#none of those poets are saying they’re better than anyone. they’re just sharing.

[dykeogenes]

besties idc how cringe you think it is, at the end of the day those “instagram poets” are sharing their work and expressing themselves while you make fun of them for daring to make the wrong kind of art, or for making it wrong. & the idea of a world where the basic human desire to create and share stories has a skill prerequisite sounds pretty pathetic to me.

[oscopelabs]

Isn’t Everything Autobiographical?: Ethan Hawke In Nine Films And A Novel by Marya Gates

When asked during his first ever on-camera interview if he’d like to continue acting, a young Ethan Hawke replied, “I don’t know if it’s going to be there, but I’d like to do it.” He then gives a guileless shrug of relief as the interview ends, wiping imaginary sweat off his brow. The simultaneous fusion of his nervous energy and poised body language will be familiar to those who’ve seen later interviews with the actor. The practicality and wisdom he exudes at such a young age would prove to be a through-line of his nearly 40-year career. In an interview many decades later, he told Ideas Tap that many children get into acting because they’re seeking attention, but those who find their calling in the craft discover that a “desire to communicate and to share and to be a part of something bigger than yourself takes over, a certain craftsmanship—and that will bring you a lot of pleasure.”

Through Hawke’s dedication to his craft, we’ve also seen his maturation as a person unfold on screen. Though none of his roles are traditionally what we think of when we think of autobiography, many of Hawke’s roles, as well as his work as a writer, suggest a sort of fictional autobiographical lineage. While these highlights in his career are not strictly autofiction, one can trace Hawke’s Künstlerromanesque trajectory from his childhood ambitions to his life now as a man dedicated to art, not greatness. 

Hawke’s first two films, Joe Dante’s sci-fi fantasy Explorers with River Phoenix and Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams, set the tone for a diverse filmography filled with popcorn fare and indie cinema in equal measure, but they also served as touchstones in his development as person drawn to self-expression through art. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s David Fear, Hawke spoke about the impact of these two films on him as an actor. When River Phoenix, his friend and co-star in Explorers, had his life cut short by a drug overdose, it hit Hawke personally. He saw from the inside what Hollywood was capable of doing to young people with talent. Hawke never attempted to break out, to become a star. He did the work he loved and kept the wild Hollywood lifestyle mostly at arm’s length. 

Like any good film of this genre, Dead Poets Society is not just a film about characters coming of age, but a film that guides the viewer as well, if they are open to its message. Hawke’s performance as repressed schoolboy Todd in the film is mostly internal, all reactions and penetrating glances, rather than grandiose movements or speeches. Through his nervy body language and searching gaze, you can feel both how closed off to the world Todd is, and yet how willing he is to let change in. Hawke has said working on this film taught him that art has a real power, that it can affect people deeply. This ethos permeates many of the characters Hawke has inhabited in his career. 

In Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) tells the boys that we read and write poetry because the human race is full of passion. He insists, “poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for.” Hawke gave a 2020 TEDTalk entitled Give Yourself Permission To Be Creative, in which he explored what it means to be creative, pushing viewers to ask themselves if they think human creativity matters. In response to his own question, he said “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems, or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of the sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life and ‘has anyone ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse, something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much, you can’t even see straight, you know, you’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art is not a luxury. It’s actually sustenance. We need it.” 

Throughout many of his roles post-Dead Poets Society, Hawke explores the nature of creativity through his embodiment of writers and musicians. Often these characters are searching for a greater purpose through art, while ultimately finding that human connection is the key. Without that human connection, their art is nothing.

We see the first germ of this attraction to portray creative people on screen with his performance as Troy Dyer in Reality Bites. As Troy Dyer, a philosophy-spouting college dropout turned grunge-band frontman in Reality Bites, Hawke was posited as a Gen-X hero. His inability to keep a job and his musician lifestyle were held in stark contrast to Ben Stiller’s yuppie TV exec Michael Grates. However in true slacker spirit, he isn’t actually committed to the art of music, often missing rehearsals, as Lelaina points out. Troy even uses his music at one point to humiliate Lelaina, dedicating a rendition of “Add It Up” by Violent Femmes to her. The lyrics add insult to injury as earlier that day he snuck out of her room after the two had sex for the first time. Troy’s lack of commitment to his music matches his inability to commit to those relationships in his life that mean the most to him. 

Reality Bites is also where he first positioned himself as one of the great orators of modern cinema.” Take this early monologue, in which he outlines his beliefs to Winona Ryder’s would-be documentarian Lelaina Pierce: “There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know, a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle, and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.” 

Hawke brings the same intense gaze to this performance as he did to Dead Poets Society, as if his eyes could swallow the world whole. But where Todd’s body language was walled-off, Troy’s is loud and boisterous. He’s quick to see the faults of those around him, but also the good things the world has to offer. It’s a pretty honest depiction of how self-centered your early-20s tend to be, where riding your own melt seems like the best option. As the film progresses, Troy lets others in, saying to Lelaina, “This is all we need. A couple of smokes, a cup of coffee, and a little bit of conversation. You, me and five bucks.”

Like the character, Hawke was in his early twenties and as he would continue to philosophize through other characters, they would age along with him and so would their takes on the world. If you only engage with anyone at one phase in their life, you do a disservice to the arc of human existence. We have the ability to grow and change as we learn who we are and become less self-centered. In Hawke’s career, there’s no better example of this than his multi-film turn as Jesse in the Before Trilogy. While the creation of Jesse and Celine are credited to writer-director Richard Linklater and his writing partner Kim Krizan, much of what made it to the screen even as early as the first film were filtered through the life experiences of Hawke and his co-star Julie Delpy. 

In a Q&A with Jess Walter promoting his most recent novel A Bright Ray of Darkness, Hawke said that Jesse from the Before Trilogy is like an alt-universe version of himself, and through them we can see the self-awareness and curiosity present in the early ET interview grow into the the kind of man Keating from Dead Poets Society urged his students to become. 

In Before Sunrise, Hawke’s Jesse is roughly the same age as Troy in Reality Bites, and as such is still in a narcissistic phase of his life. After spending several romantic hours with Celine in Vienna, the two share their thoughts about relationships. Celine says she wants to be her own person, but that she also desperately wants to love and be loved. Jesse shares this monologue, “Sometimes I dream about being a good father and a good husband. And sometimes it feels really close. But then other times it seems silly, like it would ruin my whole life. And it’s not just a fear of commitment or that I’m incapable of caring or loving because. . . I can. It’s just that, if I’m totally honest with myself, I think I’d rather die knowing that I was really good at something. That I had excelled in some way than that I’d just been in a nice, caring relationship.”

The film ends without the audience knowing if Jesse and Celine ever see each other again. That initial shock is unfortunately now not quite as impactful if you are aware of the sequels. But I think it is an astute look at two people who meet when they are still discovering who they are. Still growing. Jesse, at least, is definitely not ready for any kind of commitment. Then of course, we find out in Before Sunset that he’s fumbled his way into marriage and fatherhood, and while he’s excelling at the latter, he’s failing at the former. 

As in Reality Bites, Hawke explores the dynamics of band life again in Before Sunset, when Jesse recalls to Celine how he was in a band, but they were too obsessed with getting a deal to truly enjoy the process of making music. He says to her, “You know, it's all we talked about, it was all we thought about, getting bigger shows, and everything was just...focused on the future, all the time. And now, the band doesn't even exist anymore, right? And looking back at the... at the shows we did play, even rehearsing... You know, it was just so much fun! Now I'd be able to enjoy every minute of it.”

The filming of Before Sunset happened to coincide with the dissolution of Hawke’s first marriage. And while these films are not autobiographical, everyone involved have stated that they’ve added personal elements to their characters. They even poke fun at it in the opening scene when a journalist asks how autobiographical Jesse’s novel is. True to form, he responds with a monologue, “Well, I mean, isn’t everything autobiographical? I mean, we all see the world through our own tiny keyhole, right? I mean, I always think of Thomas Wolfe, you know. Have you ever seen that little one page note to reader in the front of Look Homeward, Angel, right? You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, he says that we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, and that, anybody who sits down to write is gonna use the clay of their own life, that you can’t avoid that.”

While Before Sunset was shot in 2003, released in 2004 and this monologue refers to the fictional book within the trilogy entitled This Time, Hawke would take this same approach more than a decade later with his novel A Bright Ray of Darkness.

In the novel, Hawke crafts a quasi-autobiographical story, using his experience in theater to work through the perspective he now has on his failed marriage to Uma Thurman. Much like Jesse in Before Sunset, Hawke is reluctant to call the book autobiographical, but the parallels to his own divorce are evident. And as Jesse paraphrased Wolfe, isn’t everything we do autobiographical? In the book, movie star William Harding has blown up his seemingly picture-perfect marriage with a pop star by having an affair while filming on location in South Africa. The book, structured in scenes and acts like a play, follows the aftermath as he navigates his impending divorce, his relationship with his small children, and his performance as Hotspur in a production of Henry IV on Broadway. 

Throughout much of the novel, William looks back at the mistakes he made that led to the breakup of his marriage. He’s now in his 30s and has the clarity to see how selfish he was in his 20s. Hawke, however, was in his forties while writing the book. Through the layers of hindsight, you can feel how Hawke has processed not just the painful emotional growth spurt of his 20s, but also the way he can now mine the wisdom that comes from true reflection. Still, as steeped as the novel is in self-reflection, it does not claim to have all the answers. In fact, it offers William, as well as the readers, more questions to contemplate than it does answers.

The wisdom to know that you will never quite understand everything is broached by Hawke early in the third film in the Before Trilogy, 2013’s Before Midnight. At this point in their love story, Jesse’s marriage has ended and he and Celine are parents to twin girls. Jesse has released two more books: That Time, which recounts the events of the previous film, and Temporary Cast Members of a Long-Running But Little Seen Production of a Play Called Fleeting. Before Midnight breaks the bewitching spell of the first two films by adding more cast members and showing the friction that comes with an attempt to grow old with someone. When discussing his three books, a young man says the title of his third is too long, Jesse says it wasn’t as well loved, and an older professor friend says it’s his best book because it’s more ambitious. It seems Linklater and company already knew how the departure of this third film might be regarded by fans. But it is this very departure that shows their commitment to honestly showing the passage of time and our relationship to it. 

About halfway through the film Jesse and Celine depart the Greek villa where they have been spending the summer, and we finally get a one-on-one conversation like we’re used to with these films. In one exchange, I feel they summarize the point of the entire trilogy, and possibly Hawke’s entire ethos: 

Jesse: Every year, I just seem to get a little bit more humbled and more overwhelmed about all the things I’m never going to know or understand. 

Celine: That’s what I keep telling you. You know nothing!

Jesse: I know, I know! I'm coming around! 

[Celine and Jesse laugh.] 

Celine: But not knowing is not so bad. I mean, the point is to be looking, searching. To stay hungry, right?

Throughout the series, Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke explore what they call the “transient nature of everything.” Jesse says his books are less about time and more about perception. It’s the rare person who can assess themselves or the world around them acutely in the present. For most of us, it takes time and self-reflection to come to any sort of understanding about our own nature. Before Midnight asks us to look back at the first two films with honesty, to remove the romantic lens with which they first appeared to us. It asks us to reevaluate what romance even truly is. 

Hawke explores this same concept again in the 2018 romantic comedy Juliet, Naked. In this adaptation of the 2009 Nick Hornby novel, Hawke plays a washed-up singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. He had a big hit album, Juliet, in the early ‘90s and then disappeared into obscurity. Rose Bryne plays a woman named Annie whose longtime boyfriend Duncan is obsessed with the singer and the album, stuck on the way the bummer songs about a bad breakup make him feel. As the film begins, Annie reveals that she thinks she’s wasted 15 years of her life with this schmuck. This being a rom-com, we know that Hawke and Byrne’s characters will eventually meet-cute. What’s so revelatory about the film is its raw depiction of how hard it is for many to reassess who they really are later in life. 

Duncan is stuck as the self-obsessed, self-pitying person he likely was when Annie first met him, but she reveals he was so unlike anyone else in her remote town that she looked the other way for far too long. Now it’s almost too late. By chance, she connects with Crowe and finds a different kind of man.

See, when Crowe wrote Juliet, he also was a navel-gazing twentysomething whose emotional development had not yet reached the point of being able to see both sides in a romantic entanglement. He worked through his heartbreak through art, and though it spoke to other people, he didn’t think about the woman or her feelings on the subject. In a way, Crowe’s music sounds a bit like what Reality Bites’s Troy Dyer may have written, if he ever had the drive to actually work at his music. Eventually, it’s revealed that Crowe walked away from it all when Julie, the woman who broke his heart, confronted him with their child—something he was well aware of, but from which he had been running away. Faced with the harsh reality of his actions and the ramifications they had on the world beyond his own feelings, he ran even farther away from responsibility. In telling the story to Annie, he says, “I couldn’t play any of those songs anymore, you know? After that, I just... I couldn’t play these insipid, self-pitying songs about Julie breaking my heart. You know, they were a joke. And before I know it, a couple of decades have gone by and some doctor hands me... hands me Jackson. I hold him, you know, and I look at him. And I know that this boy. . . is my last chance.”

When we first meet Crowe, he’s now dedicated his life to raising his youngest son, having at this point messed up with four previous children. The many facets of parenthood is something that shows up in Hawke’s later body of work many times, in projects as wholly different as Brooklyn’s Finest, Before Midnight, Boyhood, Maggie’s Plan, First Reformed, and even his novel A Bright Ray of Darkness. In each of these projects, decisions made by Hawke’s characters have a big impact on their children’s lives. These films explore the financial pressures of parenthood, the quirks of blended families, the impact of absent fathers, and even the tragedy of a father’s wishes acquiesced without question. Hawke’s take on parenthood is that of flawed men always striving to overcome the worst of themselves for the betterment of the next generation, often with mixed results. 

Where Juliet, Naked showed a potential arc of redemption for a father gone astray, First Reformed paints a bleaker portrait. Hawke plays Pastor Toller, a man of the cloth struggling with his own faith who attempts to counsel an environmental activist whose impending fatherhood has driven him to suicidal despair. Toller himself is struggling under the weight of fatherhood, believing he sent his own son to die a needless death in a morally bankrupt war. Sharing the story, he says “My father taught at VMI. I encouraged my son to enlist. It was the family tradition. Like his father, his grandfather. Patriotic tradition. My wife was very opposed. But he enlisted against her wishes. . . .  Six months later he was killed in Iraq. There was no moral justification for this conflict. My wife could not live with me after that. Who could blame her? I left the military. Reverend Jeffers at Abundant Life Church heard about my situation. They offered me a position at First Reformed. And here I am.” How do we carry the weight of actions that affect lives that are not even our own? 

If Peter Weir set the father figure template in Dead Poets Society, and Paul Schrader explored the consequences of direct parental influence on their children’s lives, director Richard Linklater subverts the idea of a mentor-guide in Boyhood, showing both parents are as lost as the kid himself. When young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) asks his dad (Hawke) what’s the point of everything, his reply is “I sure as shit don’t know. Nobody does. We’re all just winging it.” As the film ends, Mason sits atop a mountain with a new friend he’s made in the dorms discussing time. She says that everyone is always talking about seize the moment—carpe diem!—but she thinks it’s the other way around. That the moments seize us. In Reality Bites, Troy gets annoyed at Lelaina’s constant need to “memorex” everything with her camcorder, yet Boyhood is a film about capturing a life over a 12-year period. The Before Trilogy checks in on Jesse and Celine every nine years. Hawke’s entire career. in fact, has captured his growth from an awkward teen to a prolific artist and devoted father, a master of his craft and philosopher at heart. 

[propaganda-for-poets]

Bestie pls can I have some Chameron headcanons?? I'm desperate honestly it's a problem. You don't have to btw.

bestie. of course. my old newsies mutuals may have noticed that i do this thing where i enter a fandom and suddenly i can only talk about one specific ship, yeah that ship here happens to be chameron and i am always more than happy to talk about them.

let's just do some nice happy headcannons today bc a couple days ago i wrote a fic about charlie leaving welton and i've decided i officially need a break from angst, alright

IN FACT YOU KNOW WHAT let's make them post-welton !!!!!! y'know after all the poets including neil graduate and keating never gets fired as always since that is the canon ending of the movie, nothing bad happens ever.

okay so.

charlie and cameron have been rooming together since year 1, it's kinda the end of an era that they're now both supposed to move into separate apartments and they're both really sad about it but refuse to say anything

you think this wouldn't be a problem for two people who have been dating for a year and shared a dorm since they were children, so they can easily move in together, but this is charlie and cameron communication kings so obviously they're being stubborn and aren't saying anything

and they just spend their last weeks at welton all like

"yeah yeah i wonder who's gonna help you find your stuff when you're not living with me anymore,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,cause like you won't. in a few weeks you won't."

"come on stop studying and talk to me i'm bored" "well soon you won't be able to talk to me whenever you want. because i will be in a different place. like i'll no longer be around 24/7."

"you know you better treasure these last moments you get to see me. cause after we graduate who knows when you'll see me again,,,,," "okay, charlie that's a little dramatic, you're not leaving the country-" "i'll be gone, cam, very soon. forever." "you won't be-" "i mean god knows where i'll be-"

it ends up being charlie who asked (i wrote about that here !) and so we have charlie and cameron sharing an apartment :)

both of them get into harvard because,,, that's welton boys for you of course literally the entire school makes the ivy league. cameron's literally smart as shit he can make whatever school he wants and charlie,,, well charlie has a lot of money.

i'm kidding i'm kidding, charlie's no doofus and attending welton is already a good look for any university, charlie can definitely make harvard on his own if he could survive welton but y'know being filthy rich wasn't exactly a disadvantage

charlie will always show cameron off all like "my boyfriend goes to harvard you know !!!!!!!!" and cameron's like "char,,,, so do you,,,,,,,"

but y'all don't care about who goes where i'm aware of this, let's get into the apartment shenanigans

okay, sharing a dorm for years in welton definitely had its advantages because there's none of those annoying habits of someone's you only start noticing after you're under the same roof, like leaving their clothes on the floor or playing music too loudly, they're already aware of all that stuff, they don't care anymore

they do have their own rooms now, but it doesn't matter a lot because they keep just falling asleep together on the couch.

most of the time cameron will just wake up in the middle of the night and attempt to take charlie to his room but he's learned overtime that charlie will just whine and complain until he stays with him so he ends up just taking him to his own room in the first place

slowly it becomes less "cameron's room" and more "their room", the other room just kinda stays there.

cameron is a GOD TIER cook we'e been over this but somehow they only take advantage of that skill of his on really??? questionable occasions?????

like they'll order chinese from the place down the street for dinner but if cameron wakes up to find charlie in the kitchen at 3 am munching on a piece of toast he'll be like "okay let's make some onion soup."

midnight snacks are for amateurs. here we have midnight meals.

they bake together a lot, though. whenever they find time cameron will just whip out a recipe and they'll bake something together, and they'll be very couple-y and disgusting while doing it too

of course it always resorts in them making a big mess

"charlie. charie stop putting your hands in the brownie mix."

"okay, fine."

"charlie, your hand's still in there, stop it."

"or else what, what're you gonna d- WH- DID YOU JUST THROW AN EGG AT ME WHAT THE FUCK"

then they'll have to spend the entire afternoon cleaning up the kitchen

"what're you laughing about now, dalton?"

"you have flour on your cheek."

"and whose fault is that?"

"stop being annoying, you're cute right now"

"oh yeah?"

"mhm, yeah."

cameron overworks himself a lot and a lot of times charlie will get up late at night to find him still studying

he'll always go up to him like "cam, tf. it's four in the morning. come to bed."

"i just have to get this finished."

"well, okay, i'll just stay up with you until you go to sleep."

"charlie that's not healthy you need to-,,,,,,,,,,oh you're evil, dalton, threatening me with your own well-being."

"damn right i am, now go to sleep."

okay we all know charlie. we know how he is. so it's no surprise to anyone that it didn't take long for him to bring a random stray animal into the house

cameron just comes back from class to see charlie with a tiny ginger car.

"cam, you're back-"

"nope. not happening, take it back."

"hey, it is a she, and i love her now."

"no, no you don't, she's going back."

"i can't i'm attached to her! look at her! she's adorable, she's my new favorite ginger."

",,,,,, okay now she's definitely going back."

she did not go back.

charlie named her arabella and cameron insisted she was annoying and always wanted attention and wouldn't let him study

"hey, you said the exact same things about me and you love me now, give her time!"

"i don't love you right now."

"well, i love you a lot. and i love her too, she's part of the house now."

",,,,,,,god, fine, you're lucky you're my weakness. i'll tolerate her."

one time charlie returned from class to find cameron sleeping on the couch with arabella on his lap.

he never hears the end of it once he's awake

"so, how's hating her going for you, richard?"

"shut up, she's warm."

"so you no longer despise my cat? because she's warm?"

"first of all she's our cat i don't clean cat fur all over the house for her to be your cat and,,,, she's not all that bad."

[needs-to-stop-looking-at-valves]

Scenario to get creative with: Skyquake taking Dreadwing to brothel to "get loose" a bit. ;)

So I found this buried in my asks, and I’m shook because this is actually a VERY fun idea, so let’s fucking go, let’s get carried away with this fuckin idea.

“Ah ah ah, optics closed, brother.”

Dreadwing was usually the one in charge of their creation day celebrations,  but this year, Skyquake wanted to take the reigns. Dreadwing, being a bit of a pushover for his little brother, allowed him to take this one. He knew Cybertron better than he did, so he was expecting something new, something exciting, especially given his tone. Dreadwing allowed his little brother to guide him, optics offline and walking to Primus knows where. Then he finally stopped.

“Okay, open!”

Dreadwing looked around. A bit of an odd building. It didn’t have anything on the outside, apart from a glowing neon sign, depicting a fem blowing a kiss. Dreadwing raised a brow.

“Okay, you got me. What is this?”

“The one thing that makes this place a million times better than Caminus.”

Skyquake paused, clearly wanting his brother to take a moment to think. It then clicked.

“Brother! Are you telling me we’re at a BROTHEL? That’s not even legal-”

“On CAMINUS. Here in Cyberton, they’re quite popular, and this one is the best of the best.”

“Primus sake, how many of these have you seen?”

“I’m not flinging myself at any pretty fem I see, brother. I just like supporting local businesses. Besides, you’ve been so tense with work lately, you deserve just one night to relax. Come on, you trust your brother, do you not?”

Dreadwing hesitated. Skyquake had promised he was going to pay for the evening, and his intentions seemed honest. It felt rude to say no, as uncomfortable as he was. He sighed.

“Fine. Just, make this easy for me, and...be in a different room when you do your thing.”

“Because you need to see my aft when I’m giving it to a fem.”

“Brother.”

“Sorry, sorry, just trying to ease the mood. Come on, follow me.”

Skyquake pushed past the front door, and were met with mechs and fems alike, greeting them loudly. Dreadwing let his brother walk up to the counter as he looked around. There was quite a pretty bunch of mechs and fems around. Freshly waxed and painted, some in the laps of paying customers, some bringing out drinks, and quite a few giving him the optic.

“So, in short, we’re here to celebrate!”

Dreadwing just tuned in to what Skyquake was saying. He was talking to an older fem, who was quite fetching herself. Claws that looked like daggers, and optics that glistened in greed, she looked like she’d have her fair share of prey. She gave him a look over, and chuckled.

“Mmm. Handsome thing, that one is. First time in here, darling?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re from Caminus, so this is...different.”

“Ah yes, these kinds of places are a big no no there, if I recall. Anyhow, don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of you both. A friend of Skyquake’s is a friend of ours, afterall.”

Skyquake shrugged as his brother gave him the side optic. While there was nothing wrong about visiting this place, Dreadwing was still kink shaming. Skyquake chuckled.

“Don’t look so nervous. They’re all quite kind, I assure you. Now, I’m paying for everything afterwards, I don’t want him to see just how much this is. He’s nosey like that.”

Dreadwing turned his helm away, a bit flustered to be caught in the act of peeking.

“I’m not nosey. I’m...observant.”

“Uh huh. Anyway, Is Maxima here tonight?”

“Yep, you’re lucky, she JUST got in. I’ll see if she’s willing to see you.”

“Maxima?”

Dreadwing found it odd that he was so specific on this particular fem. Skyquake scoffed.

“She’s just a fem. Don’t read too much into it.”

“You mentioned her by name, a bit late for that.”

The fem behind the counter chuckled, seeming to type something on her data pad, before leaning over at Dreadwing.

“Okay handsome, what do YOU like? You lookin’ for a wine and dine type, or a wham bam thank you ma’am?”

Dreadwing stammered. What a question to be asked. Skyquake snorted.

“We can’t afford taking ANYONE out tonight, so tell Cheesecake we gotta pass on that front. Just let him meet a few, see who he clicks with.”

“Can do. And Maxima just told me she’s got time to see you, so head to room one fifteen, you know where that is. Big blue, you’re with me.”

“Please don’t leave me alone. Not that you’re uh, not good company ma’am.”

Skyquake rolled his optics, patting his brother on his shoulder.

“If I didn’t trust them, we wouldn’t be here.”

Dreadwing sighed, before nodding. Skyquake left him to Primus knows where, and Dreadwing followed the fem ahead of him. She opened the door to a reasonable sized room, and the large couches signified it was meant as a sort of waiting room.

“Now, take a seat, we’ll have a few girls and boys pop in, see who you like. Once you find someone, you just come and give me a holler outside. Don’t be nervous, now.”

Dreadwing sat down, and let her leave. He was alone in this room now, and he felt tense. He had the occasional bout of intercourse, but that was SO long ago. Relationships of any sort just felt...odd to him now, as if the only other bot he could interact with, was his own brother. It was a bit sad, if he thought about it for too long. Enough so, that meeting all these mechs and fems did nothing for him. Some of the fems were pretty and sweet, some of the mechs were charming and handsome, but none of them really caught his optics. He was about ready to call it quits, when one remained.

“Hello. I’m Orion Pax.”

He was a small, cute little thing. Amongst the shiny paint jobs, fresh wax, and fish nets, he stuck out like a sore servo. Dreadwing couldn’t help but look at him up and down, perplexed.

“I’m sorry, you...work here?”

“As a part time job, yes. It’s nice to have a little extra credits to spend on the weekends. May I sit next to you?”

All the other’s did the same thing, but for some reason, this made him...nervous. He nodded however, scooting a bit to allow him to sit.

“Everyone is talking about how difficult you are to please. I take it you aren’t quite like your brother.”

“Primus I should hope not.”

That made little Orion chuckle. He pulled out a data pad from his sub space.

“You seem a bit tense. Poetry always relaxes me, personally. Would It help to read you something I wrote?”

“Please, I do love my fair share of poetry.”

The little bot cleared his vocal processor.

“Migrating answers

Beast of love discovers all

Bargain intertwined.”

“That’s...rather lovely. Did you write that?”

“Yes actually. I dabble in poetry in my free time, and more often than not, my sweetspark double checks my work.”

“Does...your sweetspark know you do this?”

“Of course. And he’s fine with it. He isn’t...around a lot, and sometimes you just need a big mech to-”

His face suddenly flared, and he hid it past his data pad.

“I..shouldn’t have said that, ignore it.”

Dreadwing chuckled, pushing the data pad down. What pretty optics, this little bot has.

“There’s...nothing really wrong with that, honestly. You like big mechs, and I like...well, you quite frankly.”

There was an odd moment of silence between them, before Dreadwing pressed his lips against his. There was no resistance, no uncomfortable tension. Dreadwing wanted him, and he clearly felt the exact same. Orion pulled away, cheeks still aflame. Even if this was just some kind of act to draw in more customers, Dreadwing didn’t care. It FELT honest, and the shy little poet angle was adorable. He was cute, innocent, and Dreadwing wanted to frag him till his processor malfunctioned. Orion clearly felt the same way, given how he lingered for a moment, before tapping his servo.

“I...have to go. Don’t forget my name.”

Dreadwing wanted to just take him here and now, but he was not the kind of mech to break etiquette, especially in new places. He waited for little Orion to walk out of the room, waited a moment, and the fem from before popped her helm in.

“So, you got your pick of the litter. Anyone-”

“Orion Pax. The small fellow.”

Realizing he sounded a bit too eager, he cleared his vocal processor. How desperate was he? Not even letting her finish her sentence. She chuckled, before motioning him to follow her once again.

“Let’s get you a room big guy. Feel like if I keep you two apart any longer, you’ll start breaking doors down.”

Dreadwing slipped past the other mechs and fems, and was brought to another room. It felt so much more intimate in here than the previous room. A nice, soft looking berth, soft music being played in the background, and the best part? A little Orion Pax. Standing there, in a rather thin looking night gown. The fem chuckled, nudging his side.

“Don’t let his size fool you. He’s sturdy.”

She slipped out, and Orion groaned in humiliation.

“I’m sorry about that, she uh, has no idea what she’s talking about.”

“Are you saying you’re NOT sturdy?”

Dreadwing had no idea where that question came from. He delivered it so eagerly, it made BOTH of their faces feel flushed. Orion rubbed the back of his helm, finally putting his gaze back upon him.

“I...I mean, I wouldn’t say THAT…”

Dreadwing had no idea he’d be so easily wooed by someone so small. Orion gestured to the berth.

“Do you uh, want a massage? We usually do that to kinda ease customers into it.”

“I don’t need easing in, to be frank.”

Dreadwing had no idea what came over him. He was on Orion like some hound dog, lifting him off the floor, and practically flinging him onto berth. He pressed his lips against his, and Orion did nothing to fight it. His little servos ran across his chest, dipped in between those nooks and crannies of his armor. Dreadwing savored those touches. Savored the way he groaned into his lips, savored the way he smelled even. Orion pulled away, servos lightly caressing his face. 

“You...should open your spike panel. A big mech like you needs to be taken care of.”

It might have been just sweet talk, but Primus this little one had such a way with words. Dreadwing pushed off of him, popping open his spike panel. He was almost embarrassed, how pressurized his spike was already. There was greed in his optics, and he sat up, using his little servos to grab and stroke his girth.

“Something...tells me you aren’t as innocent as I thought previously.”

Orion chuckled, rubbing his cheek against the thick, eager spike.

“I...just like big mechs. And you’re as big as they come. You deserve to feel SO good.”

Orion pushed the tip past his lips, and Dreadwing felt himself tense up. Such a little mouth, with such a wanting, skilled glossa. His glossa was small, just like the rest of him, but with the way it circled around him, the way he let the drool dribble down his base. Dreadwing couldn’t help but have his helm toss back as the little mech only took him further. This wasn’t the first time he took a spike that size, he doubted it’d be the last. After a good, solid moment of lubing up his spike, Orion pulled away. Orion laid on his back, opening both his legs, and his valve panel. He made quite the show; playing and kneading at his already soaked folds. Dreadwing couldn’t help but stroke himself, and that seemed to only egg on the little bot.

“If I can be lewd for a moment...I want you to frag me as hard as you can. I want to feel that big, throbbing spike inside of me. And YOU want my little valve.”

He was right. Dreadwing leaned forward, putting his servo over his little chest, as if he’d try to run away from him.

“When you say as hard as you can, I do hope you understand I do not take that lightly.”

“Oh trust me, I know what I’m asking for. Come on big mech. Give it to me. Use me. Fuck me.”

Such pretty words, they could be poetry in itself. Dreadwing no longer hesitated. He pushed himself past the lips, and instead of taking it slowly, Dreadwing just stuffed himself right inside, fully and totally. Orion threw his helm back, little servos clinging to his back desperately.

“Are you hurt? Should I-”

“Don’t you pull out. Don’t you dare.”

That was all the permission Dreadwing needed. He was done being nice. He started thrusting into him, his hips clanging against his own. Dreadwing wasn’t merciful; having enough force in his thrust to move the berth itself. Orion’s mouth was a tool for evil, first being used to charm him into this berth, now using it to arouse him further. The way he cried out for him, the way he cried for more, the way he screamed, as if for mercy. Dreadwing kept his face shoved into that sweet, soft neck of his, and the little one wasn’t even spared his bites. Orion’s breath was hot, husky in his audial.

“You can bite me harder, big boy. Take a bite out of me, like I know you want.”

A good, harsh bite not only made his neck bleed, but made Orion squeal in ecstasy. Dreadwing knew he wasn’t going to last very long, not with a tight valve like this, not with a mech so hungry for his touch. When Orion grabbed fist fulls of his aft (with a rather surprising grip), he was forced into an overload. He panicked, realizing he was still inside, before he pulled out. He ended up showering the little mech in his pink, hot load. The sight of the little mech bathed in the afterglow, was enough to make Dreadwing want him yet again. Orion wiped his face with his servo, and licked it off, sighing in content.

“You...REALLY needed that, didn’t you?”

“More...than I thought, honestly. I apologize, I don’t know what’s the polite thing to do from here. Am I supposed to...give you a tip, or-”

“You gave me a LOT more than a tip, big mech.”

Orion chuckled, one hand leaning down to help ease fluids out of his gaping valve. This little mech was so quick witted, so eager to pull him further into affection. Dreadwing was about to go for a second round, when there was a knock at their door.

“Time’s up you two. Everything alright?”

“Just fine! He was just saying he wants to buy more time.”

Dreadwing was about to speak against that, as he said no such thing, until Orion held onto his helm, taking a nip out of his chin. Dreadwing lightly gulped.

“I...suppose I could use more time. It IS my creation day, after all.”

“Good to hear! Go on you two, I’ll check in later!”

As the voice left, Orion chuckled.

“Now that we have just a little more time...how do you feel about letting me at YOUR valve?”

-------------------------------------------

Dreadwing lost track of time as he walked out of that room. His brother had been waiting there for what seemed like a while, given the relief on his face.

“Primus sake, there you are! You were in there for SO long, thought someone was killing you or something.”

“I...apologize. I lost track of time.”

Skyquake chuckled, shaking his helm.

“Alright, let’s see the damage here…”

Skyquake handled the final bill for them both, and Dreadwing was too lost in his thoughts to peek over his shoulder. He did some rather...embarrassing things in there. Sure he liked it all, but he didn’t like figuring out all these secret kinks he seemed to have. No matter.

What were the odds he was going to see him again, anyway?

[lovemesomesurveys]

[yourheaventonight]

What color is your couch? They’re gray.

How do you normally wear your hair? It’s always up in a messy bun.

Alcohol = the ultimate truth serum. Yes or no? Some people tend to get too talkative and comfortable and say things they probably wouldn’t normally. 

Are you a righty or a lefty? I’m a righty.

Do you own a pair of handcuffs? No.

Do flying bugs creep you out? Ew, yes. ALL bugs creep me out, but flying definitely doesn’t help cause they can fly right at me. lsflsfjldkfj

Can a girl love sex without being a whore? ...Yes. Loving sex doesn’t make you a whore. I think a lot of people love sex. I’m not going to judge people’s sex lives. Also, I just don’t use those type of terms. 

Would you ever be in a long-distance relationship? I don’t know.

Do lemons sound appealing to you at the moment? I like lemon flavored desserts, but I don’t eat actual lemons.

What size bed do you have? A full.

When was the last time you brushed your teeth? Yesterday. Before you judge, it’s only 6:36AM so I haven’t done so yet today.

Can you sleep in total darkness? Nooo. I have to sleep with my TV on for some light and sound.

What piercings do you have? Just my earlobes.

Any tattoos? Nope.

Is your glass half empty or half full? My glass is broken.

Are frogs cute or gross? The slimy thing isn’t so cute.

Do you ever wish you were born in a different century? No.

Which country's culture interests you most? Things from all different kinds of cultures interest me. <<<

What kind of guys/girls do you go for? None for the past few years...  I forget what it feels like to be crushing or have an interest in someone in that way. It feels like forever ago since I’ve last felt that.

Do you regret something you have no real control over? Yes.

Do you enjoy writing? I used to.

What do you have as your screen saver? My screen just goes black after like 15 minutes. 

Do you have a webcam? It’s built into my MacBook. I’ve never used it, though.

Do you still have your tonsils? Yes.

Aren't beetles fucking grody? Ugh, what’s with the bug questions in the past two surveys I’ve done. ALL BUGS ARE GROSS AND CREEPY.

How do you feel about Oprah? I’ve never been obsessed like a lot of people seemed/seem to be.

^ What the fuck kind of name is Oprah anyway? It reminds me of okra. Don’t gotta attack her name.

Would you ever pierce your tongue twice? Like, one right next to the other? I wouldn’t pierce it at all.

Do you like bonfires? Yes. I’ve always wanted to have one on the beach.

What makes your skin crawl? BUGS.

What's your favorite flower? I don’t really have one.

Look up Community Property by Steel Panther. Listen to the whole song. No.

Share your thoughts here. --

Have you ever dyed your hair an unnatural color? I’ve been dyeing it red the past few years. 

What's for dinner? I’m not sure, yet. 

Have you ever had someone draw a picture of you before? I’ve had those caricature drawings done before.

What confuses you most? Life.

Do you like monkeys? Sure. 

Does anything on your body hurt at the moment? Of course.

Have you ever been called a bad influence? Not that I know of.

What book are you reading right now? Cold Highway by Mary Stone.

Any bands you would like to recommend to me? Hmm.

What makes you laugh? My doggo.

What time is it? 6:47AM.

Doesn't intentionally bad grammar annoy you? Yes.

What type of person can you not stand? Arrogant, cocky, close-minded, very opinionated and judgmental people.

Care to share what song is stuck in your head? There isn’t one, currently.

What languages can you speak? Just English fluently, but I know some Spanish.

Pirates are better than ninjas. Fact or fiction? I’m gonna go with pirates cause it reminds of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, one of my favorite rides.

There is always a bit of truth behind every 'j/k', yes? Not always, but sometimes I do think that. Especially if it’s said more than once.

What do you get complimented on most often? Nothing.

What's the weirdest compliment you've ever received? Someone apparently thought I had polio because I’m in a wheelchair and told me that I looked pretty for someone with polio. Uh...

Who/what was the last person/thing to make you blush? I don’t recall.

What kind of muffins do you like? Banana (without the nut), blueberry, cinnamon streusel, lemon poppyseed, chocolate chip, birthday cake. Dang, I want a muffin now.

Do you like warm or cold weather more? Cold, hands down.

Don't you hate it when sites go under maintenance and you cant get access? If it’s something I need access to at that moment, like typically that tends to happen with websites I pay my bills on. 

What form(s) of art do you enjoy most? Literature, film, music.

Piercings are sexy. Truth or lie? I’m not into them.

Have you ever worn a French maid costume? No.

Have you ever had couscous? I don’t know what that is.

Do you like listening to yourself talk? Ew, no.

When was the last time you were congested? Hm. It’s been awhile.

Do you wear eyeliner? When I actually wear makeup, yes, but I haven’t worn any makeup in like 4 years.

Do you show everyone your tongue when something turns it another color? No, I don’t feel the need to do that.

Who is the greatest writer alive, in your opinion? There’s countless great writers. How about the greatest painter? There’s countless great painters. I may not have a favorite myself, but I can acknowledge that there’s a lot of beautiful art pieces out there.

The greatest musician? There’s countless great musicians. 

The greatest poet? There’s countless great poets. I don’t read poetry, but again I can acknowledge there’s a lot of great poets out there.

Have any good scar stories you want to share? I don’t consider any of them “good.”

Are you pierced anywhere below the waist? No, I’m not.

Facebook games: Fun or brain-frying? I don’t play any.

Do you dance well? Not at all.

Are you into anyone at the moment? No.

Do you touch yourself at night? No.

What body parts can you 'crack'? My knuckles, wrists, arms, neck.

What color do you wear most often? Black.

What about the opposite sex drives you crazy? (The good kinda crazy.) It’s been so long since I’ve been interested in someone or felt that way.

What candle/incense flavors do you enjoy most? (Yes I said flavors. :P) Autumnal scents from Bath & Body Works and patchouli. 

Do you complain a lot? In surveys and on Twitter, but I keep to myself a lot in person. I could complain a lot to those around me if I wanted to, but I don’t because I don’t want to be a burden, annoying, or bring them down. I’ve known people who constantly complained and it gets to be a lot real quick. It’s draining. So,  I just suffer in silence, ha.

What do you do when you're mad? Shutdown and cry.

Have you ever thought you could 'save' someone? No. 

Do you have any 'special' talents? *Wiggles eyebrows* Nope.

Yankee makes the best candles. Yes or no? Kinda overpriced.

What do you do when you can't sleep? I have a nightly routine that consists of scrolling through Tumblr, doing surveys, and listening to ASMR for that reason.

Have you ever liked someone you barely knew? Little crushes, yeah.

When was the last time you felt like a creeper? I don’t feel like a creeper.

Who seems to have taken up permanent residence in your thoughts? Not a who, but certain things.

Black & Milds: yay or nay? I don’t smoke.

Is smoking a turn-on for you? No.

Do you get excited or scared when you see a thunderstorm brewing? I love ‘em. We don’t get them often here, though.

Speaking of brew, when's the last time you had a beer? Almost 10 years ago. If I’m talkin’ brew I’m talking coffee.

What sub-genre of metal do you enjoy most? I don’t listen to metal.

Do you need to shave? No.

How do you feel about Obama? This question has come up in a lot of the surveys I’ve done lately.

Do you own any bandanas? Nope.

What's your favorite gangster movie? I don’t watch any.

Who/what makes your heart race? Anxiety.

How do you think I should end this survey? You just did.

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Αιώνια αγάπη (DT AU), pt. 12

12: Once a god falls from grace

Summary: Apollo and Hermes work on their plan to take vengeance against the gods, but a lapse in judgement will condemn them both. More than one reunion will come their way unexpectedly.

Warnings: angst, mentions of sexual abuse, murder

Word count: 3.2k

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Special thanks to @godlydolans for being in the story as Yashi Singh!

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Αιώνια αγάπη (DT Modern Greek god/frat! AU) MASTERLIST    

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One year later ~ Mount Olympus

"Bring. Him. In." Zeus spoke through gritted teeth, the thunder rumbling and echoing thought the halls.

All around, the gods have gathered to bear witness to what may very well be unheard of in their ranks. Each of them wear a shocked look on their faces, some of them disgust and others anger as well. None of them truly care for the victim, not anyone but two individuals who stood by the throne, both saddened and furious, demanding retribution for their pain.

Only a moment after, a portal opens, the white lights dancing as a guard steps through, another one following, both of them holding tightly onto a muscled arm as they pull the offender through the portal and throw him forward, down on his knees.

Shaking slightly, the prisoner looks up, his defiance still clear to any who cared to glance his way, the position he's locked in unnerving him, but there are no signs of any regret on his face.

Hair tousled into a perfect mess even now, even when his life hangs in the balance. His eyes are dark, like the moon eclipsed and snuffed out any light inside. His chiselled face is bloodied and bruised, darkened by the dirt of the holding room. The only clear sign of his identity are his skull pendant on the gold chain around his waist and the messenger wings he slowly grew out over the past year he's been home.

"What have you say for yourself, boy?!" Zeus raises his voice, his brown orbs sparking blue as his heartbreak is abundantly clear.

"What possessed you to kill a god? The ruler of the underworld? Your uncle?!" Zeus stepped closer, the bolt of lighting in his hand nearly hitting Hermes as his father fought the restrain Poseidon provided for him. His other uncle, the supposedly kind one...the rapist as Hermes saw him. Just as his father is.

"Someone had to be god enough to protect Persephone from him. You obviously weren't." Hermes spat, his bloody spit tainting the purity of marble stone before him.

Poseidon stepped forward, his black curls a mess as he obviously pulled at the ends, his stormy blue eyes enchanting to any man or woman who glimpses them, even for a moment. His beard trimmed, he looked comely as ever. His body is what poets write about, his white - human shirt fitting him perfectly.

But his eyes didn't enchant Hermes as he glared his way, the blue skies turning into flames as their gazes met.

"I say we kill him. He's had no trouble dealing out his own punishment. Let him taste the nothingness death provides." Disgusted, Poseidon turns around to the rest of the gods, his arms open as he gestures - such a politically charged individual, Hermes thought. Befitting someone like him, for he did crave the seat Zeus held for so long. But then again, his proposal had showed his violent, ill tempered tendencies are still at large. He could never pace himself.

"Rip him to pieces or perhaps punish him as we did Prometheus. He gets his liver eaten by eagles every day for an eternity, chained to a rock as the stink of his own rotting flesh hits him over and over again in the scorching heat. Something like that?" Poseidon lets a smile slip, his words vicious as is his character. Such beauty on the outside, but a venomous snake on the inside.

"Or you can recognize you've made a mistake by not eliminating Hades in the first place and give Hermes the Underworld as he deserved it. He did what none of you could. He saved Persephone!" Apollo steps in from the shadows, unable to watch his brother be scrutinized by the rest of them. Everyone thinks they're better than he is, but they are silent partners to each other's crimes. Rarely anyone had ever been punished as severely as he and his brother were.

Or so he thought. The year he spent on Mount Olympus has been quite illuminating.

A year ago ~ Mount Olympus

"SHE'S GOT KIDS! Bro!" Hermes falls straight to his ass, ignoring the searing pain spreading up his spine as result. He felt his lungs collapse, the breath trapped inside, unable to come out as he chokes on his own spit and clutches his chest.

"Bro, I'm having a heart attack! Can gods have heart attacks?!" Hermes proceeds to panic while Apollo stands with his eyes on his little window to Earth, rattled to the core and itching to scream at the top of his lungs. But nothing came out. Not a single sound, let alone a scream. It felt like his skin is crawling and his heart is tearing itself to pieces like it's made of paper.

"Three years?! One of us has two beautiful little kids with the most amazing human being that has ever walked the Earth and she has spent the past three years alone?!" Gasping for air, Hermes felt his wits fade away, desperation taking root right next to the tree of love that grew for Y/N and blossomed in every weather - cold or not.

"What do we do? I can't let my kids grow up without a dad." Hermes' little whine is what sets Apollo off, giving him the strength to speak.

"THOSE COULD BE MY KIDS TOO!" Speak? Well, more like screamed until the heavens shook at the might of his emotions. Apollo felt faint, as if his body is drained of blood and he is nothing but a lifeless corpse whose soul remained on Earth and split into three pieces - one for each of the kids and one for Y/N...the only woman he ever loved. Unlike Hermes, he never felt anything for any woman ever since he was created. He wasn't impressed by the lavish beauties of any dimension. Until she came to his life and to live without Y/N felt like the greatest punishment of all.

And that's when he realized it.

"This is a part of our punishment. Even if only one returned, the other would be a consolation prize. Living life with knowledge you just weren't good enough, waiting to die a mortal death. The other would remain up here, watching life unfold and suffering as the only two people in his life moved on. But this? This is genius! We both lose her! Neither of us meet our children and we watch them all until they've gone...Hecate's line continues, but we hate ourselves until the end of time, eventually forcing us to part ways as well." Apollo shakes his head, giggling.

"You will go down to the Underworld brother and you will kill Hades once I send word. Our sister will be free of the monster. And I...I'll get support up here. I find gods who will stand with us to take down Zeus and Poseidon as well and take the reigns once more. We will see Y/N again. I promise you that."

And in that moment, the brothers shared an understanding. They both had their roles to play, duties to fulfill and tasks to accomplish if they ever had any hope of meeting with their love ever again. Spelling the globe, Apollo gave his brother a small piece he could use to not only contact him, but to see Y/N and the kids again. He felt the pain Hermes bore for he lived with it too. He couldn't deny his brother a small kindness as such.

Apollo worked tirelessly, speaking to every god or goddess he believed would stand for him, revealing new truths as time went on.

"May I please have a word with you, sister?" Apollo's first stop was his twin sister, Artemis. The goddess of hunt and the moon, the eternal virgin or as she called herself - pure. She was the other part of his soul, one they shared in the womb - his older sister and his protector who helped him come into the world. She was his favorite sister at that.

"Speak, my dear brother. You always have my ear." She smiled fondly, pushing back her long blonde hair. It's unusual for her to have her hair down as she usually has it pinned up in a bun, her dark brown eyes soft as she looked at her twin with love. Artemis always had a weak spot for her brother, especially grateful for his assistance when Orion decided to try and take her virginity against her will. She was never more happy to have taught him archery than in that moment.

"Can you promise me your silence as well?" Raising her brow, Artemis then frowned and set her lips in a thin line as she leaned in and gazed at her brother favorably.

"Always." After finding out the torture her brother went through, agreeing on his quest to take Mount Olympus back, she was prepared to hunt - but not animals this time. After all, her father and uncles have long forsaken the values a god should pertain, not only allowing horrid things happen to women around them, but doing them themselves.

His next stop was the woman who gave him life, Hera, the goddess of marriage. Apollo could see his mother is unhappy, chained to the monster his father became, the animal she could never escape.

Her long blonde hair fell across her shoulder-blades, curls styled to perfection to make her life seem better than it is. Her eyes are lighter, a deep green that neither Hermes or Artemis possess, but neither did he. They inherited their father's dark looks, while Artemis had the luck of only having his eyes. The rest of her was all Hera. Athena had the same fortune, while Persephone and Aphrodite were lucky to be like Hera entirely.

"I knew you'd find me here." She spoke carefully, each word pronounced slowly and correctly. She turned her body slightly, angling her head until she could look at her son with precision a laser couldn't match.

"You've changed a lot over the centuries. I can see you've grown, my son." She offers him a smile, outstretching her arm. With a flick of her delicate wrist, she called him over to stand beside her, watching the landscape of a garden she designed herself. It's breathtaking, true, but it's also a lie. Just another way for her to escape the reality of her nightmare.

"And I see you've grown more fearful." Apollo sighs, noticing his mother inhale sharply at the disappointed tone her son used with her.

"I know what you're planning to do." Whispering, Hera slid her hand in her son's large hand, her own shaking.

"And I want to help."

It didn't take much to talk his mother into it, not at all. He didn't bother asking how she knew about his plans, but he felt at ease with the knowledge he had someone else with him.

"She's lovely. The kids too." But it didn't take much for Apollo to break down and fall to his knees, hugging his mother's waist as he laid his head on her stomach.

Hera agreed to talk to some of the gods herself, leaving Apollo with the task of convincing Athena, the most logical and wise of them all to take a stand too -  the goddess of war and wisdom. If you need anyone on your side, it's her.

"And why would I help?" She pursed her lips, walking around Apollo who was at his wits end. He wanted to attack as soon as possible because every moment spent talking was another moment he lost with Y/N and the kids he was certain were of his blood.

"Because each of them sinned against you. Poseidon the most." Apollo was reaching, bringing up ancient history.

"I've dealt with that...incident." Athena glides a hand over he tight, brown haired bun, straightening her dress right after. Apollo knew he hit the mark.

"Did you? Because you turned your most loyal servant into a monster because she was raped by your uncle in your temple?" Apollo couldn't hide his disdain for the action for he could never understand why Athena would punish the poor woman for Poseidon's lack of morals and kindness.

"I had to!" Athena swiftly turned around, facing Apollo with a pulsating vein appearing on her forehead. He definitely struck a nerve.

"I couldn't do anything to punish him for defiling her and the sacred temple! The punishment is death, Apollo! I couldn't kill her for a sin she didn't commit! I certainly had no power to harm him. I could only turn her into Medusa, send her to exile and hope the snakes on her head protect her where I failed! They were supposed to protect her from vile men like our father and uncles!" Athena screamed, her throat raw as she rehashed her greatest failure.

"And I will help. I want to be there when the bastards draw their last breaths."

While his plan worked, it took him almost a year to gather any influence on Mount Olympus. He spent his time watching over Y/N and planning.

Hermes wasn't as patient.

He played his part of a dutiful god, helping souls cross over and placing them where they belonged. He tortured those who deserved it, smiled at his uncle as if he meant it, only to picture tearing him limb by limb once he turned his back on him.

Hades was always grim, striking fear in everyone. His long black hair left him looking unkempt, even though each strand was cleaned and combed by Persephone herself. His solemn, mournful look never quite disappeared, the pain of knowing Persephone wasn't with him by choice haunting him, even now. His blue eyes resembled the skies after rainfall, shimmers of happy under the terrible sadness. His beard is long, but very well maintained, not reaching too far from the chin. He still looked as a middle aged human, despite centuries of being alive, just as his father and uncle Poseidon did. Gods do age, but the process is so slow they might as well be immortal.

Managing to speak to his young sister, Hermes found little comfort in the lack of any action on his part. She didn't seem to mind her position much anymore. In fact, it looked like she's embraced her fate.

"I've come to respect my husband. Even care for him sometimes." She told him in confidence, sighing deeply right after as she trained her eyes to the ground, hiding her face from her brother. She meant it though. Hades wasn't horrible to her, rather a very agreeable. He gave her anything she asked of him, but it drained her to be trapped in literal hell. She's a goddess that represents spring but lives in eternal darkness.

"Don't you want more? To go home? Be free of the constant sound of screaming in the back of your mind?!" Hermes insisted, taking both her hands in his right one, his left cupping her cheek as he saw her lips tremble.

"Of course I do. But it can never be."

Hermes made her a promise to rescue her all those centuries ago, but he failed. Completely and utterly failed his sister and he never forgot that. The sting of her misery never left him and he wasn't going to fail her again. One pomegranate seed eaten an eternity ago shouldn't define her entire existence. In hindsight he should have warned her eating anything Hades offers her would tie her to the Underworld for good. He won't make the same mistake twice.

However, with each passing day, Hermes grew more bitter and unsteady, finding his fantasies of killing his uncle harder to keep at bay. The worst of it came whenever he'd see Y/N and his children, especially if he was mentioned or if his love shed a tear. He longed to be beside her, have an arm around her when she cried. Hell, she'd never cry if he was with her. He'd make sure she never does.

A year passed and all he got from his brother was reassurement things are going according to plan. But he wasn't in the Underworld, forced to be the worst version of himself. Inside the darkness, he let his hatred bloom until it took over. In his wrath, Hermes used dark magic, enchanting his golden chain that laid across his hips. Magic he used was draining, but effective, for when he wrapped the chain around Hades' neck, it burned his skin and pressed deeper every time the god tried to fight his death. However, he didn't fight for long, rather allowed Hermes to exact his revenge, welcoming death as an old friend rather than an enemy.

Present time ~ Mount Olympus

"There should be a trial." Athena stepped forth, her wisdom always appreciated as Zeus instantly nodded, agreeing.

"In all the time he's been alive, Apollo, Persephone, Hecate, Yashi Singh and Y/N Y/L/N have been the most relevant to his character." Zeus mentioning Hecate had Hermes and Apollo's hearts nearly stopping, but the mention of Y/N completely terrified them.

Apollo wanted nothing more than to add onto his brother's misery by kicking him while he's down for doing something so stupid when his plans would come to in less than a month. He wanted to tear the heavens apart because Y/N would be dragged into this mess and all because a his brother couldn't control his impulses.

Clapping his hands together, Zeus effectively brought Yashi to stand to Hermes' left, Hecate to his right. He turned his head in denial from left to right, watching two of his paramores glare him down, but Apollo's hands grabbing him to face forward is what stopped the very breath in his throat.

Y/N stood before them all, confused and terrified as she looked around, two little humans holding onto her legs, each claiming one as their prize possession. She paled, tucking her hair behind her ears before bending down ever so slightly, her hands each situated at the back of her children's backs.

That's when she truly notices not only Ethan on his knees, looking like he's a step away from imminent death, but Grayson who looks like he's about to pass out. However, seeing Hecate is when she feels panic spreading through her veins, clouding her judgement.

She's older, fresh out of college. She was supposed to start a new job, move back home so the kids have a good place to grow up in and now she's either completely mad or she's standing in Mount Olympus, something terrible looming over her head.

That's when Zeus spoke, not allowing Y/N to even come closer to her once upon a time, to even touch them.

"You are all here to bear witness what happens when a god falls from grace."

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Tags: @mutuallynotmutual @lanadeldolans @xalayx @accalialionheart @gia-kerks @historyheart  @heyits-claire @daddygraysonsbitch @fallinginlove-16  @lanadeldolans @beautifulfound @thearachna-kid  @dinnerwiththedolans  @graydolan12 @justanotherfangurl272 @dxlansfxck  @godlydolans @flowery-dolan @dominatedolans @buckysjuicyplums @ethanhes @dolandolll @dolanstwintuesday

[tanadrin]

Reordberend

(part 21 of ?; first; previous; next)

(BTW, as of this update, Reordberend is, by my count, a little over 45k words long, putting it in the territory of a shortish novel. That also makes it one of the longest SF stories I’ve ever written. It’s not the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on Tumblr, but it has gotten a steady trickle of notes. Knowing there are people out there who enjoy your work, even if it’s fairly niche, is the best motivation there is to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)

Katherine Alice Green The Guest Room in the Village Hall The High Settlement McMurdo Dry Valleys ANTARCTICA

to Dr. Eunice Valerie Gordon Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 IRELAND

Dear Dr. Gordon,

I am writing yet another letter I won’t be able to send, which, I realize might make me seem like kind of a crazy person. The only defense I can plead, I guess, is that the perpetual darkness of the winters here does funny things to you if you’re not used to it, and I’ve had a lot of down time lately that I need to do something productive with. I have already written to my parents, to a couple of friends, and to my cat, which leaves only you. And these letters seem to have a way of focusing my thoughts, so maybe it’s not an entirely useless exercise.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I’m alive. That may come as a surprise. It occured to me not long after I was marooned here that perhaps nobody knows that. No one has come looking for me, and why would they? If any rescue parties did go looking for the Albatross, I doubt they’d come this far south. Not in winter. But I did in fact survive the ship going down. I don’t think anybody else did. The Dry Valleys People didn’t find anyone else on the shore, alive or dead. I try not to think about that too much, but, to be honest, it still has me kind of fucked up.

Oh, that’s the other things. I’ve made contact with the Dry Valleys People. I am, as the return address indicates, currently living with them. They have welcomed me, rather reluctantly, and I’ll be able to remain at least until the first sunrise of spring. This was not necessarily a widely popular decision, and I’ve come to learn that the political situation among the DVP is rather complicated. They have always guarded their isolation and their independence, and they’re keen to keep guarding it in the future, but there are some among them who worry how long that will really be possible. I think this is something Dr. Wright foresaw, and tried to warn them about in the letter he sent with me. But as you might expect, this is something a large part of their community doesn’t want to hear or even think about, and my presence here is definitely fraught.

As for my original mission… well, it’s an unqualified success, despite the difficulties. I’ve learned a lot. The language, to start with. You won’t believe this, but they speak Old English here. No, not thee and thou and maketh yon Old English. Not Chaucer, even. Older. From their books and what they’ve told me, their ancestors used the West Saxon dialect of Old English, as spoken about the year 1000 AD, as the basis for the language they taught their children. Dr. Wright knew this, of course. That’s how he was able to communicate them and win their trust; he showed an affinity for the same history and the same long-term perspective they cared about. If it seems weird that a bunch of people would move to Antarctica, forsake almost every modern convenience, and deliberately teach their kids a dead language that would be useless in the wider world, well, all I can say I guess is that humans have done a lot of weird shit for a lot of weird reasons throughout history. I think I am beginning to understand why the ancestors of the DVP did what they did. Some of them have tried to explain it to me, but there is a gap in our worldviews here that is difficult to bridge.

One of the DVP that I have befriended is a poet named Leofric. His sister, Leofe, taught me the language, but I’ve learned a lot more about their literature from him. It’s primarily an oral literature, although they do write some of it down. They like long, semi-narrative poetry that draws heavily on the imagery of the natural world, and I would say that it owes something to the ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry they keep in their books, except that, of course, the environment here is nothing like the environment of England one thousand years ago. But there are still some poetic traditions they have inherited from those earlier examples. For instance, their world is harsh, and unforgiving, and from a certain angle looks like a world in decline. The ancient English (so I am told) were surrounded by great Roman ruins they spoke of as being the work of metaphorical giants; here, they have the ruins of two hundred years of scientific and industrial exploration of the Antarctic coast. And their world, too, is enclosed by a vast cold sea, although this one has penguins in it at least.

Aside from the language, the founders of the DVP don’t seem to have intended to recreate medieval English society. There are no kings. There is a semi-formal system of village headship by seniority, but the social hierarchy is very flat. Marriage, inheritance, and choice of occupation all take place on fairly egalitarian terms, and their strictest taboos surround the sharing of labor and resources, not sexuality or religion. I wonder how much of their customs are the result of gradual cultural evolution, or some deliberate effort at creating a planned community. There are lots of funny Utopian experimental communities out there, but most tend to fail after a generation. In a way, this one couldn’t fail, because they had no way to leave Antarctica. They had to make it work. Is this what a real utopian project looks like after six or seven generations?

But honestly, one of the most fascinating aspects of the DVP is their material culture. As you might expect, their day-to-day existence is profoundly shaped by the environment they live in. Their houses are all heavy stone, designed to trap scarce heat, and arranged around the village halls as a windbreak against the dry katabatic gales that sweep the McMurdo Valleys clear of ice. Despite this being one of the driest locations on Earth, it’s still a better habitat for them than the glaciers of the Antarctic lowlands, or the rough, icy terrain of the mountains--here, you can actually build, and you don’t need skis and snowshoes to get around. But, as a consequence, much of their most important infrastructure is underground.

I don’t know if the ancestral DVP brought the right tools with them or if they scavenged them once here, but they have accumulated a small stockpile of laser borers, ultrasonic chisels, and crystalsteel digging equipment that they use to carve out underground chambers in the hills as meeting places and ritual sites. But they don’t do their agriculture there; that happens in networks of buried trenches just below the villages, where they grow cold-resistant mosses and lichens to supplement a meat-based diet, and what seems to be a form of genegineered fibergrass they use to weave their clothing and tapestries, and to make books.

Their art is very beautiful. Their coats, books, and tapestries--even their stone carvings--all depict elaborate lineate forms of plants and animals, inherited I suppose from ancestral memory, since none of the organisms in question are found in Antarctica. They also make images depicting the mountains, of course, and the sea, and the animals that live on the coast; even some of the coastal settlements, as seen from far off. They’re often abstracted, but these images are geographically grounded: they’re not just “generic mountains” or “generic coastline,” they’re specific mountains, specific coastlines, and they add up--if you are exposed to them every day of your life growing up--to something like a conceptual map of all of Victoria Land. It seems that if you dropped an average adult DVP individual anywhere from Oates Land to the Queen Elizabeth Range, they could probably find their way home, even during the dark months of winter.

(Oh! And the dark months! You’d think they’d be depressing, but I never imagined in my life I would see such a sight as the aurora australis, or even the clear polar stars! I can’t describe it to you. Maybe Leofric could, if I could do justice to his verse.)

They’re very communitarian, and great emphasis is placed on making sure no one goes without, but the price of that is, apparently, extremely elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms; for a culture without courts, government, or attorneys, they are remarkably bureaucratic. Each physical object seems to have its own laws attached to it. Some may be shared by all objects of that type--for instance, if you need an electric firestarter, you always go to the house windward of yours to ask if they have one. If they don’t, you go to the next, and so on; firestarters pass from house to house, as needed, but only in one direction. Other objects may have completely unique rules. There is a knife with an elaborately carved handle meant to be used only by left-handed people. I don’t know why; nobody I asked knew, either. But that was the custom, and it was scrupulously obeyed. As a rule, the more elaborately decorated an object, the more particular the rules associated with it, but the elaboration of the object doesn’t seem to connote anything about the rules. It only marks it out as somehow special. The rules themselves are transmitted orally. All of these rules at bottom are about making sure that resources are evenly distributed--making sure nobody has to walk too far in bitterly cold weather to find a firestarter, for instance--and even the ones that don’t make sense now probably were created for good reason. For instance, the southpaw knife. Their knives for carving meat all have handles that curve in one way, to help separate flesh from bone, and I suspect that one is the result of a left-handed steelsmith getting fed up with with tools he couldn’t use very well. The blade is that of a carving-knife, though the handle attached to it is straight. The handle was probably later replaced when it broke, and somebody needed the knife for a different purpose--but the custom attached to it remained the same.

This system of sharing is, if anything, even more scrupulously observed when there’s a windfall. We went on a salvage expedition a month ago and brought back some much-needed supplies, and they spent days working out what would go where, first to each village and then, once we got back to the High Settlement, each house in each village--and even then, this was just what went to who first. Anything that’s not a finite supply, like food, will get passed from house to house. Leofric tells me that a few years ago, a whale--an entire blue whale, actually--beached itself to the north, and they had to have a weeklong assembly (on the beach, next to the whale, natch) to decide what do with every scrap of meat and bone. They still talk about the arguments that went down at the Whale Parliament sometimes (for which their word is hwaelthing, by the way. Literally it means exactly what it looks like: “whale-thing.”). Funny thing is, they also very carefully manage arguments in these discussions. That’s not normally the case--if two people have an argument and what to physically fight each other about it, that’s considered their business. But when it comes to disputes about food or metal or tools, everybody is very keen to show how Not Mad they are, even if they’re actually seething about it on the inside. And if voices get raised, people get hustled aside, and the whole matter is dropped completely until everybody has a chance to calm down. This looks like a system that was either deliberately designed to keep fights from breaking out and feelings getting permanently hurt, or one that sprung up after some nasty experiences of actual fights. I suspect the latter. It’s all very informal, but there’s a lot of social pressure that enforces it. The price for division and discord in an environment this hard to live in would be death, and I think all their social institutions are built around that reality.

I will admit, this has not been the easiest experience. I mean, there’s the almost dying part, and the part where all my cybernetics are broken, and I had a bad bout of something flulike a few weeks ago and almost died again, but I don’t actually mean the physical hardship. It is a more isolating experience than I thought it would be, being the lone outsider in such a close-knit community. Everyone knows everybody and everything, except me. They all have their own jokes and stories and long-running feuds, and they can communicate a great deal to one another with just a glance, and I’m left wondering what just happened when everybody laughs at something, or a fight breaks out. I have struggled sometimes to learn the language. I mean, I’ve had no other choice, and it’s amazing what you can learn when your survival depends on it, but even now I still sometimes find myself struggling to communicate ideas, or staying silent even when there is something I might want to say, just because I can’t find the words. It’s infuriating not being able to express yourself well, and maybe for good reason I sometimes think they all see me as this hapless idiot who almost got herself killed, who they have to put up with until the spring as a result.

Okay, I mean, I kind of am that. But I am also genuinely interested in their society, in the DVP as individuals, in their stories and their history. But I feel like the best I can hope for is being kind of a mascot. Or a well-meaning but dim-witted pet. A Labrador or something.

Not that I haven’t made friends. I would say Leofric is a friend. The salvagers--Eadwig and Andrac--they’re friends. And I seem to have won at least the grudging toleration of the ones like Aelfric who initially wanted to leave me to die. But sometimes I think I’ve made a connection, somehow bridged the unbridgeable gulf between my life experience and the world of the DVP, only to find out I’ve done no such thing. I thought Leofe was a friend; but now she’s not speaking to me, and she’s left the High Settlement for one of the other valleys. I don’t know why, and the others just shrug when I ask them.

Ugh. This is turning into whining. Now I know I’ll never send it. Sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s amazing how tired you can get when your muscles can’t rely on your augs to help them do shit.

But I need to find a way to bridge that gap. I mean really bridge it. Because I feel like I’m starting to understand something the DVP aren’t ready to hear. Their ancestors came to Antarctica at a time when the rest of the world wasn’t much interested in it. It was a wasteland, so sure, let’s treat it as an international, shared territory. Nobody goes there but scientists and the occasional tourist. And during the Collapse, not even that--Antarctica was truly empty for the first time in a hundred and fifty years when the ancestors of the DVP came to its shores. But it isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be a real wasteland again. Every year the mining consortia move a little further down the Transantarctic Mountains. Every year a new outpost pops up on the coast, more ships come to Port Alexander, more icebreakers cut through the polar sea. Antarctica is warmer now that it’s been at any time in the past. Heck, without some global warming, I don’t think the Dry Valleys would be habitable. But that means more exposed rock, more open ground to build on, more people coming to the continent to work on the mining platforms or the offshore factories, and one day, I think, they’re going to come here.

What will the DVP do when that happens? This isn’t North Sentinel Island, which nobody ever goes to because there’s no reason. There’s gold in the hills here--the DVP make jewelry out of it--and maybe other precious metals, and you could build a geothermal station on Mount Erebus and power a small town, if you wanted to build some autofactories. The Antarctic Authority exists to promote “science and industry,” but with a big emphasis on industry. And by science they mostly mean, like, watching penguins bone and building telescopes at the South Pole. Not soft stuff like anthropology. And certainly not protecting three valleys full of cessionist oddballs whose parents had an unreasonable fondness for dead languages.

I think Dr. Wright knew this. I think maybe he tried to warn the DVP when he was here, but back then the danger was even further away. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention to danger that seems far away, even if it might be an existential threat. And when dealing with that danger would require you to completely change the only life you’d ever known… well, that’s a hard sell. The DVP don’t really like change. I can’t blame them. But one day things are going to change here, and if they’re not prepared for it, it could get really ugly, really fast. It’s one thing to shut yourself away when the world is ignoring you. It’s another when the world comes knocking.

If I think I can persuade them, I’m going to talk to the elders here, Aelfric and Wulf. Some of the DVP have had very fleeting contact with outsiders before me. I think one of them should come with me in the spring, as a sort of emissary. I’m not sure who they should talk to, yet. Maybe the Authority. Maybe somebody in Port Alexander’s local government? Or maybe we should just try to tell their story directly to the world. That might bring the DVP more attention than they’d like, but better a little good attention now than a lot of bad attention later. I would have asked Leofe--she’s smart, she’s tough, she could handle the culture shock--but that’s not an option now. Something to think about, anyway.

Well. I hope this letter finds the imaginary version of you well, my love to the imaginary family &c, hope the undergrads aren’t giving you too much trouble this year. If for some reason you do find this letter--like I freeze to death on my way to the weather station in September and they find this document on my corpse--please forgive my stubbornness, my insistence on going on this stupid trip, and any worry I’ve caused you as a result. And if I really am dead, please tell everybody I died doing something badass, like, I dunno, fighting a polar bear. I guess those are extinct and they never lived in Antarctica anyway, but something along those lines. Make it good.

All the best,

Kate

[miraniel]

l85 questions tag game

Tagged by @peppermintfeminist​. Hi mate! You’re the best!

— What was your last…

1. Drink: Alcoholic? You’re kidding right? I recently tried a milliliter of Somerset Apple Brandy and NOPE, never again. Non-alcoholic? Water with lemon. 

2. Phone call: My parents, just before I left for England, where I am now (not over the excitement yet)

3. Text message: “Yes” in response to my grandmother, who asked if I got her text. 

4. Song you listened to: Reflection from Mulan

5. Time you cried: Two days ago, in the middle of a back country road in Somerset, over a goddamn Severus Snape fanfic. I’m still mad that the writer actually managed to make me care about fucking Snape. 

— Have you ever…

6. Dated someone twice: No. Have I dated someone once? Yes, but only by accident. 

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: No.

8. Been cheated on: Look I’m ace as fuck and have never dated really ever. 

9. Lost someone special: Yes, I’ve lost friends in multiple senses. 

10. Been depressed: I don’t think so. 

11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Any alcohol has this taste for me that the best I’ve been able to describe it is “rancid nickles,” it’s bloody awful, and I’ve never been able to stomach more than a sip of the stuff, so no. 

— Fave colours

12. Olive green. 

13. Purple. 

14. Deep cerulean. 

— in the last year have you…

15. Made new friends: Not really. I made a couple of cordial acquaintences in the drama productions I’ve been in, but no one close.

16. Fallen out of love: No, see above about being ace as fuck. Now, my brief obsession with the show Sherlock...

17. Laughed until you cried: Yes. So many times. 

18. Found out someone was talking about you: Yes, in both good ways and bad ways. 

19. Met someone who changed you: So many people. Just one who springs to mind is my Education professor at college. She was amazing. 

20. Found out who your friends are: I am fully aware that I am a terrible long-distance friend. It’s my worst flaw and I wish I was better about this. I think I’ve betrayed more friendships by just letting them slip away than I ever have had people turn on, or abandon, me. 

21. Kissed someone on your facebook friends list: Unless we’re referring to familial pecks on cheeks... no. 

— General

22. How many of your facebook friends do you know irl: Nearly all of them, apart from one random guy that my cousins met online and who has since befriended the entire family. 

23. Do you have any pets: I no longer live at home, but my family still has one of the two cats we had when I was growing up. 

24. Do you want to change your name: I think about it sometimes. I think about it a lot. I’ve just started using a new name with an eye to it becoming my official pen name. I don’t know if I want to start using it as my everyday name. 

25. What did you do for your last birthday: Oh, crap... I can’t remember. I think my mom was there, and my grandparents. We had cake and a tiny family party. I think. All I remember is I was glad I didn’t have a play rehearsal that day. 

26. What time did you wake up today: 6:50 am

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Sleeping, for once in my life. 

28. What is something you can’t wait for: Finally achieving my lifelong goal: being employed, being published, and being financially stable enough that I can afford a little house, with a dishwasher and laundry, and a cat, and food, and health insurance, and Netflix. It seems... a long way off. Also the next episode of Supergirl?

29. This question is mysteriously missing, so I will pose a question to the universe/the people I’m going to tag: What was the first piece of media (film, book, world, comic, game, character, etc) that you were ever obsessed with?

30. What are you listening to right now: Silence.

31. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Several Tims, but no Toms. Excluding possibly some random middle aged guys back when I was growing up because who remembers that sort of thing

32. Something that’s getting on your nerves: People assuming I’m in my early teens and asking me things like how high school is going. Then I’m like, “Nope, I’m like ten years older than that, graduated college a while ago now,” and they’re like “Oh, you look so young,” and I’m like “I know!!” and then (and this is the bit that’s driving me crazy) they all say “You’ll be so grateful when you’re my age!” Like... I just kind of called you out for patronizing me? And your immediate response is to patronize me again? Also there’s no guarantee that I’ll still look ten years younger than I actually am when I’m 50? Also, I may be grateful or not when I’m your age but it sure isn’t doing me any favors now? Please stop. Just stop. 

33. Most visited website: I may or may not be slightly obsessed with Nonasuch’s fantastic Dogfather Harry Potter AU and I might check their tumblr once or twice a day. 

34. Hair colour: Somewhere between dirty blond and light brown now. It was blond when I was a kid. 

35. Long or short hair: Okay, so I really want to be able to braid my hair elaborately again, but I also love the feel of short hair on the back of my neck.  Right now it’s in an inbetween stage and I can have neither of these things. What is a person to do. 

36. Do you have a crush on someone: I had things I called crushes when I was in high school and hadn’t figured out I’m ace as fuck. I get hardcore friend crushes. 

37. What do you like about yourself: I’m proud of my talents, though I play them down more than I should, and I neglect to practice them more than I should. I like how far I’ve come figuring out my identity and who I am these past six years or so. 

38. Want any piercings: Under no circumstances am I voluntarily going to sit still and let someone poke a needle through me or into me for anything other than a medical necessity. This applies to tattoos as well. I respect people who have them, but hell no for me. 

39. Blood type: SOMEONE knows because I’ve had a blood transfusion, I think, but I don’t have a clue. 

40. Nicknames: I have wanted a nickname my entire life and nothing has ever stuck. 

41. Relationship status: Single asexual inactively seeks person willing to share habitation, bookshelves, Netflix, pet, and nerdy conversation for the rest of their life. 

42. Sign: I don’t do the zodiac thing at all, but I’m an INTJ and a Hufflepuff. 

43. Pronouns: Um, this is a weird place and time to do this, but since you asked, I’ve just changed them to “they/them.” 

44. Fave tv show: Ever? Avatar the Last Airbender. Right now? Supergirl, The Flash, Miraculous Ladybug

45. Tattoos: See above regarding NEEDLES

46. Fave city: Albuquerque. Fight me. 

47: Ever had surgery: When I was a kid I had The Case of Pneumonia From Hell and Fun Times in Hospitals and got chest tubes and part of my lung removed. Also a few minor random stuff. 

48. Piercings: See above regarding needles. The needle phobia is directly related to the Fun Times in Hospitals. 

49. Sport: Literally none. I’ll watch gymnastics and skating every four years, but apart from that the highlight of my interest in sports was that time that JKR was live-writing the Quidditch World Cup on Pottermore. 

50. Vacation: I’m in Oxford right now, somewhere I’ve always dreamed of being! And I’m on my way to Scotland and Wales. 

— More general

52. Eating: Sushi, macaroni and cheese, fruit, chocolate, scones

53. Drinking: tea, tea, tea, milk, orange juice, non-alcoholic lemonade or apple cider, water, tea, tea, tea

54. I’m about to watch: Brooklyn 99 (The UK has it on netflix!!)

55. Waiting for: My betas to come back to me on my novel draft. Then it’s agent shopping!

56. Want: A cat, the ability to focus, the ability to read properly without stupid eye problems, a job, writing time

57. Get married: ... growing up I fantasized about getting married because I wanted my paternal cousins to meet my maternal cousins and I couldn’t think of any way that would likely happen apart from my marriage and I think they would get on like a house on fire.. this still seems like one of the only motivating factors for me ever to get married. 

58. Career: Author and poet and crazy cat lady

— Which is better

59. Hugs or kisses: hugs

60. Lips or eyes: Neither. I don’t actually like making eye contact even though I’ve learned to do it, and why would I stare at people’s mouths?

61. Shorter or taller: For a dance partner? Taller, but not significantly so. 

62. Older or younger: If this is meant to be about romantic partners? Because why would anyone ask this question? Significant age gaps are generally not a good thing either way, except possibly between two consenting adults who understand and work to alleviate the uneven power dynamic a significant age gap typically creates?

63. Nice arms or stomach: The heck?

64. Hookup or relationships: Relationships. 

65. Troublemaker or hesitant: Hesitant and trying to overcome it

— Have you ever

66. Kissed a stranger: NOPE

67. Drank hard liquor: See above regarding the horrors created by my taste buds and any alcohol.

68. Turned someone down: Yes. It was awwwkward, but he was a friend. Normally, when I suspect someone likes me, I run away and never speak to them again. Trying to get over that. 

69. Sex on first date: Uh nnnoooo

70: Broken someone’s heart: I hope not

71. Had your heart broken: By friendships, yeah.

72. Been arrested: Nope

73. Cried when someone died: Not really. 

74. Fallen for a friend: A couple times, but in like, a really aggressively platonic way

— Do you believe in

75. Yourself: Yes.

76. Miracles: Yes.

77. Love at first sight: Yes, because it basically happened to my parents. Theirs is a story of being bookstore managers, an immediate attraction, a mutual failure to understand origami, and a shared love of Star Trek. It would make a perfect rom com but there was literally no drama. My parents are adorable. 

78. Santa Claus: I have always had the ability to choose what I believe in. Santa Claus was one of those things, long after I knew the truth. 

79. Angels: Not really of the stereotypical “feathery wings and flawless skin” type. In the possibility or even likelihood of benevolent forces or beings outside human comprehension that are not a divine creator but may be from or of the divine, yes. This likely has a lot to do with how many times I read Narnia, The Dark is Rising, and A Wrinkle in Time as a kid, now I think about it. 

— Misc

80. Eye colour: Green

81. Best friend’s name: I have a few. One starts with a C. 

82. Favourite movie: The Fellowship of the Ring. Or 101 Dalmations. 

83. Favourite actor: Maggie Smith

84. Favourite cartoon: Avatar the Last Airbender. I didn’t discover it until I was about 18, but I love it to death. 

85. Religion: Ex-roman catholic Episcopalian 

Tagging @nerdiekatie, @swimmingbirdrunningrock, @dragon-feathers, and @fantasiavii

[womenofcolor15]

YBF POLITICS: Don’t Save Them, They Don’t Want To Be Saved

    Listen. We’re one sleep away from the election deadline across the country.  If that fact alone doesn’t have your anxiety working overtime, then you’re the real MVP. For the rest of us, it’s the crunch time we’ve been waiting for.

  We've got some final thoughts.  And they don't involve saving folks from themselves (looking at you, Lil Wayne and  followers). Leave the people who still believe "protest nonvoters" and the "all the candidates are the same" people where they're at.  You and your mental health will thank us later.

  There's still many of you voting absentee up until tomorrow and in person tomorrow.

          View this post on Instagram

                  @JoeBiden knows that the key to a strong economy isn’t cutting taxes for billionaires; it’s by lifting the prospects of working Americans. He’s got a plan to create ten million good clean energy jobs, fight climate change, and secure environmental justice. Let’s elect a leader who sees this moment not as a chance to get back to where we were, but to finally make long-overdue changes so that our economy actually makes life a little easier for everybody.

A post shared by Barack Obama (@barackobama) on Nov 1, 2020 at 1:16pm PST

  In case you still haven't read it, the Biden Harris ticket has a plan that addresses damn near all of your concerns, if you give it a fair shot.  For instance, tired of racist bankers and SBA loan officers having so much power in who they lend money to?  This longstanding issue is only being addressed by the Biden Harris ticket.

  Despite the tax receipts we didn’t need that prove the current leader of the free world is a whole con-man, there are still people doing Olympic style hurdles to say the Biden/Harris ticket is “no different” than a Trump administration.  Let them.  They will likely never be swayed to vote for what’s in their own best interest.  They’re simply making excuses to allow for another Trump term - whether it’s sexism, being too woke for their own good, secretly being happy about the way they’re benefitting from a Trump presidency, or whatever other reason they could possibly have.  There’s no reasoning with or swaying those people, so don’t.  

  In the words of the rap poet Pastor Troy, “Don't save 'em. They don’t wanna be saved.” It’s time to leave those folks right where they’re at so we can focus on continuing to sway “undecided voters” or those who haven’t typically voted. All 100M+ of them.

          View this post on Instagram

                  We can't let history repeat itself. Don't wake up on November 4th wishing you had done more.

A post shared by Joe Biden (@joebiden) on Nov 2, 2020 at 2:00am PST

  At this point, if the Biden Build Back Better Plan is, to you, “what and what” with Trump’s “Platinum Plan” when it comes to their stances on helping Black America, you simply want to believe that, despite the facts proving otherwise. The root of the problem is finally being addressed with the Build Back Better plan, and it’s the getting rid of the racist lending practices for us. All while generating NEW money to pump into black businesses and communities.

  Here’s the gist of what you need to know about how Build Back Better ACTUALLY affects our lives.  No more of this “but his plan doesn’t explain anything.”  That’s B.S.  If you actually want to know instead of automatically believing and repeating what others say, here’s what you should know:

To address the racial wealth gap, the opportunity gap, and the jobs gap for Black and Brown people, Biden will launch a historic effort to empower small business creation and expansion in economically disadvantaged areas — and particularly for Black-, Latino-, AAPI-, and Native American-owned businesses. In addition to providing small businesses with an ambitious “restart package” to survive the current crisis and come out the other side strong, he is launching a special, ongoing initiative to empower these entrepreneurs to succeed and grow with a three-prong Small Business Opportunity Plan. His plan is consistent with key elements in the Jobs and Neighborhood Investment Act recently proposed by Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer, Mark Warner, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. Biden will:

·       Spur more than $50 billion in additional public-private venture capital to Black and Brown entrepreneurs by funding successful state and local investment initiatives and making permanent the highly effective New Markets Tax Credit.

·       Expand access to $100 billion in low-interest business loans by funding state, local, tribal and non-profit lending programs in Black and Brown communities and strengthening Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs), and the Community Reinvestment Act.

·       Eliminate barriers to technical assistance and advisory services by investing in a national network of cost-free business incubators and innovation hubs and intensive business seminars.

And how much money will be in play for this?  $150B of NEW capital for small businesses that have been structurally excluded for generations.  This is not existing money supposedly being sent our way.

  If folks have an issue with this amount of money going to small and black owned businesses, let them.  Most people are silent about tax dollars going to things that don’t help our community in any way.  So if some tax dollars go to helping black and brown business owners, so be it.

  Re-allocating additional current funds isn’t off the table either, though.  Biden is also set to Leverage $100 Billion in Additional Financing for Small Businesses.  Why? In 2019, only 10% of funding from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) major lending programs went to Black, Latino, and Native American entrepreneurs.  We haven’t heard anyone else talk about how they plan to address that. (see point #2 above).

    Trump’s Platinum plan promising $500B to black people is empty foolywang material.  He can't do it anyway. Congress must appropriate the money. Unlike in Biden’s plan, Trump hasn’t named a single member of Congress whose bill he will be promoting.

  It’s also important to reiterate, the $500B is not new money.  These are federal contracting dollars already available that he’s promising will be allocated. People would still need to go through banks and possibly the SBA – who often use racist lending practices to barely lend to black businesses at all – who face no repercussions if they don’t lend to black businesses and people and pocket the money given to them to reallocate. None of this is addressed by Trump. And seeing that he recently said systemic racism doesn’t exist, you can bet it won’t be addressed ever. This means hardly anyone but his white banker friends will see a dime of that money.  So it’s toothless policy even if it was to come into fruition.

    No plan will ever be perfect, but you didn’t need perfection from anyone else you are handing over the keys to in other parts of your life.  And you have surely found ways to forgive the folks who affect your everyday life - cheating pastors who are leading whole congregations with your tithes you pay, husbands or wives who have made mistakes - whether they have proven they’ve corrected their previous questionable behavior or not.  Biden’s and Harris’ records over these last several decades have proven they have evolved with the times and needs of our society. It’s one thing to hold someone accountable for a belief or action from 40 years ago.  It’s another to ignore the endless actions they have done sense to course correct, especially when the incumbent hasn’t course corrected a day in his life.

            View this post on Instagram

                  13 cities, 6 days, and a whole lot of people who can’t wait to vote early.

A post shared by Kamala Harris (@kamalaharris) on Oct 29, 2020 at 2:12pm PDT

    It does not matter whether you like Biden-Harris or not.  Even though we actually do.  The important fact is that you do not waste your vote writing in another candidate and vote for the ticket that can oust Trump. This election is about getting him out, yes.  But it’s also a referendum on what type of country we want America to be.  Some may feel like America hasn’t been a democracy for a long time, but more of an oligarchy.  That's fair.  But when you have the opportunity to change it, do that.  Vote for who has made it clear that making a more perfect democracy is their end all, be all goal.  And only one ticket has said it is.

          View this post on Instagram

                  These policies aren’t just the right thing to do — they’re also the smart thing to do for the future of our country. Click the link in my bio to learn more.

A post shared by Joe Biden (@joebiden) on Jul 27, 2020 at 2:24pm PDT

  We can’t worry about those who are ignoring the dictatorship forming and acting right before our eyes, and that is being strengthened with a Supreme Court pick whose belief system is rooted in a “secret society” that spurned the idea for “The Handmaid’s Tale”.  There’s no way anyone who truly is weighing both sides can come up with a final evaluation that both sides are the same.  Those people want a Trump presidency, so let them want that.  Far more do not.  And it’s time we spend our efforts aligning with the non-voting progressive majority instead.

  VOTE NOW.  If you have not yet voted, turn your ballot in to a ballot box or your county clerk's office, or vote in person on November 3rd. Both options are now better than mail in voting due to timing.

              View this post on Instagram

                  Make sure your voice is heard. Here are a few reminders to help you as you vote.

A post shared by Joe Biden (@joebiden) on Nov 2, 2020 at 3:00am PST

      Protect your energy, and your vote!

          [Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/11/02/ybf-politics-don%E2%80%99t-save-them-they-don%E2%80%99t-want-to-be-saved

[strawberriestyles]

Shakespeare (Part I)

(Banner made by the incredibly talented @tiostyles)

Harry X Reader (AU)

In which Harry is a poetic frat boy who just so happens to be the TA for your new English class.

Author’s note: This is gonna be a multi-part fic!! I’m really excited for it and would love any and all feedback. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Xo

You aren’t a newbie, but your frazzled appearance might portray you that way.

Autumn air nips at your cheeks as you rush around the corner and continue along the edge of the sidewalk. Your feet carry you around other students who aren’t as pressed for time. They give you amused side-glances  as you hustle into the entrance of the closest brick building.

This was supposed to be your semester, the one where you get to class early and rewrite your notes by hand and get straight As. But one-too-many snoozed alarms later and your first day of classes has become your worst nightmare.

You take the stairs two at a time, and are rushing through the doorway to the second floor when you slam full force into a particularly solid shoulder. You’re knocked off balance and a flurry of papers careen through the air to scatter the floor around you.

“Shit, fuck,” a deep voice mutters from above where you’ve landed in a heap. You rub tenderly at the bruise that is bound to form from your collision.

“Are yeh okay? Yeh hurt?”

The man leaning down in front of you addresses you with a thick accent. With an upward glance, you find tired green eyes framed by a large pair of glasses.

“I’m fine,” you answer quietly, pushing yourself back to your feet. “I’m late, sorry.”

You spin around to rush down the hall. A prick of guilt stabs your chest as you leave your victim to collect his belongings. You hear a sigh and shuffling papers from behind you as you open the door to your classroom. Heads turn to assess you in your flustered state. The clock on the wall informs you that you’re forty-seven seconds late—a feat, if you consider how late you woke up.

It’s a small class with about twenty students. Seats are arranged in a large circle that you’re forced to cross. The gaze from the professor—who must be Dr. Glasser—at the head of the room does nothing to soothe your nerves as you find an empty chair and slip into it as quietly as possible.

“As I was saying, on time is late in my book.”

Your head lifts from the backpack you’ve set at your feet to find a pair of narrowed eyes. Dr. Glasser has his arms crossed over his chest, brows raised as he quirks his lips at a joke you’re not yet in on. Getting on his bad side was everything you wanted to avoid today.

“Hey, ’m sorry.”

The door closes behind a man who’s entered the room unnoticed until now. His voice draws the professor’s gaze from you and your eyes follow suit.

“Woke up not feelin’ well and then some girl bowled m'over in the hall.”

You cringe, sinking back into your seat in hopes you’ll melt away. If your day could get any worse, you’d rather it happen now than later when it might take you off guard. But at least there’s another student who can share the guilt.

“It never changes,” Dr. Glasser replies with a curt nod and a knowing chuckle. “That’s all right. This is Harry. He’ll be your TA for the semester.”

You sink even lower in your seat, stomach churning in discomfort. How could you fuck up your first day so terribly?

Harry sets a mess of papers down on a desk beside the professor’s and turns to look at the class with a half-hearted smile. His white t-shirt is clean but wrinkled. You notice the red glint of his eyes and the way his fingers pause to rub at his temple as his hand passes through his tousled hair. He’s sporting a nasty hangover, by the looks of it.

Your thoughts cease completely as his eyes stop scanning the students to pause on your regretful face. He gives a soft shake of his head and a quiet chuckle before he sits down. You’re screwed.

“What does it mean to be an English major? What are we here for?” Dr. Glasser pipes up, pushing away from his desk to pace the center of the circle.

There’s a short pause before a couple of stray hands rise hesitantly into the air. You remain stationary, unwilling to dig yourself a deeper hole. Until you’re more sure of his personality and teaching style, you’ll be a quiet student in this class.

“To study literature?”

“More generally.”

The room goes silent and Harry smiles lopsidedly, fiddling with the rim of his glasses. Dr. Glasser gives him a prompting side-glance.

“T'study words,” Harry corrects, and his smile widens as he shifts forward in his seat, “aesthetically. How they interact, wha’ they make us feel. Lot o’ people make fun o’ English majors, but we have the best deal, ‘f yeh ask me. We get t'play 'round. Not everythin’s gotta be pragmatic and serious.”

“Right,” Dr. Glasser agrees with a nod and a grin that stretches across his middle-aged face. He’s handsome in his own right, in a pair of glasses much thicker than his assistant’s. They magnify his eyes to an abnormally large size. You notice the brown laces of his black shoes and the mismatched plaid of his socks that peak out whenever he takes a step.

“Everything we do is toward an aesthetic end. You don’t really get that when you’re collecting data or memorizing the anatomy of a rhinoceros, do you?”

“Rhinoceros?” Harry asks with a raised brow and a quizzical scratch of his stubbly jaw.

“It’s a bit more interesting than a dog, wouldn’t you say?”

“S'pose,” he agrees with a chuckle.

You admire the way he can still stay focused and present with the leftover alcohol taking its toll on his body. You’re sure you would be a useless blob if you were in the same condition.

“I’m not trying to say that English is the best major-”

“Yes, he is,” Harry interjects, grinning at the professor.

“Okay, yes, English is the best major,” Dr. Glasser confesses, stuffing meaty hands into the pockets of pants that are a size too large. You find yourself agreeing. Science classes are far less than enjoyable and math classes can be close to impossible. “And you may think that I’m a bit biased, but it’s a fact. Ask your science-majoring friends.”

You notice a girl a few seats around the circle from you who is scribbling intensely in a brand new notebook. You chew on your lip to hold in a chuckle. She must be a freshman. 

“They’re probably too loaded up with work t'answer yeh, though,” Harry adds, sifting through the pile of papers on his desk and rearranging them. “Yeh wan’ me t'take attendance?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dr. Glasser concedes, hopping up on the edge of his desk and swinging his feet.

Harry smooths out a sheet of wrinkled paper with a faint shoe mark—one that would match the sole of your boot perfectly, if you were to put them side-by-side. His eyes flit over rows of printed pictures that match the faces in the room. He clears his throat before beginning to roll through the alphabetical list, and you consider not reacting when he calls your name. Maybe you can make one up, so your actual title isn’t tarnished by your faulty first impressions.

“Y/N,” Harry asks, and if you’re not mistaken, you can hear a lilt to his voice, like he’s testing the sound of your name on his tongue. His gaze lifts from the page before him to find you immediately, only a small pie-slice away from him in the circle of desks.

You lift your hand meekly in response. You don’t trust the anxiety you feel not to stain your voice. His eyes hover on yours for a moment longer, flickering with amusement, before dropping back to the attendance sheet.

“It might take me half of the semester to remember those,” Dr. Glasser admits when the list comes to an end. He returns to the floor with a heavy thud and presses his spectacles back up his nose by the bridge. “But we’ll get there.”

“Yeh didn’ remember m'name 'til the last week o’ classes,” Harry complains, rolling his eyes playfully.

“That is most certainly untrue,” Dr. Glasser denies with a feigned look of hurt. “You were my favorite student and your name was the only one I remembered. But let’s stop our bickering, now.”

The professor spins in a circle to survey the class before he speaks again.

“Harry is smarter than you,” he states matter-of-factly. “When it comes to English theory, at least. I can’t say he’s the smartest at deciding which nights are good ones to go out drinking, however.”

Harry coughs to cover his a laugh, but he can’t hide his entertained smirk while Dr. Glasser shoots him a playfully disappointed look. He pushes his glasses up his forehead to rub at his eyes with long fingers.

“Anyways, I am also smarter than you in this department, but Harry happens to be much nicer than me. I’m not trying to intimidate you, I’m just letting you know that if you have questions or need help with anything, it’s probably better to ask him first. Plus, his voice is a lot nicer to listen to than mine.”

Harry groans audibly, but the ever-present smile is still plastered across his lips. You can tell how much he loves this class, and Dr. Glasser, specifically, and you can feel yourself hoping that your below average first day doesn’t set the tone for your semester.

“He’s quite talented. And quite the poet, if I may add.”

“Yeh may not,” Harry huffs, flicking his glasses back down in front of his eyes.

“Well, he’s quite the poet,” Dr. Glasser repeats, ignoring Harry’s remark and smiling to spite him. “He’s the smartest kid I’ve ever met and none of you will compare, but we can pretend.”

“Oi! Can we stop talkin’ 'bout me, now?”

“I love when he uses British terms. It’s very endearing.”

“Dr. Glasser,” Harry complains again, rubbing his hands beneath the lenses of his glasses once more.

The professor shrugs with a grin to the class and checks his left wrist, which he finds to be watch-less. He then checks the clock on the wall.

“Does anyone have any questions?” he asks, continuing on before anyone has a chance to raise a hand. “Great! Your reading assignment is on the syllabus, which is online. You probably should have looked at that already. We’ll start talking theory next class. And a bit of advice: don’t drink as much as Harry did last night.”

Students erupt into snickers as Dr. Glasser slings his messenger bag over his shoulder and leaves the room, and you can’t help but laugh at his closing statement, too. Harry drops his head back in exasperation, huffing out a loud breath. The room is suddenly filled with a chorus of footsteps and ruffling papers and zipping bags. 

You slide out of your seat, hiking your backpack up and over your shoulders. Your feet hesitate, mind trying to decide whether you should apologize or if it’s best to just leave. Harry is stacking his papers and trying his best to align the rumpled edges. He slips the pen he used for attendance between his teeth. Before you actually make a conscious decision, you’re standing in front of his desk, rocking on the balls of your feet nervously.

“Hi, Harry.”

He lifts his head briefly and then looks back down at his papers, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

“I’m-”

“Y/N, yeah. Not gonna forget tha’ one,” he interrupts, mumbling around his pen and chuckling under his breath.

You sigh, fiddling with the straps of your backpack. Harry lifts his bundle of papers and hugs them to his chest, plucking the pen from his mouth and tucking it behind an ear.

“I just wanted to say that I’m-”

“’M late, sorry.”

And with that, he gives you an amused smirk and skirts around you to leave the room.

Part II

[ratmonologue]

You know the drill, all tHE ASKS

Why

Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora? I don’t actually use any of them

is your room messy or clean? Room is okay, but desk looks like a war zone

what color are your eyes? brown

do you like your name? why? Yeah? It’s fairly unique but it’s spelled how it sounds, which is nice. And I’m used to it so

what is your relationship status? in a polyamorous relationship with about a dozen fictional characters

describe your personality in 3 words or less um…. obsessive, spontaneous, triestobeagoodfriendbutidkhowconsistentlyisucceed (that counts as one word right?)

what color hair do you have? brown

what kind of car do you drive? color? 20 years old and don’t have a driver’s licence eyyyy

where do you shop? At stores? Mostly of the grocery variety

how would you describe your style? Pretty casual I guess. Jeans and tanktops/t-shirts, dark colors, boots, army jacket

favorite social media account Does the OT count as social media? If so that

what size bed do you have? Sad little twin-sized mattress with very broken innersprings (yay college apartments)

any siblings? one younger sister

if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why? I’m honestly loving Edinburgh so staying here for the time being would be great

favorite snapchat filter? don’t have snapchat, so don’t know

favorite makeup brand(s) whatever’s cheap and doesn’t smudge

how many times a week do you shower? Usually every other day, so, like, 3-4. If it’s hot out then closer to 5-6

favorite tv show? FIREFLY. With additional special mentions to Blackadder, M*A*S*H, and Merlin

shoe size? US size? UK size? European size? CAN YOU TELL I’VE HAD A CONFUSING TIME SHOE SHOPPING OVER HERE??? (US 8, Euro 39, UK a Mystery)

how tall are you? 5′5″

sandals or sneakers? COMBAT BOOTS (but converse are second place so sneakers)

do you go to the gym? pfffft no

describe your dream date A ride in the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo would be pretty cool

how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? *checks* around £55

what color socks are you wearing? not wearing socks

how many pillows do you sleep with? two

do you have a job? what do you do? college student who really does need to start thinking about an actual job, seeing as how they’re graduating in a few months

how many friends do you have? I think that number really depends on where you draw the what-defines-a-friend line but, um, a decent enough number I guess? I do need more irl friends over here though

whats the worst thing you have ever done? Some high school friends and I were kinda shitty to this one girl in our group, so maybe that. Idk, I’ve done a lot of small-ish terrible things but nothing super dramatic so it’s hard to pick one as the /worst/

whats your favorite candle scent? IKEA had this one green-apple-scented candle that to this day I wish I would have bought.

3 favorite boy names That’s so hard to narrow down and now all I can think of are fictional characters that I like. Um… *throws darts at mental dartboard* Sam, Nathan, Adrian. Although those might be pretty heavily influenced by the fact that I’ve met awesome people with all of those names so. For fictional characters, Kaz Brekker is a fantastic name, as is Han Solo, as is Ronan Lynch, and…. I should stop. There are so many names that I like though

3 favorite girl names Same problem as above. *throws more mental darts* Sierra, Lyra, Clare

favorite actor? I’m currently in watch-everything-that-Diego-Luna-has-ever-been-in mode. More long-term favorites are Harrison Ford and Richard Armitage

favorite actress? Catherine Tate is pretty fantabulous.

who is your celebrity crush? I like how the question asks for “crush,” singular

favorite movie? Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park

do you read a lot? whats your favorite book? Not as much as I used to. Favorites (yes, plural) include The Book Thief, Six of Crows, Illuminae, Inkspell, The Dream Thieves, Half Moon Investigations, and so many more…..

money or brains? For me or in others? Either way, both is always nice xD

do you have a nickname? what is it? Well the OT crew knows me as Clary so. My camp counselor name was Coconut

how many times have you been to the hospital? I’ve been to the ER once or twice, but I don’t think I’ve ever stayed overnight in a hospital

top 10 favorite songs How dare you. Okay, um…. *tries to pick from a variety of bands and not just my 1-2 faves* Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back (MCR), Daze (Poets of the Fall), When Everything Comes to an End (Plan Three), Brush it Off (Plan Three), Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day), Morning Tide (PotF), Subrosa (Plan Three), What About Now (Daughtry), Ambulance (MCR), Rogue (PotF)…. that’s ten…. that didn’t even come CLOSE to covering them all (and so much for a variety of bands, heh)

do you take any medications daily? nope

what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc) Pretty normal? Maybe slightly on the oily side

what is your biggest fear? jellyfish and plane crashes

how many kids do you want? ZERO, ZIP, ZILCH, NADA, NONE, KEINE, NUL. NO THANK YOU.

whats your go to hair style? Well seeing as how my hair’s kinda too short to do much with it, either down or in a partial ponytail

what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc) grimy old student apartment woohoo

who is your role model? Nina Zenik

what was the last compliment you received? I have no idea

what was the last text you sent? “Honestly though I can’t say I’d mind if he actually did invade my hotel room. He’s one of the few people that could get away with it ;D” …..I’m not sure whether the context would make this better or worse

how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? 8, maybe? There was never a dramatic earth-shattering reveal; understanding was kinda gradual

what is your dream car? a spaceship

opinion on smoking? it’s disgusting why would you ever

do you go to college? yes

what is your dream job? underwater archaeologist by day, bestselling novelist by night. space pirate is also an option.

would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? Can I just say smack-dab in the city center? Is that not an option? Because that’s where I am now and I’m loving it.

do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? No but the last hotels I was in provided instant tea/coffee/hot chocolate packets and I stole all the hot chocolate packets

do you have freckles? no

do you smile for pictures? usually

how many pictures do you have on your phone? 1248. I need to delete a bunch.

have you ever peed in the woods? Yes, many times. I’ve also peed in the desert many times.

do you still watch cartoons? Yes, although different ones than from when I was a kid

do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds? Neither, honestly

Favorite dipping sauce? There’s this one place in San Francisco whose french fries are, like, award-winning and they have a zillion dipping sauces, one of which is a lemon saffron aioli and it is heavenly.

what do you wear to bed? a t-shirt and sometimes pants, if it’s cold enough

have you ever won a spelling bee? no but I think I was in the top ten?

what are your hobbies? wasting time, reading, watching movies/tv shows, writing and drawing when I have the motivation

can you draw? Kind of?

do you play an instrument? Clarinet for 11 years, plus saxophone, mediocre piano, and mediocre guitar

what was the last concert you saw? Poets of the Fall. I died. Many times over.

tea or coffee? neither honestly, though tea if I absolutely had to pick

Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? Don’t really care

do you want to get married? If I somehow find a way to make fictional characters come to life, sure

what is your crush’s first and last initial? S.B.

are you going to change your last name when you get married? Unless I marry someone with an impossibly cool last name, no

what color looks best on you? probably black. purple and olive green look good too

do you miss anyone right now? The SOAR Squad

do you sleep with your door open or closed? Considering I share an apartment with five other students, closed, always

do you believe in ghosts? not really, no

what is your biggest pet peeve? When people are unwilling to look facts in the eye

last person you called? Maybe my mom?

favorite ice cream flavor? COOKIE DOUGH

regular oreos or golden oreos? Does golden mean no chocolate? If so then regular, why would you take away chocolate

chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? always chocolate

what shirt are you wearing? a purple one that for once isn’t fandom related

what is your phone background? Sir Gwaine in sunglasses

are you outgoing or shy? It honestly depends. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at pretending to be outgoing

do you like it when people play with your hair? Depends who that person is

do you like your neighbors? I’m gonna interpret this as apartment-mates and while I don’t really know them too well yeah they seem pretty alright

do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? Whenever I shower

have you ever been high? Only on sugar and sleep deprivation

have you ever been drunk? Yes, but not enough to black out or give me a hangover

last thing you ate? Cheesy bacon-ey mushroom-ey salsa-ey scrambled eggs

favorite lyrics right now “And now assassination is just the only waaaaayyyyyy…..” by the cowboys in Dr. Horrible

summer or winter? Winter if there’s snow, but summer’s great too. idk

day or night? Night

dark, milk, or white chocolate? All of the above?

favorite month? October has the best weather

what is your zodiac sign? go away

who was the last person you cried in front of? My friend Josh (some of you might know him as medieval dude 1.0) because I went to see Rogue One with him

[vermiculated]

terrible tuesday: leia

really I was terribly tempted to carry on with ARCHITEUTHIS, or the new threesome monster kaiju rom-dramedy; somehow taste prevailed. (squids have beaks too!)

"No, it's alright," she tells Tilda. "Just thinking."

Tilda looks at her, inscrutable. Tilda is probably confused. The two expressions share the same pinch to her eyebrows. Recently, she has shaved her head so that there's no hair at all. Leia isn't sure she likes the feeling, the smoothness. She's put her hands on Tilda's scalp, the underside of her knee in the natural course of an evening, and still, it's a strange feeling. Tilda hasn't told Leia why she did it. They aren't like that.

It's a blessing, really. A huge blessing, an unlooked-for boon. Tilda doesn't need to say everything, to parcel out her ideas, her thoughts. She lets her mind go wide as the sky, and with just as few impediments. They see one another when they do, and they don't need to plan for it. Don't need to discuss it so endlessly. Like today. It was meant to be busy, Leia was canning the peppers from the garden, putting them up for the winter. Nothing stops growing here, but sweet peppers shrivel on the vine. Ben was ploughing the red wheat, and he'd told her that Tilda was coming. She'd known, of course she'd known: their life here is contingent on the truth that she can identify an arrival before he can.

Tilda had shrugged when Leia greeted her, shoulders ropy. "Thought I'd see what the Lous were up to," and Leia had felt her heart thicken on hearing that. Their family nickname hadn't been something she's thought she'd bring with her, but she hadn't been ready to discard it either. Tilda knows nothing about Alderaanian naming conventions, and Leia's never mentioned the seriousness of it, how her parents had brought her into their circle with that name. She supposes she never will, the pleasure of Tilda drawing interlocking "L's" on her palms is too great. Putting words to it might change it. They hadn't needed to talk as they finished the canning together, and when Ben had come in, they'd all three had the brine over bread. It has been some days since they saw one another, and the space of it is so natural. Leia considers carefully the image of Tilda, crosslegged, her cheek in her hand, the latches to her collar undone, as the sun set. It's like a jewel, small and pleasurable. Only for her own contemplation.

It's hard work, but anything worth having is. Ben's asleep; he wouldn't intentionally intrude, so Leia has tried not to draw boundaries. When he's up and about, he can be distracting. Leia smooths a crease in the bag with her hand. Tilda had brought her bag and they'd cinched them together. That had been how they'd arranged things on Endor, except that it had always been such a ... production. Nothing could ever be let to happen. It had been a war, and even the smallest matter, where she slept, might be a matter of life and death. At the time, she'd told him what she was doing, how she liked it, and what the sentry signals were; he would never use them during the night, and it had been enjoyable then, to plan and not execute an escape. They'd talked about that. Maybe he's still talking about that.

Noncommittal as it is, Tilda's approach to life is such a relief. Tilda doesn't assume that Leia must know everything, and Leia returns the favor. Some things are private.

Before, Leia would never have thought this. She hadn't exactly been a snoop, but -- knowing things was easier than not knowing them. It wasn't sneaking if she didn't have to try. Spying was an effort, something her parents devoted huge amounts of time and resources to doing right. Just like everything else they'd done, and she'd wanted to help. Lying in bed, under her purple comforter, and she'd felt that she could reach up, and the information would glide down from the ceiling. Like raindrops on a web, and she was the spider at the center of it all. Greedy for what would bring freedom, lessen her parents' fear, give them all a little room to breathe, A big gulping spider. Binyamin had told her that, once: that she read so fast it was like watching someone consume the words. Leia treasures the compliment.

It hadn't worked that way. Few things are so easy, and none of them have happened the way she would have imagined, back in her childhood bedroom. A suite, she'd had. The walls were white, a pale purple stripe at elbow height. She'd stood straight up to it when she'd been small. She had thought about painting a room for Ben like that. He might have liked it. The walls of the yurt are tan. Everything is, here. She's never tried to explain what it might have been like to him, or to Tilda. She doesn't need to explain anything to anyone; she knows it all herself.

That asymmetry will save them. Leia stays out of Tilda's mind. She misses intelligence briefings, the feel of ranks around her, those golden drops of analysis. She misses it all in the same way she misses the feeling of a flight deck under her feet, a layer of transparisteel over the air, a rise below the soles of her boots. Everything is so sturdy here, like the floor will never swing upside down, leaving her floating on a tilting horizon. Leia can still feel the slackening, the way it had been. Both her parents were keen on sports; her pare calling that he was going to cut the weights and her mare jumping at the moment of release, spinning for what seemed like an age, her knees drawn up close to her chin. They'd had fun. Taking a cruiser out for a joyride like that was fun, as well as a convincing false front for her parents to send out messages to the Rebellion free of interference.

It had been a wonderful life.

Does she miss it? She can't; this is the path she has taken. She knew that as soon as the idea came into her head, entirely her own, and unmistakably separate. The floor had been cold under her feet, they'd been bunking in one of the great ceremonial palaces in the Yavin complex, and she'd needed to walk some distance away before crouching down in a corner and holding her face. She's never told anyone what she thought about there. It had been longer than a moment. Then she'd straightened up and looked higher. Crossed her ankles, leaned back on a bench, and thought. There had been so much, her heart and mind full of her choice. She had spent the next ten months reading ancient atlases, gazetteers in secret, as she openly read family manuals. Bored him with her conversation, until he'd spend nights away. That giant map on the ceiling had called to her. Leia had looked around her, at the great stone structure, at the carvings so far above her head, and found it a comfort. The poets of the past had provided counsel, and it had been the particular brilliance of their art to write it all meters high. There were places which could protect her. Her and the baby. Not many, but the two of them? They only needed one.

At the time, she knew it was a rash decision. She left so much behind -- but at least there was a behind to leave it all to. That's what she's bought the galaxy, that's why she's here. The books here aren't much, and she's never liked the feel of paper under her hands, but they have them. They exist, and they refer to what's still there. History, drama, words. Leia's the only reader of certain books: she'd only seen them on a screen, and she's never been able to find what was lost. Ben's a good reader. He doesn't mind the feel of the trees, and he will read to her if she asks. He's a better speaker than she had worried; Leia herself can only provide so much conversation, and Tilda isn't one for extended dialog.

It's what she'd known to worry about. It's always what's comprehensible, what can be anticipated, that can be solved. A baby with no one to talk to won't be as confident as a baby in a big family, a larger planet. It's important to give him skills. When Ben reads to her, Tilda will busy herself with whittling, or mending. Leia likes to listen to the words, nothing to occupy her own hands. She does her darning in the dark. There's only one weight of yarn anyway, and Leia can feel how the  fibers want to align. They were once so, and shall be again. It would be easier if she could hear the yaks themselves, have a few of her own. It's an extravagant dream, one which she summons when she can hear their lowing. This planet lacks the excitement and fear which she had lived with, but it has some satisfactions: she could raise yaks.

A yak. Probably just the one. She'll go over to the Mixs' pasture in the spring, to look at the young ones. It could be an outing. A planned outing, a day to look forward to. That could be fun. Ben ranges all over, but it would be special to go together. She can't wish that he would stay closer: they are as close as two can be. Excepting of course, this. She kisses the vein in Tilda's wrist.

Tilda nods, the light gleaming along her skull. If Leia's not careful, if she's looking from the corner of her eye, Tilda can appear to be be wearing a helmet. Leia moves closer to her, to the center of the bed. Tilda isn't boring. Leia rebels at the thought. Tilda knows what Tilda knows, and that’s why they're safe. It's a choice, not an accident, not Tilda's own personality. Would Tilda like to know more? Should Leia tell her?

There was never a time Leia had needed to be taught to keep secrets. Perhaps in her youth, she was unfair, but she is not now. Tilda has her own stories, and Leia never asks what she is not willing to answer. Tilda does not know about Ben's other parent, any more than Leia knows what Tilda had been before coming here. None of them will ever know about her: Leia has wrapped her frail memories up and treasured them in the new, free galaxy. She'd trusted them and then they had saved her, a price beyond all paying.

Leia cut her own hair, in a public washroom, stuffed it into a bag. She still cuts it, lets the wind carry away the strands. She kisses Tilda. "I was thinking, it's alright." Tilda nods.

"Alright."

[angryhausfrau-writes]

I Travel Troubled Oceans: Chapter 14 - Meditations

With one fashion show already under his belt, Jack approaches his second with much more equanimity. Ok, he's maybe still a frazzled mess, and both Anne and Charles have both kidnapped him on several occasions just to get him to take a break. But he's really handling this show much better than the last. He is.

He's gotten most of his designs mocked up in muslin, knowing now that his strong suit is doing and not planning, even if it's only in this one thing. Charles and Anne have both made fun of him for getting too wrapped up in his head, for coming up with grand plans and schemes and tricky plots when a boot to the face would be nearly as effective and vastly quicker. But that's the thing. Jack doesn't want nearly good enough. He wants perfection. He wants to be the best – and that requires careful planning.

But there's a saying that perfection is the enemy of good enough. And Jack certainly values the balance Anne as his partner and Charles as his second in command (and isn't that a change of circumstances that Jack is still getting used to) bring to their little team. Because Max too is a planner and if it were just the two of them, they might get bogged down in the minute details and miss valuable windows of opportunity. Or literal windows, like the one Anne climbed through into the posh bedroom of one of the city planning commission bigwigs to gather conclusive proof of his tawdry extramarital affair. And if Anne helped herself to some of his top shelf booze and cigars, well Jack likes a drink and a smoke of an evening as well as the next man. Except for Charles, who'd complained that the whiskey went down too smooth, but Charles would drink paint thinner if left to his own devices, so Jack is firmly NOT taking his opinion into account.

Although he thinks at least half of Charles's stubborn refusal to be domesticated is a front. Because honestly, who would rather live life at the ragged edge of survival when they could be safe and comfortable and happy? Who goes out to beat the shit out of other people nearly every day – and have the shit beaten out of them in turn – when there are a million other much more pleasurable ways to spend one's time? Idiots, that's who.

It all just smacks of the kind of hypermasculine male alpha bullshit that Jack has never had particular interest in. Obviously.

But despite their differences, the three of them – well, five if you count Mary and Max, the latter of which Jack has learnt never to disregard – they all make a pretty great team. Jack might think rather highly of himself – too highly, if Anne's to be believed – but he would never be able to pull off the con they're attempting without Max. Without her connections, yes, but it's more than that. She has a clarity of vision he hasn't known since Flint ran a crew, and it's a vision far less likely to cause them to wind up dead or incarcerated.

And Mary has been invaluable helping out with the social media angle of their little venture. So much of what they are doing rests on public perception – and a positive public perception at that. Both Flint and Vane had run crews on the power that fear gave them. But that has never been Jack's angle. Sure, he's ruthless – violent - when he needs to be, but it isn't his go-to method of garnering respect. But even for him, this is a great deal farther along the path of respectability than he's ever trod before. And Mary has helped guide them all down it with a keen eye to social mores and outside perceptions that Jack can't help but admire. Even if he dislikes his work being interrupted for an hour while Mary stages the perfect “candid” photo for his Instagram.

Speaking of his work, it also helps having Christine as an assistant this go round at creating a fashion show, since Fashion Week is somewhat more important than his debut show. Jack has a lot of eyes on his design studio, and those eyes want to see sketches and drawn out designs – proof that he can hack it in the cutthroat world of high fashion. Which, Jack ran a street gang for two years, he's got this covered. But he is garnering a fair bit of interest from the British critics for this new show, as well as some international interest and it serves their agenda to keep those guardians of haute coture appeased., since Max is banking on further exposure for the next stages of her plan.

Sewing the seeds of an international criminal empire is not the only goal, however. Jack is also supposed to be using this show to help Idelle become even more entrenched with Councilor Featherstone. Max has gotten a fair bit of insider information off the esteemed councilor through Idelle's rather pointed pillow talk. Nothing actionable at this stage, but they're still laying the groundwork, both through her efforts and with Jack's own weekly tennis dates with the man. Not to mention the occasional double dates he and Charles have been dragged on, usually to the poshest and most upscale of restaurants – where Charles still doesn't deign to button his shirt more than half way. And expecting him to wear a suite jacket is a complete lost cause.

Not that Jack particularly minds. And he doesn't think Idelle does either.

Frankly, the councilor's not much to look at. Sort of quiet and mousy. Even after all these months and months of trying to draw him out of his shell, Jack doesn't feel like he's been all that successful. The man's more withdrawn than a turtle faced with whatever the fuck eats turtles.

Some kind of bird maybe? Or a lizard? Jack's not a biologist, all right? Or any kind of scientist.

What he is is a conman masquerading as a rich idiot fashion designer. Who's been tasked with making a prostitute look upper crust enough for the nouveau rich government official they're conning to start thinking marriage, not just fun fling.

Because one of the side effects of Jack “befriending” the councilor is that he starts complaining about his life problems. Which is exactly what Jack wants to happen. He can't very well give Councilor Featherstone his heart's desire – fix all the little botherations currently vexing him – if he doesn't know what those botherations are. But God is it dull. His largest problem is an overbearing mother who constantly wonders why he hasn't settled down yet.

And so Featherstone has been agonizing lately over whether or not Idelle is the capital-O one. The real deal. The love of his life. The one he wants to spend forever with – or as much of forever as middle-aged rich fuckers care to believe in.

And for the sake of the con if nothing else, it's Jack's job to make Idelle into the councilor's one true love. His soulmate. His reason de etre.

And that means taking a corner girl and turning her into an upper-middle class enough woman that she can be a wife and not just a hot trophy girlfriend, to be used and then discarded when a newer, shinier model wanders into the councilor's view.

Jack's getting flashbacks of watching My Fair Lady – terrible musical and with a completely different ending to the book. Although the sugar sweet Hollywood ending, with enough romantic nonsense to start rotting teeth, is exactly what they're after.

And Jack is nothing if not adaptable, as evidenced by his turning the whole Flint debacle into something positive. So this go round, all the clothes are rich brocades and just dripping in jewels, like the whole fucking royal treasury is out on the catwalk. And the clothes are not exactly modest, not with the amount of cleavage Jack's showing. Idelle's got great tits and it would be a shame not to feature them prominently. But there's no skin tight latex or side slits up to the waist or plunging necklines that end at the groin.

No. It's respectable.

He's respectable. Which isn't a word Jack often uses to describe himself, much less Anne or Charles. But here they are.

--

Anne is having a great fucking time. Like sure, she knew being rich had to be better than starving on the street. And the kind of money they've got is enough to let them weather storms of a magnitude she can't even fully comprehend.

But just the day to day stuff, it's ridiculous how much that shit's changed.

Anne's got people to clean her bathrooms. Hell, Anne's got a bathroom – and all to herself, she don't gotta share with anyone if she don't want. She can close and lock the door and lay in the gigantic bathtub, full of some perfumy smelling shit she swiped offa Jack and just exist for hours.

No one can get in and bother her. No one can judge her for using up all the hot water. Or for being unproductive.

Or for being girly.

Cuz Anne's not really one for frills and lace. Ain't never been one for dresses or high heels or makeup. But there's something to be said for having the freedom to do all the kinda girly shit she'd thought was stupid and weak and no way to get respect – and to find out that some of it's kinda fun.

Like the bubble baths. Or the tea parties she and Max and Mary started having, as a way for Anne to see Max at least weekly, but they've sorta turned into their own thing.

None of them are posh, and neither Anne or Mary want to put on the flowery sundresses that the event seems to call for. But Max'll put on a just fucking gorgeous dress with her hair piled up on her head with jewels in it like she's a queen or maybe a goddess like from Greek myths or some shit. And Anne'll put on a poet shirt and highwaisted pants and boots, cuz Byron might have been a syphilitic jackass but he had good fashion sense at least. And Mary'll put on a real sharp suit. And they'll sit out in their fancy garden and drink sparkling fruit juices with booze in them or tea nearly white with cream but still so much better than the dishwater they'd used to drink and eat finger sandwiches and fancy little cakes and just take the piss out of all the fucking rich pricks they've had to put up with all week. And sometimes, Charles will even join them, which is extra funny cuz he never even bothers to change out of his usual wardrobe of ripped jeans and leather and just so much testosterone you could choke. But he'll stick his pinky out when he drinks tea and gossip with the best of them, cuz he knows Anne'd give him endless shit if he didn't.

It's a whole hell of a lot of fun, is what Anne is saying, all that silliness and camaraderie and, and civility. She's glad she gets to live a life where she can do all those things. Where she don't gotta be the fiercest and the toughest and the ballsiest fucker in the room just to prove she belongs there.

Though she's also glad she gets to live a life where she can climb through a rich fuck's window to commit espionage and petty theft. Cuz life'd be pretty fucking boring if it was all just bubble baths and tea parties.

[networkingdefinition]

Mug Quotes

Official Website: Mug Quotes

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• Ale, not beer, in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink. – Guy de Maupassant • Alex took a silent step closer to the kitchen door and watched unseen as willow spooned instant coffee into a pair of mugs.With another yawn, she scraped her hair off her face and stretched. She looked so entirely human, so drowsy and sleep-rumpled.For a moment, Alex just gazed at her, taking in her long tumble of hair, her wide green eyes and pixieish chin. Fleetingly, he imagined her eyes meeting his, wondering what she’d look like if she smiled – L.A. Weatherly • Animals look at people the way people look at people that might mug them. – Dov Davidoff • As long as the “woman’s work” that some men do is socially devalued, as long as it is defined as woman’s work, as long as it’s tacked onto a “regular” work day, men who share it are likely to develop the same jagged mouth and frazzled hair as the coffee-mug mom. The image of the new man is like the image of the supermom: it obscures the strain. – Arlie Russell Hochschild • As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug’s game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. – T. S. Eliot

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Mug', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_mug').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_mug img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Blustery cold days should be spend propped up in bed with a mug of hot chocolate and a pile of comic books. – Bill Watterson • Caffeine gives me hope. Sometimes, when I brew my wicked strong Irish black tea just perfect, about halfway through the mug I feel a clear and overwhelming feeling of optimism. It didn’t surprise me when a study a few years ago implied that suicide was much less likely among coffee and tea drinkers. – John Vanderslice • Closing his eyes, he sent up a prayer to anyone who was listening, asking please, for God’s sake, stop sending him signals that they were right for each other. He’d read that book, seen the movie, bought the soundtrack, the DVD, the T-shirt, the mug, the bobble-head, and the insider’s guide. He knew every reason they could have been lock and key. But just as he was aware of all that aligned them, he was even clearer on how they were damned to be ever apart. – J.R. Ward • Effectively, it makes the greasepaint permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self. If all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show: we mere players are not just aware of the camera; we mug for it. – Peggy Orenstein • Have faith, Ed, all right?’ I search the coffee mug, but there’s none in there. – Markus Zusak • How could he convey to someone who’d never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, turnec the mug they were sharing so that her mouth landed where his had been? How did he explain the way they could be in a locker room, or underwater, or in the piney woods of Maine, bus as long as Em was with him, he was at home? – Jodi Picoult • I aint such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself. – George Bernard Shaw • I confess, right at the start, to the doubts – and sometimes outright dreads – that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today? – Gail Godwin • I gave my mother a matching set [of mugs] for Christmas, and she accepted them as graciously as possible, announcing that they would make the perfect pet bowls. The mugs were set on the kitchen floor and remained there until the cat chipped a tooth and went on a hunger strike. – David Sedaris • I have mugs of hot water every morning because the studio is cold, and also because it makes my throat sound clearer. – Mika Brzezinski • I hight don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine. I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine. – Jack Parsons • I like light green, sometimes red is fun to look at, not a fan of yellow, unless it’s in a rainbow or on a coffee mug or on a happy face. – Chris Kattan • I like my mug shot. I think I have a really great mug shot. It looks like a magazine shoot. – Paris Hilton • I wasn’t a great improviser when I started there; I’m not really up on current events. I would always just mug, just try to get my laughs from making faces. So I decided to do a character who should never have become a comic – somebody you would see at the Comedy Store and go, “This person is never going to make it.” – Paul Reubens • Ice is most welcome in a cold drink on a hot day. But in the heart of winter, you want a warm hot mug with your favorite soothing brew to keep the chill away. When you don’t have anything warm at hand, even a memory can be a small substitute. Remember a searing look of intimate eyes. Receive the inner fire. – Vera Nazarian • If you and I took a walk down a shopping street in Jo’burg or Cape Town or London, we see two guys looking in a shop window, we think, “Oh, they’re wondering what they’re going to buy.” A cop looks at them and thinks, “Why are they standing there? Are they doing a drug deal? Are they going to mug someone? Are they going to rob the shop?” – Peter James • I’m a huge Wonder Woman fan – I have about 12 coffee mugs at home! – Kari Wahlgren • I’m pretty sure lurking in a dark alley to mug me with your apology isn’t the usual way to go about saying you’re sorry. But I didn’t read that Mars-Venus book, so who knows. – Jim Butcher • I’m really conscious of the amount of food I eat, but I don’t deny myself anything. For example, I have a really big sweet tooth. At the end of the night, if I’m craving ice cream, I might not have the bowl that I would have when I was a kid, but I’ll put a couple of scoops in a coffee mug, and I’ll eat it slowly, and I enjoy every moment of it. – Summer Sanders • Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day, 1642: a weakly and diminutive infant, of whom it is related that, at his birth, he might have found room in a quart mug. He died on March the 20th, 1727, after more than eighty-four years of more than average bodily health and vigour; it is a proper pendant to the story of the quart mug to state that he never lost more than one of his second teeth. – Augustus De Morgan • It was one of those mornings when a man could face the day only after warming himself with a mug of thick coffee beaded with steam, a good thick crust of bread, and a bowl of bean soup. – Richard Gehman • It’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity. – Daniel Dennett • It’s the nicest thing on earth if someone comes up to me and says, ‘Every day I drink out of a mug you designed.’ – Jonathan Adler • I’ve always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude. – Robert Polidori • I’ve been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off and suddenly there were Hulk coffee mugs and Iron Man lunchboxes and The Avengers sweatshirts everywhere. Money’s okay, but what I really like is working. – Stan Lee • I’ve gone through a lot of the same things like Britney Spears. I just don’t have a mug shot. – Fergie • I’ve never been able to write for myself. I was doing a lot. I produced The Green, I wrote it – I didn’t see myself in the world of this film. I’m sure there are elements of dark corners of my psyche that found their ways on screen; you didn’t need my mug up there. There was enough of my essence in the story as it plays out without me acting in it. – Paul Marcarelli • Karl Marx himself preferred a glass of claret to the mug of tea affected by some of his recent converts. – Denis Healey • Listen, boy, just ask the chef to make me a proper Full English Breakfast. You know, bacon, fried eggs, sausages, liver, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, black pudding, kidneys, baked beans, fried bread, toast and served with strong English mustard, mind – none of this effete French muck – and a large mug of hot, strong Indian tea. – Bryan Talbot • Martha Stewart showed up at Manhattan FBI Headquarters to have her finger prints taken and pose for a mug shot. Then Martha explained how to get ink off your fingers using seltzer water and lemon juice. – Conan O’Brien • Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course. – Alexander McCall Smith • My daughter got me a ‘World’s Best Dad’ mug. So we know she’s sarcastic. – Bob Odenkirk • Nanny Ogg could see the future in the froth on a beer mug. It invariably showed that she was going to enjoy a refreshing drink which she almost certainly was not going to pay for. – Terry Pratchett • Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing. – Graham Greene • Not like I need an excuse to enjoy a Moscow mule, but this tray and six-mug set, handmade in Mexico with hammered recycled copper, makes cocktail hour extra special. – Oprah Winfrey • O lovely O most charming pug Thy gracefull air and heavenly mug … His noses cast is of the roman He is a very pretty weoman I could not get a rhyme for roman And was obliged to call it weoman. – Marjorie Fleming • Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea? – Frank McCourt • On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn’t, he said: Do you mind if I mug you here? – Paul Merton • Once Mo had closed the gates, he returned to his little stone hut, and his half-eaten sandwich of butter and canned sardines, and his mug of thick hot chocolate, which every night he poured carefully into a thermos labeled COFFEE. – Lauren Oliver • One day as a young man, I was walking down the streets. And a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me closing in on me. And I could hear them talking to one another about how they were going to mug me. (Speaking Zulu). Let’s get this white guy. You go to his left, and I’ll come up behind him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run.So I just spun around real quick and said (speaking Zulu). Yo, guys, why don’t we just mug someone together? I’m ready. – Trevor Noah • One must be able to say at all times–instead of points, straight lines, and planes–tables, chairs, and beer mugs – David Hilbert • Out of nowhere, Valek appeared before me, yelling in my ear, shaking my shoulders. Stupidly, belatedly, I realized he was the drunk. Who else but Valek could win a fight against four large men when armed only with a beer mug? – Maria V. Snyder • Outside the youth center, between the liquor store and the police station, a little dogwood tree is losing its mind; overflowing with blossomfoam, like a sudsy mug of beer; like a bride ripping off her clothes, dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds, so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene. It’s been doing that all week: making beauty, and throwing it away, and making more. – Tony Hoagland • People’s arrest tapes, mug shots, everything is online. – Jane Krakowski • Poetry is a mug’s game. – T. S. Eliot • Revolution? Unscrew the flag-staff, wrap the bunting in the oil covers, and put the thing in the clothes-chest. Let the old lady bring you your house-slippers and untie your fiery red necktie. You always make revolutions with your mugs, your republic–nothing but an industrial accident. – Alfred Doblin • Saiman picked up a coffee mug, stared at it, and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into a dozen pieces. We looked at him. “Your date appears to be hysterical,” Rene told me. “You think I should slap some man into him? – Ilona Andrews • She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days. – Alice Munro • Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding. – Vera Nazarian • So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days.” “I do,” Zuzana agreed. “I swear I hate more poeple every day. Everyone annoys me. If I’m like this now, what am I going to be like when I’m old?” “You’ll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony.” “Nah. BBs just rile ’em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka. – Laini Taylor • Something smashed to the ground. Jack looked at me, all the mugs forgotten. “I’m not going to let anyone kill you.” He grinned. “If I don’t get to, no one should. – Kiersten White • Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted on his mug. – James T. Farrell • Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: ‘Don’t be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones. People might suppose this was in poor taste. – Christopher Hitchens • That was close,”he said, helping himself to coffee. Yeah, you almost opened the door to Morelli.” I wasn’t talking about Morelli. I was talking about us.” That too,” I said. Ranger sliced a bagel and looked for the toaster. It’s broken,”I told him. He truned the boiler on and slid the bagel into the oven. That’s surprisingly domestic for a man of mystery,” I said to him. He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. “I like things hot. – Janet Evanovich • The mug from the washstand was used as Becky’s tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea. – Frances Hodgson Burnett • The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they’re an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good. – Billy Zane • The toughest thing for a homeschooler is the same as for a school teacher – shifting from a weak tea vision of math being grinding calculations to a rich frothy mug of math as an active way of thinking. – John Golden • The world won’t get more or less terrible if we’re indoors somewhere with a mug of hot chocolate,’ Kim said. ‘Though it’s possible it will seem slightly less terrible if there are marshmallows in the hot chocolate. – Kamila Shamsie • There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby. – Nick Hornby • There are popular celebrities, there are unpopular celebrities and then there are the walking dead. You know the walking dead when you see them: they look like Mel Gibson, still striving for drunken charm in an L.A. County mug shot, after getting picked up on a DWI charge that included anti-semitic slurs directed at the police. – Jeffrey Kluger • There is more similarity in the marketing challenge of selling a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible. – A. Alfred Taubman • They were the reason that he kept faith with his stars, that reinforced him in his belief that the universe had more in store for him than the mug’s game of working for a modest salary until he retired or died. – J. K. Rowling • This is ideal, you’ll see. We do everything backward. It’s just how we are. We began with an elopement. After that, we made love. Next, we’ll progress to courting. When we’re old and silver-haired, perhaps we’ll finally get around to flirtation. We’ll make fond eyes at each other over our mugs of gruel. We’ll be the envy of couples half our age. – Tessa Dare • This is no time for drinking a mug of water – which you would do nowhere else in the world. A mug of water! You just don’t drink water from mugs, do ya? Except on the telly. Water out of a mug! Should be a hot drink… mug of water. – Russell Brand • Three years ago, the white hope of the theatre. Today, a mug. That’s New York for you. Puts you on a Christmas tree, and then – the alley. – Ben Hecht • To espresso or to latte, that is the question…whether ’tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain…or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one’s heartache. – Jasper Fforde • Tonight, I propose a 21st Century Crime Bill to deploy the latest technologies and tactics to make our communities even safer. Our balanced budget will help put up to 50,000 more police on the street in the areas hardest hit by crime, and then to equip them with new tools from crime-mapping computers to digital mug shots. We must break the deadly cycle of drugs and crime. – William J. Clinton • We have such a long, familiar history with Peter Falk. The minute his mug is on that screen people smile. – Paul Reiser • We need to get past the point where being black and a male means that I am likely to mug you for your wallet, likely to have a minus 15 on my IQ, likely to not go to college and likely to wear my pants below my arse. – John Amaechi • We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe All the evening, from his empty mug With gleaming eye glanced towards us: “I seen ’em myself!” he said fiercely. – C. S. Lewis • What are they teaching these thugs? -Why are there so many of them? -What is the Institute for Higher Aeronautics? -How many of the are there? There are only six of us! Why? -Why is DC public transportation so weird? -Why don’t we mug those Eraser goons for money more often? -Fang’s Blog – James Patterson • What brings you onto my property?” Rhev said, cradling his mug with both hands trying to absorb its warmth. Got a problem” I can’t fix your personality, sorry – J.R. Ward • What I really want is to sit next to someone under an L.L. bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug. I don’t want some rusty ’73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when it’s rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket. So why do I keep looking for Pintos? – Augusten Burroughs • With a face like this, there aren’t a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I’ve gotta face that was meant for a mug shot and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past thirty years. If I play a cop, it’s always a racist cop, or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop – but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts. – M. C. Gainey • Yes Headwoman Azaze. But I never lie to Rosethorn. She, um, discourages it.” “Evvy and I have an understanding.” She grabbed the teakettle and poured hot water into the mug. “She tells me the truth, and I don’t hang her in the first well we come to. It’s a solution that works tolerably well for both of us. – Tamora Pierce • You can never prepare yourself enough to see your mug shot and DUI. – Tracey Gold • You can tell the future?’ ‘More like the future mugs me from time to time.’ Rachel said ‘I speak prophecies. The oracle spirit kind of hijacks me once in a while, and speaks important stuff that doesn’t make any sense to anybody. But yeah, the prophecies tell the future.- Rick Riordan • You had a package. It was torn, so I looked in.” She lifted one of a stack of firefighter calendars, with his own mug and half-naked body on the cover. “Nice,” she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her lips. “Mr. 2008.” He bit back a sigh. “It’s for charity.” “And you definitely contributed. – Jill Shalvis • You know I’ll never say no, and Nate’s so dedicated, I think he loves our alpha more than me.” “I resent that,” Nate grumbled. “I might love football more than you, but definitely not Lucas’s ugly mug. – Nalini Singh • You should take more pride in your appearance,” I tell him. “You’ll never attract girls with an ugly mug like that. – Darren Shan • You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up – even if you want to stay where you are – and get you moving again. – Alan Sillitoe • You were safe on a troll. Anyone wanting to mug a troll would have to use a building on a stick. – Terry Pratchett

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Mug Quotes

Official Website: Mug Quotes

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• Ale, not beer, in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink. – Guy de Maupassant • Alex took a silent step closer to the kitchen door and watched unseen as willow spooned instant coffee into a pair of mugs.With another yawn, she scraped her hair off her face and stretched. She looked so entirely human, so drowsy and sleep-rumpled.For a moment, Alex just gazed at her, taking in her long tumble of hair, her wide green eyes and pixieish chin. Fleetingly, he imagined her eyes meeting his, wondering what she’d look like if she smiled – L.A. Weatherly • Animals look at people the way people look at people that might mug them. – Dov Davidoff • As long as the “woman’s work” that some men do is socially devalued, as long as it is defined as woman’s work, as long as it’s tacked onto a “regular” work day, men who share it are likely to develop the same jagged mouth and frazzled hair as the coffee-mug mom. The image of the new man is like the image of the supermom: it obscures the strain. – Arlie Russell Hochschild • As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug’s game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. – T. S. Eliot

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Mug', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_mug').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_mug img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Blustery cold days should be spend propped up in bed with a mug of hot chocolate and a pile of comic books. – Bill Watterson • Caffeine gives me hope. Sometimes, when I brew my wicked strong Irish black tea just perfect, about halfway through the mug I feel a clear and overwhelming feeling of optimism. It didn’t surprise me when a study a few years ago implied that suicide was much less likely among coffee and tea drinkers. – John Vanderslice • Closing his eyes, he sent up a prayer to anyone who was listening, asking please, for God’s sake, stop sending him signals that they were right for each other. He’d read that book, seen the movie, bought the soundtrack, the DVD, the T-shirt, the mug, the bobble-head, and the insider’s guide. He knew every reason they could have been lock and key. But just as he was aware of all that aligned them, he was even clearer on how they were damned to be ever apart. – J.R. Ward • Effectively, it makes the greasepaint permanent, blurring the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self. If all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show: we mere players are not just aware of the camera; we mug for it. – Peggy Orenstein • Have faith, Ed, all right?’ I search the coffee mug, but there’s none in there. – Markus Zusak • How could he convey to someone who’d never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, turnec the mug they were sharing so that her mouth landed where his had been? How did he explain the way they could be in a locker room, or underwater, or in the piney woods of Maine, bus as long as Em was with him, he was at home? – Jodi Picoult • I aint such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself. – George Bernard Shaw • I confess, right at the start, to the doubts – and sometimes outright dreads – that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today? – Gail Godwin • I gave my mother a matching set [of mugs] for Christmas, and she accepted them as graciously as possible, announcing that they would make the perfect pet bowls. The mugs were set on the kitchen floor and remained there until the cat chipped a tooth and went on a hunger strike. – David Sedaris • I have mugs of hot water every morning because the studio is cold, and also because it makes my throat sound clearer. – Mika Brzezinski • I hight don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine. I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine. – Jack Parsons • I like light green, sometimes red is fun to look at, not a fan of yellow, unless it’s in a rainbow or on a coffee mug or on a happy face. – Chris Kattan • I like my mug shot. I think I have a really great mug shot. It looks like a magazine shoot. – Paris Hilton • I wasn’t a great improviser when I started there; I’m not really up on current events. I would always just mug, just try to get my laughs from making faces. So I decided to do a character who should never have become a comic – somebody you would see at the Comedy Store and go, “This person is never going to make it.” – Paul Reubens • Ice is most welcome in a cold drink on a hot day. But in the heart of winter, you want a warm hot mug with your favorite soothing brew to keep the chill away. When you don’t have anything warm at hand, even a memory can be a small substitute. Remember a searing look of intimate eyes. Receive the inner fire. – Vera Nazarian • If you and I took a walk down a shopping street in Jo’burg or Cape Town or London, we see two guys looking in a shop window, we think, “Oh, they’re wondering what they’re going to buy.” A cop looks at them and thinks, “Why are they standing there? Are they doing a drug deal? Are they going to mug someone? Are they going to rob the shop?” – Peter James • I’m a huge Wonder Woman fan – I have about 12 coffee mugs at home! – Kari Wahlgren • I’m pretty sure lurking in a dark alley to mug me with your apology isn’t the usual way to go about saying you’re sorry. But I didn’t read that Mars-Venus book, so who knows. – Jim Butcher • I’m really conscious of the amount of food I eat, but I don’t deny myself anything. For example, I have a really big sweet tooth. At the end of the night, if I’m craving ice cream, I might not have the bowl that I would have when I was a kid, but I’ll put a couple of scoops in a coffee mug, and I’ll eat it slowly, and I enjoy every moment of it. – Summer Sanders • Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day, 1642: a weakly and diminutive infant, of whom it is related that, at his birth, he might have found room in a quart mug. He died on March the 20th, 1727, after more than eighty-four years of more than average bodily health and vigour; it is a proper pendant to the story of the quart mug to state that he never lost more than one of his second teeth. – Augustus De Morgan • It was one of those mornings when a man could face the day only after warming himself with a mug of thick coffee beaded with steam, a good thick crust of bread, and a bowl of bean soup. – Richard Gehman • It’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity. – Daniel Dennett • It’s the nicest thing on earth if someone comes up to me and says, ‘Every day I drink out of a mug you designed.’ – Jonathan Adler • I’ve always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude. – Robert Polidori • I’ve been very lucky. All I wanted was to pay the rent. Then these characters took off and suddenly there were Hulk coffee mugs and Iron Man lunchboxes and The Avengers sweatshirts everywhere. Money’s okay, but what I really like is working. – Stan Lee • I’ve gone through a lot of the same things like Britney Spears. I just don’t have a mug shot. – Fergie • I’ve never been able to write for myself. I was doing a lot. I produced The Green, I wrote it – I didn’t see myself in the world of this film. I’m sure there are elements of dark corners of my psyche that found their ways on screen; you didn’t need my mug up there. There was enough of my essence in the story as it plays out without me acting in it. – Paul Marcarelli • Karl Marx himself preferred a glass of claret to the mug of tea affected by some of his recent converts. – Denis Healey • Listen, boy, just ask the chef to make me a proper Full English Breakfast. You know, bacon, fried eggs, sausages, liver, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, black pudding, kidneys, baked beans, fried bread, toast and served with strong English mustard, mind – none of this effete French muck – and a large mug of hot, strong Indian tea. – Bryan Talbot • Martha Stewart showed up at Manhattan FBI Headquarters to have her finger prints taken and pose for a mug shot. Then Martha explained how to get ink off your fingers using seltzer water and lemon juice. – Conan O’Brien • Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course. – Alexander McCall Smith • My daughter got me a ‘World’s Best Dad’ mug. So we know she’s sarcastic. – Bob Odenkirk • Nanny Ogg could see the future in the froth on a beer mug. It invariably showed that she was going to enjoy a refreshing drink which she almost certainly was not going to pay for. – Terry Pratchett • Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing. – Graham Greene • Not like I need an excuse to enjoy a Moscow mule, but this tray and six-mug set, handmade in Mexico with hammered recycled copper, makes cocktail hour extra special. – Oprah Winfrey • O lovely O most charming pug Thy gracefull air and heavenly mug … His noses cast is of the roman He is a very pretty weoman I could not get a rhyme for roman And was obliged to call it weoman. – Marjorie Fleming • Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea? – Frank McCourt • On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn’t, he said: Do you mind if I mug you here? – Paul Merton • Once Mo had closed the gates, he returned to his little stone hut, and his half-eaten sandwich of butter and canned sardines, and his mug of thick hot chocolate, which every night he poured carefully into a thermos labeled COFFEE. – Lauren Oliver • One day as a young man, I was walking down the streets. And a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me closing in on me. And I could hear them talking to one another about how they were going to mug me. (Speaking Zulu). Let’s get this white guy. You go to his left, and I’ll come up behind him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run.So I just spun around real quick and said (speaking Zulu). Yo, guys, why don’t we just mug someone together? I’m ready. – Trevor Noah • One must be able to say at all times–instead of points, straight lines, and planes–tables, chairs, and beer mugs – David Hilbert • Out of nowhere, Valek appeared before me, yelling in my ear, shaking my shoulders. Stupidly, belatedly, I realized he was the drunk. Who else but Valek could win a fight against four large men when armed only with a beer mug? – Maria V. Snyder • Outside the youth center, between the liquor store and the police station, a little dogwood tree is losing its mind; overflowing with blossomfoam, like a sudsy mug of beer; like a bride ripping off her clothes, dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds, so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene. It’s been doing that all week: making beauty, and throwing it away, and making more. – Tony Hoagland • People’s arrest tapes, mug shots, everything is online. – Jane Krakowski • Poetry is a mug’s game. – T. S. Eliot • Revolution? Unscrew the flag-staff, wrap the bunting in the oil covers, and put the thing in the clothes-chest. Let the old lady bring you your house-slippers and untie your fiery red necktie. You always make revolutions with your mugs, your republic–nothing but an industrial accident. – Alfred Doblin • Saiman picked up a coffee mug, stared at it, and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into a dozen pieces. We looked at him. “Your date appears to be hysterical,” Rene told me. “You think I should slap some man into him? – Ilona Andrews • She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days. – Alice Munro • Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding. – Vera Nazarian • So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days.” “I do,” Zuzana agreed. “I swear I hate more poeple every day. Everyone annoys me. If I’m like this now, what am I going to be like when I’m old?” “You’ll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony.” “Nah. BBs just rile ’em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka. – Laini Taylor • Something smashed to the ground. Jack looked at me, all the mugs forgotten. “I’m not going to let anyone kill you.” He grinned. “If I don’t get to, no one should. – Kiersten White • Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted on his mug. – James T. Farrell • Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: ‘Don’t be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones. People might suppose this was in poor taste. – Christopher Hitchens • That was close,”he said, helping himself to coffee. Yeah, you almost opened the door to Morelli.” I wasn’t talking about Morelli. I was talking about us.” That too,” I said. Ranger sliced a bagel and looked for the toaster. It’s broken,”I told him. He truned the boiler on and slid the bagel into the oven. That’s surprisingly domestic for a man of mystery,” I said to him. He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. “I like things hot. – Janet Evanovich • The mug from the washstand was used as Becky’s tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea. – Frances Hodgson Burnett • The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they’re an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good. – Billy Zane • The toughest thing for a homeschooler is the same as for a school teacher – shifting from a weak tea vision of math being grinding calculations to a rich frothy mug of math as an active way of thinking. – John Golden • The world won’t get more or less terrible if we’re indoors somewhere with a mug of hot chocolate,’ Kim said. ‘Though it’s possible it will seem slightly less terrible if there are marshmallows in the hot chocolate. – Kamila Shamsie • There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby. – Nick Hornby • There are popular celebrities, there are unpopular celebrities and then there are the walking dead. You know the walking dead when you see them: they look like Mel Gibson, still striving for drunken charm in an L.A. County mug shot, after getting picked up on a DWI charge that included anti-semitic slurs directed at the police. – Jeffrey Kluger • There is more similarity in the marketing challenge of selling a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible. – A. Alfred Taubman • They were the reason that he kept faith with his stars, that reinforced him in his belief that the universe had more in store for him than the mug’s game of working for a modest salary until he retired or died. – J. K. Rowling • This is ideal, you’ll see. We do everything backward. It’s just how we are. We began with an elopement. After that, we made love. Next, we’ll progress to courting. When we’re old and silver-haired, perhaps we’ll finally get around to flirtation. We’ll make fond eyes at each other over our mugs of gruel. We’ll be the envy of couples half our age. – Tessa Dare • This is no time for drinking a mug of water – which you would do nowhere else in the world. A mug of water! You just don’t drink water from mugs, do ya? Except on the telly. Water out of a mug! Should be a hot drink… mug of water. – Russell Brand • Three years ago, the white hope of the theatre. Today, a mug. That’s New York for you. Puts you on a Christmas tree, and then – the alley. – Ben Hecht • To espresso or to latte, that is the question…whether ’tis tastier on the palate to choose white mocha over plain…or to take a cup to go. Or a mug to stay, or extra cream, or have nothing, and by opposing the endless choice, end one’s heartache. – Jasper Fforde • Tonight, I propose a 21st Century Crime Bill to deploy the latest technologies and tactics to make our communities even safer. Our balanced budget will help put up to 50,000 more police on the street in the areas hardest hit by crime, and then to equip them with new tools from crime-mapping computers to digital mug shots. We must break the deadly cycle of drugs and crime. – William J. Clinton • We have such a long, familiar history with Peter Falk. The minute his mug is on that screen people smile. – Paul Reiser • We need to get past the point where being black and a male means that I am likely to mug you for your wallet, likely to have a minus 15 on my IQ, likely to not go to college and likely to wear my pants below my arse. – John Amaechi • We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe All the evening, from his empty mug With gleaming eye glanced towards us: “I seen ’em myself!” he said fiercely. – C. S. Lewis • What are they teaching these thugs? -Why are there so many of them? -What is the Institute for Higher Aeronautics? -How many of the are there? There are only six of us! Why? -Why is DC public transportation so weird? -Why don’t we mug those Eraser goons for money more often? -Fang’s Blog – James Patterson • What brings you onto my property?” Rhev said, cradling his mug with both hands trying to absorb its warmth. Got a problem” I can’t fix your personality, sorry – J.R. Ward • What I really want is to sit next to someone under an L.L. bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug. I don’t want some rusty ’73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when it’s rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket. So why do I keep looking for Pintos? – Augusten Burroughs • With a face like this, there aren’t a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I’ve gotta face that was meant for a mug shot and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past thirty years. If I play a cop, it’s always a racist cop, or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop – but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts. – M. C. Gainey • Yes Headwoman Azaze. But I never lie to Rosethorn. She, um, discourages it.” “Evvy and I have an understanding.” She grabbed the teakettle and poured hot water into the mug. “She tells me the truth, and I don’t hang her in the first well we come to. It’s a solution that works tolerably well for both of us. – Tamora Pierce • You can never prepare yourself enough to see your mug shot and DUI. – Tracey Gold • You can tell the future?’ ‘More like the future mugs me from time to time.’ Rachel said ‘I speak prophecies. The oracle spirit kind of hijacks me once in a while, and speaks important stuff that doesn’t make any sense to anybody. But yeah, the prophecies tell the future.- Rick Riordan • You had a package. It was torn, so I looked in.” She lifted one of a stack of firefighter calendars, with his own mug and half-naked body on the cover. “Nice,” she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her lips. “Mr. 2008.” He bit back a sigh. “It’s for charity.” “And you definitely contributed. – Jill Shalvis • You know I’ll never say no, and Nate’s so dedicated, I think he loves our alpha more than me.” “I resent that,” Nate grumbled. “I might love football more than you, but definitely not Lucas’s ugly mug. – Nalini Singh • You should take more pride in your appearance,” I tell him. “You’ll never attract girls with an ugly mug like that. – Darren Shan • You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up – even if you want to stay where you are – and get you moving again. – Alan Sillitoe • You were safe on a troll. Anyone wanting to mug a troll would have to use a building on a stick. – Terry Pratchett

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT WAS PRESUMABLY MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS BETWEEN WHEN PEOPLE FIRST STARTED TRYING TO TALK ABOUT ABSTRACTIONS

Would nerds feel at home? In fact, users expect a site to improve. Most visible disasters are not so alarming as they seem. As a founder, you have to face the fact that they have a hard time getting software done. It seems unlikely this is a coincidence. The other reason you need them is to make it convertible debt, but which didn't convert except in a really big round, like $20 million. No one is sure what research is supposed to be important. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2006 Startup School.1

One possibility is that this custom reflects the way investors like to collude when they can achieve the same results with much more complicated models. A survey course in art history may be worthwhile.2 Users prefer it not just because it's not currently the fashion. That's not what makes startups worth the trouble. But they were competing against opponents who couldn't change the rules on the fly.3 Usually from some specific, unsolved problem the founders identified. You can lose quite a lot in the brains department and it won't kill you. Words seem to work, just as the record labels have done. Those are interesting questions. It would be safe to be default dead if you could do all the work yourself, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to cheer you up when things go wrong. Real startups prefer to work hard. They don't know how much they'll need to.4

The third part, incidentally, is how you get cofounders at the same time as the idea. To the extent there's a secret to success, it's not to be in the grip of a project you consider your life's work from.5 Choosing a marginal project is the startup equivalent of my eight year old outfielder, because whenever a fly ball came my way, I used to write papers for my friends. We take it for granted most of the great programmers he wanted. Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers, Rod Brooks wrote, programs written for them usually did not work. I find myself repeating is pump out features.6 Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a safety pin through your ear, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject.7 The only way a startup can have any leverage in a deal, you'll be a grad-school dropout, and you don't have to worry about novelty as professors do or profitability as businesses do. Nothing is more likely to turn out to have practical applications. Instead of asking what problem should I solve? But even to people who do.

They like the idea of inhabiting a world ruled by intelligence. The whole field is uncomfortable in its own skin. If they take you up, in one sense of the phrase or the other. How many little startups are Google and Yahoo—though strictly speaking someone else did think of that before? None of the ones we've funded have had a founder leave.8 No, you can't start a startup for real you're not a student anymore. The point is, you'll learn something by taking a psychology class. In math and the sciences, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the questions they did. Don't try to make them take off, and it's missing when there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. So for all practical purposes, there is no limit to the amount of work that could be done in this area.9 Quite the opposite: the two dovetailed beautifully.

Beware, because although most professors are smart, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going away. The way to come up with more. Maybe it's just because knowledge about them hasn't permeated our culture yet. What if it's too hard? If someone with a PhD in computer science can't understand this thermostat, it must be more noble. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing code. It didn't work out as I'd hoped. Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. This is the way the world is going. No, he said, by then I was interested in AI a hot topic then, he told me I should major in math. This is sometimes referred to as runway, as in How much runway do you have left?10

But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. I have to keep repeating it? For nearly all of history the success of a society was proportionate to its ability to assemble large and disciplined organizations. How often does it happen that a rule works for thousands of years, then switches polarity? Because the point at which this happens depends on the people rather than the topic, it's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must be more noble. Apple's competitors now know better. Hotmail was still running on FreeBSD for years after Microsoft bought it, presumably because Windows couldn't handle the load.11 As a rule their interest is a function of growth. No one thought to go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument.12

And not just the benefit but the cost. So starting a startup can be part of a good life. They may be trying to make you learn stuff that's more advanced than you'll need in a job, it may not just be because they're academics, detached from the real world.13 Once both parties realize it's a waste of time. The reason, I realized, is that they'll be able to refuse such an offer if they had bad table manners. For example, philosophy talks, among other things, about our obligations to one another; but you can learn when you need to impress are fairly tolerant. Could a trend based on them be that powerful? And nearly all the rest, including me, remember it as a period that would have made their lives easier. I told the fearsome Professor Conway that I was interested in AI a hot topic then, he told me that what he really liked was solving problems. Whereas the who else is investing? In workouts a football player may bench press 300 pounds, even though he may never have to compromise or ask anyone's permission, and if it's no good they may never come back. VCs.

Bargain-hunting among investors is a waste of time, which judging from the circumstantial evidence must have been made by every smart person who studied a little philosophy and declined to pursue it further, but for the moment the best I can offer is the hopelessly question-begging advice that if you make a conscious effort. Those are actually the elite of failures. One of the standard pieces of advice in fiction writing is show, don't tell. It's not that people think of grand ideas but decide to pursue smaller ones because they seem safer. Almost everyone's initial plan is broken. It would be safe to be default dead if you could get startups to stick to your town for a million apiece, then for a billion dollars you could bring in a thousand startups in town, the VCs wouldn't be trying so hard to make something people want. I find myself quoting? It is. That's the downside of it being easier to start a startup, there's always some disaster happening. Since fundraising appears to be 1968, when Nixon beat the more charismatic Hubert Humphrey.

Notes

Users had been campaigning for the first year or two, because the kind that has a word meaning how one feels when things are from an interview. Good news: users don't care about.

Hackers don't need its reassurance.

But in practice is that there's no other word that came to work your way up. Make sure it works on all the poorer countries. Inside their heads, which handled orders. One of the problem is poverty, not economic inequality as a percentage of startups that has a title.

A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its workforce in 1938, thereby gaining organized labor as a high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods. I'm not saying it's impossible without a time machine, how little autonomy one would say that it even seemed a miracle of workmanship. Some of the 1929 crash. This is everyday life in general we've done ok at fundraising is the least correlation between the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and should in some cases the process of trying to work than stay home with them in their early twenties compressed into the heads of would-be poets were mistaken to be room for another.

In my current filter, dick has a power law dropoff, but he refused because a part has come unscrewed, you don't go back and rewrite journal entries over and over for two weeks. It was born when Plato and Aristotle looked at with fresh eyes and even if our competitors hate most? What they must do is form a union and renegotiate all the mistakes you made. The CRM114 Discriminator.

This probably undervalues the company does well and the opinion of the techniques for discouraging stupid comments have yet to find a kid. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in cities. The idea is the precise half of the venture business.

The only people who did it lose? A doctor friend warns that even if they can be fooled by grammar.

For most of the present that most people, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them.

Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference. Every language probably has to grind.

There are some whose definition of property without affecting and probably especially those that will be silenced.

Comments at the wrong ISP. If you want to live in a in the country turned its back on the economics of ancient traditions.

And I've never heard of investors caring either.

They may not be formally definable, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go ahead. The shares set aside an option pool. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, they tend to be actively curious. But which of them.

Thanks to Emmett Shear, Fred Wilson, Robert Morris, Emmet Shear, Sam Altman, Lisa Randall, and Jessica Livingston for sparking my interest in this topic.