#no punctuation just breaking your thoughts into different tweets

[9w1ft]

9wing! thoughts on #that part of the 1989 TV prologue?

this is me admitting im probably not going to be reading the room correctly so my apologies

coming from the perspective of someone who has been focused on building my understanding of taylor’s relationship with one person based on a continuing thread over years, amidst a sea of people doing precisely what taylor described, which is starting rumors about her and whoever she touches, i read this prologue and said, well… yeah! yep!!!

maybe one alternative way to look at it is to say that it’s just her saying “i thought i could take cover with men but i became too big to hang out so i decided to take cover with women but the same things happened!” which is true. and if you believe she had a relationship that she wanted to keep secret but still enjoy some semblance of life with, it is true that there was no combination of men or women that they hung out with that stopped people from assuming the secret was theirs to prove.

now, when i think about the prologue from a more meta perspective, i can understand how many had high hopes for a different 1989 tv era than the one we have been previewed as of late, and i recognize that that the thing is worded in a way that people who send hate to gaylors will take as permission to send even more hate to gaylors, and in the abstract, what this is is taylor choosing words that she should know by now will send hate to a group of people that is majority gay (umbrella term), and there’s something kinda wonky about that whole setup given the power imbalance.. although, it’s not one fan’s tweets against the biggest singer of our time, it’s a sea of people, and in some ways taylor is but one person. she has feelings. and just the same as you and i, it’s probably difficult to always feel like you have to take the high road simply for the principle of the thing, when the way people treat you or speak about you as if they know you might sometimes bother you. maybe sometimes we (the collective we, her fans) can’t have nice things because we break them, and she had to take them away. we are all going to feel different ways about that, but i don’t think taylor’s feelings are illegal for her to have.

i think about a particular span of time — back in the era in which she wrote the 1989 songs spanning all up through the 1989 era and until she disappeared —and how we all can see that she went through a singular hell because things were recorded and things were reported. i’m sure this hell will be punctuated again with stuff in the vault tracks. and part of her experience in that hell was finally finding someone who loved her for who she was and let her wear high heels and let her bejeweled, as it were, someone broad shouldered, a love that was really something not just the idea of something, only for it to be overexposed via a few grainy cellphone videos before taylor was ready for it to be. and people ran with it when she wasn’t ready to, and there were other people who might have wanted a heads up. and yeah she was drunk that night and yes she was dropping hints and screaming it every step of the way but every situation has nuance and gray and there was probably some unexplained line or implied boundary that taylor sees that we as fans may or may not see at any given time when it comes to what she feels is too much.

and it kind of reminds me of how taylor penned the lyric “talk your talk and go viral i just need this love spiral” which probably meant something close to “you can all profit off rumors of me all you want i don’t like it but i can’t stop it and im not going to stop loving who i’m with no matter how viral your claims get” when she probably could have anticipated a lot of people would have just taken “talk you talk and go viral” as some sort of manchurian directive to make all the content always every day 🙈 so for her to drop this sort of prologue right now where she highlights how people talk about her being with everyone probably feels extra hypocritical or unnecessary when you look at it from a certain perspective. but i can also recognize how multiple things, multiple feelings, can be true

and so to circle back to what it made me think personally, from a kaylor perspective, idk it made sense to me in some way 😆 in not gonna be like hey guys think the same as me, no. no, no. please think the way you need to but as for myself i’m just going to keep on in the way that i think is best and keep a lookout for signs of feedback about what she might want more of or less of from me and adjust as i see fit. so yes, these have been my thoughts.

[tsumtsumrry]

Christina

the one where there’s a reminder 

(3.4k words; there’s smut, lots of mention of hate, husband harry :D, like two seconds of fluff at the end, ofc there’s language)

Everybody knows the media isn’t the most positive place. But Christina knows that all too well. 

Christina and Harry have been together for seven years, and while all seven of those years were heaven within the relationship, outside of it was hell. 

Out of all the people Harry has been with, Christina gets the most internet slaughter and hate. Neither of them really understand why, but Harry’s solution to the problem was always to ignore them because, “if they have nothing better to do than gossip about an incredible woman they don’t even know they aren’t worth your time”

Christina believes him of course, but sometimes she accidentally stumbles across some hateful words, opens a thread, and then she’s sucked into a rabbit hole of them. Other times, she can’t stop herself from venturing on to her social media platforms and seeing what people are saying about her.

This is one of the latter.

After she put Darcy to sleep, she sat down on the couch and went to town, finding every nasty tweet, post, and thread that she could find.

She’s fighting back tears as she reads every last word, down to the punctuation and grammar mistakes and wonders what she’s doing so wrong that everyone hates her. 

She keeps reading and reading and her heart is breaking and breaking and she can feel a headache coming on but yet she still doesn’t stop. 

It’s not until she hears heavy footsteps coming down the stairs that she even has a thought of putting her phone away. 

She can hear the footsteps getting closer to the bottom and she tries her best to wipe her tears before her husband sees her having a breakdown over some comments that were probably written by ten-year olds.

Harry was just up in their shared room watching television and relaxing when he missed his wife and wanted to give her a kiss. He’s always excited to talk to or see her even though they live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, and see each other all the time. He always wants to be around her, he can’t stand when she’s not there. He gets so pouty and down when he’s on tour and he just wants a cuddle. 

Christina always makes fun of him for being so extremely homesick, but she can’t deny that she misses him terribly when he’s gone too. 

Harry starts whistling a happy tune in glee because he still can’t believe his life is this perfect, but he abruptly stops when he hears a sniffle. 

His trots down the stairs slow and he starts to walk more cautiously down the stairs. They’ve been down this road before, Harry always wants to comfort his wife, but she doesn’t like showing that she’s in pain, whenever Harry even tries to catch her crying or down, she just plasters on a fake smile and gives him a bullshit excuse. He hates it, but he knows he can’t force anything out of her and Christina is safe knowing he won’t try to. 

Christina is still wiping her tears and she doesn’t even notice that the heavy steps have stopped, she’s just focused on putting on a good face for her husband. 

“Baby?” 

Christina practically jumps out of her skin when she hears his voice. She’s hoping he can’t see her swollen lips, wet skin, and that her puffy eyes and that he’ll just cuddle her to sleep and call it a night. 

She sniffles a little softer than before and prays he doesn’t hear it, “uh...hi H. Why aren’t you sleeping yet? It’s pretty late.” She internally curses her voice for trembling a bit and turns around a little more to smile at him. 

Harry usually tries to demand that he tell her what’s going on, but that never works because he’s a little scared of upsetting her and their volumes when they speak have always been inside voices unless they were in the bedroom. So he tries a different approach. 

He walks slowly over to her where she’s sitting on the couch and leans down to rest his head on her shoulder. He sighs at her intoxicating scent and warming aura and pecks her on the cheek. “Why aren’t you sleeping yet, my love?” 

She shrugs lightly and tries to lean more into Harry, god knows she needs to comfort (even if she won’t say it).

“Just put Darcy to sleep, she was a little more stubborn than normal today.” she mumbles. At least she’s not really lying. She did just put Darcy to sleep, but that’s obviously not all she did. 

At this, Harry pulls his head back, trying to get eye contact with her and he frowns, “I could’ve done that.” 

“It’s fine, I thought you were asleep anyways.” 

Harry nods and believes her at first, but then he thinks back to the sniffle and how she was trying to discreetly wipe away tears when he walked down and he frowns even more. 

Christina notices and her lips dip down at the corners too, wondering what’s got him upset. 

“If you just put Darcy to sleep....why’re you out here sitting on the couch?” Harry mumbles, trying his best not to sound too accusing. Christina is taken aback though. Harry always believes whatever lies about how she’s feeling that she tells him, she lets her emotions out through something else, and everythings good again. But this time she has a feeling that routine isn’t gonna fly.

She stutters out a rushed lie and that's when Harry’s heart breaks, “jesus, baby. You have to talk to me. Tell me what’s going on?” he says, his voice raising in volume and sternness in the slightest so she knows he’s not playing around this time. 

Christina doesn’t know how to say it, so she decides she’ll just show him, she pulls out her phone, unlocks it, puts it right in Harry’s line of vision. 

She can see his irises moving rapidly around the page opened on her small phone screen and she’s biting her nails, overcome with nerves. 

She knows it’s stupid, but she can’t help but think that maybe Harry is reading those words and agreeing with his fans. Agreeing that she’s a slut, a bitch, and someone who doesn’t deserve Harry. They are his fans after all, wouldn’t he agree?

Tears fall from her eyes at her thoughts and Harry is so engrossed in these disgusting messages that he isn’t even realizing them. 

With every word he reads, the urge to vomit grows stronger. He can’t believe that his fans, the people that claim to love and adore him so much , would talk so disgustingly about a person he loves and adores so much. 

In times like these, he’s exceptionally grateful for all the fans of his that respect his life, privacy, and relationship. 

He imagines Christina reading these messages with tears in her eyes and doubt in her heart and he feels his own heart crack even more. He’s trying to fight back some of his own crying and finally tears his eyes off the screen. 

“Why are you loo--” he stops when he sees Christina with tears streaming down her face and a pouty trembling lip. 

“C’mere.” Is all he says before Christina is tossing herself into his arms and sobbing into his chest. 

“None of those things are true, alright? Those people are fuckin’ assholes.” 

Christina wants to believe him, but she can’t shake the feeling that he’s lying to her face. She knows insecurity is something she’s struggled with for a while. She hates it but she can’t really stop it. 

Her friends tell her that she’s dating the Harry Styles and has nothing to feel insecure about, but the fact that she’s dating Harry sometimes makes it worse. 

The alleged cure is the cause. 

Harry tries to tell her everyday that he loves her, that she’s perfect and all he wants, but Christina’s mind makes her believe otherwise. Harry knows that she can’t help the fact that her brain is lying to her, but he can’t help feeling his heart break when he sees her crying and down because of it. 

“You know what?” Harry says all of a sudden and stands up abruptly at the same time. He grabs her arm from around her torso and pulls her up from the couch. Christina has no idea what’s going on, but she just goes along with it because she knows once Harry has something in mind (especially a solution to a problem) he’s not going to let it go. 

Harry’s in between fuming and being heartbroken for his girl. He’s stomping up the stairs into their bedroom and Christina is aimlessly following him with no fucking clue what’s going on. 

Once they get into the bedroom, Harry pulls her once more but this time he pulls her down on the edge of the bed in a sitting position. He has a stern, concentrated look on his face. His eyebrows are pulled harshly together and his thumb and pointer finger are picking at his bottom lip that’s set in a pout. 

Christina just stares at him with her eyebrows raised up to her hairline and her mind swimming with confusion and a little bit of amusement at how her husband is behaving. 

Harry is pacing back and forth in short quick steps before he stops right in front of her. He looks down at her and tilts his head to the side while pursing his lips almost as if he’s negotiating with himself about something in his head. 

He hums and then speaks “I think I have to remind you just how perfect you are. Just how wrong those people are.” 

Christina’s eyebrows pull down her face in confusion and Harry smiles slightly. 

“I wanna show you,” he pauses and leans down to kiss her lips slowly and passionately, “just how fucking perfect you are. Will you let me?” 

Harry hands move from his side to Christina’s full thighs and starts to knead them sensually until he lets his hands inch higher. Christina sucks in a breath and Harry smirks before he speaks. “Please let me show you, baby”

Christina nods, at all loss for words and before Harry can reprimand her she corrects herself and gives him verbal consent. 

He lowers himself down until he’s on his knees, watching her the whole time and Christina’s breath hitches at the sight. 

“Only woman who can get me on my knees like this. S’only for you, babe.” he whispers while using his large hands that are still set on her thighs and slowly spreading them apart. 

He leans his head a little further, still managing eye contact, and starts to leave wet, slow open-mouthed kisses up and down her thighs. He smirks when he feels a warming heat start up near her core and Christina is desperately trying to hold in her gasps. 

Harry reaches his hand up to pull down her small shorts, and then her underwear follows. Christina suddenly feels exposed and tries to shut her legs, but Harry isn’t having any of it. His grip tightens on her thighs and makes it so she can’t even think of moving them. 

Both of them know Harry has always been a bit shy and submissive when it comes to sex. Christina was quite the dominant herself so it worked out. But today, today is definitely different. It’s obvious that Christina is beyond surprised at the commanding inflection in Harry’s voice and the way he’s dealing with her right now.

Christina is at a loss for words when he leans even further and licks a slow stripe up her heat. She gasps and her hands instinctively go to tangle in his hair. 

He groans and with his mouth still on her, moves his hand under her thighs and picks her up slightly to push her further on the bed. She lays down on her back in the soft sheets and is suddenly grateful she has something else other than his beautiful hair to tug on (even though he loves it).

His tongue juts out to put just the right amount of pressure on her clit and begins his fast paced patterns. Christina throws her head back in ecstasy and moans softly into the air. Her eyes squeeze shut and her back arches. 

Harry’s always been good at going down on his woman, it’s never been anything he’s had trouble with. Pleasing his woman in general is easy and fun for him. He’s always told Christina he enjoys her pleasure more than his, and it’s true. Nothing beats the face his wife makes when she comes undone on his mouth, fingers, or his cock. Nothing beats that.

“Watch, Cris. Look at me.” Harry rasps and while it proves difficult to keep her eyes open while his tongue is quite literally inside of her, she manages to open her eyes and look at Harry only to find his lustful gaze is already fixed on her.  

Christina can feel the stirring in her tummy that’s telling her she’s already close. Harry and her haven’t done anything like this in a while since the baby, at least that’s Harry reasoning. Christina hasn’t felt like being touched by Harry since she’s been so consumed with the hate on the internet and social platforms, but Harry’s hoping to change that tonight. 

Her moans become more frequent and raise in volume and Harry knows that she’s close, the way she’s soaking his face is more of an accurate indication, though.

“Oh god--fuck! I’m close! Harry, harry I’m close!” she moans out, getting closer and closer to relief with every flick and suck that he plants on her. 

“Mhm. Yes. Cum.” he mumbles back at her, knowing she likes the small encouragement. 

“Fuck!” she gasps and then she’s cumming and Harry’s groaning and they’re both in bliss with their shared satisfaction. 

Harry doesn’t let up with his tongue until she’s whimpering and whining in overstimulation and trying to separate her core from his mouth. 

“Good?” he asks after pressing a kiss below her ear. He knows the answer to his own question but would rather hear it coming out of the mouth that was just helplessly moaning his name. 

“So good” Christina smiles in content and Harry smirks at her expression and the praise. 

“M’so hard for you, baby. Feel.” he whispers and takes her hand in his to guide it to his crotch. 

Christina applies to pressure to lightly palm him and he moans softly at the contact. 

Seeing her in pleasure gets him exceptionally excited and that’s why he’s been grounding his hip into the mattress in hopes to offer himself some relief. He can tell that he’s extra sensitive and any touch she gives him is threatening to send him over the edge. 

“S’for you, baby. S’all for you.” he says referring to how rock hard he is and Christina mewls softly at his voice.

He brings his hand down to her heat and presses his palm to it, teasingly moving it some, “this for me?” he mumbles softly with a hint of taunt in his voice. 

Christina nods quickly after a quiet gasp, “yes, Harry. It’s for you.” 

“Good.” is all he says before he discards his pants and boxers and leans down to give Christina sensual, loving kisses. 

He always puts effort into the kisses he gives his wife, but he makes sure to make this one especially powerful. He wants her to feel every ounce of emotion and love he has for her. Even though he knows it’s her insecurities that make her feel like she’s not enough, he won’t lie and say it doesn’t sting that feels that way. It makes him feel like he’s not doing a good enough job as a husband with showing her he loves her, he’s hoping that this changes that.

He takes a hold of his cock and presses it near her entrance, sucking in a breath and the feel of her wetness that’s starting to pool and drip out of her. 

“D’you want me to keep going? Want me to fuck you?” Harry asks softly and Christina nods deliriously, so overwhelmed with the intense need to let him have her in any way he wants. 

He adjusts himself a little bit and pushes his hips forward tortuously slow until she’s filled with him completely. 

“Fuck. So so tight. Fucking christ.” Harry gasps. 

Christina moans aimlessly into the air and Harry takes advantage of it, bringing his lips to her neck. He sucks and kisses it and she moans at both forms of pleasure she’s getting. 

“God you’re so perfect. You feel so fucking good, so tight around me. S’like you’re fucking hugging me.” 

Christina mewls at the words coming out of his mouth. They’ve both always equally loved dirty talk, it’s something that gets them both going and ultimately everything feels better when your partner is letting you know they enjoy what you’re doing to them. 

“M’so full, Harry.” she says at the same time Harry thrusts particularly deep. His eyes roll into the back of his head while his jaw slacks in a stomach-knotting moan. 

“Yeah? I fill you up?” Harry taunts, leaning down to nibble at her earlobe. It’s no secret between the two (and everyone else if we’re being honest) that he has a bit of a praise kink. A bit would actually be an understatement. Not many things can make him feel like praise makes him feel. When Christina tells him how big he is, how good he’s making her feel, it literally makes him shake. 

“God, yes. You’re so big, makes me feel so good.” she tightens around him for a second, almost as if to prove her point and Harry has to bite down on her shoulder to pacify his loud moan somehow. 

“Fuck look at me.” he manages to growl out. As soon as he gets her eye contact, (wavering, but still eye contact nonetheless) he speaks. “Do you see how fucking good you’re making me feel? Nobody else can make me feel like--fuck--like this. You’ve got me so fucked up for you.”  

At this point he’s just babbling out whatever comes to his mind, he’s sure he sounds incoherent but Christina hears him and it nearly brings tears to her eyes. She’s never had someone care about how she feels about herself as much as Harry. The fact that he’s doing everything in his power to make sure she knows how loved and perfect she is, it makes her indescribably happy.

So much so that the orgasm got a little closer than she thought it would be. 

Harry watches her face contort some and his head lulls to the side when she tightens around him. “Gonna cum, baby?” 

She nods quickly and she can feel it, she can feel everything building up into that white hot pleasure, she can feel it about to bubble over the surface, but then he stops. 

She whines in protest but Harry just shakes his head.

“Tell me, Christina.” 

“Harry.” she whines “Let me come.” 

“You’re perfect, beautiful, and the love of my life.” he punctuates each adjective with a kiss. “Say it.” 

She whines again and tries to shift her hips to get some sort of friction, but Harry pins her hips down and Christina is cursing his strength. 

“Say it.” 

“I’m….perfect, beautiful...” Harry hums to urge her to keep going, leaving open mouthed kisses all over her neck, trying his best to refrain from nipping at all so she can finish her sentence. “...and the love of your life.” she finishes. 

“That’s right. Remember that.” Harry says with a tone of finality, and in two quick movements he pulls out of her only to quickly slam back into her.

“Fuck” he gasps. “Have no idea how hard it was to stay still. Y’so warm though, it was nice.”

It doesn’t take much to bring both of them right back to the edge, Christina squeaking out high pitched moans and Harry sobbing out what sounds like pained groans. 

“Yes, fuck. Cum. My perfect, beautiful wife. Need you to come for me.”  

Almost immediately after the words leave his mouth she cums and takes Harry right with her with a muffled-into-the-pillows shout of her name. 

Harry gasps with the last spurt of cum that shoots out of him into her and then he slumps down on top of her, completely worn out. 

“You’re so good at that.” Christina says with a breathy laugh and Harry joins her. 

“Yeah? You too, babe.” he chuckles.

“No I mean, making me feel better, You’ve always been so good at that.” she reiterates. 

Harry just smiles down at her and leans down to peck her lips, “s’my job, baby.” 

“Let’s go get cleaned up and then we can have a cuddle, yeah?” Harry says and Christina nods with a smile.

[wispon]

mental state hc for shadow, tails, and sonic?

LMAO WHOOPS, i entirely forgot about these!!!

for shadow: shadow’s limiters are there entirely for mental reasons!! physically, his body is theoretically perfectly capable of handling his power, but that’s failing to take into account how responsive chaos energy is to thoughts and emotions. the biolizard also had this problem, but the professor misinterpreted chaos energy being power “enriched by the heart”/the biolizard’s explosive responses to fear and stress as the energy responding mechanically to its heightened heartbeat, and outfitted shadow with multiple support hearts and peristaltic blood vessels to take the load off of his main heart as a result... which is great bc his main heart can stop beating and he’ll be fine, but kind of fails to address the actual problem gjfkgfjkdlgd. so once the professor realized how chaos energy actually worked, he decided to give shadow power limiters instead of just, like, taking out his amygdala or teaching him to suppress his emotions. shadow’s not very expressive but he IS very sensitive so even with his, at this point very good, coping mechanisms, it’s a lot easier and safer just to leave the limiters on unless otherwise needed. and he also Knows it looks cool as fuck when he does get to take them off, so that’s a bonus

for tails: tails is doing really well at this point!!! he’s a lot more confident in general, and is enjoying figuring out who he actually is instead of just trying to be like sonic. but he’s also in that place in recovery where, like, problems that were buried under other problems are suddenly at the surface and can be blindsiding. tangential aspects to his low self esteem like the fact that he can’t take a compliment (even from sonic, bc it’s easy to brush off as Well, That’s Sonic, he’ll say nice things to Anyone), he doesn’t have a healthy work/life balance bc he still puts an unhealthy amount of his self-worth into his work, and that he still doesn’t really know how to ask for help because of a loop where he doesn’t feel like he deserves it but also like he should be above needing help at this point because he’s Grown Up are suddenly Real Problems now. that last one makes it kind of difficult for him to tackle them, but thankfully his close friends are all pretty perceptive/emotionally intelligent (aside from knuckles JKDGJFKLGJD) so he definitely has a support system in place

for sonic: this goes against popular fanon, but i truly don’t think he’s all that phased by things like danger or water! i straight up don’t think he knows how to feel fear in a lot of situations that he should. like when you have anxiety and your brain interprets any autonomic arousal as fear, but instead of fear it’s excitement. big robots or deep water or things that otherwise pose a mortal threat to him are just interesting challenges to him. a different kind of fun than the other things he experiences on his adventures, but still fun in the sense that he has to figure them out and work through them. i think the only times he feels fear is when he’s faced with a situation he truly can’t find any control in or work his way through, like in unleashed or colours. he knows when he’s beat! but otherwise he loves being challenged by things that push him off balance... honestly as long as innocent people aren’t in danger you can throw anything at him and he’ll love working it out

[bubblyhoney]

sarah i have thought of another fic request or like a cute idea i guess! i didn’t have anyone in mind when i thought of it so you can write it for whoever you want honestly :)

okay so the reader is a streamer but streams games like animal crossing, standew valley, etc. then (insert who you’re writing for) says they don’t like that game, but later ends up buying it and the reader is like “i thought you said you didn’t like this game” and they’re like “well i like you” and they confuses their feelings and they end up playing the game together and reader gives them a tour of their island or farm

i feel like this request isn’t good, but the scenario seemed cute and i wanted to share it. sorry if this is confusing or just too specific cuz i know it can be hard to write requests like that! but yeah i hope it gives you inspiration and you like the request <3

new horizons

warnings: language, a Marvel reference (hint: natasha said it about tony), stupid idiots who don’t realize they like each other, use of pet names, Uno rage, Hasan Piker's presence

words: 1473

tags: sapnap x gn!reader

A/N: i’ve been trying to catch up a little on my requests (i’ve only got a couple so i’m not super overwhelmed) but school and outside life has been taking up most of my time so this one took me a while to make! tbh— ive never played animal crossing so i did google some of the game mechanics and i apologize if anything is inaccurate about the game…. but i liked relaxing and writing this cute one so thank you for requesting hails :3

requests/inbox status: open

-

“This game is trash.”

Your head quirks, fingers stopped on the screen. You’re in the process of giving your character a cute new nickname; it’s kind of hard to decide between “awkward dude” and “elderly skater”.

“Excuse me?” Your chat comes alive with emotes and ‘KEKW’s, obviously entertained by you and your almost-more-than-friends-friend.

There’s a story for that later.

Sapnap’s rough laugh comes through your headset and he audibly swallows, the sound of a water bottle dropping onto his desk echoing.

“I’m just saying—it’s boring. It’s like Minecraft but you don’t like… do anything.” The grainy image of his bearded face shifts and you see him pull out his phone.

“It’s— you can’t even compare it to Minecraft! It’s a completely different game system—you actually interact with other people live in the game.” You huff out a dramatic sigh, slumping in your chair with a pout. “Just because you go into this lucid state where all you know is ‘touch block, hit George’ doesn’t mean this game isn’t fun.” (He scoffs at your awful impression of his voice. Your viewers love it.)

“Jeez,” he mumbles, fumbling with the cap of his water bottle. “Touched a nerve there, bud.”

You roll your eyes, getting back to the village in the game.

“Don't ‘bud’ me.”

The call falls comfortably quiet, the sounds of him tapping obsessively on his phone and you clicking away filling the silence. A gentle bedroom-pop YouTube playlist remains in the background, prompting you to hum along and glance at the chat to see a flood of “check twitter” and “Y/N TWITTER!!”.

“What happened on Twitter?” You mumble, confused, and pull the website up on another monitor. Sapnap just makes a curious noise, swinging back and forth in a circle. “Oh my God,” you say to yourself, fingertips brushing your parted lips.

“What?”

“Hasan Piker just followed me and retweeted one of my not even remotely political old tweets. Like from a year ago.”

“That’s— wow. Congrats?” Sapnap’s voice cracks, and his ears flush pink the tiniest bit when you glance at his face on Discord.

“I’m gonna go on record and say that he could get it.” You shake your head in disbelief.

Sapnap falls uncharacteristically non-hyper-verbal, so you look past the frenzied chat and to his screen— wait. He muted and turned his camera off.

“Um,” you start, furiously typing question marks in your private chat. “Where’d you go?” You mute and turn screen share off for your stream, concerned that he might’ve fallen off his chair and broken his neck and needs you to call the ambulance.

The characteristic ding of a twitter notification sounds through your bedroom, and you look at your phone quickly.

“That’s where I went.”

Sapnap Tweeted: “all Y/U stans can choke on my dick”.

“Jesus, Sapnap,” you say, and rapidly refresh to read the replies. This tweet was deleted. “That’s so— that barely makes sense, bro. Why— literally what?”

His snicker floods your ears and you relax in your chair. Crisis: averted. “Don’t fucking— what’s wrong with you?”

“I thought it would be funny,” he offers, shrugging, and fiddles with the straw in his water bottle, smile fading. “And also Hasan pisses me off.”

“Why, ‘cause he wants a piece of this? Jealous?” You think back to your viewers, knowing they’re probably spamming question marks and coming to ludacris conclusions about both of your absences. No offense to them. You remember your stan days very vividly.

“I mean, kinda.” He rubs once at his nose, glancing at the camera (and what feels like you) before taking a sip from his water bottle.

“Wow.” You watch one strand of his hair fall from beneath his hat and brush against his full eyebrows. “I’m uh—I’ll get back to my stream. You coming? Or is it time for a Sapnap-snack?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He snorts and leans his chin onto the balance of his arm.

“That means you like to take a little snack break mid-stream and come back approximately nine hours later and you didn’t even eat.”

“You know what— fuck you.” He flicks the camera as you laugh at the look on his face.

The teasing mood is easily kept as you switch games from Animal Crossing to Uno, all the while slamming Sapnap with +4’s and skipping the newly-arrived BadBoyHalo at any chance you can get. It unironically pisses him off and he has to take a Sapnap-snack break midway through (only a fifteen minute break this time, during which you and Bad take a “What Kind of Bread Are You?” quiz). The rest of the night is filled with devious cackles (you), loud and sudden bangs that sound suspiciously like someone hitting their desk in anger (Sap) and the stupid barking of Rat, AKA Lucy (Bad). She’s cute but a menace to the sound quality of Bad’s microphone. You sign off stream around 2 a.m. with various forms of thanks and kisses blown to the camera. It’s been a refreshing night, actually; you’ve been busy organizing a partnership stream all week and all your friends have been busy filming or editing or what-not. Quackity had time for a little Roblox every couple of days, though. He’s got your back.

The next time you see Sapnap is after a two hour stream of him try-harding in Valorant and you finishing responding to an email from your partnership in the VC.

“Okay, I’m back.” You hear him shift in his chair and click a couple more times on his keyboard. You perk up in your chair, closing the email browser you’d been looking at.

“Do you want to play anything else? I’m down for anything.”

“Absolutely not Uno. You can go to hell for giving me 6 cards that one time,” he jabs. You scoff, crossing your arms and leaning back in your chair.

“Okay, the +4 was on me but it’s Bad who gave you the last two. That’s not my fault, sweetie.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, trailing off as the clicking of his keyboard stops. “Hey, um—Guess what?”

Your heart beats loud in your ears at the tone of his voice. He sounds nervous; that’s never good.

“I’m scared to guess,” you try, playing with a little Minecraft dog figurine you have on your desk with fidgety fingers. “What?”

“I bought Animal Crossing.”

Silence. You stare at his discord icon blankly, trying to reroute the wires of your brain.

“Tell me you love it.”

“Well… I haven’t actually played it— but you said you liked it, so.”

“So,” you repeat him, ears warming but continuing on. “Is that what you tell all your friends when you buy something they like? That it's because of them?”

He seems to choose his next words carefully, pausing a beat to consider your questions.

“Well, I don’t have a crush on all of my friends.”

“You—what?” You stutter, caught off guard and stumbling. What did he just say? “Don’t tell me you mean you have a crush on me.”

“I’m almost positive I just did.” His discord icon stares right back at you, taunting.

“You know, you’re very casual for someone who just admitted they like-like me.” Your cheeks flush pink and you have to press a hand to your chest to keep your breathing sounding stable.

“Yeah, I’m kind of cool like that,” he offers, a huff of a laugh punctuating his statement. The conversation moves into a lull that you can’t help but know is because of you. He must expect you to say something about it, right?

“You are very cool, Sapnap.” You tilt back in your chair, sucking in a breath to prepare yourself for your next words. “And—Isortakindofhaveacrushonyoutoo.”

He must understand you, for you can hear the grin in his voice when he asks “Really?”

“Y-yeah.” You feel like a preteen again, all shaky and giddy in front of the boy you just asked to a middle school dance.

“Um, alright. What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” you answer genuinely and swing in a happy little circle in your chair. “We could play Animal Crossing.”

“I’m down.”

You swear you’ve never heard more beautiful words.

He keeps his camera off for most of the time you two play, too focused on creating his island and asking you questions about how to fish to turn it on. He silently flips it on when you help him decorate his lawn, needing to show you in real-time the decorations he has bought and where you think he should put them. He looks cute. I mean, of course he does. He always does.

You tell him goodbye late in the night, eyes saying a little more than just “see you tomorrow”.

You like him. He likes you.

It’s even better when you two have matching gardens.

-

A/N: anybody and everybody (especially my precious hailey) let me know what you think!! :]

[adorethedistance]

READING MY BOYFRIEND’S FANFICTION?? - Owen Joyner x Influencer!Reader

JATP masterlist

Requested: OMGGG!! Could you do a an Owen fic based around his girlfriend being an armature youtuber/social media influencer (shes also an actress and they met on set and have been dating for a while) and it’s “reading/reacting to my boyfriend’s fanfiction” ? You can do whatever you want with the fanfic part it’s just a concept that has been running around in my head for a while. LOVE ALL YOUR WORK!!

Warnings: swearing, allusions to sex, very mild

Words: 1460

A/N: A fic?? From Ace?? Hi. I’m off spring break officially and so my stress has dissipated immensely. School was becoming so much these last two weeks and I thought I’d be stressed or worried, but I’m actually fine? It’s weird lol so I decided I could be productive with my stress-free moment and post a little fic for y’all. I love this prompt, and before any of you writers panic, I’m using my own fics for the fanfictions because I wouldn’t want to put y’all on the spot like that. Also this is my 3000 post! thought that was cool lol

“Do you wanna do the intro?”

“I think I have to do the intro.”

“Okay, go for it.”

“Alright,” Owen sighs out a heavy breath in exaggerated preparation for my (some would say lengthy) intro. “Hello, hi. Yes, okay, this is Y/n Y/l/n vlogs, welcome or welcome back to my channel!” Once Owen finishes his statement I’m so stunned I can’t generate any sort of response other than a slacked jaw semi smile.

“That was not even close. Do you know my intro?”

“I got the first part right!”

“You’ve lost intro privileges,” I turn back to the mess of lights and tripods in front of me and ignore the disaster of an intro Owen offered. “Oh, hello, hi! I am Y/n and this is: Reading My Boyfriend’s Fanfiction!”

“That’s basically what I did.”

“No, it is not! It’s ‘oh, hello, hi. I am ‘name’ and this is: ‘title of video’.”

“You don’t ‘welcome to my channel’?” Owen’s voice has dropped to a hushed volume as he genuinely inquires about the segments of my usual introduction.

“I do not.”

“Don’t use any of this,” he pleads when making direct eye contact with the camera. “Mister Sid. Editing Sid, please don’t embarrass me.” His pleas fall on deaf ears, knowing that I’ll be using the footage in full.

“Anyways. Butchered intro aside, I am Y/n and today I am here with my lovely “So Many Stars” costar and scene partner, Owen Joyner!”

“I’m also your boyfriend.”

“That too,” I give Owen’s pointed comment a soft place to land, “So, yesterday--it was actually like, two weeks ago, I don’t know why I said yesterday--a little while back, I came across a tweet telling me someone had written a fanfic about us-”

“Did you read it?”

“On Wattpad. Of course, I read it. There are only three chapters up right now and they’re all in the 2-3k range so it was a quick read.”

“2-3k?”

“Words,” I reply nonchalantly as I unlock my phone. I bookmarked a few one-shots beforehand for us to read, and I’m slightly cocky about my selections. Owen then responds with an outburst of shock.

“2-3 thousand words is a short read?” I merely give him a blank stare.

“Judging by that reaction, Owen hasn’t read any fanfics in his life.”

“Is that not long to you- That’s what she said.” Owen cuts me off with his own stupid joke and I briefly sigh before answering.

“No, that isn’t long. Baby, I’m here for that 130k slow burn enemies to lovers on AO3 with the ‘only one bed’ and ‘locked in a closet’ tropes.”

“The what?”

“Oh, we have so much to catch you up on.”

__________________________

“So I saved three fics, an angst, a fluff, and a smut. Which do you want to read?”

“Wait, what does that mean?”

“Oh my- okay. Angst is the sad shit, it’s what you read when you need your heartbroken and a good cry. Smut is pretty much in the name, it’s explicit content that will undoubtedly get this video demonetized, but that’s okay because we do have a sponsor. And fluff is the cute moments, domestic and sometimes mundane romance that makes you smile like an idiot and put the device down to screech into a pillow.” Throughout my whole explanation, I can tell Owen was becoming more and more lost, so I opt to give him a few moments to collect his thoughts.

“Let’s start with the fluff just to ease into things.”

“Smart choice. This fic I have saved is called ‘Baby Fever’ and the summary says ‘you and Owen spend a day at the zoo babysitting Baby Shada, and her presence sparks conversation about adding a new presence of your very own’.”

“That sounds so ominous.”

“Here, I’ll read the narration and reader’s POV, and then you’ll read your own dialogue.” Owen nods and leans over my right shoulder to read off of my computer screen.

“You actually start the fic.”

“‘You ready, little one?’” The instantaneous actor mode Owen slips into has me howling with laughter at which he looks at me confused. My gasping for air makes Owen laugh empathetically despite still being unsure as to what’s killing me at the moment.

“Why are you laughing?!” He yells, dramatically shaking my shoulder.

“Just the way you jumped into that, I wasn’t prepared for you to turn on the acting charm. Okay, uhhhh, ‘I bite back a laugh when I hear Owen’s voice coo from the back seat’.”

The two of us go back and forth between reading the narrative, bouts of laughter, commentary on the accuracy of Owen’s character, and we finally manage to finish the 2.5k fic in about forty minutes.

“‘When he looks up from CJ’s tiny body and recognizes the familiar ‘baby fever’ look in my eyes, he smiles and utters a simple-’.”

“‘I told you so.’”

“That was cute! I like the tie-in of having us watching over Baby Shada- or, sorry, you and ‘y/n’ watching over Baby Shada.”

“They wrote me kinda funny, I don’t think I’d ever fabricate a life to make conversation with a stranger due to baby fever.” My jaw drops slightly and before Owen can respond to my reaction, I cry,

“That is such a lie!”

“What?”

“You absolutely would do something like that, are you kidding me?!”

“No, I would not!” Owen punctuates every word with the utmost offense. He has the same look in his eye as when he was proving himself to be the cleanest phantom of the three on the Sunset Drive podcast.

“You literally told the guy at Home Depot yesterday that we were buying plants for our child’s nursery!”

“Okay, that’s different-”

“How is that different? That’s the exact same thing as fanfic you!” Owen’s furrowed brow and dropped jaw are a sight to be seen as he leans away from me, bending at the waist to stare at me with defiance. I raise my eyebrows pointedly as I await a response. Instead of actually producing a response, Owen lunges forward, grabbing my waist in his hands and squeezing gently. The feeling makes me screech and gasp of laughter from surprise and also being ticklish.

“Owen! Owe-STOP, I’m gonna drop my laptop!” I manage to say through my laughter and with one final grab, he releases me from his hold. It takes a minute for my laughter to settle but once I do, the two of us are simply breathing heavy and staring at one another with giddy smiles on our faces. In a moment’s clarity, I turn to look into the camera lens to talk directly to my editor,

“Sid, don’t use any of this. And please don’t cut to this after we finish reading to make it look like- things were happening.”

“Actually, I think you should, Sid. Just cut to right there and make the world think we-”

“OKAY, thanks for watching, bye!” I quickly stop the recording before Owen says something we’re unable to recover from. I hear him laugh gently behind me as I set my laptop down on the coffee table behind the tripod. Coming back to the couch, I move to plop down but before landing successfully on the cushion next to my phone, Owen grabs my body and moves me to sit on top of him.

“You are crazy, you know that?”

“Hmm. Crazy for you, maybe.” His cheesy line makes me scoff but smile nonetheless. I reach my right hand up to caress the side of his face as we sit cheek to cheek.

“Remind me to never film with you again.” The gesture is sweet and the sentiment is not which makes Owen laugh and he presses a soft kiss to my cheek. I lean back into him so my back is pressed flush with his chest as he lazily wraps both arms around me.

“You say that now but you’ll regret it when you wanna do a ‘boyfriend does my makeup’ challenge video.”

“Nah. I’ll just call Charlie to-” Without allowing me to finish my sentence, Owen is digging his fingertips back into the tissue of my sides and I squeal with laughter once more. This time the torment is short-lived and Owen releases me after a sweet, reconciling kiss. “Do you have baby fever now?”

“It was cute and all, but not really, no.”

“That’s too bad,” I stand up from my spot on his lap to grab my computer and hold it to my chest, “I was gonna say we could practice some baby-making.”

And with that, I turned on the balls of my feet, heading for my bedroom when I heard Owen stand up eagerly, quick to follow.

***

Taglist: @caitsymichelle13​ @kaitlyn2907​ @itz-jas​ @crybabyddl​ @kcd15​ @kinda-really-lost​ @calamitykaty​ @morganayennefertyrell@n0wornever​ @dream-a-little-bigger-x​ @mrstodorooki@vicesvsvirturesfanfic @curlybrownhairedboys​ @amazinggracy​ @kaitieskidmore1​ @asdfghjkl-fanfics​ @ghostlygreenbean​ @juliefromaustralia @merceret​ @jemimah-b99​ @ifilwtmfc​ @thesweetestsinner​ @imsydneywalker​ @lovesanimals​ @thebloodthirstyvampress​ @bumbleberry-pie​ @losers-club6​ @tefilovesreading​ @dmcfarland1​@joynerxmercer @kexrtiz​ @talk-on-the-street​ @phantompogues​ @konciousdreamer​ @sunsetcurvej​ @warmnesss0ul​

[darlingpetao3]

House of W (Multiple!Wells x Reader, Chapter 2)

Rating: T

Summary: After having to deal with the deaths of an infinite number of Harrison Wells in the Multiverse, you, a magic-wielding meta, have a breakdown and unwittingly create a happy, fictitious sitcom life with some of your favourite men. In a world of comedy and cameos, can Team Flash and an out-of-town magician break through your powers to save you? And what if you don’t want to be saved...?

Tag List: @fandomdancer @bluesclues-1234 @pinkdiamond1016 @crissymadlock @ensign-tilly @disneyoncerlover815 @marvel-lady10 @thecaptainsgingersnap @noctvrnalmoth @alexxlynn @dontbedumb3 @heyl0lwhatsup @ryou-cosmos​

PROLOGUE | CHAPTER 1

Birds tweeting, sun shining…

Big strong arms around you.

“Well, well, Wells,” you say with a scratchy morning voice and twist your body around in bed to see who’s got you in his grasp. Ah. “Good morning, Harry.”

“Good morning, (Y/L/N),” the scientist replies. You just love how strands of his hair stick up in place. Harry arguably has the best bedhead.

“You know dear, since we are married after all, don’t you think it would be more acceptable to call me by my first name?”

Harry chuckles and pulls you closer against him.

“You do raise a fair point. (Y/N).”

“That’s more like it.”

He kisses your nose. Shortly after he does, it starts to feel itchy. You feel like you’re about to sneeze. It wiggles and wiggles until—

“Achoo!”

Suddenly, Harry, who had been clad in his silky pyjamas is now- oh my.

“(Y/N), did you just sneeze my clothes away?”

You can hardly answer the Wells in your bed because you’re so enthralled by his lack of clothing under the sheets.

“Happy accident?” you offer innocently. Harry shakes his head and smiles as if to signify that you’re up to your old antics again.

“Come here, you,” he says and pulls the covers over you both.

* * * *

The scene is really quite comical.

Harry walks briskly with his long legs into work at S.T.A.R. Toys Manufacturing Inc. as you try to keep up with quick little steps and a clipboard… while H.R. trails behind you like a maniac with a tray of coffee.

“(Y/N), I believe you have some explaining to do,” Harry speaks to you over his shoulder. “Can you remind me why you’re at work with me? And why the numbskull, too?”

“Handsome numbskull!” H.R. jokingly clarifies. Harry rolls his eyes.

“I told you, honey,” you begin, “I decided it would be best for me to get a job instead of sitting around the house. Plus, an assistant here was the only position available. I thought that was terribly convenient. We can spend more time together now, isn’t that wonderful? As for H.R., I hired him as my assistant!”

“My assistant has an assistant?”

“Don’t question it, honey,” you tell him and pat him on the cheek. Just then, two young employees walk up to you. They look rather familiar, but you can’t place why at the moment.

“Good morning, Mr. Wells,” the pair greet Harry. “And Mrs. Wells. ...And Mr. Wells.”

“Ah, good morning Garcia. Runk,” Harry answers. “I trust your projects are coming along?”

“That they are, Sir,” the young man called Runk replies.

“We should have them finished and ready by end of day,” Garcia, the young woman, adds.

“I’m glad to hear it-”

“-Well done, chaps!” H.R. interrupts. “You’re all doing such magnificent work. All for the children.”

“All for the children,” Garcia and Runk agree.

Harry clears his throat and whispers to you, “I think assistants to the assistants should be seen and not heard.”

“I’ll have a little chat with him,” you tell your handsome boss husband. “Now, let’s build some toys!”

* * * *

After a long day at the factory, you, Harry, and H.R. all return home. The delicious scent of dinner greets you as you walk in the door.

“Mmm, I wonder what Sherloque and Nash are cooking up!” you think out loud.

“I hope it’s nothing French,” Harry says semi-bitterly.

“H.R., can you go see what they’re up to in there, sweetie?”

“I most certainly can, dearest!” he responds then disappears into the kitchen. You are sure to take this opportunity to have some more one-on-one time with Harry on the couch. As you sit, he sets his briefcase down on the coffee table and removes from it a small rocket ship. After turning it around in his hands, Harry hands it to you.

“I’d been working on this today,” he says.

“Oh Harry, it is so groovy. You do such fine work.”

“The idea came to me in a dream.”

“You make dreams come true for children every day.”

Harry turns to you. “I think I’ve always wanted kids. But I guess it’s never happened for me.” He looks into your eyes. “I think I’d like to have one with you someday, (Y/N). How do you feel about that?”

“I feel… I feel…” Your nose starts to wiggle again. “Achoo!”

“(Y/N), are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

“Oh, yes, I’m completely and totally, whoaaaa!” You stand up to get a better look at yourself, finding that your tummy has a noticeable roundness to it.

“Are you…?” Harry asks. The rest of the Wells men come rushing into the living room.

“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

“I heard another sneeze!”

“Jumping juniper, (Y/N)’s pregnant!”

They all group around you in a half-circle to admire your belly and to declare their delight at the very abrupt surprise.

“Is this really happening?” you ask all of them, falling deeper and deeper into your happiness.

“I couldn’t imagine a better life with you,” Harry says and punctuates his final word with a kiss. Everything about this moment just seems… so much more colourful and vibrant.

And perfect.

~ ~ ~ ~

Barry had urgently messaged Cisco and Caitlin to meet him back at the Grand Central City Auditorium, where they had just seen Zatanna’s magic act. The plan—what very little of a plan he had—was to race to find Zatanna, the Mistress of Magic, and ask for her help.

Word on the street was that Miss Zatara’s act wasn’t mere illusions. People have said that she really does possess a special magical power. And if this was the case, she was their only hope to retrieve you from whatever world you’ve gotten yourself into.

They say sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

Well, now Team Flash is going to fight magic with magic.

It took a bit of making a scene inside the venue with the security guards for Zatanna to finally come out of her dressing room to see who was causing the commotion.

“Hi, excuse me, what’s going on here?”

“Zatanna? My name is Barry Allen,” your brother introduces himself. “I was at your show tonight.”

“Flawless,” Cisco can’t help but add.

“Sure,” she says, probably very much wanting him to get to the point. “How can I help you, Barry Allen?”

“We have a bit of a magical issue. My sister has gotten herself into a situation. We need your help.”

Zatanna’s big round eyes squint slightly, but whatever she sees in these three strangers surely isn’t threatening.

“Your sister, you say?” The Mistress of Magic always did have a soft spot for family. “Where is she?”

“You better come with us and see for yourself.”

~ ~ ~ ~

“Wow, this is quite the setup,” Zatanna says, taking in the Cortex upon her arrival. “Now, you said that your sister is broadcasting her own sitcom?”

“That’s right,” Barry confirms. “I switched on the TV earlier, and there she was in black and white. But the weird thing is that her set looked almost identical to her home, except not because her real home exploded-”

“Yeah, that’s the weird bit,” Cisco pipes up sarcastically. “Definitely not that she’s married to four different versions of the same man.”

“What?” Zatanna looks entirely confused. “Okay, you guys are going to have to catch me up.”

“No problem. The episode is streaming online. On repeat.”

“Cisco, pull up the show on the monitors,” Barry orders. The engineer does so, and the crew proceeds to analyze the sitcom episode.

“This man... or these men, rather—you said they died?” Zatanna asks the room. The rundown the gang gave her on the way to S.T.A.R Labs was quite rushed, so naturally it would only generate more questions.

“That’s right. I saw them disappear before my eyes,” Barry confirms. “They sacrificed themselves for us.”

Zatanna hums in thought. “Whether they’re truly dead or not, she must be using an incredible amount of magic to create this world and broadcast this across the airwaves.”

“Guys!” Caitlin raises her voice. “We have an incoming broadcast!”

The monitors change after a bit of static. Now, instead of the episode Team Flash was watching, a brand new jingle comes through the speakers.

“Is this…?” Barry starts.

“She released Episode Two!” Cisco cheers. Everyone in the room shoots him a look. “What? I’m invested.” As they watch the new episode, they take frantic notes, searching for any kind of clues.

“Look!” Barry points at the screen to the familiar faces.

“How did Allegra and Chester get in there?” Caitlin wonders.

“They have a guest-starring role…” Cisco notes, possibly with a hint of jealousy.

“And who are they?” Zatanna inquires.

“They’re our friends,” Barry clarifies. “At least, I think they are. They can't be illusions, can they? Created by (Y/N)?”

“I’ll call them and see if we can hear their phones ringing in the show,” Caitlin suggests. As she attempts the call, the rest of the team stands and stares at the screens hoping for some form of ringing sound. This episode seemed to be styled more in the Sixties, so it was unlikely that they’d actually see Chester and Allegra pull out a cell phone.

Nothing. No sound.

They must not have their phones on them…

A little while longer passes, with even more analyses by Team Flash and Zatanna studying your power on screen. Once in a while, she’ll ask Barry for background information about you. Which brings her to ask the all important question:

“How did (Y/N) get her powers?”

Barry goes on to explain your origin story, which coincides with his own. It was that one fateful night where Barry was in his CSI lab at CCPD, and so were you. You had stopped by to see how he was doing after the whole debacle of Iris getting her laptop stolen and Eddie saving the day instead. (To Barry’s credit, he tried really hard to catch the criminal, he just wasn’t fast enough). But you were checking up on him when the Particle Accelerator exploded and sent a wave of extraordinary, uncontained power across the city. You saw the lightning in the sky and tried to get Barry away from holding that metal chain, but in doing so, you also got caught in the crosshairs of the accident. Your brother fell into the shelf of chemicals as the lightning struck at the same time you knocked over a box of evidence—stolen ancient crystals from the Central City Museum.

Zatanna takes in the story silently, nodding in the right places. She’s deep in thought when a voice comes from the entrance to the Cortex: “Hey guys, what’s going on in here?”

Barry rushes to the two younger members of Team Flash, Allegra and Chester. “How did you two get in there? How did you get out?”

“Get in where?” Allegra wonders.

“Come on! In (Y/N)’s sitcom,” Cisco says. “Did she send out a casting call or did she just tell you that you got the parts?”

Chester and Allegra glance at each other with identical furrowed brows.

“You really don’t know what happened, do you?” Caitlin asks them.

“What happened?” they reply in unison.

Cisco stands up immediately. “I’ll get the popcorn.”

As he replays the footage, both of the ‘guest stars’ shake their heads in disbelief.

“Wow, nope, don’t remember any of that,” Chester says.

“No,” Allegra agrees. “One minute I’ve got my feet up in the Lounge, and the next I’m here walking into the Cortex.”

“Interesting,” Caitlin muses. “Interesting, but beyond strange. It’s like they’ve been mind wiped of the experience. We need more answers.” The rest of the episode plays out to reveal the big cliffhanger at the end.

“(Y/N)’s going to have a baby?!” Cisco shouts. “Oh man, things just got real. I wonder who’s the father... You don’t think (Y/N) would turn her show into a Maury episode, do you?”

“Zatanna, is there anything you can do?” Barry asks desperately. “This is getting out of hand.”

“I can cast a locating spell. All I have to do is say the words of what I wish backward for it to take hold.” Zatanna readies herself. “(N/Y) etacol,” the magician utters with her eyes closed. Everyone in the room stands silent in case making any kind of noise would ruin whatever spell she has cast.

They hold their breaths.

“I’m getting something…” Zatanna says eventually. “It’s like a signal of sorts. I can see it in my mind. And it’s coming from… here.”

“What do you mean, ‘here’?” Barry presses.

“Here. As in S.T.A.R. Labs.”

[lligkv]

a starting point, not the sum total

The magazine Harper’s recently published a feature in which a bunch of writers talk about “life after Trump.” They cover various topics: reality, tabloids, movies, relationships, manners, imagination, gold, conversation, punctuation, apologies, golf, literature, and Trump himself. Some of the writers are covering their usual beats: “literature” is covered by the book critic Christian Lorentzen, “movies” by film critic A. S. Hamrah. And some writers cover topics that I know from Twitter they’re already interested in: I’ve seen a number of tweets from Jane Hu, for instance, with quotes on Adorno’s thoughts on punctuation, which also opens her Harper’s piece. Other writers speak to subjects that seem more random, like Liane Carlson’s examination of the decline of the public apology that we saw so often in the early 21st century (with Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, and their like) or Yinka Elujoba on gold: the color, the substance, why it appeals to a certain brand of aristocrat in a certain type of declining empire.

A few of the pieces are inane—showing what can happen when you assemble a piece by giving a bunch of writers a topic to just do whatever they want; different people take mandates differently, and they won’t always be deep—they won’t always be hits. For instance, there’s not much to “Golf” by David Owen. Basically: golf was staid and boring when he first took it up in the early 90s, then it became kind of cool with Tiger Woods’s fame in the late 90s, or at least something people knew about and many people watched, and then all that was undone by Trump’s love of golf the last four years. And that’s well and good, but who cares. Ultimately, Owen’s contribution registers as a marginal blip in the midst of more robust discussions.

But the most inane entry might be Eileen Myles’s contribution to the feature. It’s ostensibly about “relationships.” What it’s actually about is Myles’s feelings. We’ve established before how much I’ve come to distrust writing about how we feel about major developments in politics or about disasters like climate change, rather than the developments and disasters themselves. And at least Elisa Gabbert’s The Unreality of Memory is a genuine attempt to explore something, even if there are moments when the essays in it drift into ponderousness or sentimentality. In fact, I’ve come to feel less harshly about Gabbert’s book as I’ve thought about the pandemic the last few weeks—how unreal a number like 400,000 deaths feels to me, and how I struggle to know whether this is a natural response. Is a pandemic, with its enormous scale of death, a hyperobject, a phenomenon so vast it can’t really be countenanced by a single human mind? Do large-scale tragedies ever feel real and not abstract to those living through them, when they’re this diffuse? Or is this flatness I feel unique, a sign of some special psychic damage in those of us who are alive today, from social media or the ubiquity of news in the times we live in? I’m more willing to grant that this, how to countenance disaster, is Gabbert’s question; she certainly engages it thoughtfully.

Myles is not thoughtful. It’s striking to read their contribution after you read, say, Hamrah’s brief, potent account of the streaming services’ ascendance in the COVID era, now that we’re all stuck at home and at the mercy of whatever pricing schemes the streaming giants want to set for the movies they release if we want any (legal) entertainment, and how this reflects similar moves last century by studios to force theaters and theater-goers to pay for shit movies as well as better ones. Or Mike Jaccarino’s recent history of tabloids: how Trump depended on them to inflate his image in the 90s and aughts, and how the dynamic reversed over the course of his presidential race and term, with the task of tracking changes in Trump’s image now sustaining them—revealing again the inversion of structures like the media over the course of neoliberalism’s evolution and aftermath. Myles’s piece, so focused on them and how they felt about Joe Biden winning the presidency in 2020, is just so narrow by comparison. Even Charles Yu’s account of the damaging effect the Trump presidency has had on (consensus) “reality” is more interesting. It’s flawed, to my eye, because it so often presents what Trump supporters or QAnoners believe as merely an inferior narrative, a fiction they’ve subscribed to at least somewhat consciously and don’t want disturbed, as though they were all ostriches sticking their heads in the sand rather than people inhabiting the same physical space as Yu himself. And you’re never going to succeed at changing someone’s mind if you’re just convinced they’ve subscribed to a false and inferior narrative—because, as Lauren Oyler notes in her contribution to “Life After Trump,” differences in opinion often come down to different interpretations of the same facts. But even Yu’s contribution is interesting, because it’s not just Yu talking about himself as though his own experience is ours.

Myles’s piece, on the other hand, is just “I, I, I, I, I.” “I was crossing lower Broadway to look at a show,” they write: “I’m a fan…of the work of the artist named Sky Hopinka,” “I had allowed that monster”—Trump—“into my body,” “I went inside the gallery,” “I could hear [the spoken parts of the Hopinka exhibition] pretty well,” “I was in Texas during the earliest parts of COVID and I stayed there for a while and I was keenly aware that this was the first true crisis I had missed in New York”—and on it goes.

And Myles is so irritatingly convinced that their “I” is heroic, or part of a heroic “we,” standing in opposition to Trumpists and to the people in Chelsea, bourgeois and apolitical, who aren’t happy when they see a friend of Myles’s, Joe, pumping up the crowd at the election celebration:

He put his Biden-Harris T-shirt on which was brilliant. Everyone cheers when they see him. He’s like a sign. He starts acting like a sign, saying yay to everyone. Women always say yay, some couples won’t. Or they say a little. Not everyone in Chelsea is happy. They’re doing their Chelsea thing. Shopping, getting some food. This is a disruption. It’s like they didn’t even know there was an election.

I’m not on the side of the Chelsea shoppers here. I’m not on the side of anyone who’s indifferent to their environment, or who sniffs at a public display of any kind of emotion, enforcing some arbitrary idea of seemliness. But how radical is an election, really? How much does this one ultimately change? It’s a minor fluctuation in a long interregnum. I see these lines of Myles’s and I think, If you were really radical, you’d know that. You’d know that, and you wouldn’t devote this piece that professes to be about relationships to celebrating yourself and your milieu as though it speaks for the Chelsea shoppers’ or for mine. You’d think about the world you were in. The whole world, not just your part of it.

Some of the frustration of reading “Relationships” in the larger context of “Life After Trump” is the frustration of watching someone practice a mode that’s been outmoded as though it were still revolutionary. It’s part of Myles’s project as a poet to write from their own perspective. And it was likely groundbreaking or at least interesting when they first began writing: a way to speak to the experience and subjectivity of artists and creatives in late 20th-century America and make that real to those who did not know that world. Or a way to speak to those who wanted to join that world. It’s a poor mode now, in this time. Artists have long been integrated into the mainstream and the market—they’re no longer a vanguard. They’re not even people whom the mass media organs of the culture consciously turn to for a reflection of what life looks like now and what it could look like in the future. (Here, I’m thinking Sontag, Mailer, Dwight Macdonald, whoever—a small and biased set of examples, but the ones that come to mind.) The work of artists now feels like just another kind of content you might prefer to consume, just another piece of fodder for an identity (say, “literary person”) that you can espouse—and the presence of even critical artists and creatives is a marginal one that you, again as an individual consumer, can pay attention to if you like or just as easily ignore.

What’s more, in a time marked by widespread use of social media, everyone’s a poet of Myles’s type today. Everyone’s a relentless “I,” broadcasting their feelings and impressions of situations and history, talking about what everything and anything that happens feels like for them and what it means for them. I’m doing it right now! And I read magazines like Harper’s and Bookforum and the London Review of Books and more for a break from that mode—or a practice of it in which the “I” is a starting point, not the sum total. That is, when it comes to writing about the culture, I’m looking for writing that goes beyond the “I” to say something genuine about the world we’re in. Something that helps me understand that world better and then to change it.

[aziraphallist]

the yoke of inauspicious stars

Inspired by this tweet.

*

Crowley’s drunk when it happens. Story of his life, right? He should stop drinking so much.

Except he doesn’t know, at the time, the trouble it will cause. Not just him. The trouble it will cause, in general. More trouble than he ever cared to cause intentionally. (See also: the story of his life.)

He’s with Aziraphale, obviously. That’s probably the root of the problem. It’s—he’s losing track, now, of how many years it’s been, how the humans are counting these days. Though maybe that’s the drink. It’s, what, four thousand years since he sheltered under Aziraphale’s wing on the wall of Eden, watching the first rainfall. Crowley’s been in love with him for all of them. 

Humanity has always loved storytelling. Crowley appreciates each new stride forward, as a rule; stories are knowledge, and Crowley has, historically, always come down in favor of knowledge. It remains to be seen, though, where he stands on the issue of literature.

Aziraphale, sitting in a tavern in Rome, could not be more pleased. Careful to keep his cup far from his prize, he pushes a scroll across the table, practically vibrating with joy.

Crowley concentrates very hard on not feeling jealous that a simple inanimate object can provoke this reaction when he himself cannot. “What’s this, then?”

“Metamorphoses.” Aziraphale says it the same way he will one day say crepes. “Book four. Ovid. I’ve been waiting for a chance to get my hands on a copy, you know.

“Book four?” Crowley repeats, taking the scroll without really intending to. He unrolls the first few inches.

“Of fifteen,” Aziraphale confirms, and Crowley spends a moment wondering anachronistically when humanity will get around to inventing editors. “But this one’s my favorite so far. Oh, do read the second one, there, that’s the best one.”

Crowley can read, though his eyes aren’t exactly designed for it. He can coax them into submission for brief stretches, but it’s taxing, and he doesn’t want to sober up. He hands the scroll back. “You read it to me, if you like it so much.”

This is his second mistake. Third, if he counts the alcohol. Fourth, if he’s feeling particularly uncharitable with himself and tacks on the fact that he, a demon, gave his incredibly stupid heart to an angel four thousand years ago.

But he’s drunk. He almost can’t help himself. He knows it doesn’t mean anything if Aziraphale acquiesces. He merely likes the poem and wants to share it. His capitulation has nothing to do with Crowley except as a captive audience; Crowley has long known Aziraphale likes to hear himself talk.

It certainly doesn’t take much cajoling for him to start reading this one, which begins:

When Pyramus and Thisbe, who were known

The one most handsome of all youthful men,

The other loveliest of all eastern girls—

In the many years to come Crowley will hear a thousand stories like this. In years to come he’ll think back on these verses and think they’re so simple, that so few lines can’t convey the depth of emotion of a play or a novel or a film. But those years are still to come and this is the first love story he’s ever heard, read to him in the voice of the being he has loved hopelessly for more than four millennia. And it speaks directly to him.

He finds himself leaning forward, wine forgotten, as Pyramus and Thisbe whisper to each other through the shared wall of their homes, make a plan to defy their families. His heart, heedless of its own irrelevance, beats a steady pulse in his throat, the story lending it optimism, a borrowed maybe one day. For a brief, absurd moment, the air tastes like freedom.

His fingers clench into fists when Thisbe encounters the lioness. Relax when she escapes. But when the lioness tears at her dropped veil, a pit of ice forms in his chest. His palms sweat; his hands feel weak. Horror makes him pale as Aziraphale reads on, oblivious to the crisis happening two feet in front of him.

“Now Pyramus had not gone out so soon as Thisbe to the tryst; and, when he saw the certain traces of that savage beast, imprinted in the yielding dust, his face went white with fear.” Aziraphale’s voice is steady; he doesn’t even look up. Crowley’s heart thinks he is discorporating. “But when he found the veil covered with blood, he cried, ‘Alas, one night has caused the ruin of two lovers! Thou wert most deserving of completed days, but as for me, my heart is guilty! I destroyed thee!’”

Despite his every effort, a pitiful, animal sound thrashes out of Crowley’s throat. Literature might be new, but Crowley is a suspicious bastard, and he knows how to hurt people. It’s his job. He knows exactly how this story will end.

The way it must end. The way any story like this would end.

Theirs too, provided Aziraphale could ever love him. And for that aching, horrified moment, Crowley finds himself fiercely glad he doesn’t.

“Now the gods have changed the ripened fruit which darkens on the branch: and from the funeral pile their parents sealed their gathered ashes in a single urn,” Aziraphale concludes with a veritable sigh of satisfaction, and sets the scroll aside, only now to gauge his audience’s reaction. “I—Crowley? Are you crying?”

Crowley is not crying. Crowley is furious. Even if his face is wet. Tears of rage don’t count. “Who,” he says, over the screaming beat of his heart, “who would write such a thing?”

Aziraphale frowns at him, leaning closer across the table. “I told you. The author’s name is Ovid—”

“No,” Crowley cuts in, slashing a hand across his face, “Never mind, I don’t mean who, I don’t care who, I mean why? What’s wrong with these humans? Is this what they left the garden for?”

Whatever is happening on his face, it’s enough to alarm Aziraphale, who moves his chair closer still. “Crowley, you’re not making sense.”

“I mean, what’sss the point of it?” There are a thousand different things wrong with this story, a thousand reasons Crowley feels the need to slink into the desert and shed his skin, find a rock and crawl under it for the next fifty years, and he can articulate none of them. Something is boiling inside him, threatening to spill over if he can’t take the lid off the pot, but he doesn’t even know where the fire is. “Four thousssand years practicing free will and they’re no better at it than we are! Worse, even, here they are just, just taking it for granted—”

A line of consternation appears between Aziraphale’s brows. “But it’s not about free will—”

Crowley laughs bitterly. “Everything is about free will, angel.” He thumps a hand over the scroll. “That bit at the end? Where the gods change the mulberries and their parents sssseal their ashes in a single urn. That’s what free will gets them in this bloody poem.”

“For goodness sake, Crowley, it’s poetic!” He draws back, searching Crowley’s face. He’s not only surprised, he’s bewildered. Because of course he is. Because he has no idea Crowley has been breaking his heart over him since the invention of rain. Because he doesn’t see their story paralleled in this one at all. “I thought you’d understand.”

“Poetic doesn’t make you any less dead,” Crowley snaps. Belatedly he remembers the wine and quaffs the rest of his cup, barely tasting it above the ash-and-sulphur burn of rage on his tongue. He ought to give it up. Walk it off. Next time he sees Aziraphale, fifty or seventy or a hundred years from now, he’ll have forgotten all about this.

But that will be fifty or seventy or a hundred years from now. And even here, sore, angry, hurt, even laid bare, Crowley cannot bear to deprive himself of a single moment. “The author,” he begins.

“Ovid,” Aziraphale supplies.

“Whatever.” Crowley inhales unnecessarily through his nose. “The author has free will too, yeah? So he’s writing this poem. Two young people fall in love in defiance of the rules.” Oh, he’s skirting trouble here; if Aziraphale sees him—but then Aziraphale’s been drinking too. “He could do anything he wants. They could get away together. Their parents could change their minds. Thisbe could catch Pyramus before he falls on his own blessed sssword.” He clenches his teeth. The hiss is starting to get away from him. “For that matter, Pyramus could investigate a bit further than a bloody veil before he decides to off himself!”

He punctuates this last with his fist against the table, and Aziraphale jumps. Good.

“But no,” Crowley continues. Bitterness leaches into his words like lead, urged on with the liberal application of alcohol. “Free to give the story any ending he likes, he chooses this one: as punishment for daring to choose each other over family, over rules, the lovers perish.” He scoffs, wishes his cup full again, takes a swig.

“But they’re together in death!” Aziraphale protests. “And the gods grant Thisbe’s last wishes. I think it’s a very romantic notion, to die for love.”

“Maybe if your death would mean the survival of your beloved!” Crowley ripostes, swaying a bit in his seat, furiously willing himself to believe he’s never personally considered that particular inevitability. Because yes—that’s it, that’s what’s getting to him. “But this—to romanticize dying for love, for no reason—it’s deplorable.”

Crowley would do it. He’d fight like heaven not to have to, he’d pull out every last miracle he has. He would do it with very little regret. But calling the idea romantic is an unconscionable sin.

Aziraphale sighs, but it’s fond, the irritation fading from his countenance and leaving behind a trace of softness around his mouth. “Oh, of course you would be a pragmatist.”

Crowley almost chokes on the irony.

It’s pure bad luck that the tavern barmaid walks by just then, and bad luck that Crowley’s so deep in his cups, and worst of all that he’s just suffered through Aziraphale reading him a poem that might as well be called “What Would Happen To Us.” Because what comes out of his mouth next has the force of untethered power behind it, and it changes her life, and Crowley’s, irrevocably. “Might just as well choke to death on lovesickness, if they like suffering so much,” he mutters, mulish.

The barmaid pauses on her way past, then seems to shake herself.

The next morning she’ll wake with rosepetals spilling from her lips, that ache in her chest turned physical.

It will be another thousand years before the same happens to Crowley.

He gets a commendation for it.

[ddaenqu]

Update Me

pairing: yandere fanboy!jimin x idol!reader

themes: slight angst, slight fluff

tags: soft yandere, possessive behavior, obsessive behavior, toxic behavior/relationship, unhealthy relationship/behavior, stalking, sasaeng behavior, ambiguous ending, implications of depression (? maybe if you squint)

It’s been exactly five minutes since your last post, his heart pounds and pounds, hounding against his own body as it moves mechanically throughout his apartment. His bare feet hitting against the wooden floor as he paced around; stopping in his room, his kitchen, and then his living room.

He clicks onto your latest post after refreshing five times, expecting some sort of edit, which was highly unlikely since Twitter didn’t allow edits to their tweets, maybe a code hidden within that one tweet? He thought. You were smart, after all.

He rubs at his eyes in slow, sluggish movements before checking the time on his phone. It’s around 12 at night, he’s almost shocked that he’s managed to stay up this long—or how long he’s been forcing himself to.

His eyes burn uncomfortably, squinting made it worse. His body felt numb, all his muscles were slowly giving up, having practiced a rigorous 

choreography today over five times and which his body was not made to do. His head feels as though it was splitting apart, or someone taking a hammer and landing a blow right on the sides of his head.

It’s all worth it, of course. Being one of the first few to see your new album is more important, to comment and review it, and then immediately think of a dance to go with it.

He lightly pulls at his hair after refreshing for the 15th time, his worry getting the best of him. His body falls onto his couch, his muscles tense as an idea comes to mind.

Maybe something happened, he immediately thought, what if something happened to you?

“No,” he says out loud, “no, no, that can’t—”

His breathing becomes irregular and begins to open all his news apps, all his social media’s and switching to his fan account, checking for any recent posts about you—your health in particular. He finds nothing out of the ordinary, no official statements or anything, only the posts of people hyping up your album, he thinks they are at least. Most of the fan accounts he follows were in English, you were, after all, an American Idol. Luckily, there were some Korean and Japanese fan accounts that either translated interviews or updated any information he hadn’t seen already (which was highly unlikely, he’s always up to date on everything you’ve done).

He pulled himself into a curled position on his couch, the tops of his knees are drawn up almost to his chin with both hands pulling your twitter page down consistently, watching the loading sign over and over again.

You had said that your new album was coming around eight pm, which was 12 o’clock for Jimin, unfortunately.

The time difference was rather annoying, he hated having to wait until the middle of the night just to interact with you first in the morning. Maybe—maybe if you moved here, he thought. The thought of you being here with him made him more than happy. You wouldn’t have to worry about the time difference, you would always be with him and then you could learn Korean.

Wouldn’t that be nice? You wouldn’t have to do anything, he would just be there as your friend and boyfriend—a soulmate. You were made for him, you had to be.

He was never one to be attached to singers or any artists really. At first, prior looking you up and actually getting to know you, he saw you as any other artist: rich, famous, and present in the moment, as if anything around you that wasn’t you didn’t matter.

But you—you were different.

Slowly, you began to pique his interest, from interviews of you just talking about your day popped up in his video recommendations or the number of products you were sponsored by in ads or stores.

It took him a while before he was actually acquainted with you, as a whole. The way you carried yourself with an air of confidence, love, and a sense of consciousness no matter what you were doing.

No one else understood his virtues as you did. How you fought for rights, argued with unjust people, and spoke of sensitive topics most wouldn’t dare to touch.

No one sang in a voice as you had despite whatever critics had to say, whether it was your voice being too breathy, singing high and low notes when it doesn’t match, or voice breaking on certain notes—your voice was unlike any voice he’s heard before.

Every song you’ve ever produced had a meaning behind it, a secret that he had to decipher through your lyrics. Just for him.

The many times he wanted to break down in the bathroom belonging to his studio, in class during an exam, or when he was left alone for too long in his quiet apartment. Or how it took him too much energy and forced smiles to deal with others he didn’t like, having to fake his attraction towards a dance he didn’t want anything to do with. Dealing with his teachers who were too tedious at the end of the day where he wanted to go home and rest.

Your bright and effortless smile would be there, holding him up the rest of the day.

To him, your smile was more than just his sun. It was his medicine, something to keep him sane.

You are his salvation.

You are his everything.

He refreshes once more, still not losing hope—he knows quite well you wouldn’t do that to him.

And then, he sees it: a new post, announcing your new album.

It only takes seconds before he’s listening to every song in the album, he makes little comments here and there about the beat or—very rarely—the lyrics, he would have to wait until a Korean translation of your songs came out.

He’s very pleased with the album, even though there’s a tinge of dislike pulling at his heart, he senses, when he listens to one or two songs, but he knows he will come to like it later on, he has to. He retweets, likes, and comments on the post as well as the posts that appear on his timeline about your new album. Switching to another social media app, he types a full, punctuated, and detailed paragraph about the album on his blog, attaching his favorite song so far.

Jimin is almost close to calling it a night, going to sleep, knowing you didn’t like people staying up. He had to form a choreography for one of your songs too, and that was more tiring than only learning a complete set of moves.

The huge smile on his face contorts into a look of pure confusion when he gets a twitter notification, another post from you. His insides turn and prick at his sides, his heart doing damage inside him. He presses the notification and it redirects him to the post with an image attached, he clicks on the image to enlarge it.

His eyes roam eagerly around it, it’s in English. But he still can understand the words “Tour” and “Dates” at the top, his eyes trail downwards to a cluster of names of places: Tokyo, Los Angeles, France, the list going on until his eyes reach the third row, the last location.

“Seoul, South Korea.”

(Feedback is greatly appreciated! Happy Easter!🐰)

[cuthian]

Starting Over Chapter Six

Hi guys!

Sorry for the delay on this one :) This is another Asgard chapter, so check the end notes again if you prefer not to read about Becca and Thor.

Love, Annaelle

Chapter Six

PEPPER POTTS IS PREGNANT AND BREAKS TWITTER WITH ADORABLE PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK — Pepper Potts, C.E.O. of Stark Industries and longtime girlfriend of Tony Stark and Col. James Rhodes, is having a baby, and like everything else she has done since the news of her polyamorous relationship with Rhodes and Stark, she is doing so on her own terms.

[...]Potts, 42, is pregnant with her first child, and used the unconventional, but adorable video she dropped on her official Twitter account yesterday morning to confirm the rumors of a pregnancy that have been floating around for the past few days.

[WATCH HERE: PEPPER POTTS SURPRISES TONY STARK, JAMES RHODES AND STEVE ROGERS WITH ADORABLE PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT.]

She followed her video announcement with a tweet stating, “I have seen many children born into homes with two parents, who end up arguing, fighting, and divorcing. The person this affects the most is the child. I don’t think our situation, our relationship, will be detrimental to our child because it will ensure that our child will be loved. [...] It takes a village, and we have a big, loving, crazy village. I cannot wait to begin this next part of our lives together.”

The announcement was retweeted by Col. Rhodes and Tony Stark within seconds—we cover the adorable and surprisingly eloquent reaction of the two fathers-to-be here in this podcast—as well as by Captain Rogers almost immediately after that, all with happy and congratulatory messages. Captain Rogers’ tweet hilariously promises he will be the best big brother to the Rhodes-Stark-Potts baby in the history of big brothers.

Potts replied to Rogers’ tweet: “Steve will definitely be the best big brother to our baby. He’s got plenty of practice as #BigBrotherOfAmerica.”

[...]Fans flooded the video with congratulatory messages, and the hashtag #IronBaby has been trending for forty-eight hours so far, and promises to hold for at least another few days.

—Clara Newitski, “Pepper Potts confirms pregnancy”, E!News Online, 30 November, 2015

————————

TRAINING FIELDS, IDAVOLL, ASGARD

NOVEMBER 30TH, 2015 – 8:57AM (EARTH UCT+1)

BECCA

She hit the ground with a dull thud, the fall knocking the wind clean from her lungs, leaving her gasping for breath for a long couple of minutes. She laughed breathlessly when Sif appeared in her field of vision, grinning fiercely as she offered Becca a hand to help her up. “You did well,” Sif told her approvingly. “Not bad for a human. You held out much longer than I expected.”

“I got good trainers,” Becca chuckled, allowing the other woman to help her up.

She and Natasha had been training together for years at this point, and Thor had made a point of it to ensure that all of the Avengers learned how to fight opponents physically stronger—had made it a point to make sure they knew how to win and survive a fight against an opponent physically much stronger than they were.

“You must’ve,” Sif remarked, patting Becca’s shoulder. “I see our prince’s influence in the way you dodge, sometimes.”

Becca smiled lightly. “He’s been diligent about teaching us to win against more powerful opponents.”

“I cannot have my favorite mortal friends perish before their time,” Thor boomed as he came up behind them, slinging an arm around her. “You least of all.” She leaned into him when he pressed a kiss to her temple, relaxing against him.

She’d not been alone with him since before the disastrous feast, had barely even been in the same room as him, and she’d missed it—she’d missed him.  

Sif only grinned in response before she curtsied—exceptionally sarcastically, somehow—and turned to beat up some hapless Aesir warriors. Becca smirked before she turned in Thor’s arms, slipping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. She’d been up since dawn, had joined Sif in training not long after, and they’d been at it for hours.

She was well-trained, and in good condition, but she was only human.

She was tired, and Thor was comfortable and safe.

“Hello Krúttið mitt,” he rumbled, smoothing his hand down her back. “You’ve been busy.”

“Well, I had to keep myself busy with all kinds of official, diplomatic things,” she told him, seriously leaning back to raise an eyebrow at him. “My boyfriend seems to have other, more important matters on his mind than entertaining little old me.”

Thor frowned faux-seriously, shaking his head sadly. “Ah, your man must be a fool, to leave a woman beautiful and ferocious as you all by herself.” He grinned rakishly. “Anyone could pass by and just… snap you up.”

He punctuated the last word with a peck to her lips, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“You’re an idiot,” she told him, but she didn’t resist when he cupped her face in his hands and leaned in to kiss her again.

“Perhaps, but you… You,” Thor muttered against her lips, her cheeks cupped in his large palms, “you are a dangerous woman.” He slipped one hand down, trailing down from the back of her neck to the small of her back, pulling her flush against him, ignoring the wolf-whistles that his friends sent their way. “And an irresistible one.”

Becca grinned against his lips and tugged on his hair a little. “And don’t you forget it.”

“I could never,” Thor chuckled.

“Odinson!” Fandral roared from somewhere on the training fields, effectively shattering their little peaceful bubble. “Stop canoodling with your mortal and come help me! I cannot lose to Sif again.”

Becca laughed when Sif cackled, and Thor shook his head in faux-dismay.

“Go,” she told him. “I think I’ll watch you, for a change. Go beat some unsuspecting morons for me.”

Thor chuckled and nodded. “Their blood shall be spilled in your honor then, Krúttið mitt,” he hummed. “And then I shall sweep you off your feet, and carry you to my chambers as my prize. My very own spoils of war. If you let me.” He hugged her close as she spoke, and she made note of the slightly possessive note to his words—it was so very rare that he admitted to wanting something different, or something potentially… more, she supposed, than what they already shared, that she cherished each time that he did.

“And after, I shall return you to your chambers,” Thor muttered, pressing a light kiss to her lips. “Once I have properly and thoroughly ravished you. I must confess I am most curious about your abode… I fear I’ll have to inspect whether it’s worthy of housing you, elskan min.”

“Oh?” Becca raised an eyebrow. “And should you find it lacking?”

“Well,” Thor rumbled, drawing her close one more time to press a smacking kiss to her lips. “I suppose I’ll have no choice but to house you in my chambers. Nothing less than the absolute best will do.”

She giggled against his lips, allowing herself one more moment before she pushed him back, keeping him at arm’s length when he pouted. “Go beat up your friends, hotshot,” she told him with a warm smile. “I’ll be right here when you’re done, okay?”

“As you wish,” Thor hummed, lifting the hand she’d pressed to his chest up to his lips to press a soft kiss to her palm, before he turned and joined his friends.

She remained where she was for a few moments, grinning at Thor’s back when he collided with his friends. She watched as he threw a casual arm around Fandral’s shoulder, as she’d seen him do dozens of times with Steve, watched the way they all laughed and teased each other, and felt something loosen in her chest.

Even on his best days on Earth, there was a kind of heaviness to him that did not dissipate.

It had now.

Seeing him here on Asgard was… it was almost unreal. He was lighter here, flourishing in a way she’d never seen him flourish before—in a way he probably couldn’t flourish on Earth—and she loved seeing him happy and carefree like this.

She tried not to think about what that meant for their future, though.

She made her way to the plump, surprisingly comfortable benches to the side of the training fields, sitting down with a sigh of relief. Her body ached a little—in the good way, the way it ached when she’d done an intense workout and stuck with it until the end—and it felt good to let her muscles relax for a short time. She’d get up to do some more stretches soon, she promised herself, but she’d take a five-minute breather first.

She watched, as she’d told Thor she would, allowing herself to study the way he fought, now that he didn’t have to hold back. He was ferocious, fighting with a kind of elegant brutality that was both breathtaking and frightening—she loved him, more than anyone else she’d ever been with, but she forgot… she forgot how different they were sometimes.

It wasn’t a bad thing, certainly, but… it was a little scary.

“Milady?”

Abruptly startled from her thoughts, Becca looked up to find two of the—frankly absurd amount of—maids Odin had assigned to her, Unnr and Þrúðr, standing before her, both looking profoundly uncomfortable.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, squinting up at the two women.

Unnr shook her head shakily. “No, milady. We just—” she and Þrúðr exchanged a fleeting glance, “—we were wondering if you are ready to return to your chambers?”

Becca blinked. “Oh,” she said, looking between the two maids. “I… I was actually planning on staying for a while? Until Thor’s done, at least.” She didn’t miss the way the two exchanged another glance, and huffed impatiently. She’d liked Asgard fine, so far, and no one had been openly hostile—barring the woman she’d had to shoot for threatening Thor—but things were different, here.

The change from Earth to Asgard had thrown off her sense of time too.

It almost felt like jet lag, but worse too.

It wasn’t bad enough to incapacitate her, or make her want to stay in bed for a few days until her body had fully adjusted to the new time zone, but it was, at moments, so damned uncomfortable.

The minor headache she’d managed to ignore all day came roaring back, and she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.

“Ladies,” she sighed. “Would one of you please tell me what’s wrong?”

Both girls blinked at her, before Þrúðr spoke. “The training grounds are typically… they’re typically off limits for maidens, milady. I believe exceptions were made because the Prince demanded it be so, but usually…” She shook her head. “It’s not proper for unwed women to be here.”

Becca swallowed thickly and blinked again, trying to digest… all of that.

“Sif’s here,” she pointed out dumbly, gesturing towards where her boyfriend was doing his best to electrocute his friends while cackling gleefully.

She shook her head.

She loved that weirdo.

“Yes,” Unnr conceded. “But Lady Sif is… well… concessions were made. She is of highborn Aesir nobility. Before Prince Thor was betrothed to Prince Loki, there were many talks of an alliance forged by marriage with her and the Prince. I believe the King allowed certain… liberties when he abruptly broke off such negotiations with her family.”

“That’s bullshit,” Becca blurted loudly, wincing a little when both maids startled.

Before either of them could speak, though, someone interrupted from behind them. “Our traditions are bullshit to you now, Lady Rebecca? I’m sure my son will appreciate hearing you express such blatant disrespect towards our customs.”

She stiffened, turning slowly to face her boyfriend’s father—his King—for the first time.

She had been introduced to him at the feast, of course, but that had been with Thor holding her hand, and about two hundred people surrounding them. She was vaguely aware that her two maids dropped into a deep curtsy the moment they realized who had spoken, and that they all likely expected her to do the same, but… she remained sitting, only moving to incline her head towards the man lightly.

She was not, after all, one of his subjects.

She was a guest of his son, and he allowed her in his home, so she owed him at least a modicum of respect, but she did not owe him allegiance or deference.

“Your majesty,” she offered. “I meant not to offend. I’m sure you understand that not allowing certain… parts of your citizenry to learn how to defend themselves seems… peculiar to someone looking in from the outside.”

Odin smiled tightly. “I suppose from your point of view, it certainly must seem so. As long as you remember that you are, of course, on the outside, glancing in.”

Becca blinked at that, taken aback by the barely veiled insult.

“Ladies,” Odin addressed Unnr and Þrúðr, “I’m sure you have duties to attend to.”

The two scampered off before the King had even finished speaking, and Becca remained were she was, stiff and decidedly uncomfortable, as her boyfriend’s father took a seat  on the stone bench beside her.

She was tempted to get up and rejoin Thor and his friends, to let this arrogant old man look the fool, but… She sighed and shook her head.

He was Thor’s father, after all.

Insufferable bastard or not, she’d promised herself and Thor she wouldn’t let him get the best of her.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she offered again when he remained silent.

She wasn’t sure why the man was here, why he insisted on sitting with her when he clearly did not approve of her presence at all. She expected he would try to frighten her away from Thor, or that he would insist on tormenting her about all of Thor’s past lovers—Loki most of all.

“Worry not,” Odin finally said. “Human lives are but fleeting, I should not expect such underdeveloped minds to understand the delicate intricacies of our society.”

“Excuse me?” Becca spit, rearing back as though he’d slapped her. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I am Odin. King of Asgard.” He turned to look at her slowly, expression frustratingly inscrutable. “Protector of the Nine Realms.”

“Yeah,” Becca snorted. “Right. Nine Realms. Including Earth. We noticed the protection. Thanks, by the way, for keeping our planet from slowly heating up and destroying itself. Or for stepping in during any of the wars, famines, epidemics, or disasters over the past thousand years.” She shook her head again. “Thor tells me you haven’t even looked at Midgard in centuries. Don’t you dare call yourself our protector when we’ve clearly been doing fine on our own.”

Odin merely chuckled, and shook his head lightly. “You humans… threatened by suffering in threefold; by your own body, doomed to decay; and the world you so cherish, that rages against you with overwhelming and merciless destruction… and then from your relations with one another. I’ve lived thousands of years, child, but I’ve never met another race quite so talented at self-destruction.” He looked down at her and added, “Your kind’s never taken well to our interference. While I have several agents established on Midgard, keeping me apprised of… relevant information, we generally let you be.”

Becca snorted. “For a man who so readily proclaims our brains underdeveloped, you sure seem to like some of our people’s works.” When he raised an eyebrow, she shook her head, “I know Freud when I hear it, your Majesty, however much you try to dress it up with fancier words.”

Odin smirked. “Ah, you are clever, at least. I suppose my son has some taste after all.”

He shook his head again, as though he’d grown weary of the conversation, and said, “Surely you understand, though, that my son will not be able to keep you. Certain classes of beings cannot mix—certainly not for any significant length of time.”

“With all due respect,” she replied coldly. “I hardly think we’re a different class of being. Having access to seiðr readily doesn’t make you more evolved—even certain humans can harness its power, even if they are far rarer than they are to your people. Honestly though, I can’t say that I care overly much for what you think. I care what Thor thinks, and he’s made the way he feels about me very clear.”

Odin eyed her critically. “My son has had many lovers before. What makes you think you’re different than those he dallied with to distract himself from Loki’s disinterest?”

“I trust him when he tells me I am,” Becca told him coolly, crossing her arms over her chest, and though she was fuming, she carefully kept her expression blank, because she refused to let him see that he was getting to her—that his words rattled her even the littlest bit.

Odin laughed humorlessly. “I’m sure he told the others such things as well. Like he did Loki. Undying devotion did not last quite so long, did it?”

She knew what he was trying to do, and she was sure if he had done so earlier on in their relationship, she might actually have believed him. She might have let this old, sad, heartbroken man get under her skin and ruin what she and Thor had managed to build, but she refused to let him now.

They’d worked too hard to get where they were today.

“You know, I’m a little sad for you,” she said, slowly. “I’m sad you’re so twisted up inside that it makes you want to make Thor just as miserable as you are.” She looked him right in the eye and shook her head. “I love your son. I really, really love him, and I don’t care that I’m mortal and he’s not. I don’t care that you don’t like me. I care that I make him happy. I know I’m not Loki, and I don’t need him to love me like he loved Loki.”

She shrugged and offered a soft smile. “I just need him to love me like he loves me.”

Odin chuckled derisively. “Such sentimentality. I should expect no less from a human.”

“Father,” Thor cut in, and Becca barely resisted the urge to jump at his sudden appearance. Thor settled himself on the bench beside her, pressing closer than was, perhaps, strictly appropriate in front of his father, but she didn’t protest, allowing the press of his torso against her side to soothe her.

“My son,” Odin said calmly. “I sought only to properly meet your frù.”

“Do not talk of her as such,” Thor hissed viciously, drawing Becca against him firmly, surprising her with the venom in his tone. “She is more than that.”

“Is she?” Odin chuckled. “Is that what your inn mátki munr signified? Will you insist on making her your kvàn, my son? Call her your brúðr? Your kona?”

“If I do,” Thor spat, “It will be because she chooses to be.”

“And she’s right here,” Becca said, elbowing Thor in the gut when he squeezed her too tightly.

Thor looked at her, eyes wide and somewhat crazed, and Becca made the executive decision that remaining anywhere near Thor’s father wasn’t going to end well for either of them. “Thank you for coming all this way to meet me, your Majesty,” she offered, making sure to paste the most insincere smile she could manage on her face, “I think we both rather learned a lot today.”

She looked to Thor and squeezed her fingers around his. “We’re leaving. You promised me you’d show me more of Asgard.”

“So I did,” Thor nodded, keeping his blue eyes intent on hers. “There is much to see still.”

He stood smoothly, offering Becca a hand as soon as he was standing, and pulled her to her feet as well. “We will take our leave, Father,” he said. “It was a pleasure, as always.”

With that, Thor began moving, pulling her along with him.

She didn’t look back.

————————

[PEPPER POTTS PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO!]

There is a short moment before the image settles that shows a cozy, comfortable living room, before the image stills and zooms in on two men sitting at the kitchen island, heads bent together over a laptop.

“I don’t see the big deal, Capsicle. It’s not like this is news, even to you,” Tony Stark, looking almost like had only just rolled out of bed, shrugs, leaning back in his chair and sipping from the large mug in the shape of the Hulk’s fist.

“This isn’t a joking matter, Tony,” Steve Rogers, dressed in a tight white t-shirt and light sweatpants insists, gesturing towards the screen with a frown. “They moved to L.A. of all places. It’s a fucking outrage.”

“But it’s just baseball,” Stark mumbles, looking entirely nonplussed, before he offers, “Would it help if I bought them?”

Rogers blinks in astonishment before he groans and puts his head in his hands. “God, don’t tempt me, Tony. I don’t even need you to buy them for me—I could do it.”

Stark laughs and pats his hand on Rogers’ head while he shakes his head, using his free hand to draw the laptop closer to himself. “Shhh,” he tells Rogers, “let me live out my sugar daddy fantasies through you, Steven.”

Rogers looks appropriately scandalized while Stark cackles and types madly on the laptop.

Rhodes walks in, stops short, takes in the scene and shakes his head. “Whatever it is, Tony, no.”

Stark cackles louder. “Tony, yes!” Both Rogers and Rhodes sigh and share a commiserating eye roll before embarking on a journey to the refrigerator together.

The camera shakes a little when the person behind it moves, moving closer to the men in the kitchen. “Tony,” Pepper Potts says from behind the camera. “What have you done now?”

Stark looks up and smirks gleefully. “I’ve just bought our baby a baseball team.”

Rogers and Rhodes emerge from the depths of the fridge with identical, bewildered expressions, and Potts is quiet for a moment before she chokes, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know Steve was our baby now?”

Rogers, who has once again rounded the kitchen island to peer at the laptop, exclaims gleefully, “Neither did I, but you’re not getting rid of me now. You bought me the Dodgers?”

The camera shakes when Potts laughs. When it settles again, the three men are now crowded around the laptop, talking over one another excitedly.

“Well,” Potts interrupts, moving closer to the men. “I suppose we can keep you. As long as you learn to share with your future baby sibling.”

The camera swings up to catch a clear look of the three men’s astonished expressions before the image cuts out.

—Clara Newitski, “Pepper Potts confirms pregnancy” CONTINUED, E!News Online, 30 November, 2015

————————

FENSALIR, VALASKIALF, ASGARD

NOVEMBER 30TH, 2015 – 12:09 PM (EARTH UCT+1)

THOR

He was still fuming at the sheer nerve of his father, even hours later.

He had taken Rebecca to see the city and had shown her his favorite little corners. He had taken her to the tavern he had taken Steven to as well, had taken her to visit Aase and the market, and had watched her become struck with awe when he had taken her to the libraries that held the collected works of the Nine.

It had soothed his ire some, to see Asgard anew through her eyes.

Becca’s wonder at seeing his home was contagious, and Thor had relaxed some. He had known, of course, that his father would attempt to sow discord in his relationship, that he would seek out Rebecca and try to pinpoint her insecurities, that he would use those insecurities against her to destroy them, but he had not expected his father to be quite so open about his disapproval.

He’d certainly not expected him to corner Rebecca on the training fields.  

“Hey.”

Rebecca’s voice and her insistent tug on his hand drew him from his thoughts.

“Stop it,” she told him sternly when he looked at her. “Don’t let him win. I didn’t believe a word he said about us, Thor.” She turned towards him fully, and Thor relaxed a little when she tiptoed to slip her arms around him. “I love you. I trust you. You know that. I didn’t let him get under my skin.” She smiled and pecked his lips. “Don’t let him get under yours.”

“You’re right,” Thor sighed, leaning his forehead against hers. “You’re right. I’ll not let him spoil our time together any longer.”

“Good,” Becca grinned, leaning in to press another kiss to his lips. “Now show me these famed gardens of yours. Steve’s told me they’re absolutely gorgeous.” She stepped back a little and held out her hand to him, raising an expectant eyebrow.

Thor smiled and took her hand in his, leading Rebecca back towards the palace. He looked forward to showing her the Gardens; they’d proven a refuge for him and Loki many times when they’d been children, and he knew it’d brought Steven comfort too, when he had been here.

He hoped that Rebecca, too, would find some solace there.

He recognized he had not been able to be the host he wanted to be due to the absurd itinerary his father had foisted upon them when they arrived. Rebecca had spent far more time with his friends and the handmaidens—whom she had thankfully taken a liking to, even the maids she had initially bemoaned—than she had with him, due to his father’s insistence on adhering to tradition.

Tradition that he had never once been forced to adhere to before.

He’d originally planned for their first few days here to be far less strenuous and far more intimate.

Heimdall had warned him, when he began planning this trip, that journeying through the Bifrost would likely be exceptionally taxing for a human; even Steven, with an enhanced physiology that brought him closer to Aesir than to human, had felt the effects of it for a few hours.

He had not kept as close an eye on Becca as he had planned to, and he hoped she wasn���t feeling any ill effects of the travel any longer.

“Are you doing alright?” he asked concernedly, pulling her to a slow stop by lightly tugging on her hand. “I’ve not thought to ask how the Bifrost affected you, I apologize.” He imagined an inter-dimensional jet-lag on top of his father being… well, himself must’ve been exhausting.

“I’m fine,” Becca told him with a wry quirk of her lips. “Although, Asgardian cuisine doesn’t seem to agree with me yet.” She smiled a little. “I guess I just have to get used to it, but I’m not very hungry. I’m so bloated it’s not even funny anymore, but I’m not feeling sick or anything bad. Little tired, maybe, but... ” She squeezed her fingers around his. “Jet-lag hasn’t been so bad yet.”

“If you’re sure,” Thor said doubtfully, running his fingers across her cheek.

“Of course I am,” she shook her head. “Come on, show me the Gardens.”

He nodded silently and resumed their trek back to the palace; they would not have to enter the palace, thankfully, and risk running into his father or any of the servants. Loki had once shown him a secret path into their mother’s gardens, where they could slip past the guards unnoticed and hide in the lush, green garden for hours without being found.

He fully intended on doing so with Rebecca as well.

Spending their afternoon basking in sunlight, snacking on the morsels Thor had had asked the maids to prepare, and relaxing together, as they hadn’t been allowed since their arrival on Asgard, sounded like the best idea he’d had in months.

“So, your father had these gardens created for your mother?” Becca asked, slowing down a little so they walked side by side again, swinging their arms between them.

“Yes,” Thor nodded. “She missed the woods of her homeland and her father’s gardens, and my father sought to ensure her happiness by recreating them as precisely as he could.” He wondered where the man his mother had fallen in love with, once, had gone.

He wondered if love lost turned all hearts bitter, or if his father was an exception. Then again, his father had been a bitter man for longer than his mother had been gone.

He wondered, briefly, if he would lose himself to bitterness and anger too, should he lose Rebecca as well.

Losing Loki and his mother had very well had the potential to turn his heart to stone, and he believed it may have, had he not had his mortal friends to lean on in his time of need. The Warriors Three and Lady Sif were worthy friends indeed, but they had not understood the depth of his despair following Loki’s death. It might have been more forgivable if they had not so clearly mourned the loss of his mother while barely paying lip service to Loki’s memory, and only then on Thor’s behalf.

Having Becca and Steven and the other Avengers to turn to had saved him, in a way.

“That’s sweet, I guess,” Becca nodded, drawing him from his thoughts.

He looked to her and smiled lightly, squeezing his fingers around hers. “I suppose it was, at the time,” he shrugged. They’d reached the palace walls by now, and Thor slowed their pace down to a casual stroll, gently nudging Becca’s attention towards the walls that surrounded the palace.

“Do you see the etchings that cover the walls?” he asked, slowing to a stop so Becca could reach out to touch her fingertips to the faint lines.

“What are they?” she asked, looking back at him quizzically.

“Loki insisted they are the remnants of the history of our people that our forefathers would rather have seen forgotten. If you look closely, you can almost see the figures that tell our tales.”

Becca was silent, and Thor allowed himself to remember the awe that had filled him the first time he had seen the lines on the walls form a recognizable pattern. “It’s beautiful,” Becca said quietly, pulling her hand away from the wall and turning back to him.

“It’s also our way into the gardens,” Thor confided in her, pressing close to her and taking her hand in his. He guided her hand up, palm up, to the wall, letting it hover above the stones for a long moment.

“Say the words with me,” he whispered. “Opnað grindrinn.”

“Opnað grindrinn,” Becca repeated dutifully, and Thor relished in how easily her lips formed around the still largely unfamiliar words—she had insisted on beginning to learn his native tongue as soon as their relationship became more serious—and smiled when she gasped delightedly when the solid wall that stood before them shimmered and then disappeared, revealing a veritable oasis of greenery and flowers.

“Oh wow,” Becca breathed, and Thor couldn’t help but smile. It was an awe-inspiring sight, even for him. “Is it a gate?” she asked as she walked further into the gardens, “or is it an illusion?”

Thor hummed and considered his words before he spoke, watching as Becca moved deeper into the gardens, fingers idly trailing past flowers and deep green leaves. “It is somewhat of both,” he finally said, allowing his gaze to stray to the bright red flower that bloomed only through his mother’s lingering seiðr. “Loki wove the spell centuries ago, weaving it so only those we chose to share it with would be able to enter, and only accompanied by one of us. It was an ideal hideout.”

He expected Becca to laugh at that, to tease him about hiding out in the secluded gardens with Loki so they could make out like the careless, lovestruck boys they had been at the time, but she remained quiet.

He looked up to find her standing only a few feet away, rather a lot paler than she had been minutes ago.

“Becca?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

“I–” She shook her head and swayed where she stood. Thor moved before he had even consciously thought of doing so, crossing the distance between them in a few strides, grasping her forearms tightly. “I’m so hot.”

Now that he stood so much closer, he could see sweat beading on her forehead, and see just how alarmingly pale she’d suddenly become. “Becca, what’s going on?” he demanded urgently, concern flooding his entire being when she didn’t respond to his query immediately, eyes going a little unfocused before she muttered,

“I need to sit, I’m—l’m going to be sick.”

“Of course,” Thor floundered, trying to figure out how to help her sit without having her keel over, when her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp in his grasp.

“Becca!” he shouted in shock, barely moving fast enough to catch her as she crumpled, knees buckling as he sank down to the ground, her limp form cradled in his arms. She didn’t respond, nor did she wake when he patted her cheek, despite him using more strength than he usually did with her.

No reaction, but at the very least she was still breathing, and her pulse sounded strong and steady to his enhanced ears.

He looked up desperately, shaking himself forcefully. “Alright,” he nodded to himself, lifting her up in his arms and making for the palace.

Eir would know what to do.  

————————

Start from the beginning:

In Hell We Stand By You:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Never Feel Alone:

(1) (2)

Decisions: (1)

Dancing with a Limp:

(1) (2)

Chances:

(1)

Starting Over:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Or read it HERE on AO3 :D Find the next chapter HERE on Tumblr :)

[thesinglesjukebox]

CLAIRO - SOFIA

[6.80]

We’re ready for a conversation...

Katherine St Asaph: This song is so solid that not even being called a misogynist by fucking Rostam (but the culture's not ready for that conversation) has ruined it for me. [7]

Nellie Gayle: Maybe it's because I'm still constantly thinking about/tweeting about Euphoria season 1, but this Clairo song feels like a very good summation of the teen queer romance depicted in the show. In Doreen St. Felix's review of Euphoria for the New Yorker, she mentioned the girl/girl romance shown there epitomizes "the electric stirrings we felt as young girls, reading best-friend adventures that we so desperately wished would rise into romance." If I was to cinematically portray Sofia and Claire's affection for her, it would surely blossom from an intense high school friendship into one halve's yearning for more. The tentativeness with which we approach queer relationships is marked by a fear that we lose more than a partner when romance fails: we risk the connection that underscores every other iteration of the relationship. Beneath romantic longing is a pivotal safeness, warm and familiar enough to risk pinning our romantic hopes to. Sofia feels like an ode to those hard-to-deny, more than a crush-es we find in our queer friendships, and the calculation of whether the risk is worth the reward. [8]

Alfred Soto: If "Sofia" occasionally settles for lethargy, the force of the drums punctuates and pins down Clairo's admissions; I especially dug the line about loving her lover's hair down. [7]

Kylo Nocom: Warm and fuzzy dance beats cut squarely into the heart of Clairo's crushing, and every beautiful musical moment passes by like thoughts running through your head minutes before you're kicked out of the school dance's venue. Though a line as earth-shaking as "oh my God / I think I'm in love with you" could be highlighted a bit more, and the urgency of "Sofia" is a little nerve-wracking, the whole rush is the point. A beautifully layered vocal arrangement as the song climaxes is the nicest imaginable payoff, and it feels like any worry you've had has all but vanished as you finally get what you've been waiting for all along. [6]

Alex Clifton: A happy little queer marriage between a fuzzy Strokes guitar and dreamy Belle & Sebastian vocal delivery--in other words, designed for me. It's a sweet song that captures the feeling of being in your early 20s and losing your way in every aspect of your life but knowing that your feelings for someone else are crystal-clear. I'm not normally one for "bedroom pop" as it tends to be too hazy for my liking but it works for everything Clairo's doing here. [8]

Vikram Joseph: Sounding like you don't have to try as a singer can be a double-edged sword. Clairo's vocals usually sound like a gentle waterfall of honey, entirely smooth and effortless, bordering on non-committal. This works, sometimes - on album opener "Alewife" it creates a beautiful sense of distance and perspective to teenage emotional trauma, and it lends recent single "Bags" a sense of emotional equivocacy which suits it perfectly. I think it sells "Sofia" emotionally a little short, though, especially for a lyric about exploring your sexuality. It's a charming, well-constructed song, with a reliable chord progression giving it a gentle momentum and multiple vocal melodies offering a sense of dynamism, and the production takes it in interesting directions (especially the guitar solo that sounds like it's being played through wrecked speakers). It just feels a little too controlled, and leaves me wishing she would... cut to the feeling, I guess? [7]

Oliver Maier: Clairo's music, as with most that ends up on Spotify playlists called stuff like "Chill Indie", often threatens to be so pleasant that it becomes tedious. "Sofia" mostly sticks the landing, though that admittedly has more to do with the backdrop -- fuzzy guitars, cartwheeling synths, "Rostam drums", all snapping in and out of focus -- than Cottrill's lacklustre melodies. Most interesting, overall, is the vocal splicing in the final stretch that deconstructs her repeated pleas into tongue-tied clouds of pure feeling, a trick that only works because it comes at the end of the song. It's a shame that most of what comes beforehand feels a little half-baked. [6]

Julian Axelrod: I'm not saying Clairo's the bedroom pop Nav, but making a Rostam-helmed Strokes shuffle sound this boring is a crime on par with wasting a Metro Boomin beat pack. [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There's a strange distance to "Sofia." Each instrument, from the dutifully chugging drum track to the kinetic rhythm guitar and the fuzzy lead and even Clairo's vocal performance, sounds like it's playing from a different room. The first time I heard the song, I thought something was wrong with my headphones-- they're breaking down anyways-- but the truth of the matter is more satisfying. The distance Clairo cultivates on "Sofia" is an intentional one, a way of layering on ambiguity and uncertainty to a song already rich in the uncertainty of queer longing. [8]

Josh Buck: 10 years ago, this would have been in a Zach Braff movie, and now it'll play in the background of a progressive Netflix teen rom-com. I call that an upgrade. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[complcatedfreak]

in which ethan loves you, no matter what mental state you’re in.

‘alright, bub. i’ll talk to you after the show! i love you’ the text ethan sent ended with a pink heart emoji, and no actual punctuation. that’s how he usually texted, but the lack of an exclamation point, or even a period, sent your head into circles.

your thoughts ranged from “what if he was just in a rush” to “he hates me and hates talking to me and wants to break up”. this is how a lot of your thoughts had been lately. no matter what situation you were in, you were overthinking things.

sure, overthinking wasn’t a new thing that was occurring suddenly. you’d always tended to overthink things, but it had gotten really bad recently. some of your friends had mentioned that it had gotten worse since ethan left for Amsterdam, but you shut that down quick. yes, ethan held your heart. you loved him in a way you’ve ever loved anyone. his smile and warm eyes were able to calm you down, and his hugs and cuddles were the most comforting thing in the world. but you didn’t rely on him like that. people aren’t the solution to mental health problems, as much as you wished he could be.

with a sigh, you locked your phone, and tossed it to the other side of the couch. it was still early, only like 9 something in LA. the nine hour time difference between you and ethan was annoying and inconvenient, but he’d be home soon. this leg of the tour wasn’t that long, and he’d be home in no time.

needing a way to stop these thoughts, you figured scrolling down twitter could be a good way to distract yourself. sure, a lot of time there’s a lot of ugly, political things, but overall the community was very sweet, and were able to act as a pick me up for you.

scrolling down your feed, it seemed like a lot of them missed you. there were memes about where you went, and sweet tweets saying they missed you. it warmed your heart, and you decided you wanted to do something to make up for absent.

‘hey guys! i’ve been gone for a bit, but to make up for it i’m gonna do a younow livestream in 20 minutes! see you soon’ you tweeted, and put your phone. you didn’t want to interact with anyone until the stream, so you had some time to waste.

first thing first, step up everything. first, you grabbed your laptop and a small blanket from your and ethan’s shared bedroom. next, you poured yourself a glass of apple juice, and sat it on the small coffee table in front of the couch. realizing you forgot your laptop charger, you headed back into the bedroom, grabbed it, plugged it in and then sat down. after logging into your laptop and all of your social medias, you made your way to younow. you figured it was best to get this started before you could overthink anything. you pressed go on the livestream, and then tweeted it out, and then gave everyone a couple seconds to file in.

the stream was going relatively well, and then the chat began spamming “where have you been?” and “where were you?” you tried to ignore it, but you knew you couldn’t anymore. “everyone keeps asking where i’ve been,” you began, “and honestly, i’ve been here. i didn’t go anywhere, quite the opposite really. i’ve just felt really,” you stopped for a second, trying to find your words, “anxious? i guess. i don’t know. i just feel like anything i’ve done wasn’t good enough to post. i’ve spent a lot of time laying face down on the floor.” you finished with a chuckle. it wasn’t funny, but it felt weird being open with your audience.

“i’m gonna try to get better. i think i have been, honestly.” you finished. the fans were very nice. a lot of them could relate to what you were saying, and they all understood. there were plenty of comments about how much they love you, and how strong they think you are.

the rest of the stream was lovely. it went longer than you had planned but it was fun, so you weren’t complaining. by the time it ended, ethan had finished his show. unbeknownst to you, fans had begun to tweet what you said to ethan. you weren’t even aware he had been active on twitter, and you certainly weren’t expecting him to blow up your phone with messages of concern and support.

your notifications ranged from tweets from fans, texts from ethan, and even a text from mark. deciding to open ethan’s first, you were shocked.

‘hey bub are you okay?’

‘people were tweeting me stuff and i just wanted to make sure you were okay’

‘i’m always here if you need me, okay?’

‘no matter what time zone i’m in, no matter how far apart we are’

‘you’re my priority’

‘i don’t know if you’re still live’

‘answer me please bub’

‘love bug’

‘you mean so fucking much to me’

‘i hate that you’re upset and i’m so far’

‘when you see these, let me know you’re okay’

‘ill leave you alone now, princess’

‘but i love you and i miss you. please text me’

your heart swelled at the string of messages. you really loved this boy, and he really loved you.

you quickly typed out a reply: ‘hey eth, i’m sorry i didn’t reply. i just got off of the livestream. i love and miss you too, so so so much. i’m good now, i think. thank you for always being there for me.<3’

he replied a lot faster than you thought he would. it was like he had your messages open and was just waiting for you to answer him. his text read: ‘okay, bug. i’m always here for you, okay? no matter what time it is. you’re my priority.’

once again, it felt like your heart was leaping out of your chest. you replied with ‘i know bubba, same goes for you. but you need to rest. sweet dreams, prince. i love you.’

ethan replied with a simple ‘i love you too <3’.

[phantoguy-blog]

Lakeland

alright guys, it’s time for my first post ever. basically i wrote this story because i live in a town with needlessly strict parking laws and i wondered, “why?” 

4772 words and some are good. enjoy. 

***

“Hey, Smitt. Come look at this.”

Mr. Walter Smitt did not want to see whatever his campaign manager, Councilman Daniel Armstrong, was talking about. It was a hot day, and there was a rally that afternoon, and Smitt wanted nothing more than to return to his thirsty viewing of the local news. But nothing seemed to be newsworthy that day except for a local accounting firm burning down, which would have no effect on the mayoral race apart from warranting the obligatory sympathetic tweet. Smitt, therefore, decided to go see Armstrong in the break room, but he elected to shamble through the door so as to convey to Armstrong that he was burdened by this demand.

“Oh, Smitt. Look at this.”

Armstrong, a man of about 5 feet 11 inches, was looking at the dining table, on which sat a piece of bread and a tub of butter. He wore an expression of brooding that rearranged his facial features into a configuration Smitt rarely saw.

“You want me to look at the table?” “No, the butter.” With this, Armstrong emphatically picked up the tub of butter and thrust it at Smitt. “See?”

“What?” But Smitt did not receive an answer: Armstrong simply smiled like a dog who suspected his owner had treats. Smitt laboriously raised his right eyebrow.

“Look at the brand,” said Armstrong as though watching Smitt unwrap a Christmas present “The brand name.”

Smitt squinted as dramatically as humanly possible and read the dish. “Land ‘O Lakes?”

“Yeah! Like the town! Lakeland!”

“Oh!” The town was, in fact, called Lakeland. Smitt, the mayoral front-runner, felt slightly ashamed for not noticing this buttery coincidence until now. “Oh. Very funny, Armstrong. I was in the middle of analyzing important data when you interrupted me.” “Analyzing important data” meant watching the news.

“Sorry,” Armstrong said. He clutched the butter tub in his hand for a moment, then got up from his seat and held it poignantly as though he was Hamlet and Smitt was Horatio. “You know, Lakeland is a lot like butter.”

Smitt’s face fell, because he realized he would now have to ask why Lakeland was like butter. He clenched his fist and asked, “Why is Lakeland like butter?”

Elated, Armstrong began to wax what to him was poetry. “Because it’s all, like, flat and the same, and it tastes kinda salty.” He paused, for dramatic effect. “But it looks tasty.” Sated, he punctuated his soliloquy by setting the butter dish down. It made a loud clack.

This is why I’m the candidate and you’re the manager, Smitt thought. As he walked back to his office, he continued to ponder his friend’s intellectual capacity. But he knew, despite his scorn for Armstrong’s less-than-ideal conversational ability, that Armstrong was not wrong. Lakeland was absolutely, like, flat and the same. Its biggest and only hill was in its cultural epicenter, Turmeric Park, which had a great stage atop a large mound of grassy land. The houses of Lakeland looked almost as though someone had copy-and-pasted them in great lines with some magical computer. There was a lot of grass, and where there was not grass, there was sidewalk, and where there was neither, there was road or dirt. It was not a town that any up-and-coming young professional would choose to migrate to (Smitt placed remarks like this in his “Things to say in the company of only private donors” vernacular).  

But the winds of change were coming to Lakeland and its population of 10,000. Signs were sprouting up in yards just like the flowers of Spring, and the signs sent many different messages at first, but now they were down to just two. Occupying the South and West sides of town were blue signs adorned with graphics of buildings and the message “VOTE November 6th Walter E. Smitt For A Better Lakeland!” On the North side of town, you would be more likely to see plain maroon signs with one white star at the top, with text saying “RE-ELECT Mayor Elliott Madison!” There was one such sign in a large flower-pot outside the accounting firm that Smitt was currently watching burn down on TV. He tried to catch a glimpse of the sign past the reporter who was currently blocking it, and saw one red corner, which suggested, much to his chagrin, that the blaze had not taken the sign.

The door opened. Smitt instinctively turned off the TV, hoping that the visitor would not discover his newfound schadenfreude for Richter and Sons’ Accounting firm. He was relieved to see that Armstrong, a man well-trained in the political art of not morally analyzing one’s boss, was standing in the doorway.

“Smitt, your rally’s in, like, an hour. Do you want to get going?” asked Armstrong.

“Yes. Yeah. Whose turn is it to drive?”

“I think it’s yours. I drove to the breakfast.” Smitt stared blankly. “With the union leaders.”

“Oh. Right. Ugh. It’s too hot. The van’s probably an oven right now and it’s too hot to drive.” Smitt’s official campaign vehicle did not have an air conditioning unit.

“Well, I guess I can drive to the rally and you can drive back,” Armstrong offered.

“Ok. But make sure you pick me up at Cedar & Chapel instead of the park. The voters don’t need to see the van.”

Armstrong looked solemnly in the direction of the parking lot. “Right.”

---

“We’re expecting a crowd of about 150 people today,” said Armstrong, nonchalantly reading emails from his phone as he drove.

Smitt smiled. “That’s one of the highest turnouts all year! I’d like to see old Madison compete with that. ...By the way, what’s Madison up to today?” “Dunno. I don’t think he’s, like, holding any rallies. Guy’s been mayor for so long, he probably thinks he’s got this in the bag already.” “If it weren’t for his army of churchgoing, wine-guzzling, high-horsing ‘community activists,’ he’d have been defeated a long time ago.” This remark, Smitt knew, squarely occupied his “campaign-ending gaffe” vernacular and should never be repeated in public under any circumstances. He scanned the van for recording devices just in case, but found none.

The two men took side streets to avoid being spotted, and pulled up behind the stage area in Turmeric Park. Armstrong looked at Smitt and nodded. “Go out there and give ‘em hell, Smitt. Remember to mention the parking situation. And give Madison a few knocks for me.”

“Right,” said Smitt. Armstrong gave him a firm pat on the arm, and with that, Smitt exited the van and made his way to the stage.

---

There was already a sizable crowd gathered. Some of them were holding signs that said things like “SMITT FOR LAKELAND” and “MADISON IS MAD, SON!” The latter slogan was one of Armstrong’s design.

Smitt could hear the crowd murmuring what he imagined were very complimentary things. The murmurs grew louder as he approached the steps to the stage, and then suddenly fell silent as he scaled them. Finally, when Smitt took the stage, the crowd’s voices grew to a mighty roar of pure zeal. Smitt beamed from ear to ear, raised his right hand, and gave an unassuming wave-- and with that one little movement, he immediately asserted his dominance over the crowd and guaranteed their consent, all while appearing as relatable as a 49-year-old businessman-turned-politician possibly could. “Thank you!” he said. It was like flamboyantly tuning an instrument before a concert. “Thank you!” This was the best part of Smitt’s job.

Smitt was not a natural-born politician. Though he would scarcely admit it to anyone whose last name was not Armstrong, he could not understand the people of Lakeland in the way that they understood each other. Lakelanders, as they were known, were a simple and quite homogenous people. They said a lot of words, but most of their communication was nonverbal and carried itself through ritual rather than rhetoric. They attended church every Sunday at one of Lakeland’s many churches, after which they would stop at one of Lakeland’s many restaurants for one of Lakeland’s many sandwiches. They travelled in packs of 3-8, depending on how many kids and/or friends they had, and fancied themselves quite intellectual and cultured but not to the extent that they ever mentioned this.

Smitt was not a religious person. He did believe that there was an omnipotent force that was currently guiding him, and only him, to become mayor of Lakeland, but this belief, if he ever expressed it out loud, was nothing short of a “campaign-ending gaffe.” He fancied himself an entrepreneur, who had recently moved back to his hometown of Lakeland after completing his MBA in order to found an advertising firm. When he travelled, it was in packs of 1-2, as he did not have a family and preferred to keep his friends far away. He never truly considered himself a Lakelander, though he had grown up there. And when he looked out at the adoring crowd before them, it was with a sharp twinge of sympathy, a sharper twinge of disdain, and a twinge of appreciation that was not particularly sharp.

But Smitt had a trick up his sleeve. He knew how to play his audience like the church organs they heard weekly. He understood, as much as any Lakelander, one of the fundamental problems with the town, and was ready to convince 150 average joes that he alone could fix it.

“Hey, Lakeland!” he said, which was as much a greeting as it was a statement. “Who’s ready for a change?!”

The crowd applauded sufficiently to indicate that it was, in fact, ready for a change.

“Yeah. Yeah! That’s what I like to hear!” Smitt liked to use crowd-pleasers he remembered from Monday Night Wrestling. “A year ago, when I first launched this campaign in Turmeric Park, I never thought we’d get this far. Now look at us!” More applause. “We’re still in Turmeric Park, but there’s more people!”

One more emotional appeal, Smitt thought. Then the big segue.

“This town is the greatest town in Upper West Perry County, Indiana, and we’re going to reclaim its former greatness together!”

A few seconds more of applause. The bait was now on the rod. Now to cast.

“You know…” The applause died down. “You know, I was just being driven here by my, uh, chauffeur, in our campaignmobile, when I ran into a bit of an issue.”

Smitt was dangling the rod now, almost taunting his crowd. He could feel the pressure build up, and it was exhilarating. He could barely move his hand, but ran it through his hair just to prove to himself that he could.

“Yeah? You all know what I’m talking about?” A quiet, low roar began to build up. “That’s right. That’s right. We couldn’t find a damn place to park!”

It was like someone had just set off a bomb. The crowd was sent into hysterics. I bet the guys at Richter and Sons’ Accounting Firm can hear us now, Smitt thought. And rightfully so. Smitt had just touched upon the single greatest grievance one could have with Lakeland: The parking.

“The streets were wide open, sure. Tons of places to park. Tons of places! But guess what the sign says? Guess. Guess.” Smitt knew, of course, that his constituents were physically too far away from him to hear their guesses, but he enjoyed riling them up all the same.

“‘No parking between 12AM-8PM. That’s right, 12AM-8PM! I guess you have to pay a fine or get your car towed or something if you dare to commit the grave offense of parking there.”

Smitt paused for a round of applause from the crowd of revolutionaries, then continued.

“And it’s not just limited to the street behind the park. We can’t park in front of our houses. We can’t park in front of our houses! I have to move my car two streets down-- and even then, you can’t keep it there for more than 8 hours or guess what, it gets towed and you’re paying for it!

“Now, my good friend Elliott Madison seems to think he can take advantage of our money, our cars, even our schedules. He’s been in the mayor’s office longer than some of us have been alive. But today, we’re telling him that he’s wrong. He does not own us. He does not own our houses, our cars, our families, or our lives, and on the 15th, we’re going to show him what we’re all about.  

“We are not about taxes. We are not about inconvenience. We are about freedom-- especially when it comes to parking.”

Smitt beamed from ear to ear and took a few steps back, watching the movement he had created. Not all Lakelanders were the same bible-thumping populace. Some were too young to know what church was, some were too old to know what church was, and some did not go. But all Lakelanders were united in their hatred for the town’s parking policies, which were simply nonsensical. For instance, on some streets you could only park from 8-10 AM, while on others, there was no parking from 2-6:30 PM and  7-11 PM but anytime else was fair game, and these were just scratching the surface. Not only were the laws ridiculous, but the punishments were even worse. At best, you’d get a ticket; at worst, your car would be towed and you would get a ticket on top of that. If there was one good thing you could say about Mayor Madison, Armstrong always mused, it was that he enforced the law like no one else. One could get away with a little shoplifting here and there, and the police would almost certainly let you off for going a couple miles over the speed limit. But failure to comply with parking rules for more than a few minutes at the time would result in certain punishment. Madison had created a special task force charged with patrolling the streets for illegal parking, and punishing the offenders to the fullest extent of the law. Almost any Lakelander has had the experience of watching a siren-equipped tow truck go barreling down the street in search of the next unfortunate victim’s car, and merely shaking their head with a solemn sort of empathy. The townspeople wanted the quintessential essence of life in small-town Middle America: To do whatever the hell you want without the government in your way. Yet they re-elected Madison so many times that some say he was actually born in office, and lived out his entire life as mayor. And well before Smitt came on the scene, it was customary in Lakeland to, whenever running over a pothole, seeing litter in the parks, or receiving one of the aforementioned parking tickets, turn to the person most immediately close to you, sigh, and say “Madison.” They re-elected him not because they liked him as a person (most had never seen him), or because they agreed with his policy stances (which were mostly unknown).

Madison was simply the status quo, and his status as a punching bag had become something of a cornerstone for the community. It had been generations since they had truly felt outrage or anything more than mere annoyance at Madison’s governing, and since no one had ever come along to oppose him, he never faced the serious possibility of not winning re-election. Smitt, however, was not afraid to stir the pot, to remind the Lakelanders, for motives selfish or not, that just because it is the status quo does not mean it is good, or that it cannot change. And he continued to remind them of this, through several more rallies and a televised debate, until it was finally election night in Lakeland.

Smitt had moved the TV from his office to the break room, where he was now pacing back and forth in front of Armstrong, who was calmly watching the results come in.

“Smitt.”

“Mm,”  said Smitt, who was squeezing the leg of his pants.

“You nervous?”

“No.” Smitt opened and closed the refrigerator door a few times. He was not hungry.

“Good. ‘Cause we’re gonna win. You know that.”

“Yeah. Yeah we are.”

Suddenly, the office buzzer rang loudly. Startled, Smitt jumped, banged his head on the ceiling, and shouted in pain. Armstrong looked at him quizzically as he stumbled around the room and rubbed his head.

“Smitt, I think someone’s here.”

“You think?” Smitt growled. “Go open the door. Tell whoever’s there that they can go screw themselves. I don’t want visitors right now.”

“What’s the magic word?” “Now.”

Armstrong left the room, feeling slightly emasculated. Smitt sighed, closed his eyes, and listened as Armstrong’s footsteps made their way across the office space and towards the door. He heard the door creak open, and a quiet yet urgent voice on the other end.

“Hello, sir. I need to speak to Walter Smitt.”

“Sorry. He gave me specific orders to tell anyone who comes here to go--”

“Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.” Smitt sprung into action and ran to the door. “There’s no need to finish that sentence.” He found Armstrong towering over a short, portly man with tan skin and a tuft of white hair on his head.

“Sorry, Smitt. This guy just seemed a little troublesome, so--”

“Armstrong, that guy is the mayor.”

“Oh.” Armstrong sized the man up and took a step back. “Crap. Sorry.”

There was a moment of tension between the three men. Armstrong refused to meet Madison’s eyes, Madison was looking straight into Armstrong’s eyes, and Smitt was trying to listen to the TV in the break room. Finally, Smitt decided to break the ice. “Hello, Mr. Mayor,” he offered, and extended his hand.

“Good evening, Mr. Smitt,” replied Madison. The two shook hands, each man crushing the other’s hand so much that they could not feel their own hands. This practice was customary between Smitt and Madison; Smitt had won 7 out of the approximately 13 of these exchanges they had gotten into over the course of the race.

Madison brushed his jacket impatiently and adjusted his tie. “I’ll keep this brief, Mr. Smitt, as I imagine you’re something of a busy man yourself. You are aware that the election is tonight, yes?”

“Oh, yeah. That. I forgot that was tonight.”

“Even though your TV is quite loudly playing live coverage of the election right now?”

“With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, you must have had a better reason to come here than to listen to my TV.”

“Yes.” Flustered by Smitt’s remark, Madison winced slightly. “In short, I understand that you seek the mayor’s office.”

I mean, I have been campaigning against you for a year, genius, Smitt wanted to say. Instead, he nodded.

“Yes. There is a clear conflict of interest here, I think we can agree.”

“A conflict of interest?”

“I am the mayor of Lakeland. I have been the mayor. You seem quite intent upon unseating me.”

“I suppose you would call that a conflict of interest,” Smitt agreed apprehensively.

Madison paused, then took a step closer to Smitt, completely shutting Armstrong out of the conversation. “I have a proposal that may benefit us both.”

“Look, I’ve been out here for a year and I’ve spent thousands of my own voters’ money. If you think I’m gonna--”

Madison held up his hand. Smitt was immediately silenced.

“You drop out of the race tonight and endorse me. Life in town returns to normal, and perhaps some of the village budget finds its way into your pocket.”

“Are you trying to bribe me, Mr. Mayor? I hope you realize that’s in violation of campaign finance laws.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Madison snarled. “This town needs me. If you stand in my way, the stress of the job will be the least of your problems.”

“Bribery and now threats? This could be grounds for impeachment.”

“Impeachment? You want to impeach me?” Madison gave a high-pitched laugh. “Oh, I’m not threatening you, Mr. Smitt. I won’t hurt you. Unlike you, I still have a shred of decency left. I took this job to protect the common good and keep Lakeland safe.”

“You call towing someone’s car because they dared to park past 3 PM ‘keeping Lakeland safe?’”

Madison smiled a tight, painful smile and grinded his teeth together. “There is so much about this job that you do not understand, Mr. Smitt. Withdraw and put an end to the mockery you’ve made of this beautiful town. Withdraw and let life return to normal. Your life will be made much easier, of that I can assure you. I’ve been re-elected once for every fifty dollars you’ve made in your entire career, and believe me, I will see to it that you don’t regret your decision. So suspend your campaign tonight, for the greater good.”

Smitt pretended to think for a second. He could almost feel Madison’s sharp blue eyes burning into him, and his heart began to race much like it did when he was first interviewing for a job at Goldman-Sachs so many years ago. But this time, he had the upper hand and he knew it. He smiled and turned to Armstrong, who was now sitting on the couch staring at the floor.

“Armstrong? Get this guy outta here.”

“Right away.” Armstrong obediently leapt to his feet and cracked his neck back and forth.

“No! Please, Mr. Smitt, you don’t understand what you’re doing,” pled a shocked Madison.

“Too late, buddy,” said Armstrong. He rolled up his sleeves-- a feat which demonstrated strength by itself, for he was wearing a suit and jacket--  to reveal two very strong arms.

“You can’t do this to me, councilman! I am the mayor. I am your boss!”

“But it’s not you that elected me. It was the people. And now, you’re going to see what the people are capable of.”

Armstrong gritted his teeth and flexed his biceps. He clenched his right hand into a fist, and with one sweeping motion, slammed it down on a button affixed to the wall.

“Security? It’s time to remove the mayor from office.”

Madison glared at Smitt and Armstrong for a moment, then turned with a flourish and left, evidently trying to avoid a scandal on election night.

Armstrong turned to Smitt and grinned from ear to ear. “Did you like that line? I’ve had it prepared for years in case this happened.”

“It was… It was good.” “When I said ‘remove him from office,’ it was, like, a double meaning. I was talking about this office.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you liked it?!” “It was good, Armstrong. Now, let’s go watch the election results.” The outcome of the election was quite predictable if you had been paying attention to the political climate in the past year. Smitt beat Madison 52%-48%, the mayor’s first loss in a political career so long it could be considered a one-man dynasty. Tens upon tens of people, which was a lot for a political event in Lakeland, came to watch Smitt’s victory speech, which they received with much applause. The city council liked Smitt even more, with the majority standing and applauding when he entered the council chamber for the first time (Armstrong was nearly censured for his loud whooping). Smitt’s first act as mayor was to eliminate all parking restrictions in Lakeland, which passed the council 9-1. The one dissenter was a longtime Madison loyalist, a tall, gaunt man who watched contemptuously from the shadows as Smitt signed the bill into law.

The first day after the bill became law, cars now lined the streets of Lakeland such that no one could tell whether there was a major traffic jam going on or if it was simply 8:00 PM on a Wednesday night and everyone had just returned home. It was a beautiful sight. Subarus, Toyotas, Hyundais, Fords, and more adorned the streets, framing them like a picture of American freedom.

And as Smitt got into bed that night, blowing a kiss to his Tesla that was parked right outside for once, he felt truly accomplished. His eyes drifted shut.

---

Crash. Bang. Vvvvvrrrrrr.

Smitt’s eyes drifted open again. Without seeing the time, he knew they had not been closed long enough. But there was crashing and banging going on outside, and Smitt’s phone was vibrating fiercely. He groggily reached for it. The display said 3:48 AM. I’m not going to answer, he thought. It’s too early. The president could be calling and I wouldn’t answer.

He answered the phone.

“Smitt-- I mean, Mr. Mayor Smitt! Are you there?!” It was Armstrong, who had not sounded this distraught since the two got kicked out of the Applebee’s bar the night after the election.

“Whoozair? Armsrong? IssthreeAM.”

“Mr. Mayor, look outside! The town! Oh, it’s too horrible!” Smitt sighed and hung up. He pulled his pillow over his ears, shut his eyes tightly, and tried to go back to sleep, when a tremendous earthquake shook the floor and nearly knocked him out of bed. That was when Smitt realized that something was seriously wrong in Lakeland. He leapt to the floor, slowly pulled himself by the windowsill, and peered out the window. He could not believe what he was seeing.

The clouds in the sky had parted; lighting was flicking through them like an angry god thrusting his trident. All the houses and the cars parked in front of them were in shambles. Massive tentacles the thickness of tree trunks burst from the ground, their great suction cups illuminated only by the lightning. They thrashed around furiously, throwing houses off of their foundations, uprooting trees, and sweeping unlucky people off the ground towards a fate that Smitt shuddered to imagine. Underscoring this horrendous scene was a cacophony of splintering wood, shattering glass, screaming people, and of course, car alarms. Smitt could only watch in horror as the town he had grown up in, campaigned for, and now governed, crumbled before his very eyes.

Suddenly, Smitt remembered Madison’s words about the town needing him. Realizing the true nature of those words, Smitt rushed to his dresser and pulled out his phone book. He quickly flipped through it until he found an Elliott Madison. Hands shaking, he dialed the number. The phone rang once, then twice, then three times, until finally someone picked up.

“Smitt, I presume?”

“You’ve-- You’ve gotta help me, Madison. What the hell’s going on?” demanded Smitt breathlessly.

“What you are seeing now is the great beast that until now slept below Lakeland. He has been sealed underneath the streets since the beginning of time-- and I was to be his warden, essentially. If enough cars remained in one spot for long enough, the pressure would wake him. I had to prevent that. Thus, the parking laws.” Madison spoke with a hint of amusement, and a hint of utter despair.

“What… Why didn’t you tell me?!” shouted Smitt, nearly crying for the first time in his life.

“Let’s be realistic, Smitt. You wouldn’t have believed me. Even if you did, you would have repealed the parking laws all the same. Because you just have to serve your constituents, don’t you. You must bend to their self-serving whims. You must tweak every rule, take an eraser to every bill, until the people smile back at you.”

At this, Smitt rushed to defend himself, tripped on his words, gasped, and choked on his gasp.

“Goodbye, Smitt. It has truly been a pleasure. May our last few moments on this earth be as pleasant as all the ones before.”

“Madison, don’t go. It can’t end like this. You know something and you’re not telling me, right?! Madison!” But there was no answer. Smitt might as well have been screaming into a brick, and he knew it, as much as he did not want to.

Smitt shambled to his door, slowly opened it, and walked outside. His Tesla had been reduced to a pile of smoking garbage, much like how he currently viewed himself. There was no chance now of evacuating.

“All I wanted,” he said to himself, “was to be mayor.”

“All I wanted,” he said in between tears, “was to fix the damn parking situation.”

“Now, the town’s fucking gone.” He crumpled to the ground and punched the sidewalk.

“God fucking damn it.”

But in his last moments, Smitt did not cry. On the contrary, he smiled. He smiled with joy, because he remembered something.

This was one blaze that Richter and Sons’ Accounting Firm would never be able to come back from.

[alexwinfield-blog1]

Digital Footprints: Put YOUR stamp on it.

It’s Monday morning. A new day. Another week of school. You turn off your alarm and head straight over to Twitter. “Monday already !!!!!!! (Crying emoji X10) Can’t w8 to get back into bed”. Your phone pings. It’s Lizzie. Your BFF. She never lets you down. Except not today it seems. “Soz bbe. Sooooo ill. Grab any hw sheets for me plzzzz (blowing kiss emoji) xxxx”. Mum shouts up the stairs “Are you getting up at any point today? The dog needs walking and you need to take your brother to school!” You slam your phone into the duvet, roll your eyes and take a deep breath. You’re annoyed and the day has only just begun. Toast in one hand and dragging your brother out the door by the other, you smile at the postman. “Morning”, you say. Knowing full well he loses your packages ALL THE TIME.  Be nice mum always tells you. Manners cost nothing.

You get to school. The mean girls stare you down as you walk to your English lesson. You try to look cool. You tell yourself that one day they’ll take you in as one of their own, but maybe today just isn’t that day. You find your seat, unpack your books, your pencil case, tucking your phone under your hideous plaid skirt. Silly really. Illuminating skirts aren’t exactly the school uniform market’s latest innovation. You’re top of your class. You know you shouldn’t be scrolling through Instagram in a lesson, but everyone else does, and you for sure don’t want to stick out any more than what you already do. You get A’s in nearly every assignment and you compete in nearly every extra-curriculum sport in the school, but you can’t help but fantasise about that Instagram #gymbod. Your parents are immensely proud, and your teachers? You can’t do enough to please them. You love school. Never too shy to raise your hand in class, never too eager to stand in front of the WHOLE of year 11 to deliver a speech about the school’s litter policy, and never too embarrassed to admit to your friends that you’ve not even kissed a boy.

It’s lunchtime. You and your best friends of 12 years gather around the canteen table.They tell you about their exciting weekends. How their heart throb boyfriends distracted them from getting any work done. How they got ridiculously drunk at a family party and how their mum grounded them for coming home at 10:33 – 3 minutes later than expected. And you? You just listen. For the most part, you spend your break and lunch times talking in the hockey team WhatsApp group chat. They’re a laugh. Sometimes you tell the girls about your boring weekend, or even fluff it up slightly by telling them you actually got out of your pyjamas. They would never believe you. You’re well and truly the plain Jane out of the bunch. The new boy in your year asks if the seat next to you is taken. The girls think he’s a nerd but you think he’s quite cute. You say no. The girls sigh as if to say “you’re such a loser”, but you don’t care. You have to pretend you don’t know his name, that you don’t have an unhealthy obsession with checking his Facebook. You know his cat goes by the name of Clive, but you pretend you don��t know that. You know he plays for the local rugby team, but you’re not supposed to know that either. You don’t know that his birthday is the 6th of June, and most importantly, you must NOT show any bitterness towards his girlfriend of 3 years.

Home time at last. You’re loosening your tie as you get closer to the front door, eager to jump straight back into bed. PING. It’s the girls group chat. “House (girl dancing emoji) Sat nite. 8.30. B there or b (square emoji)”. NOOO. You promised mum you’d have a film night with her. Saturday night rolls around. You’ve been plotting all week how you could get away with this one, but she’s a mum. They find out everything. Not this time. You divert from the party situation. It’s now a revision sleepover situation with the girls. You ask to go and of course you’re allowed. School first, partying second. It’s 10pm. You’re having the best time but you assured mum updates on the revision sesh. So, as promised, you load up Instagram stories. On your second Instagram account, obviously. By second, you mean the only Instagram account your mum thinks exists, right? You locate the photo album named “revision”. You browse this until you find the most colourful, most mind-map-ful, most hard working-esque photo you can find. And voila! A little later, in comes a text from mum. “Wonderful stuff. Looks like you’re really working hard. See you in the morning :)” . Little does she know, over on what might as well scream @yourerliar101, several stories and photos were posted of your amazing night with your besties. In the morning it seems the party was a huge success. Tweets and Instagrams raving about the night – “Can’t believe Josh taught every1 to do the (worm emoji) (cry laughing emoji)”. “Had the best nite EVAAAAAA (tongue out emoji)”. “Me and the gals last night!!!!!!! (cocktail emoji) (heart eye emoji) #lovethem”.

Sound familiar? Well, this may not be too dissimilar to a day in the life of your late teenage years. (Millennials, this one is for you!) Through this artificial account, we learn that in just 24 hours, you are likely to perform a variety of different roles. You’re a reliable friend and a caring sibling. You’re also studious, a potential lover and occasionally a liar. But sometimes it’s for the best, right? So, quite literally, how can these personalities become transparent online?

Just like this teenager, the average social media user, whatever you may define this to be, can be traced online. Social media can speak volumes about a person. Not just what they get up to on the weekend, but the finer details. For example, they’re obsession with their house rabbits, how much they can’t stand their boss, and more recently, how they’ve jumped on-board Facebook’s latest bandwagon, “rate my meal”. 

Social media, such as Instagram and Twitter allow me to present the most favourable, or sometimes least favourable, versions of myself.  If you were to rewind to old school Alex on Twitter, you would definitely find tweets containing homophones, such as “u”, with my favourite acronym, still to this day, being “lol” – only used sarcastically of course. As well as this, I was a sucker for, and admittedly still am, a cluster of exaggerated punctuation, but mostly “!!!!!!!”.  Although Crystal (2008) claims that young users of social media, especially in SMS, will use abbreviations such as “GTGMIW” (Got to go, mum is watching), this wasn’t necessarily the case when I was growing up with social media. Nowadays, it’s all about filtering what you put online. This screening allows you to hide your online activity, for example by disguising your wild Friday night shenanigans by deselecting your mum from viewing your Snapchat story. Or, creating a separate Instagram just for your friends’ entertainment. You can be as embarrassing as you like and you won’t have 800 followers judging you.

Goffman (1974) refers to this online social interaction as “audience segregation”. We ultimately filter aspects of our lives from certain people in order to curate and maintain a multitude of personalities depending on the context we are in. So, for me, this means presenting a sensible, family-friendly Alex on Facebook, an interesting and good-humoured Alex on Twitter, and an exciting, adventurous Alex on Instagram. Let’s take a look…

So, 2017 A-Level Results day. Here, we’ve got a definite exaggerated use of punctuation and excitable capitalisation. Not only this, I clearly thought the use of the extreme smiley emoji X2 wasn’t enough, resulting in going the extra mile with a #. What am I doing here? Looking back on this, this for sure could have been Facebook worthy. This could have bagged me a gushing army of comments from overjoyed family members bursting with pride. But why Twitter? My friends would see this. People I know, but don’t really know, would see this. Those 23 likes - those 23 people thought this was worthy of a tweet and that’s all that mattered. In this moment, I. Was. Clever.

Evidently, over the years, I desired to either be desperately funny or desperately embarrassing. You decide this one.

Would I have found any of these tweets to be bland if I weren’t to use homophones? Or exaggerated punctuation? Or hashtags? Were these attempts for me to moan about how busy my life was? Did I want sympathy or just someone to relate to?

Here’s Instagram Alex. Holidaying in the Dominican Republic, Lanzarote and Greece. Eating Wagamamas at least once a week. Being overly obsessed with a French Bulldog, attending fancy-dress parties and the occasional festival. This is what I choose to share online. Not very exciting, but a fairly accurate representation of me. You can guarantee nearly every other caption incorporates an excessive use of emoticons, sarcasm and most definitely a little too much of this “!!!!!”.

What do these linguistic features allow me to achieve?

If I asked a complete stranger to read my Twitter, browse my Facebook and scroll through my Instagram, they would probably argue that my presence across these social media platforms doesn’t really differ that greatly. You could say that for the most part, I present the most authentic version of myself online. I’m not one to shy away from no-make up selfies, or tell the world about how groggy I feel after waking up from that 3- hour nap, or in fact how much I moan about going to my 20 hours a week part-time kitchen job.

However, for some people, this is not the case. Without audience segregation there would be a context collapse. Employees would start saying “lmao” when their boss asks for a coffee. Students would use inappropriate emoticons to sign of their “sorry I can’t make it to the lecture today, I’m ill” email. Parents would text, or even worse, tag you in their FB status announcing “#DINNERISREADY” instead of actually calling you down for dinner, and we definitely don’t want to live in a world full of parents who hashtag EVERYTHING.

So, what can we learn from this?

For both professional and personal matters, it’s important to present yourself online in a way that is consistent. You don’t want people to think you have 25 different personalities. Keep this for the real-life stuff. No one likes a catfish. After all, if 70% of employers screen candidates’ social media before they consider hiring, it’s important to avoid branding yourself as a fool online. Keep those drunken night out videos OFFLINE and maybe consider deleting those 2012 “Like for a rate <3” cringey Facebook statuses. However, don’t go erasing yourself offline completely in fear that you’ll never get a decent job. After all, 47% of employers argue that having an online presence allows them to learn a bit about who they’re hiring. So, be open, but not TOO open. Be YOU. However, if “you” means writing Facebook statuses about how much you love playing Angry Birds at work, or how you’re easily persuaded to go clubbing on a Monday night, maybe it’s best you don’t share the real you online. Be mindful about the digital footprint trail you’re leaving behind. 

References:

Driver, S. (2018, October, 7). Keep It Clean: Social Media Screenings Gain In Popularity. Retrieved from: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2377-social-media-hiring.html

Jones, R. H., & Hafner. C. A. (2012). Undersatnding Digital Literacies. London: Routledge.

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[breakingarrows]

What makes a game a good game? I’ve been thinking about this, as well as what I have to offer to the greater conversations that are perpetually in motion Online. Taking a break from my usual outlet due to a huge feeling of apathy, I looked back towards my younger days just posting whatever it was on my mind on Tumblr and thought that was a time I was more satisfied. Not with a byline or great recognition but just kinda creating and putting it out there for nobody but myself to look over on a portfolio. So here are some thoughts on game criticism and media and the way they are used and could be used.

There is no such thing as an objective review. A great example of this is Objective Game Reviews that would post “Game reviews that are fact, not opinion.” An example from their “review” of RAGE:

One of the weapons in RAGE is the “wingstick,” a thrown blade weapon that can slice off the limbs of enemies and return to the player. Wingsticks can be steered through the air by moving the crosshair, and if they hit a hard surface or an armored enemy they can break. The player can craft wingsticks and alternative ammunition with parts looted from the world or purchased from vendors. Normal ammunition can be looted from enemies and refilled during a fight, whereas if alternative ammunition runs out the player must pause to craft more.

Another great example is Jim Sterling’s “review” of Final Fantasy XIII. Sterling did not like Final Fantasy XIII, giving it a Below Average, 4/10, for Destructoid on March 16, 2010. Of course reactions ranged from “whoa!” to “you didn’t even play the game.” In response, Sterling wrote up an objective review:

The videogame has graphics and sound. The graphics are seen with your eyes and the sound is heard by your ears. When you start the game the graphics and the sound will occur almost at the same time, letting you know that the game has started. There is also text which players can read.

Gamers who cry out against reviews that are not objective just disagree with what is being said, and don’t actually want an objective review that is just listing the things in the game as factual statements with no opinion on whether those things are good or bad. The same can be said of those who cry that a reviewer is “biased” towards a certain game/company/genre/etc. Most famously this is hurled towards Nintendo reviews for games that are perceived as bad but get good reviews “because Nintendo.” Sometimes it can be hard to not fall into this trap, as my reaction towards Skyward Sword getting hugely praised in 2011 was viewed as coming from people who couldn’t help but worship at the feet of Zelda and Nintendo.

The issue though, of universal praise for nearly every major title every year is something worth discussing. Both Nick Capozzoli, Vincent Kinian, and Tevis Thompson have talked about this before, the latter with a bit more hostility and other issues all his own, but the fact remains that there is a deep hole of variety when it comes to game reviews. This isn’t helped by the fact that more sites are beginning to realize the stupidity of assigning a score to a game, as if a number can accurately sum up a game’s worth and that elevating all games on the scale of numerical weight means games never meant to be compared to each other will be. See the meme of IGN’s review of Party Babyz Wii whose 7.5 was copy+pasted next to “better” games that got a lower review score for years.

Tevis links back the inability for game critics to come out and say Red Dead Redemption 2 sucks to the universally praised Bioshock Infinite of 2013, a game that mainstream media made multiple offerings to in the form of breathless praise, whereas others wrote out their criticisms on the periphery, best exemplified by the recent Critical Compilation on the game.

One critic he mentions is Videogamedunkey, a YouTuber who puts out short videos about whatever game is currently in the discourse. His slant is generally as an entertainment, comedian, wanting to make his viewers laugh, but also he talks about what he liked in the game and what he didn’t like. With Red Dead Redemption 2 Dunkey’s conclusion is the excess bears down on the game and he became as disillusioned as protagonist Arthur Morgan does with his mentor Dutch. It’s a fine video/review, though doesn’t nearly have the bite Tevis appears to want with regards to Red Dead Redemption 2, a bite I personally found in Jess Joho’s review of the game for Mashable which most aligned with my own feelings on the game and one he does list. Listing Dunkey also either shows Tevis’ ignorance or agreement with another Dunkey video: Game Critics, which provoked lots of conversations about people who review games for larger sites. Though, reading through Tevis’ piece, that video might be why he apparently looks up to Dunkey for good criticism. It is not like some of the issues Dunkey lists are wrong.

You’ve got your fanboys, your hobbyists, your escapists.  Your ‘objective’ reviewers, your consumer advisers, your spec hounds.  Your people pleasers, your twitter cheerleaders, your industry bootlickers.  Your never hate a game philosophers, your games are hard to make sympathizers, your but some people like it! tsk-tskers.  You’ve got old critics who’ve given up and young critics who’re getting there.  You’ve got so many internet professionals and professional apologists.  The tired, the self-censored, the players of the game.  None mutually exclusive.  All guardians of the status quo.

I think the real issue here is that the required work to put into really proving this sort of thing is massive. Reading and sorting the reviews based on site and author, taking into account Twitter posts that extend the conversation into an endless timeline unsearchable by keyword due to the often vague nature of criticizing criticism publicly. There have probably been hundreds of tweets in response to just Tevis’ blog as well as games criticism in general. It seems like the conversation about reviewers, their role, their work, their compensation, their method, is repeated ad nauseum monthly. Games media loves to talk about games media. I mean here I am, someone much lower than those I’ve mentioned, talking about it myself.

This sort of work loses the point, about what is it that makes a game good? Objective reviews are useless, subjective reviews are useful. What makes a subjective opinion worth reading? What makes the work their talking about worth something? These are the sorts of things that have many answers.

Some small things to get out of the way are some more useless things, specifically the belief that a 10/10 means a game is perfect, is a belief that is hard to get around despite how simple it is. A 10/10 just means it is the pinnacle of what games can achieve and others should be more like this one. What constitutes a 10/10 is, as everything is, up to personal taste. For myself, 10/10’s practically don’t exist since no piece of art is without flaw. We are all humans. Remember before when I said assigning numerical value is stupid? Well given the circumstances of Metacritic, assigning a numerical score might not actually be a dumb thing when it's used as a statement, a punctuation at the end of your text. If Tevis used numerical scores in his reviews and got onto Metacritic he would be able to wield them much more usefully as a way to vocalize dissent through metascore than as just a page of text most will pass by without reading.

Phrases such as “Isn’t for everyone” or “not a perfect [x].” are also useless in terms of criticism. Not every game is made for everyone or could even accomplish that if it were the intention. That phrase can be applied to any and every game and is therefore useless. As mentioned before, no piece of art is perfect, so simply stating that as some sort of qualifier that, “I like this but it’s far from perfect,” is such a pathetic qualifier that should never be used.

A review worth reading is one that brings a point, a perspective, an idea that you didn’t have before about a piece of art and put it in your head. It also has to have supporting evidence for its conclusions, the sort of Philosophy 102 cogent argumentative qualities that blew my mind as a college kid. Given that we have already had decades of consumer grade reviews: ones that break a game into categories and tie them together into a qualitative statement at the end, that we would be able to move on from that into something different. This includes the derogatorily described “blog” reviews, ones that are less about whether or not the graphics never stuttered and more about whether or not a personal connection was made to a specific aspect of a game, whether large or incidental. These are the kind of conversations that bring something new than whether or not the guns sounded satisfactory. This is the sort of conversation that differentiates critical YouTubers like Raycevick from Noah Caldwell-Gervais. Both put out videos on the recent Wolfenstein series and both took very different approaches to what they wanted to say about the game. Raycevick was more focused on the mechanics, the variation of the map, the way it linked together its setpieces. Noah was more interested in what the game had to say about America, Nazism, and the ways to resist and cope with a fallen country. The former might make for a good quick recap of what the games are and what they do in a input-output sense (think right-trigger, left-trigger of Call of Duty), but it's the latter that does the digging into what the game is beyond whether the shooting was good or the stealth sections not too frustrating.

When ascertaining whether or not a game is good there are some easy questions to ask. Did I make an emotional connection? Was that emotional connection cheap (say showing a dog dying) or earned? Does the game have something to say about a topic and do I agree with or disagree with its conclusion about said topic? Did I enjoy spending time within the game and why? Was this a worthwhile spending of my time?

Mechanic’s based criticism is also valid, but personally less interesting. Does it matter if Anthem has good shooting and flying if the things surrounding it are bland? This is where subjectivity again comes in. So far, out of all the shlooters released, I’ve found that you can have the most mechanically satisfying circle, but if that is surrounded by mediocrity it doesn’t matter, it’s a bad game. I don’t care whether or not the shooting felt good in a game, I want to know if the things surrounding those mechanics is worth investing time into. Red Dead Redemption 2 had a rote shooting gallery mechanic underlying most all of its missions, and that couldn’t be saved by the characters and world surrounding it which left me feeling like I had wasted my time come the credits. Of course many felt the opposite, and its the ways we craft the arguments and explanations for why we felt that way that make a good criticism. A review is likely not going to and not meant to convince you that a game you hate is good, but it should at least allow you to understand why the author felt that way about it.

Something that has cropped up recently when covering games is the conditions under which they are made. As we, hopefully, work our way towards a labor revolution not only in games but across all aspects of culture, we have become more aware of the way corporations exploit the lower class workforce. AAA development means overwork, let’s not even get started on the lie of the 40 hour workweek, underpaid, and stress that routinely leads to the end of careers. Rockstar management came out and boasted about their 100 hour work weeks in New York Magazine, which was then qualified as just the writing team, and then was further qualified by a Kotaku report (that has been the norm) about the conditions under which Red Dead Redemption 2 was created. The question became whether or not this would affect reception of the game. It didn’t.

I sometimes struggled to enjoy Red Dead Redemption 2’s most impressive elements because I knew how challenging—and damaging—some of them must have been to make. Yet just as often, I found myself appreciating those things even more, knowing that so many talented people had poured their lives into crafting something this incredible.

The game currently has a 97 on Metacritic, there was only one “mixed” scored review, and even those who didn’t give scores offered only a slight hand wringing at the way the game was created in their text. Kotaku’s section ends with a shrug, “yeah the people who made this were exploited but I’ll be damned if that exploited work isn’t impressive.” It’s useless to have in the text as it leads nowhere, and the question of, “was their labor worth it?” should always be answered with a resounding NO. We are attempting to unionize the industry in order to keep exploitation from happening. What a fucking useless gesture to contemplate whether or not someone spending weeks crunching was “worth it.” It’s the sort of thing Tevis called out in his post,

They couch any troublesome truths in acceptable gamerese, outline all possible caveats, neuter any rhetorical force, maybe dress it up for their academic buddies while they’re at it.  Suddenly everything is ‘messy’ or ‘complicated’ or ‘full of fascinating contradictions’.  Sure, they’re ‘frustrated’, even ‘disappointed’, but they’re still rooting for the game.  And always with due deference to their audience.  It’s not for me but it’s cool if you and it’s totally just a taste thing now don’t get me wrong now I know what you’re thinking now I’m not saying that, y’all.

Some of this comes from the fact that games media is largely made up of, and rooted in, enthusiasts: people who do it out of a love for the media itself. This may best be exemplified by a recent (now deleted) tweet from Brian Altano, video host/producer at IGN Entertainment:

I've been working in the video game industry since 2007 and I don't think I've ever heard more than three people legitimately call themselves "game journalists" without being sarcastic, ironic, or putting it in air quotes while laughing about it. That's... not an actual thing.

Brian has never been someone you go to for criticism or news, the things journalists do. He exists to make you laugh, to entertain you. Going to Brian to determine whether or not you should buy a game will end with “Yes!” or “Maybe try it out.” Brian exemplifies the type of critic Tevis decries in his opening paragraph. He isn’t a critic, but he does represent a larger audience than critics do. There isn’t a real large audience for the type of work done at Bullet Points Monthly, or else their Patreon would be much higher than it currently is. People go to websites like IGN and GameSpot to have their already convinced minds reinforced that what they like is Important. This is why there are multiple articles whenever a new trailer or piece of information comes out about the next Star Wars or Marvel movie or Game of Thrones. These things are big so we have to talk about them and reinforce their importance, further enriching the pockets of corps like Disney, whose billion dollar company is immoral with its continued existence.

The roots of game criticism comes from the game magazines and websites of the 1990’s. Work that existed to be read and shared not because they did a good job interrogating the things they proclaimed to love but because they were entertaining to read and reinforced your love, whether it be Nintendo, Sega, Sony, or Microsoft. The same sort of circular reinforcement continues in the larger sites today, which is why AAA games will never fall below a favorable average on numerical compilation sites, with exceptions of course. Not that this sort of status quo is unique to just games media. Noam Chomsky, in the book On Western Terrorism, mentions how the media in the West give no time to dissenting opinion,

If you want to say that China is a totalitarian state you can say it, you know. If you want to say something like the U.S. is the biggest terrorist state in the world, they are not going to stop you, but you do sound like you are from Neptune, because you are not given the next five minutes to explain it. So you have two choices, to either repeat propaganda, repeat standard doctrine, or sound like you are a lunatic.

I hope you’ll forgive me for likening the universal love of game critics to the propaganda machine of western news media, as it's comically different in terms of importance, but the similarity is there. People who don’t conform to the generally accepted opinion on a game are labeled contrarians just looking to make a buck off a different opinion. Those who are praising Breath of the Wild are just Nintendo hacks. Those who call into question aspects of God of War are just SJW cucks.

Michael Thomsen touches on this status quo as well in his review of Jason Schreier’s book Blood, Sweat, and Pixels for The New Inquiry,

In these times, the most important task of game journalism isn’t to serve a public interest but to ensure that fans can continue to identify some version of themselves in the games they have played, and ensure future releases will allow them access to even deeper levels of self-expression and understanding. In playing the next game, owning the newest console, having an opinion on the latest patch, we feel like we can become stabler versions of ourselves, all at the cost of clearing out space—both mental and financial—for open-ended consumption of a form without any purpose beyond this increasingly tautological pleasure. This process is necessarily dehumanizing. Games matter because you are here to play them, and you remain here to play them because they matter.

We can do better, as being human is to strive to be more than we are (yeah its a corny Star Trek clip but that episode fucks me up). I think it should be obvious that better games criticism is probably pretty low in terms of importance when you look at other things, but I do think it has influence on creating and leading conversations, the kind that lead towards stronger rights for laborers and are more critical of the output of corporations who seek only to deepen their own pockets.