#so she’s pretty high status and incredibly intellectual

[pastasilly]

decided to redesign kate blake’s pirate outfit too!!

[daughter-of-melpomene]

MY GLEE ORIGINAL CHARACTER, IVY KEKOA

BASIC INFORMATION ---

FULL NAME: Ivy Kipi Kekoa.

OTHER NAMES: Ives, Kipi, Taylor Swift, Freak, ipo, manu mele, Kekoa, Miss Kekoa.

NAME MEANINGS:

Ivy - of English origin, meaning vine.

Kipi - of Hawaiian origin, meaning rebel.

Kekoa - of Hawaiian origin, meaning brave one.

ZODIAC SIGN: Aquarius (born February 9th, 1994).

BIRTHPLACE: Lima, Ohio, USA.

CURRENT RESIDENCE: Lima, Ohio, USA.

NATIONALITY: American.

SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English, Hawaiian (not fluently).

GENDER IDENTITY: Cisgender female.

PREFERRED PRONOUNS: She/her.

ORIENTATION: Heteroromantic, asexual (sex-repulsed).

OCCUPATION: Student at William McKinley High School, part-time barista at the Lima Bean.

FACECLAIM: Auli'i Cravalho.

PERSONALITY ---

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Slytherin - "the serpent".

"Slytherins tended to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. They also had highly developed senses of self-preservation. This means that Slytherins tended to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done. Slytherins tended to take charge and possessed strong leadership skills. They were often self-assured and confident of their own competence and can be very loyal."

MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE: ENTP - "the debater".

"Quick-witted and audacious, Debaters aren’t afraid to disagree with the status quo. In fact, they’re not afraid to disagree with pretty much anything or anyone. Few things light up people with this personality type more than a bit of verbal sparring – and if the conversation veers into controversial terrain, so much the better. It would be a mistake, though, to think of Debaters as disagreeable or mean-spirited. Instead, people with this personality type are knowledgeable and curious, with a playful sense of humor, and they can be incredibly entertaining. They simply have an offbeat, contrarian idea of fun – one that involves a healthy dose of spirited debate."

ENNEAGRAM: Type Four - "the individualist".

"Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity. At their best, Fours are inspired and highly creative, they are able to renew themselves and transform their experiences."

ZODIAC: Aquarius - "the water bearer".

"Aquarius is the sign different from the rest of the zodiac and people born with their Sun in it feel special. This makes them eccentric and energetic in their fight for freedom, or at times shy and quiet, afraid to express their true personality. In both cases they are deep thinkers and highly intellectual people who love to fight for idealistic causes. They are able to see people without prejudice and this makes them truly special. Although they can easily adapt to the energy that surrounds them, Aquarius representatives have a deep need to have some time alone and away from everything in order to restore power."

ALIGNMENT: True Neutral.

"A Chaotic Good character acts as their conscience directs them with little regard for what others expect of them. They make his own way, but they are kind and benevolent. They believe in goodness and right but have little use for laws and regulations. They hate it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do. They follow their own moral compass, which, although good, may not agree with that of society."

LOVE LANGUAGE: Quality time (giving and receiving).

SKILLS: Singing, songwriting, acting, piano, acoustic guitar, speed reading, cooking, knowledge of feminist history, sewing, observational skills, quick wit, dancing.

LIKES: Performing, alone time, songwriting, organizing protests, going to protests, educating people on important issues, spending time with friends and family, funny movies, comfortable clothes, being able to quickly come up with a comeback.

DISLIKES: Arrogant people, any form of discrimination, ignorant people, broken promises, boring situations, people insulting her heritage, being told she can't do something, violence.

FEARS/PHOBIAS: Failure, complete darkness, large dogs, tight spaces.

BACKSTORY ---

Ivy Kipi Kekoa was born February 9th, 1994, to Maile and John Kekoa, a couple who had moved from Hawaii to Lima, Ohio only three months prior in order to be closer to Maile's aging parents, who had lived in Cleveland for years. Young Ivy was fortunate enough to have been born to two dedicated, loving parents, and her early childhood was a happy, uncomplicated time.

When Ivy was six years old, during a visit to her grandparents in Cleveland, her grandmother put on a CD of the original Chicago West End soundtrack while cooking, belting out "All That Jazz" alongside Maile and dancing the young girl around the kitchen to the tune of "Roxie". From that moment onward, Ivy developed a deep love for musical theatre, singing, and performing, listening obsessively to any musical soundtrack she could get her hands on and, eventually, writing her own songs, wanting to be the next Joni Mitchell or Carole King if she somehow couldn't be the next Bernadette Peters.

Maile Kekoa was also a proud feminist, and made sure to teach her daughter to fight for equality as well. Unfortunately, there wasn't much room for an outspoken feminist Pacific Islander girl in small-town Ohio, and Ivy often found herself the subject of bullying and ridicule. She also entered into a fierce rivalry with fellow aspiring theatre star Rachel Berry, who always seemed to beat her out in singing competitions or for the roles in community theatre productions she wanted. She was, thankfully, able to find a friend in Mercedes Jones, a fellow outspoken girl who refused to take crap from the popular kids. Their friendship was almost instantaneous and mutually admiring, each girl regarding the other as something close to a sister and being amazed by her vocal talents.

As sophomore year of high school began, Ivy was looking forward to karaoke nights with Mercedes, going to protests in the nearby towns, and generally finding ways to piss off McKinley's jocks and cheerleaders. But when she spied a sign-up sheet for a glee club being run by her least-favorite teacher, she thought that perhaps this might be the year she finally showed the teenagers of Lima just how good she was - and hopefully show up Rachel Berry along the way.

RELATIONSHIPS ---

FAMILY: Maile Kekoa (mother), John Kekoa (father), Leilani Ikaika (maternal grandmother), Akamu Ikaika (maternal grandfather).

FRIENDS: Mercedes Jones (best friend), Artie Abrams (friend), Tina Cohen-Chang (friend), Mike Chang (friend), Kurt Hummel (friend), Brittany S. Pierce (friend), Santana Lopez (frenemy).

ACQUAINTANCES: Finn Hudson (acquaintance), Quinn Fabray (acquaintance), Emma Pillsbury (acquaintance), Noah "Puck" Puckerman (acquaintance), Will Schuester (acquaintance), Rachel Berry (acquaintance/rival).

ROMANTIC INTERESTS: Finn Hudson (brief crush), Artie Abrams (former crush), Sam Evans (current romantic interest, boyfriend).

TRIVIA ---

Though Ivy's grandparents fully accepted her when she came out as asexual (as did her parents), the coming out itself took about an hour and a half because she had to convince her grandfather not to immediately make "proud grandparent" t-shirts.

Ivy read Simone de Beauvoir's classic feminist book The Second Sex when she was only ten years old. She didn't understand most of it at the time, but it's one of her mother's favorite books, and she understands it much better now that she's read it nine times.

Ivy's favorite show is Star Trek: The Original Series, because she's been watching her father's old VHS tapes of it with him since she was a toddler. She would never admit it to anyone, though; the last thing she needs is to give McKinley High's assholes another reason to make fun of her.

She once punched Puck in the face after she spoke Hawaiian to Mercedes in the cafeteria and he made fun of her. He doesn't admit it to her until senior year, but he's respected her ever since for that.

Her first fictional crush was Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (also something she's never admitted to anyone but Mercedes).

Ivy can sing "Roxie" from Chicago backwards. It's sort of a party trick that she's performed at sleepovers and for the rest of the New Directions.

Ivy plans to move back to Hawaii after she's older and has retired from Broadway. She may have never lived there (outside her mother's womb, that is), but she's always wanted to reconnect to her roots.

PLAYLIST ---

i. "let me be your star" from smash.

ii. "anything you can do" from annie get your gun.

iii. "rebel girl" by bikini kill.

iv. "loser like me" by glee cast.

v. "21st century machine" by catie turner.

[kylejsugarman]

wow i wasn't expecting so much kind feedback from that post :’) below the cut is the fic, “love will not break your heart”. PLEASE remember this was written five years ago and i wasn't expecting to fall back into moral orel but here tf we are ❤️ 

i. idolatry

"Who does that cloud look like?"

"Umm…" The brunette tilted her head pensively, tracing the arbitrary peaks and valleys of the cloud in question with a critical eye. Her expression of solemn concentration buckled under a luminescent smile as she finally identified the cloud's likeness. "It's Joshua! See the beard?"

"Oh, wow, you're right!" He pointed to an adjacent puff of condensation on the verge of dissipating under the snowy glare of winter sun. "And there's the city of Jericho!"

She giggled in agreement and rolled onto her side; verdant streaks of earth branded her baptism-white cheek. A strand of sandy hair had escaped her new red headband (he had nervously presented it to her and promptly melted at the sight of her grateful beam) and now unfurled down the length of her pearly face. He brushed it back into place, then blushed.

"Uh, sorry."

"It's okay, Orel," she said with an adoring laugh. His timid eyes--coppery pools into which one's best qualities were inevitably reflected--found her own, then flicked downwards in humility. Though she appreciated his respect for her, the reverence with which he treated her was slightly disquieting. There was something to worship in both of them, something she felt she failed to adequately express. "Orel?"

The eyes, lit dreamily by a refulgent sky. "Yes, Christina?"

She touched a hesitant hand to his face and waited for the momentary tension of his form to abate as he recognized the tenderness of the gesture. There was the inexorable flutter of panic in her gut, as if her father were crouched behind one of Inspiration Peak's many bushes waiting to snatch her and drag her back into the study, but she quashed it readily. Her love for Orel was stronger than her fear of her father and with its pristine power she could have demolished that study with a single fiery glance.

But Christina had always favored creation over destruction, so she leaned over and pressed a soft, pink kiss to Orel's mouth. She tried to whisper "Happy Valentine's Day" to establish her motive, but was immediately silenced as he braced himself up on an elbow and shyly reciprocated the kiss. He tasted like candy heart chalk and mint.

"I love you," he said after he had bashfully withdrawn his head.

The world was shiny and new, the clouds morphing cheerfully behind him into benevolent figures who would shelter the tender bloom of their love. And Christina Posabule reached up to frame Orel's face in her gentle hands and said "I love you too" for the first time.

.

.

ii. respect

"Ugh. I never did understand the appeal of French toast."

Dottie scrutinized the buffet offerings, her angelically-proportioned visage contorted into a rictus of disgust. Her plate was sparsely garnished with a serving of greens and a mimosa, which she had already taken a drag from. As she eyed the decadent bricks of syrup-drenched toast, Florence calmly forked an omelet onto her own plate and waited for Dottie to make a decision. The Valentine's Day brunch was rarely an extravagant affair, but there were certainly enough dishes to satisfy even Dottie's impossibly high culinary standards.

"I think French toast is wonderful," Florence said. She expected this remark to be met with a haughty sniff or snide comment, but Dottie abstained. She even summoned a mordant grin.

"Well. I suppose the French are the superior culture for a reason." The blonde delicately pronged a lone slice of French toast onto her plate, taking care to select the most lightly-sugared piece on display. "Alright, I'm done. Quick, before I change my mind."

Florence led Dottie back to their booth, which had been denoted by the placement of their respective pocketbooks on the table (Florence's sturdy handbag looking markedly haggard next to Dottie's designer clutch). The two women supped here together after church, a tradition that had been inaugurated shortly after the Reverend's Easter sermon. Dottie had apologized to Florence in a rare fit of humility and promised to stop berating her roommate for her figure; Florence, ever the victim, dutifully accepted her apology. However, Dottie had surprised her by making a noticeable effort to curb her cruel commentary and even started contributing to the community by taking on sewing projects. Her lovely dresses soon filled the closets of every woman in Moralton--including Florence's. The rather flattering candy-pink wrap dress that Florence was wearing now was Dottie's handiwork, a fact the blonde managed to work into every conservation.

"Darling, that dress is absolutely divine on you," Dottie said, lighting a cigarette.

"Yes, thank you." Florence smoothed down the collar and smiled at the sight of her freckled hands. A modest diamonded band adorned her ring finger.

Dottie noticed her admiring of the piece of jewelry; she pursed her polished lips expectantly. "I really think you should've sprung for something bigger."

"Oh, I think this is just lovely the way it is," Florence insisted. She elevated her hand in order to demonstrate the diamond's iridescence. A slant of noon light caught the mineral and fissured apart into chromatic prisms; diamonded specks twinkled across the laminated tabletop. It was a rather appropriate expression of Florence's own appearance, something the ring's buyer had obviously taken into consideration. "Aren't you happy with your ring?"

"Me? Why I'd rather die than have this ring taken off my finger." Dottie inspected the arrangement of jewels gracing her own finger, which were independently lustrous and set into an ingot of platinum. The colors matched the sheen of her blonde curls perfectly.

An inexorable smile pressed dimples into either of Florence's cheeks. "You really like it?"

Dottie flicked her cigarette ash into the table's decorative vase with an insouciant tap of her manicured finger. Her expression was characteristically enigmatic ("you can't let them think you're interested," she had lectured Florence as she practiced looking jaded in the mirror), but the favor with which she regarded the ring was unmistakable. Finally, she said "I love it" in an emphatically decisive voice tempered with genuine affection. An affection that Florence reciprocated with an echoing of the sentiment before cutting into her omelet and watching Dottie slice willingly into a piece of French toast.

.

.

iii. requited

"Um, anything else, Steph?"

The tattooed, pierced, and freshly dyed vision of beauty glanced up from her book, eyes lightly glazed from an hour of reading. She had salvaged a rather intriguing volume of essays about evolution from a seedy bookshop in Sinville and was determined to complete the tome before it could be snatched and tossed on the literary pyre. Forghetty's wasn't exactly the ideal location for intellectual pursuits, but Stephanie had abandoned the shop at the mere notion of Karl and Kim Latchkey requesting some disgustingly romantic apparel for the holiday and decided that she deserved  some discounted Valentine's vodka for soldiering through the week unscathed.

"Another vodka would be great."

Dolly smiled warmly. "Coming right up."

As the blonde scooped ice into a tumbler, Stephanie became suddenly and acutely aware of the candy-pink heart branding the small of Dolly's neck. Despite having stitched ink into countless arms and sides, she was shocked by the heart's symmetry. It was absolutely flawless.

"One vodka," Dolly said, sliding the glass across the condensation-varnished bar. Her fingers were impossibly long, slender--piano fingers. Stephanie could not fathom why these trivial details fascinated her so, but she was suddenly pressed to learn more about the daisy-pretty bartender who had dutifully refreshed her tumbler for the past hour. Starting with that immaculate tattoo.

"Thanks. Uh, Dolly? Where'd you get that ink on your neck?"

"Ink on my--?" She palpated her neck in befuddlement before remembering the previous night and giggling wanly. "Oh, it-it's just pen. My friends thought it would be funny if I actually got a tattoo, so they had the guy draw it on, but I… I chickened out, I guess."

"Oh."

"It's not that I don't want a tattoo," Dolly quickly amended, tipping Stephanie's colorful arms an appreciative nod. "I'm just kinda chicken about needles."

Stephanie quirked an amused eyebrow. "So you would get a tattoo?"

"Well." She sheepishly wrung a damp cloth out over the bar top and made a concentrated effort to appear occupied by the menial task. "Maybe."

"That heart's pretty cute. I think it would look nice back there."

Roses bloomed in Dolly's porcelain cheeks. Though her friends had never abstained from making passively nasty comments about Stephanie's unusual appearance and proud deviance from Moralton's constrictive status quo, Dolly had always fostered a secret respect for her. There was something alluring about Stephanie, something that begged back story: Dolly longed to read the text that accompanied the illustrations trellising her arms like ivy. "You think so?"

"Definitely. And if you're scared of needles, I've got an assistant who could probably distract you," Stephanie added with a playful smirk. Orel had curbed several customers' needle anxiety with breathless sermons about the incredibleness of Jesus and anecdotes about his occasionally distressing adventures ("and then I died! Three times! It was neat!")

"Would you really give me a tattoo?" Dolly asked, equally hopeful and horrified.

"If you're up for it."

Dolly twisted the cloth in her hands for a moment. The yearning to know Stephanie--to know every corner, every fold--was blossoming urgently in her chest. She wanted more than a tattoo. She wanted to familiarize herself with the inky mysticism enshrouding Stephanie Putty and if that meant romance, if that meant public scorn and disappointment and disgusted looks, so be it. She wanted Stephanie. She wanted all of her.

"Doll?"

"Y-Yes," Dolly sputtered, visibly flustered. Then she grinned cautiously and set down her hands on the bar top, allowing Stephanie to admire their delicate whorls and pearly nails at a closer proximity. "I'd love that."

.

.

iv. infatuation

"I know you think I'm stupid, Marionetta."

They had cloistered themselves away in a small clearing that provided some margin of protection from their schoolmates' scorn. A mild sky opened above them, achingly empty, painfully wide. As he stared into its doleful depths--oppressing himself not to betray the shame making dewy his eyes--he recalled the passages he had studied about the atmosphere. His old teachers had refused to teach the subject, citing the lack of a Heaven in the textbook's diagram of the Earth's atmosphere. He imagined it was sandwiched between the mesosphere and thermosphere, an impossible realm illuminated by auroras and burning space debris. But in the absence of substantial evidence that such a place existed, he was content to call the clearing Heaven, as long as Marionetta was there.

The girl smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her dotted skirt. Even

[whitehotharlots]

Privilege Theory is popular because it is conservative

Privilege theory, as a formal academic thing, has been around at least since 1989, when Peggy McIntosh published the now-seminal essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Even within academic cultural studies, however, privilege theory was pretty niche until about a decade ago--it’s not what you’d call intellectually sound (McIntosh’s essay contains zero citations), and its limitations as an analytical frame are pretty obvious. I went through a cultural studies-heavy PhD program in the early twenty teens and I only heard it mentioned a handful of times. If you didn’t get a humanities degree, odds are it didn’t enter your purview until 2015 or thereabouts.

This poses an obvious question: how could an obscure and not particularly groundbreaking academic concept become so ubiquitous so quickly? How did such a niche (and, frankly, weird and alienating) understanding of racial relations become so de rigeur that companies that still utilize slave labor and still produce skin whitening cream are now all but mandated to release statements denouncing it? 

Simply put, the rapid ascent of privilege theory is due to the fact that privilege theory is fundamentally conservative. Not in cultural sense, no. But if we understand conservatism as an approach to politics that seeks first and foremost to maintain existing power structures, then privilege theory is the cultural studies equivalent of phrenology or Austrian economics. 

This realization poses a second, much darker question: how did a concept as regressive and unhelpful as privilege become the foundational worldview among people who style themselves as progressives, people whose basic self-understanding is grounded in a belief that they are working to address injustice? Let’s dig into this:

First, let’s go down a well-worn path and establish the worthlessness of privilege as an analytical lens. We’ll start with two basic observations: 1) on the whole, white people have an easier time existing within these United States than non-white people, and 2) systemic racism exists, at least to the extent that non-white people face hurdles that make it harder for them to achieve safety and material success.

I think a large majority of Americans would agree with both of these statements--somewhere in the ballpark of 80%, including many people you and I would agree are straight-up racists. They are obvious and undeniable, the equivalent to saying “politicians are corrupt” or “good things are good and bad things are bad.” Nothing about them is difficult or groundbreaking.

As simplistic as these statements may be, privilege theory attempts to make them the primary foreground of all understandings of social systems and human interaction. Hence the focus on an acknowledgement of privilege as the ends and means of social justice. We must keep admitting to privilege, keep announcing our awareness, again and again and again, vigilance is everything, there is nothing beyond awareness.

Of course, acknowledging the existence of inequities does nothing to actually address those inequities. Awareness can serve as an important (though not necessarily indispensable) precondition for change, but does not lead to change in and of itself. 

I’ve been saying this for years but the point still stands: those who advocate for privilege theory almost never articulate how awareness by itself will bring about change. Even in the most generous hypothetical situation, where all human interaction is prefaced by a formal enunciation of the raced-based power dynamics presently at play, this acknowledgement doesn’t actually change anything. There is never a Step Two. 

Now, some people have suggested Step Twos. But suggestions are usually ignored, and on the rare occasions they are addressed they are dismissed without fail, often on grounds that are incredibly specious and dishonest. To hit upon another well-worn point, let’s look at the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. The majority of Sanders’ liberal critics admit that the senator’s record on racial justice is impeccable, and that his platform would have done substantially more to materially address racial inequities than that being proffered by any of his opponents. That’s all agreed upon, yet we are told that none of that actually matters. 

Sanders dropped out of the race nearly 3 months ago, yet just this past week The New York Times published yet another hit piece explaining that while his policies would have benefitted black people, the fact that he strayed from arbitrarily invoked rhetorical standards meant he was just too problematic to support.  

The piece was written by Sidney Ember, a Wall Street hack who cites anonymous finance and health insurance lobbyists to argue that financial regulation is racist. Ember, like most other neoliberals, has been struggling to reconcile her vague support for recent protests with the fact that she is paid to lie about people who have tried to fix things. Now that people are forcefully demanding change, the Times have re-deployed her to explain why change is actually bad even though it’s good.  

How does one pivot from celebrating the fact that black people will not be receiving universal healthcare to mourning racially disproportionate COVID death rates? They equivocate. They lean even harder on rhetorical purity, dismissing a focus on policy as a priori blind to race. Bernie never said “white privilege.” Well, okay, he did, but he didn’t say it in the right tone or often enough, and that’s what the problem was. Citing Ember:

Yet amid a national movement for racial justice that took hold after high-profile killings of black men and women, there is also an acknowledgment among some progressives that their discussion of racism, including from their standard-bearer, did not seem to meet or anticipate the forcefulness of these protests.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, the legal scholar who pioneered the concept of intersectionality to describe how various forms of discrimination can overlap, said that Mr. Sanders struggled with the reality that talking forcefully about racial injustice has traditionally alienated white voters — especially the working-class white voters he was aiming to win over. But that is where thinking of class as a “colorblind experience” limits white progressives. “Class cannot help you see the specific contours of race disparity,” she said.

Many other institutions, she noted, have now gone further faster than the party that is the political base of most African-American voters. “You basically have a moment where every corporation worth its salt is saying something about structural racism and anti-blackness, and that stuff is even outdistancing what candidates in the Democratic Party were actually saying,” she said.

Crenshaw’s point here is that the empty, utterly immaterial statements of support coming from multinational corporations are more substantial and important than policy proposals that would have actually addressed racial inequities. This is astounding. A full throated embrace of entropy as praxis. 

Crenshaw started out the primary as a Warren supporter but threw her endorsement to Bernie once the race had narrowed to two viable candidates. This fact is not mentioned, nor does Ember feel the need to touch upon any of Biden’s dozens of rhetorical missteps regarding race (you might remember that he kicked off his presidential run with a rambling story about the time he toughed it out with a black ne'er do well named Corn Pop, or his more recent assertion that if you don’t vote for him, “you ain’t black.”). The statement here--not the implication: the direct and undeniable statement--is that tone and posturing are more important than material proposals, and that concerns regarding tone and posturing should only be raised in order to delegitimize those who have dared to proffer proposals that might actually change things for the better. 

The ascendence of privilege theory marks the triumph of selective indignation, the ruling class and their media lackeys having been granted the power to dismiss any and all proposals for material change according to standards that are too nonsensical to be enforced in any fair or consistent manner. The concept has immense utility for those who wish to perpetuate the status quo. And that, more than anything, is why it’s gotten so successful so quickly. But still… why have people fallen for something so obviously craven and regressive? Why are so few decent people able to summon even the smallest critique against it? 

We can answer this by taking a clear look at what privilege actually entails. And this is where things get really, really grim:

What are the material effects of privilege, at least as they are imagined by those who believe the concept to be something that must be sussed out and eradicated? A privileged person gets to live their life with the expectation that they will face no undue hurdles to success and fulfillment because of their identity markers, that they will not be subject to constant surveillance and/or made to suffer grave consequences for minor or arbitrary offenses, and that police will not be able to murder them at will. The effects of “privilege” are what we might have once called “freedom” or “dignity.” Until very recently, progressives regarded these effects not as problematic, but as a humane baseline, a standard that all decent people should fight to provide to all of our fellow citizens. 

Here we find the utility in the use of the specific term “privilege.” Similar to how austerity-minded politicians refer to social security as an “entitlement,” conflating dignity and privilege gives it the sense of something undeserved and unearned--things that no one, let alone members of racially advantaged groups, could expect for themselves unless they were blinded by selfishness and coddled by an insufficiently cruel social structure. The problem isn’t therefore that humans are being selectively brutalized. Brutality is the baseline, the natural order, the unavoidable constant that has not been engineered into our society but simply is what society is and will always be. The problem, instead, is that some people are being exempted from some forms of brutalization. The problem is that pain does not stretch far enough.

We are a nation that worships cruelty and authority. All Americans, regardless of gender or race, are united in being litigious tattletales who take joy in hurting one another, who will never run out of ways to rationalize their own cruelty even as they decry the cruelty of others. We are taught from birth that human life has no value, that material success is morally self-validating, and that those who suffer deserve to suffer. This is our real cultural brokenness: a deep, foundational hatred of one another and of ourselves. It transcends all identity markers. It stains us all. And it’s why we’ve all run headlong into a regressive and idiotic understanding of race at a time when we desperately need to unite and help one another. 

[insfiringyou]

BTS preferences - Their biggest ‘turn-offs’ in a partner

Our opinion only. Thanks to the reader for the suggestion. 

You may also be interested in our post ‘Their ideal type/girlfriend’ which explains the types of girls they would go for.

Likes, comments and new subscribers are always greatly appreciated. 

Our full masterlist can be found here

Some rated content below the cut

RM

Physical

* Someone who doesn’t take care or pride in their appearance when in public. We see Namjoon as someone who likes his girlfriend to dress up for dates and public appearances as he does himself, so he would hate if they did not care about this too. While in private, he would not mind if they were more casual in what they wore or if she did not wear makeup as he would find this really sexy and intimate. He would love the different sides to his girlfriend, and that only he really gets to see these more natural and carefree aspects. 

* Someone who does not have a ‘ladylike’ fashion sense. We see him as loving a sexy, feminine look on his girlfriend. He would love her in sleek cocktail dresses when out or in formal, office attire when they are working.

* Someone who has a bad lifestyle. We see him as really loving women who are physically healthy and fit. This does not mean spending hours at the gym, but someone who does exercise regularly, drinks plenty of water, eats healthily (most of the time) and most importantly, does not smoke. We see smoking as one of his biggest turn-offs as he would find it really unattractive. 

Personality 

* Someone who deliberately acts dumb, or ‘dumbs themselves down’. While he would not expect his girlfriend to be Einstein, he would need to be able to have intellectual and deep conversations and would hate women who deliberately acted stupid to get more attention. 

* Someone who seeks attention. Namjoon is incredibly private about his personal life as he does not just have himself to look out for, but also the other members. He would hate the thought of his girlfriend gossiping too much or being too loose-lipped about their relationship, as he would worry about it being leaked to the press. 

* Someone who has a lot of male friends. We see Namjoon as getting very jealous and obsessive easily if he suspects another man likes his girlfriend. He would be quick to assume she is cheating on him.

Sexually

* Someone who is too quiet in the bedroom. We see Namjoon as enjoying cues in the bedroom as to what they like or want him to do. He loves dirty talk (see our list here of MLT enjoy dirty talk here), so would hate being with someone too shy to let him know what feels good or not. 

* Someone not willing to try new things. We see him as someone who is very open to trying toys and positions so would need someone who also enjoys experimenting. 

* Someone who never initiates sex. While he would love taking the lead, he also would want his girlfriend to feel comfortable letting him know she was horny and teasing him verbally or visually before sex. 

Jin

Physically

* Someone who exercises to an extreme extent. While we see his body type preference as someone slightly ‘softer’, we think he would be against his girlfriend exercising too much or obsessing over her weight more because he would be concerned for her emotional wellbeing. He would want his girlfriend to love herself and her body, and it would worry him if she showed signs of hating herself. 

* Someone who dresses ‘slobbish’. While he wouldn’t expect them to dress up all the time, he personally would always look at his best when around them, even if he was just having a date at their/his house, so would like to know she also appreciated this. 

* Someone who does not take care of their hygiene. We see him as loving his girlfriend to smell ‘clean’ and ‘pretty’ and also taste nice too, so he would be turned off if she did not take care of herself such as not brushing teeth regularly etc. 

Personality

* Someone too loud in social situations. We see Jin as someone who has traditional values, so would be turned off if they were too loud and obnoxious when around other people, such as drinking to an extreme extent or gossiping. 

* Someone who does not have family values. We think he wants a family and so would want his girlfriend to also wish for this too. His own family and his girlfriend’s family would also be important to him. 

* Someone who does not get on with his friends. He loves his bandmates and would find it too difficult to be with someone who did not get along with them too. 

Sexually 

* Someone who is too dominating in the bedroom. While Jin would definitely be open to new things, being traditional, he generally prefers to lead things in the bedroom. 

* Someone too kinky / experimental. Jin is someone who would try his best to please, but we don’t think he would be turned on by kinky sex or using more ‘extreme’ sex toys. 

Suga

Physically 

* Someone who obsesses over their looks. Like Jin, he would be turned off if his girlfriend was overly insecure about their appearance to the extent they were wanting to extremely change their looks. He definitely is someone who has insecurities of his own, perpetuated by the unrealistic beauty standards in Korea, but he would hate to see these feelings reflected or mirrored in his girlfriend. Someone wanting to have cosmetic surgery or going to the gym too much (for any other reasons but wanting to stay healthy) would be something he wouldn’t feel comfortable with.

* Someone who does not dress for their body type. While Yoongi would be attracted to most body types and is not overly concerned about his girlfriend being super fashionable, he would find it sexy if she dressed to compliment her figure. He would hate it, for example, if someone more curvy tried to hide it by wearing frumpy or overly baggy clothes. He finds curves super sexy so would want to see them. He likewise finds athletic body types sexy and would want that to likewise be shown off. 

* Someone too ‘artificial’ looking. He would be turned off by girls who wore too much fake tan, coloured contacts and hair extensions. While he would not mind makeup if it complimented their style, he wouldn’t like it to be caked-on. 

Personality

* Someone too timid or ‘personality-less’. Like Namjoon, he would enjoy having ‘real’ conversations with his girlfriend about current affairs, politics, music, history etc. and so would need someone who had interests of their own and wasn’t too shy to speak their mind. 

* Someone with too much ‘entitlement’ or ‘privilege’. While Yoongi knows and respects that you can’t change your background, he would be turned off by a girl who acted better than other people due to money or social status. We feel he would naturally be more attracted to someone who, like himself, had to work hard for what they have. If he did date someone who was born rich, however, he would want them to have a good work ethic. 

* Someone too ‘high maintenance’ or ‘dramatic’. Yoongi would hate it if his girlfriend was an attention seeker or someone who needed attention all of the time. We see him as a private person who values his own space from time to time, so would look for that in a partner too. Someone who played on his emotions for attention or expected gifts all the time would be one of his ultimate ‘turn-offs’.

Sexually

* Someone too ‘submissive’ in bed. While he is very open sexually, he would not like it if his girlfriend expected him to completely take control or be dominant. He prefers an equal sexual relationship where both feel comfortable saying what they do and don’t like and where she would feel comfortable to take control every now and again. He is happy to lead in the bedroom if that is what the situation requires, but would like a balance. 

* Someone too ‘quiet’ in bed. Likewise he likes to hear her moans, comments, giggles, sighs etc. If they were very quiet or silent, he would feel he was doing something wrong. (Despite this, we do see Yoongi as fairly quiet in bed...see our list of loudest to quietest member here)

* Someone who did not like skin to skin contact during sex. As previously mentioned, Yoongi would completely understand and relate to a girl being insecure about her body but, if this was the case, would want to work through this with them so she felt comfortable being naked when having sex. This is because we see Yoongi as loving pressing his body close to his partner’s as it would be incredibly intimate for him. If they insisted on wearing clothes all the time or covering themselves, he would not get that satisfaction he craves.

 J-Hope

Physically

*Someone who does not dress ‘feminine’ but modest. We see Hoseok as loving girls who dress prettily and so would not be as attracted to a tomboy or super glamorous style on a girl. He would love summer dresses, long skirts paired with sweaters and, surprisingly, slightly ‘frumpy’ and old-fashioned clothes as you might expect on an older lady. 

* Someone who wears too much makeup. Hoseok loves natural beauty and would not mind subtle makeup or, on occasion, more dramatic if they were going out for a special occasion. He would not like for her to wear thick makeup which disguised her natural features, however.

Personality

*Someone mean-spirited or rude. He would be turned off by someone who had a ‘mean streak’ or was rude to people. He would hate it if they were the type to complain all the time about the service/food when going out to a restaurant or someone who was rude to sales assistants. 

* Someone who does not like children and animals. We feel Hoseok, like himself, needs someone all-loving, who shows kindness towards children, animals, the elderly and those in need. If they were uncharitable, for example, or complained about the homeless, he would be shocked and turned off. 

Sexually

We actually cannot think of anything Hoseok would be explicitly turned off by sexual-wise as he is a very open person and would love trying new things. Likewise, he would not mind being dominated or dominating from time to time, as long as the other person was happy. Furthermore, we see him as the only member who could have a sexless relationship. He would happily date someone who was asexual and did not have that desire. 

Jimin

Physically

* Someone who does not take care of their appearance. We see Jimin as someone who likes his girlfriend to dress prettily and cute for him, so would be turned off if it seemed she did not care or seem bothered about seeing him. He likewise would prefer his girlfriend to eat healthily and take care of her body. 

* A tomboy. Jimin would prefer either very girly girls or quite glamorous girls. This is to not say he would never date a tomboy, but he would be more attracted to girls who had a ‘preppy’ style of dress. 

Personality

*Someone too intellectual or educated. Of all the members, Jimin would feel the most overwhelmed dating someone much smarter than him as he would struggle to keep up with the conversation. This would also make him feel insecure about his own knowledge and, instead of inspiring him to learn more, would have the opposite effect and make him feel stupid and upset. 

*Someone with completely different hobbies to him. While he would try to act interested and learn more about his girlfriend’s hobbies, if they were too different from his, he would find it hard to find that middle ground and find things for them both to do together on dates/days out, etc. 

* Someone who the other members do not like. He really values the opinions of his bandmates so would be likely to break up with someone if the other guys expressed dislike towards her for whatever reason. 

Sexually

* Someone too outspoken or intimidating in bed. Sex for Jimin allows him to feel quite masculine and also boosts his self-esteem, so he would feel intimidated by someone who pointed out his flaws in technique. (We feel for this reason among others, within our headcanon universe, his relationship with Angel did not work out). 

* Someone who has had too many previous boyfriends or sexual partners. One of Jimin’s biggest ‘turn-ons’ would be to take someone’s virginity or do something new with someone for the first time. As we see him as quite insecure, if he knew his partner had been with a lot of guys before him, it would affect his self-esteem.

V

Physically

* Someone who dresses ‘boring’. Taehyung would like his girlfriend to stand out from the crowd due to her quirky dress sense. He would be turned off if someone did not seem to care about what they wore or only followed the crowd with current fashions and trends. He would, however, be attracted to tomboys as they would stand out for that reason. Likewise, really girly girls who wear long, interesting dresses would also appeal to him. A unique sense of style would be what initially catches his attention.

* Someone who dresses too ‘provocatively’ in public or in front of the other members. We see Taehyung as getting jealous easily (see our list of who gets the most jealous here) as well as having somewhat traditional values, so would not like knowing other men’s eyes were roaming over his girlfriend. He does, however, get a weird kick out of being jealous so, on the occasions, this would happen, the sex afterwards would actually be mindblowing.

Personality

* Someone rude to others. Like Hoseok, Taehyung would want his girlfriend to love his family, children (in general) and animals. He would be turned off by someone who showed disrespect in public or embarrassed him by being rude. 

* Someone who is too high maintenance. While Taehyung would love surprising his girl with expensive and extravagant gifts, he wouldn’t like to be with someone who expected these things or who spent too much money on things. He would prefer his girlfriend to be ‘pennywise’ and buy things from antique shops or ebay, preferring to be the one to give her expensive things.

Sexually

* Someone too dominant in the bedroom. We see Taehyung as the most dominant of all members and, while he may act submissive on rare occasions, he prefers to lead during foreplay and sex. 

Jungkook

Physically

* Someone who is not sporty or athletic. We feel he would like his girlfriend to share his love of sports or fitness. This could mean she goes to the gym, fitness classes, goes running or is part of a sports team. He would also love exercising together as a couple (see our headcanon fic ‘Can we work out together more often?’).

* Someone who does not care about their physical appearance. He would like his girlfriend to be physically fit as well as ‘neat’ as in having nice, healthy-looking hair, healthy skin and being shaved. 

* Someone who smokes. 

Personality

* Someone who does not get on with the other members. Like Jin, Jungkook would really seek approval with the other members of his girlfriend. If they did not like his girlfriend, he would find himself doubting his relationship and her personality. 

* Someone too ‘clingy’ or ‘obsessive’. Jungkook is no stranger to crazy fans, so would feel intimated by women who wanted to be with him 24/7, stalked his social media/phone or got overly jealous of him when he was around other girls. (His first girlfriend within our headcanon fics, Jia, is the perfect example of this, as well as the ‘burgundy haired girl’ he has several encounters with.) Of all members, Jungkook is most likely to attract this kind of crazy person.

* Someone who uses him for their own fame/personal gain. Jungkook would be naturally more naive than the other members in recognising if someone is using him. Once he found out, however, he would be heartbroken. 

* Someone too ‘immature’. As he has grown up among older people, Jungkook would hate if his girlfriend acted ‘young for her age’ and was a gossip or did not take certain things seriously. For this reason, we see him as being better suited to older women. 

Sexually

* Someone who is too timid in the bedroom. While he would initially find this comforting when he himself was more sexually inexperienced, we think Jungkook loves pleasing his girlfriend and looks for cues on what to do. He would therefore get more excitement over someone who knows their own body and what they like.

* Someone who criticises his technique or makes him feel insecure in the bedroom. While he would always be looking for ways to improve, he would prefer if the girl hinted in a kinder way. We see Jungkook as someone who loves feeling ‘masculine’ and ‘protective’, even with an older woman, so would get quite upset if this was challenged.

* Someone who expects sex on demand. While he has a healthy sex drive, Jungkook would be quite likely to be unable to get an erection if he felt he needed to perform ‘on demand’ (as he does in our scenario ‘You ask them to make love to you’ which takes place with his first girlfriend, Jia.)

***

Thanks for reading. 

To read each member & their girlfriend’s headcanon universe fics in order, follow the links here: RM   /   Jin /   Suga /   J-Hope   /   Jimin   /   V   /   Jungkook

Thanks for reading. Our full masterlist can be found here.

You can support us by buying admins a coffee here (if you wish). :)

[chezgender]

Medusa (Nikki/Tommy)

A new fic here. A sort of Greek mythology AU, featuring a sad Nikki and a cute Tommy. Oh and also, soulmates trope!

I hope you’ll like it, let me know what tou think about it!

Plot: Nikki and Tommy have been friends for a few months now, but Nikki has never shown his eyes. There’s a secret behind this.

Warnings: mentions of past abuse, mention of rape (in the context of a Greek myth)

The first time Tommy had met Nikki they were in a bar, and the drummer hadn’t seen his eyes. It was a boiling Saturday in Los Angeles and, despite the temperatures, Sixx was in full glam mode, dressed in black leather, with jet-black hair, black everything. Tommy looked kinda stupid in his high-waisted tight denim and yellow shirt. Figuring something out about Sixx had been nearly impossible since that dark and thick fringe made it impossible to see Nikki’s eyes. Like a curtain on the stage of an unknown theatre, like a cloud hiding a mysterious moon that could move seas.

Even when they started hanging out regularly, Nikki never took hair away from his face. It seemed like he wanted to avoid eye contact, so Tommy thought he had some strange issues. Though, after a few months of friendship, Lee still hadn’t seen the older’s eyes.

*****

“Your parents are amazing.” Nikki commented once they were outside Tommy’s house. The bassist had been welcomed like a son, he almost felt home for the first time in so long.

“Well… they are, yeah. Don’t you ever miss yours?” Lee asked, offering a cigarette to his friend, who accepted gladly. They were walking towards the Rainbow, as the night was falling on the city.

The bassist frowned, his voice dropping all of a sudden. “I hope they’ll rot in hell.” He commented and finally lit that cigarette, indulging in a long drag that seemed to calm his nerves a little.

Tommy changed the subject to avoid making him angry.

*****

“What color are your eyes?” Tommy asked once, before sipping loudly his chocolate milkshake.

It was one of the many dog days on the Sunset, and the two friends were sitting at a cheap café where Athena’s boyfriend worked. Athena was Tommy’s sister and he was very protective over her since they had always shared everything. Lee had asked Nikki to hang out together while he checked on that guy, and they took the chance to buy a drink. Finding relief to the heat seemed to have become Los Angeles’ priority, and staying with Nikki had become Tommy’s priority.

Hearing that question, Nikki turned to Tommy and flashed a grin that looked almost bittersweet.

“Green.” He so said, before finishing his iced coffee and looking away, without letting Tommy watch through his sunglasses. Who the fuck wore sunglasses inside a bar?

The drummer sighed and let the topic off, settling down for that small answer.

Their day went for the best until Tommy had to go home.

*****

The first time Tommy had seen Nikki with the fringe away from his forehead, the bassist was rocking a ponytail.

Pretty weird for him, to be honest. His hair looking still wet and dark with sand in between the messy locks.

It was more or less 6 pm, the drummer remembered it because there was a beautiful sunset and the two of them were on the beach, in a desert place in Santa Monica. The sun was slowly drowning in the sea, painting it orange and yellow and light shone bright, yet delicate, invading the air and filling everything with sudden peace.

Nikki was looking at the sea, sitting on the wet sand, diving into so many thoughts.

“Sixx,” the taller called him, appearing suddenly by his side. The bassist winced in surprise and immediately looked away, avoiding any eye contact. Tommy was starting to think all of that was some kind of joke. “don’t worry, just wanted to know if you wanna go home now.”

The bassist let his hair down again, his fringe covering his forehead and eyes. “Get you in ten, if you wanna go.”

To be honest, Tommy didn’t want to go away, and so stood at Nikki’s side and spent minutes and minutes fantasizing about those oh so secret eyes, wondering how the sunset light would change that mysterious shade of green.

They then walked towards Tommy’s van and spent the trip in silence, listening to Cheap Tricks on the radio.

*****

Tommy had recently gone living on his own, finally away from his family. It hadn’t been hard, besides money, and anyway he loved the idea of being independent. He had already invited Nikki multiple times and they wanted to use the place to rehearse, even though they were only two instruments. They just had to settle down, they were going to find a singer and a guitarist very soon. They liked playing together anyway, because they had a very pleasant chemistry.

“Can I use your shower?” Was the first question that Nikki Sixx asked a Tommy that had just got out of bed. The bassist was standing at the front door, hands in his pockets and sunglasses on, of course. He was also visibly sweating, it was way too hot outside.

“It’s 7 in the morning and you came here to ask me if you can take a shower?” Lee whined, scratching his eyes and yawning. He needed a coffee, right in that moment.

“It’s 2 pm.” The older pointed out. “And yes, I totally did.” Tommy was doubtful but decided not to ask any question: he didn’t want to know why Nikki needed to use his shower at 7 am, or 2 pm, or any time in the day. He probably got kicked out of his apartment, again.

“Yeah, come in.” He then said, sighing and letting the bassist in. “Be home.” he added, knowing there was no need to tell Nikki where the bathroom was. He had been in that house almost every day.

“Of course, thank you T-bone.”

They didn’t talk too much: Tommy gave the bassist a clean towel and told him not to mess up things in there. Nikki laughed, more like a small giggle, and soon he disappeared in the bathroom. As Tommy heard the water running, he decided to finally put some clothes on: a simple t-shirt and grey sweatpants for comfort. He waited for Nikki to come out, sitting on the sofa that in many nights had hosted Sixx, and listening to some music with a cold coffee in hand.

Each time he thought about Nikki, the whole eyes thing would come to his mind. Nine months of friendship, and he had never seen those eyes. Often he wondered the reasons behind that unusual, weird choice. Lee knew that Nikki was pretty introverted and the only way to get to know him very well was music, which bounded them like brothers. Another way to know a person is through their eyes because eyes are the window to the soul, but maybe Nikki didn’t want anyone to see his soul.

Tommy had realized his feelings for Nikki, recently. Feelings that were well above friendship and, even if he refused to name them or to talk about it with anyone, he knew that he couldn’t ignore them forever.

Maybe that was the reason why he felt the desire, the need to look into those eyes and see if there was the same spark, the same warmth that Tommy felt every second they spent together.

But at that point, he wasn’t even sure Nikki could feel anything at all.

And anyway, Tommy had thought to be straight for his whole life and now, Nikki happened? Shit was weird as hell. And also painful, because he was pretty sure Sixx, despite being pretty open-minded, would’ve never accepted him as gay, bisexual or whatever the hell he was.

The sound of the bathroom door being opened -that thing was creaky as fuck-, distracted Tommy from all those thoughts. He looked at Nikki with the corner of his eye, trying not to be too damn obvious, to notice his damp hair and his face, finally free and visible. He turned around suddenly, staring at the bassist, who looked into Tommy’s dark irises. None could manage to look away.

“It’s a nice green.” Tommy simply said, staring right at him and standing up. He slowly walked towards the older, to enjoy each emerald shades that adorned those beautiful eyes. And everything was almost unreal, dream-like, Tommy was afraid he’d never have a second chance.

Nikki remained silent, doubtful, playing with his own hands. “Thanks. Never heard that compliment.” He said, looking kinda sick.

“Dude, you look pale. Are you okay?” The drummer asked, frowning at Nikki’s reaction. He made him sit on the sofa and gave him clean clothes -a T.rex shirt and sweatpants-, waiting for him to get dressed. “You need some water?” he asked, as he looked at Nikki’s moves: kinda graceful and totally different from the ones he had on stage. He was shaking lightly and Tommy wished he could hug him; but he knew Nikki was very reticent about physical contact.

“Would be great, thanks.” the older said as he sat down on the sofa again, and Tommy soon handed him a glass of fresh water, with some sugar. Nikki drank it in a few seconds while the drummer sat with him. “Have you ever heard the story of Medusa?” the black haired guy asked, all of a sudden.

That was so out of context that Tommy didn’t even know what to answer: he frowned, not understanding how it could be related to their topic. “In school, I guess? Don’t remember much.”

Nikki sighed lightly, crossed his legs and lit up a cigarette, immediately taking a drag from it. “Alright, lemme tell you a story. Medusa was a gorgon, the only human of three sisters which represented moral, sexual and intellectual perversion. She was a beautiful woman, graceful enough that every living creature would look at her.”

Tommy raised his hand like a schoolkid: “Okay, but wasn’t she the girl with snake hair and stuff?” he remembered some things about Greek culture. They didn’t study much of it in school, but he had always found it incredibly interesting.

“Yes, lemme get to it. One day Poseidon, king of the Seas, fell in love with her and wanted to lie with her.” Nikki kept on talking, his voice was quiet, almost like he was hurt from that same story. Like he had lived it on his skin, somehow, like it was part of him. “But she didn’t, so he forced her. He raped her and she tried to hide her face behind Athena’s statue. The Goddess punished Medusa for her vanity, turning her into a monster.”

“Wait, how is Medusa considered vain? She was assaulted!” Tommy exclaimed, at that point, he was really invested in the story. And suddenly the ancient mythology felt so real, so everyday-like, and T-bone thought about all the girls that went through the same path in different ways.

Nikki shrugged, suddenly getting up: “I don’t know Tommy, I’m not Athena. I can’t believe your Greek ass didn’t know this story.”

“Anyway, why are you telling me this?” Tommy asked, making himself more comfortable on the sofa and following Nikki with his gaze. It was weird to finally look into his eyes, and see the light in them. The rage, the desire to wreck everything, the need for freedom. To be honest, Nikki wasn’t so different from what Tommy had imagined to that point.

“When I was very little, Nona told me this story and warned me about a thing: once I’d become an adult, I’d be able to turn people into stone without my control, like Medusa.” Sixx sat down on the table, looking right in front of him, where Tommy was, burning him with his gaze. Unintentionally, because Nikki wasn’t very used to glance at people while they could see his eyes, so he just looked rather creepy. “Because of my past, you know? I told you my childhood was kinda fucked up.”

“And that’s why you never let your eyes be seen by anyone, right? But it shit didn’t work on me.” the taller stated, fidgeting his legs as usual. Nikki had grown used to it, so he wasn’t even bothered anymore.

“Nona told me another thing. Do you believe in soulmates, Tommy?”

T-bone’s eyes widened in surprise at the question: “Soulmates…? Never really thought about it.”

“Well, she told me the only person who could resist to this would be my soulmate,” he concluded, taking another drag from the cigarette and blowing it in the heated air. Tommy was speechless, which was unusual for him. His mind was a mess, trying to connect all the dots and form a coherent thought, a decent answer to that.

“You gotta be kidding man…” he whispered. Not decent, but still an answer. The drummer laid down on the couch like he needed some more moments to realize. And Nikki, slightly worried about him, sat down next to his friend again and took his wrist to feel the pulse of his quickened heartbeat.

“I’m not, I’m shocked just as you. I don’t think I’m gay or anything, soulmates ain’t a thing you decide.” he sighed as he let the other’s arm and put the cigarette off in the nearest ashtray.

Tommy finally looked at him with a little smile. He always had that innocent, joyful sparkle in his eyes. He was the total opposite of Nikki, but none of them was bothered by that. “Hey it’s alright, I wouldn’t mind it anyway. As you said, a soulmate isn’t someone you can choose;“ he paused for a few seconds, looking at his friend with the corner of his eyes, "and I gotta say I’m okay with you being mine.”

“Are you saying it doesn’t weird you out?” Sixx was finally smiling, too. He almost never smiled, and Tommy felt a pleasurable stabbing sensation in his heart every time he witnessed those lips curving in a shy, cute manner.

“Listen, I might be slightly gay for you and anyway, after hearing this story, nothing can weird me out.”

“Stupid.” the older chuckled, before realizing what Tommy had really said: “Wait, are you gay?”

“No? I don’t think so…” the drummer mumbled, unsure about the best words to use. But maybe at that point, spilling the entire truth would’ve been better than keeping motherfuckin’ secrets. Secrets ruin friendships, and Tommy wasn’t intentioned to lose Nikki. “I mean, I realized I have some feelings for you, don’t wanna name them yet, but if we’re soulmates it means something, right?” he so dared to say, and Nikki’s reaction came quite unexpectedly. Tommy was expecting a ‘fuck you’ or something, but instead, his lips found Nikki’s in a kiss. A delicate and maybe awkward kiss, because none of them seemed to have the guts to deepen it.

“I- uh…” Nikki fumbled, but the look Tommy gave him was so full of feelings that the bassist kissed him again, almost like he was possessed.

And this time everything felt natural, which meant fast and violent and full of unnamed feelings. Nikki bit the other’s lip, making him gasp visibly at the sensation. The vibrant green of Nikki’s irises seemed to shine with a new feeling, which Tommy couldn’t really tell.

“Do you think things are going to work?” the bassist asked in a hushed voice, his forehead pressed against Tommy’s.

“Which things?”

“Us,” Nikki cooed, turning his head away from Tommy. His rosy cheeks showed new shades of his heart and Tommy was so glad and surprised. “are we going to make it?” he asked, his voice was full of worry, of that kind of pain only lonely people endure.

He had never thought he was destined to have a soulmate. That only happens in fairy tales, he would tell himself, and then proceeded with falling in love with people only to hurt them in the end. Because none of them were his true soulmates. His fate was to be alone, he had hurt too many people to trust himself anymore.

The taller then smiled softly, cupping Nikki’s face and smiling at him, before kissing his cheek. “Always, no matter what.”

“What a romantic motherfucker. I’m gonna get diabetes.” the bassist playfully complained, his smile would reveal all of his feelings. He really couldn’t believe Tommy was alive and well, that nothing had happened when their eyes met, when their lips touched. That there were no tears nor desperate situations.

"At least you know what you’re signing for.” Lee clicked his tongue. They fell silent, then, Tommy looking at Nikki and Nikki looking at the old and ruined, but oh so familiar, sofa. The atmosphere was quiet. There was some uncertainty, still, in fear’s fault.

A gay relationship, in the 80s, between two guys trying to become famous. That could’ve blown everything up, destroy their life-long dream. Was it worth the risk?

Nikki sighed. “Do you think we should make it public?”

Tommy frowned, his eyes veiled with the same preoccupation that darkened Nikki’s: “I don’t know, that might be a bad idea. But what do you think?”

“This is gonna be our secret, at least for now.” Nikki agreed, his hand found Tommy’s. Their fingers intertwined shyly, and Lee strengthened the hold.

“By the way, you can sleep here if you wanna. Since you got kicked out.” He said after a few moments of silence, and Nikki clicked his tongue at him:

“How do you know it?”

“Because you woke up earlier than 6pm, which, for the record, you never do.”

Nikki laughed: “Alright, alright, I have my stuff in the car.”

“Fine, go and take it so we can find some place for your clothes.”

In the end, Nikki didn’t sleep on the sofa anymore. The bed was pretty small for the two of them, but they could arrange it by sleeping on each other despite the extra hot temperatures. Nikki was feeling home like never before, and it was the most beautiful sensation. He would’ve phoned Nona, sooner or later, to tell her he had found his soulmate like she had said.

[wangjiplayingwangji]

Ok, question, have you considered a Steven Universe AU for JoJo? If so I would love to know your take on it!

Don’t get me started on SU AU’s I had a whole blog dedicated to me and my friends gemsona’s and how they fit into the SU world called “The Imperfects”

BUT since you ASKED (and these are based more off personalities rather than appearance/color)

( Also, these are those depicted on my blog! I will attempt to go into more detail if anyone interested but this is all for now and it is L O N G )

Jonathan - Topaz

From what we’ve seen of them they were big hulking gems used more for defense and guarding than offense attack but would also be nothing to scoff at in a battle. Not to mention the ones we did see really didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

Speedwagon - zircon

The persecuting and defensive gems in the diamond court case, I feel like Speedwagon would be a good one. He’s smart, a good judge of character and has a good heart. The zircon on stevens side wanted to do her best to help him even though he was technically an enemy, just like SW wasn’t originally on Jonathan's side but had a change of heart when he really spoke with him and heard of his noble quest to save his father. They also seem to have a bit of an anxious streak and that suites our beloved SW as well.

I imagine they’d escape to the off-color caves after Jonathan refuses to hurt someone and is put on trial only for SW to not agree with the results and choose to save his life putting them both on the lamb with their only option to be to retreat underground.  

Joseph - Tigers Eye

Although we don’t see one in the show it just seems like something that would fit Joseph’s colorful and unique personality as well as it retains some color quality of a Topaz with a twist of it’s own. It’s also said to be a stone meant for clearing out anxiety and fear to bring peace, balance and stimulate action and decision making which I think sums up Josephs character pretty well. 

Caesar - Aquamarine

The aquamarines we met were callous and prideful in their gemstones as well as obviously high-class gems. They’re efficient, ruthless and skilled, just like our favorite bubble blowing baby. Their snotty attitudes seem to match him well, as well as when they decide to go easy on their partner rather than report them to the diamonds which means they do have some reluctant compassion. 

They’d probably end up a Romeo and Juliet situation where they both operate under a different diamond but something draws them together, with Joseph being a little too impulsive and Caesar a little too strict and always lecturing him but never reporting or stopping his behavior. However one of Josephs pranks goes too far and he’s sentenced to be shattered on one of the earth’s spires. Caesar tries to use his status to beg for his life but it proves useless, leaving him no choice, he takes him and jumps. The fall and extra weight damage his wings leaving him with only the ability to conjure water bubbles. Joseph feels guilty be Caesar sees it as a start to their new life. 

Jotaro - Garnet

Cold and calculating but with a surprisingly sweet side and unexpected sense of humor. Garnet seems to suit Jotaro to a T, not to mention being incredibly powerful (however he is not two lesbians in a trenchcoat) He always seems to have a plan and know what’s going to happen next. The rock that everyone relies on, Jotaro as a garnet is both the sword and the shield.

Kakyoin - Pearl

Originally made to bend to everyone’s will but his own Kakyoin is a pearl that fights back. He’s polite, intellectual, and respected among the ranks of the crystal gems. Having escaped from the clutches of homeworld he was originally made on earth, but on a raid to clear a village to make room for a new kindergarten he found himself appalled at homeworlds methods and rebelled from his general and master.

They meet on the battlefield. Jotaro fighting for homeworld and Kakyoin for the earth and crystal gems. Their weapons clash as their fight takes on an unbelievable intensity and at one point Jotaro tears the scarf kakyoin wraps around himself to hide his gem. In that moment of confusion upon seeing it’s a pearl he’s fighting Kakyoin gets the upper hand and Jotaro is poofed. Later he reforms in a destabilization chamber on a broken ship with Kakyoin waiting for him.  The pearl demands why he held back during their fight and Jotaro counters with asking what a pearl is doing on the front lines, if he had some kind of death wish. Their conversation goes back and forth for some time before Kakyoin sits on the floor opposite his captive and end’s up regaling his tale of servitude, horror at the destruction of the diamonds and how he decided to change because he wanted to be something more. For the first time, Jotaro questions his purpose, and wonders if there’s more to life than being a made to order soldier. 

Josuke - Rose Quartz

A made to order soldier, as is any quartz. But they don’t lack for personality. They are smart, compassionate and even a bit naive. However, they are more of a backline soldier that in the meantime gather resources and help in the creation of more kindergartens. They are stil respected and powerful gems that enjoy games and the company of others, with the ability to hurt and heal they make a fearsome enemy and kind ally. A bit childish at times but powerful and sweet Josuke would make a perfect rose quartz.

Okuyasu - Amythest

Similar to the rose quartzes amethysts are also made to order soldier type gems however they are a stronger more durable gemstone made moreso for the frontlines and guard work. They tend to be on the goofier and denser side of the quartz spectrum with them being the most expendable and easiest to control as for the others made to be more general types such as jaspers. However, what they may lack in strategery they make up for in power. Amythests are formidable opponents and can be darkly serious when it matters, a stack contrast to their typical fun-loving and silly nature.  

Josuke and Oku meet on earth in their respective kindergarten. Although they both popped out knowing what they were, what their purpose was everything seemed to stop when they met. A connection of some kind, a feeling of fate or some kind of magnetism. They met in the middle as the rest of their gems march on around them. Josuke cracks a small smile and says ‘nice gemstone’ Okuyasu lets out a laugh and says ‘thanks i like yours too’. After they get so lost in conversation they don’t notice their agates watching them and suddenly they've pulled apart and directed to opposite sides of the kindergarten to stand in formation. Reluctantly they return but keep their eyes on each other. The pair is soon known as a couple of troublemakers, constantly getting distracted from their work and stopping to talk much to the annoyance of their authoritative gems and needing to be ordered back to their work. It all came to a head one day however when Josuke’s agate, sick of watching them disobey orders, she forcibly got between them, destabilizer in hand. Her intention to poof the rose quartz and send him to the opposite side of the galaxy where they would never see each other again. It took Okuyasu everything he had to fight off the gems holding him down but in a fit of rage, he managed to fight them off and throw himself into Josuke before the destabilizer hit him and there was a burst of white light. When he next came too he and Josuke were in a forest, apparently safe for now. 

Giorno - Agate

Giorno is a yellow agate in charge of the human zoo. It was a place off-color gems with no real place on homeworld were sent for a chance to have a purpose. Misshapen amethysts and disproportional jaspers were his crew, not that he minded. Despite being overcooked himself, he was a bit too short, he took his role seriously and commanded the respect of the other gems despite his imperfections. A natural leader and commanding presence Giorno is respected everywhere he goes and has amassed quite the following.

Mista - Ruby

A ruby in the elite guard in charge of protecting the agate in charge of the human zoo, Mista isn’t quite like the average ruby. Undercooked, he stands taller over most and towers over his charge, a yellow agate. He’s a bit of a dunce at times and can be spacey during boring conversations or events but he takes his duty seriously and speaks casually, even to his superior, however, the agate does not seem to mind his friendliness. Mista is a great ruby, a quick thinker and he throws himself into his job, but off hours he’s fun lovable and ditsy, making him a favorite among his peers. 

Mista and Giorno because of their roles spend a decent amount of time together, and often times Mista ends up making empty one-sided conversations as they wander the halls of the ship, uncomfortable with silence. He’d gotten used to the silence that it was a surprise when the agate indulged him by responding one day. After that, they talked fairly regularly as they checked the status of the ship and its inhabitants. They established a comfort, so much so Giorno ended up letting it slip one night that he’d love to visit the planet the humans' hail from and see the organic life he’d grown to adore inside the zoo. The plants, the water, the animals, it was a rare wild beauty within the sterile walls of the diamond authority. Mista on an impulse suggested the go to earth, much to the surprise of the agate. But Mista explained nothing ever changes, its the same in and out, he was sure anyone would be able to handle it, like holly blue agate. A ruthless commander and Giornos second in command, if anyone would be able to handle it, it would be her. And so for a night, they planned to escape and see the earth, but, suppose a night turned into a few thousand.

[mxliv-oftheendless]

Gods’ Children AU

OOPS IT’S ANOTHER AU. Lol will I ever stop thinking of these? Probably not. 

So yeah, once again, I in my infinite sappy dorkiness have come up with yet another KISSteria AU. I’m only a little sorry if this is incredibly stupid, but I thought it was a good idea, so I decided to write it out. Shout out to @cosmicrealmofkissteria for letting me ramble to her about this AU idea a couple weeks ago :) Hope you guys enjoy this!

So in this AU:

The Gods of Sphynxia’s pantheon are all regular old mortal humans. They’re just humans, that exist on Earth, and do human stuff.

The Patron Gods of the Warrior Troupe, however, are their parents. 

What does this look like, you ask? WELL... 

SET AND SEKHMET

Set and Sekhmet have the kind of relationship where everyone’s lost as to how Sekhmet puts up with him.

They bicker like, a lot.

But that’s just how they work. There’s no malice in their bickering, and they would rather hurt themselves than even dream of hurting each other. And if it ever does turn into a full-blown fight, they’re able to work it out eventually (it definitely involves angry sex).

Also Sekhmet doesn’t put up with Set’s shit, because she’s kind of a badass.

Set owns a biker joint, and used to be a biker himself, but left his gang after he opened his bar. He was known as the gang’s resident hothead with a “temper of chaos”.

Sekhmet is a kickboxing instructor that used to be a full-time prizefighter. She doesn’t anymore, however.

Bomani is their adopted son; his parents were murdered when he was very young. Set and Sekhmet were their next-door neighbors in the apartment building they lived in, and offered to take him in afterwards.

Well, I say offered; it was more like they fought like hell to make it happen because they were both VERY aware of what the foster system is like, and Bomani was so young and for crying out loud hE JUST LOST HIS PARENTS.

The murderer is, thankfully, in prison. For a while he received letters from both Set and Sekhmet that… let’s just say if the murderer got killed while in prison, the letters would lead to Set and Sekhmet being potential suspects.

Sekhmet and Bomani are the only people you’ll ever see Set be soft around. Everyone else gets his “I have no feelings dumbfuck” side. But it doesn’t change the fact that he would take a bullet for either of them. 

SOBEK AND THOTH

Sobek and Thoth are awkward soft gays that are a beautiful blend of jock and intellectual.

They actually knew each other in high school, and funnily enough had crushes on each other. They ran into each other years later, realized their old feelings were still there, and started dating… and years later they got married.

They like… almost never fight. Sure, they debate, and when they’re tired they’re a little snippy, but they almost never argue. And when they do, they talk it out and have sweet make-up sex afterwards.

Sobek is a professional swimmer and is seriously dedicated to it. The amount of trophies and medals he has is certainly proof of that. Maybe he’s not the quickest-thinking person, but give him time and he can come to a solution for a problem eventually.

Thoth owns a bookstore that has a pretty respectable vintage collection. He’s probably the definition of academia. He’s very smart, has a career as a bookbinder and loves to read, and can quote word for word the beginning paragraph of Pride and Prejudice and the entirety of The Tell-Tale Heart. He’s a skinny, glasses-wearing guy who has really nice handwriting, and loves his husband and son.

(And no, he totally doesn’t stare shamelessly at Sobek when he’s not wearing a shirt… just kidding he totally does)

Dalila is their son, born from a surrogacy, that again, both of them would take a bullet for. They both love to smugly boast about him taking after them; he’s a really good swimmer, and he loves to read.

One of their biggest “proud dads” moments was when Dalila got sent to the office by his first-grade teacher after he kept speaking out in class… by protesting that Christopher Columbus didn’t actually discover America and his voyage led to Indians becoming slaves. (The teacher, of course, neglected to mention that part) 

PTAH AND KHONSU

Ptah and Khonsu are long-term boyfriends that banter with but will raise hell for each other and for Masika.

Like with Set and Sekhmet, they banter, a hell of a lot, but there’s never any malice in there.

What’s funny is, whenever they do argue, usually it’s about a little ridiculous thing. And there will without fail be a point where they stop, take a step back, think about what they’re doing… and crack up laughing.

Ptah is an architect, and he does a very good job; his architectural firm has gained a lot more clients thanks to him. He also likes to build things himself.

Khonsu is an ethologist with a specialty in nocturnal animals. He is very passionate about his job; he will literally go on rants about how intelligent bats actually are and how people zombify them simply because of their connection in fiction to vampires. One time it actually led to him calling someone out on their evident racism, and to Ptah dragging him out of the room before he got into a fistfight.

Masika is actually Ptah’s godson. Though a series of unfortunate and very messy events for all involved, Masika was transferred into Ptah’s custody, and he and Khonsu now co-parent him.

Officially it’s co-parenting; but Masika’s considered them his actual parents for years now.

Masika has a troublemaking streak, and likes to pull admittedly-impressive pranks on people. Ptah blames Khonsu as an enabler, and Khonsu doesn’t protest that because he knows it’s true.

Not that Ptah can say anything—he loves Masika.

Their snark definitely rubbed off on Masika; there’s been many a time where he’s come home with a note from his teacher for being “disrespectful”.

But as mentioned before, even though he’s a snarky, wild little shit, both Ptah and Khonsu would raise hell for him. 

ISIS AND HORUS

Isis and Horus are… pretty much couple goals. They’re a dynamic duo. They’re so in sync with each other. They just… work.

Basically they’re the relationship everyone wishes they had, and that some people are skeptical of its existence.

Isis is a therapist, and has a big clientele because of how good of a therapist she is.

Horus is an ornithologist—or as Sobek calls him, a bird nerd. In fairness, he really loves to study birds. His office is filled with statues of different birds, posters of bird anatomy, the works.

They adopted Vinneketh as their son when he was a little boy. Vinneketh was literally dropped off at an orphanage by his parents, who never explained why and instead just left him there. This, as a result, left him with deep abandonment issues.

And his biological parents better hope they never run into Isis and Horus, because these two are prepared to fight them over this.

A memory that still breaks their hearts to think about is from about a month after they adopted Vinneketh. He decided he was going to wash the dishes for his new parents, and while doing so accidentally dropped and broke a plate. He instantly burst into tears, desperately apologizing and begging them to not send him away.

It’s still a long and winding road, and has involved a lot of therapy and gentle reassurance, but Vinneketh is doing much better.

Also, in the future: Bastet and Hathor are the lesbian power couple that declare themselves Ayesha’s moms, since she already has two dads. Vinneketh and Demon know better than to argue against that. Ayesha’s just stoked to have two moms alongside her two dads. 

In summation: all these couples would all take a bullet and/or raise hell for their sons. So even though they may not be their biological parents, they’re incredibly capable of loving them just as much as a parent should.

[thegildedcentury]

What We Talk About When We Talk About Luv: The Beauty and Horror of Blade Runner 2049′s Tragic Antiheroine

“I’m the best one.”  Luv declares as she struts away from K, fresh blood from a stolen kiss adorning her face as she departs, having again reduced her opponent to helplessness and having again decided, bafflingly, not to kill him.  

If we think of Blade Runner 2049 as a pretentious yet inferior movie, a pale imitation of its source material lacking all the intellectual and emotional resonance of the original, these four words spoken by Luv mean nothing, existing as a tossed off line spoken by a tossed off character in a film that accomplishes nothing aside from looking pretty and making you wish you were watching the original.

I disagree.  I think Luv is incredible, one of the most fascinating, nuanced, and profoundly tragic characters I’ve encountered in a very long time, a figure who both deserves and rewards our attention.  Though it’s easy to miss during an initial viewing (I certainly did) Luv has a rich, deep story arc that branches through the whole of Blade Runner 2049, one that both parallels and intersects with K’s story, the two characters informing each other even as they violently ricochet off one another.  Once understood, the tragic depths of Luv’s story don’t just reveal a remarkable character but enrich the movie as a whole, adding an extra dimension to a narrative already dense with meaning.

Luv, like our central protagonist K, is a Nexus-9 Replicant model, a product of the Wallace Corporation.  When we first meet her she is in the process of selling other Replicants as Off-World slave labor.  This may seem like a betrayal of the first order but, as we will soon learn, Luv does not see it that way.

Luv works directly under CEO Niander Wallace himself, acting as his personal assistant, assassin, and all purpose fixer.  While Niander Wallace is the face Technological Capitalism chooses to show the world--brilliant, eccentric, full of glorious and high minded ambition, a Ted Talk come to life--Luv represents it’s actual real world consequences: empty sadism, nihilistic violence, and ignorant self-aggrandizement, which is not to say that Luv is stupid.  Luv knows she is a slave but nevertheless exalts in her position because she is the best slave, Niander Wallace’s chosen instrument.  If Niander Wallace is God, and he certainly seems to think he is, Luv is his "First Angel”, the chosen means by which he enacts his will on the world.  Luv knows this, but she can’t bring herself to fully comprehend its ramifications, a failure of understanding that ultimately leads to her tragic destruction.

Any discussion of tragedy would be incomplete without at least a brief detour to account for the Ancient Greeks, the originators of Tragedy as Western Civilization knows it, so let’s get it out of the way now.  All tragedy results, on a fundamental level, from a failure to obey the message inscribed above the Oracle of Delphi: “Know Thyself”.  When you don’t understand yourself, you open yourself up to becoming prey of the Gods, what today we might call the Passions, though few Greek Tragedians would have recognized a distinction between the two.  (Euripides being the notable exception.)  The most famous embodiment of this kind of tragedy through self-ignorance was Oedipus, the subject of the tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.  Though a prisoner of fate, Oedipus effectively strolled into his own cage by letting his passions rule him, first by giving in to his wrath by killing a stranger he met on the road, and then by giving in to his lust by marring the wife of the man he killed.  When wisdom finally comes to Oedipus in the form of the realization that the man he killed was his father and the woman he married is his mother, it arrives too late to save him, and instead destroys him.  

The character of Luv in Blade Runner 2049 bears less direct blame for her own tragic fate, yet the mechanisms by which it operates are fundamentally similar.  Luv does not understand herself.  The result is pain and suffering, yet it is far more nuanced than it first appears.  What superficially manifests as depraved cruelty is, in fact, the result of a more fundamental lack, the sort of profound misunderstanding of her own nature that elevates her from the status of a mere hired goon to a character worthy of our consideration, and even our sympathy.

Unless I’ve overlooked something (which is entirely possible) Blade Runner 2049 makes no mention of whether or not Luv has the sort of artificial memory implants that prove such an integral part of K’s personality and story.  Knowing this is vital to understanding her character, and while there is no way to be absolutely certain, I believe Luv’s actions clearly demonstrate her lack of a synthetic past, maliciously depriving her replicant mind of what Eldon Tyrell in the first movie called “a cushion or a pillow for their emotions”.  As a result I believe, despite her often cold exterior, Luv is a raging tumult of conflicting, contradictory emotions she can neither understand nor control, paramount of which are her feelings regarding K.

Luv expresses interest in K during their first meeting, her fascination paralleling the sparks that fly between Rachel and Deckard in the old recording they both listen to.  Unlike the meet-cute that occurred thirty years prior in the first Blade Runner, the attraction isn’t mutual, and when Luv attempts to inquire further into K’s life he rebuffs her.  This quiet, polite rejection will ultimately have devastating consequences for both characters.  K makes a powerful enemy, while Luv becomes divided against herself, afflicted with powerful feelings she has no context for or understanding of.  As Kierkegaard said, life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.  Without any history there can be no understanding, we become disconnected and begin to float, easy prey for any passing impulse.  Knowing this doesn’t let us absolve Luv of her misdeeds, but it does give us a chance to reach a better understanding of her, as well as the more enigmatic aspects of her behavior.        

We see Luv cry twice in Blade Runner 2049. The first time is when she sees her master Niander Wallace stroking and bidding happy birthday to a newborn female replicant (credited only as ‘Female Replicant’) who he then proceeds to murder by stabbing her in the womb, a brutal crime committed for no real reason other than vent his frustration and illustrate a point in a monologue he’s delivering more or less to himself.  The second time is when Luv tortures and kills Lieutenant Joshi, K’s master.  Both instances involve a woman being murdered, stabbed to death specifically, their body violated with a piece of metal in a grotesque pantomime of the act of heterosexual lovemaking. (When Blade Runner’s symbolism isn’t Judeo-Christian it’s Freudian.  Freud would have diagnosed Luv with the three A’s: Ambiguity, Alienation, Ambivalence.)

When Luv cries with Niander Wallace it is in response to the nameless female replicant shedding her plastic birth caul and spasming into life.  Luv casts a fleeting glance upward as the tear rolls down her cheek as if in acknowledgement to a higher power that bestows the transcendent spark of life, but if that’s the case any pretense to the sacred is destroyed when Niander Wallace murders the newborn replicant, an act that serves as a vulgar reaffirmation of his own mastery over life and death.      

When Luv cries a second time it’s in response to her torturing Lieutant Joshi by crushing shattered glass into her hand, an act of sadism that concludes with Luv murdering the Lieutenant outright.  

The fact that Luv sheds tears in both instances despite their profoundly different circumstances may lead us to the conclusion that Luv’s tears have no real emotional resonance, instead being an involuntary autonomic response to any extreme stimuli, what is little more than a bug in her design.  It’s a natural assumption, but one that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Luv is the best one, at least as far as her status as a consumer-grade product is concerned.  She is the pinnacle of Wallace design, the closest to perfection he’s yet managed to come.  If Luv had a fault in her genetic architecture that made her cry at inappropriate times, Niander Wallace would likely have disposed of her with the same dispassionate matter-of-factness  he disposes of everything that mildly displeases him.  Yet if Luv’s tears are genuine, how can we make sense of them?

The answer is the absence of her memories.  Without the mental foundation of memory that would provide her with a chance to ground the violent events she experiences and violent emotions she feels in context, Luv is helpless to control how she reacts, a condition her judiciously maintained cool exterior can only do so much to hide.  

The tears she sheds while witnessing the nameless female replicant’s birth and the tears she sheds while torturing and killing Lieutenant Joshi are both genuine.  This is naturally confusing since the situations are so different, but as the author Leonard Richardson writes in his book Constellation Games, (which I cannot recommend highly enough) crying does not mean you’re sad, it means you’re experiencing an emotion that’s too large to keep inside of you.  Blade Runner 2049 throws us off the scent because the first time Luv cries the cause is obvious, then when she cries for a second time it seems completely inappropriate to the situation, yet when we appreciate the emotional tumult storming inside Luv, both reactions begin to make congruous sense.  The first time Luv cries it is out of empathy and a sense of the sublime.  The second time Luv cries it is out rage fueled by a mix of resentment and jealously. 

When Luv first strolls into Lieutenant Joshi’s office she says in regards to K “I like him.  He’s a good boy.” an evaluation Lieutenant Joshi’s silence seems to affirm.  Lieutenant Joshi is a character who, let us not forget, is for all intents and purposes K’s owner and master, having the same power dynamic with him that Niander Wallace has with Luv.  Killing Lieutenant Joshi not only serves the practical purpose of giving Luv free reign to access Lieutenant Joshi’s computer and find K, but it also gives Luv a chance to eliminate a romantic rival, experience the catharsis of killing a human master in a way she never could with Niander Wallace (who she needs to reaffirm her status as the Highest Angel), and eliminate the person that has enforced rigid control over every aspect of K’s life.  She’s acting out of a very warped sense of duty to K, not quite the sort of redeeming "kinship” that led Roy Batty to save Deckard’s life at the last moment, but a kind of solidarity nonetheless.

When viewed from this perspective, the desires motivating Luv are very fundamental and very human.  She wants solidarity with her fellow replicants. She wants revenge on those who’ve enslaved her.  She wants to experience romantic love.  The fact that she gets none of these things, that she has been explicitly denied the capacity to understand what these desires are and how to act on them and is instead forced to derive comfort from her status as the best one, the best product, the best slave, is what elevates her as a character beyond the stark dichotomy of victim or villain to the higher echelon of tragic antiheroine.

Luv spares K’s life twice in open defiance of the spirit, if not the letter, of Niander Wallace’s commandments.  The first time is when she and her fellow Wallace fixers storm Deckard’s Las Vegas sanctuary and abduct him.  K fights back despite being wounded thus forcing Luv to beat him into submission, though when the time comes to move in for the kill, she holds back.  Instead she kills Joi, K’s holographic A.I. companion, crushing the emitter that contains her consciousness beneath her radiantly polished boot.  

Immediately before doing so she says “I do hope you’re satisfied with our product.”  Luv looks at Joi when she speaks the line, though it seems to be intended for Joi, K, and Luv herself, all three of whom are themselves commercial products of the Wallace Corporation.  It’s a line that can be read as pure sarcasm, yet when considered in the context of what we’ve been talking about, we can view it as a sort of question, and a sort of appeal as well.  Joi and Luv are both Wallace Corporation products, but Luv knows herself to be the best product.  There is an implicit “Why?” in Luv’s words and actions, an inquiry that demands an answer from K.  “Why Joi and not me?  Am I not the superior model?”  K choosing Joi over her is an insult to her attraction and an affront to her pride, yet the only way she can express her outrage is with violence.  By destroying Joi she demonstrates her preeminent status as a product, while also eliminating another rival for K’s affections.  

Luv departs without another word, leaving K alive.  It’s safe for us to assume that Luv hasn’t simply fallen victim to the classic bad guy cliché of incorrectly assuming the good guy’s dead.  They are are both the same model of replicant, there’s no reason for us to think she isn’t precisely aware of both K’s limits and his potential.  Luv is still intrigued by K in a way she doesn’t understand, and lets him live secure the the knowledge that they will meet again under similarly unpleasant circumstances.  By then the scales will have completely fallen from K’s eyes and he will be endowed with an unshakable sense of purpose, his own personal raison d'être.  Luv will not be so fortunate.

K, at great cost, comes to understand who and what he really is in time for him to act on it in a way that gives purpose to his life and, more importantly, his death.  Like all great villains Luv is K’s antitheses, a distorted reflection of him, what C.G. Jung might identify as his shadow-self.  K begins the movie doing the same thing Luv does, namely killing on cue in accordance with his design.  The difference is K encounters people who change his worldview, making him aware of the possibility of altering his circumstances.  Luv never gets that chance.  

The name ‘Luv’ is obviously dumb, the kind of dull platitude you’d find on a candy heart or in a rushed-off text message, and the fact that it is the name Niander Wallace chose to bestow on his First Angel shows the true indifference he feels regarding her, how the contempt he has for all life extends to her as well, despite his lofty rhetoric and empty praise. 

Names are powerful, but they aren’t enough to imbue one’s life with meaning and purpose, a fact illustrated when a massive advertisement addresses K by his adopted name, the name Joi gave him, calling him “A good Joe.”  Not only does this show that even something as personal as a name bestowed by a loved one can be corrupted and co-opted by Technological Capitalism, but that both Joi and the advertisement are probably making decisions based on the same artificial intelligence program, leading both of them to pick the same name out of thin air.  This works to expose K to the artificiality of the relationship he had with Joi, forcing him to seek out something more authentic and human.  It’s the sort of epiphany Luv is denied, so while she does seek to form a sort of relationship with K, the why and how of it completely eludes her, leading her to act on a sort of animal instinct that can’t distinguish between aggression and affection, two very different human Passions that appear to her as indistinct aspects of the same raw emotional yearning she becomes less and less capable of containing over the course of the story, a compulsion that climaxes with her beating and stabbing K nearly to death, then following it up immediately with a deep, soulful kiss. 

The final battle between K and Luv at the sea wall isn’t just a grim parody of the iconic scene of two lovers passionately entwined in the surf from From Here To Eternity.  (Though it is at that.)  It’s a baptism.

Christian baptism is a ritual where the physical is sanctified and thus made to represent the spiritual, its invocation of grace elevating the ritual to transcend the mundane and evoke the divine.  When Luv and K fight they are also sanctified by the symbolism surrounding them, which renders the conflict more significant than two people beating each other up.  It is the physical versus the spiritual, the sacred versus the profane, the meaningful versus the meaningless, an elemental confrontation between the loftier and baser aspects of reality.  For Luv the thing that matters most to her and carries the most meaning are her Passions, which aren’t in themselves bad, but when misunderstood and uncontrolled lead to destruction.  In her fury she attacks and defeats K, and in her infatuation she yet again neglects to kill him.  Her mercy is rewarded with death.

The final contest between K and Luv is their mutual attempt to drown one another, one that ends by demonstrating the ultimate disparity in their respective personalities.  Both Luv and K forcibly hold one another underwater for what are at first roughly equivalent amounts of time. K survives because he is able to exert enough control over himself to hold his breath until he can turn the tables.  Luv in contrast dies because she is a slave to her Passions.  Instead of holding her breath and waiting for an opportunity to regain the upper hand she rages, clawing and growling, resisting with all her unchecked strength until her life is totally spent.

K and Deckard partake of the waters, die, and are born again.  Luv is subjected to the same trial, but she is denied such grace.  She is the First Angel, the most raw and brilliant and terrible, and as such, she must fall in all her dreadful glory, our horrible, beautiful, drowned Lucifer.

Like the studio-mandated happy ending of the original Blade Runner that everyone loathes, there could be another ending to this movie, a more conventionally satisfying ending where K and Luv gain a deeper understanding of themselves and, in doing so, find the capacity to care about and even love each other.  It would be nice, but it would also deny Luv her final tragic grandeur, and us the vision of a true antiheroine.      

The actress Sylvia Hoeks’ portrayal of Luv is as eerily perfect as the character herself, a performance that easily ranks among the best popular depictions of uncanny quasi-humanity ever rendered, on par with Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman, Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector, and Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty.  Luv is also different, a step beyond but also a step removed.  The sheer virtuosity of Sylvia Hoeks’ performance is largely based in restraint, the sort of illusion of control that Luv is so good at deceiving herself with that it’s easy for us, the audience, to be deceived as well.  It is right and good that we bemoan the lack of good female roles in popular cinema, but such objections can come to ring hollow when they come from an audience that routinely overlooks outstanding exemplars like Luv, a rendering that’s brave enough to not be obvious, whose peripheral status in the narrative does nothing to diminish.  I don’t think we’re going to see a great many characters equal to Luv in the future, not only because it’s rare for a concept this good to be executed this well, but the demographic of people who were once most inclined to notice such things are now largely intellectually hemmed in by an ideology that Blade Runner 2049 does not neatly fit into, and who thus deem it unworthy of consideration.  It is my ardent hope that it will eventually find a public worthy of it, just as its predecessor did.  It’s the reason why I’m writing this, why I’m proselytizing for Luv, who is, after all, the best one.  

OTHER PUNS I CONSIDERED WHEN TITLING THIS ESSAY

All You Need Is Luv

Luv Will Tear Us Apart

Luv Story

Luv Actually

The Luv Guru

Me Luv You Long Time

[lilyjcollins-news]

Lily Collins :“I want to dig deep, tell the truth and be more brave” by Jane Mulkerrins.

(click here to see the photoshoot and here to go to the website.)

The day before we meet, Lily Collins had what felt like a breakthrough encounter. At the end of a short, on-camera interview, the journalist had asked where she lived. Los Angeles, she told him, where her mother was born and raised, and where she has lived since the age of five, when her parents divorced. He then asked where her father lived. England, and partly in the US now, too, she answered. And what did her father do for a living? After some stifled giggling from the crew, Collins, who has just turned 30, gently explained her parentage. “And the guy just looked at me with the biggest eyes,” she laughs. “He’s like, ‘I’m sorry, what did you just say? Oh God, now I feel silly.’”

She insists that she was very grateful for his ignorance. “I’m so proud of my family, but I have also worked really hard to carve my own path and to not have that define me.’”

The daughter of superstar musician Phil Collins and his second wife, Jill Tavelman, she admits that her famous surname has inevitably opened doors, but insists that nobody has ever “made a phone call” for her. “I did get told that I could have other ways in,” she shrugs, when we meet on a rainy New York afternoon. “but I never wanted to give anyone the opportunity to say: ‘Well, she only got X or Y because of that.’ I knew it would take longer to do it on my own, but it would be so much more worth it.”

Collins’s insistence on carving her own path is now paying off, with two high-profile films – Tolkien, and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, and the US launch of the BBC miniseries Les Miserables, for which her performance as the tragic Fantine is already creating some early awards buzz.

Tolkien, a biopic of the author’s early life, stars Nicholas Hoult as JRR Tolkien, the philologist and author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Ringsseries, while Collins plays Edith Bratt, his childhood sweetheart and, later, his wife, who was the inspiration for Lúthien Tinúviel, the elvish princess in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. “I had auditioned to play an elven character in one of Peter Jackson’s movies, and I didn’t get it… but I’ve ended up playing the woman who inspired the elven princess,” grins Collins. It is her most mainstream, highly anticipated film to date, and a world away from the romcom roles she was getting five years ago. While there’s a heavy focus on Tolkien’s male friendships – the inspirations for his “fellowship” in his books, Bratt is fully fleshed-out and three-dimensional, too, not some flimsy, token love interest. “She was very creative and very passionate and driven, and he was intellectually stimulated by her,” says Collins. Bratt and Tolkien were both orphans. “At that time women of her status and in her position weren’t really afforded the opportunity to seek higher,” says Collins. “But she encouraged him to continue on his path. It’s very selfless, and, at times, heartbreaking.”

She sees a similar selflessness in Fantine, her once-vivacious character in Les Miserables, who becomes a prostitute and sells her hair and teeth in order to feed her child. “I died on day two of filming,” says Collins, with a laugh. She sent a picture of herself in character to her mother, who replied, “No one should have to see their daughter like this.”

“My choices have tended to go quite dark,” admits Collins of her recent roles. Just three days ago, she finished filming Inheritance, a forthcoming thriller in which she stars alongside Simon Pegg. “That’s incredibly dark, too. I really enjoy playing these characters that, under the surface, have so much more going on than they are saying, or who seem like they are barely keeping it together.

“I’ve always believed that asking for help is not a weakness, it’s a strength,” she continues. “I have a tattoo that says: ‘True delicacy is not a fragile thing.’ You can look delicate, but it doesn’t mean that you’re fragile.” I surmise, from her having it made permanent in ink, that people have, perhaps, underestimated her in the past.

Undoubtedly the darkest of her recent projects is Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, about the serial killer Ted Bundy, who murdered more than 30 girls and women in seven US states in the 1970s. The title comes from the judge’s summation of Bundy’s acts when sentencing him to death. Collins plays Elizabeth Kloepfer, the killer’s long-term girlfriend who is convinced of his innocence, with Zac Efron playing a charismatic and persuasive Bundy.

While preparing for the role, over the Christmas holidays, Collins recounts how she would wake every night at 3.05am. “I would go downstairs and have a cup of tea, trying to figure out why I had woken up again.” Then, she says, “I started being woken up by flashes of images, like the aftermath of a struggle.” She went to the internet to investigate. “I discovered that 3am is the time when the veil between the realms is the thinnest and one can be visited.” She began to believe women who were murdered by Bundy were, perhaps, trying to contact her. “I didn’t feel scared – I felt supported. I felt like people were saying: “We’re here listening. We’re here to support. Thank you for telling the story.”

Collins tells me all of this in a completely matter-of-fact manner, as if receiving messages from long-dead murder victims were a perfectly normal part of preparing for a film. It’s pretty much the only moment in our time together when she seems more Californian than British. Even her looks – porcelain skin, dark hair and dramatic eyebrows – are eminently more London than LA. And, while in person her accent is pure California, on screen in Tolkien, her clipped, turn-of-the-century English consonants and vowels are flawless, as are her more working-class ones for Fantine. She looks deeply relieved when I tell her so. “I did worry that people were going to be like, ‘Well, she is actually British, her accent should really be better,’” she laughs. “There’s an extra level of pressure. I worked with a dialect coach as I needed it to be absolutely spot-on.”

Collins was born in Guildford, Surrey, at the height of her father’s success – six months later he would release Another Day in Paradise. Is it true, I ask, that Elton John used to babysit her? “I’ve really got to sit my parents down and ask them questions about that. I’ve been hearing it for so long, but I really have no idea,” she says.

After relocating with her mother to LA at the age of five, following her parents’ divorce, she attended the prestigious Harvard-Westlake school, where former pupils include Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal, and began auditioning for film and TV roles. “I was getting told ‘no’ all the time,” she says, which she puts down simply to a lack of experience. “I’d done musicals and plays at school, but I hadn’t studied acting or anything, and auditioning for film and TV is very different.”

At the same time, journalism held an appeal, too. “I wanted to be the youngest-ever talk show host,” she says. After pitching ideas to magazine editors, she began writing for Teen Vogue and Elle Girl, and scored a job as a reporter for the children’s channel Nickelodeon, covering the 2008 presidential election and Obama’s inauguration. “I was 18 and I could just vote, so I was like, ‘Oh great, I get to ask all the questions that I don’t know the answers to.’” What she liked less, however, were the questions she had to ask as a roving reporter on the red carpet. “I would think, oh, that’s not what I really want to ask this person, I would hate to be asked that,” she recalls. On the other side of the microphone now, there are questions she simply doesn’t answer, about her personal life, or about politics, on which she refuses to be drawn.

She studied broadcast journalism at the University of Southern California, but dropped out in her second year when, in 2009, after several years of auditioning, she won her first film role, as Sandra Bullock’s daughter in The Blind Side. Soon after, she was perfectly cast as Snow White in Mirror Mirror, followed by Rosie Dunne in Love, Rosie, the adaptation of Cecelia Ahern’s novel Where Rainbows End.

Though acting has clearly won out over journalism and talk show ambitions are on hold for now, Collins is still a keen writer. In 2017, she published Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, a collection of personal essays in which she opened up about her struggles and self-doubts, her relationship with her father, with partners, and with her own body, writing about the eating disorders she battled for some years. “A lot of young women write to me on social media [she has more than 14m followers on Instagram], saying, ‘I just wanted to let you know that this is my situation and my insecurity, not that you would ever be able to relate to it…’ and I’ll always be like, ‘No, I really can relate,’” she insists.

Collins describes in Unfiltered how, as a child, she had only positive associations with food, but that changed when she turned 16. Her father was separating from her stepmother, his third wife, while Lily was juggling school, a budding modelling career, a social life and trying to break into acting, too. “My life felt out of control,” she writes. “I couldn’t handle the pain and confusion surrounding my dad’s divorce, and I was having a hard time balancing being a teenager with pursuing two different grown-up careers – both of which I’d chosen myself, but which also focused heavily on how I looked.” She began starving herself, exercising obsessively and became addicted to diet pills and laxatives, habits which continued well into her early 20s.

She pitched the book proposal during a dry spell in acting. “I hadn’t booked anything film-wise for a while, and I was itching to do something. The idea for the book had been at the back of my mind for a while, and I thought, well, maybe now’s the time.” Soon after, she was also sent the script for To The Bone, a film about a young woman with chronic anorexia. “It was too big a message to ignore,” recalls Collins. She attended group therapy sessions with recovering anorexics. “I didn’t want them thinking that I was just coming in to be nosy. I wanted them to know that I actually could relate. It encouraged me to really dig deep and tell the truth, to be more brave. And it was freeing,” she says. Collins sent a copy of the book to Michelle Obama “on a whim. I wanted to reach out to certain people and just thank them for being an inspirational woman, someone who I look up to,” she says. “I certainly never expected to receive a letter back thanking me and saying the same thing. I need to get that letter framed.”

This summer, she’s heading to France to film Emily in Paris, the new comedy-drama from Sex and the City creator Darren Star. “I knew I had so much baggage that I needed to get rid of in order to take on the baggage of all my characters,” she says. “And the second I did that, my career and my personal life opened up in a whole new way.” Collins, it seems, having been drawn to the darkness, professionally and personally, is now heading towards the light.

vía The Observer Magazine.

[inxbreakableheaven]

How does your character think of their father? What do they hate and love about him? What influence - literal or imagined - did the father have?: Marlo loves her father, but at the moment, they’re butting heads over the war and the fact she blames him for the fact she had to come home. Ordinarily they’re very close.

Their mother? How do they think of her? What do they hate? Love? What influence - literal or imagined - did the mother have?: Marlo is also on tense terms with her mother for the same reasons. 

Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do they despise about their siblings?: Marlo doesn’t despise any of her siblings. She has three brothers and two sisters. 

What type of discipline was your character subjected to at home? Strict? Lenient?: Her parents are strict, but not abusive. 

Were they overprotected as a child? Sheltered?: Very much overprotected. After she triggered her gene, she was kept close to home save for university.

Did they feel rejection or affection as a child?: Affection, but approval didn’t come easily.

What was the economic status of their family?: Upper-middle. The Averys are a humble family who live well-within their means, however.

How does your character feel about religion?: Marlo is indifferent towards religion.

What about political beliefs?: She prefers to stay out of it.

Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?: Marlo is a very book-smart/educated/intellectual young woman who loves books and learning.

How do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated?: She views herself as at least smart, if not a little impulsive.

How does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations?: Marlo’s learned to dumb down her vocabulary so people can “understand” her, but she loves any chance she has to show it off.

Did they like school? Teachers? Schoolmates?: Marlo was neutral on school, for the most part, but was a good student.

Were they involved at school? Sports? Clubs? Debate? Were they unconnected?: She was involved in soccer growing up.

Did they graduate? High-School? College? Do they have a PHD? A GED?: Marlo graduated high school and has an undergraduate degree in psychology from Yale.

What does your character do for a living? How do they see their profession? What do they like about it? Dislike?: She wants to eventually go back to school for her graduate degree in psychology so she can fulfill her dream of helping at-risk supernatural youth cope with their abilities.

Did they travel? Where? Why? When?: She doesn’t travel often. 

What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?: She has never been outside the country

Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or 'ideal’ partner?: Marlo casually dated here and there, but when she imprinted on Adam, it all kind of molded together. Her friends are people she feels she can depend on and can depend on her. She’s very loyal.

What do they want from a partner? What do they think and feel of sex?: Marlo wants an equal above all. She doesn’t want a leader and she doesn’t want to lead. And she very, very much enjoys sex. 

What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?: Marlo still loves to hunt, but she also loves playing games and stuff with her family. Anything to flex her brain.

What are their hobbies and interests?: Hunting, reading, writing, cooking.

What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?: Marlo’s room is generally pretty tidy, save for clothes that miss the hamper and her bed is a little rumpled. Her appearance is generally very casual: jeans, button-down shirt or T-shirts. Sometimes tank tops. Her hair is usually brushed and up in a ponytail.

How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?: Her clothes are generally fitted, but as of late, they’ve been looser to hide the rapidly-forming bump growing. 

Who is your character’s mate? How do they relate to him or her? How did they make their choice?: Adam Blackstone is Marlo’s mate. They’re both headstrong, snarky, but both very caring about the other. Both of them would do anything for the other, but they would both choose their packs/families over anything. Neither of them chose the other, but neither of them would complain about it. 

What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?: Marlo is incredibly impulsive and has little self-control when it counts. She’s also very impatient and short-tempered.

Are they holding on to something in the past? Can he or she forgive?: Marlo does not forgive easily. At all.

Does your character have children? How do they feel about their parental role? About the children? How do the children relate?: Marlo is currently pregnant with her first baby and already, she would kill to protect it. 

How does your character react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?: Defensively. Very defensively.

Do they drink? Take drugs? What about their health?: Before her pregnancy, she drank occasionally, but never drugs.

Does your character feel self-righteous? Revengeful? Contemptuous?: The only revenge she wants is for Natallia Wright to pay for killing her brother, Levi. 

Do they always rationalize errors? How do they accept disasters and failures?: Marlo does not do well with failure at all and is often very hard on herself when it occurs.

Do they like to suffer? Like to see other people suffering?: Marlo hates seeing people suffer.

How is your character’s imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?: She now lives very firmly on the ground.

Are they basically negative when facing new things? Suspicious? Hostile? Scared? Enthusiastic?: She’s very negative and very cautious more than anything.

What do they like to ridicule? What do they find stupid?: People who dress up their dogs like humans

How is their sense of humor? Do they have one?: Very dark, somewhat twisted. She also loves puns and has a very dry sense of humor.

What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?: She wants peace so she could find happiness, even if it isn’t with Adam. 

Does your character have any secrets? If so, are they holding them back?: Her only secret is her pregnancy. 

How badly do they want to obtain their life objectives? How do they pursue them?: Right now, Marlo wants peace and it doesn’t matter how it’s achieved.

Is your character pragmatic? Think first? Responsible? All action? A visionary? Passionate? Quixotic?: She is very impulsive and passionate. She tends to not think things through before she does them.

Is your character tall? Short? What about size? Weight? Posture? How do they feel about their physical body?: Marlo is about 5′8″, 125 pounds or so, and has excellent posture. Her body’s changing at the moment and while she’s trying to revel in the fact that it is changing, she’s scared. 

Do they want to project an image of a younger, older, more important person? Do they want to be visible or invisible?: At the moment, invisible. 

How are your character’s gestures? Vigorous? Weak? Controlled? Compulsive? Energetic? Sluggish?: Controlled, normally.

What about voice? Pitch? Strength? Tempo and rhythm of speech? Pronunciation? Accent?: She has a more of a medium range in voice. Very soft, but she’s willing to make herself known if need be. Slight New York accent.

What are the prevailing facial expressions? Sour? Cheerful? Dominating?: Neutral, mostly. People often thought her intimidating in college because of “resting bitch face”.

[momo-de-avis]

tell me more about millais and the whole "steal ur wife and have a happy marriage with her lmaoo" and the whole pedo thing??? im intrigued

At the top of my head and very quickly without bothering myself with checking things online cause I’m a bit lazy sorry (though I’ve been over this story for quite a while, I trust my instinct)

When the Pre-Raphaelites appeared, they were the bad boys of London. Reasons:

1) Fucked around, mostly Rossetti

2) Broke academic rules by painting in excruciating and vivid details that weren’t possible with the naked eye (like Holman Hunt painted every single blade of the grass—your eye can’t see it unless you stare closely at it, so academically, that was ugly)

3) Used redheaded women as models. Now, Victorians were absolute fucking lunatics, but the ideal beauty to them was some corpse-looking Morticia Adams. Black hair and pale skin, was top notch. Blonde, blue-eyed beauty came second, probably. What mattered was the pale skin. It was a trend among Victorian women to paint purple and blue veins to look as dead as possible because the frailty of women in a society that told they literally were good for nothing except breeding was the Latest Trend. Redheads, however, were considered cursed. Case in point: the greatest pre-raphaelite muse, Lizzie Siddal: she was not only a red-head, but her skin was also darker than most prefered. Not that she was anything but a white woman, just not white enough to look like you were already flirting with tuberculosis and ready to die fashionably at 40 (though Lizzie was famous for being constantly sick and bedridden. And addicted to Laudanum, like a good Victorian).

4) Basically what gave them the name: PRE-raphaelite. To explain quickly: academic painting privileged the art that resembled Raphael's paintings: harmonious, made of volumes through precise shadowing, mannerist in its style. Line and drawing prevailed above colour. This is linked to formalism so I’m just gonna wrap it up quickly: drawing was considered the intellectual form of art (because in the 16th century people were like ‘oh, astronomy is a science!’ and 'oh, mathematics is a science!’ and people were like, 'well shit, we gotta find a reason to call arts a science too’ and the Renaissance worked that out by explaining that drawing was basically a form of science. Take Da Vinci). The Pre-raphaelites said: fuck that noise, and privileged colour. They used techniques to brighten their paintings (like a layer of white paint applied to the canvas before they applied the preliminary drawing, which made the colours stand out, and then finished it off with wax varnish, which makes it glow. If you ever see a PR painting live, note just how vivid it is. It looks like it’s never gonna wear off, it’s incredible). So with this, they basically said the Royal Academy was a bunch of piss babies who knew jack shit about painting (the accusation of being dumbasses included).

5) …but to be that guy, you had to LIVE the life. So, if you privilege medieval thinking, lifestyle and theology, what you gotta do? BE that medieval knight Victorians thought were oh so Chivalric. Again, famously, Lizzie Siddal is known to be the bad girl of this revival: she refused to wear crinoline and whatever shit the Victorian ladies wore. She wore loose dresses, no corsets and overall dressed like the engravings on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. She was actually lauded for her commitment like, even Ruskin at one point saw Rossetti as a piss baby rock star wannabe who never finished his shit, but this girl? She committed.

So you see, when these guys popped up, Victorians scowled. BADLY.

But they knew that, to conquer the hearts of promiscuous dandies and hypocritical high-society, laudanum-ridden, arsenic-eating uptight douches and douchesses, they had to get to the loins of one man: most important art critic of his time, single-handedly responsible for elevating William Turner to the True Genius of English Painting: John Ruskin.

Now, just WHO was John Ruskin?

First of all, this little shit was overtly religious. Protestant kind, so you know what you’re in for. This guy studied Turner back and forth, knew everything about him, wrote extensively of his genius and was responsible, as I said, to consecrate him to the memory of British sea painting. Except he purposefully left a bit out, one particular episode of Turner’s life that, to Ruskin’s mind, would ruin his reputation.

Turner was a freak. My man has ENDLESS erotic drawings that go from curious artist look into the Vagina from full-blown pre-victorian porn. And Ruskin kept it all locked away inside his drawer.

The thing was, Ruskin was brought up surrounded by art. This guy looked at Roman statues of women, with their perfectly waxed peepees and toned arms supporting perky breasts and DEAD ASS though this was what women looked like.

So he married Effie Gray, a woman in everything respectable, a prosperous marriage for the good ol’ Victorian lady and dude.

And for the next five years of their marriage proceeded to REFUSE to even touch her.

When the pre-raphaelites pop up, Ruskin attends their very first exhibition and writes them a glowing review. Immediately they go from nut-heads to pop stars. But among them all, it was clear that it was John Everett Millais who was the most talented. So Ruskin took him under his wing.

His first assignment was: paint my portrait. But the pre-raphaelites did something the British academics didn’t: to paint nature, they went outside and painting the motif by looking directly at it. And Ruskin, who praised this mode of making art, had in mind the precise spot he wanted to be painted on: a waterfal or some shit in Scotland, where he owned a cottage.

This cottage was not big. It was actually rather small—you know, in pretending-to-be-a-peasant-is-so-much-fun! victorian fashion. And what does this absolute buffoon does? He invites Millais and his wife Effie in to paint his portrait.

Now I want you to imagine this woman, who has been pushing down 5 years of Horny, putting up with this dude’s shit, enclosed in a tight space with this man—who was older than herself—and incidentally, a handsome looking young fella who paints nicely.

I insist on this thing that Ruskin didn’t touch his wife because he thought women looked like statues because he actually told her. He told her he found her repulsive because—what do you know!!! The peepee’s got some pubic hair! And women menstruate! And like, we’re real fucking things, not Pygmalion's wet dream forged over and over again! She actually wrote a letter to her father detailing this (if you watch the show Desperate Romantics, the scene were Effie confesses this to Millais, the actress is actually reciting this letter word for word).

So when they return to London after the painting is done, they just… Fall in love. I mean, shit, what was she supposed to do?

The face of a man who doesn’t know he’s about to be shit-whipped by his pupil, painted by none other than his protegée, this same pupil.

But remember: no matter what Victorian fangirls say, and whatever that Victorian TV show tries to show you, this society was absolute utter shit for women. Effie Grey presented an annulment proposal to her marriage, and society collapsed on her. She was actually blamed for the fact that Ruskin wouldn’t consummate the marriage. And because she had grown quite close to Millais, she had to prove before the entirety of Victorian society that she was a virgin. Oh, yes. It’s what you’re thinking.

Those open-your-legs-wide-and-let-me-insert-this-not-at-all-friendly-looking-metal-utensil-up--your-private-canal-to-prove-you-are-a-virgin. This, mind you, was back then as utterly humiliating as it sounds now, and to make matters worse, Mr. I-only-fuck-clean-shaven-pussy claimed she was mentally unstable.

Either way: annulment conceded, and she married John Everett Millais. The two went on to a lifelong of fucking and 8 children. Check Millais’ painting Peace Concluded and tell me those two idiots did not die happy together.

I kid you not: until Millais’ death, Effie was socially ostracized. She was even barred from being present in social events where Queen Victoria was, proclaimed by the Queen herself (because remember kids! Victorian society absolutely sucked because it was none other than our favourite imperialist who made it so!) even after she ordered Millais the first Laureate painter. It was only when Millais was dying that in his death bed he BEGGED to lift that stupid shit and she conceded. I just honestly believe Effie didn’t give a shit at this point, because my girl was happy.

So, you ask, what happened to Ruskin?

Don’t think he got off easy lmao. He had his own demise. He wasn’t seen with good eyes after the whole annulment debacle. But of course, being the pissy adult he was, he had to make things worse.

Enter Rose de La Touche.

You see, Rose de la Touche was Ruskin’s pupil. She is, as far as we can tell from his writings, the only woman he ever called attractive and revealed to be attracted to her. When, you ask?

When she was fucking 9 years old, the first time he met her.

He became tutoring her when she was 14. At this point, this ugly ass vulture was way past his 40s. Rose’s parents actually made it worse if my mind doesn’t fail me, but I’m not certain so I won’t address them. Either way, he pretty much groomed her and she grew infatuated with him. He actually made plans to marry her once she turned like, 18 or something, like a good pedo.

The only reason Rose didn’t marry Ruskin? Effie Gray stepped in. Not that she was that interested in what was to happen. The thing was, the reason for the annulment was that Ruskin was impotent, and if he fucked a healthy girl and she got pregnant, she’d be in the shits. But either way, I think it was easy given that he was like 40 years older or some shit. Rose actually declined to marry because she wanted the marriage to be unconsummated, but this time around, ya big Pedo declined! I wonder why was it so easy the first time, and so hard now that he found himself a neat little child to corrupt, right?

At some point, even fucking Rossetti intervened. Now, Rossetti was the rock star of his time: he fucked everything that moved, he got into affairs with the wives of his pupils while Lizzie lingered between life and death at his home, and it took him some 9 years to finally keep his promise to Lizzie and marry her ass. He was the last person you’d expect to say a thing. But you know you’ve fucked up and that you’re a perverted piece of shit when THIS IS THE GUY who steps in to say 'hey, Ruskin, big fan, but you really gotta tone it down cause even I’m not a pedo, pal’.

Now listen: yeah, there’s a lot of speculation about Ruskin’s 'love affair’ with Rose de La Touche. Did he really fall in love with her when she was 9? We don’t know. We don’t care either, because it doesn’t make him any less a fucking pedo. Like, yeah, good art critic, nice theory on the whole Modern Painting book, but this dude had some serious issues.

And there you go

[millennial-medusa]

Anything, Everything

Oh look another super cheesy percabeth baseball au fic, what a surprise

Figured I should give Percy & Annabeth a little backstory and history, yeah? So here we go, how they met and the first game Annabeth went to.

read on ao3

February 16

Annabeth pulls her coat tighter around herself and pushes forward, stepping over and across the orange-and-black-clad fans with as much grace as she can muster. She successfully avoids stepping on any feet—though she nearly loses her balance several times—and makes it, finally, to Grover’s and her seats in the student section.

“There are too many people on this planet,” Grover grumbles, plopping onto the bleachers and immediately wincing at the bite of cold metal.

Annabeth laughs and huddles closer to him. “You’re not wrong, but at least the crowd is generating some kind of heat. I’m freezing. Whose idea was it to start baseball season in February?”

Grover shrugs and digs into his nachos. “Want any?” he asks, his voice muffled by the mouthful he’s working on.

Annabeth shakes her head absently and studies the field. She hasn’t been to a baseball game since her dad took her to see the Yankees in sixth grade, but she spent the last week researching the rules and history of the game. She’s determined to be the best, most supportive girlfriend ever, so knowing the basics of the sport isn’t enough. She wants to really understand it, especially since she’s planning on being at all of his home games.

“It’s not a big deal,” he’d told her when he saw her stack of books. He’d brought her coffee for their Thursday night library study date, with just the right amount of cream, and the gesture had made her even more determined to learn everything there is to know about baseball.

“It is a big deal, Seaweed Brain,” she’d answered stubbornly. “You want to do this professionally, and you love it, and I want to love it too. So I should figure out how it works.”

He’d blushed a little, clearly pleased at her enthusiasm, but he had laughed all the same. “It’s really easy to pick up on, I swear. You just have to pay attention to the game on Friday and you’ll have it figured out in no time.”

“Yeah, but I want to really get it. And I like research.”

With a grin, he’d leaned over and kissed her temple. “I know, Wise Girl.”

Thinking back on it makes Annabeth smile, and she has to shake herself out of the memory to refocus on the field. The teams are in the dugout, so she can’t see him yet, but she’s straining to get a glimpse. He’s the starter, she remembers, and it’s a home game, so he’ll pitch at the top of the innings.

Actually, she thinks, with the amount of research she did this past week, she should know who decided to start the season in February.

She taps her heel against the metal bleachers, the cold and her nerves making her jittery. Grover must notice, because he wraps his arm through hers and squeezes lightly.

“It’s gonna be a good game,” he tells her. “He’s a fantastic pitcher—you should’ve seen him in high school, everyone on the other teams was terrified to bat against him.”

She smiles back at him. “Yeah, but the Giants were top of the college league last year.”

Grover blinks at her. “I thought you didn’t follow baseball,” he says, and Annabeth grins.

“I didn’t until about four months ago.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “All those years I tried to get you to watch baseball so we could talk about it together, and you kept saying you had 'more important and intellectually stimulating' interests to pursue,” he mimics her in a high pitched, snooty voice, and she snorts. “But now that you’ve got a boyfriend…”

“First of all, I didn’t sound like that,” she scoffs, ignoring his grunt of disagreement. “And second, it’s a little different now that I have to go to all these games to be a supportive girlfriend. Just be happy you can talk baseball with me now.”

“I wouldn’t want it to get in the way of your superior intellectual endeavors,” Grover shoots back, but there’s no malice behind it.

“I’m sure those can wait. Besides, I’m pretty sure I actually know more than you do now,” she teases.

Grover gives her an affronted look. “In your dreams, Annabeth.”

“I guess we’ll just have to find out.”

August 24

Annabeth’s favorite time to go to the library was right at the beginning of the semester. Midterms and finals were months away, it was too early for any tests or papers to be looming on the horizon, and the library was always practically empty. When it got busier, she usually preferred other various study locations—anything to escape the throngs of caffeine-high college kids—but now, on the second day of classes? She was the only one on the whole floor. She could browse the stacks, leaving her stuff at her table without fear of it being stolen, even read out loud if she needed to. There was no one to bother.

That is, until he showed up.

He was tall and lean, with a shock of unruly black hair, and maybe under different circumstances she’d be impressed, but as it was he had stumbled onto her while she was laying in one of the aisles reading Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise out loud to herself, and she was not pleased at the interruption.

A few feet away, he faltered under her gaze. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there, but he seemed frozen in place, watching her. She felt a blush start to creep into her cheeks, but forced herself to stay cool. Their eyes locked; she expected him to leave now that she was glaring at him. He didn’t.

Finally, she cleared her throat. “Can I help you?”

He shook his head slightly and ran his hand through his hair. Annabeth tracked the movement with her eyes.

“Sorry,” he coughed out, “I just…um, I’m looking for a book, and I’m not—I mean, it might be here. Somewhere.”

She studied him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, his eyes darting about nervously and settling back on her.

“Somewhere?” she echoed.

He nodded.

“As in ‘somewhere’ in this aisle, or ‘somewhere’ on this floor, or—?”

“Somewhere in this library,” he squeaked, his voice pitching up at the end as though it were a question. Annabeth only blinked back at him, noting the flush spreading across his cheeks. It was a lovely shade of pink. “I, uh, well I don’t really know how to find it, so I figured if I just sort of walked through the aisles eventually I’d have to stumble across it, you know?”

At that, Annabeth sat all the way up and frowned. “You’re walking all over the library looking for one book?”

His blush deepened, and some of Annabeth’s irritation melted away at his obvious discomfort.

He stared down at his shoelaces. “I’ve never really…”

“Been in a library?” she snorted, but immediately regretted it at his cringe. “Sorry, that’s not what I—”

“No, it’s okay.” He shook his head. “I haven’t, actually.”

She gawked at him. Annabeth had been spending her free time in the library since…well, since she was old enough to walk to the public library. That anyone could get to college—college!—without having set foot in one? It was unfathomable.

“How?” she asked, not bothering to hide her incredulity.

The boy shifted uncomfortably under her scrutiny and played with the strap of his backpack. “It’s sort of a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” she answered, settling her back against the shelves and patting the floor next to her. “Not that you have to tell me, of course. But you’ve piqued my interest.”

He watched her a moment, as if sizing her up, before making his decision and dropping down next to her. “It’s sort of embarrassing, and not very entertaining.”

He was about a foot away from her, and Annabeth took the opportunity to study him more closely. He wore old, black converse, jeans, and a dark blue tee shirt. The color looked good on him, she noted, suddenly realizing how incredibly attractive this guy was. She wasn’t sure how it could have slipped her notice before, even amid her annoyance and confusion, but he had the bone structure of a marble statue and the lean but muscular build to match.

Frankly, he was…well, he was gorgeous. And sitting next to her. In the middle of an empty library. As her heart rate picked up, she began to wonder if maybe she’d made a mistake in inviting this impossibly handsome stranger to continue their conversation. She didn’t need to get her heart broken again after the last year and the whole Luke debacle, and she was afraid that the longer she talked to this boy, the greater the risk of being let down.

But, Annabeth, decided, that was ridiculous. It was just one conversation, and then campus was so big she’d probably never see him again.

“I’m in the library on a Thursday night. It’s not like I’ve got anything more interesting going on.”

He turned to meet her gaze, and his eyes were so green it knocked the wind out of her.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his eyes tracing the lines of her face. She forced herself not to blush.

“Annabeth Chase.”

And then he was smiling, smiling so widely and brightly that Annabeth couldn’t help but smile back, and maybe this was a bad idea after all, maybe there really was something different about him, but she was already too far gone to back out now.

“What’s yours?”

February 16

“Percy Jackson with another strike out!”

Percy grins, watching the K flash across the scoreboards. It’s the top of the third, and he’s only let five batters get past him. Only one scored a run, Beckendorf’s already hit a homer for the Demigods, and Chiron is almost smiling in the dugout.

As he and Jason jog back to the dugout with the rest of the guys, they high five and wave to the crowd.

“I love home games,” Jason shouts over the cheers, and Percy nods in agreement.

He turns to search the student section for where he saw her earlier, and quickly spots her blonde hair. He waves once, and she’s in the stands on the other side of the field but he’s confident she knows it’s for her.

Suddenly Charles Beckendorf, a sophomore that Percy took to as soon as he made the team, slaps him on the back. “Nice inning, Jackson,” he says as they shuffle into the dugout.

“You too. That was a wicked double play.”

“Gotta show the Giants we mean business.” Beckendorf winks and takes the seat on the bench next to him. “So the girlfriend you talk about nonstop is here?”

Percy blushes a little—okay, so he talked about her a lot, especially to Beckendorf since he’d given him the advice on asking her out and everything, but it wasn’t that much—but he can’t help the wide grin that stretches across his face at the mention of her. “Yeah, she’s in the student section with our friend, Grover.”

“With the way you get all mushy just talking about her I figured you’d get distracted when she finally saw you play,” Beckendorf says, and Percy frowns at him.

“Why would you think…?”

He snorts. “Because the first time Silena came to one of my games, I was so nervous I struck out every single time I was at bat.”

Percy gawks at him. Beckendorf is one of the best batters on the team, has drawn the attention of several big league teams, and Percy would never have believed that if he hadn’t just heard it from Beckendorf himself.

“You struck out…every time?”

Beckendorf nodded. “Silena still teases me for it.” Chiron calls him over, and he stands to grab his bat. “But if you keep playing the way you have been, Jackson, you won’t have that problem.”

Percy shoots him a thumbs up before he turns to confer with Chiron, and he heads into the bullpen to keep himself warm. He’s determined not to embarrass himself in his first college game, even if his stunningly beautiful and dangerously smart girlfriend is in the stands. He’s been dreaming about this game since he was a little kid batting off a tee in the public rec center, and it’s even better than he’d imagined. Annabeth is an added bonus he hadn’t dreamed up before.

So Beckendorf is right; he won’t have that problem. Besides, even if he does majorly screw up somehow, he knows Annabeth wouldn’t tease him about something so important to him.

August 24

“So after I was diagnosed it made a little more sense that reading was so hard, but I still hated it, and it was embarrassing to sit there and struggle, so I just sort of…avoided it,” Percy said with a sigh. “My mom sat with me every night for an hour just to get through a few pages, and I know I probably sound stupid but—”

“You don’t,” Annabeth interrupted.

Percy glanced over at her and searched her eyes for the wariness or judgement he was used to seeing, but instead found them open and understanding and a beautiful gray flecked with blue, so subtle you’d miss it if you weren’t staring into them, and was she closer than before? He wanted to answer, but he suddenly found his mouth incredibly dry.

“You don’t sound stupid. I’m dyslexic, too,” she said softly. “And I’m not ADHD but reading is already really hard for me, so I can’t even imagine having to deal with that on top of it.”

He felt as though a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and he could breathe more easily, and he wasn’t sure how five minutes after meeting this girl she could make him feel like that, but if listening to her talk and staring into the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen was what it took, he was happy to do it as often as possible.

“Um, yeah,” he said dumbly, slightly distracted by the blonde wisp that had slipped from her ponytail and curled along her jaw.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours, each taking in the other, and yeah, they were definitely closer together than they were before but Percy didn’t mind at all, and he had to remind himself that he’d only just met this girl, that they hadn’t known each other for years and didn’t really know anything about each other, because he was dangerously close to kissing her right then and he didn’t know what her policy on kissing strangers was but he figured it wouldn’t be in his favor, and—

“So,” she coughed, “What book were you looking for?”

He blinked a few times. “Oh, um. It’s called Red Harvest? It’s a detective novel.”

“Yeah, I read it a long time ago. It’s really good! It’s like an action novel, but with a good plot and compelling writing and you get into the detective’s head. You’d probably actually like it even with the dyslexia and everything,” she said, getting to her feet and offering him a hand.

Percy couldn’t help but be a little disappointed; he’d been enjoying talking to her, and it hadn’t lasted very long. But she probably wanted to get back to her own book, so he nodded and explained, “My friend, Grover, recommended it to me, and that’s pretty much what he said.”

Annabeth stared at him slack-jawed, and his mind raced to figure out what he’d said to upset her.

“Grover?” she asked, and Percy nodded mutely. “Grover Underwood?”

“Yeah, how did you—?”

“You know Grover?” They spoke at the same time, both excited and intrigued.

“He’s my roommate, and we went to middle and high school together,” Percy said.

Annabeth’s smile was the prettiest he’d ever seen, and he had to practically bite his tongue off to keep himself from telling her.

“Grover and I have been going to the same summer camp since like, eighth grade.” She laughed, and then a thought seemed to occur to her. “Do you play baseball?”

It took Percy’s brain a few seconds to process and catch up, but he stuttered out a confused, “Um, yeah?”

“Oh my God,” Annabeth laughed, “you’re him! You’re the best friend Grover always talked about, that plays baseball and gets himself landed in detention all the time!”

Percy scoffed. “I wasn’t in detention all the time, and there was always a good reason.”

“Oh, I know, I’m a big admirer of some of your pranks.”

“I hope he only told you the really good ones, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.” Annabeth rolled her eyes, but the delighted smile hadn’t left her face and Percy was determined to keep it there. “So I take it that means you’re his genius architect friend that was a counselor with him?”

A pretty flush painted her cheeks, and she glanced down shyly. “I wouldn’t say I’m a genius.”

“Grover would, and I trust his judgement implicitly.”

She looked back up at him, a new light in her eyes that made Percy’s heart stutter. “I do, too.” Then, before he could think of anything even remotely clever to say: “Well, your crime fiction novel is not likely to be in the world languages section. Let’s look somewhere that actually makes sense, huh Seaweed Brain?”

February 16

“Come on, Seaweed Brain!” Annabeth shouts, clapping wildly. He can’t hear her over the din of the crowd—they’re all on their feet, yelling and waving, cheering their support as Percy prepares to strike out the third batter of the seventh inning—but she screams herself hoarse all the same. She’s wholeheartedly invested in the game now. Percy had been right; the sport was incredibly easy to follow, but she finds herself watching anxiously, not just for Percy or even their school’s team, but for herself as well.

Annabeth had never pegged herself for a baseball fan, despite her unwavering support of the Yankees. (This love was, of course, cultivated from a young age and in support of her favorite city, rather than being built on an informed opinion, but now that she knows how much she likes the game, she figures keeping up with the Yankees won’t be too much of a hassle.) And yet here she is, jumping up and down beside Grover, who is just as animated as she is. They clutch each other’s hands as Percy rears back and sends the ball flying.

A swing and a miss, and the stands roar around them.

As he heads towards the dugout, he turns towards them and waves, just as he has at the end of the last six innings. He’s too far for her to really see his face, but she knows it’s for her and Grover every time. Annabeth’s cheeks are starting to hurt from all the smiling she’s been doing, but she can’t bring herself to care. Not even the cold can bother her now.

(Seeing Percy in his uniform for the first time helps with that too. The jersey? The cap? The knee high socks, weirdly enough? And sweet Lord, those pants…she’s heard girls talk about the pants football players wear, but they must not have been to a baseball game before. Even from a distance, she can tell how well Percy fills out those pants, and the thought is enough to keep her warm all over.)

“You know,” she says, turning to steal some of Grover’s sour patch kids, “it’s interesting that Percy likes to talk about Tom Seaver’s pitching style so much.”

Grover’s brow furrows, and he swallows the mouthful of candy he was working on. “Why? He was a great pitcher, and you know Percy loves the Mets.”

“Yeah, but with how much he likes him, you’d think he’d mimic his style more.”

“You think he doesn’t?”

Annabeth shakes her head. Chris Rodriguez is at bat now, and she watches him take a few warm up swings. “Seaver liked to pull his hands all the way up over his head and swing his leg out on the follow through. Actually, Roger Clemens’s style was similar, and he talks about him a lot, too, even though he played for the Red Sox. But Percy just pulls back, not up and over, and his leg doesn’t arc out like Seaver’s so much as it just sort of twists. And he’s more relaxed. He doesn’t even look like he’s trying very hard.”

Grover is staring at her now, wide-eyed.

Chris doesn't swing, but the pitch is outside. Ball one.

“He reminds me more of Mariano Rivera than Seaver, or Clemens,” she finishes.

It takes a moment for Grover to process what she said, apparently, because she has time to steal three more candies from him before he finally answers, “Who are you?”

Annabeth laughs.

Chris hits a pop up foul.

“No, seriously, who are you and what have you done with Annabeth Chase? Because the Annabeth Chase I know doesn’t care about baseball and can’t tell you the difference between a short stop and an outfielder.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sniffs, “of course I knew the difference between a short stop and an outfielder. Just because I didn’t watch it doesn’t mean I was completely in the dark.”

“I distinctly remember having to explain the difference to you the summer before our freshman year of high school,” he says, raising his eyebrows at her.

Chris swings and misses. Strike one.

“Whatever. I did some research, so now I do know the difference, and all the rules, and the major milestones in the history, and the most famous players, and I spent a few hours on Percy’s favorite pitchers. So I’m fully prepared, and you can talk my ear off about baseball and I’ll actually understand what you’re saying.”

Grover smiles widely at her, and she assumes it’s because after years of pestering her, she finally appreciates the game. But his smile is too soft for that, too positively gleeful, so she frowns questioningly back at him.

“You like him,” he says.

Annabeth rolls her eyes, but she can’t help blushing a little. “Of course I like him, Grover, we’ve been dating for four months.”

“Yeah, but you really like him. Like, spend hours doing research on a sport you don’t think you like, like him.”

Chris hits the ball way out to left field, and manages to make it to second base.

“I like my research,” she grumbles. And then, softer, “But yeah, things are going well and I really, really like him. I’ve got a good feeling about him.”

He nudges her shoulder with his own. “If it’s not super obvious already, he really, really likes you, too.”

“Well, I’m glad the last four months haven’t been a waste of both of our time.” Annabeth ignores the way her heart flutters and her stomach feels like mush. She knows how much he likes her. He’s not subtle, and frankly, neither is she.

“I think there will be plenty more not-wasted months ahead, then,” Grover says. “You know, as long as you don’t tell him you just compared his pitching style to Mariano Rivera.”

She blinks at him. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because Mariano Rivera played for the Yankees, Annabeth!”

“Yeah, so? So did Babe Ruth. They’re one of the best teams in history.”

“And you know how much Percy despises them.”

She rolls her eyes, both of them pausing to cheer as Jason’s line drive gets him to first and Chris to third. “The Mets are terrible, and I’ve got the stats to prove it.”

“What are you gonna do if they recruit him?” Grover asks, popping another handful of sour patch kids into his mouth.

She thinks it over, and then says, “I’ll have to go to his games, I guess. But I’ll wear my Yankees jersey to every single one.”

Grover snorts, and they both dissolve into giggles.

October 5

“If I have to read another word about liberal hegemony I’m going to scream,” Annabeth said as soon as he arrived, sliding deeper into her seat.

“Government that bad?”

“You have no idea,” she groaned. “It’s so easy, but so incredibly boring.”

Percy frowned down at her. “If it’s so easy, why bother studying for it?”

She sent him a look he’d come to understand as “I’m going to assume you already know how ridiculous what you just said was”, and he conceded with a shrug.

“I’m almost done, thankfully, but I’ve read so much about ‘actors in the global system’ I feel like a goddamn theatre major.”

Percy chuckled and slid into the chair across from her, the same seats they could be found in every Tuesday and Thursday night for the past six weeks. He’d chickened out of getting her number the night they met and spent the whole week regretting it, so the next Thursday he wandered the library again—searching for her, rather than a book. He thanked every deity he could think of when he found her, and the smile that lit up her face when she spotted him was so bright he decided he’d spend every day in the library just to see it.

From there it had become a sort of tradition to meet in the library on Tuesday and Thursday nights, sit at their table, and spend hours studying and doing homework and talking. Or, more accurately, Annabeth studied and read out loud—it helped with her dyslexia, and Percy loved the sound of her voice—while Percy listened and procrastinated on his own work by watching, entranced, as she did hers.

Studying her came much more easily to Percy than any scholarly subject. He had picked up on her habits: how she’d chew her bottom lip and frown when she didn’t understand something, how she’d tap her heel on the floor when she’d been sitting for too long, how she sat up straighter and talked excitedly when he asked her questions and she got to explain, how she smiled and flushed and rolled her eyes when he complimented her. He’d learned about her family, about her love of architecture, about her summers at camp with Grover, about how she’d tried sushi when she was thirteen and gotten food poisoning and refused to ever eat it again, and about how she’d been correcting people’s grammar since she was about four. They’d both been grateful that not many people came to their little secluded corner of the library during that story; they’d laughed obnoxiously loudly. Percy could just picture her, tiny and chubby with perfect blonde ringlets, precociously announcing that, “Um, actually, it would be ‘whom’, not ‘who’.”

He had also learned, in those weeks, that he was an absolute fucking coward who could not ask the most beautiful, funniest, smartest, most perfect girl he’d ever met on a date.

And it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried. It had been a struggle to keep himself from kissing her at any given moment from that very first night they’d sat together, and his inner monologue was pretty much always just a stream of please go out with me please go out with me wow your eyes are really pretty please go out with me I want to run my fingers through your hair how do you make different kinds of columns sound so fascinating what do I have to do to get you to kiss me please go out with me please please please—

But every time he decided he’d finally ask, she’d get to a tricky spot in a reading, or want his advice on a part of her essay, or even just look at him in a way that made the words stick in his throat, so now it was October and he was pretty sure he was falling in love with her despite the fact that he couldn’t even get her on a date.

They fell into their usual routine, Annabeth finishing her reading—out loud, now that he was there to read to—and Percy watching her tug at the necklace that rested against her collarbone and trying not to imagine what noise she’d make if he kissed the skin there.

She finished the article and turned to make some notes, and Percy took a deep breath. Beckendorf had talked him into asking her today, no backing out, and he needed to know her answer one way or the other and it had to be now because waiting for another week sounded like torture.

“Hey, Annabeth,” he said slowly. She hummed, not looking up from her notes. He coughed a little, his throat suddenly very, very dry.

“What’s up, Perce?”

His heart caught in his throat at the nickname, and he could feel his cheeks warming. “Well, I was wondering—hoping, really, if you…um, I just…if—if maybe tomorrow night, I mean if you wanted, because I want to—um, do you—?”

“—Want to go to dinner?” she finished for him. He swallowed nervously and nodded. “I’d love to.” She smirked at him and all the air left his lungs.

“Yeah?” he breathed.

“Yeah, Seaweed Brain, I’ve only been waiting over a month for you to ask,” she laughed.

Percy didn’t stop smiling the whole rest of the night. But, he noticed, neither did Annabeth.

February 16

As Percy jogs to the mound at the top of the ninth, he’s aware of several things.

First, he’s aware that Chiron has been reluctant to let him pitch this late into the game, and he has to prove that he isn’t even a little tired. Pitchers don’t normally stay in this long, but Percy had insisted and Chiron has a soft spot for him, so he’s determined to finish this game.

Second, he’s aware that they are currently beating the Giants 7 to 4, so as long as Percy can keep them from scoring more than two runs, they won’t even have to bat the bottom of the inning. The game will be over. He doesn’t intend to let them score at all.

Third, he’s aware that along with thousands of fans and everyone watching it on television, his family, best friend, and girlfriend are all in the crowd, cheering him on. The thought should be nerve-wracking. Instead, it settles him. He can’t wait to give every single one of them a giant hug. (Annabeth will be getting more than a hug later, but he can’t let himself get distracted right now.)

Fourth, he’s aware that his stamina is at an end. He needs to make the next few pitches accurate and tricky, because he doesn’t want to have to pitch to more than three guys.

He steps onto the mound and watches as the umpire examines a few baseballs before handing one to Jason. Jason, in turn, lowers his catcher’s mask and tosses it to Percy, who catches it easily and cradles it in his glove, feeling the weight of it. He transfers it to his other hand, and his fingers skim across its soft surface.

As he rubs the red stitches under his fingers, everything synthesizes into one thought: make these next few pitches count.

He gets into position, spreading the soft dirt with his feet and tugging the brim of his cap down slightly. The ball twists in his hand, buried in his glove, as he watches the batter lift the bat above his shoulder.

And then he’s rearing back, his left leg lifted high across his body, and then he’s twisting and throwing and the ball his leaving his hand and his left cleat is digging into the mound and his body is rocking forward with the momentum and all he can see is Jason’s mitt, and then the ball is too far left, it’s outside of the strike zone and Percy is catching himself on his right foot, and then the ball is curving right and down and crossing home and the batter isn’t even swinging and Jason’s mitt is closing around it it’s a strike, and then the crowd is cheering and Percy can breathe again.

He repeats the process again, and again, varying the types of pitches he’s throwing to keep the batters on their toes and rarely missing the strike zone. He does it all unthinkingly, entirely on instinct, and before he knows it the third batter is slumping dejectedly and the noise is deafening around him.

It’s his first college baseball game and Percy just struck out the last batter.

Jason reaches him first, his mask discarded in the dirt near home, and pulls him into a bear hug.

It’s his first college baseball game and Percy pitched every inning.

The rest of the guys are surrounding him, Beckendorf is next to him, and Lee Fletcher, and Coach Hedge and Chiron are coming over too.

It’s his first college baseball game and Percy just won it.

Suddenly he turns, craning over the heads of his teammates to see—

His mom and step-dad, Paul, and his little sister are all in the center section of the stands behind the net. They’re cheering, Estelle bouncing gleefully, and Percy can see the pride and tears gleaming in his mom’s eyes even from here. She returns his wave and gestures towards the exits; he knows he’ll meet them outside in a while.

Then he turns to the student section, but he can’t find Grover and Annabeth. They weren’t where they had been sitting, and he frowns a little because surely they couldn’t have gotten out so quickly in this crowd, and they wouldn’t have left before the game was over, would they?

But then he spots a head of blonde curls pushing forward, followed by Grover, the two of them fighting against the crowd.

Percy pushes through his teammates and takes off at a run.

For as quickly as the last inning passed, reaching the low wall separating the left outfield from the stands takes an inordinate amount of time, and Percy feels like he’s running in water or time has slowed down or something because he just wants to be there and to see her and it’s not fair that it’s taking so long. Finally, though, he’s reaching the wall and slowing down slightly, watching eagerly as Annabeth shoves through the last crowd of students and reaches the wall. He’s staring up at her, and her hair is wind-blown and tangled and her cheeks are rosy and her coat is askew and the setting sun on their right is casting a golden glow over her and Percy thinks she’s never looked more beautiful.

Her hands on the wall rest just below his chin, and she’s bending over it, her face hovering just over his own.

“You won,” she says simply.

He pushes onto the balls of his feet, braces one hand against the wall for balance, and places the other on the back of her head. And then she’s leaning further and he’s pulling her in and they’re kissing, and they’ve kissed plenty of times before but something is different now. Kissing Annabeth, he realizes later, has the same effect as twisting a baseball in his hands; Percy’s entire world narrows to the most important thing. And right now, that’s the feeling of her lips moving against his, pressing hard and hot and passionately.

It’s the best kiss of his life, he thinks.

(But, of course, he thinks that just about every single time he kisses Annabeth Chase, and he’s pretty sure he’ll never stop thinking it.)

Suddenly he’s yanked backwards. His eyes fly open to see Annabeth, still hanging over the wall with a dazed smile on her face, and Grover laughing behind her, but he’s being dragged backwards and away from them. He’s dimly aware of Jason and Sherman Yang on either side of him, gripping his arms, while others—Beckendorf, he thinks, and maybe Lee Fletcher—laugh behind him, but he can still feel Annabeth’s lips on his and her silky hair under his fingers and she’s still hanging there, getting smaller and smaller as he’s pulled back to the team.

“Sorry to interrupt, Jackson,” Sherman laughed on his left, “looked like you were having a good time.”

“You don’t sound too sorry,” Percy shot back, getting his feet back under him and pulling away.

Jason wrapped his arm around Percy’s neck and turned him so they were walking back towards the dugout together. “We are. But only a little.”

“You’ve got to celebrate with your team!” Lee added. “It’s your first win, and we loooooove you!”

Percy laughed as Lee batted his eyelashes, giving him a playful shove to the shoulder.

“Besides, you’ll have time to celebrate with Annabeth later,” Sherman said. “And celebrate, and celebrate…”

Lee laughed, “I’ll bet you’ll be celebrating with her all night long!”

Percy blushed bright red. “Fuck off, Fletcher,” he snarked, but there was no real bite behind it. After all, if the way she’d kissed him back just now was any indication, he wasn't too far off.

As they jostle into the dugout with the rest of the team, Percy throws one last glance over his shoulder to the student section. Annabeth and Grover are nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into the crowd or already made it out of the stadium. He’ll see them, and his family, in a while.

He follows Beckendorf into the dugout and is greeted by a chaotic mixture of wolf whistles, congratulations, and roughhousing.

It’s perfect.

October 6

Annabeth stopped outside her dorm building and turned to face him.

“This is me,” she said shyly.

They were still holding hands; she couldn’t remember when they’d started. She liked the way his hand felt in hers. It was larger and warmer and rougher than her own. It was perfect. She never wanted to stop holding his hand, and that was dangerous, that was how she’d gotten hurt with Luke, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go of Percy’s hand.

He stepped closer. “I, um…I had a really nice time,” he said, just as awkward and shy as she felt. It was a little bit of a relief. She smiled up at him.

“I did, too. I wouldn’t mind doing it again some time.”

“Yeah?” he breathed, almost in disbelief. Just like he had the night before, she remembered with a chuckle.

“Yeah.” Their eyes were locked together, sea green on grey. “Or doing something else. Like a movie, or coffee, or a concert, or just hanging out. I like spending time with you, Percy.”

She was determined to be honest with her feelings. She was determined to make this work.

“Me too,” he answered, then frowned. “I like spending time with you, I mean. Not with myself, obviously, but you probably got that so—”

Without really thinking about it, Annabeth found herself pushing up onto her toes and grasping his other hand in hers and pulling him forward and pressing her lips softly, ever so softly, to his. He was still for a moment, and she was about to pull away but then he was kissing her back and it was delicate and tender and perfect.

It was the best kiss of her life, she thought.

She lowered herself back down, pulling away slightly, but he bent to keep their foreheads pressed together. They breathed, unable to quite catch their breaths, and they stayed there—eyes closed, foreheads together, hands entwined—for the shortest eternity Annabeth had ever experienced.

When she finally opened her eyes, she found his already staring down at her. They were darker now, the mischievous glint she was used to replaced by something more serious. The fire behind them burned deep and hot and intense and it was burning up all the air in Annabeth’s lungs, and she couldn’t breathe. She was drowning on dry land.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice whispered to be careful, that she’d barely known him a month. That she was moving too fast. That this was only a first date. She shushed it. She’d known him her whole life. She’d known him a thousand lifetimes.

“Percy,” she whispered, letting her breath ghost against his lips, “kiss me again.” Her voice was hoarse, and her lips were dry, and his eyes tracked the movement of her tongue as she wetted them. “Please.”

And then his lips were on hers, harder and hotter, and his hands were sliding up her back to pull her flush against him and she was gasping and sliding one hand into his hair, the other thrown around his neck to press him harder against her mouth. His tongue teased the seam of her lips and she opened willingly under him, letting him take whatever he wanted, anything. Everything.

This, she thought, was the best kiss of her life.

By the time they slow and pull apart, another eternity has passed, and they are both panting, still pressed together.

“So,” he said finally, “how does pizza and a movie tomorrow sound?” His smile was hopeful and cheeky and positively infectious, and she returned it without hesitation.

“Sounds like a plan, Seaweed Brain.”

They stared at each other a few moments longer, and she couldn’t look away from his eyes on hers.

“Goodnight, Percy,” she whispered finally, pulling out of his grasp.

“Night, Wise Girl.”

Annabeth headed inside, glancing over her shoulder as she entered the building to see Percy standing where she left him, watching with a dopey smile on his face. It matched hers. By the time she reached her room, her eyelids were already drooping, so she hurried through her nightly routine as quietly as she could, not wanting to wake her roommate, and fell into bed, tired and happy and already dreaming of sea green eyes and excited for tomorrow.

It was perfect.

[karla-the-elemental-dreamer]

Where Have I Been?

Hi folks, I don't know where to begin. I have quite a bit on my mind, so please sit tight or forever hold your peace.

Something happened last week, which I will not expand on for the safety of all parties. But this has caused me more damage than it should. I already, by nature, have a hard time letting things go, but this is harder for a multitude of reasons.

I am part of an eFed community on Discord, in which after the climax, I went to my 'friend' (friend but still not close), and after telling her to a degree what happened, I said something along the lines of, "it's over for me. I have nothing left", and the good woman tells me, "it's not over".

Now why did I make such an extreme statement? I had heaps of other things accumulate that week, so by Friday, I felt ran over pretty much; that's the week (closer to fortnight actually) where I couldn't catch a break. Losing one person is nothing when you have dozens of others and/or you're part of a status quo, but when you have next to no one, that's like 50% or 33% (you get the gist) being taken from you.

And then that's the week I also had to resign from my bank Board of Directors, because with the moral compass I adopt, I could not fathom what they were doing, and so I could not fool myself to take part in something so 'immoral'. I will also not state their issue in respect for confidentiality, and also as these guys would be a corporation.

And then how can you have any sense of hope (and/or high self esteem) all the time, when you live in the most locked-down city in the world; Melbourne, who had to endure a 111 day lockdown last year, and 200 days and still rising over all? Just wait until you're living in Victoria, and your government are so outrageous that you start fearing if you'll even see into next week.

So when I say I've lost everything, I'm not in actual poverty, I've got family, and a roof over my head. But when I say everything, in only the space of a week, I lost my confidence, I lost a huge chunk of sociality (remember the ratio), I lost a 'job' (even though just volunteer work, and as a resident of Victoria, I am losing my human rights day by day.

Finding new friends, a new job, meeting new people is easier said than done. And it won't be happening any time soon if our economy and job market doesn't improve, and we're not allowed to leave our homes, which means further difficulty networking.

But with Friday again, the things going on in my mind after it happened: "Maybe I don't know how to RP", "I've been conditioned too much by other circumstances", "what's the point of making friends if you can't keep them?". I'll explain the 'conditioned' one:

Since mid-2019, I was a part of that eFed server (and still am), and the people in that Discord say that the place is so special. I wondered why. And now I see it; people treat each other like 'family' on there, and strangely, I've developed connections in that community that I never would have thought possible beforehand. And that's where 'conditioning' comes in.

When my eFed friend asked me what happened and I told her, she told me that the Tumblr environment and its people were so much different, and that at times, despite her enthusiastic nature to me, she found the eFed place weirdly close-knit compared to other online environments... And that's the point where I realised I f***ed up (and she kinda insinuated it too). I am too conditioned into the MNW culture (I've been there for 2 yrs), that when I go to other places, I forget these networks are not even a part of or aware of the 'Nexus'.

So I had to make a decision. Even though I love the freedom of posting in this place, I have to make sacrifices to keep myself safe. Because when you are passionate about a certain fandom, and you get a large portion of your expression taken away from you (at no fault of the other person), which was originally one of the things keeping me happy during the Victorian lockdowns, it hurts more than it should. I have to do something to make a change when ever since Friday, I've had to go and see my Riku every night since, for therapy. That's a telltale sign that I need to take charge of what happens to me next.

Maybe it's a preposterous inside voice (or a gremlin as they say), but I'm not fit for Tumblr. I'm not fit for making connections. It's sad when my imaginary friends (Riku and Terra (adapted)) are more approachable than anyone else in the real world; and with my Riku and Terra, I don't have to risk being a danger to them. So I don't want to get hurt again, and I don't want to be a danger to others. For now, in the words of Mr. Incredible, "I can't. Not again. I'm not strong enough".

Therefore, I will not be going out of my way to approach and/or reach out to anyone on here (at least for a good period of time). If somebody wants to get to know me and/or connect with me, then you have to come and find me. If you don't have enough money to afford this rare gem, then it's not for you, go find one that fits your budget. Be warned; I am super intellectual, super wordy, utterly creative, thinks outside the box, does not lie (at least not compulsively), super genuine, wears their heart on their sleeve, and needs clear and proper communication.

I figure that it's better to be alone than to have people that don't know you, because then you're alone anyway. So I need to embrace being alone so I can be my true self without limits. I originally wasn't going to say anything as I wanted to go in peace, but when I assessed my esteem this morning, I realised I was struggling to let go, so this is a way to hopefully close the chapter without so many after-effects. Once again, I'm sorry for the spew of words, but I needed closure from my end. My messages are open for people who care and for people who can afford me.

[openemptysummer]

stranger in a strange land

A supergirl fanfic. 4k.  Summary:Stranger in a Strange Land: Exiles Quiet Power. A CatCo Magazine Exclusive. By Cat Grant

 Kara Kent (25) is standing dead center in Bronze, Metropolis’s most exclusive gallery when I arrive, surveying the results of three years of hard work. She greets me with a hug that knocks the breath out of me, and tells me she still has a few things to sort out and to please look around.

Read on ao3 or below the cut.

Stranger in a Strange Land: Exiles Quiet Power A CatCo Magazine Exclusive By Cat Grant

Kara Kent (25) is standing dead center in The Bronze, Metropolis’s most exclusive gallery when I arrive.  surveying the results of three years of hard work. She greets me with a hug that knocks the breath out of me. Tells me she still has a few things to sort out and to please look around.

Arranged in a half circle are thirty paintings, each inset into a small booth, a small post-it beside each one. When I point to the post-its Kara sings out from across the room, “Official plaques and descriptions are coming tomorrow.”

Exiles is a series of landscapes, each work named for the contributor and the location depicted in it. Painted from the artist’s imagination and first hand accounts of locals who have left their homelands and not returned. Intermixed with landscapes that depict a bustling street market in Syria, a hill village in Cambodia, a group of children swimming at waterfall in Venezuela are paintings of Earthrise from a crater on Mars, a group singing on the crystal mountains of the planet Sedenach, a robot hammering metal at forge on the planet Korugar.

I stop in front of the painting of a lush jungle, an domed palace rising above it. It could be on Earth if there were not four moons visible in the sky. “Tamaran,” Kara says from behind me. “They were attacked two years ago by the Citadel, a race of slavers. Earth has a refugee population who fled the occupation.”

Centered in the circle is the painting that has garnered the most interest since Kara announced its existence. Krypton, the post-it beside it reads.

By the time this article has been published, Exiles will have been open for a week. It will no doubt invite controversy.

The human race has only been aware of the intergalactic community for four years now since I published an interview with Supergirl where she confirmed her status as an alien and the last survivor of the planet Krypton. Since then humans have been increasingly aware of alien populations among us and both the threat they pose and the opportunities they can offer us.

Kara Kent has been aware that we were not alone in the galaxy since she was a small child. “One of Argo’s suppliers was a Xudarian merchant. I never found out how my family knew him.” At my look of confusion she clarifies, “Xudarians are a race of aliens who developed on an aquatic planet. Bright orange skin, a beak, and a crest.”

Kara got involved with the alien population in America while she was still in college. “I picked up a kinda generic flyer from the psych building one day calling for open minded volunteers for a study. It promised free food and compensation so I took my roommates and checked it out. There was two rounds of screening and they cut more than three-fourths of the original participants before they told us anything.”

“The guy who ran the program was an Alstairan. They’re a telepathic species, evolved from plants into humanoids after they made first contact and have the loveliest pale green skin. They can project a telepathic field that will fool people who don’t get too close. He dropped the field in the third round and told us to take notes, there will be a test at the end. It was a very effective tactic for coming out.

“It remains the most interesting powerpoint presentation I’ve sat through.”

“You’ve read it,” She comments. “The Extraterrestrials Manifesto. He dropped it on Reddit right after Supergirl came out.”

The Extraterrestrials Manifesto or the ETM, for anybody who’s been living under a rock for the past four years, is the reference for anyone interested in learning more about aliens. An eighty slide powerpoint, written by a group of self identified second generation Americans, it breaks down the galaxy’s sociopolitical landscape with notes on different species, systems of government, contact policies, and races that operate outside those systems. It is an not exhaustive resource, the authors disclaimed on the very first slide, but it is a thorough one. The authors expressed the hope that it would act as a starter guide for humanity as we began to find our place in the galactic community. In the Extraterrestrial Studies departments that are being quietly formed in colleges across the country the ET Manifesto will be required reading.

For a species that has barely managed to visit our closest neighbor it is a deeply humbling read.

“It was a good job, maybe ten hours a week for fair pay and I made a lot of ‘international,’” here she lifts her fingers into airquotes, “friends. I sat interviews for remote jobs, toured apartments, changed money, and grocery shopped for a group of eight aliens. One of those was a Sedenachi. They’re a small species, three feet tall with violet fur and can sing crystalline structures into being. I’d sell the gems K’rzt sang into being for cash.”

“We got to be pretty good friends and I was hanging out at their apartment one day working on a project for school. They were telling me about the singing mountains of Sedenach. After a while I started sketching what they were telling me. It was just a rough sketch in charcoal but they nearly wept over it.”

“I drew a lot of alien landscapes over the next two years. After the first few I had a bit of a reputation for them. A lot of aliens on Earth are refugees who fled their homeworlds because of catastrophes- personal, political, or geological. The ability to see a bit of their homeland is a gift.”

“Speaking from personal experience?”

“A smidge.” She says, holding two fingers just the tiniest amount apart.

Kara Kent was raised in Argo, a commune in Alaska, founded by a group of intellectuals who prized scientific advancement until she was thirteen and tragedy struck. She lost her family to an experiment that destroyed the entire compound and was relocated to live with her estranged Aunt and Uncle in Smallville, Kansas.

“Smallville was very strange to me. We constructed and spoke a different language in Argo, had different customs. I was the object of a lot of curiosity at school and I struggled to make friends. My accent didn’t help.”

I ask her about that because her English is grammatically and idiomatically perfect, and she says, “I’ve learned to eliminate my accent but why should I? I’m proud of where I came from.”

It was not until in an effort to graduate Smallville’s High School early that Kara took a painting class through the community college that she began to heal. “My family didn’t go much for the arts.” She says matter of fact, “It was the first time I had something I was good at that didn’t hurt. So I clung to it and learned as much as I could.”

When Kara entered Metropolis University at seventeen she, much to the disappointment of Met U’s science departments, declared as an Art major. It was a minor scandal in academic circles at the time according to a former professor of hers, Doctor Emil Hamilton.

“Kara Kent’s admissions essay to the university was a proof of concept for a solar powered battery with a five year lifetime.” He tells me over lunch in the Met U’s cafeteria. “It was ten years ahead of the curve and created by Kara when she was sixteen years old. The competition to get her at our school was incredible. Then she arrived and decided to study art instead.”

“I thought it was a waste of her mind until I got to know her.” He says, something complicated passing over his face.

When it doesn’t seem like he’ll continue, I prompt, “And now?”

“Now,” He says, “I realize there was nothing we could have taught her. At least as an art major she was learning something new.”

The next day, two days before opening, I meet Kara at the unfortunately early hour of six in the morning. She’s wide awake, hair in a high ponytail, her face clear of makeup. When she sees me, she offers up one of the coffee cups she’s holding, and does me the courtesy of not trying to speak to me until I’ve finished it.

The coffee is, unsurprisingly, perfect.

I must disclose, I have known Kara Kent professionally for five years, since I was assigned to cover her public appearances with Lex Luthor at The Daily Planet, and personally for three.

Caffeinated and slightly more awake, I watch Kara sign off on delivery of the plaques and descriptions she told me about yesterday as well as a box of glossy photographs. The paintings titles are engraved on stainless steel, the descriptions printed on thick white paper. The photographs are studio portraits of the Exiles, 8.5x11 inches tall, to be hung beside the descriptions.

Kara lies the photographs out in a line on the floor displaying a rainbow of people. Amongst humans, I see humanoid species with orange skin, wings, spikes. The non-humanoid species are the bottom of the pile- a giant lizard, a crystalline structure, an alien that looks like a giant purple hamster. Together we lie out the plaques and descriptions on the floor, matching them to the photographs. It’s a task made more difficult by the fact that while the painting’s names are bilingual, the descriptions are written exclusively in the native language of the titular Exile.

“I had to invent a program that could scan the different types of writing from the handwritten into blocks that that we could reproduce.” Kara tells me as we work, pointing to a particularly complicated bit of writing that slants right to left, bottom to top across the page.

I can’t help asking. “Which one is Supergirls?”

She shuffles papers for a minute, coming up with a sheet of paper covered in pictograms. The plaque, she pulls from a pile and tosses to me. In English it reads Supergirl, Krypton. Below that, in pictograms, is a line of text. My eyes catch on the famous ‘S’, the third character in the line, the last before the first comma that separates the words.

Kara sees it. “Supergirl said that was how she wrote her name on her home planet.”

“So it’s not an S?”

“Apparently not.”

Two dozen college students arrive at nine am in various states of disarray, along with five dozen doughnuts and four carafes of coffee. Kara has them all grab a plate for the briefing and half an hour later the gallery is a hive of activity as they hang the plaques and descriptions. Kara flits from painting to painting, checking in with the students as she goes. They are mostly art students from Met University and happy to chat with Kara as they work.

“She’s very good about feeding us.” Belinda Zee, a fourth year Art major and friend of Kara’s tells me. “I’ve worked setup on three of Kara’s shows we’re always well looked after. Plus anybody who works gets an invite to opening night. That mattered less at her other shows but now she’s showing at The Bronze it’s a little different.”

By noon all the plaques are hung, the descriptions and photographs level. Lunch arrives, in the form of catering from a Dim Sum place four blocks over. With it comes the Luthors, each carrying a cardboard box.

The Luthors need little introduction to any resident of Metropolis, coming from a family that has shaped the city since its inception. They are a staple of the gossip pages, Metropolis’s first family.

Lex Luthor (27) is the CEO of Luthor Corp, a company that makes everything from batteries to vaccines. Mr. Luthor took over the company two years ago, after the death of his father Lionel Luthor. Under his leadership the company has refocused on green technology and a minimal impact footprint.

Lena Luthor (17) is Lex’s adopted sister, currently a first year student in Mechanical Engineering at Yale, and Kara Kent’s favorite brunch partner.

There have been rumors surrounding Lex Luthor and Kara Kent since she first appeared as his date to the annual Luthor Foundation charity gala, six years ago. Both deny romantic involvement with each other but Kara remains Lex Luthor’s favorite partner appearing on his arm at most events.

Most of those rumors are happy to ignore Kara’s history of collaboration with Mr. Luthor, now seven years old. Together they hold eleven joint patents on devices marketed and sold through Luthor Corp. They are currently filing for an twelfth, on a water filtration system that is both solar powered and biodegradable. They plan on donating one system to Splash International for every system sold.

It’s well beneath Lex Luthor’s pay grade to be schlepping for an artist and the sharp cut of his suit emphasizes that, though Lena Luthor, dressed down in jeans and a Supergirl t-shirt fits right in with the rest of the other volunteers. Both drop kisses on Kara’s cheeks, tuck the boxes they’re carrying out of the way and load up a paper plate with lunch. There’s a noticeable pause in the conversation as the students watch as Metropolis’s first billionaire sheds his suit jacket and sits on the floor to eat his lunch.

After lunch Kara opens up the boxes and shows us how to install the speakers inside. They’re prototypes of a product that will be released this summer, name to be determined, one of the many collaborations between Kara and Mr. Luthor. They are wireless, a home with two auxiliary speakers. Once we’ve set up one, on the painting Syria, Kara produces a box full of thumb drives and plugs it in. We’re treated to the sounds of Arabic, a three minute speech that is then repeated in accented English. Mrs. Rahma al-Saab tells the story of her painting, a market place she visited she visited as a child and young adult before she married and was moved to the states by her husband.

“Oh, good.” Kara says as it loops, breaking the silence we’ve fallen into. “It works.”

We’re eager to hear the rest after that and break into pairs that take a system and move to set is up. As each group finishes we call to Kara and she brings a thumb drive over. The Luthors, I notice, call dibs on Supergirl’s landscape. It’s the last finished and we gather eagerly to hear about Krypton. It’s a vista of jagged red rock, with lava flows cascading over sheer drops dominated by a red sun sitting low in the sky. In the foreground is a hovercraft, a glass dome, with a control panel and a set of chairs. There are three figures in the dome, one lying on the bottom face pressed to the glass. The other two are larger, indulgently pointing out the highlights of the landscape.

Supergirl tells the story of touring the Fire Falls on holiday with her parents and her fascination with the lava flow. “I would have joined the science guild,” the recording tells us, “if Krypton had lived.”

A discrepancy I notice only in hearing the other descriptions. Supergirl’s accent is flawlessly American, carefully parsed so that it doesn’t slip into any specific regional dialect. She avoids contractions, regionalisms, and idioms with the care of a nonnative speaker who has no wish to reveal herself as such.

“That’s the last of it.” Kara says. “We’ve got a bit cleanup and then you’re all welcome to spend as much time as you like looking around. If you want to hear every story it will take 90 minutes in total. We’re meeting for drinks down the road at six.”

The group disperses through the gallery, and I have Kara tour me through her top three favorites. Thangar, a city built into an enormous forest, winged humanoids wheeling above as Corvo Tal tells the story of watching aerial displays of the Military Corp from their home. Mars and J’on J’onz speaks of watching the Earthrise with his wife and their children, small green figures viewed from behind. And finally Zambia as Kabwe Aliomba tells the story of hunting a zebra as a teenager in the grasslands by his village.

“Not all of these stories are tragedies.” Kara says between paintings. “It’s a series about loss, but when I interviewed my subjects I asked them to describe their happiest memory of their homeland. I sought to capture that joy in my painting.”

She leaves me to tour the rest without her as she checks in with her helpers, listening to their opinions on her work.

Lex Luthor is still watching Krypton by the time I circle back to it. He startles when I stand next to him. “Forgive me.” He says. “It just struck me how much Kara lost when she came here.”

“And Supergirl?” I ask.

He smiles at me, an ironic tilt to it. “And Supergirl.” He acknowledges.

Over drinks, a tab that Lex Luthor picks up with little argument from the group. Kara defends her show and the ideas it brings forward- equating alien refugees to human ones and the need for protections within the system. She argues passing privilege and human rights with the art students refining her ideas against their commentary. Kara Kent believes that there should be a path to citizenship, pointing to the authors of the ETM, noting that they are american by virtue of their birth though most of them could not walk down a street without starting a panic.

She has written at length on those ideas here and my opinions on the subject are well known so I will leave that discussion to the critics.

The day before Exiles opens there is a dinner and private viewing session for the subjects of the paintings and their families. It’s catered with an open bar, some of Kara’s inventing money going to good use. I am welcome to attend, Kara tells me, as long as I treat all the guests equally. I’m invited to arrive early and I take her up on that. She’s dismissing the catering staff when I arrive to the Bronze’s hall.

“I don’t want to force anybody into a position to confront their tolerance.” She says. “They’ll be back to clean up after.”

She’s dressed for the occasion, hair in a updo and a sleek black dress. She greets her guests as they arrive and I understand her remark about testing tolerance as she presses kisses to cheeks that I have a hard time not recoiling from. The adults among the group are visibly  nervous of their reception and are careful to stick to their species. A pack of children, human and alien alike has already cast aside their differences and is running wild underfoot.

The food is laid out buffet style and Kara has made a choice to have a mere handful of tall tables, forcing her guests to stand with their plates and mingle in groups. The atmosphere is awkward to say the least, until Kara moves in.

She moves from group to group pulling people in her wake, introducing them to each other. A Thanagarian is introduced to a Syrian pilot and ten minutes later they’re discussing aerodynamics with a mechanical engineer from Tamaran. I see Kara repeat this feat over and over again until the atmosphere shifts from tense to convivial. Groups of species mingle and break apart to reform differently around separate tables as they snack on appetizers.

Supergirl does not attend the dinner. Kara shrugs when asked. “I’m sure she’s busy.”

By the time they’ve finished the food, everybody is considerably more relaxed and Kara finds a chair to stand on. Even on it she is still shorter than the largest guests, Lizarkons, a race of orange skinned lizard people.

“I’ll be opening the doors to the main gallery in a few minutes but first I wanted to thank all of you for coming and for contributing your stories to this show. I literally could not have done this without you.” She pauses as a round of applause goes through the room. “Thank you! And please enjoy.”

All of the subjects have seen their paintings before. Kara consulted with them through every stage of the process, asking them to help her edit until the paintings were as true to life as possible. They wrote the statements in their native languages and recorded them in Kara’s studio but that doesn’t prepare her guests for the reality of show, thirty landscapes each telling a different story. I watch the crowd move through the show, pointing out details to their newfound friends, rehashing their stories a thousand different ways, some laughing, a few crying, and lose Kara in the press.

Eventually, I turn back to the open doors.

Supergirl is there, half hidden in the shadows, observing.

When I make my way to her, she greets me as watches the crowd pass her by. I suspect this is the first event she’s ever attended where she is not the main attraction.

“Here to see the results?”

“Ah. No. I came by yesterday.” She gestures at the crowd, “I wanted to see a group like this. Humans and aliens alike, telling their stories, intermixing. It’s not very common on Earth but it makes me hopeful.”

“Was it common on Krypton?”

She grimaces. “Not as common as I would have liked. We were a proud people. Too proud in the end. My education was interstellar; every year my parents took me offplanet for a month. I’ve visited a third of the planets represented here and some of them had looser immigration policies than Krypton. The marketplaces of other planets were the second most astounding thing I’d ever seen.”

“And the first?”

“The Fire Falls of course.” Supergirl glances sideways at me before she volunteers, “My family’s motto is el mayarah. In English that literally translates into ‘stronger together’ but it loses nuance in that translation. What it is supposed to mean is that nobody is ever truly alone and so long as we remember that we will thrive.”

“This is el mayarah in practice,” she says gesturing to the crowd, “a group becoming stronger together.”

Supergirl cocks her head to one side, listening, “Excuse me Ms. Grant. I’m needed elsewhere.” She’s gone before I have the chance to ask more.

When I return to my apartment that night, I check the news. There’s footage of Supergirl stopping a convenience store robbery running on repeat on the local news. She’s talking the robber into giving her his gun, gently and carefully. When he gives it up, she smiles.

The event wraps two hours later and I watch as groups trickle out trading numbers, making plans to meet again. Kara looks tired but happy as she ushers the last of her guests out. When the catering staff returns, she pulls a bottle of wine and two glasses from behind the bar.

When I tell her Supergirl stopped by, she smiles. “To the survivors?” Kara offers as a toast and we clink glasses.

“Jeva.” She says and drinks.

I wait until we’re most of the way through the bottle before I ask, “Did you paint a work for yourself?”

“Of course.” She says, “It was going to hang opposite Krypton originally but frankly that seemed a little too egotistical. In the end, this show isn’t about me ”

“Could I see it?”

She pulls out her phone and fiddles with it for a moment, pulling up a photo, before turning it sideways, and handing it over. The painting is of a yellow farmhouse, a barn out back. It’s surrounded by green fields, a dirt road leading to the foreground.  The mailbox is painted red and reads, Kent, in white letters across the side.

“I haven’t been back to my foster home in five years.” Kara tells me.

When Exiles closes the paintings will go home with the subjects, a permanent piece of their lost homelands. Kara Kent hopes that they will help the subjects remember that they are not alone.

Catherine Grant is a three time Pulitzer Prize winner and the founder and CEO of CatCo World Media. Her work has appeared in The Daily Planet, Vanity Fair, and CatCo Magazine. You can find more of her work here.

References in order: - The Bronze is named for the nightclub in Buffy -Sedenach is a planet Kara has canonically visited. No information available on the native species (or even if there is one) so I made all that up -Korugar is the homeworld of Sinestro and Katma Tui- pink skinned, yellow eyed, dark haired humanoids -Tamaran is the homeworld of Starfire and canonically at war with -The Citadel, a race of slavers -Xudarians might be the most peaceful race in the DC universe -Alstairians are a canonically telepathic race in DC comics that are human/plant hybrids. They have orange skin in canon not green. -Argo City is where the El’s resided and the capital of Krypton. It’s also an Earth reference which is why Kara can get away with using it as part of her cover story. I chose Alaska because it’s vast, underpopulated, and land is cheap -Doctor Emil Hamilton has appeared in varying forms as an ally to Superman across DC media. In this case I’m thinking of the DCAU version -Cat Grant started at The Daily Planet prior to starting CatCo -Belinda Zee is a supporting character in the Supergirl comics -Splash International is a real charity. They partner with local businesses, organizations, and governments to provide safe drinking water to areas without. They have a four star rating on charitynavigator which is how I chose them. -Rahma al-Saab is a generated name -the fire falls are a canonical feature of Krypton and super cool looking -Kara was slated for the science guild in most versions of canon -Thanagar is the homeworld of Hawkgirl and species of humanoids with wings -Kabwe Aliomba is a generated name -Jeva is the kryptonian word for joy. Here i’m using it like it’s cheers.

[merlotetmos]

Courtney Marlow: The Stone Files OC

General Characteristics

Name: Courtney Marlow Faceclaim (if applicable):

Titles: ADA Nickname: Court, C-Low Alternate forms:

Theme song:  Nothing for Granted Brendan James

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5’7 Build: Athletic, skinny Nationality: American Accent: English, proper Species: Human Skin colour: White Hair colour: Blonde Hair length: Shoulder Eye colour: Blue Eye shape: Almond Most prominent facial feature: her blue eye Most prominent body feature: Blond Hair Scent: Cloves and cinnamon Right/Left-handed: Right

Mannerisms: She taps her paper when she’s thinking and often blanks during conversations.

Health and Fitness

Addictions: Coffee. Planter peanuts, Gilmore Girls reruns Handicaps:  She rambles when she talks, but it always comes out as something important.

Story Information

Archetypes: The smart blond lawyer. Role: She helps them build winable cases.

Personality

Personality type: It's hard to describe a complex person like Amber Hawkins, but if there's anything you should know it's that she's practical and innovative. Of course she's also tolerant, companionably and flexible, but they're often slightly tainted by a mindset of being shallow as well. Her practical thinking though, this is what she's often adored for. People often count on this and her captivating nature whenever they need assistance or help. Nobody's perfect of course and Amber has plenty of less favorable traits too. Her tactlessness and apathetic nature risk ruining pleasant moods and reach all around. Fortunately her innovative nature is there to relift spirits when needed. Strongest character trait: Her memory. Weakest character trait: She talks to much.

Competitive?: Definitely. Snap judgements or Calm thinker: Calm thinker, she is the kind of person that makes pro’s and con’s lists to help her make decisions.

Where do they go when angry/upset?: the coffee shop Where do they go when happy?: The park How do they react to praise?: Basks in it. How do they react to criticism?:  Doesn’t take it well at all and can throw a toddler-like tantrum. How do they react to a threat?: Not very well. She doesn’t have the fierceness of Jesse unless she’s in the court room. Fight or Flight: Flight.

Biggest weakness: She freezes when hard choices need to be made.

Personal Characteristics

Birth date: Jan 3rd, 1986 Zodiac sign: Capricorn Birthplace: New York City, New York. Hometown: New York City, New York, but currently lives in Wilkson.

Motivations

Primary objectives:  Her main goal is to become a DA. Secondary objectives: She wants to prove to her family that she is better than they think. Desires: to find some place to belong, to have a family. Secrets: She’s pretty much broke for the most part. The money she makes from cases usually goes to paying off credit cards and such. She’s been cut off from her family and she’s basically paying off what she had to use to survive when she was going through college. Quirks: She always carries a pen.

Greatest achievement:  Graduating from Harvard Law on her own. Worst failure: Her parents disowning her for going into law school to be a defense attorney.

Mental Characteristics

Known languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew Lures: Anything sweet, anything with vodka or coffee. Savvies: Defense criminal law, Ineptitudes: Aspects of human interaction in not knowing when to be quite, Temperament: Subtle. Intelligence type (book smarts, street smarts, etc): book smart. Intelligence level: Very intelligent, graduated Harvard with top marks.

Intellectual Characteristics

Interpersonal: She is very socialable, maybe a little too much as much as she likes to talk. Intrapersonal: She spends most of her time alone and leads a very structured life style though she does go out for drinks on Friday’s and allows herself to let loose for the night. Morality: Her side is on the law. She stands soundly behind her law degree. Perception: She’s perceived by most, at least at first, as a little ignorant, which she uses to her benefit. What’s their view on lying?:Doesn’t like it.

Likes and Dislikes

Likes: Winning, Whiskey, Vegan food, cooking on occasion, a nice glass of Chardonnay every now and then. Dislikes:  Loosing, dealing with her parents, peppermint flavored foods, cheaters (in court). Equipment: law books, the sound of her voice. Wardrobe:  Pant suites. Large fears: Being a failure as a lawyer. Being a failure to her parents, seeing herself as a failure Small fears/anxieties: being alone, not fitting in, being broke, lack of confidence Hobbies: playing classical piano, What would they change about themself?: Having more confidence in themselves, possibly her parentage

Social Characteristics

Emotional Stability: On the outside she seems cool, sometimes airheaded, but on the inside she’s an emotional mess. Humour: She often fails at delivering jokes, but laughs at her own jokes anyway Reputation: While known as a lion in the court room, she’s often seen as aloof, distant and awkward outside She doesn’t have anyone she really calls friends and outside of work stays to herself. Status: Single

Occupation: ADA Skills: Public Speaking, Research, Patience Superiors: DA  Avery Landon

Romantic Characteristics

First kiss: Wedding day, 2002 First sexual encounter: Wedding night, 2002

How do they behave in a relationship?:The only relationship her parents allowed her to have was with the husband they arranged for her. She wasn’t allowed to date until her wedding date so she has no experience with being in relationships. Have they ever been in love?:No. Have they ever had their heart broken?:Yes, though she didn’t love her husband, but the divorce three years after the wedding broke her. He was both emotionally and physically abusive and the broken marriage broke her relationship with her parents when disowned her for not remarrying

View on PDA:

Interpersonal Connections

Family

Mother: Dalia Marlow Father: Evan Marlow Siblings: Christopher Marlow, Sadie Marlow Married/Attachments: Divorced (Craig Evanperry) Other:

Other

Allies: Jesse, Soni, Zack, Nate, Alyssa, Eddie, Avery Landon, Enemies: Dalia, Even, Craig, Chief Mayberry Friends (What do they value in each friend and what do they dislike about each?): Jesse, Soni, Zack, Nate, Alyssa, Eddie, Avery

Heroes: Avery, Jesse, Rivals: Prosecutor Eva Lameria, ADA Cameron James

Biography

Childhood: Courtney was raised in a typical, privileged home to two parents who were both lawyers. She grew up with maids and nanny’s and handed everything she needed. She passed all her classes and even took extra’s at time. Her child hood was pretty much handed to her with a silver plater and she never considered thinking twice about it. Adolescence: Her high school life passed pretty much the same, she participated in soccer, cheerleading and theater. She was considered most popular because of her name her life was pretty ‘average’ until her senior year when her parents arranged for her to be courted by Craig Evenparry, whose parents were much richer than hers.  Attempting to follow the rules and please her parents, Courtney didn’t argue, though she didn’t love or even like him.

Adulthood: Courtney graduated from Harvard law, with honors, just as planned, but instead of going into practice, she married Craig, but Courtney was incredibly unhappy. Craig became controlling of everything she did and became emotionally abusive towards her and she quickly became a prisoner in her own home.

A year into her marriage, on their anniversary night, Courtney caught Craig in bed with one of their neighbors. Angry, Courtney took his car (their only car) and went home. While Craig was still with the woman, she had a locksmith change the locks and then proceeded to move out. She moved back home with her parents for a month while she divorced Craig. Her parents attempted to fix the situation by setting up another marriage for Courtney, which she refused. She’d received a job offer for an ADA position in Wilkson and accepted. Her parents disowned her and she moved out the night she accepted. When she arrived in Wilkson, she had no where to go and no money until her first paycheck. She met Jesse at the cafe and cried out her troubles over a cup of coffee. Feeling bad for the girl, Jesse offered to let her stay with her until she got back on her feet (the only time Jesse ever had a roommate). Jesse was just starting the UCU and explained it to Courtney who immediately signed up and helped Jesse pitch the idea to the mayor, who accepted after a short arguement with Courtney. As a thank you to Jesse, Courtney has been working with UCU on volunteer basis while working her regular job as ADA and remains single.