#nobody disagree ill rip your head off

[cart00ni]

He's the best jojo character

[lorenfangor]

I heard that #40 was super homophobic :/ so I skipped it. But now your fic is making me want to give it a try. How problematic is it? Are the characters worth it?

Okay.

Okay.

Let’s talk about #40.

The plot of The Other (a Marco POV) is that Marco sees an Andalite on a video tape sent in to some Unsolved Mysteries-esque TV show, and he assumes it’s Ax and hauls ass to save him from being captured. Ax, being Ax, has videotaped the show, and they pull it up and Tobias uses his hawk eyes to figure out that it’s not Ax, it’s another Andalite - one without a tailblade. Ax is appalled at the presence of this vecol (an Andalite word for a disabled person) and we find out that he and others of his species have deep ingrained prejudices against at least some kinds of disabled people.

Despite this, Marco and Ax go looking for the Andalite in question because he’s been spotted by national TV, and they meet a second one, named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad. The vecol is Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, a former fighter pilot with a reputation and Gafinilan’s coded-gay life partner. The two of them have been on Earth since book 1; they crashed their fighters on the planet and have been trapped there thanks to the GalaxyTree going down. Gafinilan has adopted a human cover, a physics professor, and they’ve been living in secret ever since.

Thanks to that tape, Mertil has been captured by Visser Three, and he’s not morph-capable so he can’t escape. Gafinilan wants to trade the leader of the “Andalite Bandits” to the Yeerks to get his boyfriend back; he can’t fight to free Mertil because he’s terminally ill with a genetic disorder that will eventually kill him, and (it’s implied that) the Yeerks aren’t interested in disabled hosts, even disabled Andalite ones. Despite Ax’s ableism, the Animorphs agree to work with Gafinilan and free Mertil, and they’re successful. Marco ends the book talking about how there are all kinds of prejudices you’ll have to face and boxes that people will put you in, and you can’t necessarily escape them even if they’re reductive and inaccurate, but you can still live your life with pride.

So now that I’ve explained the plot, I’m gonna come out the gate saying that I love this book. I love it wholeheartedly, I love Marco’s narration, I love Ax having to deal with Andalite society’s ableism, I love these characters, and as a disabled lesbian I don’t find these disabled gays to be inherently Bad Rep.

that’s of course just my opinion and it doesn’t overshadow other issues that people might have? but at the same time, I don’t like the seemingly-common narrative that this book is all bad all the time, and I want to offer up a different read.To that end, I’m going to go point by point through some of the criticisms and common complaints that I’ve seen across the fandom over the years.

“Mertil and Gafinilan were put on a bus after one appearance because they were gay!”

this is one I’m going to have to disagree with hardcore. I talked about this yesterday, but in Animorphs there are a lot of characters or ideas that only get introduced once or twice and then get written off or dropped - in order off the top of my head, #11 (the Amazon trip), #16 (Fenestre and his cannibalism), #17 (the oatmeal), #18 (the hint of Yeerks doing genetic experiments in the hospital basement), #24/#39/#42 (the Helmacrons’ ability to detect morphing tech), #25 (the Venber), #28 (experiments with limiting brain function through drugs), #34 (the Hork-Bajir homeworld being retaken, the Ixcila procedure), #36 (the Nartec), #41 (Jake’s Bad Future Dream), and #44 (the Aboriginal people Cassie meets in Australia) all feature things that either seem to exist just for the sake of having a particular trope explored Animorphs-style or to feature an idea for One Single Book.

This is a series that’s episodic and has a very limited overall story arc because of how children’s literature in the 90s was structured - these books are closer to The Saddle Club, Sweet Valley High, Animal Ark, or The Baby-Sitters’ Club than they are to Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mertil and Gafinilan don’t get to be in more than one book because they’re not established in the main cast or the supporting cast, I don’t think that it’s solely got anything to do with their being gay.

“Gafinilan has AIDS, this is a book about AIDS, and that’s homophobic!”

Okay, this is… hard. First, yes, Gafinilan does have a terminal illness. Yes, Gafinilan is gay. No, Soola’s Disease is not AIDS.

I have two responses to this, and I’ll attack them in order of their occurrence in my thought. First, there’s coded AIDS diseases all over genre fiction, especially genre fiction from that era, because the AIDS epidemic made a massive impact on public life and fundamentally changed both how the public perceived illness and queerness and how queer people themselves experienced it. I was too young to live through it, but my dad’s college roommate was out, and my dad himself has a lot of friends who he just ceases to talk about if the conversation gets past 1986 or so - this was devastating and it got examined in art for more reasons than “gay people all have AIDS”, and I dislike the implication that the only reason it could ever appear was as a tired stereotype or a message that Being Queer Means Death. Gafinilan is kind, fond of flowers, and fond of children - he’s multifaceted, and he’s got a terminal illness. Those kinds of people really exist, and they aren’t Bad Rep.

Second off, Soola’s Disease? Really isn’t AIDS. It’s a congenital genetic illness that develops over time, cannot be transmitted, and does not carry a serious stigma the way AIDS did. Gafinilan also has access to a cure - he could become a nothlit and no longer be afflicted by it, even if it’s considered somewhat dishonorable to go nothlit to escape that way. That’s not AIDS, and in fact at no point in my read and rereads did I assume that his having a terminal illness was supposed to be a commentary on homosexuality until I found out that other people were assuming it.

“Mertil losing his tail means he’s lost his masculinity, and that’s bad because he’s gay! That’s homophobic!”

so this is another one I’ve gotta hardcore disagree with, because while Mertil is one of two Very Obviously Queer Characters, he’s not the only character who loses something fundamental about himself, or even loses access to sexual and/or romantic capability in ways he was familiar with.

Tobias and Arbron both get ripped out of their ordinary normal lives by going nothlit in bad situations, and while they both wind up finding fulfillment and freedom despite that, it’s still traumatic, even more for Arbron I’d say than for Tobias. And on a psychological level, none of the main cast is left unmarked or free of trauma or free of deep change thanks to the bad things that have happened to them - they’re no less fundamentally altered than Mertil, even if it’s mental rather than physical. And yes, tail loss is equated with castration or emasculation, but that doesn’t automatically mean Mertil suffering it is tied to his homosexuality and therefore the takeaway we’re intended to have is “Being gay is tragic and makes you less of a man”. This is a series where bad shit happens to everyone, and enduring losses that take away things central to one’s self-conception or identity or body is just part of the story.

Also, frankly? Plenty of IRL disabled people have to grapple with a loss of sexual function, and again, they’re not Bad Rep just because they’re messy.

“Andalite society is confusingly written in this book, and the disability aspects are clearly just a coverup for the gay stuff!”

Andalite society is canonically sexist, a bit exceptionalist and prejudiced in their own favor, and pretty contradictory and often challenged internally on its own norms. In essence, it’s a pretty ordinary society, and they’re really realistic as sci-fi races go. It makes sense from that perspective that Andalites would tolerate scarring or a lost stalk eye or a lost skull eye, but not tolerate serious injuries that significantly impact your perceived quality of life. Ableism is like that - it’s not one-size-fits-all. I look at Ax’s reactions and I see a lot of my own family and friends’ behaviors - this vibes with my understanding of prejudice, you know?

“Mertil and Gafinilan have a tragic ending, which means the story is saying that being gay dooms you to tragedy!”

Mertil and Gafinilan have the best possible ending that they could ask for? They are victims of the war, they are suffering because of the war, they get the same cocktail of trauma and damage that every other soldier gets. But unlike Jake and Tobias and Marco, unlike Elfangor, unlike Aximili? Their ending comes in peace, in their own home. Gafinilan isn’t dying alone, he’s got the love of his life with him. Mertil isn’t going to be as isolated anymore, he’s got Marco for a friend. Animorphs is a tragedy, it’s not a happy story, it’s not something that guarantees a beautiful sunshine-and-roses ending for everyone, and I love tragedy, and so I will fight for this story. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it deserved better. But it’s not less meaningful just because it’s sad. Nobody is entitled to anything in this book, and it’s just as true for these two as it is for anyone else.

“It’s not cool that the only canonically gay characters in this series don’t get to be happy and trauma-free and unblemished Good Rep!”

This is one I can kind of understand, and I’ll give some ground to it, because it is sucky. The only thing I’ll say is that I stand by my argument that nothing that happens to Mertil and Gafinilan is unusual compared to what happens to the rest of the cast, and that their ending is way happier than Rachel and Tobias’s, or Jake and Cassie’s. But it’s a legitimate point of frustration, and the one argument I’ll say I agree has validity.

(Though, I also want to point out that I think there are plenty of equally queercoded characters in the story who aren’t Mertil and Gafinilan - Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco all get at least one or two moments that signal to me that they’re potentially LGBT+, not to mention Mr. Tidwell and Illim in #29 and their long-term domestic partnership. There’s no reason to assume that the only queer people here are those two aliens when Marco’s descriptions of Jake exist.)

“Marco uses slurs and reduces Gafinilan’s whole identity to his illness!”

Technically, yes, this is true, except putting it that way strips the whole passage of its context. Marco is discussing the boxes society puts you into, the ones you don’t have a choice about facing or escaping. He’s talking about negative stereotypes and reductive generalizations, he’s referring to them as bad things that you get inflicted upon you by an outside world or by friends who don’t know the whole story or the real you. The slurs he uses are real slurs that get thrown at people still, and they’re not okay, and the point is that they’re not okay but assholes are going to call you by them anyway. He ends by saying “you just have to learn to live with it”, and since this is coming from a fifteen-year-old Latino kid who we know is picked on by bullies for all sorts of reasons and who faces racism and homophobia? He knows what he’s talking about. He’s bitter about what’s been said and done, he’s not stating it like it’s a good thing.

Yes, absolutely, this speech is a product of its time, but it’s a product of its time that speaks of defiance and says “We aren’t what we’re said to be,” and in the year this was published? That’s a good message.

tl;dr The Other is good, actually, and Mertil and Gafinilan are incredible characters who deserve all the love they could possibly get.

[opluffys]

What We Aren’t- Killer x Reader

this took me so long cuz i had no motivation to write it... i fucking love killer but i’m so lazy lol. i hate this but there’s not that many fics for him, so enjoy? idk i’ve been unhappy with my writing for a while ughhh. please enjoy even though it’s bad! *please let me know if something looks off in the writing, sometimes it copies weird!!*

-smut/nsfw-

You sat perched upon your small, uncomfortable office chair, calmly awaiting a very important call. All you had been doing this entire day was waiting, for that damn transponder snail to ring. How long does it take to read over one single paper and respond back?

Being a member of a Supernova's crew meant a lot of injuries, you were no fool, no. You knew the toll it'd take on you as a surgeon to become Kid's ship doctor. One would take a look at you and assume you had enjoyed the challenge, the thrill of getting a new patient under the operating table each hour with something new wrong with them.

No, that was not the case, not at all.

Goodness, you adored being a surgeon, of course! Holding that scalpel and practically slicing people open always made you giddy. A sadistic surgeon, guess that's what people would pinpoint you as. But those were just simple perks of being the ship doctor on the Victoria Punk.

The real treat was the second in command.

Every time you weren't blinded by the lights in the operating room, you would steal glances at the attractive man. How mysterious he was just did wonders for you...

Over the years that you had stayed, you obviously had made advances. You wouldn't say that Killer always had women throwing themselves at him, they must be blind, though. So of course when you hinted that you wanted him in a more, intimate, manner, he at times accepted.

The two of you were not in a relationship, in fact, the two of you had barely exchanged any words to one another. Even though you always treated his wounds with utmost care, and not a word was said. Just a simple thanks and he was on his way.

You didn't care, though. You were not, by any means, looking for a long term relationship. You did not have the time for that, and you probably never would, if you were to continue your role as a surgeon, that was all you could focus on.

You scribbled notes down messily, crossing names out on the list quickly. While you waited for the transponder snail to ring, you decided to doodle a list. It wasn't important, not in the slightest. But you wanted to see how each crew member had gotten injured and where. It wouldn't help, but it was fun to see such a thing.

You heard the door swing open, being caught just in time in order not to bang against the wall. You were about to yell at whoever burst inside in such a way, but then you saw that familiar mass of fluffy blonde hair.

"Well, hello." You said, settling back into the chair, hearing it give a weak squeak in response to any weight put onto it. You really needed to get a new chair.

Killer grunted in response, and a small sigh left your lips. At times, you would question why he wasn't so talkative like the rest of the crew.

You quickly ripped the list that you had made, tossing it in the nearest trash bin you could find. You figured now would be a time to make an actual list you would use, not one that would bring you petty amusement.

"So, what do you need? You don't look injured, and I only do surgeries. So go over to the others if you have a scratch you need checked." You said, scribbling more unreadable words down.

"Since when do you only do surgeries?" You heard an unfamiliar voice pipe in. In question, you rose your head from the notes over to the voice you heard. After seeing a random lackey holding bandages, you scoffed and gave an eye roll.

"Too many on this ship come to me everyday to go under my operating table. You know that? Imagine if I had to take care of everyone else who came to me with a runny nose crying for dear life. I'd go insane." You said, relaxing your skilled hands in your lap, smiling proudly. Of course you would end up helping anyone who wandered into your office regardless. You knew nobody else could take care of anyone like you.

You shooed the young boy out of the office, who smiled in return to your words, not believing a thing, he knew how soft you were.

You groaned loudly, putting your head against the table. Why couldn't you be a mean pirate like your captain? Refusing any with a small bruise on their arm. It's your own damn fault, being too nice to the crew members, acting like their damn mother.

You then returned to take your notes.

"I need painkillers."

You nearly had a heart attack.

"You're gonna fucking end me..!" You gasped, feeling your heart beat quicken.

You calmed down quickly, your heart still beating quite quickly. Not because of how scared you were, but because of who was in front of you.

"Why?"

"I've been feeling a little sore and tense lately." Killer replied, leaning on the wall.

You laughed, bringing your hand to your mouth. "I can give you painkillers for that, but it can easily go away by a simple massage." You said, kicking your legs up onto the table. Hell, it was disrespectful, but it was your office. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted here.

"And I think I could help you out with that." You added, sounding a little suggestive about a simple favour to a friend, if you could call him such a thing.

"I thought you only did surgeries..?" He said, and you could've swore you heard a slight teasing undertone. Sly bastard...

You didn't bother a reply, you did not want to bicker with the man. Especially at a time where just a look at him paired with the sound of his voice would ignite your entire body on fire.

You sauntered over to him, urging him to take a seat. He did so, and you knew your chair couldn't take his mass of muscles for very long.

"Your shirt." You said from your place behind him. You were sure the both of you knew he didn't really need his shirt off. But ugh, that back of his...

You obviously were not a masseuse, but how hard could it be?

You dipped your fingers into his skin lightly, pushing harder when he didn't say anything to put a stop to you.

After around thirty or so minutes, you could've cooked anything with just the temperature of your skin. You were dying to be under the man in front of you, harsh nail markings sporting his sculpted back.

You leaned in a little closer, pressing your lips against the nape of his neck. He immediately stiffened, not being used to such a loving gesture.

"So? How does it feel now?" You questioned, spinning him around to view you.

You took a seat on his thighs, a much better place to be seated than your chair.

"I hope I made you feel at least a little better. It would hurt my reputation if one of my patients left without being helped, even just a bit." You grinned, hands roaming all over his built chest.

His breath hitched as you began to move your hips against him, feeling his hands attach to you.

"Now?" Killer questioned, not seeming to protest against any of your actions.

"Why not? I've been awaiting a call, but it looks like that idiot forgot about it."

It seems as if that were all the affirmation he needed, because soon after you said that, you were pushed harshly against your own desk, a surprised squeak coming from you.

Your garments were ripped off with haste, a lazy smile spread across your reddened lips.

Within seconds, you were just an utter mess. You always questioned how he always knew what your body had craved from him.      

He quickly pushed your soaked panties aside, sliding his fingers against your slick folds. You bit your lip to try to prevent any unwanted noise from leaving you, but just the sheer skill he had was too much for you.

Your cheek was against the desk, your mouth slightly agape. Such a lewd face you had made, and all he had done was a little teasing.

"So wet already. What have we done that was exciting?"

You whimpered in response, pushing your hips back in hopes of feeling his fingers, or rather, something else, fill your insides.

You felt his presence flush against your back, "Or maybe," he pushed his fingers inside agonizingly slow, nearly causing your death, "this had been on your mind the entire day?"

Fuck, this man was a master at reading people.

Your hands were balled into fists, nails creating marks on your soft palm. You didn't want to give in, you didn't want to beg, but your mind was beginning to disagree with your pride.

"No. That's not the case..." You gasped, feeling his thick fingers curling inside of you, "Hmm, I don't like liars. But, I do like watching you squirm."

"All you have to do is tell me the truth, come on. I know you can do it." Sick bastard. Fuck him. Yeah, you didn't need him, you could finish yourself off, if needed.

"I already told you," You took a deep breath, feeling him move behind you with ill intentions, "all that I've done today was wait for a call. Then, I'd seen you... My thoughts had run for a little, that's all."

Yeah right! Like he'd believe such a thing! This seems like a child who took something they shouldn't. It wasn't your fault, you weren't working properly. Your mind had become wired on feeling Killer inside of you, and that's what you had needed.

You heard shuffling behind you, followed by the removal of his digits. You grumbled unhappily, was he really hellbent on you admitting something that didn't matter? You were both adults, and adults were supposed to get mad behind closed doors. Yup.

While you had been lost in thought, you felt his tip press against your dripping entrance. Finally! About time! You almost broke out in song you were so happy.

You won this little dispute.

Actually, no. You didn't.

He pushed himself inside rather slowly, cock snug against your velvety walls. You expected him to start moving, or at least do anything. But nope.

Nothing.

"Seriously..." You mumbled, trying to move back into him, obviously he didn't allow this, hands stopping any of your ministrations.

This is fine. You were going to be okay like this. You weren't going to give up. You wanted to be a pirate, so you couldn't just rip your pride to shreds.

You knew he couldn't last longer than you. He would crack eventually, and you would triumph. In this case, it was seen as the opposite.

"You really can't admit it, can you?"

No! You couldn't! It wasn't the truth... Mhm, just keep telling yourself that.

You knew he obviously didn't care, he just loved to see you have an internal meltdown. He would use anything and everything he could against you. You could practically hear the 'teehee' come from the bastard.

He took a seat on your tiny chair, bringing you with him while the chair squeaked in discomfort. Now sitting upright on him, oh this wasn't good for you. You could feel him deeper inside of you and you craved more. You craved sweet friction of any kind.

You squeezed around him tightly, trying to ease him into forgetting about this little feud.

You heard his breathing become slightly uneven after that, you grinned, you had an ace up your sleeve.

"What kind of monster takes teasing to such a level?" You politely asked, slightly raising your hips. He wasn't able to stop you in time as you sank onto him slowly.

He was so heavy inside of you, you couldn't take it anymore. You wanted him to fuck you until your mind stopped working. You just got a little taste of what you could have, and you wanted more, you wanted it all.

"How about we take a rain check on this. I think we're both a little needy today." You smiled, you're such a genius. This way, you didn't lose. No, you won. You wanted to tell him to suck it, but you had boundaries.

"Fine. But next time, don't expect me to give in so easily." He sighed, getting a better grip on your hips.

You turned around briefly, seating yourself back onto him. You always secretly enjoyed being so close to him, hearing his heartbeat in an irregular way. Maybe it was because you were so close. Your face heated up a bit, no, that couldn't be it. You placed you hands on his chest gently, "You can move now." You braced yourself for a second, at times, the two of you had gotten a bit rough. You didn't mind, as long as the both of you enjoyed it, you were happy.

He lifted you slightly, you felt a little empty for a moment but sighed blissfully when you felt him back inside.

This was an odd pace... Almost like he was taking how you felt in consideration. Usually you fucked like animals, but this? This was more of a lovers pace. Even the way he held you, it was gentle, for such a large man you hadn't thought he could hold you in such a way.

Maybe he was still teasing, going at a slower pace than you were used to. You could wait a little, at least he was moving now. Your head made contact with his chest, a slightly more comfortable pose for you.

How awkward for him! Your soft hands at his chest lovingly, your face against him while he slowly pumped inside of you... This is what lovers would do, not people who just wanted a quick session... He almost imagined you looking up at him with teary eyes, mumbling an 'I love you'.

He too, felt his face warm. It was such an uncomfortable feeling for someone who didn't welcome such emotions.

A small part of you somewhat enjoyed this, being next to him like this. You wished you could feel his lips plush against your own at this very moment. You smiled while in thought.

He looked down at you through the holes in his mask, he didn't expect such a serene look on you..! You had been liked this, hadn't you? Holding him while you had sighed and whimpered with want.

He took no time to pull out of you, flip you the other way, so you were, once again, facing the desk. He shoved himself inside, pounding into you at a more wanted rate.

All of this has happened very fast. Literally blink of an eye. You had no time to adjust whatsoever, from a slow and leisurely pace, to harsh snapping of the hips.

The expression on your face was priceless, but also very vulgar. The illusion of lovers was wiped away instantly, meaningless pleasure filling its slot.

Your muscles had stopped supporting you, your body nearly becoming lifeless. You silently depended on Killer to keep your body from not falling off of the desk. You laughed imagining this actually happening.

Your eyes screwed shut while your lips had only been able to form, 'yes yes yes!'. You knew his ego was through the roof right now, having a girl under him screaming for more.

And you were right, spot on, actually.

Again, Killer didn't always have women offering themselves to him. You however, would happily flock to him anytime he felt like he needed to relieve some stress.

He looked down at you again, seeing your greedy cunt swallow his cock with urgency put him in a trance. Fuck you took him too good. It was literally as if you were the missing piece to his life.

The way your insides clenched around his length every single time he moved a single muscle, paired with your small and delicate moans... He felt like he'd break you in an instant at such a pace. But he knew you could take it, he wanted you to take all of him every time the two of you do this.

Tears came out of your closed eyes due to the intensity your body was undergoing. It felt fucking phenomenal to be stretched and filled and body bent while being pushed into the uncomfortable wood of the desk. God, you nearly unraveled right there.

Your grip on the desk tightened, knuckled turning a burning white. You couldn't go on forever, you knew that. But with the earlier teasing, you were going to be finished soon.

"Oh fuck yes... Right there fuck yes!!" You screamed, the feeling of pleasure skyrocket when he brushed against that sweet bundle of nerves inside.

"Right here, huh..?" He hummed, large hand caressing the curve of your ass. You panted and whispered something even you didn't know in response. You were just broken at this point.

You were certainly not prepared for when he continued to slam into that desired spot over, and over, and- oh fuck you couldn't handle this shit.

Your orgasm hit you fucking hard, you felt lifeless. Completely and utterly dead.

Seeing you moan and whimper desperately beneath him was, simply, hot as fuck to Killer. The way your body silently begged for more with every thrust, you lightly convulsing and squeezing him when you had gotten close, and the sudden outburst when you had finished... It just kept replaying in his head over, and over, and- oh fuck he couldn't handle this shit.

A deep grunt left him and he pushed deep inside of you again, a quiet whimper coming from you since you were so sensitive. His tip giving a final kiss to your insides, and finally sealing his hot release in you.

You mumbled incoherently while you struggled to get up, trying to pull on your panties.

"Woah, no need to waste." He grinned, pushing a finger into your entrance, keeping his cum inside.

You lightly fell onto his lap, not knowing he'd still stimulate your exhausted nerves. You turned your head into his hard chest and nearly cried.

"Don't be an asshole..." You muttered lowly, looking up at him, "Someone might come in and see."

"So? Maybe it's a kink of yours..." He replied, voice slightly hinting a mischievous undertone.

You snickered, rolling your eyes. When he wasn't so scary, he was quite pleasant to be around.

"Maybe... We might explore some of your kinks too." You giggled, feeling him stiffen at your response. Usually after sex the two of you would go separate ways. You would never bask in the afterglow with him, at least not this long. Talking so casually, too.

You were scared at what the two of you shouldn't become. This was a dangerous life, you couldn't get attached.

And finally the fucking phone rang.

It was as you hadn't just had the best sex of your life, finally this idiot had done what you asked. Who the hell knows why it took him so long.

"Yes? Hello?" You answered, getting off of your comfortable seat, which had been Killer, and leant against the desk.

"What a fucking view..." He mumbled to himself. It seemed that you had forgotten to put your garments on, just how important was this call?

You faked a laugh, this fucker said he went to the wrong island. How. How did that happen..? You would be sure to give him hell when he came back.

"It's okay! It's okay, I'm not mad!" Yeah, you're fucking seething. He was lucky you got remarkable sex out of this.

"Yes, please tell me how much they want for it? Also don't forget to try to swindle them for it, okay? I know you're a shy bastard but you can do it!" You said into the phone. He better get your herbs. You need these stupid little fucking plants or else you couldn't make your medicine.

"Holy shit, that's a lot of money... Well can you try-"

Oh he did not just.

While you were on the phone.

Your assistant constantly asked if you were okay, a shaky answer leaving your red lips.

"Hold on a second sweetie." You said calmly into the phone, acting like you didn't once again, have a huge cock deep inside of you.

"While I'm talking to someone? You couldn't fucking wait?" You whispered, bending slightly. This man had no shame, he wanted you to take it all, clearly.

"Let's see how quiet you can be." He retorted, not even acting like he'd done anything wrong. "Fine, just don't move too much. I don't want anyone on the other line figuring out that we're doing something so scandalous... It's quite rude to do so on the phone." You sighed, removing your hand off of the receiver.

You actually held up quite well, rocking side to side a bit while holding a normal conversation with the shop keeper, haggling about a price. You were so proud of yourself!

“No, put the price lower that’s way too... Too, ah..! Oh fuck..!” You yelled, feeling his large thumb rub harsh circles into your clit. Now everyone knew what you were doing, fucking great.

“Aww, and you were doing so well.” He chuckled, watching you shake under him. You didn’t bother saying anything back to him, too far gone in your own pleasure to care.

How embarrassing... You could try to cover this up, but you don’t know if that would end up well...

“Yes, yes I’m fine... Just stubbed my toe...” You laughed nervously, biting your lip not to let any unwanted noises out.

“How sly.” He smiled, hidden admiration in his voice. You gave him a quick middle finger, cursing at him a couple of times.

“Yeah thanks sweetheart. I’m gonna hang up now okay? Yeah, bye bye.” You spoke, not even hearing anything your assistant had said. You were focused on feeling another great climax, and certainly didn’t care about the price of the plant any longer.

“You’re so fucking wet...”

“Yeah, I wonder why.” Cue the eye roll, “I guess I was right? This is one of your kinks, isn’t it?” He grinned, pushing his cock deeper inside of your warm walls.

“You gonna finish inside of me without warning again?” You muttered, exhaling a shaky breath.

“Only if you want it babe.”

Oh. Oh he had called you babe. Names like those? Oh fuck now you were gonna get attached, and... And...

And maybe that’s okay.

“Fill me up.” You moaned, letting out a gasp of his name that you had chanted like a prayer.

You sure as hell didn’t need to tell him twice.

•Bonus•

“Hey,” You looked up at Killer, hugging him under the sheets, “I think I like you.” You sighed, worried for his answer. You had a feeling the worst thing that could happen was a simple no, but hopefully you wouldn’t lose the sex.

He took his warm hands off of you, which you took as a no towards your earlier statement. You felt a tinge of embarrassment, but since you were so tired, you also didn’t care.

He lifted his mask just so his painted lips were shown, he quickly captured your lips in his own and you felt the sparks fly. You initially thought that it was just sexual, but during the day when you had thought of him, goodness, you were oblivious to your own feelings.

“Really now? You’re not just using me for the sex, are you?” He whispered, voice husky and deep in your ear. You reached to scratch his goatee lightly, “Who knows.” You pressed your lips against his once again, sitting upwards and quickly growing hot. Who knew a make out session would be this hot? The mans got mystery, that’s some extra points right there.

“I think I like you too.”

[hireath24]

Everything wrong with ACOFAS: A Rant Part Three

Disclaimer: This is part three and will continue from pages 97 to 150. Part one can be found here. Part Two can be found here. Part four can be found here. These page numbers come from the UK paperback edition of A Court of Frost and Starlight. This is my own opinion of the book - the writing, the grammar, the characters, etc. I won’t be commenting on anything that may have been plagiarized or that has been ripped off from the history of other cultures as SJM has a tendency to do. If you disagree with my opinions, I’m sorry and hope you see the error in your ways.

Page 99: Saying ‘wine will make you feel better’ really gives off the wrong impression when this is a book targeted at young kids. I mean, it’s written for the YA genre which is typically categorized for ages 12 and up. 

Page 101: I’m so fed up of people talking badly about Nesta. Having Amren say ‘That’s if she shows up sober’ when she has walked in to see Feyre, Cassian and Azriel all drinking wine? Feyre and Cassian being ‘drunk’? Double standard! Unfair! 

Page 102: So Elain managed to become a seer with the cauldron, right? So… Are there other people - sorry, Fae - who are seers? Why does the cauldron affect people in different ways? 

Page 107: Amren was turned into a High Fae in the last book, which means that she no longer has to drink blood as food. But why did she ever have to drink blood? I don’t think it was ever explained. Why?

Page 108: Elain asks Amren if she could have taken on a male form and Amren replies with ‘Before, in my other form, I was neither. I simply was.’ Was that supposed to be SJM’s cheap shot at adding some gender diversity? Because I would have loved to see Amren be this non-binary power house asexual dragon but who has time for that but she uses she/her pronouns throughout the entire series and this is the only mention of her being able to switch between genders. 

Page 112: ‘…A few drunk revelers spotted us and fell silent. Felt Rhys’s power, perhaps my own as well, and found somewhere else to be for a while.’ Why would they want to find somewhere else to be as soon as their High Lord and High Lady show up? Why are they showing fear at the feeling of their power? Aren’t Feyre and Rhys supposed to be the good guys? This reads a lot like the people of Velaris are scared of them…

Page 115: ‘Gentlemales’ GENTLEMALES. GENTLEMALES. GENTLE FUCKING MALES?!?!?!?!

Page 116: ‘Indeed, some people were turning our way.’ This is just… This word is useless in general but in this book? I don’t think it was edited properly. 

Page 118: ‘A scene. This was about to become a scene in the worst way.’ SJM does this quite a lot in this book. These little two sentences where she says something and then expands on that something. It was used twice before already and I didn’t write it down because I thought it was just a writing choice but… it’s a poor one. It feels like a way to get the word count up somehow and, quite frankly, it’s bad writing.

  Page 118: Feyre is annoyed that Nesta is asking for her to pay her rent? How else does she suppose that Nesta should pay for her rent? She had a home that was taken from her back in the human world (that was taken from her because of Feyre, mind you) and all she asks is that Feyre pay her rent because she doesn’t have a job in fairy land? That seems pretty reasonable. Feyre shouldn’t be mad. 

Page 121: ‘But those were her deaths to claim.’ Why does everything have to be paid with death? I think it would be a lot more empowering if Mor would meet with those who wronged her, say something about them and her and just walk out of their lives entirely? SJM should start preaching forgiveness a little bit more but, hey, that’s just my opinion. Plus, this is really making Rhys seem like a bad ruler. Wanting to kill his enemies? No. 

Page 122: ‘Keir is coming soon, isn’t he.’ Yeah, no, this wasn’t edited. 

Page 122: ‘When.’ 

Page 125: ‘Az has a list of kingdoms most likely to cross the line.’ I’m wondering why the Night Court is in charge? Why does Rhysand get to decide which kingdoms and courts cross the line? Why does he get to decide where the line is? 

Page 126: As I said for Page 118, Rhysand says: ‘Tempting. So damn tempting to tell…’ See what I mean? 

Page 126: If Rhysand deals with conflict by fighting fire with fire, then his court is going to fall apart. Why is he allowed to get away with attacking Tamlin the way he did? What are the basic rules of the court - any of the courts? Surely the people wouldn’t want an insufficient ruler so do they get a say in it? WHY ARE THE HIGH LORDS ALLOWED TO ACT LIKE BLOODTHIRSTY BEASTS?! 

Page 126: ‘Too long. She’d been cooped up within the borders of this court for too long.’ Wow, once you tune into it…

Page 127: I really want to make one thing clear. Not every piece of dialogue has to have a tag attached to it. Sometimes things work much better if you just use ‘I said’ or ‘he/she/they said.’ At least then it would mean less lines such as this ‘I laughed again. ‘Certainly not Amren. Not if we want peace,’ I added.’

Page 127: Also, Rhysand ‘want(s) peace’? Bullshit. Not seven paragraphs ago did he laugh about Mor wanting Tamlin dead and a page ago he was tempted to tell ‘the High Lord of Autumn that his eldest son coveted his throne.’ Do not think for one second that Rhys is a level headed ruler. SJM has a tendency to tell us that he is rather than show it. 

Page 128: ‘…Even the wine I’d returned home to drink couldn’t dull.’ Teaching young, impressionable people that alcohol might solve some of your problems. Great. And what - Feyre can say this but Nesta can’t drink? 

Page 129: ‘Decadent - it felt decadent…’ I really wished I had never picked up on this.

Page 129: Feyre keeps complaining about the amount of work she has to do but here she is shopping with Elain? When her people are scared, heartbroken, without a home and in mourning after the war?

  Page 129: ‘So different. This place was so different…’ ON THE SAME FUCKING PAGE?!??!

Page 131: So I guess that nobody ever told SJM that a character description goes beyond eye colour, hair colour and clothes? 

Page 133: ‘I might ease that grief, make the pain less.’ Feyre’s powers allow her to do that? When, why, how and fucking what?

Page 134: ‘I was lucky - so tremendously lucky.’ 

Page 134: Rhys was dead and he was brought back to life, right? It wasn’t like with Feyre’s death where she was still slightly conscious because she could hear what was going on, no. No, with Rhysand’s death, he really was dead. But he was brought back to life and somehow… feels nothing from this? I would love to see if there are times where his body becomes slightly misty and ghostlike, if his veins turn black under his skin because they had stopped working during that brief moment of death. I would have loved to see something other than just him feeling a little bit tired!

Page 134: ‘How.’ 

Page 135: I’s very clear to me that, for whatever reason, SJM wanted Feyre to be able to paint but she has no idea how to write about it. Whilst Feyre is painting, we only read about her need to create and what the end result looks like. Even during her process we hear nothing about light and perspective and I’m not a painter but there’s a true science behind it. And where is she getting the paints from? Rhys was able to give her some with his magic but from where?

  Page 138: It disgusts me that Feyre thinks that she can solve the people of the Night Court’s problems by teaching them how to paint. These people went through a war! And before that it was Under the Mountain! Painting and creating art in general can help with recovery from mental illness and trauma and PTSD and depression and everything else, but there comes a point where therapy is needed. Memorials are needed, ceremonies are needed. How are people supposed to paint what they feel when they can’t understand what they feel? It’s bullshit and, really, quite a childish thing to even suggest. How is this a ruler? 

Page 139: Why do jigsaw puzzles exist. Why are they called jigsaw puzzles. SJM is not a high fantasy writer. 

Page 140: ‘Good thing indeed.’ You guys know how I feel about this word by now, right? 

Page 140: ‘Indeed, each seemed like a different decade.’ So the fashion changes with time, does it? Great! Tell me more. Tell me why and how and when. Also, indeed.

Page 143: ‘The females bring their jewellery. I bring my weapons.’ But Cassian is a feminist, right? Yeah, no, guys, it’s alright. He’s a feminist, it’s all fine. 

Page 146: ‘You being too drunk to climb the stairs last night.’ I’m really not okay with the amount of casual drinking in this book - and not only that but the way it’s treated. Nesta is shamed for it, Feyre mentions that even wine can’t help her, Rhys makes jokes about his friends being drunk. It sends a really bad message. 

Page 147: ‘Illyrian baby indeed.’ 

Page 147: I’ve said this before but someone should really tell SJM that every scene in a book should further the plot. This has been three pages of bickering, useless drivel about a bed being too small for Cassian and cheap jokes about alcohol. The entire thing could be cut and the story wouldn’t change. 

Page 148: ‘Indeed, as Feyre emerged from the kitchen hallway…’

Page 148: ‘Strange - so strange to see…’

Page 149: ‘Indeed.’

Page 150: ‘Mor was instantly on her feet, offering - insisting on wine.’ This is just teaching kids that you need alcohol to be able to have a good time! Which isn’t true in the slightest! And it’s wrong on so many levels - especially insisting that everyone has wine! Peer pressure?? SJM deals with sensitive issues so badly (see what I said in another post about Rhysand and sexual assault) that it’s… It’s hard. Yikes.

[remiwarner]

DISCOLORATION

     The smile melted off his face the second Charlie closed the door behind him. Remi tried to make himself stop walking. To turn around. To go back inside and tell her that he could postpone, or force his importer to come to the city. But his body was truculent and buzzing like a fucking wasp’s nest – restless, hollow – and wouldn’t obey him. His feet carried him to the elevator, to the garage, to his car; his hands started the engine, turned the wheel, and soon he was speeding along the streets of Battery City, his mood darkening the further he got from home.      He wanted it to stop. He needed it to stop, the constant, nagging thoughts that chewed at the back of his mind, told him that he was no good and that there was no point to anything, and that all he was doing by fighting it was dragging his suffering out longer. That he might as well give up. The thoughts that drew him into himself and made it feel like the world around him was a firm pressure on his temples, that everything – but most of all him – was deeply and fundamentally wrong.      All he needed was to get rid of them, to get himself back to normal, so he could continue his life without feeling like existence in and of itself was nothing but a migraine, ever developing and growing in intensity until it became unbearable. All he needed to get rid of them was packed away underneath a panel in his dashboard.

     To his credit, Remi did have a meeting with an importer, and it was out of town, just… not very far. And there was no problem (at least not anymore – another half lie), just a new shipment. Wouldn’t take more than an evening.

     For a little over two hours, he zoned out to the monotonous landscape flying by him, the tension in his body only given away by the way his knuckles whitened around his grip on the steering wheel. The sun was setting to his right, painting the desert in orange and red – then it dipped below the horizon and it got dark fast, his headlights illuminating the way ahead.   ��  Finally, he pulled in to a hiking trail parking lot, idling his car next to the only other one that stood there with its engine running. He got out, retrieving a bag from his trunk, and his importer did the same before coming to meet him between the two vehicles. The expression on Remi’s face must have spoken volumes, because the importer, usually one for small talk, went straight to business.      “This one’s a good one. Hear they got someone new in the lab.” He handed Remi the duffel he was holding, and Remi put his smaller bag momentarily on the roof of his car to free his hands before accepting it. He tugged the zipper open about halfway, inspecting the contents using what little light reached them from the two bright pools their headlights made on the ground.    “Yeah.” Remi zipped the bag back up and held it in one hand, grabbing the bag on the roof with the other and tossing it at the importer. “They do.”

   “So make sure they stay on schedule from now on. Wasted a lotta money while they were lookin’ for a replacement, ‘n I want double deliveries ‘till it’s made up. I don’t care what y’gotta do, ‘f they gotta stay in the lab twenty-four fuckin’ seven; just make it happen.”      The importer nodded, fidgeting with a zipper on the bag he’d been given, then waited until Remi got back in his car before doing the same.

     The drive back seemed longer than it had the other way, and he was tired, so fucking tired – of his headaches, of the knots in his back and shoulders, of the impatient shaking of his leg whenever he sat still for more than two minutes, of the unintelligible maelstrom of his conflicting thoughts. He gave up, pulling into the next motel he came across: an unmanned, anonymous place that had about as much charm as a piece of rock. Popping the cover off the panel on the dashboard, he retrieved the pills he’d stashed there and took two, then put everything back into place before he rolled up to the barrier gate and booked a room on the screen there. Once he’d paid, a swipe of one of his cards against the sensor, the gate rose, letting him through. Remi found a parking spot, retrieved his bag, his gaze lingering on the other bag for a split second before he closed the trunk, locked the car, and went to his room.      It was just as impersonal and charmless as the outside, but it was clean and tidy. He dropped his bag on a chair that stood in the corner, undressed and got into bed, only pausing for a moment to send Charlie a text (Love u x) before dropping his head onto the pillow and closing his eyes, letting the codeine do its work.

* * *

     When he awoke the next morning, the rising sun was poking its way through the tiny gaps in the blinds, glimmering at him as he shifted his head. Squinting, Remi checked the time on his phone. 6:33. That’s what you get for going to sleep at fucking nine. He rubbed at his eyes and got up, padding into the sterile bathroom to pee. Shower. Brush his teeth. It was a little past seven when he left the room, dropping his bag into the trunk – other bag, other bag, other bag – before getting back on the road. He had another hour to get back to Battery… and then he had a lot of meetings, because getting all his head dealers to show up somewhere at the same time was apparently an impossible task.

     First, he met Simone, near a small shop where he’d just bought a breakfast burrito, eating while he waited for her to show up, texting Charlie good morning now that it was a more reasonable hour. After Simone came Marco, Sebastian, Alex… the bricks in the bag in his trunk dwindling bit by bit. It was nearing five pm by the time he arrived at the corner shop down the street from Jerome’s apartment, last on the list; he idled the car by the curb, waiting. The bag was in the backseat, almost empty.      It didn’t take him long to appear, the car door opening and closing, the right side of the vehicle dipping a little as he got in.      “Hey,” he grinned, reaching behind him and pulling the bag into his lap. “Long day?”    “The fuckin’ longest.”      They talked a little about the… hiccup in production, about the replacement, about how they’d have to move the product fast to make up for lost time and resources, then Jerome gave Remi’s shoulder a slap and reached for the door handle, bringing the bag with him.    “Wait,” Remi interrupted, stopping him before he got the door open. “Leave me one. ‘M workin’ tonight.”      “Yeah?” With a slight furrow of his eyebrows, Jerome dragged the zipper open, took out a brick and laid it in the glovebox. “Y’need help?”    “Nah.” Remi shook his head.      “Alright, man. Have a good one.”    “You too.”

     And then he was alone again, and the day’s errands were done, and he had a brick of heroin in his glove compartment and a get-together to get to. He pulled away from the curb and headed towards Zone Seven, to a penthouse apartment somewhere between Summerlin and Wildemont, filled with some of Battery’s most unsavory. It was more of a base of operations than it was a home, people coming and going at all hours of the day – and even more so at night. It was mafia-owned, and tonight was a sort of… networking event. Very different from anything Charlie had ever made him attend: darker, ten times more debauched, but when it all came down to it, just as fake. Everyone’s goal was to get ahead, and nobody cared who they had to step on to do it.      Remi drove into the parking garage and shut off his engine, bringing the brick with him from the glovebox as he went around back to the trunk. He grabbed his jacket from there and slipped it on, then ripped the packaging open on the brick and started filling his pockets. There wasn’t enough room. Not without him going around looking like a bulging idiot, anyway. He dug around his car until he found another bag and put the rest in there, bringing it with him as he headed for the elevator. On the touch screen there, he pressed the button for the penthouse, and a light went on next to a camera above the display. When it didn’t recognize him as either the owner of the penthouse or any of the people on the approved visitor list, he heard a short, melodic chime, staring impatiently into the lens as he waited. Another moment passed, then a cheerful trill sounded, and the elevator started going up. Up he went, for floors and floors, not feeling how quickly the elevator was moving because the ride was so smooth. Softly, it came to a stop, then the speakers dinged and the doors opened onto the dim but luxurious penthouse, for the time being rather empty.

    A suit-clad man came to greet him – in his sixties, salt and pepper hair, clean shaven, beady eyes. He smiled, crow’s feet fanning out onto his temples.       “Remi Warner. The man himself. I’m so pleased you could attend.” He shook Remi’s hand firmly, clasping a hand onto his shoulder in some kind of phony, overbearing gesture that was supposed to come off as warm, and probably looked ridiculous due to the fact that Remi was at least a head taller than him. “Been a few years now, hasn’t it? Where all I’ve seen of you has been the fallout of your, uh… exploits. How are you?”    “‘M alright, Harry.” The man finally let go of Remi’s hand.       “Is that a wedding ring?” He asked, though Remi’s left hand was hanging at his side and he hadn’t so much as glanced at it.    “Yeah.”      “Congratulations. That bride of yours is beautiful, I hear. And a daughter, too? Adopted, must be.”    “Yeah.” Remi’s jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly.      “Your father would be proud. Let’s have a toast to him. Come. Sit. Scotch okay?”    “Sure,” Coming further into the large apartment, Remi sat down on the sleek, spotless couch, avoiding a third yeah. Avoiding any ill-conceived jabs about his old man, no matter how many fought their way up his throat. The man currently in his company was old fashioned – there were only two things he valued more than family: money, and respect. Remi really didn’t think his father deserved any, but he was almost certain Harry Harlow would disagree.      When they were both seated, a boy – mid- to late teens, in a shirt and vest – wheeled a bar cart closer and started pouring whiskey into crystal glasses for them. Grandkid? Some cousin or other? Remi thought to himself, swallowing a smirk when the boy passed the first glass to the old man with a muttered here you go, uncle. He was given the second, sipping it as the old man went on about recent events in Battery’s underground and the lives of other mutual acquaintances.

     Slowly, people started trickling in. More well-dressed mobsters. Members of other syndicates. Arms dealers. People who dealt in alcohol, technology, information… Fences, smugglers, collectors of banned and censored things. Leering procurers with entourages of barely dressed women and men trailing lasciviously in their wake, lounging over the furniture and casting solicitous, sultry gazes beneath half-lidded eyes at anyone who looked their way. The penthouse filled with the sound of voices and music, ice clinking in glasses, with the warmth of bodies, with smoke. The heroin was flying from Remi’s pockets, replaced with bills and bills and bills and bills, fatter than the baggies they were exchanged for. He made trips down to his car in the garage, stashing it away in hidden places because – as pleasant as they all were being – there was not a single soul in that penthouse he trusted further than he could spit.

     The night dragged on. He’d had two glasses of whiskey, and was significantly less inebriated than everyone around him, and if he’d thought the codeine would be enough, he’d been wrong, because there was something better in his pocket, and it was calling his fucking name. He ignored it, chain-smoking as the last of his supply decreased, one baggie at a time.

     A whore slid into the seat next to him on a couch somewhere deeper inside the penthouse, getting close. It was quieter there, at the edges of the party. The sugary scent of her perfume overpowered everything.      “I hear you can hook me up?”    “’M out.” He glanced at her, and she watched him back, a slow smile spreading across her face.      “That’s a lie.” Her eyes narrowed a little. “Come on… I’ll pay.”      Remi shook his head.      “Share with me, then.” Her hand landed on his thigh, traveling upwards. “And I’ll give you the best tip you’ve gotten all night.”      He caught her by the forearm and placed her hand firmly back in her own lap.      “No fun,” she frowned petulantly, reaching into her bra for a fold of silver that she held out to him between her index and middle finger. Her eyes were onyx in the shadowy murk of the room. His jacket was lying draped over the armrest. Remi slipped his hand into the inner pocket, fingers closing around the last baggie before he pulled it out and offered it to her, the money and the drugs trading hands. I did it, he thought, a strange mix of relief and regret flooding him. And then… and then… she opened it. Poured it out on the low coffee table in front of them; a heap of white powder. Leaned over it, cutting it into four fat fucking lines with a long, perfectly manicured nail. Another bill came out of her bra – amazing what she had room for in there – and she rolled it up, leaning even lower over the table as she held it up to her nostril.

     Remi’s mouth went dry, watching her. He tried swallowing, but couldn’t, the motion nothing more than a painful bob of his larynx. He sat forward a little, accepting the bill from her when she passed it to him as she leaned back into her seat. He was powerless to it. Just one night – just a couple of hours. Of silence in his head. Of the tightness in his muscles dissipating. Of being numb. He flipped the rolled up bill over, using the other end as he cleared the two remaining lines from the polished stone surface of the table. Then he sank into the couch, too, leaning his head back against the cushions, slow breaths escaping through parted lips as he stared up at the ceiling, waiting. Waiting.

     And then bliss washed over him like a tidal wave.

     His eyes fell shut, enveloping him in a comforting darkness. A sigh seeped from his lungs; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so light, and nothing was wrong anymore. How could it be, when warmth was trickling through his veins and he was floating and the penthouse was dissolving around him? Not a single thought lingered in his brain – his consciousness was a waking dream, an all-encompassing euphoria that swept him along in its current and carried him away from everything. Everyone. From himself.

* * * 

     When he came back to the party, the dark-haired hooker was gone; he was alone, and happy to be, blithely fucking numb. It was lighter in the room, but it wasn’t because anybody had turned on any lights. The sky outside was brightening, an orange haze peeking above the horizon. Remi shifted, folding an arm underneath his head as he laid it on the armrest on top of his jacket, then used the last of his energy to bring his legs up onto the cushions beside him, curling up on the expensive couch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but he was, and it didn’t take him long to fall asleep.

* * *

     Somewhere, in the next room, somebody was arguing, muffled voices bleeding through the wall. Remi screwed his eyes up and squinted against the sun in his face, slowly pushing himself into a seated position. Other bodies were scattered around on the furniture, some sleeping, some awake and groaning. He grabbed his jacket and stood, picking his way quietly through the room without disturbing or looking at anyone as he made his way to the elevator. And down he went, plummeting past floor after floor before he arrived at the garage. Walking towards his car, he pulled his phone from his pocket, waking the screen.

     And his stomach dropped.

     Calls. Texts. Notifications about voicemails. His eyes scanned rows and rows of them, all from Charlie. Please call me back. I need you. Where are you? Please… Please…    “Shit.” The word was a hiss, his fingers quick with practiced ease as he turned his phone over in his hands before he had time to change his mind or do something stupid like come to his senses.      The case that housed the device’s hardware clattered to the ground by his feet, the battery following a split second later. The chip snapped in half between his thumb and index. Then the phone itself was dropped, glass cracking into a million pieces as it landed face down on the concrete. Remi bent to pick up the broken parts, dropping them into a trash can that stood by the elevator doors before he walked the rest of the way to his car, got in, and headed for home.

[moseswilhelm]

Now that you’re all gone, I’ve got a few squishy bits to air out. I don’t feel normal. Whether that means quirky or broken or eccentric depends on the day or hour or seconds between the particular anxiety of waiting on someone to respond to a long string of text. Internally, I’ve cycled between deciding if I am alien, demon, mutated evolution, a plaything of God, a challenge, or just plain old mentally ill. We can guess the healthier option, but there isn’t much use or fun using that.

Knowing you’ve lacked socialization in your youth doesn’t really mean much in trying to solve that problem in the same way that knowing you were just shot won’t help close the wound. What I am trying to say is I wasn’t socialized when I was young and that consistent distant feeling from your peers comes from that.  Hearing that you think differently, or have an interesting brain is a nice little compliment albeit a little condescending. Unfortunately, you can’t really monetize excellent explanatory metaphors without the true meat and potatoes of capitalist society: focus. Arguably, effort and hard work and all that, but the measurement of how much you’ve put into something gets a bit blurred when you’ve somehow acquired detail knowledge of the economic turmoil that initiated the Pontic Wars. Someone please give me money for that. Easily an entire week got a bit lost in trying to understand centralized economies in the classical era and not one person paid me. Outrageous. I think writing was my way of trying to accomplish that level of usefulness that we are all trying to achieve. I knew that whatever I went through as a kid helped me develop an approach to understanding things in a unique way, but this is arguably not even useful to myself let alone the world as a whole. Unfortunately this hobby/career is top tier ADD nightmares and require a level of focus and drive comparable to Stephen King just ripped on coke. I neither have the proclivity for weird child orgies and dog monsters or coke.  Well thats a lie, coke suits me just fine but my scantron has enough bubbles filled out and I’m already late turning in my “how much of a trainwreck are you” buzzfeed quiz.  I see you, red squiggly telling me that “thats” needs an apostrophe. Fuck off, this is art and I refuse to change. Hey, what do you think happens when you’re told that confidence has to come before... y’know... actually being proud of yourself? Arrogance and self-absorption, obviously. You learn very quick that empty confidence is just as meaningless as no confidence, so to kind of fake it you have to really inflate things you have no right inflating and they are inflated on a scale comparable to those around you. Which is arrogant! Its awful! People can do different things at different levels and still be valid! Confidence is valued at an extremely high level to the point where the confidence to present yourself is a bit more important than the character you are supposedly proud of... evidenced plenty by the folks in the public eye known specifically for their charisma and yet somehow failing to actually be a person worth being around. That said, it can get tangled up in actually being proud of yourself. Shocking, I know, but you can’t really lump people who have characters worth being proud of to those just decent at faking it.  Faking it. I know imposter syndrome is a thing. I am certainly not really alone in the concept of “oh god I’m faking it” so I won’t really pretend I have some magic insight on the concept (I’m lying I’m absolutely going to present myself as someone with Answers welcome to the fucking show) but when does “holding it together” and “how you present yourself” become imposter syndrome.  “Hi this is me who has to be this way in order to balance between seeming different enough to stand out but not so different that you feel disgusted at the concept of change, nice to meet you” I mean what the fuck is a person anyways. Thats not a question. Not even a rhetorical one so if you answered aloud in your head I’m sorry but my psyche is not emotionally prepared for audience participation right now so clam up. Finding yourself is always a precarious as hell phrase because that often means one of two things: 1. Learning not to care about how others feel about who you are, despite all evidence of existence point out that this is the absolute most important aspect of your life 2. Presenting the parts that you were afraid to present to people.  Look, I get it, you can’t please everyone and I’m not really here to talk about how to please anyone. In fact, I’m not even here. This is a lucid dream you’re having in your chair and shortly you’ll wake up and not remember if you were sleeping at all. Its fine, you’re fine.  You have to please someone though. I think we underestimate the value of the tutorial level of life regarding this. You are given a set amount of people who are, usually, just going to be pleased by your existence. This always sets up your expectations of how that looks, how it feels, and how important it is. I mean imagine if right now I decided to criticize the immense value society puts on children. You’d hate my fucking guts! “Look at this asshole, kids deserve to be cared for” To be clear I don’t disagree with that. I think a lot of the current “you are valid” rhetoric is based on the concept that adults deserve to be cared for as well. This sorta rounds off my point that attention and reassurance is an important part of being cared for. In my opinion, this gets overlooked very often in favor cheap performative actions like hitting a heart button and oh my god I’m like a baby boomer writing for the new york times okay hold on I promise this isn’t a cynical criticism of millennials.  People want to be heard. Importantly, people want to be understood. Spicy hot fucking take. Its a bit more than “this person knows who I am” although thats precisely how its framed. People want to be cared for, and this means knowing the... other person knows who they are caring for. Ah holy shit this is why I use metaphors.  You have a snickers bar and you are hungry. Congration, you done it. Its the middle of the day and you never had any breakfast and frankly your bank account could use a break from pleasuring Starbuck’s atm reader so you somehow found the last snickers bar in a box you bought off of impulse bought off of Amazon and immediately regretted because it was gone two days later. Or so you thought. As you threw away the cardboard you hear the tell-tale tumble of a forgotten rod of peanuts and caramel that must have gotten jammed in the back of this thing. It was, however, 7am and you had to get to work and maybe having bubbleguts while dealing with people is not your recipe for a good day so you throw it into your purse or bag or whatever the fuck and move on.  “Lunchtime” rolls around and as you do the mental gymnastics required to find the conclusion that food=energy in between bouts of fury over why your workday insists on starting at 8am and how you can’t seem to cope with falling asleep early enough for that not to matter, you remember your snickers bar. Reaching into whatever bag you put it and coming to the horrifying dread of realization that you left this bag in your car in fucking July, you find the sweet sugared respite in a corner. Squeezing it a bit just to test, you are surprised to not find it in the horrible (and yet delicious) state of melted confectionary. Your stomach grumbles a bit as you fidget with the perforated candy wrapper, vaguely thinking to yourself that it might be interesting to read the ingredients as you eat this thing like that isn’t going to fill you with inexplicable Eldritch dread. Nobody needs to know they are ingesting something that might have been made in a facility that also processes every other nut you can think of, delightfully shortened into “tree nuts”. I wonder if anyone has cross referenced all the allergen warnings to deduce which candies are made in the same factory, or if that information is just freely available. What if we kissed in the snickers production facility??? haha jk but...? Anyways, as your mind cycles through a list of stale memes you manage to unsheath this uncut chocolate delight from its wax(???) plastic prison and proceed to take your first, and arguably best, bite into this lunch.  Your teeth sink softly into it, as you would expect. In fact, expectations haven’t really filtered into your skull soup you call a brain, so all manner of things can just slip through your recognition. Not this, however. Instead, fireworks of electric signals screaming “BITTER POISON” shock your brain from its previous state of vaguely functioning. Now you truly see the color of light, feel the air cocooning your skin, the squirm of your organs in your belly. Full panic ensues. You are not human, you are animal, and you have taken in a poison thing.  You spit it out right there on your lap.  You stare at the sad and ruined chocolate mutant nestled grossly in between your legs as your brain high fives itself for saving your life before frantically scouring your subconscious for whatever Vine gives it enough dopamine to not just fucking kill yourself right here. What happened? The fugue of panic washes your perceptions with a mixture of justifications for this travesty. It probably just went bad, but that didn’t taste spoiled (you consider yourself a mild expert having scraped clean many an old collection of halloween candy collections in August the year after the fact) so maybe it melted and rehardened? Baking stuff is weird so maybe that broke down some of its components. You pick it up (holy shit that is slimy. Of course its slimy, just touch it) and its insides look fine. I mean, how often do you examine the insides of a partially chewed bite of snickers? No weird colors. The remaining chocolate lasagna brick also looks exactly what you’d thought it be.  You jokingly think to yourself that maybe you had a stroke but despite the apparent hilarity of that possibility you do the smile thing in the selfie camera of your phone. Everything seems fine, but now you’re getting mad that some turn of events has just ruined your perfectly good slab of sugar and fat that surely would have made the rest of the day bearable (and full of indigestion) Now that is a metaphor. 

[hopevalley]

I’m back, and with the usual nonsense. 

I’ve been thinking about that potential novelization again. Heck, I dreamed a while back that I was going to tweet Hallmark to ask “permission” to do it (but ended up tweeting them in the dream to novelize the Wedding March series instead). It’s fanfic. I don’t need permission to write it!!! (Dream!Me was stressed out at the idea that Hallmark could say yes, because then I’d be locked into writing it. I’m still marveling at Dream!Me’s confidence.)

I’m gonna ramble about the potential for a novelization of When Calls the Heart here, just ‘cause I can. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings and nowhere to put them. Read on if you’d like!

I like When Calls the Heart! I really do. It’s had its ups and downs, but overall things have been pretty darn awesome.

I don’t think any of us would be here if there wasn’t something about the show that really captured us, took us by storm. For some people it was the romance. For others, the friendships. I know people who watch the show for specific characters or character arcs (Henry comes to mind), or because they like the feel-good nature of the series while it deals with some realistically awful situations/issues; the Lee and Rosemary and the infertility plotline that popped up in S6 comes to mind, here.

Honestly, I wish I could trust someone else to novelize the tv series the way I’d like to see it done. Unfortunately I’m a picky baby and I have very specific ideas of what these characters are like from a more intimate POV than we get with the show, so...if I want it done, I gotta do it myself. (RIP my free time, though.)

The biggest roadblock, though is...feedback.

This fandom is notorious for being terrible about ‘participating’ and fanfic isn’t everyone’s cup of tea anyway. Imagine working your tail off to produce a well-crafted novelization of the series only for it to get ignored. I’d probably never write again...and that’s not me being dramatic, either. I think it’s fair to say “my time is worth something” and stick to that. It is. My time is worth a lot to me. I could use it to clean the house, do dishes, spend time with my husband, play with the cats, clean the yard, do gardening, work longer hours and get paid, play video games, crochet, et cetera. I have an endless supply of hobbies! It’s harder than it sounds, because it means I can’t ever dedicate tons of time to just, you know, one of them. On the plus side it means I’ve got something waiting in the wings no matter what mood I’m in!

The possibility exists that the story would be a surprise success, too. I mean, I doubt it (judging by the numbers, fanfic for this series isn’t that popular), but...you never know! Jack and Elizabeth are a focal point of the first few seasons and a novelization of the series would also support this.

Anyway, I think I said before that I was toying with the idea of pre-writing five chapters, posting them a week or two apart, and gauging interest based off of that. If people aren’t interested, I can abandon the project early enough into it that nobody has to feel sad about it. If people are into the idea, and take the time to comment on the chapters... Well, it looks like I’d have to keep going.

It’s just a struggle to get started.

For two reasons. 

The first is the possibility of failure. Now, you could say it’s not a failure if you complete the project, or no time spent on a hobby is wasted, but for me that just isn’t true—at least not completely. Writing is a hobby, but it’s a very personal hobby. I pour a lot of myself into those stories, into storytelling, and the very point of writing for me, especially when I post it online, is the social aspect of it. Fanfiction is a social hobby! When nobody comments on the story, nobody favorites it, nobody bookmarks it... 

Well, I might as well have just left it all in my head and not taken the time to write it down.

The second is...Elizabeth, and by extension, Jack. And, uh, by extension of that, Jack/Elizabeth.

Hear me out!

I think both characters have some good foundations going for them. Season 2 shattered a lot of the good things they had going on for the Dramaz (which I wholeheartedly disagree with), but I feel fully capable of warping the S2 events to better suit the characters we ended up with (and to avoid some of the unnecessary meaningless drama that never did sit right with me). I just feel like both characters are...a little bit...empty? And especially for focal characters, they need depth that the show just simply refused to provide outside of Dramatic Situations.

I’ve been working through some of that in my head. Something I always liked about Elizabeth was how she unapologetically enjoyed being rich! Whether she was in Coal Valley or Hamilton she sported fashionable things. She loved going shopping with her sisters, dressing up for dinner, et cetera. Her vague ignorance of people like Abigail visiting (welcome in the house, but definitely unaware of ‘dressing for dinner’) was this really nifty mix of like...endearing and frustrating. I think playing that up a little further, or rather...bringing it to the forefront, might be a great idea.

--

Speaking of Abigail, I think the character was an excellent addition to the series in the beginning and I’d prefer to continue along those lines, here. I’d fully plan to include her, but with my own slight twist on things; she stays Abigail. No Lorigail.

I can’t decide exactly what to do with some of the other characters, though. I greatly enjoyed Cat and her children, and as Emily is still around later I feel like I’d want to keep her around, but she needs a role to fill and it doesn’t feel quite right to relegate her to the very background when Elizabeth spent the first season going up to bat for her. I think I could figure it out easily enough, but it’s another consideration I’m up against.

--

Of course, this is all kind of hinging on the idea that the first five chapters would be met with some measure of success, because if people kind of shrugged over them it won’t matter what I do with Cat or anyone else.

Anyway I feel like it should be stated outright that I have no real intentions of completely altering anything...at this time. That could definitely change, though, if the readerbase wanted it badly enough and I felt it was appropriate. There are some things that I think need more attention, but that’s not the same as altering events, per se. Bill as a character comes on really mysterious but what’s the point of writing him that way when the entire potential readerbase already knows he’s married? Already knows about the counterfeit plotline? It might actually be more fun to get into his head and write some of those scenes from his perspective (third person limited, not first person; I despise first person). Then we have his reasoning (stupid or not) instead of the mystery.

Therein lies the reasoning necessary for anyone to actually start reading it in the first place: it offers something the tv show doesn’t (because text-based mediums can get into people’s heads and narratively examine their psyche) but doesn’t actually deviate hard from what people already know and like about the show. I guess you could say that it’s giving them more of what they like?

--

I think the difficult part of balancing a novelization has to do with the points of view; do you pick a few and stick with those? Do you GRRM it up and everyone gets it sometimes, or do you choose the scenes and select the narrative based specifically on how that scene would best be told, which could result in some people having more scenes than others?

I’m leaning a little toward the latter with the idea that some characters will probably never get their own scenes, because if a character is only allowed to have one, why bother even giving them that? I’m not sold on the idea though, because I can’t even choose a character who wouldn’t get a scene. Probably characters who just aren’t around enough for it to matter? I’m thinking about characters like Greta (the investor) or Jenkins (bank manager) more than I am even characters like Ray Wyatt, ‘cause at least Ray sticks around in the story for a reasonable period of time (and therefore might deserve a scene or two along the way).

(Though I mean, I can’t say for sure. We all know what happens to these characters, so maybe I’d have to stick with giving characters scenes who will eventually join the ensemble of Hope Valley? Hm.)

I guess it’s something to think about.

--

Rolling again with the assumption that the story is a success (let’s just be confident, here!) there are future aspects of the series that didn’t really do it any favors and/or weren’t presented in a satisfactory manner.

I’ll give a few examples off the top of my head: Season 2′s drama, Lorigail, AJ and Bill’s weird relationship dynamic, wedding drama for Jack and Elizabeth.

I can swallow a lot of nonsense! I like drama...when it’s interesting and done well. What I don’t appreciate is the cheap stuff, designed to fling a roadblock in the way of a romantic couple. Jack and Elizabeth didn’t need Charles to make things feel off/weird/bad, or for Jack to be made to feel unwelcome. I personally think the entirety of the S2 plot could be better shaped and molded for the characters. We can still have drama, but not at the expense of the characters’ integrity!

Just throwing ideas out there, but in the novels Elizabeth’s original contract was only for a year, so when that year was up and it was the summer break from school, she returned to Hamilton and waited to hear from Coal Valley to find out if she’d be invited back there for the next school term. I’m not against Elizabeth’s mother falling ill to get her back to Hamilton, but I’d prefer if her...extended stay there didn’t hinge of iffy (flimsy) health stuff. They resolved that way too neatly and it was just... I don’t know. It could have been better done, maybe to offset the potential for drama.

As far as Lorigail goes, I think Abigail taking on a role in town as part of the town council and eventually stepping up as mayor should come at a cost, and those costs eventually lead to her giving up her role as mayor (which would take care of a lot of the lorigail issues of her just being involved in everything). Obviously this is so far in the future it’d hinge on a very successful story overall, but I’m busy being confident so I’m willing to entertain the idea that someday I’d have to address this. 

AJ also doesn’t show up for a very long time but her introduction was pretty mediocre, and Bill’s reaction to her (not chasing her down instantly) didn’t make a lick of sense. Bill isn’t easily swayed by anyone’s dumb opinion, and he’s not a romantic in the traditional sense so it’s hard to imagine a kiss from a stranger made him slack on his job duties. An easy fix here would just be to show the good moments that had to have existed between the bad ones. The only reason Bill would let AJ go without even trying to find her is if he feels that 1) she doesn’t deserve to be jailed, and/or 2) she’s safer if she’s free. It’s not a huge issue in the grand scheme of things but I think it’d be a real shame not to ‘fix’ the issue while possible.

Finally, with the wedding drama... Honestly they didn’t need any of it. The church didn’t need to burn. If we want wholesome content: there’s been a bit of a drought and there aren’t any nice flowers for the wedding, so Elizabeth’s dad remembers that his girls used to like making paper flowers and organizes everyone to use colored paper to make them so they can string them up in the church. I mean, something little like that doesn’t really change the backbone of the story we’re getting (I mean, we’re here for Jack and Elizabeth’s wedding, a celebration of happiness, not for the drama that ends up being completely meaningless). Cute mishaps on the wedding day would be much better/more interesting/tell a better story.

(Or maybe Bill just about completely misses the wedding and then we get Lee and Rosie’s rings being used, which sort of ties in with how close Elizabeth gets with them in S6 storylines...)

--

The more I think about it, the more potential for an amazing story I find in this, and the more excited I get. 

Henry is SUCH an interesting character; it would be amazing to get into his head early on.

Imagine getting to see Elizabeth and Abigail’s friendship actually form.

Clara’s relationship with other people, like Abigail and Elizabeth, but also exploring the specific kind of grief she feels vs. the grief Abigail feels and how that might clash/be different.

Exploring the different relationships the women in town had with their husbands. Some were obviously still in love, some not so much, others ready to move on quickly and a few completely closed to the idea.

A schoolhouse/group of kids that isn’t replaced every ten seconds and remains somewhat consistent...

Getting to write Jack and Elizabeth actually falling in love over the big and the little things. 

Elizabeth as a passionate teacher.

Characters dealing with nightmares, good dreams, dreams about their friends or potential love interests... I want to see real raw human emotion, here! The good stuff, definitely, but maybe some of the bad, too, because writing the different ways they deal with it could be...fun.

Abigail being Abigail and staying Abigail... ♥

HOBBIES being a part of everyday life!!

CHURCH!!!!! SERMONS! Worship! Gathering together for meals! 

Rewriting some of the dangerous scenes to actually FEEL dangerous.

Writing in Julie’s perspective would be SO much fun.

Including travel time for the big events and shaping the world into a place where time MATTERS aaaaaa that’s so fun too!

--

Anyway, I’m rambling. I just really, really love the idea of writing this. I have so many thoughts and ideas I want to do, all without deviating too far from the source material that we all love so much.

It’s just hard to feel like I should spend my free time on it...but lately it’s really been gnawing at me, so...

We’ll see! It could be a lot of fun just to try. At least if I try, I’ll know. If I don’t, I’ll probably always wonder what might have happened if I had.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I keep referencing this Chris Morris interview lately, mostly to myself. I try to talk to people in real life but the things other people take seriously aren't as important as any words I try to speak outloud. This is a trend that Morris and crew began to target in the late nineties when Brass Eye was released. When asked if Brass Eye could happen at the time during the Trump administration, he replied staunchly it could not. Back in the late nineties people took themselves far too seriously in the news. So it was easier to lampoon. These days it feels like a regression. Everyone has a statement to unload on you. A complex series of opinions, arguments, and rules about this or that. Some of them have some weight. Others are carried away by counter arguments and burnt at the stake. The only reason a statement, argument, or ideological battle penetrates the news is to simply kick it around for two weeks in a cycle. It never reaches any sort of consensus. It never diffuses into at the very least a case of agreeing to disagree. The Met Gala recently is a fine example of this. Statement fashion is simply meant to nudge the conversation into focus. At it's very minimum the shock is meant to jolt someone out of this seriousness. To rattle them away from their protective shell to change the dialogue. Think tax the rich or peg the patriarchy. Neither of them if you flesh out the argument have much teeth to them. I'm sure you could find yourself at a party defending either argument. "How many stocks do you have in the bank Mister!" Or why victims of childhood sexual harassment and violence might feel a little differently about proving how you might be able to face the patriarchy in a less violent and humiliating way. This is that none of us are defending a 35,000 dollar ticket to the Met Gala in the first place. There were plenty of other statements. After all the ideological dust settled I almost never realized that Iris Van Herpen designed Grimes suit of armor. If I were too clouded by the ideology I would have missed that legitimate moment of genius. I'm a technologist by profession. I have years of 3D fabrication support. I've often found myself drawn into the intersect of technology and fashion. The embroidery machines that print out all the stupid little poetry that gets stolen from other artists? Those are pretty complex to operate. Without them none of this would be possible. And yet good statement fashion does get people talking. But fashion is more than statements. Especially from the rich and wealthy. And if we don't talk about all of it, we start to realize who controls the flow of the dialogue when it goes petty. We're supposed to move on from these arguments like exhibits in a museum. Not get stuck on one or two moments and use them as a soapbox to drown out the entire room. Statement fashion gets people's attention. I wore undercover for years only to find for years people thought I was an undercover cop. I wear a mouse on a shirt and suddenly my porch is overflowed with them. I hold a raccoon in my arms in Korea one trip and the next year my porch is flooded with them as well. You like animals so much! Prove it!

Prove it was also a song by the underground band Television. I was introduced to them by the king of statement fashion itself, Jun Takahashi. I've worn undercover for years at this point. The story of undercover during the Scab years is an interesting insight into what Jun was trying to express at the core. His assistants were getting food in London on a break. An old woman came up to them and offered them a banana. She thought they were homeless. They were excited because the fashion they were wearing felt real and unpretentious. It blended in and confused people in such a way that it was not high brow or high fashion. It was accessible. It was street level. And it was largely coopted by the ultra rich and worn far too seriously for its own good. For people like myself who wore it out of love to provoking real conversation, it did the opposite. It cast me into a shadow realm where people thought what I was saying enabled them to push the limit. To use people like myself as cover in terms of hijacking authenticity. You used to wear undercover as a badge of honor in Japanese street wear. It was designed for rebels after all. You could wear a t-shirt that simply said RAT out in the street and assume if it applied to someone they'd read into it. But nobody including myself really thought you'd be able to change shit with a t-shirt. In America, people wear rebellious shit to express this idea of freedom. With Jun's stuff, it was all centered around this idea of individualism and anarchy. You can be who you are and there are so many variants of human that there is no comparison. America always wants you to prove it. Prove the right to be alone. Prove the right not to mix with the general population to avoid dilution. To avoid being neutralized or have a narrative hijacked. Nowadays you can't even afford to have a statement without someone explaining it for you behind your back. When the streets become the runway, retaliation happens outside the niceties of press and junkets. It happens with real unbridled emotions. The statements you throw into people's faces don't get moderated by it kids, secret tribunals of the ultra rich or your heroes. They get dealt with in a violent and sometimes mob like fashion by people who take themselves so seriously that their arguments against you are louder than a bomb or a nuclear powered submarine. And everything starts to contradict itself so much that none of us have the energy to argue. We just start mocking it. And the entire situation gets worse.

When it comes to a person like myself, I live in a surreal shadow world where the worst Black Mirror plot lines get tested. I've been writing and making statements for years. I've carefully parsed the arguments online. I've defended myself against an invisible hoard to let people know I am not like other people. And yet in America, until they can throw you in a group you are still nobody. You have to be attached to an ecosystem. A financial sink hole that can sell back your ideas to you instead of compensating you for the trouble. I can't take America seriously anymore even when it comes to it's idea of freedom. It lies to maintain a status quo. It constantly lies. It holds it's head high while sniffing the coke back into it's nose and proudly proclaims how it cares. And when people like myself stare it back in the face with our rotting street wear clothes from early 2010, it's a laugh. It believes until it has fully roasted the juices out of you then you are ready to be carved up. And we buy into it consistently. We waste our time feeding into arguments that have no intent on reaching a consensus. It's always you are either for us or against us. Go back and rally with your people. If you can't find your people it must mean you are mentally ill. America can never take the blame. If you catch it off guard it will figure out a way to trash you or cause a diversion. And so making statements to fuel an argument you can't win becomes a lesson in tedium. We should, by all means, continue to make fun of it. But the more we take these arguments seriously, we miss the real problems. We neglect the real art. We see that there's a good 35,000 dollar barrier to being heard. If we're lucky maybe we stitched together the rags these people wear. To me there have been statements in the populist context that have far more penetration into poking a hole in the patriarchy. I'm supposed to preface this by saying I own stock in some company. But I'm not trying to sell a portfolio. And it'd be kind of laughable to say that I'm only serious about feminism by putting my money where my mouth is to break this glass ceiling. The glass ceiling is there for a lot of us if minimum wage can't get us into the Met Gala. These statements are supposed to give you an idea to confront things in your own way. Not some secret way to groom you into humiliation and destroy your sense of self and sexuality. I write statements every week here most of the time. And they get chuckled at by friends and whoever these days spies on me to see how I deal with dead mice on my porch. Aren't I doing enough by saying something for free? I don't get paid to write any of these words. I don't get paid to talk about any of these people. What was that quote about art being counter revolutionary if it isn't accessible by the regular people? What I could do with a four hundred dollar statement t-shirt I can do with a color. Maybe I could make a statement shirt myself and have it ripped off by an incompetent designer one day. I could point at the screen and say "I copyrighted that statement." And look where it is now. Not in my wallet. Not anywhere near the 35,000 dollar ticket price to point back at the camera. Do you see me? No you don't. People in that realm only see themselves. And we take them and their arguments so seriously for what? A laugh hopefully. Because nothing is going to change if we're locked on the outside looking in at a bonfire of vanities. Witches get roasted either way. <3 Tim

[bleedingcoffee42]

Notorious AU- Part 5

Tracking Tag

Sorry, it got a little longer than I expected.   

xxxxxxxxxxxx

As casually as they could, they walked back to the car and once again he sat in the passenger seat while she got behind the wheel.   Roy couldn't resist comparing it to their first drive together when she was 'drunk' and weaving all over the road and doing her best to protect those she loved from him. Now she carefully drove back to town, he watched her concentrate on her surroundings more as well as drive with more caution.   She was more focused on the danger that lurked out there now, the danger she possibly was reconsidering putting herself in.  

He had worried that he was going to ruin this operation with his honesty and he did just that.  

It was one thing to care for her and let it be one sided.  It was ill advised but it was an exception he was inclined to make:  he always tried to protect those who were placed under his command.   In the months of surveillance and studying the Hawkeyes he had seen a woman trapped in a life of her father's creation and bad judgment, but also a loyal woman who refused to abandon her father.   She disagreed with Berthold, but she was determined to ride it out until judgment was passed down on him, because there was nobody else that would.  In that sacrifice she made, in dedicating herself to watching him decline and destroy himself with his life's work, she possibly stopped him from making even worse decisions.   He viewed her as a soldier, watching the senseless destruction and helpless to do anything about it;  a soldier who knew without a presence there, that things could escalate and get much worse.

Now, she was in the same scenario, one of his own making.  Now, she was compromised by feelings that she had someone else to protect: him.

“You're regretting the kiss, aren't you?”  Riza asked when the uncomfortable silence was no longer possible to bare.  

Roy had to be honest with her, there was no other way.  Not now.  “It makes things more complicated in an already difficult operation.”

“Giving someone something to live for, to look forward to....”  Riza bit her lip.  God it was just one kiss.  She sounded like she was in love with him.   “It's nice to feel human again, to feel like an individual instead of just roles I've had to play.   I've had to be my father's daughter for my entire life and I have never been able to be me, truly me, Riza Hawkeye.  Believe me, it would be easier if I could just hate you and use you to find a new life here.  Turn my back on Amestris, on the country who betrayed me, and just start over.   Away from my father's legacy, away from the guilt of what I couldn't stop him from doing because I was too weak to betray my father.....”

“That's not you.”  Roy said softly and he watched her knuckles go white as she clenched the steering wheel.  

“No, I love my damned country and will sacrifice myself over and over for it until I have no more to give.”  She shook her head.  “Which is why I hate myself so much for wanting you.”

He looked at her and she pulled up to the hotel and waited for the valet to come to take the car.   She looked over at him and he saw the sincerity that threatened to melt his heart, the look that made him want to tell her to just keep driving until they found the border.   Whatever border.   Wherever she could go and just live for herself instead of dying for some damned cause.  

“We're alike you and I.”  She said simply.   “I know nothing about you but I understand with every fiber of my being your need to try to fix this world.   That we can't turn our eyes from the wrongs or turn our backs from the duty we have to be the one who does something.   It's the cloth we're made from, and the shroud we'll be buried in.”

Roy saw the valet coming and said softly.  “You're better than me.”

“If I was, would we be here?”  She asked.   “If I stopped my father from selling his research, if I have turned him in, would we be here?”

He shook his head.  “It's not the same Riza...”

“A part of me believed he knew what he was doing, a part of me was too scared of him to do more than just watch him.   My inaction was worse than any reaction.   Now that research could cost lives, a lot of lives...”  She said and looked ahead as the Valet smiled and came over to the door.   “I am indirectly responsible for this and any deaths will be on my hands as well.  Nothing you say will absolve me of that.  I chose this job, you didn't con me into anything.    You're pretty, but not pretty enough to make me go to a foreign country and throw away my life just to chase after you.”

He gave her a smile.   He loved how she could deliver the truth, simple but noble.   It made him feel a renewal of passion for his cause, and she wasn't even in charge here. Why was she saving him?

“I need someone to protect too.” She said and looked over at him.   “My family. Amestris.  You.   I can handle that.   I do understand the risks involved, Mustang, I really do.  That's why I am really looking forward to dinner because I'd like to live this life before it's gone.”

xxxxxxxxxx

They had made it back to her room and as soon as he finished checking for bugs, Riza had pushed him into the wall and started kissing him.  Hands roaming under his jacket, fingers running under the leather straps of his shoulder holster and her lips firmly on his.   Roy had never been so aroused by any woman in his entire life, and of course it was at that moment that the phone rang.

He wanted to throw the damned thing off the table, rip it out of the wall and throw if off the balcony.   He wanted to ignore it in favor of finding out what exactly she planned to do when she got his jacket off, pretend like maybe they had a half an hour to spare before someone came to get answers in person.   Instead, it was the knowledge that him not answering would trigger a series of events that lead to Maes Hughes bursting into this room via window or adjoining door, and see him compromising his mission.   See him and Riza in the middle of something incriminating, something that said that his judgment was beyond compromised.   So he picked up the phone, with strength and resolve he didn't think he had, and answered.  

Now, he was standing in a room with his fellow agents and boss and hating everything.  Hughes's eyes were on him from the moment he arrived, Maes knew the sound of his voice and certainly knew that sound he made when he was trying to be composed instead of react to a beautiful woman kissing his neck and stroking his chest.   Of course he had been the one the other end of the phone line, calling to let him know that the boss was here wanting to discuss the plans for this mission.   He wasn't angry at Hughes for being the one to interrupt, but he was sure pissed at him now for reading him like a book as he shuffled uncomfortably behind a chair waiting to be spoken to.

“We've reached a decision on the strategy we're going to be taking.”  Hakuro toyed with the cigar he was smoking, there certainly was a distinct and exotic flavor to it.

Hughes watched Roy and occasionally looked around the room to see if anyone else detected his agitated state.  Hakuro, their boss, was more interested in mentally calculating how many cigars he could smuggle back to Amestris in their gear boxes when the time came to go home.   The other agents were focused on their work, but Breda looked like he was going to vomit from the smell of the cigar smoke while Havoc tried to resist lighting up a cigarette of his own.  Falman kept writing his reports, Fuery listening to the tapped phonelines and Armstrong was just standing there looking like a statue.   None of them had noticed Roy's irritation, but to them he just looked the usual form of pissed off that he was when Hakuro was being condescending.  

“We need Hawkeye to get close to Kimblee, and I mean close.”  Hakuro said and rolled the cigar in his fingers.   “His confidence won't be won by just comradery or friendship.”

Hughes watched Roy grip the back of the chair like he was going to break it in half.   They didn't talk about the seduction option, but it was an unspoken element always on the table.   Roy knew this, but of course the delivery of this from Hakuro always made things sound so much more vile.  

“She's been throwing parties at her father's house.”  Hakuro said and inhaled another deep breath of smoke.  He exhaled and smiled.   “She can be friendly, charming and with the right amount of intellect to intrigue Kimblee. Don't you think Mustang?  You're the one who worked with him.“  

“We didn't discuss his taste in women, sir.”  Roy said sharply, too sharply as Hakuro's eyes darted to him.  

“Do I detect a problem?”  Hakuro said.  “You knew this was an option if necessary.”

“I don't think it necessary.”  Roy countered.  “Or an option.”

And then everyone took notice, Hughes observed.   Havoc glanced over and Breda's sharp eyes flickered with recognition of a challenge.   Falman paused in his writing a brief second and only Fuery was too occupied to hear or feel the tension in the room.   Armstrong stood stiffer and stared off at some cracked plaster in the opposite wall like he was capable of keeping it together with his will power.  Maes took it upon himself to stretch out his legs and put his hands behind his head, adding the dose of casual back into the conversation before injecting, “Don't think she has the resolve to do that?”

“I don't think she's that kind of woman.”  Roy said simply.  Bless Hughes, even if he was going to slap him upside the head for getting invested in her.  

“I don't understand your attitude, Mustang.”  Hakuro snorted after he exhaled.   Of course Mustang would think he knew better than him.

“Why don't you think she'll do it?” Hughes prodded, trying to get Roy unfocused on a battle with Hakuro and more on the task at hand; the task of not making it obvious he had feelings for Riza.

“She has no experience.”  Roy said, angry enough to keep his replies short.   Maybe it wasn't anger.

“Oh come on.”  Hakuro snorted. “Sure she's not one of your mother's girls, but I think she manages just fine...”

Before Roy could flip the chair over Hughes said, “Hawkeye was chosen for this, not only because of her father's background but because of how well she covered for him while she was trying to change his mind.  Kimblee knows we're sending her here to get close to him, he'll delight in trying to turn her against us.”

“I know how Kimblee works.”  Roy said sharply.   “Which is exactly why I don;t think seducing him is going to get a reaction you want, other than revoltion from Hawkeye at the prospect of sleeping with that man.”

“We need her in his house.”  Hakuro said definitely.  “How else do you get her in there for a long period of time?”

Roy went to open his mouth for a rebuttal, but Hakuro knocked some ash off his cigar and stood up.

“So I think you should go back to Miss Hawkeye and explain to her what she needs to do.”  Hakuro said and walked over to Mustang, physically inviting a challenge.   He made sure the chair was between them though, he knew what the man was capable of.   “What is it, Mustang?”

Roy shut his mouth and then looked down at the chair he was rocking back and forth without realizing it. “Nothing, sir.”

“I thought you were going to say something?”  Hakuro said feeling cocky as Mustang broke eye contact.  He cocked an eyebrow, and in a mocking voice asked,   “No?”

“How do you expect them to meet?” Roy asked.  “Or do you just want me to tell her to stand on a street corner and look for a greasy asshole in a fedora?”

Hakuro put the cigar back in his mouth.  “There's chatter she'll get an invite to some gala Prince Claudio is hosting.   It's your job to make sure she's ready to make an impression.”

Roy nodded and considered making an impression in Hakuro's head with the chair he was putting all his frustrations into trying to crush.  “Yes, sir.”

“That will be all, Mustang.” Hakuro said and turned his back on him to go back to his comfy chair and look at the men in the room in triumph.  It was no secret who they were loyal to, but he wanted to make sure they remembered who was in charge.

Maes looked up at Roy and exchanged a brief glance with him, then stood and stretched.  “I need some fresh air, need anything boys?”

They all shook their heads and Hakuro ignored the implication that his cigar smoke was making people ill.   Roy went to the door, Hughes was right behind him waiting for the moment they were out of sight and hearing to ask him what the fuck he was doing.

And the truth was, he really didn't know anymore.

[billyagogo]

A survivor. A funeral director. A marriage divided. How Americans' COVID experiences shape their votes

New Post has been published on https://newsprofixpro.com/moxie/2020/11/03/a-survivor-a-funeral-director-a-marriage-divided-how-americans-covid-experiences-shape-their-votes/

A survivor. A funeral director. A marriage divided. How Americans' COVID experiences shape their votes

In Wisconsin, a funeral home director who has watched the COVID-19 pandemic rip through her community can only blame President Trump.

In Texas, little can change one woman’s loyalty to the president — not even her own struggle for breath as she lay in a hospital bed.

In New Mexico, an underemployed firearms instructor plans to cast his vote as a rebuke to Democrats he says were overzealous in closing businesses.

In Arizona, a Joe Biden voter found political detente with his Republican wife as the lingering effects of infection continue to cause them pain.

In Michigan, a school bus driver won over by the president before the pandemic deepened her devotion and took up arms to protest shutdowns.

Even before the coronavirus sunk in its teeth, the United States was deeply polarized. Facts mattered less than feelings and political parties acted like tribes.

The virus — a shared, microscopic enemy that demanded a unified response — offered the nation a chance to come together. But from face masks to shutdowns, the pandemic quickly became the main thing Americans were fighting over.

As the death toll grew so did anxieties about who would win the presidency.

Election day arrives as the virus surges like never before, with an average of more than 80,000 new cases reported each day last week — well over previous spikes and up more than 44% from two weeks earlier.

Once concentrated in urban centers like New York and later in Sun Belt states, the virus is now ravaging the rural Midwest and Rocky Mountain states.

Field hospitals have been pitched in parking lots from Texas to Wisconsin. In the past week, hospitalizations reached new highs in 18 different states.

Treatment is improving and infections are increasingly concentrated in younger people with high odds of survival, but experts predict a significant rise in the U.S. death toll, which now tops 230,000.

The surge poses a dilemma for officials trying to balance health concerns with economic ones as the public grows wary of more forced shutdowns.

Polls suggest that most voters have made up their minds — and record numbers have already cast their ballots.

All of the issues that divided America before coronavirus have been eclipsed.

This is the pandemic election. And these are the stories of five voters.

The funeral home director The first call came in late March.

A 70-year-old had died shortly after being taken off a ventilator. Michelle Pitts sent a hearse to pick up his body from the hospital.

Michelle Pitts, owner of New Pitts Mortuary, stands outside her Milwaukee funeral home.

(Kurtis Lee / Los Angeles Times)

There would be no funeral, just a burial at the cemetery attended by three relatives. The family was too worried about contagion.

Pitts was left with the feeling that “this virus was going to be bad.”

The calls kept coming, at all hours. Pitts could only watch as the coronavirus spread through the neighborhood. As owner of the New Pitts Mortuary, she has been serving the predominantly Black northside of Milwaukee since the 1990s.

The disproportionate toll the virus was taking on Black people was obvious to her. The two dozen victims her funeral home has handled included bus drivers, nurses and grocery clerks — essential workers who didn’t have the luxury of sheltering in place.

“If you live in this community, you know someone who has either contracted the virus, or died,” she said. “It’s an American tragedy plain and simple.”

As the months wore on, Pitts couldn’t stop thinking about the ages of the deceased. Early 50s. Mid-40s. Late 30s.

She herself was 60.

Pitts remembered the expression of the parent standing over the oak casket of a beloved son, who days earlier was taken off a ventilator. She recalled the woman whose husband died before he could line up a life insurance policy to help take care of the couple’s two young children should something happen to him.

How are they doing now, she wondered?

To sustain herself, she often recited her favorite scripture, a section of Psalm 23: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

In late October, she filled out her ballot.

There was never any doubt that she would vote for Biden. In her view Trump had only responded to the pandemic with callousness.

She deposited the ballot in a nearby drop box.

“I felt like a weight was kind of lifted off my shoulders,” she said. “As if it was my time to be heard.”

— Kurtis Lee

The survivor It had become her evening ritual: Order dinner from Doordash, mix a cocktail, draw a bath and pretend she was swimming in her complex’s off-limits pool.

“It just became very lonely,” said Jaime Vollmar, 35.

Meanwhile, her hours as an operating room technician at two plastic surgery clinics were severely cut.

It all seemed overblown to Vollmar. She knew friends who had contracted the coronavirus, but nobody who died from it.

Then, in early October, Vollmar and her boyfriend decided to take a risk and get together for dinner with another couple. The woman hosting began to feel ill that night, and within days called to tell Vollmar she and her husband had tested positive for the virus.

Vollmar also tested positive.

After two weeks of feeling “like death” at home, Vollmar was admitted to United Memorial Medical Center in Houston. During sleepless nights, she struggled to breathe as she watched a monitor showing her blood oxygen level drop.

She began to wonder: “Am I actually going to survive this?”

Her second priority was making it to the polls to vote in person.

She had supported Trump in 2016 and appreciated all he had done on immigration, the economy, even the pandemic.

“He did a great job. He’s human,” she said, adding that her bout with the virus “gives me more appreciation for him.”

Jamie Vollmar was admitted to United Memorial Medical Center in Houston after contracting COVID-19.

(Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Los Angeles Times)

Vollmar was released from the hospital Friday. At the polls, she plans to “be a dork” about safety and wear a mask, keep a distance of six feet and encourage others to take more precautions.

Looking back, Vollmar believes that she might have contracted the virus when she tasted the dinner host’s new vaping flavor — watermelon strawberry bubblegum.

“It was a heavenly flavor,” she said from her hospital bed. “But not worth all this.”

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

The expectant father Marcos Sanchez was irked.

Driving by the local hardware store in the early days of the pandemic, he’d see lines of hundreds of people waiting to get in.

Yet Sanchez, a 35-year-old firearms instructor in Española, a small city tucked in the mountains of northern New Mexico, wasn’t allowed to work after an order from the state’s Democratic governor closed all businesses except those deemed essential.

Sanchez, who had been steadily growing his business for two years, had no income for three months straight.

“It’s frustrating because they’re raking in money and I’m struggling,” he said.

The way Sanchez sees it, the pandemic was an act of God. The shutdowns were an act of man.

Under current restrictions, he can work again, but must limit his shooting and self-defense classes to a quarter of normal capacity. With a second child on the way, he’s now contemplating whether his business can continue.

“I’m not blind or ignorant to the damage that the virus has done, but I see the damage it’s done economically and that leads to a whole lot of other problems,” he said.

Rio Arriba County, where Sanchez lives, went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 — 64% versus 24% for Trump. But Sanchez plans to vote for Trump, like he did four years ago.

His decision is largely based on his opposition to firearm restrictions and his religious beliefs, particularly his objection to abortion. But the pandemic has also played a role.

Trump is not a perfect candidate, he said. He thinks no candidate ever is. But most important for him are the kinds of policies a person will enact once they are in office, and Trump has opposed widespread economic shutdowns in the face of the virus.

“You have to ask what’s worse,” he said. “The virus or the constant anxiety we’ve been putting ourselves in?”

— Kate Linthicum

The activist Bill Whitmire had to leave for a doctor’s appointment, but his keys were nowhere to be found.

It’d been months since he felt clear-headed. Lapses in memory and reasoning — so uncharacteristic for a 56-year-old who prided himself on being organized — had become the norm.

He chalked it up to the coronavirus, which he believes he contracted back in January, before testing was available in the United States.

His wife, Ann, came down with the virus in June. She still faces bouts of nausea, body aches and feeling like she has no energy.

The pandemic brought the couple closer together — and not just in their shared suffering.

She is Republican and he is a Democrat, which seemed like less of an issue when they got married back in the 1980s than it did in 2016, when she voted for Trump and he went for Clinton.

“Sometimes we have to agree to disagree,” he said.

Whitmire kept an open mind about Trump in the beginning but grew increasingly disenchanted with him — especially after the pandemic struck.

As a former high school biology teacher, Whitmire was appalled by White House news conferences, in which Trump repeatedly contradicted his own health experts.

“He acts like he’s cured the virus: ‘We’ve rounded the corner, it’ll be over soon, live your life,’” Whitmire said. “Yeah, right.”

For the most part, Whitmire and his wife avoided conversations about Trump and kept focus on their common values of compassion and helping the less fortunate. But it was clear that Ann was losing faith in the president too.

Whenever her husband would turn on a presidential news conference, she would leave the room in disgust.

Anger and grief turned Whitmire into an activist. He joined Marked by COVID, a support group for people who have lost relatives or suffered other effects of the virus. On Friday at the Arizona state Capitol in Phoenix, he lit candles honoring victims and listened as a woman who survived — but lost her sister — sang a haunting rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

“I will never forget it,” he said.

Ann, still ailing, did not attend.

When they they both filled out their ballots in mid-October, he enthusiastically marked his for Biden.

She made him promise not to tell anyone who got her vote, only that it was not Trump.

— Richard Read

The militia member Michelle Gregoire stood guard outside Karl Manke’s Barber & Beauty Shop with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and a flag emblazoned “Don’t tread on me.”

Manke had no intention of following state orders to close this past May as coronavirus infections were climbing. Gregoire and dozens of other members of a militia known as the Michigan Home Guard were there to keep out the authorities.

She had long been disillusioned with both major parties. But Trump’s outsider status and unusual political style had appeal.

She reluctantly voted from him in 2016, the same year she made a failed bid for a seat in the Michigan state house as a libertarian.

“I was scared when he took office,” said Gregoire, now 29.

That changed when she got a $16-per-hour job as a school bus driver, plus a bigger tax refund. She and her husband were saving to ditch their rental in Battle Creek to buy a house big enough for them and their three children.

Gregoire was growing more political. She decided to run for a state house seat again — this time as a Republican.

Last November, she joined the militia, which claims to have at least 1,000 members and says on its website that it is preparing “for tyranny, social discord, natural disasters or anything else that may arise.”

The pandemic only fortified her faith in Trump, whose downplaying of the virus reflected her own experience.

“I don’t social distance, I don’t wear a mask,” she explained. “If anybody has COVID, I should have COVID… Nobody around me has tested positive.”

Gregoire lost badly in the August primary for the house seat. She is still jobless, saying that she has not been allowed to return to driving school buses because she is facing charges of trespassing and resisting arrest stemming from her militia’s occupation of the state Capitol in Lansing for a week in May.

But she paid off mounting credit card bills using the $2,400 her family received in checks as part of the federal stimulus package, each accompanied by a letter signed by Trump.

She was planning to vote in-person because it feels more “patriotic.”

— Jaweed Kaleem

Read More

[absumink]

April: the sky looks like it was injected by a needle-point sewing machine, my eyes look like a paint-by-number dream. nobody told me life eventually got stale, i thought the people who warned me of dullness were all crybaby misfits who were prudes towards colour. maybe i should've payed more attention in science class when they spoke about how the illusion of getting cold is really the absence of heat. my father started making buttermilk hot-cakes every Sunday, he said the weather is just right. it's really because he buys too much cream.

May: heat has crept up on me. the stale breath of the orchids down the street started seeping down the drainage pipes and up evaporated concrete. i didn't have time for lunch because I'd rather be filled till i'm full on decadence and watch plagiarized clouds till my pupils dilate. i turn fifteen and watch my skits start to wrinkle, i'm just paranoid; but maybe my life really is collapsing. my mouse pad was peeling so i ripped it right off. it's sad that i have a tendency to pick at the imperfect, that may be why i have so many scabs. summer is relaxing alone while bluebirds are basking in riverbanks, the wind feels like ghost-silk on the nape of my shivered neck. this is what it's like to be afraid of home.

June: savoury solitudes are spread across my bedsheets. i've been trying to find sweet ones for too long because i'm tired of sleeping on spiced spruce and sourdough that rots of dead roots. the shipwrecks of ice-caps have found their way to the bottom of the pond. i used to run above seaweed when i was six till i got sick of the feeling of fingers on my feet. i wear socks now so my toes don't get so pale. the ocean's sea spray stings my throat but only for cleansing because it knows im hooked on the alcohol that i've let control me. sometimes i wake up in the dead of night, watching it screech up my floorboards in red and yellow and blue. the band-aid on my left ring-finger-knuckle is gnarled and frayed from how many times i scrub it with salted soap. i've wasted eight now.

July: my brother buys a shirt that has the pattern as one of my own, similar at least kids at school scream profanities, it's for a girl. he doesn't care. i remember when he'd crack as deep as a sidewalk crevasse when someone else disagreed. i daydream about what it's like to live a life that free. my body has never looked normal to me, i've always hated how my thighs remind me of jelly fish in southern oceans and my smile as wry as bruised bone structures at age ninety-nine. gulf streams soak up too much of my black pants so I'd rather not put them on at all. but i have to, i'm insecure. speaking of, the pockets on the side of my jeans cup my hands like my mother used to. her skin was softer than this denim. but then again she washed the dishes four times a day. i'm now used to the dampness behind my knee-caps and screams under the slits of my tongue.

August: a birthday party under the saturated sun leaves me singed on the back with a ringing in my cars. my brother is growing up and it's not long until he's dead. it's like everything ?ye ever loved is evacuating from flames. i don't see them but i'm engulfed anyway, i smell nothing but God. there's grapefruit slices in the sky and my window broke its nose trying to breathe so loud i woke up. i remember when sunrises looked more cool toned and took no back to alpine mountains, now it looks like the devil under my bed has thrown up blood and burn stains. pain accumulates on my palms, when he looks at me i'm blue, no i'm red. at least, i feel like it.

September: i see him again and statistics are proof i am no longer shallow. something tickles my throat when we kiss so after i go home, i gargle with cough syrup. my teeth are putrid of grape flavouring and dye number 16185. the dog across the street finally shuts up and whimpers when the sky bleeds. it's not that i'm afraid. i mean. i am but it doesn't matter. my new desk at school smells like rotting moons and werewolves that scream at new ones, maybe they haven't yet marked their territory. tomorrow i'll find carved hearts and ill-fated fantasies. my father said i shouldn't get so caught up in love; i am too young.

October: banshees lay their heads on my shoulders and their tongues shackle to my wrist. i feel as if i can't move without waking up the guard dogs and making them shriek. everyone i ask tells me to keep going, they must not know what it's like to balance demons against your hips and listen to the secrets they say underwater. i wish my collarbones would be striking enough to strangle me like the briar brushes strangle rabbits at the edge of my neighbours yard. fences twist metal words from safe to scared from new to old and old to young. they have stories engraved in their bones. i see him at school and i puke out nervous water weeds, the ones that have sprouted inside me. he says i'm becoming broader and that i should stay small, he can pick me up that way. he sounds like a city man 3 thousand in his pocket and his name scrawled on half the town. i loved a small town boy who smelled like the cherry tree its front of my bedroom blinds, not whoever he is now.

November: i'm homeschooled and i don't see him anymore. he swore he'd come around but his excuses echo how little effort he's flossed between his gums. i guess i shouldn't be complaining but the air i'm surrounded with now tastes technicolor ebony, a muted damsel in distress, a silenced plead. snow attempts to bite at my cheeks, i bite back, except it won't budge and i do. i'd trade the clothes i'm in and the food in my stomach to go back to when things were easy. all the mistakes i made no far have been moulding between my pillow cases. i didn't mind the stench before but now that i spend my life indoors i'm starting to cough a lot more. my father won't make breakfast so I'm stuck with bread and curdled milk.

December: i don't wash my clothes. i've been wearing this sweater for a month and a half and i've only showered twice. every time i step into cold air i look at myself and wonder how anyone could love her. people look for happy girls with shrivelled hips and baby blue eyes. i am the opposite. my front door lock has rusted shut because of how no one will open it anymore. our house is a spirit home made of aged mumbles and clenched fists, the old ache of love has bludgeoned me. i forgot to colour my hair black, he said that was his favourite shade and at the time my hair was a charcoal brown. i promised i'd fix myself and he promised he'd stay so i believe that makes both of us liars. how cliché.

January: people say a new year is a fresh start but the sixty seconds between yesterday and today has done nothing but make me nauseous. i'm done hurdling over high trees trying to reach heaven. i think i'm here already. he hasn't called in 3 months and today i don't care. because people say a new year is a fresh start and maybe their fresh start can be shared. i've stopped missing sun rays because i have hope they'll come back tomorrow. if not i'll still have hope then. i refrain from cracking my knuckles. he did too. it makes me sick to my stomach, which has already been bruised. i'm not fixed but i'm getting there. every afternoon i've began blowing the snowflakes off our tree swing so i can swoon below the sky. i'm waiting for blue to move to gold and gold to wave goodbye.

Februaq: Hallmark's profit went up this month but it was no longer because of me. 'he' is just a pronoun and love is something i'm no longer familiar wills. am i complaining'? no, not any more than i am about my body. which, by the way, isn't as bad as it seems. i still feel like i'm an antiseptic to an open cut but i hope it'll pass like everything else has. a program on television told me i needed weight loss pills and wrinkle cream? i think i look fine. skin folds come with aging and maybe i'll still look beautiful its pounds over one hundred-twenty-five.

Mairh: team broke through my stained glass walls and strained my eyes to purple. everything's in a blue hue and i'm afraid i've gotten bad again. i've worked so hard to climb this peak, this prominent place of ease. i am scared that what i'm looking for at the top of the next one. the veins in my arms haven't yet grown back. they look more like agitated vines on corroded brick walls. rain has visited me again and unfortunately it's making me miss how comfortable i felt knowing i was slowly dying. alas, i'm no longer worried of the dark that looms after six. i go walk for five miles in hopes someone will strike me with their front license plate instead of passing me with their back one.

April: well, this is it. relapse is okay, recovery is better. i'm not afraid to love. yes i am vulnerable but i'm not strung together with cuttable cord. my limbs are stationed with metal pipes and i'm not as fragile as i was before. nobody told me life eventually got harder, i thought the people who warned me of the lack of light were pessimistic outlanders who were afraid of their own shadow. maybe i should've payed more attention to the world when it told me i'd eventually come home. the sky now looks like cotton candy and my eyes breathe burgundy butterflies. i've travelled further than i started, i understand that's the whole point. i find beauty in the most mysterious things, this ground beneath me has bellowed in praise. i've accepted things may become difficult, but i'm no longer afraid of the change.

— ; g.k.