#the one who got it is a very effective supervisor

[tigergirltail]

TIGER HRT CHAPTER 5 - MONTH 4 - COMMUNITY

FIRST - PREV - NEXT

It took another month after my check-in, after starting the correct dosage, for my transformation to stabilize and stop hurting all the time. My bones have settled down, my tail is getting long enough to get in the way which is honestly more exciting than annoying, and I've even got little bitty claws pushing out of my fingers! The mechanisms for retracting and extending them haven't grown yet, though, so I just… am sharp now.

It's actually become kind of a bloody inconvenience, and I use the term 'bloody' very literally. The first few times I went to go scratch an itch, I'd end up drawing blood, and having to go clean myself up and put on a bandage. I thought about clipping my claws, but I have no idea if that's going to stunt their development or have consequences when I can finally retract them, and it's not something that seems worth bothering Dr. Erian about. The biggest problem is that sometimes I'll move my arms in my sleep, and there's no way of telling what'll be in the way. I've already had to conduct emergency repairs on three plushies, and my bedsheets are kind of a write-off.

I was a little afraid of the pain subsiding, if I'm being honest, because it means going back to work, which means existing in a public space with my half-human half-something-else face. It's still cold enough that I can wear a scarf and toque over the more off-putting features, but that won't last much longer and it's not something I can do indoors. I'm just going to have to face the truth…

I don't pass as human anymore.

My first day working in-person again, my supervisor walks into my office with the intention of welcoming me back, but what actually happens is he stands in the doorway dumbfounded before asking, "Now what in the world happened to your face??"

For all the time I had, I never actually managed to think of a clever lie, so I just tell him it's a side effect of some new meds I'm taking. Technically not a lie, if you ignore the word 'side'. Fortunately, he doesn't ask what's wrong with me. I'm not looking forward to having to tell someone who doesn't get it that Being Human counts as Something Wrong.

Work has been alright, though, if a bit dull. My coworkers mostly leave me to my own devices to get things done.

It's doing anything else that becomes an issue.

I get lots of stares in the grocery store or the mall. I'm not sure whether it's the inhuman face that does it, or the fact that I nearly always wear t-shirts and my fur is now growing up to my wrists. I think it's growing faster now that it's run up against peak arm hair territory. Either way, I basically don't dare set foot outside without my partner in tow. Nobody's tried anything yet, but I see them shying away from me, and just the other day a little kid called me a 'monster'. It's… still eating at me.

I never could take being the centre of attention.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. I don't know whether the tactile senses of my hands have changed or it's something psychological, but that thing cats do where they knead something with their claws? "Making biscuits" I've heard it called?

It feels soooo niiiice.

Last weekend I went to take an afternoon nap, and ended up spending a solid half hour just squishing my blahaj with my hands (or would that be 'paws' now?) All the stress from the previous week just… melted away. It was like an ASMR video for my sense of touch.

Is it bad that I'm really enjoying being a little more cat-brained?

I've also become RAVENOUSLY hungry. As in, "destroy an entire rotisserie chicken in one sitting" hungry. The meat cravings have kicked in, HARD, and I've basically lost my appetite for bread and pasta. You really don't realize how much human food is grain-based until you stop wanting to eat it…

All the big changes hitting at once are getting hard to withstand sometimes. There are nights when I go to bed absolutely euphoric about how it's finally happening, I'm finally embodying everything I'm supposed to be! But there are also nights when I cry myself to sleep because oh gods, what was I thinking, why am I doing this to myself, I look and feel like a godsdamned circus freak, and it really doesn't help to remember that white tigers are pretty much universally victims of inbreeding and abuse.

In a moment of weakness, I catch myself eyeing the remaining contents of the HRT bottle. I ran some numbers a little while back and figured out that at the recommended dose, this bottle is an entire 18-month treatment, give or take. Well, 12 months now, I guess, since I was accidentally taking a triple dose for the first three months. The fact that it's a diluted Fifteen Minute formula means that if I just brace myself and chug the entire rest of the bottle, that would finish out the treatment in one go, wouldn't it? It… probably wouldn't even hurt as much as doing Fifteen-Minute from the start, right?

My partner walks in on me holding it and staring at it, and asks what I'm doing, so I explain my thought process. They just silently put one hand on mine and use the other to gently remove the bottle from my grasp.

"But I -", I begin to protest.

"No."

"I keep getting stared at and -"

"No."

"That one little girl called me a monster!"

"No."

I start crying, and I can't help raising my voice. "If I just finish it all NOW then maybe -"

"NO."

They set the bottle down and pull me into a tight hug, pinning my upper arms to my sides. "I love you very much, and I don't want to see you hurt yourself. You went into this knowing it was gonna suck for a while, and right now it sucks, but it's not worth risking your life over."

I don't have a counter-argument. I just lower my face onto their shoulder and sob. "I just… I don't want to keep doing this alone anymore! I need… I need help! Support, guidance, SOMETHING!!" I cling to them, digging my fingers, my claws, into their back. "I don't want to be the only one…"

"You aren't.", they reassure me quietly. "Didn't you tell me yourself that there's a bunch of people doing this? We even saw a whole crowd of them at that seafood place."

"Y-yeah, but I don't know anybody local!"

"Then find them online. It's better than nothing, isn't it?"

"It's… It's just not the same…"

They pat me on the back. "Just… try. For me."

They let me cry into their shoulder for another several minutes before I let them go.

Back at my computer, I sit down and start searching for a humanity removal therapy support group. A Discord server, a Facebook group, a Tumblr sideblog, ANYTHING. Gods help me, I'm even looking to TWITTER for help. Even as a human I was a solitary creature, and tigers are about as solitary a creature as they come, so it takes a lot of effort to bring myself to reach out. I end up doing it right before I go to bed, just firing off a few quick messages to some figures in the community, then forcing myself not to look at social media the rest of the night. For all my growth, I'm still a bit terrified of being noticed.

By the time I wake up, some of them have gotten back to me. I… wasn't expecting it to be so fast.

It turns out there's a private group chat where a bunch of them hang out on the regular to talk about what they're going through. They sound open to the idea of bringing me in, but want to get to know me a little better first. I don't blame them for wanting to keep to themselves. I get to talking with one of them, a lamia-to-be, and through our conversations I get the distinct impression that, well, I'm not alone in feeling alone. Somehow I manage to convince her I'm worth knowing and having around, and she sends me an invite to the group chat server.

Time to face the mortifying ordeal of being known.

I go through all the typical new-to-the-server motions. I read the rules page - it's the usual "don't be a dick" type stuff, with some bonus content applicable to our unique situation, like not stereotyping based on species, and a reminder to not present your own experiences with humanity removal as universal fact. Then into the welcome channel to type up a quick introduction:

"Hey all, I'm Alexis, transfem (she/her), 38, 4 months white tiger HRT. Interests include gaming, tabletop RPGs, costuming, and witchcraft. Looking forward to getting to know everyone!"

A few people react with heart emojis and tiger emojis. Discord only has the standard orange tiger as an emoji, but, you know, close enough. One person reacts with a witch emoji, and it gives me a laugh.

There's a channel for serious questions about the transformation process, so I decide to hop in and fire off a quick one:

"Not that I mind this, but why am I so hungry for meat now? It hit around the 3 month mark and now I can eat an entire roast chicken in one go"

Over the course of the next hour or so, a few people weigh in. The consensus is that my body is entering a 'bulking up' phase, and needs a ton of protein to generate muscle. Just out of curiosity I go to do an online search to confirm something, and yeah, tigers are a lot more proportionally muscular than humans are. Someone else suggests taking calcium supplements to help with bone growth, unless I'm prepared to drink a LOT of milk. I am in fact prepared for that, but it couldn't hurt to drop by the pharmacy.

It also turns out that the server isn't just for people who have started their HRT, but for aspiring humanity-removers as well. There's even a channel specifically for advice navigating the whole process, including how to convince your medical provider that you're for real and you won't immediately regret it when the itching/soreness/bleeding kicks in.

One of the regular posters is a teenage girl with a corvid avatar who asks a lot of questions about what it's like to become nonhuman. Surprisingly, she's not trans like most of us are, but she is queer. It sounds like she's not in a stable situation, though - she asks at one point if anyone can think of a way to get the meds without her parents noticing.

The problem is, even if that's a possibility, someone would notice when she starts sprouting black feathers and a beak.

---

(guest cameo from @ariathelamia!)

[theweirdwideweb]

I reported my boss to HR for discrimination last week. Please tell me if I'm crazy.

My old boss got promoted so around October I got a new supervisor. We've been coworkers for about 5 years and had a friendly relationship. I'd been to her house, met her kids, we chit chatted a lot. When she started approving my time cards she noticed I was using about 3-5 hours of PTO per week at random times. I explained this was an informal arrangement I had with my previous supervisor due to my disability. I have C-PTSD and ADHD which honestly make it difficult to get through the day pretty much every day. Sometimes I need more breaks and if I'm using my PTO and being honest, who cares right? Well the new supervisor cared. She told me that if I couldn't be a full time employee they couldn't justify our headcount and my job was on the line unless I made this a formal arrangement. I was really hurt but I did it, I got all the doctors notes together and figured--while I'm formalizing it, I actually do need extra therapy so I'm gonna make my FMLA (family medical leave act) time include these sessions.

All this is approved obviously because one thing I'm not is self diagnosed. I've got medical records a mile high. So starting in January this official leave time goes into effect and I can use up to 7 hours of PTO per week. Before all this began my supervisor consistently praised me as a "rockstar" employee, saying I was the only person on the team who truly follows the rules. In general I was thought of as an excellent worker and had received a promotion. The team that I lead smashed our goals for 2023. But, strangely, once I start the FMLA my supervisor begins complaining about my lack of productivity. I kept a spreadsheet as a tool for my ADHD where I tracked how I was spending my time so I volunteered to let her see it so she could figure it out. Instead of sending the spreadsheet tracking my work in 5 minute increments once or twice, this woman has had me sending it every week for the past 7 months. Every Monday we have our 1:1 and she lets me know how poorly I'm doing. She also sends me an email on Mondays where she counts every email I have in my inbox, every claim I have across multiple programs, every minute of meetings I have scheduled and sends me the amount of time she expects it to take and if I don't make it then we have to talk about my "problems".

Now I'm practically never making it. I've appealed to her and to her boss so many times that there is something wrong with this formula they've come up with to calculate my workload--and they both just think I'm lying. Long story short in May I started measuring my time not on the spreadsheet but by the individual tasks in the email and not only am I keeping up, but there's a full 5-6 hours of work every week that she hasn't been counting (including 3 hours talking on the phone---with her!). I bring this up at our 1:1 in late May and say, See there really is something wrong with your measurement. I'm right on track productivity wise with these tasks. She doesn't acknowledge at all the flaw I've found in her formula but DOES say, "I do think there's been an improvement in your productivity and I expect it will continue to improve as you get more therapy." Full on MASK OFF. So my "productivity issues" are improved by therapy, meaning she's been ascribing those issues to my disability. Incredible.

I go to HR the next day to have this interaction on the record. First time I've gone to HR about anything ever. They are so concerned that they are going to launch an investigation and I tearfully plead with them not to because my boss's boss is out on medical leave and I don't want to cause huge problems while she's away and can't moderate. I didn't realize it would automatically cause an investigation to report this. The lady takes pity on me and says they won't investigate for now.

The VERY NEXT DAY my supervisor tells us in a team meeting (other people there to witness) that she's got a funny story about her son. It's some innocent story about how he's grounded and can't go to a party, but she continues on by talking about how she has to be extra strict with him because he has ADHD. If she doesn't enforce consequences, he'll never learn! And he has to learn because when he grows up his boss isn't going to take his ADHD as an excuse. "Policies are policies" she said, "Your boss isn't going to accept an answer like I know I was supposed to do four things but I only got to three because...." She even went further talking about how he's having trouble learning to drive because of his ADHD and just laughing about it. When he has to do something, she says, she has to remind him multiple times and set timers and double check with him otherwise he'll forget.

So I'm fucking flabbergasted at this point, right? This whole time I've been feeling like this time tracking is discriminatory and here she is just spelling it out for me in neon letters: YES, IT ACTUALLY IS. So I'm biding my time until her boss gets back from medical leave. But after 3 weeks of showing her that her method is flawed she tells me I don't have to do the spreadsheet anymore. Her boss is back but cancelled our first meeting, so I figure: If the bullshit stops, for the sake of my career and mental health I'm gonna let this go. My supervisor goes on vacation for 2 weeks. I'm doing my work exactly as I want to without the added pressure and everything is going great.

Once she gets back though we have our 1:1 and she asks me where my emails were on the 2 past Fridays telling her if I got all my work done. Which she never asked me to do, btw. Reader---I mcfreakin lost it. I belligerently asked why this was still necessary, that I felt picked on and bullied, that she isn't doing this to anyone else on the team, and that I'm sick and tired of constantly being demoralized by her leadership. I told her that I was going to talk to her boss directly about this situation. She was pissed. She actually unfriended me on facebook which for middle aged women is like throwing a grenade.

Next day I talk to her boss. I bring my evidence because of course I've been taking notes. The situation is serious. HR has become involved. And just because there are anti-retaliatory rules for reporting protected concerns doesn't actually protect me from getting fired. Suddenly I'm fearful about everything. I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job and my health insurance, bye bye therapy,, bye bye surgery I need. I've been at this job 6 years and the animosity is at an all time high. Christ almighty.

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Can I Stay? (A Baekhyun Story) Part 21.

Pairing: You x Baekhyun

Rating: M (Mature)

Word Count: 11k

Warnings: smut. what if we made a drunk sex tape. The next chapter will be the end.

A romance between two adults with an unspecified age difference between them, an English story that uses the word Noona for lack of another word in English that carries the same feeling, if you don’t like this, then don’t read this story.

Links: Masterlist The Letters (Bonus Chapter)

Tag: @his-mochi-cheeks

Your perspective on the other side of that patio door was a haze. You were drunker than you thought. Your quick stop at the empty bathroom just inside of that patio didn’t help sharpen your mind much.

The journey back to the grand ballroom, back to the party, had an odd buzz of excited whispering from groups of guests that you passed. Everywhere and all around you heads were leaned in close as they all giggled and whispered about some event that had transpired; some shocking party scandal. As you drew closer to your particular group of people you began to notice an occasional pair of eyes glance in your direction and just as quickly those eyes would look away.

The buzzing through your veins seemed once fully attributed to the alcohol suddenly felt just a little less warming and more chilling.

They were all very thrilled with whatever the news was. Highly amused in a sort of rubbernecker kind of way. Whatever had happened had no like effect on their lives. Whatever had happened would only ruin someone else’s life or worse, their career. You tried to make longer eye contact. You tried to gague what sort of a scandal it was this time. All the while wondering if you had done enough in your life to be on God’s good graces. If the $25 paycheck deduction for the local animal shelter had bought you enough good karma to save you this time.

With their whispered giggles and their snickering body shaking secrets group after group you passed seemed to be incredibly worked up as the gossip seemed to be spreading through the hotel like wildfire.

That chill in your veins had spread and brought a sinking feeling inside of your stomach. You felt made just a little queasy by it.

What if someone saw.

What if a right place right time eye witness saw you and Baekhyun out there on that patio just now.

What if a party guest out on a smoke break just happened to be walking back up the sidewalk at the exact right time and happened to look up at the exact right time and happened to recognize your super sparkly dress or his blue satin suit and what if, what if, what if someone in one of the apartment homes directly across from patio was putting their child to bed after a bedtime story and as they were drawing the curtains to shut out the nighttime lights they happened to catch the both of you in full on, middle school textbook visual description of heavy petting, just so happened to know a guest at this very party who just so happened to have seen you both walk out there toward that patio and what if, what if, what if a phone call was made or a picture was sent and they put it together that you and Baekhyun had been sleeping together all this time; even and especially when you were his direct supervisor and in charge of things like his schedule and his bonuses and his promotions and his performance review oh my god his performance review the one you got fucked on top of and ruined and then directed him, as his supervisor to forge just as you had directed him as his supervisor to engage in sexual intercourse on company property on company time you were at least guilty of time theft and extortion and sexual harassment and fraud. Charges like that, even with the best lawyers, even if you beat the charges, your reputation would be ruined and you could face thousands upon thousands of fines and lawsuits and maybe even go to jail. Could you survive prison?

You weren’t the type to brag. This was a reality of your situation. But fucking hell, you were too pretty for prison.

Phones were buzzing on tables; lighting up around the darkened space like twinkling Christmas lights and you suddenly remembered you had one of those too and you pulled it out of the clutch bag you miraculously still had with you.

Your screen was lit up with notifications. Several of your work group chats had several unread messages and the messages were still coming in.

Your eyes scanned the incoming words desperate to find the subject of all of this mess.

‘No way!’

‘Omg I can’t believe it.’

‘That’s fucking crazy!’

You’d come into this too late. You quickly unlocked your phone and began scrolling up through the apparently bombshell that began all of this commotion and after several seconds of scrolling you came across the beginning.

‘!!!!!’

It started with an appropriate commotion and the next message instantly had you exhale a long sigh from deep within your lungs that seemed to take ages for all off the air to fully exit your body.

‘Chet just got dragged out by security and he’s being arrested for peeping in the ladies bathroom. Someone said he was laying on the floor taking pictures up skirts! What a fucking creep!!’

The relief felt like a light switch was flipped; with the instantaneous flood through your chest.

As quickly as the relief came a different worry. Despite the answer to your question being answered you still scrolled line by line through the flood of messages as your team members and other people in the agency discussed the news with ravenous delight. Word after word your eyes searched for his name. You searched for any possible connected to your name even if you had your doubts that these people would suddenly forget that you were also in this group chat if they wanted it start badmouthing you and spreading rumors about the incidentals behind why Chet happened to be in that hallway outside of the ladies room in the first place and who it was that might have been spotted having that big drunken loser onto the floor of that ladies room; surely they wouldn’t be doing that sort of gossiping in this group chat.

You were a manager but you hadn’t always been one. You knew for a fact that the lower tier employees had their own group chats and even amongst themselves they most certainly had broken off into even smaller chats where all of the juiciest bits of gossip were spread around.

You’d reached the end of the messages and the occasional buzz of your phone and signaled the arrival of something else was just a mirror of the same sort of sentiment.

‘He always gave me a bad feeling.’

‘Glad I never went on that date with him.’

‘I can’t believe this.’

‘He should be fired. Those woman would have to work with him again.’

This wouldn’t work. There was one person who you would ask to make sure your name and Baekhyun’s name hadn’t been connected to this in any way.

You found Sandi laughing and chatting near the appetizers and small bites tables.

Oh …food. You’d forgotten about food. Your drunken head swam and your stomach growled the moment you saw it and you slinked up silently right beside Sandi with your own little plate ready to grab something to eat.

“Sandi,” you whispered harshly beside her and she jumped and placed a palm over her chest, “I need to talk to you.”

“Jesus—” She groaned with her eyes closed, “someone should put a bell on you.” She mumbled under her breath.

You popped something that looked to be potato based into your mouth and chewed, swallowing quickly so you could drill her for what she might know.

You’d filled up your little plate and grabbed her by the elbow, ignoring the weird yelp she made when you pulled her behind you to some quiet corner where you could hear everything she said while also looking deep into her eyes for signs that she was leaving anything out.

“What happened with Chet?” You looked into her face as you said it and she looked back at you with the slightest pause in her words and mannerism before she actually started talking. When she did move it was to narrow her eyes and she looked over your face and then down over the length of you once before her eyes were back looking in yours.

“Maybe I need to ask you what happened with Chet.”

You looked down at your plate and popped another potato thing into your mouth, quickly grabbing another one because goddamn these were delicious, and you shrugged your face every so slightly as you chewed. You let your eyes land inside hers for a few seconds but then looked away again. You weren’t sure exactly why this woman was able to read you so well but you were quickly melting before her weirdly knowing gaze.

”What happened with Chet?” She said again in a quieter whisper and you sighed in genuine defeat knowing that this was going to take some explaining. She was going to need the whole story from the over the top flirtatious hugs as a greeting that he always insisted on, to the overheard conversation of Chet’s plans to basically conquer you for the sake of his ego and nothing else, as well as the way he seemed to feel that he was somehow owed something from you when you’d promised nothing and never had even given him anything more than professional politeness.

You had found a quiet place for this and had each grabbed fresh drinks and once you got talking you could feel her growing more and more irritated by that man’s terrible behavior. You heard the quiet gasps of surprise and her genuine laughter when you recounted the mop-water incident. You did your best to gloss over the entangled involvement of your boyfriend in this situation; but there was honestly no way around it when you got to the events of this evening that led up to Chet being outright arrested for sexually deviant behavior and the weird guilty feeling that bubbled up inside of your stomach when you thought that maybe he might be punished for something he didn’t even really do; not really.

Yes he’d grabbed you by the wrist and your wrist was still sore right now from it. You didn't know what his plans were with you. You didn't know if the man was just stupid or if he was actually dangerous but you definitely didn’t feel good about him being blamed for something he hadn’t actually done.

Sandi was giggling. You were feeling conflicted and she was too overcome with laughter to be of any actual help. Drunk Sandi was fun for scheming and gossiping, but you were looking for actual help here. When she finally got her giggles under control enough to talk, she did and with her words came the familiar relief you often felt when you shared any sorts of your worries with this woman.

“He wasn’t arrested. He was escorted out by hotel security, yeah, but I never saw any police. I think they just all got excited, you know how rumors are.”

“And you didn’t hear my name or,” you lowered your voice significantly and leaned in closer to her, “Baekhyun’s name connected in any way?”

She was giggling again, leaning closer as she whispered just as you had, “No, I didn’t hear his name, or your name, but Ma’am,” she emphasized the title with an over the top seriousness in her voice, “the way he looks at you…when he’s dancing with you…”

Her eyes had gone wide as her words trailed off and her mouth hung open briefly before she lifted a hand to fan her face dramatically. You had to cover your own face as the snort of giggles broke free from your chest.

“I don't know how anyone would survive that. You are strong. And I’ve never felt more single and more alone than I did watching you two dance — ohhh I’m getting mad just thinking about it.” She stood up with her empty glass and reached out her other hand for you to grab so you could come with her, “Come on, we need another drink.”

You grabbed her hand and quickly pulled her close to you so you could walk arm in arm with all of your silly drunken secrets and shared giggles. Both of your steps were a bit unsteady but together you at least had someone to lean on.

“You know you really are the most beautiful woman here tonight,” you whispered into her ear and she snorted out loud.

“Shut up. I look like a potato. Did you really have to go all out like this? Can’t you consider the rest of us?”

“If you are a potato then you are my loveliest sweet potato,” you leaned a head on her shoulder and she snorted and playfully pushed your head off. The rejection, even if playful, it only made you grip her arm tighter and lay your head on her shoulder more forcefully.

“No, my sweet potato!”

“He better appreciate how lucky he is.” She remarked seriously with a severe look down in your direction and you looked up at her curiously and her serious expression softened and grew into a reticent grin. “I’ll kill him if he hurts you.”

Again and again, Sandi was on your side. Again and again she was such a good friend you even played with the idea that maybe this wonderful woman who you always thought of so fondly might very well be your best friend.

“Sweet Potato,” you called up to her loud enough so that you were sure she heard you call her. She didn’t really respond other than a Quick Look. You gave her a little shake, “Sweet Potato Sandi,” you called again and she laughed and said a very drawn out and extremely informal, “whaaaat?”

“Will you be my Maid of Honor?”

Your question stopped her forward steps and she turned with surprised eyes to look at you. You straightened your spine and looked her right in the face with confidence and sincerity and after a few moments her shoulders sagged and she lifted her eyebrows with a tiny shrug on her face.

“Me?”

You nodded in earnest.

“Okay,” she said quietly with the slightest pink growing across her cheeks and the tiniest smile that fought to break free on her lips.

Eventually though, the smile grew wider and she giggled out an excited squeal that you quickly mirrored with a quick little jump up and down while holding hands in delight.

“I can’t believe you’re getting married!” She whispered through the excitement.

“I can’t believe I’m getting married!” You said just a little too loudly. She quickly shushed you and laughed noisily to hide what you had just said.

“Who’s getting married?” A familiar voice called out over the loud music from the dance floor. Marci had overheard and she was smiling wide with glassy eyes and a curious yet very drunk slur deep within her voice.”

“My sister—”

“My sister,” both you and Sandi said at the exact same time and Marci’s eyes bounced from your eyes to Sandi’s eyes and back to your eyes before her smile sagged and she looked up into the space above her head as she tried to make sense of what she was being told.

“Her sister,” she said and “Her sister,” you said in unison and you had to cover your mouth with your hand to keep from spitting out in laughter. Marci just blinked at you both with a sort of far away and very, very deep look of genuine and hopeless confusion.

“Whose sister?” She finally said and you leaned forward shouting over the music with a wide smile and you nodded your head excitedly, “yes!” You declared, purposefully deceitful and confusing.

You would be sure to add it to your list of many sins.

“Let’s dance!” You shouted and you and Sandi grabbed her hand and pulled the poor girl deep within the chaos of the heat and bodies of people dancing to the thumping beat of the dance song.

Time was a blur of songs and laughter. Occasionally, someone’s hands and someone else’s body bumped up against you.

You had somewhere deep inside of you, a quietly nagging voice that did its absolute best to remind you of things. Proper things. Managerial things like respect and your position as a person to admire and trust amongst these people. Sandi aside, most if these people had to take your instructions at face value and answer your questions, and at times respond to your professional demands. You knew deep down that you could not sever that image of yourself.

And you thought you did pretty well. You laughed with them and danced with them and shared in the joy of the evening while still keeping whatever parts of your mind you needed to keep intact for the sake of the dynamics of the team.

You experienced a few moments of control. You had a handle on it for a couple of songs worth of time; you began to trick yourself into thinking you could handle anything, even while drunk.

But when you saw Baekhyun, a switch was flipped.

He was with some friends; the same ones as before. A group of rowdy young men you hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet but he seemed quite close with them.

You saw them laughing together, exchanging in some sort of noisy banter; it felt quite different from the playful way he acted with you; this behavior seemed much more daring, much more primal. If you had to compare it with something you’d aliken it to a group of almost feral, unsupervised boys left to their own devices on a playground together. Had they been younger, you would not have been surprised at all to see blood drawn.

One such ‘game,’ (and you hesitated to use such a word as there were discernible no rules) involved messing with some party favor on the table in a way that was never intended to be used. The result was one unsuspecting member of the group, who hadn’t been paying enough attention to his friends given the amount of danger he should have felt by sitting beside them, this one poor man was smacked right in the back of the head. At least it didn’t seem too painful of a prop to turn into a weapon. He wasn’t the original target but had been smacked quite dramatically nonetheless for the crime of sitting too close to your sweet boyfriend who had actually been aiming for another person.

The result was the same. Someone was hit. Everyone erupted in raucous laughter and a swift punishment was enacted on the offender.

You watched as they all grabbed your boyfriend by the collar, bent him over at the waist and unleashed a folly of smacks upon his back.

The entire thing was loud and violent. Baekhyun’s yells could be heard over the music and he came back up pink in the face and laughing noisily ready for whatever revenge the rules of this game allowed.

There was alcohol involved too. Apparently there was some step in the game that involved shots of alcohol. You couldn’t make sense of any of it.

You knew you were staring but you felt enraptured by his behavior.

Who was this man?

Where did your boyfriend go?

Was this really the same tender man who held you in his arms and night and declared his never ending love and adoration for you?

He was noisy and crass and annoying and he delighted in the ridiculousness and stupidity of this whole thing.

You weren’t sure which one of them noticed you first. But there was a sudden and dramatic shift in the atmosphere that came over the entire group and it manifested as a literal wave of change that surged from person to person starting from someone in the far right edge.

There was straightening of suit jackets and smoothing of hairstyles that had been messed by the ruckus. There was frantic tapping and wide eyes that motioned in your direction followed immediately by whichever onlooker quickly looking toward Baekhyun. Hands were on him, someone was motioning in your direction and their faces had a look of urgency.

They were calling his attention to you because you were looking at him and this in itself was significant to this group of men.

You wondered what they knew about you and about Baekhyun. What all he had told them and was any of it was enough to be used against you in a court of law.

Baekhyun’s eyes found yours and you had already begun to make your way off the dance floor to the table where you’d kept your drink and your bag along with the other girls’ things and you watched the atmosphere of Baekhyun’s group take on a much more secretive vibe.

They were, every single one of them, absolutely terrible spies.

There was an intense whispering happening. It all felt very dramatic. There was someone slapping Baekhyun quite hard on the arm and laughing as if whatever situation he had been placed in was too funny for non-violent enjoyment and Baekhyun turned to the slapping man, quietly bickered back and forth in an annoyed and scolding manner.

Your table was very close to them all and you’d reached for your drink to take a sip when out of the corner of your eye you saw a genuine stumble as a human man surged in your direction.

Someone had pushed him.

They all turned to look away from you the moment you curiously looked at them and Baekhyun completed the two final steps that it took for him to be standing right beside you.

“So…” he said under his breath. He was whispering to you and his cheeks were as pink as his eyes were glassy. Baekhyun cleared his throat and inhaled again, keeping his voice very low so you were the only one who could hear him. “My friends are pressuring me to ask you to dance and it would make their fucking nights if you said yes.”

You were sipping on a beer and you peered your head around his shoulder, catching at least four faces seconds before they abruptly turned away.

You looked back into his face with genuine amusement and you quickly licked your lips and swallowed away how obviously entertained you were by this.

Baekhyun watched your face and a single eyebrow lifted over his eye before he inhaled to whisper again. “You see, they all think I have a crush on you,” he added.

You recognized the upper hand you had in this situation. Should you give them all what they wanted? A bunch of silly men who wanted nothing more than to encourage and possibly humiliate their friend with his little crush.

“Do you not have a crush on me?”

Baekhyun leaned then, allowing his whispered answer to heat the skin of your cheeks with every word that puffed from of his lips.

“Baby, I do not have a crush.” He said the word with a deep and significant drawn oh emphasis on the last word. Then, from parted lips came the air from deep within his lungs that fanned over your face and smelled like the usual sweet scent of him paired with an obvious scent of all of that alcohol that surfed through his bloodstream.

“I am in love with you,” he urged with his focus locked tightly with yours.

His eyes held onto yours until he leaned in close enough for the darkness in his whisper to coat the back of your neck with goosebumps.

“Dangerously,” he growled and when he pulled his face back and his eyelids sank down hard on the after effects of that one word that sounded more like a warning than a term of endearment.

You set the beer back down on the table and reached a hand out to lightly touch his forearm; letting your hand trail slowly down the length of his sleeve until you reached his fingers. From the table of men you heard light gasps

“Let’s make your friends happy then.”

The moment your hand made contact with his and you took that first step toward the dance floor you heard a sound like a commotion coming from the group of men. It was half a cheer and half a groan and you turned back to see several of them taking shots of alcohol and wincing as it went down.

You looked back at Baekhyun in surprise but your boyfriend's face was the absolute picture of innocence.

“Even this is part of the drinking game?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He smiled sweetly but his bottom lip twitched like it does when he’s being just a little less than honest.

The smallest laugh broke free from your chest. You didn’t want to encourage this, but dammit he was cute when he was acting up.

If either of you had been less intoxicated you might have worked out the timing of this better.

You hadn’t even noticed that the upbeat pop song was about to end until you’d pulled him well onto the dance floor and turned around to face him ready for some manager/ex-secretary appropriate moderately close enough to touch maybe hands and forearms and the occasional only when absolutely necessary waist or chaste hand on a shoulder dancing, when the final happy and peppy beats of the song ended and the lights in the room went surprisingly dim as the notes of a new song began.

If you’d been in your right mind you’d have waited before agreeing to dance with him until you’d cleared the song.

If you’d been in your right mind you might not have gotten genuinely excited once you realized that this particular song; this sexy sultry deep r&b beat and with sexier lyrics; this was a song that you, in fact, had danced to before.

You had, in fact, learned a set of moves to this song, a set of rather risqué and rather provocative moves that you’d learned as part of a group dance fitness class at your local gym, appropriately titled Bad Bitches Dance Fitness.

You had your doubts back when you clicked to sign up for the class. But the instructor had a way of bringing the bad bitch out of you. When the first notes of this song started and you set your face for this, you made sure you looked right into his eyes as you struck the first sexy pose that opened the dance, you learned that not only was the bad bitch still inside of you; but apparently all she needed was some alcohol to come out.

Baekhyun was surprised.

You could see it in his face. His eyes widened and his lips parted as his eyes followed your sexy little prance in a full circle around him and when you reached a fingertip to touch his lips, dragging it down slowly down his chin over his chest, opening your hand to scrape your fingernails straight down the length of him it took him an honest to god moment to recover and react.

You stopped at his belt, thank God — not through any good sense on your own part, but the next move of the dance required you to bend at the hips, slip a bare thigh out with a pointed toe and when you flipped your hair up and let your body roll all the way back up, it was against his warmth as you did it. It was punctuated by the sharp exhale you heard come out from his lungs and the desperate darkness you saw deep in his eyes. The dance went on. It was risky as all hell with plenty of touching and even more flaunting certain parts of your body for the man.

It was dark enough now that not every single bit of this could be seen from all parts of this grand ballroom. The dark lighting and occasional strobing lights gave the illusion of some privacy. His table of friends was close enough though. From somewhere in the direction of their table, you could make out the hoots and hollers from the group of young men who seemed to be very excited to have been the catalyst for this kind of situation.

Baekhyun kept up with you. Despite the fact that he did not know the dance; he was enough of a musician with an obvious background in dance as well to know what might come next. He knew how to anticipate your next move and he moved his body with yours, despite the occasional hard clench you saw in his jaw and sharp gasp for air he took when you did something particularly bad.

You lived for those moments. The bits where he was overcome and so close losing his control.

You didn't have to let your hands travel so slowly over him. You didn't have to grab ahold of your own breasts the way you had done and make an expression that very likely reminded him of fucking you. These bits were never covered in the class; but you had very much lost control over yourself to the alcohol.

Every one of his reactions made you smile. It was a satisfied, truly naughty smile and you looked into his eyes, laying another hand just over his chest as you leaned in close to his face. Your eyes slid from his eyes down to his lips and you leaned in so close. It was dangerous. You swore you could feel the breaths from his mouth against your own. You felt the body heat coming from his smooth skin. You could taste the sweetness of the alcohol on his labored breaths.

You turned your head at the last moment. It was all part of the dance. This was just part of the tease. If you had a chair to sit him down in, you might even sit on his lap, straddling his thighs, letting him feel the way your hips would roll into him to the beat of the music.

But Baekhyun didn’t know the dance. You gasped when your backward step was interrupted by his strong arm wrapped tightly around your waist. He pulled you back into him roughly and your legs parted enough for his firm thigh to slip fully in between your thighs. You felt the dress resist on one side but on the other, that damn slit gave you permission; encouraged you even, practically begged you to straddle his thigh and grind your hips against him. You rubbed against the heat between his legs and you felt him there. Hot and hard and so very teased by you — all night long — nearly at a limit. The temptation was stronger than anything you’d felt before. You wanted to feel that friction pressing into your skin. You wanted his stuttered moans pushed deep inside your ears when you ran the palm of your hand over the rigid shaft you felt below the suit fabric.

A pair of eyes to your left caught your attention. Someone had genuine curiosity written all over their face and someone else’s own dance was interrupted as their eyes wandered over to this strange pair of dancers who really ought not be so close to each other right now, not like this, not in public, not when they shared a strictly professional relationship that never ever crossed any lines. Sure it was quite dark and alcohol was likely the culprit but still…

You needed some distance. He was so warm and he felt so good and his hand around your waist had traveled, slipping his hot hand down your ass and over to grip roughly into the flesh of your bare thigh. You’d had enough sex with this man to know what sorts of touches were a prelude to something more. A touch like this, with as hard as he felt between his legs, this was him drunk and him much too affected by your teasing. This was him having had enough of this. This was him wanting to fuck you.

You felt his hot breath exhale slowly over your ear. There was a throaty moan at the end of it, “f-fuck, baby,” he whined.

This had to stop. You needed to get out of his arms. You took a step back, placing a firm hand against his abdomen, you pushed yourself back hard and you stepped out from between his legs; disguising the movement with another body roll thanks to the perfectly timed out-tro it fit perfectly with your exit.

You had to bite down on your lip and control your breaths. It felt like they were pushing and pulling at your lungs with too much force and Baekhyun’s eyes snapped quickly into yours with that same darkness deep within his blown out pupils.

Your focus was wandering. It had been too much. It had been too obvious. Anyone who had even half paid attention would be able to tell that not only were the two of you already quite deeply in love with each other but the chemistry you felt between him and yourself on this dancefloor alone surely would have told them all that the sex had to be mind blowing.

Your eyes caught movement at your table; of course you’d had plenty of witnesses there. Beside your table stood a group of silently staring men with mouths gaping too surprised to give any sort of reaction and back at your table, you watched sweet Sandi lift a hand to her mouth for a noisy wolf whistle and she started cheering and clapping. The girls beside her cautiously lifted their hands to clap and laugh and the encouragement had a sheepish smile pulling up to your lips and you gave the group the smallest little drunken courtesy. Leaning into their compliments as if you had intended to put on such a show with that dance all along.

Beside you, Baekhyun had a hand on his hip and had just ran a palm over the length of his face, no doubt doing his best job of fixing whatever expression he might have; whatever secrets he might accidentally be showing that should not be shown.

His lips pulled into a smile when you smiled at him and without any other moves to make that could signify to all of your onlookers that the make believe, pretend, it was all for show, movie scene was over now, you lifted a hand in his direction and held it up for a high five. A high five was just the move to get that point across. People that slept together regularly didn’t give each other high fives. This was as platonic a move as you could think of. You were sure he would tease you about this for weeks.

“Great dance!” You said through false brightness loud enough for all of the people waiting for you at your table to hear.

He looked at your hand and then back down at your face and back up at your hand again before he lifted his own hand to give you the weakest, most pathetic excuse for a high five that you've ever received from anyone. His face had the uncomfortable kind of wince that a teenager might sport after being embarrassed in front of their friends by a supremely uncool parent.

Back at the tables you both parted ways and in between Marci’s questions, drilling you about where you learned to dance like that, your ears caught the occasional low guffaws, snickers of laughter and teasing quips bellowing out from the group of men that accosted your boyfriend.

“Man…a high five.”

“That’s rough, buddy.”

There were side conversations and occasional condolences. Some of the men had more hope that others and you were pretty sure they didn’t realize just how loud they were all talking.

“Don’t give up hope, dude.”

“You see the way she dances tho?”

“She a baddie.”

“Way outta his league.”

“If a girl like that gave me a high five I’d just go home and never come out again.”

“Shhh — he’ll hear you.”

You reached for your clutch and pulled out your cell phone; keyed out a short text message and hit send as you pushed yourself up from your seat at your table and let the girls you were going to take a quick bathroom break.

Your message sat unread for long enough for you to make it clear across the dance floor toward the hallway with the bathrooms. You may have imagined it but you could practically feel the change the moment he had read it. You could feel the heat of his eyes watching as you walked away from him. When you rounded a corner you turned back and found his eyes easily as if you’d always known his focus would be only on you.

‘Bathroom by our patio has a lock’

You were walking through the lounge areas past the smaller groups of party goers who congregated there; seeking a little more peace and quiet for some whispered and intimate late night conversations.

Your feet carried you easily through the spaces and with each step as your heels hit the tile floor and echoed all around you it felt like the bang bang bang of a hammer as your hips swayed and you walked with the confidence of the kind of baddie who might propose a forbidden rendezvous such as this.

It was the alcohol. It was the dance. It was the way he smelled and the warmth of his breath as he moaned into your ear. It was the taste of the alcohol on his sweet breath as you inhaled against his face. It felt forbidden, doing something like that with the eyes of so many people on you both. It was the grip of his fingertips as he held onto your thigh and pulled you hard against his dick.

There was no one around. You’d journeyed through several spaces that were completely empty by the time you reached this bathroom door. You pushed the door open and stepped inside rewarded with the silence you knew you’d find in here.

This was a big party but this hotel was so massive the odds of any lost guests finding their way to this end of the building were astronomically small.

The inside of this bathroom had a cozy yet still tasteful feeling. You could tell it was a luxury hotel by the heated hand towels neatly rolled on the surface of the immaculately clean countertop and the floor to ceiling wooden doors that closed off the bathroom stalls. You walked by the cushioned bench and full length mirrors to stand in front of the sinks.

Your reflection looked back at you and you scrutinized the expression you saw in your own eyes. You hardly recognized yourself. Your skin was just a little bit damp looking from the dancing and you were flushed all over. The flush seemed to be more than just from the alcohol, more than just from the dancing and the exertion. It took a couple of deep breaths through your parted lips and a couple of blinks and only then did your mind clear enough for you to actually see yourself clearly. So this is what you looked like to him. So this was the look in your eyes when you wanted him badly enough to seek out a place of privacy even if that place was a bathroom of all places.

You had to inhale a deep breath and look away from the mirror. You felt too crazed for this level of self discovery. You could feel the desperation bubbling up to your surface, your own once carefully curated resolve made so flimsy and weak by a little alcohol … and by him. The light was bright but not harsh and you leaned a hip against the marble countertop as you watched the door for signs of movement.

Baekhyun’s arrival at that bathroom door came with a sound first. Two soft knocks against the wood made with a single knuckle.

You leaned forward and pulled the door handle open and he stumbled a bit until he was leaning against the open doorway with his eyes cast downward, not yet looking at you and definitely not coming inside with nearly the urgency that you would have expected of him right now.

You reached a hand out and grabbed ahold of his. He gave you his hand without protest and when you pulled you had his eyes looking up into yours as he took two steps inside where you urged until he was standing fully inside this silent space in front of you. The door closed behind him.

His brown eyes were on you and his lips were parted as he breathed through those parted lips and after a few moments of watching your face in silence he closed up his mouth and his head sagged back just a little bit.

Having him here in front of you did something to the anxious energy you’d been feeling before he came in. He wasn’t touching you at all except with his eyes but just looking at his beautiful face pulled a smile to your lips and you backed against that countertop again and leaned against it as you simply let the warm feeling take over your chest as the smile grew.

His expression was changing. His face had looked quite collected and controlled when he came in here but the longer he looked at you the more you saw. His focus refused to stay up in your eyes as his had dropped slowly over the length of your body.

“You —” he breathed out with his eyes down on your bare thighs, “you might actually kill me tonight.” He pulled his eyelids up and narrowed his focus on your face as he spoke.

“You know exactly what you’ve been doing to me. Looking like this — in this fucking dress. Dancing like that. Teasing me and then leaving me. Making me — making me desperate.” His hands flew around with every other sentence, pointing and gesturing all over as he ranted.

You felt an unparalleled satisfaction from hearing his many complaints about you from tonight. You knew you were acting up. You knew you had been teasing him and then leaving him wrecked and part of you had been so very weak to him that you simply could not keep yourself under control around him, not when you had been drinking so much. Your only link to reality had been those moments when faced with the very real possibility of exposing your entire relationship to everyone in here that you retreated from him. Running away, giggling the entire time for just how very naughty you were being.

You couldn't stop.

It was wrong of you.

But it was fun. He was fun to tease and the long list of grievances he was airing right now only pulled your lips into a wider smile that you tried your absolute best to bite down on to blank away. It didn’t work, of course. He saw.

“And you’re smiling,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows and his lips pulling into a smile that didn’t have any humor behind it. He closed his eyes as he lifted a hand to rub over the length of his face.

The same naughtiness that you felt pulling at your strings and making you do these terrible, awful, inappropriately teasing things to him all night long pushed you to take a step forward, into his space.

You reached a hand out and dragged your fingers down the front of his shirt. You could feel the warmth of his chest below the fabric. You moved your hand lightly down the length of him dragging fingers along the edge of his necktie, reaching the very end of it you felt the folded edge of the fabric; that strip of unassuming fabric that moved with his breathing. With your fingers at the bottom you only lightly touched the very tip of his tie, the arrow that pointed downward, that part that laid just above his belt. You touched this spot again and again, letting your aim grow sloppy; letting your wandering hand graze lightly below the metal buckle of his belt and all of the warmth and heat you felt there.

“I’m going to get my hands on you,” his lips pursed and he blew out a stuttered breath that shook his bottom lip on the exit and he bit down on his lip briefly as his eyes followed your moving finger. His lips flew open and his tongue darted out to dampen the dryness on his bottom lip before he inhaled a sharp breath to continue his threat, “and there won’t be any stopping me. There will be no party we have to get back to. No songs that just ended.”

“No… fucking … high fives.” He exhaled through the curse word and you took a step into him.

You hooked his belt buckle with your index finger and gave the smallest tug, pulling your bottom lip into the smallest little pout you could manage as you looked down. You should probably pretend to be at least a little bit sorry. It took you a few moments to really sink that pout in deep and it managed to stay put when you looked back up into his face.

Baekhyun scoffed and he shook his head in disbelief. He lifted a hand up your face, bouncing the tip of his index finger lightly twice over the softness of your bottom lip.

“What are you doing? What is that?” His brows were furrowed and his teeth bared, “are you — are you pouting right now? Do you have something to pout about? Something like, oh, I don’t know, a three hour boner, perhaps?”

Your silly attempt at repentance vanished and you pulled your chin inward with the smallest itty bitty eye roll escaping against your will and through the doubts you clearly displayed on your face you mumbled under your breath, “I don't think — it was that long—”

Baekhyun's face flattened. His eyelids and his eyebrows settled into a completely serious expression and you could still feel the doubts and disbelief bouncing around inside of your head, “I mean…three hours—”

Baekhyun’s sudden movement cut off whatever nonsense you were speaking and he grabbed ahold of your right hand, pulled it forward palm open and he planted your hand squarely on top of his, very obviously, fully erect dick. The interruption and presentation of evidence pulled your jaw open as you held him in the palm of your hand and slowly moved upward along the shape of him.

“Did anyone see you come in here after me?” Your whispered question had pulled his eyes open. They had drifted closed with you touching him like this. As it was now, you hadn’t located his tip as he seems to have tucked himself somewhere behind his belt in attempt to just live with his new reality and what you had done to him.

“No idea,” he breathed through short gasps.

Your hand had reached as high as you could move without removing his belt and slowly, with firmer pressure, you moved your hand back down. You felt the push he gave with his hips into your touch.

“Are you mad at me?” You asked it with much of that same teasing smile on your voice and he shook his head quickly back and forth as his left hand flew up to lean against the bathroom door. After a few seconds you heard an audible click when he locked it.

You gasped in surprise when he moved and reached for you, wrapping his arms around your waist and easily lifting you up to sit on the marble countertop. The stone was freezing beneath your bare thighs and your skirt moved up high enough for a peek of your panties to show. It didn’t matter, he pushed his hips between your parted legs with the same roughness as he handled you. He pulled you into him with strong arms and fingertips that dug into your ass and every push, every bit of friction had your legs parting more; had you needing more than what was possible through the layers of clothing that separated your bodies.

“No,” he leaned in close to your face and spoke in a dark whisper, “but I might want to disrespect you a little while I fuck you.”

You didn’t have any time to form a response because his open mouth covered your own. He kissed you roughly and deeply. His mouth devoured yours hungrily and all you could do was gasp for air when he pulled back, sucking your bottom lip deep inside with the pull of his mouth until he let up enough only for his teeth to bite down. You tasted alcohol on his tongue and on his breath and you imagined you tasted the same.

You felt the culmination of tonight’s frustrations in his kiss. You felt consumed and had by him and when the hollow of his mouth released its hold on, you gasped out loud to feel his lips at your neck seconds before those same parted lips hovered just over the skin right above your jugular. He seemed to play with you there, his lips popping light kisses; his tongue darting out to taste the saltiness of your skin and only when you’d let yourself drift into this tenderness, only when you’d relaxed your shoulders and leaned into him as he kissed and tasted your skin, only then did he do it. Without warning; with the next soft and contented moan that left your lips his muscles tensed around you and his fingertips dug in hard again. At the same time, he pushed his face into your neck, right on the same spot he had been tasting, he suddenly bit down. His hard wet teeth were sinking in deep and he was biting down very hard. He made your breath catch in your throat. Your gasp was a half whine, half whimper interrupted by the shock of the pain you felt when he did it. He made your brain feel fuzzy and dizzy. Maybe it was the surprise, or the alcohol or maybe you hadn’t had enough of a chance to catch your breath.

You would have a mark — red or even the blue color of blood vessels burst just below the surface of your skin. You would touch lightly at this spot and feel a slight tinge from this.

Oh, he was everywhere.

You were quickly overwhelmed.

You could feel your heart racing inside of your chest and that overwhelming feeling felt like it might just burst through your skin. Every touch felt like more than the previous. He was constricting and tightening and he was lifting and pulling and pushing and the room spun; it spun in the confines of this tiny bathroom it spun and it seemed to come to some sort of a comeuppance. He was standing and lifting, his arms clung so tightly around your waist you lost the air inside of your lungs and when you opened your eyes he had found the padded bench and perched you right on top of his lap. You had somehow lost the panties.

“I want to fuck you so badly,” his breathing was rapid and heavy and his face was buried somewhere in your chest. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You have to take your pants off first.” Your breath caught when you felt his mouth open up over your nipple; right on top of the sticker that covered it and he pulled it into his mouth, sucking, soaking it with his spit and biting with his teeth.

“You’ve got me so fucked. I’m going to cum the second I get inside of you.”

He won. His efforts won over the stupid sticker and you felt the sting of the sticky glue pull hard against your skin; against the most sensitive spots. “I don’t want that. I’m not ready for this to be over.”

You cried out from the pain as he ripped it off with his teeth in a single motion. “You feel so good. You taste so good. You’re so fucking hot.”

As quickly as the sticker was gone and the sting radiated through your nerve endings his mouth was there, pulling your breast into his hot mouth, sucking and biting. Pulling away and leaving you soaked.

You moved your hips over his lap. The firmness lined up perfectly with you; everything about Baekhyun always fit you perfectly. You could feel that desperate friction bumping against your clit with each pass. You chased that feeling, grinding your hips over him again and again, pressing your center atop his stiffness and delighting in the wild grunts that escaped the back of his throat as you did it.

”Don’t,” he breathed out, “don’t you dare,” he was whining with his arms wound around you tight, holding you down, making you stop the movements. You knew what he was saying. You could feel the change in him.

“So take them off, Baek.”

You pushed off of him first. With the way this was going he would cum in his pants before you got to feel him inside of you. His arms relaxed enough to let you go and you stood in front of him, the dress somehow still on, although pushed up very high on your thighs, but both shoulder straps pulled down and your bare breasts exposed, every single mark from his mouth and fingertips flashed flush and hot on your skin. You still had on the stilettos and he stared at you blinking and breathing and begging himself for just a few more minutes of control.

With each of his breaths came small facial twitches. His eyelids pulled down on the exhale and his eyebrows pulsed on his forehead. His eyes closed and opened again and his lips twitched, “You are unfair,” he whispered.

At last, you heard his movement. His hands were at his belt and the quick sounds of that metal buckle and the slide of his zipper resisted against the pressure behind it. He lifted himself into an unsteady standing position and pushed the pants off completely, leaving them crumbled on the floor beside the suit jacket, and the tie, and the shoes.

You lifted a hand behind the dress to find the zipper.

“Leave it on,” he said, reaching for you with both hands; you were spun in place and the heat and warmth of the length of his body warmed your back as his hands wrapped around your waist, one gripping your breast roughly and the other he slipped down between your legs. He coated your back. Behind you, behind your ass you felt him slipping easily between your legs. You were too wet for any resistance at all.

You were moving. He was walking and pushing you forward back toward that padded bench he had been sitting on but his fingers slipped within your wetness as he did it, bumping against your already too wet; too worked up center made it so hard to focus on much.

He moved you; pushing your shoulders down and holding your waist up tight, making you bend down in front of him and your hands hit the bench in front of you, your knees resting on the edge of it and your ass in the air. There wasn’t any dinigity in this. This was fucking. It was desperate and animalistic. His palms ran over the curve of your ass, pushing the fabric of your dress out of the way, slipping fingers in between your legs roughly as he did it. You felt more than desperate. Each of his touches was superficial. Each time, not quite enough. He was so close to you though and his knee nudged hard against the inside of your own knee, making you spread your legs further for him.

Baekhyun was shuffling behind you. Fidgeting with something and whatever it was, it didn’t last long enough for you to care because he was back behind you, this time his movements felt more purposeful. You felt the pad of his thumb dip between your folds and he rubbed over your clit. It made you whimper and moan and push back into him. He knew how to make you cum but he wasn’t doing it. Perhaps it was to buy himself some time to calm down. Maybe he was paying you back for all of the teasing.

“Baby, you are dripping.”

You knew you were. You could feel it. With how long and drawn out this evening had been; with how much you had been denied by him; you were sure you’d be a complete mess.

You felt the soft roundness of the tip of him, slipping in between your wetness as he pushed himself between your folds. This — this was what you needed. This was what you wanted him to do. The action made you squirm and push against him. You needed to feel this again. As he pushed in again, he was also touching you only this time you heard something unexpected. It was a striking and familiar sound that rang out. You knew this sound. This was a cell phone camera shutter. It made your eyes open back up and you looked behind yourself for answers.

Baekhyun was holding your phone and he leaned to reach for you; covering your entire back with his heat and weight he pushed the phone screen forward into your line of sight and you saw it. You saw the picture he had taken with your own cell phone. “Do you see how fucking pretty you look? So wet and needy.” His whisper into your ear had you reeling. He was still moving behind you, pushing his tip against your clit again and again; but not yet entering you.

Your eyes took in the image on your phone screen. His dick in the shot, pushing inside your wetness. Each push from him felt that much more intense with this image in front of you. You felt close to losing control and your eyes drifted closed as you dropped your head and gripped the sides of the bench tightly.

“Do you want a video?” He whispered this next question just at the moment when you felt the building pressure from his actions against your clit. He knew he was bringing you closer as he asked you this question. Your head was swimming. You couldn't process what he was asking you. “Do you want to see what I see when I fuck you?”

Did you want that?

Did you?

You reached for the phone, grabbed it and held it up for him to take. You felt his thumb replace his dick and he was rubbing again. The wetness between your legs increased and your breathing grew frantic.

“Is that a yes? Can I record a video of me fucking you?”

You nodded your head. You already felt it. Your legs were shaking and you felt the trembling as the wave of climax took your breath and your functioning mind and you cried out. It took you a second before you opened your eyes and your phone was gone from your hand.

He pushed inside of you then; in a single rough fluid motion and the inundation took you by surprise, making you cry out again. The sounds, the low grunts with his effort, the deep moans of pleasure, the whispered curses that flew from his mouth, all of the sounds from him hit you just as hard as each rough thrust into you. You felt a mess. The slight pain mixed with pleasure you felt with each thrust had you grasping to hold on to something. There was a new sensation. Something different and unexpected and he did something with his hand, pressing with his thumb in between your ass as he fucked you and you felt crushed; you felt dizzy and overcome and he was shaking and trembling; holding on so tightly to you in this way that made you lose every single thought inside of your head along with every bit of oxygen inside of your lungs.

You both must have lost your damn minds, doing this here, in this place.

You knew the oxygen must have been returning because this thought popped into your head after a few moments of clarity. Baekhyun plopped himself down onto the bench beside you and wrapped his arms around you waist, pulling you to sit down on top of his bare lap. You could still feel the mess spreading between your skin and his skin but you were too spent to care much. He was holding you tightly into him and you leaned your head back to rest against his shoulders, leaning your temple against his.

In front of you Baekhyun held up your phone. The screen was illuminated with the filthiest thumbnail of a video you’ve ever seen in your entire life, outside of occasionally desperate porn videos that you watched sometimes when you were lonely and frustrated with life.

You could feel every rough exhale from his lungs warming your neck and you turned your head to look at his profile out of the corner of your eye.

He pressed play on the video and it came to life, the real life, sinful sounds of the sex you’d just had with him. You felt oddly transfixed watching this. Not nearly as embarrassed to have this view of yourself as you thought you might have been and you felt even more surprised to see what he had done while in the height of both of your orgasms that had pushed you so over the edge at the time. The ball of spit from his mouth that landed right over your asshole. The thumb he pushed inside. Your mouth flew open and you turned to look at him.

His eyes were down on the phone and he was blinking slowly as he licked his lips and bit down. You lifted a finger to point at the screen.

“Is that what that was?” It came out as less accusatory and more of a curiosity. And you saw the tiniest grin pull at the corner of his mouth before he leaned his chin over and playfully bit you on the shoulder.

“Can I have this video too?” He whispered the tiny request and looked over at you after you didn’t respond immediately. “You can say no.” He said softly with a shrug. “You can just delete it if you want to.”

“Don't forget to delete it again from your recently deleted folder, if you do.” Something in his voice sounded quite pathetic and sad as he reminded you about the importance of being diligent when deleting your sex tapes. “I’m sorry I got drunk and spit on you and put my thumb in your butt and made a drunk sex tape with you, if that’s what you’re being quiet about.”

You covered your mouth just in time to catch the snort of laughter that erupted from your chest. This man’s post nut clarity was hitting him very hard and very quickly. From between your legs, and all over his bare lap you felt the wetness move out of you with every laugh and his face turned into a genuine wince as he seemed to hold his breath when he felt it too. You tried your best to stop the laughing but you were too amused by this nonsense.

“You can send it to yourself,” you finally said after recovering from the manic giggling. “I’m not being quiet. I am in shock.”

He bit down on the inside of his bottom lip and the smile on his face grew wide and self satisfied and he was moving his hands very quickly over your phone screen as if you might change your mind and take it back any second now.

“But you liked it,” he sing-songed with a playful shake of his head and you heard a buzz somewhere from the floor where his own phone was still tucked away inside his pocket.

“I have it now,” he said triumphantly and he abruptly turned his head to face you with a bright playfulness deep within his eyes. You looked back at him curiously, feeling that something was brewing here.

His smile widened and he, very slowly, and very annoyingly, lifted a hand up into the air in front of you, palm facing you. He held it up with that same wide smile on his face. This wasn’t a sweet smile. This was a teasing smile. His eyes were full of mischief.

“Great sex,” he whispered and those same eyes looked crazed as he motioned toward his waiting hand with the smallest whine that came from the back of his throat when you didn’t instantly give him what he wanted. He gave his raised hand the smallest shake for emphasis.

“I’m not doing that,” you said, pulling yourself up off his lap as you headed away from him toward the bathroom stall so you could clean up the mess you had all over the lower half of your body.

“Oh come on,” he said, standing up and following you. “Do it. Great sex. I said ‘Great sex.’ You have to do it. I feel,” he inhaled a trembling and very dramatic breath, “extremely cheated right now.” His hand was still up and he was chasing you around the bathroom with it.

You tried to close the stall door but he pushed his thigh through the space and after a few seconds you saw that same hand push through, palm up, stupid and expecting — no — demanding that you cooperate.

You would never know peace in your entire life if you didn’t do this.

You were also certain that you would never know peace in your entire life if you did it too, because both scenarios would encourage his ridiculousness.

You lifted the quickest hand and slapped his palm.

“Woo!” He shouted, “Got the high-five!”

[beauty-and-passion]

Eurovision 2024: broken promises and one last hope

Hello.

I know this post took a bit longer than usual, but I needed some time to collect my thoughts about this year’s Eurovision.

Yes, I watched it. Why? Because it wouldn’t have been fair to the artists, who took part in this year’s competition. It’s not because of them that the show was so polarized, so they didn’t deserve to be punished for that.

Also, I needed to see how far the EBU would go. I needed to see and I needed to remember. And everyone needs to remember too. Remember this year and remember what happened, when the EBU followed its policy so strictly, it ended up making the most tense show I’ve ever watched.

I will share my thoughts and I will try my best to do it effectively. It won’t be a short post and I apologize, but I tried my best.

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Sweden: was it worth it?

We all had big expectations for this year’s show. There was Petra Mede, everyone’s favorite host. And Sweden is well known for doing great shows. This year should've been great.

 The first semifinal starts and we're bombarded by greatest hits of the past. Cool for five minutes, boring after one hour.

I’m disappointed: I expected something better from Sweden, not them recycling something already done in the past. But that’s what they did by sending Loreen back to win again, so I suppose it’s fitting.

Okay, so we have Johnny Logan, Ireland’s three-time winner. Is he singing one of his songs? No, he’s singing Tattoo.

Weird choice. Why call Ireland’s three-time winner to perform a Swedish song? Why call a representative of the nation who won as many times as you and make him sing one of your songs and not one of his?

If I were to think badly, I would think this was Sweden's subtle way to impose its supremacy on Ireland. A sort of: "You're not the best anymore, I reached you and I will surpass you. You will succumb to me". But Sweden would never do something like that, wouldn’t it?

Then we have the second semifinal. And we have a song, which can be resumed as follows: “We know we stole Finland’s victory last year, but instead of admitting there is a problem with the voting system (and the entire system for that matter), we’d much rather prefer to whine, because people have been sooooo mean with us. And yes, we will keep sending the same stuff every time, because it makes us win. At the end of the day, all we want is to keep winning, so shut up and love us.”

I don’t know you, but the line between being self-aware of your flaws and openly admitting all you want is to win (all while insulting the country that almost won last year, by saying that their show would’ve been so stupid ah ah, while ours is so cool, see how cool we are?) is very thin. And even the greatest hosting country of all time can succumb to its own hubris once in a while.

Then we reach the final. Okay, the semifinals' shows were meh and left me with a bitter aftertaste, but hey, that’s the final! It must be awesome!

After two hours, I was looking at the clock, waiting for the entire thing to be over.

Did we really need a thirst song about Martin Österdahl, the most hated EBU Executive Supervisor? Was it really necessary to sexualize this man? Is it because he’s Swedish? Is it because Sweden needs to kiss the ESC’s ass even more? Or is it because the ESC really really wants to make this guy more popular, considering people hate him?

After hinting at them in every possible way for the entire week, in the end we got AI-generated ABBA. Well, shoutout to the real ABBA for not participating in this: last year they said they would’ve not taken part and they didn't. Respect.

Alcazar were the biggest surprise of the entire week, because they are a piece of my childhood and Crying at the Discoteque is still a huge bop. But heaven forbid we having fun for more than five minutes, so they were sent away immediately.

At the end of the day, my question is: was it worth it, Sweden? Was it worth winning seven times, only to celebrate with the most boring show ever?

I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I missed Portugal’s show. Yes, the show I called “torture”, because they kept spamming the entire country for days.

You know what? I’d rather watch a country constantly spam its beauties and its culture, than another greatest hit compilation. By god, you’re hosting Eurovision. That's your chance to display your country on the greatest window Europe has to offer. And you use that chance, to repeat over and over “Eurovision good” and talk about it only.

I know Eurovision is good and cool and I love the reminder... but please, give us something more, Sweden. Something you. Listening to a country say: “We don’t have anything else to offer besides Eurovision” does not make me laugh. It makes me sad. It's not that you don't have anything else to offer, Sweden: it's that you don't want to show what else you have to offer.

You have gorgeous natural places (Höga Kusten and Gotland just to name two). You have the second-longest bridge in Europe and it's fucking impressive. Your capital is full of wonderful islands - and I found out there are tours with buses that go both on the ground and in the water. How fucking cool is that?!

Do we want to talk about culture? Your coffee breaks are literally part of your lifestyle and even have a specific name. You have that great concept of lagom which a lot of people should learn too. You are full of beautiful art and funny foods - heck, there is even a Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö! And I didn't find out thanks to Eurovision, but thanks to fucking Tripadvisor.

It's just sad, you know? Don't underestimate yourself so much, Sweden. You have a ton to offer besides this show.

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 The Netherlands: victim of paradoxes

Europapa was one of fan’s favorite songs and of course it was: a catchy tune, funny singer, fun and happiness for a song that was both a celebration of Europe and a touching love letter from Joost to his parents.

Of course it got people’s hearts. We all love the story of a character who comes up with a dream and wants to fulfill it. And if we can, we want to make that dream come true.

So just imagine how devastating it was, to find out Joost has been disqualified. I was minding my own business when I found out and I was shocked, so I can’t even imagine how bad his hardcore fans felt.

The first question was, of course, why. What happened? What could’ve done a man who has always wanted to attend Eurovision, to get disqualified? Not warned, not penalized. Disqualified. What did he ever do, to put in jeopardy his lifelong dream like that?

I don't know if we’ll ever find out the whole truth. All we know is that Joost asked a woman to stop filming him, she refused and kept following him, so he made a “threatening gesture” towards the camera, while not touching her.

Which gesture? No idea. Maybe he showed his middle finger, maybe he tried to lower the camera, maybe he said “fuck you and stop filming me”, maybe he tried to hit the camera. I don’t know. But in this case, I would really like to know - and not just what he did, but how the whole thing went.

If this year taught us something, is the importance of context. If Joost Klein tried to punch the camera is one thing and he should be condemned for that. But if Joost Klein tried to punch the camera after being filmed without his permission, because a woman was harassing him and following him, thus breaking the agreement that wanted him to not be filmed after stage… well, that's another thing.

Sure, he shouldn’t have reacted this way. But you can understand by yourself that snapping at someone out of the blue is one thing and snapping because you’re fed up with harassment is another thing.

Did Joost deserve some punishment? Sure. But did the person filming him without consent deserve punishment too? Of course. If you have to apply punishments, you have to do it equally, not with a double standard. So if he was disqualified, that woman should've been removed from her position too. But as far as I know, she wasn't.

Also, why didn't the EBU tell exactly what happened right from the start? Why refer to it as “an incident” and give only vague explanations? Why not mention Joost's disqualification during the Grand Final? Why did people have to find out through social media and the Grand Final happened as if nothing?

That's weird, that's not the behavior of someone who has nothing to hide. What’s the matter, EBU? Why this weird lack of communication? And why not show the footage of the incident and make everything clear? Now you’re respecting Joost’s right to not be filmed? A bit too late for that, isn’t it?

So yes, in a paradoxical turn of events, Joost Klein got his dream denied by the same show he wanted to be part of. The guy with the most European song ever, the one who stuck to the ESC motto “united by music”, the one who celebrated Europe, the one whose childhood dream was to be part of this European show, got disqualified by the same European show.

What can I say? I just hope karma will do its job for him. If he's innocent, he will get good things. If he's in the wrong, he will get his punishment.

In the meantime, you can still support him, stream his songs and check his albums. Here on YouTube you will find basically all of them, since it doesn’t seem he has a YouTube channel (yet).

And if his fans still find everything absurd and unjustifiable, don't worry: if Eurovision 2023 (and all previous ones) taught us something, is that you don’t have to be the winner, to steal people’s hearts. Sometimes, you just need one performance.

And this one stole everyone's heart.

Also, since apparently paradoxes were not enough, it seems like European flags were banned for being political? European flags during a European show in a European country in the European continent.

Uh?!

EBU, one question: on which continent do you think you’re in? Spoiler: it’s not America.

_________________________________

EBU’s biggest mistake

Let's talk a bit about the current global situation, shall we? No, you can't escape from it.

So, unless you lived under a rock until now, you know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for a long time and that recently it intensified again because of the new Gaza conflict. Israel pretends to not have committed war crimes, the rest of the world tells them to stop committing them, there are protests everywhere and people are ready to jump at each other’s throats to defend one country or the other.

Now, you’re the EBU. You say your show isn’t political. And that’s true: Eurovision isn’t political. Eurovision is a musical competition. It has nothing to do with politics.

But Eurovision takes place on planet Earth. And, as said, the situation on planet Earth is a bit tense right now. So you already know that, if you stick one single finger in this situation, you will get BIG reactions from the public.

So, what do you do, when Israel asks you to participate?

a) You tell Israel, very politely and very professionally, that you appreciate their application, but cannot accept them this year, because the situation is what it is and letting them in would bring chaos and potential dangers into a contest whose main foundation is being safe and non-political.

b) You let Israel in and let Palestine participate too, at least in spirit through people’s voices and decisions to mention it. This way, no one can say you’re taking sides, since you’re letting both sides participate.

c) You let Israel in and censor everything and everyone else, so not only you bring chaos inside your non-political contest, but make it even more political than ever and end up taking sides too.

Guess what EBU chose.

In order to stick to their non-political policy, EBU put blinders on and ignored the rest of the world. In order to let one country in because "Eurovision is non-political, so everyone is allowed to participate", they brought politics into their non-political show.

And no, it's not unexpected: it was obvious that, by letting Israel in, politics would've entered the competition too. This country and politics are bound tightly now, because of the current situation: of course if you let one in, the other will enter too.

And with politics, all the chaos of the current situation found its way in too. And that means EBU literally put in danger:

25 artists and their teams coming from all over Europe

the same Israeli gal and her team

all the tourists coming from all over the world to attend Eurovision

Swedish people who were living their normal lives and were suddenly surrounded by protests and chaos

the protesters who could've been involved in potential clashes

members of the police who also could've been involved in potential clashes

“But hey”, you might say, “nothing bad happened, in the end! You’re being too negative!”

Sure, thankfully nothing bad happened. But the risk was there, it was huge and it's not that "it would've been here anyway": the risk could've been completely avoided, by applying just a bit more human reasoning.

But even after politics found its way into the show, even after that, EBU could've saved the whole thing. If only one human being with a functioning brain said something like: "Okay, politics is in, even if we didn't want to. Now all we can do is let the other side of the conflict speak too, while we stay neutral".

But no, oh no. Mentioning Palestine and ceasefire means politics and our show isn't political. So let's ignore the fact that our decision to follow the policy verbatim led to politics being inside the show and let's keep applying the rules as if nothing: no one should mention politics, so Eric Saade cannot perform with the kefiah, Bambie Thug should remove their messages about ceasefire, Iolanda cannot keep her nails with Palestine's colors (seriously?!) and people's booing should be drowned with anti-booing technology.

You know, it's incredibly fascinating how EBU's stubborn decision to strictly follow the rules not only allowed politics inside the show, but led to the EBU itself taking a political stand, all while censoring every other opposition. EBU's rigid, mechanical application of the policy led to the EBU contradicting the same policy it was oh-so-religiously following. By making sure the show wasn't political, EBU applied censorship and not only made it even more political, but politically oriented towards one side of the conflict.

I don't know who the EBU members are and if they're human beings with functioning brains or just AI-generated bots, but please: stop following the rules like mindless robots and start using human reasoning in your decision-making process. And use common sense too, because if an idiot like me could foresee the consequences, you should've been able to foresee them too.

_________________________________

Israel: bullying cannot buy you victory

Now, we have Israel in. And the Israeli gal and her team perfectly know that their sole presence will lead to controversy and political stands.

So, if you were in their place, what would have you done?

kept a low profile during the entire competition;

showed at least an ounce of regret for unintentionally putting everyone in danger;

bullied everyone and tried to find any possible chance to beef with the other artists;

Guess what the Israeli team chose.

During the entire competition, these people kept harassing other artists, filming them without consent, calling them names, misgendering them. They kept this arrogant behavior, as if they owned the place and all other countries were just invited to their show.

And if there’s something I hate more than arrogance, is arrogance with a side dish of bullying.

So, to all the people whining because “Martina Satti yawned while Eden was speaking and Joost hid his face”: if that’s bullying, for you, you have a great life and I envy you. I wish I was bullied like that in school. But my bullying was more like… well, calling me names, harassing me and listening/spying what I was doing without my consent.

But apparently harassing the competitors wasn’t enough, so Israel decided to harass the viewers too, by begging for votes. Yes, they begged for votes. Yes, they spammed ads all over YouTube. Yes, I got one too and it was on a Eurovision-unrelated video and it made my blood boil. Yes, they were this desperate. And yes, that’s pathetic.

Also: is this legal? Is this allowed? EBU, are we sure this is part of the rules you follow so strictly? And please, tell me: is harassment also part of those same rules?

But do not worry: in the end, karma found its way. And despite the arrogance, the harassment, the tons of money spent to beg people, none of these means was enough to grant Israel the victory they oh-so-desperately wanted.

On the contrary: in a wonderfully ironic twist, the winner was one of the artists they kept misgendering and harassing. Mmmh, delicious irony, my favorite.

So thank you Israel for wasting money all over YouTube, I hope they were a lot. Thank you to all the people who made a political vote, you really got the spirit of the show, I hope you will never watch it again. Thank you Israeli team for harassing everyone and making an already tense competition even more tense. And, most importantly, thank you EBU for bringing politics in a non-political show: great fucking job, I hope someone will get fired.

And now, let's finally talk about music. Israel's song was nothing special, just the umpteenth bland song I've listened to 200 times already. And we all know it didn't get 300+ votes because everyone was in love with it. People's taste is not so bland and boring. And the final points proved it.

(On a side note, if I were Eden, I would be offended by these votes. At least the people who voted for Loreen last year didn't do it because of Sweden, but because of her talent. This year, I doubt that the people who voted for Eden gave a shit about her talent at all)

_________________________________

France: I need to make some apologies

Listen, you have to understand: we Italians know that French singers are good. We laugh, we say they’re “so French” and they keep Frenching and everything, but we know they rarely disappoint.

The problem is that France is good at the same things we’re good too. We’re both good at soccer, we’re good with food, wine, fashion. And we’re both good at singing.

So, France, remember: we might make fun of you but my god, your artists are amazing. When Slimane sang that part acapella two meters away from his microphone, I literally got shivers. He is a fucking great singer, his voice is incredible and he deserved more than 7 points.

I know French Frenching, but we should give credit when necessary:

_________________________________

Estonia, Spain and basically everyone else: two words and more apologies

Estonia 20th and Spain 22nd? Super robbed. The ignominy. The audacity. They served us beautiful Estonian language and a Spanish gal with a soft voice and that's how they got rewarded? They deserve more and better and people are stupid.

Also, I don’t know what kind of beef Greeks have with Marina, but she was good and doesn’t deserve all of this hate. Also because most of the complaints I've heard about make no sense, so… uh?!

Germany: fucking finally, people gave you votes. Thank you for persevering, your song was truly nice and I liked it too.

Armenia: yes, top 10! For great, lively, wonderful Balkan rhythm! You deserve it and your country deserves love and appreciation.

Italy: I’m okay with this result. Angelina’s performance was better, compared to the one in the semi-finals (also, better costume too, the other was too revealing and too much in general). 7th place is fine.

Ireland: I know that’s not a song for everyone and okay, fine, maybe it’s nothing special either… but my god, have you seen the performance they put on? A-ma-zing. It was interesting, captivating and full of details. And the narrative is perfect too: you can see how Bambie slowly befriends the demon and ends up killing it. It was truly enjoyable to watch. So I’m glad it got 6th place, they deserve an even higher position.

Ukraine: please keep slaying, your artists are always so great and they keep proving it every goddamn time. Also, that moment when Ukraine surpassed Israel was delicious: money truly cannot buy you love and support.

The UK: seriously, why are you whining about people not giving you points? The song was okay, but nothing truly special. Still, you got 18th place! What should Norway say, instead? Poor Norway, it has all my sympathy, the song wasn't this bad.

And now, to you all: you know what to do. Follow your favorites, stream their songs, shower them with love. Eurovision is over, but these artists are not disappearing. They are still out there, making beautiful music. Go check on them.

_________________________________

Croatia: “the audience will come to my concert, not the jury”

Baby Lasagna was a blessing and as Italian, I want to properly apologize for giving it 16 points total only. You deserved 24, shame on us for being stupid morons.

Croatia gave us a beautiful song, from a beautiful artist with a great message and upbeat sounds. And I’m not the only one who thinks this, because the rest of the public agrees with me. Marko gave us pure joy and entertainment in an evening that was mostly sadness, tension and boredom.

And yes, it’s sad he didn’t win… but he knew it, before Switzerland’s points have been announced. Look at his face, during the final voting: as soon as Petra said Switzerland only needed 182 points, he realized he was going to lose. You can see him understanding and accepting it. He knew Switzerland would get these points. I knew. Everybody knew.

So no, this wasn’t like last year: last year, it was a one-on-one game between Finland and Sweden and a tug-of-war between public and jury. This year, we had a lot of favorites. Marko was the favorite, but if Joost wasn’t disqualified, maybe the points would’ve been even more distributed.

But you know what? Marko actually got the best possible result you can get in Eurovision. People adore you, you become a legend and your country doesn’t have to deal with EBU’s bullshit. You get the best of both worlds and it doesn’t cost you a cent.

Also, consider that Marko accepted his 2nd place graciously and maturely, went back home and was welcomed by basically the whole Zagreb (Let3 were there too! Kings supporting a king, very fitting). And in an interview, he said something like “I don’t care about the jury points, because the jury doesn’t come to my concerts”. Which proves he is:

a mood

a king

the truth oracle

everyone’s spirit animal

the winner of the people

the coolest guy ever

So, Croatia: I understand your disappointment, the jury system REALLY needs to change. And no, you won't host Eurovision next year. But consider that you're everyone's favorite country now. And you won't have to deal with whatever shit will happen in 2025! So sit back, relax, may your tourism thrive and your quality of life be high.

And if all of you people really enjoyed Baby Lasagna, please consider he has a YouTube channel and there are two other songs, besides Rim Tim Tagi Dim. One criticizes social media and the influencer system, while the other is a piece of great life advice from the title: “Don't hate yourself, but don't love yourself too much”. Thank you, king, for being so real.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, they’re both huge bops.

Do your magic, people: subscribe to his channel, stream his songs, watch his videos, shower him with love and, most importantly, meow back.

_________________________________

Switzerland: a contest that can live up to its promise

In the end Switzerland won. And it’s a good victory, you know? You might not like the song, but consider that Nemo sang pop, rap and opera, all while jumping on that rotating platform-thingy and running all over the stage. And they even bent back, while keeping a high note and rotating. I can’t even keep a high note by standing still, let alone by doing all the stuff they did.

Also, this is the first victory for a non-binary person, so great for them. And basically no one knew Nemo before Eurovision, so the show came back to its roots, by giving fame to an unknown artist.

Last but not least, in an ironic turn of events, this victory is the least political thing that happened on that stage. In the most polarized, political show ever, the winner is the quintessential neutral country. Almost poetic, in a way.

And this victory is also a huge slap in the face for the EBU: in the end, it wasn't its rigid adherence to the policy that made the show non-political, it was the jury’s vote. How the tables have turned.

But there is another reason why this victory is good after all and it’s because it’s a hopeful one. The winner isn’t famous, they didn’t harass anyone, they didn’t use money to win, they brought nothing besides their identity, a kind heart and a flag they had to sneak in because of the weird “flag rule” EBU pulled out.

And I would like to remind you that, during their victory speech, Nemo said this:

"I hope this contest can live up to its promise and continue to stand for peace and dignity for every person in this world".

I think it’s a speech that tells everything about this year’s show. This year, the contest didn’t live up to its promise: it put people in unnecessary danger, it brought tension, it made it political. EBU’s strictness led to a lot of consequences, the exact ones it tried so desperately to avoid.

As a result, no one enjoyed their time. I didn't enjoy my time. When Sunday came, I was relieved that the week was finally over and I was able to leave Eurovision behind. I didn't feel an ounce of the usual post-Eurovision nostalgia. I was just glad it was over.

And it's sad and unfair, because Eurovision isn't this. Eurovision is a perfect little window of peace and unity, away from the chaos of the world. For a few hours, three evenings a year, we can leave the real problems behind and focus on silly ones, like which country should win, which should be forever ashamed and which artist will become a legend.

This year, it wasn't like that. This year politics found its way in and wrecked everything. What was supposed to be a silly, funny, lighthearted show became so heavily politically charged, it broke under the weight.

And now that I think about it, Nemo breaking the trophy is the perfect metaphorical representation of this year's competition.

Just like that trophy, Eurovision is something frail and beautiful and mishandling can break it. And oh boy, the EBU truly mishandled it. Even if it was an accident, even if it wasn't done on purpose, the trophy is still broken. The show is broken.

But when asked about their broken trophy, Nemo didn't mourn it: Nemo gave words of hope. Maybe the broken trophy can be repaired. And maybe Eurovision can be repaired too.

How? Well, maybe by starting to learn when and how to apply rules. By using common sense and sensibility. And by checking the world outside too. If we want Eurovision to keep being that small window separated from real world problems, we can't just ignore them: we need to check them and react accordingly.

And if we have to break a rule to guarantee peace and safety, then so be it. One broken rule is not as important as safety and unity.

After all, what makes Eurovision isn't a set of rules: it's the artists, with their talents, their messages, their hopes, their voices, their dreams. They are Eurovision. They are the pull that draws everyone in. They are the reason why people are "united by music". Not because a rule orders them to, not because of the EBU: because of these artists.

Maybe the EBU can start from that. Maybe it can start by looking at the human aspect. Maybe it can start by going out and looking around. And maybe it can learn to take more care of the artists who are the foundation of the show.

And maybe, maybe, they will be able to repair Eurovision too.

See you, hopefully, next year.

[ros3ybabe]

Daily Check-in: April 2nd, 2024 🎀

Hello lovelies!

I am back with my daily check-ins, so i thought I'd start with April 2nd (even tho I know today is currently April 3rd)! I look forward to regularly posting again!

Tuesday was a rough day for me near the end of the day. I pretty much had an emotional stress-induced breakdown in front of my manager and director, but they were very kind and understanding, and I called my dad, who also was awesome, and helped calm me down. It's sage to say that a packed schedule and lack of sleep definitely don't mix well together!

🩷 What I Accomplished Today:

made some actionable steps for improving my health (sleep, nutrition, and fitness areas)

completed Chapter 9 of Spanish Busuu + made flashcards for it

attended my psyc class

completed the assignment for my Friday restaurant class

completed the take home questions for a quiz for psyc

Sent my academic advisor a filled out roadmap

🩷 Good Things That Happened:

one of my accountability buddies sent me a pdf of a Spanish textbook that I was able to download to my goodnotes, which is exciting!

I tried a restaurant on campus that I had never had before, and it was absolutely so delicious

my coworker is going to cover my shift on Friday evening, so I'll have time to relax/catch up on things

Got good advice from my supervisor about life stuff

💕 What Could've Been Better:

I need to reevaluate who I call my "friends" at work after a couple of interactions I've had with people I had considered my friends

Learned that over crowding my plate when already not sleeping well is not a good life combination and will send me to burnout a lot faster

On that same note, I do feel like I still need to learn to manage my time effectively. It's a hard skill to master but I did it before

my professor for psyc was 15 minutes late to class and then proceeded to continue lecturing 5+ minutes after. I felt bad leaving but I had a study room to go to

So that was my April 2nd! Today, I also have a busy schedule. I have an early morning in person meeting with an advisor for Finance majors (I may be adding a finance 2nd major....stay tuned), and then less then 2 hours later i have a meeting with my advisor for my current major. I know she's not going to be happy about me adding a 2nd major but ehh, if it'll benefit my future, then I want to do it.

til next time lovelies 🩷

[delawaredetroit]

While there's a lot to criticize nighteye about, I actually think his point about Izuku's "arrogant thinking" has some merit to it. He says izuku isn't so special that he can save anyone he wants to, when he wants to. That he needs to take a step back and think instead of immediately jumping into action, (which is ironic since izuku jumping into action and moving without thinking is not only what got him to receive ofa, but is also a trait of All Mights.) As much as izuku might want to, might have the best intentions, might do his best, he's still human and that means he can fail. And I think this lesson from nighteye was even more important with the ending of this arc, and kinda brings out an issue or failure of izuku's, and that's his lack of planning about tenko. Izuku has always said how he doesn't know what he would do, even until the very last moment when tenko's memories kept pushing him back and asking questions, he was still acting on instint and his own heroic beliefs. And I think that lack of planning took a part in his failure to save shigaraki. Idk, i just think that was something that not only characterizes nighteye and his own view of hero society and heroism, but was also an interesting lesson for izuku to learn something from, that i personally think was connected to him wanting to save tenko.

I do agree that Izuku's lack of plan concerning Shigaraki was part of his failure. He could sympathize with Tenko and free him from his hatred, but had no idea how to deal with Shigaraki. Part of the issue with that critique though is that Izuku was being hunted personally for most of the time between the first arc and the second, and Izuku didn't have support from anyone but Ochako (and Mirio unwittingly) on the issue of saving Shigaraki. When would he feasibly have had time to come up with an elaborate plan a la Nighteye? A more fair critique would be more along the lines of he didn't mentally prepare for what Shigaraki would do if saved from All for One.

I strongly disagree with you about the Overhaul Arc. The outcome of Overhaul Arc condemns Nighteye's view to a large extent. In many ways, Overhaul is Nighteye's villain. Nighteye and Overhaul are characters who became so consumed with the big picture, they could not face what was in front of them - particularly regarding Eri. Overhaul saw her as a tool to accomplish his ends. Before Nighteye knew of her role in Overhaul's plan, she was an afterthought in Nighteye's grand scheme to take down the Shie Hassaikai. Overhaul lost his organization, his plans, his arms, in effect his quirk, and his freedom. Nighteye lost his life. Izuku made the save and defeated the villain. It wasn't a complete victory. His supervisor died and he needed to be saved from Eri's quirk by someone else. But unlike both "the big picture" characters in the Overhaul Arc, Izuku personally faced no permanent loss.

[bo0neey]

You Give Me Butterflies

○•°○•°○•°○•°○•°○

Pairing: Gekko x reader mainly. Mentions of others.

Fandom: Valorant

Synopsis: The Reader gets a second chance to fix her timeline and stop the radiant war. After following Kay-O, she's spat out early to face her own butterfly trail.

Type: Multi-Chapter

○•°○•°○•°○•°○•°○

Chapter 1

○•°○•°○•°○•°○•°○

This was it. Your first mission!

Your sturdy heel bounced repeatedly on the ships floor beneath you, metal heal clanking on a hollow surface. The beating carried upwards to your supervisor ears. While the woman didn't outwardly say anything, you could see her scowl and pale face twitching in your peripherals. Safe to say with her murderous aura and all: She was terrifying.

You had only been recruited a few months earlier (by complete accident). Your abilities weren't as obvious as some agents as they weren't visible - you relied on a 'host'. This only became apparent when a charming brit swept you off your feet and ran you out of an active explosion combat zone. As soon as he had set you down you were producing small flames on your fingertips. It was fascinating to yourself, the gobsmacked agent and kingdoms research labs it would seem as they had hooked you up to numerous machines in record time. They claimed they could enhance agents performance. Even create new ones!

This research however changed hands and got picked up by Viper early on. She changed how you were tested and what on and before you knew it she'd even recruited you onto the Valorant Protocol.

So now you sat in the flying contraption transporting you to a suspected site. The team were given a tip early that day and decided the chances were slim but not impossible. With such low chances they decided this would be the perfect chance to evaluate your training. You simple couldnt get that number out your head. It was low but still very much possible.

The ships interior was...basic to say the least. It was a dark metal with only two sets of dual seats. A pilot was obsolete in these smaller crafts.

The twitching woman was sat on her own in the row opposite. She had chosen to sit to your left leaving the seat in front empty and an easy spot to stare at. Next to you was Gekko. A young boy who had only joined a short while before yourself. Your ally was unaffected by your fidgeting and instead focused on petting the small creature in his lap-Wingman you seem to recall. He did however notice your grip on the seat growing more and more tense.

"Feelin' the nerves? I know before my first mission I was all jelly." You were snapped out of your thoughts in an instant, the impenetrable silence finally broken, and met the eyes of the green haired man. He instantly cringed at his words and tried avoiding your gaze, choosing instead to return his attention back to the creature purring in his lap. You saw a small pink hue covering the tips of his ears and could help but smile.

You knew you had an effect on people, a passive side effect of your ability. While you were definitely pretty you never needed to be the most attractive in the room for people to gravitate towards you. You chalked it down to your abilities way of securing a 'host'. And to be honest, you found him cute. The two of you chatted back and forth for the remainder of the ride, him saying strange assortments of words and you giggling along to his blushing cheeks. You were so engrossed in your chats that you hadn't even noticed your foot still or your grip changing from the seat to an appreciative Dizzy.

Your friendly chat was soon cut off by Vipers announcement: "We've reached site. I'll take B, you two on A. Gekko keep a close eye on a/n. I'd appreciate making this quick." The two of you nodded as she grabbed her shotgun and left the ship, not without a slight affectionate nod in your direction however. While she wasn't your mentor she had taken interest in your abilities and in turn you. It was small but enough to settle your stomach.

Yourself and Gekko approach the weapon crate. He pulled put his spectre and handed you your Marshal.

A large part of training is finding your combat style and complimentary weapon. You were undoubtedly best with a sniper rifle. You pick up the gun and sling it over you shoulder.

"I think I'll set up long. I'll be more use there."

Gekko nods and splits off to set up on site.

The site was an old town hall refurbished for radianite storage. It was set up into 3 main sections: 'A' which was the first room filled with radianite, 'B' the second larger room filled with radianite, and 'long' a long hallway between the two.

You take your slinged gun to a doorway with sights down long. You crouch down and angle the rifle to peek around the corner taking advantage of the long barrel.

You finally finish setting up when you hear a loud crash from the site to your right, B. Comms stays silent so you try focusing back on long but your mind keeps drifting to the site. A dangerous habit on a potential battle field.

You spot movement, a slight peek of some sort of shoe or something. You lock in and hold your breath: Behind the wall rounds a figure. Tall and slender in a white coat of sorts. You take no time in squeezing your trigger.

It all happens so quickly: the gun jolts backwards into your shoulders, pulsing shoots through your crouched body, your ears ring and the figure drops.

Training couldn't hold a candle to the real thing.

But you hold your position.

You figured if it was between going on site blind or helping from the side-lines, you had a better chance of getting picks here.

Your chest hammers against the metal in your arms, your breathing quickens and your fingers feel electric. Your brain is working overtime seeing movements in every doorway the second you skim elsewhere but once you look back: nothing.

You turn your attention to comms in an attempt to calm yourself, he might've been alone, but your met with a ghost. Comms are deathly silent. No indication of Gekko or Viper even being on the same map as you.

You wait a few more seconds and spot a second figure. This one is dressed in black, sprinting across the corridor towards your fallen enemy. You moved the scope to follow her movements but choose to refrain from shooting at this second, not trusting your hands just yet. If she stopped you'd make your move. There was no way you'd risk your position without backup.

Her black top came off the shoulders in a criss-cross fashion and ended just above her joggers. They were also black and flared out around her heeled boots, rounding into the soles. A relaxed uniform compared to the previous.

The woman stopped in her tracks, glancing down at the fallen agent, hands tightening around her gun. You hold your breath to still the gun, finger on the trigger.

She whips around in your direction, barrel facing you.

Your heart dropped.

You were looking in the mirror.

She was just like you.

Same uniform. Same hair. Same face.

It was uncanny.

Your fingers couldn't find the trigger and neither could hers.

Your thoughts were shattered by a bullet skimming the air millimetres from your face. You were inches from being shot. Hairs from death.

So you ran. You ran like the young agent you were and shut the doors, choosing to hide behind and catch the enemy off guard.

The door closed with a loud creak, enough to rattle your plan and quicken your heartbeat further. You dared not to even scope out the site behind the other set of doors. You waited behind the door. Waited for the enemies who never came.

Instead, you herd a familiar voice. "A/N?" It was a projected whisper from sites doors. While it was strange she wasn't using comms you weren't even sure they were working again yet, so you did the same and called out to try communicate positions: "Viper? There are two long."

You hadn't yet moved from your spot and watched out the doors instead. "You've shut the doors yes? Come site we need reinforcements." You waste no time slinging your marshal and unholster your pistol, a classic with charms dangling from the handle. You could feel the slick metal slip in your clammy grip.

As you make your way towards the open door you feel the air become thick, laced with chemicals - something new she'd been working on perhaps? She must've forgotten to mention on the way over. You see the air through the door is a thick green, light struggling to penetrate the thick smoke.

The coloured whisps tickle at your face and slowly engulf your figure. It was warm and strangely compressing. Especially on your throat.

In fact air was become scarcer by the second. You felt disoriented by the darkness and your movement must be getting heavier. "Is this stuff safe? Y'know without a mask?"

Behind you rings that same creak, muffled and impossible to tell from which set it omitted.

"Viper w-where's Gekko?" You were loosing control of even your voice. You felt helpless.

"V-Vi-"

A cool pressure point stings on your head. The left side you think. A stark contrast to the suffocating air.

"Sleep well my dear."

○•°○•°○•°○•°○•°○

[thesherrinfordfacility]

Enoch in particular is interesting bc of Saraqael. It's the ONLY text that lists Saraqael as an Archangel. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel are identified as the Supreme Princes of Heaven, and Saraquel is one of the "seven holy Archangels", which also includes those four. Sandalphon isn't listed, but I DO think a fun little fact there is that he and Metatron are the only angels whose names end in -on, likely a reference to how they're the only angels who originated as humans. I don't think he and Metatron are 'twins' in the literal sense though? Enoch (pre-Noah) and Elijah (post-Noah) weren't contemporaries. They just happen to be the only humans who become angels.

hi!!!✨ god im so sorry ive taken so long to get to this, anon!!! - tbh, im finding saraqael a bit of an enigma, both from the GO narrative perspective and indeed trying to work out who they were in terms of biblical/apocryphal significance... i hope you don't mind, but im gonna talk about saraqael in general in my response; as seems to be the way, i typically get carried away in answering what seems to be a fairly straightforward ask!!!

edit: further speculation on BOL and saraqael's potential role in it

saraqael theory(?)/analysis:

i think are a couple of crucial bits to saraqael in s2, and not just the ones where they recognise crowley etc. i talked a little bit about what i think their rank is in GO, which i don't think is the same rank as the other archangels, but perhaps a lower archangel like sandalphon. in terms of what saraqael actually does... it feels like they are essentially in charge of earth operations, or something to that effect.

muriel is, by all accounts so far, a (very?) low ranking angel. and yet, when muriel finds the matchbox, it's saraqael that accompanies them to the archangels to report it. now, that doesn't necessarily mean anything - muriel could have gone to a supervisor and then it got escalated, but what saraqael says here:

makes me think that, actually, saraqael knows muriel at least to a greater degree than the separation of an archangel (or whatever tier), and a 'lowly' 37th-class scrivener would have. in fact, this is the only scene other than presenting the matchbox, i believe, where we see saraqael and muriel interact? there is some kind of history there, and potentially even a degree of fondness.

now, let's take into consideration the theory that muriel themself may have been higher-ranking, and got Got by the metatron. they originally were going to demote gabriel to 38th Class; was saraqael similarly the one who wiped muriel's memory, as they attempted to wipe gabriel's? what was the purpose of saraqael being at the trial, other than to fulfil that purpose? and they took muriel directly into their chain of command as a means of keeping an eye on them, protecting them?

this kind of supports my thought that saraqael is somewhat an operations manager (but also...not just that at all*), doing essentially the archangel grunt-work, including keeping an eye on unauthorised miracles:

then we take a look at their interaction with crowley; because i do think there's a lot more to unpack in this bit than that they may have worked on a nebula together, and that crowley doesn't remember them.

summarising a couple of observations:

the seemingly innocent but assertive point made that the trial was in fact real, and didn't take a long time to happen start to finish

the fact that saraqael even notices the interaction between crowley and muriel: he's dressed as an angel (and demonstrated as being a 'bee' when michael/uriel don't fully catch it was him), muriel seems - despite the aesthetic of heaven generally - to be tucked away in the equivalent of a cupboard cubicle, and he accessed a file without, presumably, any alarms - the file recognised his former rank/that he 'knew' the password... so what exactly prompts saraqael to come over in the first place?

saraqael looks happy to see crowley, possibly even a little relieved, but once again like they're... fond?

they use his chosen name (specifically not 'crawley'), and use it with ease despite knowing him pre-fall and therefore, theoretically, not having any cause to use 'crowley' up until this moment

saraqael seems disappointed that crowley doesn't remember them.

where am i going with this bit? well, put simply. i think saraqael had some hand in the mechanics of the fall. i think they were meant to wipe the fallens' memories, but jigged about with the settings. perhaps, now, they regret their part in it, and is working to undo it somewhat, from the inside. i think, where they can, they protect those that get fully wiped (ie. muriel, and gabriel had the wipe gone to plan). and i think, maybe just their favourites, they keep an eye on those that actually fell. and i think that they are trying to break out this information without outright saying it ("well, don't let me interrupt you! show him the trial..."), because they know first-hand the consequences. and they know the consequences, because they are literally metatron's operational right-hand* angel:

this would explain why they seem to remember metatron in the bookshop: exposure to him? seems to fully understand how dangerous he is? not only does saraqael look genuinely apprehensive on behalf of michael, but watch their eyeline movement:

(ok but a moment of appreciation for how adorably derek jacobi says 'piffle' i mean💕)

it almost looks like it goes from michael, and then flips to up beyond michael? as they clasp their hands together? and then after the cut, they're actually breathing so heavily, out of... stress? worry? this is such a tiny thing that may well just coincidental actor-choice on liz's part, but it certainly works in the scene context... that saraqael seems quietly and calmly terrified.

another point, back on the subject of saraqael's role in heaven; i feel like the source of both the earth observation files michael gets in s1, and the fact that metatron says he's "looked back over a number of [aziraphale and crowley's] exploits" may have come from saraqael themself. that's a bit tentative, but it would certainly fit that it would come, at least, from their department. say - metatron has been spying on our boys through the sigil in the bookshop (or something to that effect), has gone to saraqael essentially for intel, and then put the offer to aziraphale to return to heaven in order to split them apart, after seeing the extent to which they're entwined with each other.

we haven't seen a direct, lone aziraphale-saraqael interaction, but their line about, "we'll be keeping a very close eye on you, aziraphale.", doesn't actually feel as ominous as i once felt. in fact, it's muriel that saraqael sends down which - let's face it, by all accounts they are not the angel to send down to earth when camouflage is key - feels actually like saraqael was banking on covering up the miracle for aziraphale and crowley, or at least buying them time.

last little bit: the comment on aziraphale's frisbee halo trick makes me think once again of saraqael's potential role as, essentially, head of operations (declaring war is rather messy, they're right), but also brings me back to the point i made here about the halo toss... somehow, i feel like it signifies something a bit more than just a casual hand grenade.

and now for the bible-y bits

well, i mean, there isn't really a lot to go on, lbr. as anon said (hi, anon, if you made it this far✨), they're described as one of the seven archangels in the first book of enoch (20:6), and if ive read correctly, the second book describes that they brought enoch himself to heaven... so maybe the GO narrative will follow this somewhat? if saraqael feels somewhat responsible for metatron being in the position he is, and having done the hypothetical things he's done? and that's why they might be trying to undo it, or undermine it?

i think the first book also describes saraqael (who i believe is synonymous with sariel and suriel, as well as other different but similar angel names in biblical/apocryphal texts) as being essentially the observer of justice and injustice on earth, "who sin in the spirit", which would also track against them having potential control over earth observations, and them potentially guarding over those that have fallen/have been punished by heaven.

i think some islam and talmud texts also indicate that saraqael may be azrael and metatron respectively, but i doubt that is an arc that the GO narrative will follow, nor indeed other bits and pieces from enoch that ive read through... but certainly there's enough that looks like it could have hypothetically inspired the saraqael story that im interpreting at the moment!

and as for metratr-on, and sandalph-on, iirc that is the meaning of the -on suffix, to reflect being born of man...? i looked at this a little while ago and found zephon as another example... parsing out abaddon kinda drove me a bit insane though, so that's where i left it! i agree that i doubt that metatron and sandalphon are twins, but definitely seems to speak to their origins, perhaps!!!✨

[astyrial]

engine troubles kiyoko shimizu x gn!reader (fluff) synopsis: mechanic au word count: 1k warnings: probably incorrect car stuff, unedited masterlist | requests are open

   another car rolls into the shop's garage, one of the other mechanics pulling it in. as he stops in the correct spot, you can hear the loud squealing of a worn down brake pad. your coworker steps out, crossing his arms on the top of the  old cadillac. a few black hairs fall to his forehead from his fairly blonde hair, a smile on his face, "i got this one."

  "you sure, kanji? because the two o'clock said he was going to be a little late for his engine check so i can do it," you rest your hands on your hips until he nods.

  "i'm very sure. i've done it with a supervisor like a thousand times, i think i can do it alone this once. take your break or something."

  his eyebrows raise as he waits for you to let out a small groan and a slow nod. kanji seems to be a natural talent when he works on cars, who are you to deny him his first job on his own? your shoulders slowly shrug, "sure, just let someone else look over it before you send it off."

  kanji gives you a two-finger wave, spinning around to raise the car. your hands wipe onto the small towel hanging from one of your belt hoops until there's a couple of black stains. before your fingers can wrap around the door's handle, someone is shouting out for you. you turn around and your gaze catches that of an albeit, beautiful woman.

  her hair is pulled into a high ponytail, athleisure-wear complimented with matching sneakers. covering it is a thick winter jacket. she finishes a light jog until entering the garage. there's a certain look in her eyes, one of worry. your breath catches for a second and your eyelids blink quickly as you watch her gain a quiet smile.

  "you're the closest automotive shop and my car broke down right after i got lunch. i have to head back to work, and it's right down the street," she crosses her arms in front of her chest and takes in a few deep breaths. 

  you nod, looking back at the main office, of course you want to help. however, you're on the clock and could very well get reprimanded for leaving. your gaze returns to the unfamiliar woman until you let out a soft sigh. "okay- any noise beforehand? any dashboard lights coming on?"

  "no- actually, the start up noise sounded a little weird. and it smelled a little like gasoline," she looks back at the street, in the direction of many restaurants and fast food chains.

  "okay, it sounds a little like a flooded engine, so-"

  "that isn't anything terrible, right? because i really do have to get back to work soon," the woman begins to tap her foot against the concrete floor of the garage.

  your head momentarily shakes, hands reaching for a thick jacket. "only if i can't get it started for you. then it may be the spark plugs, which you would need to get replaced before going anywhere. so let's hope for the best option, okay?" her features suddenly relax, eyebrows lessening in intensity. 

  she nods, waiting for you to finish grabbing your things and preparing to leave. when you look back up at her, the sun is perfectly set in the sky to create a sort of halo effect around her. your heartbeat begins to beat even quicker until you look away and back at kanji. he's currently under the car, attempting to fix the brake pad.

  "can you cover for me kanji? i need to go see if i can clear a flooded engine for..."

  "my name's shimizu kiyoko."

  "shimizu, she needs to head back to work and it won't take me long."

  kanji looks over at the two of you, narrowing his eyes a little as he notices you practically sweating from her radiance. he simply nods before obviously winking and returning back to his work. you shake your head, looking back to shimizu. there's a smile on her face as the two of you start off towards the car. 

  snow flutters down from the clouds to create a beautiful atmosphere. you take in a deep breath of the cold air as you cross the street to find an older car parked outside of an onigiri shop. it’s been restored to its former glory. your eyes widen a little as you notice the new paint and the convertible top. just before you reach it, she hands you the key.

  “when’d you get this beauty? who restored it?”

  “oh- just the past month. it was my granpda’s and he was a big fan of the older style of cars. he refurbished it until he passed away and left it to me,” shimizu grabs the strap of her bag and looks over to you, a smile on her lips.

  despite wanting to ask the girl to marry you on the spot, you only catch a glimpse of her before unlocking and opening the car door. the inside leather seats are also perfectly comfortable, the stitching nearly perfect for a restoration. everything from the dashboard to the disc player screams out your name in perfect tone.

  “do you mind opening the hood?” it doesn’t take long for shimizu to hear you and prop it open, “thanks!”

  you push the key into the ignition and turn it as you step down on the accelerator pedal. some smoke escapes into the air as you hear the engine roar to life. meaning that the spark plugs are likely fine. you exit the car and lean your arm against the driver door, meeting shimizu’s eyes. 

  she lets out a sigh of relief and holds out her hand, “thank you so much, i mean this is just great.”

  “of course, just let it idle for a second so that it can really clear it out. i just hope this amazing car will last you a lot longer,” you shake her hand and rest the other on your hip. 

  “well, you can always ask me that later, if i can take you to dinner as a thank you.”

  “i’d love that.”

[stuff-plus-textposts]

Nothing At All is a Good Song

Nothing At All is a song from How To Dance In Ohio the musical that I really really like. I have this whole animatic to it mapped out in my head, but I haven't got the skill or patience to actually draw it. But the song's singer Desmond Edwards said that they would want to read the outline I've written, so here it is! It's very long and I'm sorry.

I work in a lab at a hospital, and this is about my job.

I walk into the lab, into the break room, and put my purse down. On “It’s not like I’m shocked by the ableist cliches, but they do make me tired,” I reach into my purse and put on a barrette (which I actually wear everyday). The barrette then turns red and becomes a wisp of smoke following me. 

“Do I only exist on this planet to make somebody else feel inspired?” I’m grabbing a lab coat from the closet when the wisp flies away from me, I turn to follow it and see one of my coworkers waving at me. Said coworker is drawn with no eyes or nose, just a mouth and eyebrows - everyone in the animatic is drawn like this except for myself. I wave awkwardly back. 

“I’m no object of pity, and if that’s what you see, then clearly you aren’t seeing me” the camera circles around me, showing a hallway that looks like I’ve made it longer for dramatic effect but that actually is that long, and then pans around so you can see my face as I start walking down the hall towards the core lab. 

I pretend to be my own OCs a lot, so the characters I turn into are my own characters. As I turn into each one, the wisp of red smoke becomes an article of clothing on them. First is Jaimy, who has a big red bow. Then Tris, who has a red ring, and finally Jada, who has a red headband. As the line gets to “today’s look is nothing, nothing at all” I fade back into my normal self with the wisp of smoke at my shoulders, and walk over to my work station. I type at my computer with the wisp curling over my wrists, I grab a pneumatic tube that’s just come in with the smoke curling around the tube and my hands. 

“I try to have patience meeting folks where they’re at” I sit at my chair talking to my boss, who is on one knee in front of me because she's really tall. “But this gets under my skin” she stands up to walk away. “Cause if you’re writing about me, then getting to know me should be where you begin” my boss goes over to one of my coworkers, a guy who acts like and is treated like he’s a supervisor even though he’s not, and says something. The two of them look directly at me, then back at each other. 

“It’s so condescending assuming the worst” We see my hand reaching towards a piece of paper on a printer, which is me attempting to do an assignment that I’m capable of doing but don’t have permission to do. The wisp of smoke curls around my hand and pulls it back, forcing me to turn away and see my boss. I glare daggers at her but that’s all I can do. 

“When I’m Wanda Maximoff” My glare fades and I turn into my OC Taylor, the red wisp becoming a wand in my hand. “I can change my own reality” using the wand, I open up a centrifuge and remove the tubes of blood to float in front of me. Unlike most of the animatic, which is black and white, the tubes are in color. They’ve been spun already so you can clearly see the red blood cells at the bottom, the separator gel, and the plasma/serum on top. Some of the tubes have light green tops and some have gold tops (if you’re curious what I’m talking about, look up centrifuged blood gold top). “When I’m Gaga I’m ready to rehearse” I change into my OC Jodie, stepping forward into a pirouette, the red wisp turns into a rehearsal skirt, and the tubes of blood are still floating in front of me. “When I’m Miles Morales I really do believe I am a superhero in the multiverse” I change into my OC Cytherea and start to float, the wisp becomes glowing red eyes, and for a moment the tubes of blood turn into crystals in front of me. “But todays look is nothing, nothing at all” I morph back into myself and come back down to the ground. The tubes of blood become tubes of blood again and return to my hands. The red wisp goes back to being a red wisp at my shoulders. 

“Then come the voices of doubt saying right on cue” we see the core lab, where my coworkers are doing regular core lab stuff, like typing at computers and putting stuff into machines. “This world will never make space for people like you” my coworkers all look at me, now looking angry, and now shaded red. I take a step back. “I see my past rejections framed and hung on the wall” The tubes of blood fall out of my hands, not like I dropped them or anything but just like in a floaty way. I also start to float as the background becomes black behind me, and we see representations drawn in red of various crappy things that have happened to me. This includes F’s on papers, children laughing at me, and mean quotes people have said to me. They scroll by in the background. 

“And I wish I felt nothing, nothing at all” I start crying and I curl up into a ball. The background changes to say in giant red letters “Autism.” But then the red disappears from the actual word, turning it white; the red becomes becomes the wisp again, circling around my whole body. “Nothing at all” the black background fades, leaving me in a cloud of red. “So sick of good intentions, that only make me feel small” still surrounded by the cloud. I look up and see the lab in front of me, except I am literally small now, and it is huge. “Your good intentions all add up to” I fall to my knees with my hands over my ears. “Nothing at all” suddenly I am normal sized again, holding the tubes of blood like I was before. I shake my head a little bit and look startled, as if I was trying to shake myself back to reality after zoning out. 

In the instrumental break, I walk over to one of the stations in the core lab and put the tubes of blood in the rack. Then I’m seen getting my purse and leaving the lab. 

“That’s why tomorrow night I will not be at the formal dance” we see me driving home, coming inside, and walking upstairs to pull out my laptop. “though I’ve worked hard to get there all this year.” The red wisp settles around my shoulders, still weird and wispy but not floating anymore, just resting. I take a deep breath and open my laptop. “That’s right, tomorrow night I will be doing my first livestream” I open up a zoom meeting entitled ‘Ableism in the workplace’ and click join, “to discuss the controversy further here!” I wave at the people in the meeting, and you can see the clock behind me displaying the time 5:30. “Cause the whole conversation” we see a girl wearing noise cancelling headphones talking on the screen. “Needs a huge overhaul.” We see a boy talking on the screen. “And if we simply do nothing.” I wave again, and you can see that the clock reads 6:30 now. I close the laptop and look sad. The red wisp starts to float again “nothing will change at all.” The wisp becomes a single red tear which falls down my cheek. 

In the final instrumental, I wipe the tear away. My hand stays on my face as I move it up to rub at my head, like I’m pushing my hair away from my face. When I pull my hand away, the red is gone and it has turned back into the barrette that I put on at the beginning. I set the barrette down on top of my laptop, alongside my employee badge, and stand up to walk away. The end.

Don't worry though, this makes my job sound awful, but it's actually really cool and most of my coworkers don't suck. This is a picture taken for lab week a few weeks ago, I'm the white girl sitting in the front :)

@wakanda-never I hope you like it! I know it isn't exactly what the song is about, but it's what it makes me feel. Thank you for everything you did with HTDIO, it's one of my favorite musicals ever because it makes me feel so seen.

[hopelesswritergall]

okay hear me out — artist aegon x history student reader headcanons 👀

Get me out of here

Yesss BESTIE

TW: Wars…..? Idk know

Please comment, reblog or like. Reblogs are much appreciated as they cause more people to see my work. If you want to you can tell me what you thought in the reblog, in a comment or send in an ask!!!

Summary: Aegon doesn’t want to work in the museum shop, but maybe he can grow to like it?

Taglist(comment or ask to be added/removed): @howyouloveyourdragon /@simp-aholic @daenerysapologist

Je suis very sorry that it’s not gender neutral with body description. It’s just I think that Aegon notices curves in women.

Museum name: The history of all (why cuz why not)

It all started because of his mother. “Aegon for the love of god! Get a job! We can’t keep financing you, do something besides you study! Please.”

“But Mom, I do my art?!”

“Aegon, this isn’t enough to live. You need to get a job!”

Soooo Aegon had to find a job, he didn’t want to interact with people who couldn’t appreciate beauty and art. So his best shot was the museum, the gift shop.

He decided to lie a tiny bit on his resumé. He didn’t work for another museum during his first year of college, he doesn’t like to work with everyone and a few other things.

He walked into the museum and got greeted instantly with the reception and right beside that, the gift shop.

But what he saw blew his mind, a beauty was seated at the reception. He could see they had some nice curves, and a pretty smile. As he got closer he could hear their laugh and see a twinkle in their eyes.

“Hello beauty, I can see why you work here. You are a piece of art.” He would say, flirty. Howeverr it had the opposite effect. You stared at him with the customer service face

“Goodmorning Sir, what can I do for you today?” You smiled politely. But inside you thought “Alright, he has the smooth talking, what does he want?”

He looked a bit taken aback that his ‘pickup line’ didn’t work. “Oh… uhmmm, I’m here for the opening of employee in the gift shop. With who do I talk?”

“Oh. Alright. You go through the door on the left, yes the yellow one. Then continue walking till you see a little sign saying director. Knock and then you’re there. Good luck.”

“Yeah….. thanks.” Aaanddd Aegon quickly walked to the door. Feeling embarrassed as fuck.

Well the conversation might have been bad, but his job interview was a success. He got the job!

He walked back to the reception, you were currently not busy so he decided he should get to know his colleague.

“Well guess who got the job?” He said leaning on the reception. “Well guessing by your smug smirk, I guess you?”

You stood up, walked to your fellow receptionist, said something very quick and walked back to Aegon.

“Alright follow me, I’ll work you through your first day here.”

He was a little embarrassed that the girl he tried to flirt with was now showing him the ropes.

“Okay so, you’ll be in charge of the gift shop. I may ask you to do some other stuff around the museum but this will be your main task. And yes before you ask, I am in a way your boss and you’ll report back to me. I’m the supervisor or the shop and the help desk so please don’t ask stupid questions. Because contrary what people say there are stupid questions.”

Let’s say that Aegon felt mildly embarrassed and was happy to start working. He was just thinking "Get me out of here."

"When are my break times? Because as much as I love to discuss my entire day working. I do like breaks."

"You'll get a break when you deserve one. Now go and work newbie." And with that you left to attend to other matters.

"Alright Aegon it's only for a while, just prove to your parents you aren't a failure, then you can quit." He muttered to himself

The rest of the day he spent his time restocking, working at the counter, helping customers and staring at his hot and smart boss.

A new painting has just been brought in and you were inspecting it. Aegon decided to join you and see it for himself. He was an artist after all.

"Wow! It's so amazing! What a great painting, just look at those details. And look at the composition, your attention is immediately at the person standing on too, with the flag" Aegon said, he looked at you wanting to see your opinion

" AMAZING?! This painting is horrible! It's supposed to be the French revolution the second day or something based on the supposed day it is signed. But the painting doesn't match with the information that we have. It was supposed to be raining, here it is a clear sky! And the uniforms! Those uniforms weren't used by the French army until 1890. This doesn't add up! It's a fake and it's horrible they are even offering this to us!"

Aegon just stared in awe. "I suppose you're a history major?"he asked.

"Yeah, what's the best place for a history major? A museum of course!"

And thus began a love-hate relationship. Whenever Aegon found something beautiful you just had to come in with the historical facts.

It doesn't matter if it's a painting, a musical or even movies. There is always a tiny thing that is wrong with it.

Soon after meeting you couldn't help but fall for the guy. So the dates that were platonic at first turned romantic very soon.

And yes you still pointed out those annoying little details but he grew to love them. And he loved you.

[j4m3s-b4k3r]

BACK TO THE FUTURE: the animated series

I was working at Disney France when John Hays contacted me, looking for an overseas supervisor for a Saturday Morning cartoon that he'd be directing for Colossal Pictures. I’d done such things before. What interested me about this particular gig was that John wanted the supervisor to firstly work as part of the pre-production team at Colossal. I absolutely loved that idea. So headed to San Francisco to work on the BACK TO THE FUTURE cartoon.

I’d been introduced to John by mutual pal Tony Stacchi while backpacking in the USA a few years earlier. When Colossal diversified from special effects & TV commercials into longer form animation, John remembered me. Thinking my experience in Saturday Morning animation would fit with this new project, that both he & Phil Robinson would direct.. 

The crew had not fully assembled when I arrived in San Francisco. In fact, it was so early in production that even the look of the show had not yet been locked down. Many freelance artists, including Steve Purcell & Dave Fiess, plus Colossal staffers had a crack at design proposals, and I had a go too. 

Colossal had acquired a new building for long form production, but it was still being refit. So, a few of us worked in a cold drafty room at Colossal’s 3rd street building. As the crew expanded, we were housed in a cramped annex in their Custer Street sound stage. Until we finally moved into the facility on 15th street. (That building would eventually host the entire Colossal animation department).

When some designs of mine were selected for the main characters, the plan for me to supervise production in Taiwan was modified. Instead, I became one of two art director/character designers on the series. The mighty John Stevenson being the other. 

There was such a back & forth between Colossal & Universal over the main characters (even the actors got involved) that it was hard to do anything truly unique (although I was happy with how Doc Brown turned out). But we definitely had fun on the secondary character designs. 

Private Stevenson & Private Baker..

John & I both worked on designs for the first episode together, then took it in turns thereafter. I designed characters on even-numbered episodes, and John designed for odd-numbered episodes. We both sat side by side, cracking each other up with sillier & sillier designs. Joyfully competing as the series progressed. (In my opinion, John utterly killed it with his designs for his ROMAN episode..)

Directors John Hays & Phil Robinson really assembled a mighty crew for this series. Dave Gordon & Richard Moore did the BG styling, with Dave doing a lot of great VisDev too. Robin Steele, and future Pixar heavyweights Bud Luckey, & Joe Ranft did the storyboards. Two more future Pixar legends, Bob Pauley & Bill Cone, led much of the layout & location design. Future LucasFilm directors Bosco Ng, & Steward Lee were stalwarts of the art department. Colour styling was by future CNN design director Dewey Reid, and John Pomeroy animated the title sequence! 

After years of living & working in countries where I struggled to learn the language, it was great to finally be in a city where I could actually socialise. I was very lucky to be working with utterly inspiring artists. We often worked late, as we were all excited to be working together.

The pre-pro team was enthusiastic and worked hard, with high hopes for the show. However, by this point in my career I had a pretty good idea of how the Saturday Morning sausage was made. Having worked in the bowels of the sausage factory myself for 10 years by that point. I was hopeful, but also knew that it was anybody’s guess if the show would get the same care at the other end..

A show about a kooky scientist, his young buddy and a time machine had the potential to be absolutely great. The best of Doctor Who and a (family friendly) Rick & Morty. But stories that went to a new time zone each week needed a lot of design. I kept hoping that the scripts would contain less characters & locations. So that we could really refine the model packets. But every script contained tons of NEW characters & locations. Plus new outfits/gear for the main characters too. SIGH..

We'd been promised the 'top floor' animators at Taiwan's Cuckoo's Nest studio, but "Uh oh.." early footage made it clear that we'd gotten the basement crew instead.. "DOH!" Back when I'd supervised outsourcing myself, I learned that if the good artists are already assigned to another project there wasn’t much you could do. So, despite an absolutely stellar design & storyboard team, and early optimism, the show itself came out merely 'OK'. It ran for two seasons on CBS.

It has been one of the counter intuitive aspects of my career that sometimes the fave projects are NOT the best projects.. Despite being merely a footnote in animation history, this was absolutely a linchpin project in my own career, and I have fond memories of it to this day. Many great opportunities that came later were thanks to this show. I met many wonderful artists, who became lifelong friends, who I still work with and/or socialise with, decades later. On this project, I fell in love with San Francisco. And, after living out of a backpack for years, made this kooky town my home. I’d later go on staff at Colossal Pictures, which became my favourite studio I ever worked at. Where I finally escaped from Saturday Morning cartoons, into TV commercials and other more challenging projects.

[cha-faile]

This show!! oh my god this show....

Interviewer: “Were you a fan of the books, familiar with them? Did you have to do an intensive deep dive into them? You can be honest.” Ayla Ruby: “All 15 books.” Brian Shows (s02 vfx producer): “I read all of them 19 times. No, I was not involved with the books prior. Andy has more knowledge on that from the historic perspective. My part when I got into it was to watch season one just prior to starting, and then obviously we get into the scripts, and then we get into the video with the different professionals who really know the books. We were using them as resources right, it’s a great tool. But I wasn’t involved prior.” source

Interviewer: “Again, being in your position, you hear stories about like, oh, guys that like to hide Easter eggs or calls to certain things. Do you ever sneak any stuff in there for you?” Brian Shows: “He [Andy Scrase] does. But he really does pay attention to the books as much as we can. We definitely find things and we add things to it to give people and fans something to look for. So yeah, he definitely does. I’m not sure he’ll say exactly what he puts in but he definitely does.” Interviewer: “We’ll pry it out of him, it’s fine.” Brian Shows: “By all means. Good luck.” source

(interviewer) Ayla Ruby: “It’s funny you said Lanfear because there’s such a passion for that character with the fans. Did you guys anticipate that that people would be-” (executive producer) Marigo Kehoe: “Yes.” Ayla Ruby: “You knew?” Marigo Kehoe: “Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We knew. We knew. And Natasha’s just playing her so brilliantly. I hope you agree. I mean, I just think… And she’s having such a ball playing her, that the enthusiasm is… I just love the way she kind of… It’s kind of she… Which, again, we talked with visual effects earnestly about how she uses the One Power. And she’s so wonderfully dismissive and it’s great.” source

(s02 vfx supervisor) Andy Scrase: "“But I’m really, really lucky in the fact that there’s just so many different creative challenges in the show that it’s certainly not boring. It’s probably one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever worked on.” source

Andy Scrase: “I knew of the books, I had not read the books. However, obviously, I’m working my way through the books. And I think the size and scope of Wheel of Time hit home with me almost instantaneously when I had the audiobook and saw that it ran for something like 26 hours or something like this. So I knew there was obviously going to be a lot of material there, and there certainly is. Robert Jordan goes into a lot of description and it’s a really interesting story to look at, this repeating of ages and things like the Age of Legends and stuff like this.” source

Interviewer: “You said you joined in season two, how does it feel to join a team that was already working together, and try to bring your own flare to something that was already being done? You had to maintain what was done season one, but also…” (vfx producer) Brian Shows: “Yeah, I think Andy will speak to that too, more in-depth, but it’s a very welcoming team and I think that starts with Rafe [Judkins], all the way down. It’s a very collaborative team, so I don’t think there was any issue stepping in and helping out when we got to the ground. So from Rafe, to the producers, to the cast, to all the department heads, it was very easy, easy to jump into. It’s probably the best project I’ve ever worked on, in that type of environment. It really is a good group of people, a quality group of people, which is not so common.” “Well, not just that, but industry-wise, when you have it from the top down where it’s just a really great environment, you just want to keep doing it. So that’s why we did season two and we’re actually doing season three too.” source

Brian Shows: “Honestly, I never actually looked at any feedback in 27 years. Just because typically there’s people who are going to love it and there’s people who are not going to like it. As long as you know that you put your best foot forward with the time and budget that you could possibly do, put out the best quality product, then to me that’s all that really matters. But this time I heard so much about the fans, I was intrigued. So I did watch and read, and I watched some of the shows, and I did read some of the Twitterverse out there, and most of it was pretty good with respect to our part. So it’s good.” Interviewer: “That has to be difficult hearing feedback from people who don’t quite understand what your job is.” Brian Shows: “Some of the feedback is fun because I like how the fans will go down these rabbit holes of, ‘This is what they meant by…’ And they zoom in and you see the smallest thing, and you’re like, ‘Well that had nothing to do with it. But I love the fact that you read into it that far, right, amazing.'” “And then they go through and then they take the blur off to see what was in the background. Like, ‘I saw those boots once before.’ You’re like, ‘Okay, you did.'” source

(so2 vfx supervisor) Andy Scrase: “[Channeling is] such an important and unique magic system to the show. And I had certain challenges where there was a certain look established for season one. And when I joined the show, that was kind of one of my first priorities was the channeling and what I could do to improve that. There’s a big expectation on it. There’s a lot of intricacies. We’re taking threads and weaving them and things like this. So I think that where I am with the channeling is kind of a very good starting point and everyone seems to have reacted quite positively with it, with this idea. Because as I’ve said, I’ve been very literal with the interpretation of threads of power, but the colors, bringing those in was a really important decision I felt because, it’s a way of describing the different elements that they use, especially in weaves.” “It’s very important to the fan base, as I found out from doing my early research, and then just talking about it to Rafe [Judkins], we came to the decision that we could do it. But I think we always needed to be a little bit careful that it didn’t become too overbearing and too saturated. And I think even in the books, it’s described as being tinged with color. So I think there isn’t anything I’d say that I haven’t done before, it’s in the books. But it’s more a case of working what we have now even closer towards how some things are described. And I think the channeling is one of those. I’m really excited about how we go on and develop that and bring more nuances to it and more levels of detail and subtlety. Yeah.” source

It's a good place to work. They read the books. They adjust what they put into the show based on book fan and show fan feedback. ahhhhhhh my heart

[gothamslostboy]

A Small Push

Zsasz x Male Reader

This was meant to be a small paragraph or two on my gotham blog, but I got so carried away

This is the first thing I’ve enjoyed writing so much in a while, so it’s going on the main blog

I didn’t proofread so lmk any typos

WORDS: 2107

YOU ZSASZ

Very little information is known about Victor Zsasz. Sure, everyone in Gotham knows to avoid him. They know he’s a sadistic assassin, loyal to his boss, and that he’s never been serious. The few who’ve survived him only bc the boss called him off report their pleas for life to be met with indifference, which always turns to a unrelated comment about what he’s doing later or asking about what his victim originally planned to do that day.

You see, the terrifying thing about Zsasz isn’t how great he is at his job. What sends chills down Gothamites spines at the mention of his name is how unbothered he is with human life. Where the rest of us see cold blooded murder, Victor sees Tuesday morning’s work. Nothing more important than an office worker doing paper work. Yet, no matter how perplexed a person gets, none of them have tried asking him why.

Until you came along.

It was a new day at work, having started at this diner earlier this week after police officers told you one of Gotham’s several psychos burnt down your last job. Lucky for you it was your day off, not so lucky for your coworker Lucas, but you hadn’t liked him much anyway. Despite it being a Friday, the diner was almost completely empty tonight. You had only had one customer, an older man who had been in a rush to eat. He tipped well, though his rambling about leaving before “Satan’s Strawberry Milkshake Meal” left an odd impression.

Confusion only grew in your mind when your supervisor asked if you could handle being alone for a couple hours, eyes quickly shifting between you and the clock. Before you could even finish nodding your head she pushed past you, almost knocking over the coat hanger by the door as she ran. Now you were a little pissed, not only for her abruptness, but at the fact she had been whispering to herself about “milkshake psychos”.

What was everyone’s deal tonight? Maybe you were missing some information about this side of town, you had only just moved over here for the job, starting your first shift immediately after putting the moving boxes inside your apartment. You’d have to ask the supervisor when she got back.

The bell above the door rang, and suddenly all the pieces clicked together. Victor Zsasz, cruelest killer in Gotham, had walked through your doors and was striding over to the counter. It was too late to pretend you weren’t here, his eyes had registered your paralyzed form quickly and he gave a short wave before sitting down.

Taking a deep breath, your feet moved before your mind and pulled you all the way to the backside of the counter. Now you were less then 5 feet from the man, his stare unnerving, only amplified by his almost innocently placed hands: fingers interlocked in an almost “prayer” position.

Hello welcome to Margret’s Diner, what can- what would you like this evening Sir- er, um, Mr. Vic- Mr. Zsasz? Your hand were shaking as you held your notepad, small damp marks at the end of your desperate fingers. You didn’t dare to make eye contact, not even as you heard his sudden chuckle.

Why are you so stressed? If anyone should be stressed it’s me, just had to flee a scene. And you don’t have to be so formal, it’s Zsasz.

A scene? Did he mean a crime scene- of the murder variety? Your grip tightens on the yellow paper below you, clearing your throat as if it would bring back the air squeezed out from your lungs. He lowers his head to try and enter your eyeline, obviously enjoying the effect his presence has.

I guess you- aha, you have a fair point there Zsasz. You let some pathetic chuckles fill the space in between your words, only continuing on when Victor motions his hand, amused but feeling a smidge of annoyance at your inability to speak. The adrenaline of being so close to a killer kicks in, forcing a wave of dangerous confidence to enter your system. So, Zsasz, your stance straightens and you grin a bit at his surprise when you look him in the eyes. What can I get you? From what others have said today I’m assuming a milkshake is on your menu? You can’t even believe your own words, and it seems neither can the assassin in front of you. He leans back in his chair, arms crossing as he shakes his head and smiles.

Bravo, his hands make the motion of clapping with out any sound before he leans closer, head resting in his hands. You take a tiny step back. When you picture Victor Zsasz: Gotham’s Greatest Assassin, you saw a serious man. One who would have already shot you just for making any sort of assumption about him. The casual man with a sort of relaxed beauty about him seemed almost unable to kill, but you knew better than to trust your unstable taste in men.

I had you pegged for a coward diner man, where did those words come from? What a surprise that is. His eyes are wide, too full of life for a man who just admitted to committing a crime, or at the very least running from one. You relax knowing that the annoyance he carried earlier seems gone, maybe even replaced with the same fascination for you that you had for him.

Don’t know, maybe I’m losing it. So was I right about that milkshake or what? Have my sources lied? If the pounding of your heart hadn’t been reminding you of your awakeness, you wouldn’t believe this was a real moment. Not a coward, but you’ve certainly never been a brave, confident conversationalist, and definitely not with someone so infamous as Victor.

Huh, guess I was wrong. Strawberry milkshake please, no cherry. Aren’t you a tiny bit scared I’ll kill you? He focused on you now, trying to discern any fearful tells you could have. Itching to see if you truly were insane. It’s rare he finds someone who can speak to him, even rarer that person seems to relax and enjoy the conversation. You speak over the rising sound of your heart, and scare yourself a bit by resting a hand on the counter and leaning towards the man dressed in black.

If you killed me, who would make the milkshake? You don’t know where the ingredients are and then you’d have a body in your way! Doesn’t seem ideal for a relaxing milkshake. You let a big grin cover your face when it’s apparent Victor enjoyed your answer, laughing and moving just a bit closer. He lets his head flop to the side, catching in in his right hand while pointing at you with his left.

Oh you are fun. Also new here. I come here every week, surprised no one told you. Kinda well known around here. He jokingly rolls his eyes as he finishes his sentence.

He meant it. You are fun, he’s gonna have to keep you around. No matter the cost. It’s obvious to him this is at least partially a front, your hand is more relaxed, but still shaking. But even still, he doesn’t meet people who joke with him on the day to day. Only other assassins, even then it’s typically not good natured, and they usually end up dead. But you. He doesn’t even know your name but he’s on the edge of his seat waiting for you to reply. You’re cute. You’re funny. And you’re blushing everytime he gets closer, Victor doesn’t think you even noticed that you were.

Zsasz made a promise to himself the day he realized he was different from those around him. The day he realized no one else enjoyed watching the pain of others, no one enjoyed causing it, when he observed quick movements in the opposite direction as he walked towards ppl, the day he pieced together it wasn’t normal to relish in that. Victor Zsasz promised himself that when he found someone he didn’t want to hurt, even a little bit, he wouldn’t let them escape. Lucky day, he found you. Even with his favorite torture methods & his favorite weapons, no scenario in his mind felt right, at least not the unconsentually violent ones. You’re voice fades into his mind. He hadn’t even realized he zoned out.

Zsasz? You ok there? What did you get shot fleeing? are you gonna die on me? Your real concern, hidden behind sarcasm didn’t escape him. How cute. Looking you in the eyes Victor answers.

Nah I’m to good for that. Thinking about you. Wanna make yourself a milkshake too? My treat! He slams his hand on the table, expectingly waiting for you to comply.

Well, it is a slow day, why not! Walking over to the blender, a question nags at you. Hey Zsasz? You take a deep breath again before deciding to commit. Ask ya’ a question?

Sure diner man, if you can do two things. He holds up two fingers, and opens up the jar of maraschino cherries you were struggling with. Numero uno: you can call me Victor now, you’re fun. Numer dos: let me know your name! Diner man is fun an’ all, but it’s unfair you know mine.

Victor pops a cherry in his mouth as he waits for the blender to stop. Never taking his gaze away from his new prize.

Oh shit, sorry. Totally forgot. Um, Y/N, Y/N L/N! And well, I guess I was wondering- I just wanna know- I’m curious how you do it? For the first time since the beginning of Victor’s visit, you’re too nervous to look at him. What if he thought that was too personal? You place a straw in his milkshake and slide it over to him, gasping when his hand wraps around your wrist.

Don’t get all shy on me L/N, we are having so much fun. I do a lot of things, you’re gonna have to be specific. He notices your hesitancy to continue and pulls you into him, almost spilling his milkshake as he whispers in your ear. I don’t bite, well, unless you want me to handsome. He lets you pull back and winks, sipping at his cool drink.

You do the same, hoping it will combat the heat flooding your body, hoping it’s not, but knowing it is very visible on your cheeks. Alrighty Victor, he loves how you say his name, intently locking his eyes on your fidgeting hands. How do you kill? How come the cops never catch you off guard? Why don’t you have to take it seriously?

Huh. No one’s ever asked him that. His new favorite possession is braver than most.

Because I’m good at what I do Y/N. It’s easy, just pull the trigger, push the button, stab, I could do it in my sleep. I don’t take it seriously because how’s that fun? He leans back and smiles a bit, intrigued at how much more terrified you were to ask the question than you are hearing the answer. Infact, it seems you’ve forgotten that people are supposed to be disturbed when they hear this. Y/N L/N seems almost, jealous, that Victor Zsasz can do this.

I could teach you, friend. Makes good money. Definitely more fun then a diner job. He cuts off your protest quickly. You don’t have to do the whole “I’m a good person” act, I can see it in your eyes. I don’t think you were joking when you said your losing it Y/N. You just need some one to push you along, Victor stand up, slowly walking all the way to the other side of the counter until he’s face to face with you. His lips hovering barely over yours. Let me push

You get lost in his dark eyes for a second contemplating. Maybe he’s not so crazy. Life is the crazy thing. People like Lucas were crazy. He always bugged you at your last job, constantly asking you to work overtime. Why should you have to do extra because he had a bad life? Maybe what you had done made sense. I mean the police had believed that the building burning was Jerome Valeska, they hadn’t even noticed the gun shot wound. It wouldn’t be so easy if it was wrong, right? Okay, you connect your lips, closing your eyes and enjoying the moment. You pull back for air, reestablishing eye contact.

Teach me, push me over the edge

[carolingarts]

I just saw a post about how Henry is the "Original" creator of Bendy when canon says Joey and I think it's a fascinating opportunity to discuss Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney so *Let's Go* and if I get any facts wrong please feel free to add or subtract!

History is full of pairings like Henry and Joey (the closest ones obviously being Henry and William Afton - ha. see I got jokes) but the notion of a collaborative creative process that isn't instantly *seen* is something I find interesting. So much work today is dissected and arguments can be brought to social media extremely easily. It's re-defined the creative process.

Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney were the best of friends who worked on Walt's 'Laugh o' grams' before Mickey Mouse. When Walt wanted to move into shorts production and took Ub with him. The two of them went to work for Universal with Walt asking for Ub to come up with the *image* of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit while coming up with his personality.

So that's Oswald - Walt's ideas and Ub's work (His dreams, my effort) which doesn't mean that Oswald and by proxy Mickey Mouse aren't part of Ub Iwerks's work (in fact it's fucking criminal and if you like Bendy and you don't know who Ub Iwerks is go look him up in Henry Stein's name ok.)

Oswald is really interesting because Universal and Pat Powers tricked Walt into a contract that they owned total and complete rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Pat Powers - Walt's contact with Universal - announced that he had also hired away Walt's animators without them - or him - letting him know.

I remember in reading "Walt Disney: An American Original" a great story about how Walt and Ub came up with Mickey while they were still with Universal and managed to convince animators that were still "loyal" to Walt to draw the Mickey cartoon underneath their Oswald sketches while they waited their contract out. So imagine a bunch of dudes literally grabbing animation work and then hiding it when Universal supervisors came around.

From the Link I posted below:

[MARTIN: When the Laugh-O-Gram Studio eventually went bankrupt, Disney took a train out to Hollywood. But not very much time had passed before he was begging Iwerks to come out too. He couldn't make his cartoons' success without him.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARTIN: And that was where, in 1928, Ub Iwerks single-handedly animated "Plane Crazy," the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. After a record 700 drawings a day, Iwerks did in two weeks something that would have taken other animators months. ]

(JFC. If we can assume that Joey asked for Henry to do something like that and Henry did it the man is a fucking *machine*)

The rest of the story is - pretty much what we've gathered from Bendy canon unless the Meatly says otherwise. Ub ended up chafing under Walt's leadership, left the studio for 10 years and produced some pretty cool Looney Tunes cartoons even if his own studio folded. He rejoined the studio doing animation, special effects, and themepark design even winning an award for his work on "The Birds" (yes that birds, the Hitchcock Birds.)

Obviously Bendy is a story, but the real life stories about this kind of stuff are three times as interesting IMHO.

This is the most abridged version of the story *ever* and I'm sure I'm getting some facts wrong but I think both Ub and Walt would be the first people to say "we worked on Mickey together" as well as Oswald. A collaborative effort. Most creative efforts that are put in the spotlight are when things are negative and you have to really make the effort to say that it *was* the product of two people.

So it's *really interesting* that people are arguing over these two fictional characters and that Henry deserves just as much credit as Joey *especially* given that people are asking for Ub Iwerks to get more credit relating to Mickey Mouse.

There was a thread I remember reading on twitter (I wish I could find it) where an animator was talking about how in a Mickey Mouse short they were able to use a picture of Walt Disney for a joke for the first time - and how much of a shock it was. That's because Walt and Mickey are *sacrosanct*. You don't fuck with the image of Walt or the image of Mickey Mouse.

Think about it. TWDC has literally lobbied to *rewrite the copyright codes of the United States of America to protect Mickey Mouse*.

I like to say that if Walt had done what he did in the modern era or if social media had existed in the 30s he would have been like one of the big youtubers. He has an *image* that was carefully crafted - and Ub helped him design it! He was the one who said he should go by Walt Disney.

There's another quote in an American Original where Walt's like "I've kind of ceased to be Walt Disney. Walt Disney is someone else." And that's what successful branding *is*. Disney doesn't eat or yell or scare the hell out of his employees - Walt would bring cans of chili to other countries so he'd have something to eat and scare the hell out of his animators. He and Ub just butted heads then got back together and Ub helped us build themepark rides (think that Henry would give Piedmont a run for his money?)

You also have to keep in mind that even if the books *aren't* canon, Sammy was probably there pretty early and writing "The Lighter side of Hell." You can't forget the contributions of our favorite musical composer.

Any good creative project is a team effort and I'd like to think that Henry animated Bendy, Joey sold him, then they brought in Sammy who added more character. After all - Sammy technically (if they books are canon) mentions Alice and that the cartoons "need a girl."

So basically while Joey is twice as much of a bastard for totally breaking all his employees mentally - we have to give creative credit where it's due. Bendy was drawn by Henry, thought up by Joey, given a voice by Sammy (though I'd like to imagine Joey voiced him.) and then put into a world by the rest of the team.

Anyway, if people are going to have this argument I think it's important to draw from history - namely Ub and Walt and how the two *did work together* and apply it to Mickey Mouse and Oswald as well as our favorite Lil' Devil Darlin'. Again, history is full of partnerships like Henry and Joey and if you aren't careful you're going to forget one in favor of the other.

(I mean at least Walt didn't experiment on his employees outside of maybe asking them to ride rides or watch cartoons before everybody else)... As for Bendy tho.

This link above says it best, "Mickey is the Child of 2 Dads."

So's Bendy!

Joey's just the Disneyland dad and shitty parent and Henry's the one who'd probably be making sure Bendy and the crew would be eating and doing their homework before reading them to sleep.

That said, in reading the link, you should also make yourself *aware* of Ub Iwerks because he doesn't get nearly enough credit and Mickey being a team effort I think - in a world where people only bring attention to the negative aspects of creative partnerships - is important for people to know.

Let me close with my favorite Oswald animatic because it includes both Ub and Walt and Oswald and Mickey and it's inspired by Epic Mickey and it's just great.

[obsessedwhim]

Late Night Shift

"Hey, feels like it's gonna be quiet for the night" You swung in the all-important Security Chair, glancing through the store's cameras and seeing that- once again for the fourth time in the hour and a half you'd been checking- there was none there. Not a soul wandering through the half-filled shelves while they wailed to be skimmed through.

"You wanna go home? You got exams right?" You asked the younger worker who leaned on a nearby wall with phone in hand, his brow cocked at the question, "You gonna use this against me later?" He quickly retorted, not stopping in his relentless screen swiping.

Leaning further into the chair's back you hummed to yourself, "As long as you don't piss me off, probably not"

He took a moment to reflect, and argue with himself but with a final glance at you, he accepted and left with a jean jacket in hand.

Now it was just you and the shop, and the eventual strangers that would later begin trailing in through the door at random times during the night.

You only had around three hours left till the end of your shift so it's not like they'd be overwhelming you at any point. It was a good time to start getting the paperwork and cash lifts out of the way, and then dumping out yesterday's old food, which was an easy task to take care of. So why not do it now?

The current Supervisor, who was doing little supervising, stood with one last glance at the split screen and eyed the back building camera to make sure it was empty of any wildlife, but as you picked up the stuffed trash bag you failed to notice a strange claw mark which scraped itself onto one of the buildings further walls.

"Mami don't know... mhhmhmhm.. dropping it.. poppin it.. mmhmhmhmm, something unhoooly" you mumbled, listening to the local radio which echoed throughout the construction. A hand reaching out to the back fire escape and groaning when said escape refused to open to the outside world, "What the, I was out there earlier.."

Thinking for a moment you released a dramatic sigh before going with plan B, "Front door it is" You switched the bag to your other hand before making your way out the side of your place of work and dropping the trash to the ground.

"I...uh..."

The space behind the shop had been thoroughly beaten up, as if a large creature had thrown an awful tantrum in your short time between leaving the office and now. Bizarrely there were large claw marks littered everywhere- not to mention the dumpster had also been... thrown? It looked like.

"wHAT?!"

A nearby bush ratted unnecessarily and you held a quick Karate move, effective? Probably not, life-saving?... We'll see.

The shrubbery shivered as something grew closer and closer and you began glancing around you for a weapon. Your sweat output increased as you recalled the monstrous marks left behind by.. something, could that be what was coming? What on this Earth could make something like that?

Maybe Bigfoot?

You couldn't take it, reaching for a handy stick on the floor you yelped as something grabbed your shoulder, "Don't! Get Off Me! HEEEL-"

Though you were happy to see it was a human hand covering up your screams, it quickly became a very horrid feeling, and then just like that whoever held you yelled, "Stop Screamin' Already!"

Fearful orbs sharpened in anger as you licked his hand and began slapping the male with your makeshift weapon, "Why! Would! You! Do! That!" You scorned through the slaps, Ichigo was quick to grab the twig and pull it from your hands. "You shouldn't just scream at things movin' close like that, it could just be an animal y'know"

"Do you not see this?" You waved out a hand to the ransacked dumpster, "No mere animal did this!"

"Don't get all weird about this, it could've just been a bear" he shrugged, and you glanced over your shoulder, "Kurakara has bears?"

"Maybe" Ichigo united his shoulders for another unhelpful shrug and glanced to this side, trying to act nonchalant about the whole situation.

"And what're you doing out here anyway? I thought you were getting up early tomorrow and here I find you being as shifty as ever"

"Huh? Shifty, me shifty?" the ginger growled, really regretting showing himself now but damn if you didn't have the ears of an elephant. Why didn't he just pretend to be a cat and be done with it?

"Yeees Ichigo, you. Shifty" you pointed at the male as you both made your way through the sliding doors. A cheery welcome served your return to the workplace as a customer snarkily mentioned how long he'd been standing in front of the till, and so the customer assistant dance continued.

Ichigo had passed off a half-hearted goodbye before leaving to go back from wence he came, one hand held up in a weak attempt of a wave. "I'll see ya later" he sighed as you focused on the customer, only able to slip out your own quick, "Byyye Ichi"

It's safe to say the ginger left with flush cheeks, good thing he was faced the other way and you were dealing with current complaints.