#their shit i think made it hard for them to do relationship stuff whereas mine made me a snart kid and an extremely distrustful adult

[timeisacephalopod]

I love my mom but sometimes, for lack of a better way to put it, she acts like an entitled boomer. It's already a peeve of mine when people bitch about kids and what they're bitching about is kids doing completely normal, expected shit for kids to do but my mom takes it a step further and implies my nieces doing normal kid idiocy is like a personal failing and ok. Look, my youngest niece is rammy as hell this kid is a bowling ball and she's here to win, but she's seven. I expect seven year olds to be Like That and be empty head no thoughts until they break something, that's normal. No sense in getting pissed off at a seven year old for acting exactly the way you'd expect them to, but the thing that extra pisses me off is that instead of just making peace with this and teaching any of my nieces where they went wrong and how to fix it my mom just kind of expects literal children to be able to just get some verbal feedback and figure it out?? Like come on now, I have 2 siblings surely she should know zero kids are equipped to get not very useful feedback and figure out how to apply it to everything??

My oldest niece gets it the worst and every time my mom says shit about personal responsibility I want to roll my eyes so hard they pack their bags and go on a vacation to Hawaii because my niece is 12 (almost 13)- if she's not taking 'personal responsibility' then someone didn't teach her how to or at least not in a way that stuck and worked for her. It's actually the adults personal responsibility to teach a child how to develop emotional maturity, not for a kid to be grated about all the damn time like any 12 year old is equiped to be The Most Emotionally Mature Ever. Problem being my mom is NOT good at taking feedback on parenting so if I say anything I gotta wrap it up nice and sweet and make sure it comes off almost more like offering advice rather than criticism, which irritates me because "if your so pissed off about this behavior why don't you do something about it and NO not the only thing you've been trying for years and complaining doesn't work because fucking obviously why do I have to explain this to someone who surely knows far more about parenting than I would" is a lot easier than my methods that aren't working any better than my mom's.

[b-rainlet]

ecco vs/+/or tetch ;). also if you want more alice vs/+/or jervis

This is so hard, why would you do this to me :D

Only Ecco/Jervis for now, this got way too long omg (Tetchcest will be published in a separate post)

(Also beware the stray Ecco/miah analysis that sneaked in there?? I just have lots of thoughts about Ecco lmao)

(Also also I managed to sneak Jerome in there ajsnsnsnd)

Okay, okay so Ecco vs. Jervis? Ecco wins, 100%.

Like, Ecco does her research. Before she met Jerome, she probably already gathered all the info she could get on his accomplices and how he managed to escape Arkham and the like and I feel like she would've been prepared for Jervis.

(In fact, I believe she only ended up hypnotized in the first place because both her and Miah were probably too sure of themselves? Like, they probably didn't consider that Jerome was planning on being taken so therefore Jervis and Jonathan could've simply waited around Ecco's apartment to follow her to Miah's hideout.

But just between us: The whole place is full of cameras and somehow Ecco opens the door to Jervis and Jonathan? I mean, does Miah have one of those speaker systems so Jervis was able to hypnotize her from the other side of the door? I think there was a little suspension of disbelief involved actually).

Anyway Jervis isn't skilled in hand to hand combat and spends his confrontations with Jim hiding behind hostages or siccing his puppets on him (or even Ecco as his accomplice in S5) so Ecco just needs to get close enough to get a good swing in.

And she'd probably be smart enough to carry/wear some earplugs around Jervis if she's planning on attacking him or if they're on hostile grounds with each other. (Because canonly speaking, I don't think he'd hypnotize her. They like each other too much, there no reason for him to do it -other than his desire to be with her romantically-)

(She may even go out of her way to pretend she's hypnotized to trick him and get close enough to knock him the fuck out or kill him, depending on what's her mission there).

Ecco + Jervis....well, we all know my standpoint there aksnsnsn.

I have rambled about this countless times, but maybe not in public so to make it brief, I'm just saying that Ecco is probably the perfect doll Jervis could ever envision.

Like, his - and Miah's - whole thing is control and Miah has expertly shown that he can control at least one person to the point they would willingly die for him without being outright hypnotized and that's big.

On one hand I think that would incline Jervis to work with Miah in the first place - because he recognizes his talent and Ecco is like this shiny little trophy Miah can show off like 'Look what I accomplished, look how powerful I can be'.

And on the other I feel like how Ecco behaves around Miah and is loyal to him is exactly how Jervis wanted his relationship with Alice to be and once again, Miah didn't hypnotize Ecco.

She's doing all this without being forced and Jervis is fucking fascinated by that. He wants her. He wants her to be willing to die for him. He wants her to belong completely and utterly to him alone so he's the one who can show her off and have someone be loving and loyal without the added empty eyes blankly staring at him, expecting the next orders.

(Also I think he likes to paint himself as a gentleman and romantic, so he'd make it this whole show of how lovely Ecco isn't treated right and he would treat her like a princess obviously, completely disregarding the fact that she's really only valuable to him because Miah treated her so lowly and hurt and abused her because that's what made her so loyal. And if need be, he's gonna pick up some of Miah's methods to keep her in line. Only out of love though).

But I do also think that Jervis would see pre-gas and bullet Ecco as a powerful asset to the league and we have seen them get along greatly so if Ecco had more autonomy, he'd definitely treat her like an equal (like he treats Jerome or Jonathan) and he definitely values how she's similar to Jerome but that's a whole other rant.

(Also....he's hot. She's hot. I like them both. Why not like them while they smooch and Jervis gets handsy enough Ecco has to swat his hands away).

One more rambly thing while I'm at it tho:

I think it's very important for Miah and his influence within Gotham to have Ecco at his side.

I mean, not only does she do everything, from recruiting the Maniax to turning Jeremiah into a godlike figure, a messiah to be worshipped, to working with his allies and fighting his enemies, no, she's also his only 'proof' of his power so to say.

I mean, by the time S5 rolls around he does have a reputation among the citizens of Gotham but the villains? I think it's important for him to have Ecco around so he can show off how he can be cunning enough to get people on his side + as a way of threatening them by showing them how cruel he can be (which can range from stuff like using Ecco as his foot rest to outright slapping/choking her in front of people and have her thanking him for it).

If he doesn't have Ecco anymore, not only does he lose his right hand woman, he pretty much loses all his connection to his followers and the villains he worked with and it's gonna be a blow to his status as feared villain because the one who's actually a threat is gone, plus he can't use her to seem more imposing by bossing her around.

Someone has made the argument before that Miah's shit at captivating people through his words and persona (since Ecco draws them in and the moment he's alone with the maniax he loses them and has to burn them alive before they turn on him)-

-*cough cough* Jerome/Ecco parallels *cough cough*-

-so I think it's safe to say that killing her off may have been one of the stupidest decisions he's ever made. And not just because I like her.

He's never gonna find somebody he can manipulate to that point again because unless he plays the long con and really dedicates himself to it (which I think he's too impatient to do after the gas, he freely rolls his eyes at Ecco when he's annoyed with her, I don't think he's patient enough to play the dotting and loving partner for months to get his new Harley to the point she'd shoot herself for him), no one's gonna fall for him.

Jerome? Jerome could easily aquire a Harley and he'd just as easily keep her (mostly because he'd see her as a powerful asset rather than a mindless bimbo to worship him) but Miah? Nah.

He may have the role of helpless victim down but now that he's known as a villain it's gonna be harder to pull off and lure somebody in.

His safest bet would be kidnapping a kid tbh, -not that I ever thought about him kidnapping Barbara Lee, noooo-

Anyways, other fish in the sea? Miah can be lucky the villains still work with him without Ecco present as a mediator, finding a new girl to replace her is gonna be impossible.

(And ohhhh, the deliciousness of a fic where Miah realizes just that but still alive Ecco - because she's always alive, safe for two wips of mine - doesn't wanna go back to him, yeeeeesssss).

Ecco or Jervis?

Well, I don't think anyone's gonna be surprised when I go with Ecco here :D

I mean, I love Jervis and I love the storyline of Alice/Jervis and how neatly it ties into S3 but Ecco is my sweetheart and my baby and can possibly only be topped by Jerome.

-quite literally-

Because while I adore Ecco, canonly speaking there's not much there, I just decided I wanted it to be that deep whereas Jerome has a lot of canon interactions with people and a super interesting storyline, plus a complex familial situation and just...like, not to bash on Miah but he has the perfect set up to be the Joker because he's been around since S1 and him and Bruce have an actual relationship that evolves over time and he has allies he actually gets along with and he's had at least one scene with most of the mains and backstory with most of the mains and it's just so good.

Like....if they'd introduced Ecco independently from Miah just to give Jerome a Harley, I think that would've actually been my dream come true.

(But they couldn't give him a Harley because apparently their definition of Joker/Harley is 'abusive' and it would've been super ooc to suddenly have Jerome run around choking girls into submissions and shooting them so they're not better than him when he's canonly into women who could kick his ass and values them as potential allies (Bridget)).

[yikesharringrove]

Changing the theme a bit, since I saw you dont hate Jonathan thank goddd, maybe Jonathan having to ask Steve and Billy for tips because he's aro or ace? Or something he knows Lonnie wouldve actually killed him for, which Billy gets and Steve is fully willing to help soft Jonathon be a THING and they are just his gay mentors and mayhaps. Nancy just doesnt get it and it gets messy and Will just stands up for his brother in full anger and slams the door in her face and hugs jon so tight he falls

Steve is sex-positive ace, Billy is sex-repulsed, and Jon is greyace bc I’ve gotten so many messages about how many people were affected positively by showing ace diversity in that one drabble I wrote, so we’re keeping this goin’ because you’re ALL VALID. 😤

-

Jonathan had been crashing on their couch for a week and a half and has yet to say anything about the situation more than Nancy and I had a fight.

Billy and Steve didn’t know what the fuck to do about it. Jonathan was obviously fucking heartbroken over whatever the fight had been about, but they didn’t wanna pry.

“Thank you guys for taking me in. I’m sorry, I’ve probably been cramping your style.” Steve just shook his head, serving three plates of eggs and toast.

“There’s not a lot of style going on in this apartment for you to cramp.” Steve smiled at him as he placed the plates on the table. Jonathan gave him an odd look.

“What do you, what do you mean?”

“We don’t really fuck.” Billy was always the blunt one. Jonathan’s fork clattered to the table.

“You don’t, why not?”

“Neither of us are really into it.” Jonathan looked like he could fucking cry.

“Me neither. That’s what the fight was. Nancy kept asking why we don’t have sex, and if I stopped loving her, and I do! I love her so much, but I just, sometimes I feel that way about her, but I usually don’t, and I’m so fucking confused.” Steve reached out, placing a firm hand on Jonathan’s arm.

“Jon, it’s okay. I mean, I don’t think we’ve had sex in like, a year?” Billy nodded.

“It was before we actually talked about how we both felt about it.”

“And is that-” Jonathan trailed off, but they got it. Is that like me.

��I don’t mind sex. If I’m with someone who wants to have it, I can be cool with that, but I don’t always get off, and it’s more about making the other person feel good, or using it as another way to be like, intimate. But I don’t really think about it, and I can definitely go without.”

“I actively don’t like fucking. I kinda think sex is, is fucking gross. I mean, you do you and all that, but like, every time I had sex it just, it made me feel gross.” He pulled a face.

“I just, I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel for her, honestly.” Jonathan ran a hand down his face. “Sometimes, sometimes it just feels like a fucking chore. And she just, she kinda confronted me about it, and I probably could’ve worded it better, but she got so angry, and hurt, and we just, we decided to take some time apart.” He pushed the eggs around his plate. “And there are some situations that I just, I want it with her so badly, but most, most of the time I just, I just want to be with her, like just spend time with her. And she, she’s never been very good at being sensitive about things, or, or, sympathetic, and she just, she made me feel fucking broken. Like there was something wrong with me.”

“First of all, fuck her for making you feel like that.” Billy had one eyebrow raised.

“Bill-”

“No. Jonathan, you are not broken, and it sucks she made you feel that way. If she can’t be in a relationship that respects your boundaries, then she is not the one.”

Steve sighed.

“Jon, Bill’s right. A relationship should be safe. She should be more mindful of your boundaries and feelings, and should not be making you feel bad for those things. I’m not saying you should like, dump her-”

“I am.” Steve batted a hand at Billy.

“-but, if you have an open conversation with her, and nothing changes, then you are always welcome here.” Steve squeezed his arm again.

-

The talk with Nancy had been bad.

She had taken everything really personally, said that Jonathan needed to sort out his priorities and to let her know when he’s attracted to her again.

And he tried, he tried so hard to explain the way he felt, that it all comes and goes like the fucking tide, but she had put her foot down.

So he showed up back to Billy and Steve’s apartment with two more suitcases and tears in his eyes.

“I just, I know I can fake it when I need to, I don’t know why I didn’t.”

“Because forcing yourself to do shit like that sucks. Fuck Nancy for being a bitch. Figure yourself out, and then find someone who respects your boundaries.”

Billy was pacing in front of the sofa, talking sharply, pointing at Jonathan a lot. Steve had one arm over his shoulders.

“You deserve respect, Jon. And you deserve to feel safe and happy in a relationship.”.

-

He couldn’t sleep that first night.

The fight was circling in his head, over and over and over and over-

He heard the bedroom door open, and someone creep out through the living room and into the kitchen.

He looked over the back of the couch, saw a bleary eyed Steve filling a glass of water for himself, wearing one of Billy’s faded band shirts, and a pair of panties.

Jonathan laid back down before Steve could see him looking.

-

The next morning, he found himself staring at Steve.

He had put shorts on, and even a chunky cardigan while he made breakfast, but Jonathan knew.

“Can I, can I talk to you about something?” Steve smiled brightly at him. “I, um, I noticed you coming out here last night.” Steve just nodded, a look of recognition in his eyes.

“You wondering about panties?”

“Um, yeah.” Steve shrugged. “I just like ‘em. And it’s not like, a sexual thing. Sometimes they make me feel sexy, but that’s not what it’s about. I just like them. Have a lot of women’s thing.”

“What about them do you like?” Steve shrugged again.

“It’s hard to describe. I’ve never felt like, super masculine. Like, big macho tough guy, I wanna hunt and never talk about my feelings.” Steve put on a stupid-sounding deep voice for his macho man. “And I mean, not all men are like that, but that’s kind of how you’re expected to be. And women are expected to be pretty and delicate, and I’ve always related to that more. Women’s clothes help me feel that way.”

“I’ve, um, I’ve always felt that too. Not necessarily the kinda, pretty and delicate part, but the, not feeling connected to masculinity and like, what’s expected from you.” Steve set down a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Jonathan, putting one down for himself as well, and one in Billy’s empty space.

“Hold that thought, I’m gonna grab Billy. He doesn’t like it when I yell for him.” Steve patted him on the arm, and was gone for a few minutes before he returned with Billy in tow.  “Okay, Jonathan. Please continue.”

“Well, not much to say. I feel like my dad kinda always shoved that like, macho man shit on me. Would take me hunting and stuff and I just never liked it.”

“Jesus, mine did that shit too. Not with hunting, but he was all about men having their place, and women having their place.” Billy took an aggressive bite of his bacon.

“Mine was too! I got sad once when I shot a rabbit, and he called me a pussy for like, a week.”

“When my dad was layin’ into me, if he ever saw my cry, it would just get that much worse.” They were nodding at one another, trading shitty dad stories back and forth. “He would like, get mad if I helped my mom cook and shit, too.”

“God, it’s like we had the fuckin’ same dad.” Billy raised his mug at Jonathan. “It’s hard to break outta that shit, even though he’s not in your life, anymore.”

“I think so, too. I haven;t seen him in years, but every time I do something he would’ve thought was too soft, I can still hear him in my head. And you know, that’s one of the things I like about Nancy. She’s really hard, and tough, and never expected me to be that way.” And he knows that in the end, Nancy was bad news for him, not being able to love and accept him, but that aspect of their relationship was so nice, so easy.

“There doesn’t always have to be both. I mean, Steve’s more outwardly soft, but we’re both real mushy at our cores. There doesn’t have to be a big tough one and a sweet soft one. Sometimes you have elements of both and you make it work.”

“You just have to find the balance within yourself, I think. And learn to embrace the parts of you that are soft and the parts that are hard.” Jonathan was nodding vigorously at Steve. “And it’s always different. I love getting to feel soft and pretty in a dress or something, whereas Billy finds ways to be soft by taking care of things, like me and all the plants.”

“Do you think, do you think you could help me? Find that, I mean.”

“Of course! Just think of the things you already feel, things that feel right when you do them, and that’s a good starting point. And maybe that’s your photography, and maybe it’s something else.”

So they let Jonathan experiment with things to find his softness.

He would help Billy tend to the fucking garden they had on the balcony, or bake with Steve. He took a million pictures, and Steve was thriving under the camera, would put on make up and something pretty and pose around the apartment.

It was just nice.

Getting to live with these two, and train himself not to be ashamed, it was nice.

Will would come and visit quite often, and he and Jonathan spent a wonderful Saturday evening coming out to each other, and validating the ever loving shit out of one another.

Billy and Steve came home to the two brothers hugging one another on the couch and trying to hold back tears.

Steve had inserted himself into the hug while Billy patted each one of them on the head and started making dinner.

But he figured of course this would happen.

His perfect little cocoon would crumble apart at some point.

Will had come over, and Steve and Billy had gone out to dinner together, leaving the two of them to order pizza and have a movie night.

It was great, hanging out with his brother like when they were little, not a fucking care in the world.

There was a knock at the door.

“Jon, it’s me. It’s Nancy. Can we talk” Jonathan’s heart stuttered to a halt in his chest.

Will was staring at the door like maybe he could set it on fire if he glared hard enough.

Jonathan sighed, opening the door to face his fate.

“Are you seriously still mad at me?”

“Yes.” She huffed.

“C’mon. Come back home.”

“Nancy, I can’t. Not if you’re not going to respect me.”

“We were fine. I don’t know why we can’t just go back to the way we were-”

“Because I was forcing myself to do things I was uncomfortable with just to make you happy.”

“Relationships are compromise, Jonathan.”

“I know that, but when I brought up to you what wasn’t working, you refused to listen. I was the only one forfeiting my boundaries and comfort in that relationship, and I deserve more.” She rolled her eyes.

“Jesus Christ, Jonathan, this is-” Will was shoving Jonathan back, stepping between the two.

“Nancy, he’s done talking to you about this. Unless you can respect that he doesn’t always feel that way, then move the fuck on.” He slammed the door right in her face. “You don’t need her.”

Jonathan was gobsmacked. Will had never spoken to anyone like that, at least not that Jonathan’s every seen.

“Why did you...?” He trailed off, still staring at the door.

“She was pissing me off. You’re right. You compromised everything in that relationship and she couldn’t even give you the bare minimum.”

Jonathan swept Will up, hugging him as tight as he possibly could.

“Thank you.”

“You deserve better than her.”

“Yeah, I do.”

[bondsmagii]

Thots on virgos

I’m gonna go one further and give you my thoughts on all the signs just so we’re not stuck doing this until I’ve made my way through the entire zodiac. my opinions are final, you may feel free to fight me but you will not win, and if any of you clowns give me a sign that’s technically a sign but not part of the common run-of-the-mill twelve I will find you and turn your kneecaps into shallow bowls for my hummus dip.

ARIES: top notch, get on very well with Aries, married to one. love the way that they’re always down to get involved with my stupid schemes. appreciate the attitude, love the challenge of being friends with an Aries, and I can appreciate that they’re good with competition. also their personalities are usually strong enough to keep up with mine which has been noted to be extremely forceful lol.

TAURUS: upon first glance never thought I’d get on with a Taurus because I thought they would be too chill, but outside of my current relationship my two most successful relationships were with a Taurus. love how dependable they are, love how they can stay calm even when I’m bouncing off the walls, and love how they always have some kind of creativity in them that’s very often not what you would expect.

GEMINI: honestly don’t understand why these guys get so much shit? I’ve always gotten on with Geminis but then again I’m a drama loving bastard so maybe I just don’t notice if the various accusations are true/if they’re a bad thing lol. I appreciate how curious Geminis can be and it’s a trait I’ve noticed in all my Gemini friends -- absolutely insatiable curiosity, which is a trait I respect. they’ve also been some of the kindest people I’ve known, with impeccable patience.

CANCER: I haven’t known many Cancers and all of them have been batshit insane, but they’ve also been a lot of fun and I’ve loved talking to them. they always seem to have new ideas to bring to the table and while they’re sometimes a little too emotional for me I find it’s not in the weird way? I don’t know, they’re very in tune and unapologetic and bounce from one thing to the next quickly and I find that exciting.

LEO: love the drama. love the flair. love the aesthetics. a lot of people give Leo shit for being arrogant and they are but I love it. I can appreciate a bit of arrogance, so long as the person can back it up. I like the self-confidence of Leos, whether it be genuine or a fake it til you make it kind of deal. also a lot of the Leos I’ve seen have been super hot, too, so good for you guys.

VIRGO: I haven’t known many Virgos and the ones I’ve known have been... interesting. kind of aloof, kind of weird, but not in the bad way. sometimes I’ve been frustrated because I’ve found they like to think deeply into things and analyse and stuff and I don’t often have time for that, but I can appreciate the insight this gives them. it’s practical, and I often fail at being practical, so this is a nice balance.

LIBRA: my best friend in high school was a Libra and she was great. absolute social butterfly that dragged me on numerous adventures. I can appreciate the Libra talent of generally getting people to like them or to at least tolerate them, because that opens a lot of doors that can be used for evil. sometimes want to throttle the Libras I’ve known for always wanting to hear both sides of a story whereas I just want to commit cold hard murder, but nobody’s perfect.

SCORPIO: my worst relationship was with a Scorpio but he was a fucking loser so I’m not gonna judge all Scorpios by his immensely disappointing standards. love the sexiness of the Scorpios I’ve known, and love how they align nicely with me on the evil scale. pretty kick-ass, would rather have one as my friend than my enemy, and most Scorpios I’ve known have had a brilliant fashion sense even if it’s a bit eccentric.

SAGITTARIUS: I don’t think I’ve ever met a Sagittarius. not entirely sure they even exist. I know like one single person who might be one and they were pretty cool. funny, very weird, but always brought something fresh and funky to the table. couldn’t spell “Sagittarius” which makes me think they were definitely one. this seems like a Sagittarius thing to do.

CAPRICORN: the Capricorns I know have always kind of scared me because they’ve been so fucking focused and I just do not know how to do that. like. they were the kind of people who let absolutely nothing stand in their way and I’m just... wow. I am technically a cusp with this sign and if astrology is true I can thank this sign for my ability to get anything done in my life ever because I guess a bit of that rubbed off on me. none of the seriousness did thought. I’m too pretty.

AQUARIUS: sexiest sign. I am also one myself. in theory Aquarius is the coolest sign to be because we’re fun and funky and weird and also evil. we’re stubborn and uncompromising and we have brilliant ideas. I have to say of all the signs I hate Aquarians the most though. like. my one singular piece of proof for there being any truth in astrology is the fact that I have never, ever gotten on with another Aquarius. if we remain acquaintances, that’s fine. anything closer than than and we will have a disastrous falling out that usually involves revenge campaigns or the law. all of the worst enemies I have are Aquarians, including my own mother. from one Aquarius to another, fuck you.

PISCES: from my experience? they’re just Aquarians I can get along with. all the fun stuff in terms of being creative and down to scheme and kind of crazy and with great ideas of their own, but not of the whole being a twisted fucking cycle path thing. all the Pisces I’ve known have been super creative and a lot of fun, but also just like. nice people. also all the Pisces people I’ve known have had a very bright dress style like is that just something youse do? walk around looking like a highlighter factory exploded on a Gucci runway?

anyway if you don’t like this sorry this is just my personal experience with the exception of Aquarius. you’re just mad because you know I’m right.

[mayabruhbruh]

Stranger Things 4 Analysis and Theory

I don’t know if anyone else has done posts on this stuff yet (it’s really likely, but i’d not want to take the credit if i’m not the only one who’s thought of this)

I know @kaypeace21 has made tons of posts on the s4 movies from Video Store Friday, and many others have theories and analyses, but back in July I took it upon myself to research more into the very last few scenes of s3. Specifically the three months later time stamp, where Steve and Robin are in search for a new job.

My main focus was the four movies that they mentioned for Keith at the counter. “Animal House”, “The Hidden Fortress”, “Children Of Paradise”, and “The Apartment”.

(reminder that if you read this, it could be spoilers for the final cut of the actual show if i end up being correct about some of this, so read at your own risk)

My first theory, which I’ve already discussed in a separate reblog, is about The Hellfire Club. But i’ll say it here too.

Basically,

(sorry for the sucky quality)

Animal House is about two awkward freshmen going into college and joining a fraternity of rejects. It matches Mike, Dustin and the Hellfire Club perfectly! Personally, my lowkey theory is that they’re going to have to go though an entirety of initiation activities (possibly drugs too, if what we’ve heard is correct) and Lucas and Max will be in their own storylines up until the supernatural threat brings them back together again. This could be wayy off, but still its my idea.

As for Max and Lucas...

I’m not sure about the entirety of the plot of this movie, but the last line sounds a lot like something that would happen between Lumax. Lucas is a basketball jock now, I think that’s crystal clear now seeing from the Pep Rally poster, and how he’s always been the one in the group to be able to mask his nerdy side. For Dustin and Mike, I know it’s much harder for them. Anyways, Max, I’m pretty positive by now, is going to be extremely distant and defensive from everyone just like she was in the beginning of s2, since she just had a big change happening in her life. It’s the same now, except with the grief and loss of Billy. My guess, from the hints of this movie and other stuff, is that Lucas is going to come face to face with his reputation as a popular kid, and his love for Max. Like the summary says, he must decide between the advancement of his career or the girl that he loves. Real hard hitting stuff.

Onto the next one. MIKE WHEELER. (or will byers)

I watched an analysis video on this movie, because I haven’t seen it yet, but again the very last line is what I’d like to focus on.

My. Jaw. Dropped.

I’ve read many analyses of Mike Wheeler being gay (courtesy of @kaypeace21 @hawkinsschoolcounselor and MANY others), but I dunno, I was always just so skeptical no matter how much it made sense. But when I saw this WHAT THE HELL?!?’);/&? It’s stupid of me to not have believed it sooner, but I hope this is the movie that foreshadows Mike’s storyline this season. I’m assuming Mike will have to “prove his expertise in battle”, or perhaps prove he can go through with all of the initiation shit for The Hellfire Club, while hiding his growing revelation that he might be gay/bisexual.

BUT a possibly more likely scenario would be that this movie connects with Will Byers’ storyline this season instead. Perhaps the hardships of a new school and a new town has Will shaken up, and he also has his sexuality awakening that he has to hide from new people. I say that it’s more likely for him, because Will has always been more heavily queer-coded (not exactly heavier, but just extremely much more apparent and obvious opposed to Mikes queercoded subtext that we really had to dig for).

I also didn’t mention this in my reblog from earlier, but I want to address my opinions on the apparent cheerleader that meets Mike and befriends one another. One of my friends on twitter said Chrissy (her name, or so we think lmao) might be a key component to Mike being able to discover and come to terms with his sexuality. But then again, a different friend of mine thinks that the amount of content were getting is oddly suspicious, and that the Duffers are feeding us all the wrong information to lead us to all the wrong conclusions. But, at this point, why not both. At the moment, everyone thinks that Chrissy is Mikes new love interest, but what if she really isn’t, and they’re pulling a Robin on us (i call it a robin because it was technically straight-baiting in s3 LMFAO). I’m not saying that she might be a lesbian (although 👀 it says on her character info that she’s 18 (robins got some game to work with now ahaha)) but it could be a straight-bait up until she helps Mike realize his sexuality (i would have said realizes his love for Will😍😍 but recently ive been trying not to input byler into everything i fucking say, so theres how that’s going). Anyways. Last movie!

Now, I’m currently not super concrete on this one to be completely honest. I have a few in mind...

Okay, so don’t attack me, but this could possibly be a mileven storyline. It sort of fits. They have an undeniable connection, but “their fortunes shift considerably and they’re pushed apart” aka the misfortune of the mindflayer and hawkins not being safe for them leads them to moving away and literally being pushed apart. I don’t know about the pursuing other relationships, but we still have no idea what’s going on with El Hopper tbh, i havent a single clue what’s going to be happening with her storyline atm. But either way, that could be it.

ORRRR the MUCH more likely scenario, Jancy :)

Bloggers on here have already predicted that they wouldn’t be endgame, and I was only slightly skeptical because although their relationship was built on shared trauma, a very unstable foundation to have for a ship tbh, i still hung onto the fact that they cared for eachother a lot :,( But the entirety of their season 3 bickering and this summary kind of sealed the deal.

Just like Mike and El, Nancy and Jonathan have been pushed apart aswell. It was already seen in season three that they’d be better of leading separate lives, aka Jonathan was doing fine at the internship, whereas Nancy could have been somewhere better for herself. I doubt they broke up at the end of season 3, but there’s bound to be new relationships for them seperately. It sucks bc I love Jancy, but s3 showed how badly they snap at one another when there isn’t a life threatening event at hand. Jopper on the other hand, I thought their bickering was adorable, but i’m getting off track, sorry lmfaoo.

Once again, I probably am not the first to talk about these, but jsyk if you steal this from me specifically i will track you down and end you. I’ve been speculating about these things since April and July, which is pretty weak tbh, but that was when i had nothing better to do LMFAO. i hope i got at least something right, but i haven’t seen many of the video store friday’s movies, which sucks bc those could really help. But whatever.

(i wrote this really late at night, and it’s poorly edited bc my eyesight sucks lmfao, but i hope you get what i mean)

And that’s it! I hope you like it, or had some sort of impact from it idk, just sharing my thoughts tbh. Anygays, if you have any questions/added ideas/thoughts of any kind, my inbox is always here, you can private message me, and comment if you want!! i love y’all sm lmfao, so excited for the upcoming content were about to get soon, byee!

[astrarche-x]

Six of Crows (+ Crooked Kingdom)

If somebody gave a penny for my thoughts on books, I’d have zero pennies, but here are my thoughts anyway!

It’s not a very spoiler-heavy note.

I know I’m super late to the party, but it’s only a month left to read the book before the show is released and that was a motivation to finally read it. (That and the fact that I have 3 written assignments due the end of the week). 

- I haven’t read the Grisha trilogy, but Six of Crows was perfectly understandable without it, so that’s an asset. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about the war in Ravka, but generally it was ok.

- Found family in a juvenile delinquents gang is one of my favorite tropes in fiction and this book is all about that, so I was absolutely delighted. I liked how it wasn’t very obviously sugar-coated - obviously it wasn’t horribly realistic (I guess), but it avoided the Robin Hood or “criminal with a heart of gold” trope and that was nice, because it would reek of moralism.

- I liked the descriptions of the architecture etc. and could almost feel myself walking through the streets of Ketterdam. But the descriptions of Fjerda were very inconsistent to me in regard to the rest of the novel - I kinda felt like I was thrown from historical fiction to sci-fi (all that laboratory stuff) and that was weird.

- The action was very well-paced - without unneccessary delays and plot detours, but at the same time giving the characters and the reader time to breathe and bond. The only aspect I wasn’t satisfied with was the ending - it was too easy to predict the plot twist and it drained away the suspense and the sense of high stakes. And while some could say that it means that the writer set it up well, I think it would be better if it was unexpected, especially given that it’s not the kind of plot twist that changes the reader’s perception of the whole book, it just marked the turn in the action.

- post-CK addition: in Crooked Kingdom I felt that the action was moving a lot faster and left me quite exhausted at times. The moments to catch a breath were a bit too rare, but at least exuisite every time.

- While I’m rather glad that the “multiple POV” trend is dying, it was pulled off well in “Six of Crows”, because the narrative was in 3rd person. That allowed readers to switch rather effortlessly between the chapters while still directing their focus to a particular character.

- the characters, aka the best thing in this book: they are all lovable in their own ways and honestly I can’t decide who’s my favourite (jk jk it’s Matthias and Inej). I think that the number of characters is just right, not too big and confusing, but allowing for diversity in narratives. I only had an impression that characterization of Wylan was dropped halfway through the book and he’s been a plot device for solving technical problems most of the time, which is kinda sad. Also his change in personality was a bit unexpected. 

- post-CK addition: ok, Wylan got his POV & his development, but I still feel like 75% of his character are family problems. I hope that maybe a reread in a few months will make me appreciate him more. 

- Nina and Matthias: my absolutely favourite subplot (and ship in this book). It’s been a while since I’ve read so well executed enemies to lovers. The emotional and sexual tension between them! The desire to love vs the memory of past wrongdoings! The wish to trust and be vulnerable again vs the fear of betrayal! Them disagreeing on fundamental issues but finding points of mutual understanding nevertheless! Them caring for each other more than they care about their causes, even though the causes are everything! The banter! I just... can’t. Their story is such a good blend of cuteness and dark themes. I found it extremely interesting when the first chapter from Matthias’ POV showed how he was kinda deranged by his stay in prison and his desire for revenge and for love that were knit together so thight. Whereas he more or less regained his sanity as the book progressed (I wish it was more developed) he was still very much not in the best mental state and that made him a wild card, so the plot twists involving him were convincing. I also think that his disillusionment with his religious militia was quite well-written (as for an adventure novel, that is, where it was not the main plot). I liked how Matthias was trying to play 4D chess with the rest of the crew with his schemes and Nina joined him in part. Also the scene when the Crows try to get back to their ship in Fjerda and Nina gets shot, but heals herself so fast... Damn, that was some king shit. I love their dynamic, even though it’s the epitome of problematic(tm) by tumblr, but oh well, I’m all in for eros/thanatos motives and some good chemistry. One thing I feel their relationship lacked were the sex scenes - this is probably due to the book being technically YA (and that’s another reason why writing it for a bit older audiences would be ok), but both Nina and Matthias are so horny for each other that I find it impossible that they’ve never had sex. 

- post-CK addition: my heart is broken but Matthias’ character arc? Pure gold. I was so proud when he started questioning his religious beliefs and tried to reconcile them with his love for Nina. Love one redempted magic fascist. Also poor Nina... I still kinda don’t understand why their subplot had to end like this - and it’s really tempting me to read King of Scars.

- Inej’s moral/religious dilemmas were so good and I identified with them a lot (not that I’ve killed someone, but still). Also I found her characterization to be top notch, because she clearly isn’t an extrovert, but is not reduced to “i have no social skills” stereotype. I love her. 

- Kaz was a briliant character and his plans were so well written... But I have one issue with them: especially in Crooked Kingdom, when there’s a plot twist, it’s usually revealed to be just another layer of Kaz’s plan. When does he have the time to set it all up? I know he barely sleeps, but still, it feels like it kinda gets out of nowhere. But generally I’m all for scheming, ass-kicking gang boss. I also like the fact that he was still a very skilled fighter despite his disability, which allowed the author to escape the “disabled body means he can only use his mind” trope (which is justified sometimes, but still). And his trauma was so well-written... Honestly, the first full flashback with Kaz clutching to Jordie’s decaying body was one of the two most disturbing scenes in the novel (the other being Kaz ripping Oomen’s eye off) and I kinda wasn’t prepared for this. On the other hand, the bathroom scene in Crooked Kingdom with Inej? It was so beautiful, so well-crafted, so intimate; I felt the world stand still for a while. 

- me looking at Jesper: adhd

 I found him very relatable in terms of escaping his problems and felt sorry for his gambling addiction. But I wish his struggle over his powers was more expanded - he is shown being in two minds about this, but we as readers don’t really get full insight into the pros & cons of both option. But maybe it’s just the character’s specific way of going more by gut feeling and I’m being picky.

- a pet peeve of mine: if the author was really going so hard for the tzarist Russia vibe for Ravka, why did she name her character “Zoya Nazyalensky” and not “Zoya NazyalenskA” or, even better, “NazyalenskAYA” as it should be? C’mon, names ending in -sky have their female counterparts and it’s not hard to understand. 

- what was a bit of obstacle to immerse myself fully in the Six of Crows was the fact that the whole novel was so well-planned and logical that I sometimes felt like watching the author’s creative process unveil - and while it would be helpful if I was looking for writing tips, I was there to have good fun and forget about my assignments, so it kinda got in the way. It was like “ok, I want them to get inside the prison... but how they’re going to do it? Ha, I know: the jailers’ carriage. Next: what happens next in prisons? Oh right, they will be searched and... probably put in new clothes. So no clothing and no weapons means it’s time for Jesper’s big reveal. This is where I pepper in his crush on Kaz. I can cross this off the list of his character development now”. The Crooked Kingdom was better in this aspect - as the characters’ subplots were more separated and the chronology was going in loops (character A’s POV ends with all people parting ways --> character B’s chapter describes their mission --> character C’s chapter starts again at the end of character A’s POV), it was more natural and captivating read. 

- Kuwei was... very forgettable. I actually for most of the time totally forgot he was a character. I know he wasn’t a main character, but I feel like I know more about Specht and Rotty, some totally secondary gang members, than him. 

[babyybitchhh]

Thotty Thursday: Part One

There ain’t no goddamn way I could start something like this and not come out swinging with the top dog. The heavy weight champ. My personal creme de la creme. The character who started it all and made me what I am today. That’s right, I blame all this thotty shit on this demon man right here.

“Holy blast from the past, Batman!” You cry out in dismay. “What is this, some 80’s shit!?”

I’ll have you know Yu Yu Hakusho is all 90’s, baby. Just like me. 😤

So let me tell y’all a little bit about my number one husbando. He’s perfect, for starters. Like, I’d challenge you to name one thing Hiei ever did wrong, ever.

You know what, never mind. Let’s not get into that right now.

Okay, I admit my dude has a bit of a harried past and he’s not ever always the nicest but that gives him depth. Range. He CAN go deep and he WILL.

If you catch my drift 👀

So when this bite sized snack was first introduced in the narrative he was all bad. Like bad bad. At just a glance, there was nothing good or redeeming about him and it wasn’t until later that we find out he’s something of a sympathetic antihero.

His moral alliances didn’t matter to eleven year old me one bit tho, this shit had me straight up fantasizing about becoming a ruthless thief and running off to the demon world with the man who literally knocked me on my ass

And when I say literally I don’t mean figurative, haha ironic literally. I mean literally literally

PHEW please believe that I would betray all y’all for even a single night with Hiei, on god 😩

Did i mention he’s a demon yet?

Yeah, in addition to having the super amazing ability to control fire at will, he also has a very ... eye catching transformation. 👁👁

Now, I’ve seen even some die hard fangirls reject this form but it really doesn’t bother me. I actually rather like that particular shade of green and I don’t think it detracts from his good looks - if anything it just adds another layer to the evil mysterious bad boy vibe he’s got going on.

You think I wouldn’t throw my pussy in a circle for him just because he’s covered in eyeballs??

Hah

Think again

However I will say having sex in this form would probably be an awkward affair all around. Not only because having that many eyes impassively staring me down might cause a serious case of stage fright, but also because ... those peepers on his chest bout to get poked out by my titties! 😳

I mean, if he’s into that I won’t put up much of a fight

But I personally can’t imagine having a nipple touch your cornea being a very pleasant experience

Anyway

Can we talk about those gorgeous ruby red eyes on his perfect little face for one gotdamn second please???

I admit, I am weak for a man with red eyes and that’s 100% Hiei’s fault

The only ones that even come close to being as captivating and intense are Senkuu’s (Dr. Stone, for those of you not in the know) but even his don’t hit QUITE as hard as Hiei’s

Can you even begin to imagine how it would feel to have him staring you down in a completely casual setting let alone an intimate one?? 😳

Mark me down as scared AND horny

I especially like how one minute they’ll be sharp, pinpoint dots that just tell you in no uncertain terms he’s out for blood

Which he usually is but that is neither here nor there

And then the next moment, his eyes are huge and taking up half his face

It seems like his eyes are at their biggest and most vulnerable looking whenever his sister is involved (which, for the sake of spoilers on a 25+ year old series I will not go into too much) or when he’s particularly eager about something (usually fighting) OR when someone inexplicably manages to appeal to his emotions. And trust me when I say that is a lot easier said than done

Hiei is one of the toughest eggs to crack in my harem but I like the challenge 😤

He’s not all fire and brimstone (mostly but not entirely) and I know he can lay the pipe like a goddamn CHAMP

I know his dick big, I know it is

That’s why he’s so short. All of his nutritional intake went straight to his cock but I can tell just by looking that he’s slanging some grade A meat. Do not fight me on this. I will throw hands to defend his honor and that is not a joke

I’m a strong enough bitch to stand by him even when he’s getting roasted by the squad. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.

Ofc that’s not to say he’d just stand there and let them drag him, but the point here is that I’ve got his back and that’s what counts

“But he looks like Vegeta 2.0” you reasonably point out and to that I say “what about it?”

I mean. Can Vegeta do THIS?

I’m just joking, I was a thirsty little slut over Vegeta too

Short king solidarity ✊😤

His height doesn’t even bother me fr fr tho because 1: I’m about 90% sure he’s still growing by demon standards and his sister is also quite short whereas their mother was a normal height 2: I’m also short so it’s not like I’d be towering over him anyway and 3: some men like taking a girl who’s bigger than them and bending her to their will

And when I say he’s an unchallenged top ... Lord have mercy 🥵

Every encounter with him in or out the bed would be a challenge. Every 👏 single 👏one 👏

But I believe that with enough patience it’s totally possible to chip away at his mile wide walls and I know for a fact he’d be a great (if not slightly yandereish) lover

Protective in a standoffish way, territorial, demanding, strong enough to carry you in one arm while he slashes demons in half with the other, intensely intimate, just the right amount of Demon Crazy to keep the relationship exciting 🤪

Note I said Demon Crazy and not regular ol’ crazy. There IS a difference

Just whatever you do, don’t let this big eyed baby face fool you

Hiei is not the type to share his toys or let them question who’s in charge. He lacks social finesse in a general sense and his interpersonal skills are ... toeing the negative, to say the least

Plus he’s a demon so his idea of courtship is going to be drastically different from mine. If he decides he wants it then by god he’s gonna take it and I respect that

Tbh I’d anticipate some low key stalking from this dude - the kind that you don’t even notice until it’s much too late and I don’t mean he’d be lingering around every corner or conveniently there each time you turned around. No, that’s too basic for a man like this

Tbh you wouldn’t even know he was there unless he WANTED you to know

You see that third eye he’s sporting?

It gives him telepathic abilities

That’s right. In addition to controlling fire and having a multi eyed form that should appeal to any self respecting monster fucker, he can ALSO read minds

Y’all

If this man had any idea what I was thinking about him ... 😰

He’d probably kill me for the insolence, let’s not lie

But this is MY romantic fantasy and I say fuck that

He’d be able to keep tabs on you at all hours of the day, any time, anywhere - you wouldn’t even be safe from his ever watchful eye(s) while sleeping and though it’s not an ability canon touched on I see absolutely no reason why he couldn’t telepathically slip into your dreams

A nighttime visit from Hiei? Preferably a horny one? 👀 sign me the fuck up

Imagine peacefully sawing some logs and fucking around in dreamland when he suddenly appears before you acting like your very presence is a bother

Then why are you here?? I didn’t ask you to come into my dreams, thank you very much

He responds in kind and his pointed jabs just get you more and more riled up until he finally pounces

Absolutely demolishes the pussy

I’m talking put that kitty in the grave

Then when you wake up the first thing you notice is how slick you are between the thighs

“Must’ve been a crazy dream” you mutter like the dummy thicc bitch you are

But when you look down at your sore wrist, you can see faint, blooming splotches in the shape of fingertips and you realize it was all real

A demon fucked you in your sleep and you enjoyed the hell out of it

“I wonder if he accepts frequent flyer miles” 🤔 

How he finna grab the pussy

Like, hello??? Am I the only one thinking about this stuff??

Yes?

Okay then, damn. Guess I’ll just crawl back into my 90’s, smells like teen spirit cave

It’s quite comfy, actually, thanks in no small part to Hiei keeping it nice and toasty for me

The dick helps too

[datingintampafails]

Chapter 11: Darren*

Disclaimer: a multitude of events/details have been left out of this chapter, both for increased anonymity of myself and the gentleman in question, as well as I started writing this two months after this all happened, so apologies.

Darren* is actually someone that I work with at one of my jobs, of which I have three. Upon starting my position there and meeting him, I was immediately attracted. He is from a Scandinavian country originally and just comes with that natural Scandinavian good looks. He acted a little immature, in a way that is just everything is sexual, a natural flirt. For a few months, I had an innocent little crush on him, purely infatuation. 

Often we would say hi in passing and he was always really helpful when it came to patients. He got along with everyone and despite his lewdness, I really enjoyed working with him. There were multiple times that we would walk and talk in the hall, he would express embarrassment to me over him having acne, and would openly announce that he was switching what side he was on because he didn’t want me to see it. I, in my thinking he was out of my league and I was secured in the friend/coworker zone, would be super transparent, and as well complain about my acne, and described in detail the acne patches I would use.

All seemed platonic until one day out of the blue he just leaned in close to me and asked me if he could have my Snapchat. I immediately was like oh yeah of course! From there, we talked throughout the days daily for about a week. 

I let him and my coworker in MRI know that I’m gonna bring in food on the weekend since I got a huge crockpot meal from my Home Chef meal kit boxes and wanted to share the love. When really, although I did do that, I was on purpose making sure I did it on a day Darren* was working. I made sure to wear an outfit that would get his attention without trying too hard: well-fitting yoga pants and a tank top. I arrive and I call their department to let them know I’m here with food. Darren* answers the phone and there’s video chat so I also see him. I say “hey I’m here! Chicken tacos in the break room.” He says “Are they hard or soft?” in the innuendo way he does. What he doesn’t know, is he’s met his match since I’m also kind of a perv. I respond “what do you think?” seductively and with a wink. He laughs and just goes “oh alright.” I say “Nah but seriously they’re soft tacos.” He says “my favorite! We’ll be over soon.” The cavalry arrives and everyone eats their food and thanks me. I’m not really getting the quality time I was hoping for but I’m still happy. Finally, everyone starts to kinda make their way out until it’s just Darren* and I. We just chat. This is when somehow or another I find out he has a tattoo in a more rated R area. I laugh. He asks me about my outfit and if I am going to the gym. I say no that I was just trying to be comfortable but still look good enough to be outside of my house. He says he should probably get back to work and will snap me later.

Late that night, I ask him more about his tattoos, and I tell him about mine. I send him photos of a couple of my PG tattoos, he sends me his PG tattoos (yes this does imply we both have rated R tattoos). I think this is a moment that is kind of exposing but could also just be innocent as well. 

The next week, we again worked together, and he would come by, a little more than usual, saying hi to me and chatting before returning to work. The last time he stops by before he leaves for the day, he gives me a hug. Now, this hug wasn’t like a normal hug, it was super awkward, incredibly on my part.

You see, I did not expect this to happen and I was sitting down so he approached me for the hug while I was sitting. In attempts to make this less horrible, which backfired, I decided to begin standing up during the hug. Not only did I do this, no that would be still not horrible, but I then put my arms around him diagonally. Yes, that cringy one arm on the shoulder/neck and the other around the waist. At this moment I am well aware of what terrible state I am in, but am surprised and pleased that regardless of how awkward I have positioned myself that he is still holding onto me. He is in fact at this moment squeezing me tightly, comfortably. 

Somehow this embrace lasts for probably a good twenty seconds. I’m sure I am red in the face but he says bye talk to you later and leaves. Immediately, I Snapchat him and say “I’m so sorry that was such an awkward hug. I need a do-over please.” His response is something along the lines of, “It’s all good I live for the cringe” with a laughing face emoji. Otherwise, we continue to talk as we were.

I offer him my number, thinking like we are getting along well and are maybe at that point. He says that he actually prefers Snapchat, as his cell service isn’t very good with his provider (which I shall not name), so he communicates a lot more with Snapchat anyway. We somewhere too in this time say we’re going to hang out on Saturday, and I’ll cook him some food.

Oh and now is your first preview of me being sneaky and retrieving Snapchat screenshots via taking pics of my phone screen. Step One, send a thirst trap. 

Step Two: He responds to the thirst trap. I remember also saying something after that, despite not having it in the screenshot, where I say, “Is that why you don’t wear a dress to work?” Which is what he is responding to in the third photo.

I’m also still wondering, is he just being a flirt, or is this man interested? Soon I would get my answer. 

Now, it is the weekend, Friday night. I mention to him that I’m walking to my friend’s house and I’m going over to drink some wine and eat pasta. I send him Snapchats of my friend on Hinge swiping, and us playing “Tinder March Madness,” a game I saw on Tik Tok and thought was funny. Essentially, you right-swipe on all of the men, no matter what. Give it some time and wait for the matches to roll in. Then there are certain point values that go along with certain dating profile tropes. The person with the most points “wins” each round until the “Ultimate Tinder Guy” is found. Anyway, I send these to him half to be like LOL look at this stupid stuff, half to see if I get a rise out of him/he gets a little bit jealous. He is also with friends, so I don’t necessarily get in-depth answers or quick responses. I do mention to him that I’m leaving my friend’s apartment soon, and will be walking by myself. At this point it is nighttime. We do live in a relatively nice area, but it’s still a little scary to walk by yourself in the dark. I give him a call via Snapchat, he doesn’t answer but I know he’s with his friends, so it’s all good.

I arrive home and almost immediately after I walk through the door, I get a Snapchat call back from him. He asks me if I’m okay and if I got home safely. I am honestly surprised he called me back. I tell him I’m fine. He continues to talk to me on the phone and even puts me on speakerphone. The one part that hurts my soul is he does say that I’m his “friend, Mandy,” but hey, a friend is better than a co-worker. I talk with his friends about gaming, drinking, say I’ll drink some Everclear with them, go really hard. Darren* then says he’s gonna find somewhere more private to talk to me, takes me off speakerphone. We shoot the shit a little more, then he says he had just gone running and is gonna take a shower and will talk to me later. I end the call.

Literally one minute after ending the call, I receive a Snapchat from him. This is a picture Snapchat. It is a photo of him completely naked. Where his package would be is conveniently blocked by the level of the counter in his bathroom. Highly suggestive, though not a complete nude. What is my response? Something along the lines of “oh my!!!!” Any confusion I had was gone. Like alright, this man just sent this photo to you because he is into you. It’s late and I’m going to sleep anyway, so I figure I’ll just message him in the morning to clear things up before we hang out.  

Before I can even confront him in the morning, he messages me. I, unfortunately, don’t have a screenshot for this. But he says whereas he isn’t exactly looking for a relationship at this moment, that he wants to see where things go with me and see what happens. I tell him that how I feel is I don’t like to put expectations on anything anyway and that I’m happy to do that and just follow where the vibes go between us. We’ve come to an agreement! With that, he says he is super hungover and is going to take a nap, and will let me know about coming over later. By the early evening, he says he wants to reschedule since he still feels like shit. I’m on call a lot, so we just schedule it tentatively for next Saturday and I see if I can get my call covered another day sooner so we can see each other before then. 

I’m able to contact my manager the next day and I let him know I now have Wednesday free for him. I’m on call at our workplace the day I let him know that, and I jokingly tell him he is in charge of calling me in. Of course, I actually do get called in, though it isn’t him that lets me know. I arrive and hang out in the area he works in while I wait for the patient to be ready. He is not there and is off doing other stuff. He comes in and is surprised to see me, which checks out since I did tell him I was coming in, but he hadn’t opened that Snapchat yet. We hug hello, not awkwardly now, and he talks about his hands being cold. Essentially then we are holding hands. While the other coworkers are off tending to patients, we stand close together and chat. My patient arrives, and I ask him to help me move them. I observe him with a patient and he really is a great caregiver, it’s attractive. He helps me then says he’s gonna run back to his department and will be back. When he returns he says he is actually leaving for the night. My patient’s scan is more or less on autopilot, so I position ourselves away from the window that looks into the room. I embrace him and say I’m looking forward to seeing him next time we work together and on Wednesday. I think back and know I probably should have kissed him, but I didn’t, probably the thought of being at work and although no one was there and watching, still felt inappropriate.

I finished my work and returned home. Monday we spoke throughout the day, flirtatious and excited. We worked together Tuesday and when I walked in for the day, I immediately happened upon him in the break room. I sat down next to him and discussed timeframes for our hangout the next day. He is happy and upon another coworker walking in, I briefly say hey and disperse. Darren* comes into my department, as he does often, and is talking with everyone. One of our coworkers mentions to him that they want to talk to him about something. I’m not sure what it is about, but I do get a hit of anxiety wondering if he had told them about me, and it was regarding our relationship. Work goes by and they do go off and talk. Afterward, he is kinda brief in saying goodbye, which makes my anxiety increase. 

I send him a message just again mentioning a timeframe for our next day’s plans. An hour or so after he left he responds saying that he is actually starting to talk to someone and didn’t want to do the next day because he didn’t want to jeopardize that, as he thought if he came over the next day he didn’t know what would happen. His phrasing was “is it okay” if we don’t see each other. So I say something like, “well I wouldn’t want to complicate things, I’m not happy about it but I understand.” He also expressed he was worried about work, though, at this point, I was about to start my new job and had told him about this. He mentions not having a “crystal ball” and that he doesn’t know what will happen in the future, blah blah blah. That we could still be with each other someday.

I am beyond confused. Literally three days before this, he had been the one to initiate things and asked for us to see where things go, wasn’t interested in a relationship, when suddenly now he is, albeit with someone else, and is interested enough to be afraid something romantic would happen if we were alone together, but not enough see where it goes.

In response, I give into a TikTok trend where you ask people what your type is. I did this that night. He did not take kindly to it. His response was kind of like, what is this? I was angry and thought this was a good way to have some self-deprecating humor. Essentially “douchebag,” “extroverted gamer,” “emotionally unavailable,” “guys with girlfriends,” and “Trump supporters,” were mentioned in this. Many of those descriptions which could describe Darren* at that moment. 

I was still very hurt days afterward and didn’t know what would happen once we saw each other again at work. Come next workday together, he was starting to be on temperature check duty at the hospital. I did not know he was though, and stumbled upon him as I was going out to say hi to another co-worker I knew was out there. It was very awkward at first but we became more on friendly terms. Toward the end of the night, we were alone back inside for a moment. I asked him some questions about his life and such. As the night went on we did embrace a few times and were very close. It was more confusing but he did still seem into me. We left at the same time and he walked me to my car where we lingered and talked and held each other. I did feel pretty bad, as I would sometimes see his phone, see him talking to this other girl, and sometimes I would just happen to see his messages with her and could tell that he did care for her. And in character, it was on Snapchat, so he may have been completely honest regarding using Snapchat as his primary communication method.

Basically a similar scenario continued on for the next four weeks, each time it becomes more and more difficult/intimate. One week we took a walk around the campus and cuddled in the grass, watching the stars. The bugs made us move, but we had a closeness. We just barely kissed one time. He would grab my hips and touch my body when we were alone. Constantly he would resist, I was just as confused as he wasn’t dating this person. Another night, we are walking together doing rounds through the hospital, when one of his close coworkers casually mentions he’s uncircumcised. Which was just some bizarre information. It was funny to see him embarrassed.

Finally, after four weeks of this “what is going on” scenario, I have him call me. I tell him essentially that if he and this woman are still not exclusive, that we should still give this a shot or at least hang outside of work and see what is truly going on. I reiterate his crystal ball thing. I am truly speaking in our both interests, as we have been playing a dangerous game. He says he will talk to her that night and figure out what is going on, as she has been kind of putting off/delaying that conversation. He says he will let me know what she says and will think about it if they don’t become exclusive, as he admits that he doesn’t see the point of staying with her if she doesn’t want to become official. I follow up the next day, asking how it went. He says it didn’t come up and apologizes, though saying he will soon. A few days after that, I find out that they must have had the conversation, because “Darren* is now in a relationship” appears on my Facebook news feed. I message him in Snapchat and congratulate him. I do truly wish them the best, and take the situation as a lesson learned.

A couple of months later, present-day as I write this, I notice a name that looks familiar on a patient’s chart. Casually I bring it up to my coworker, saying “isn’t that Darren*’s girlfriend?” and it is confirmed. I become infuriated and text my friend immediately, explaining the situation I have just uncovered. This new information does add to my displeasure, as I realize that this guy’s now girlfriend also works here and that it is quite possible that he could have been seeing her on any of those days that we had become so close. This disgusted me. I did see him a couple of days later and casually mentioned to him, “I didn’t know your girlfriend worked here.” He hit me with a “yeah she does.” I felt it important to let him know, I know. I try and remain cordial, but it is extremely difficult when I learn more and more about how scummy he is. Later that day that I let him know, he told me it was “good seeing me” and I literally responded with a vomit noise. Even if things don’t work out with his lady, and I’m still single, that “crystal ball” will not do him any favors.

[dwellordream]

I want to ask for your full Director's Commentary on the whole of "in the language of flowers," but that might take too long! Can you tell me about your favorite section to write? Or if you'd like something a little more specific, anything you would like to say about the epilogue, or Sirius and Petunia's relationship? Thank you!! ❤❤

it’s been two years so it’s a little hard to get back into that head space but I’ll try my best lol. just in general I think the desire to write the fic came from wanting to write a long-term HP fic where I didn’t need to rely on the books to guide me through scenes and characters. with Flowers I pretty much could do whatever I wanted in terms of plot and characters as long as I hit certain points (the start of the war, Sirius running away from home, Lily and James getting together, etc). it was pretty freeing and I was able to do what I wanted with Petunia so long as she still was recognizable as her canon self.  I had a lot of favorite chapters so i’ll just go in order: chapter 1 was a big deal to me bc I needed to establish the baseline of the Lily and Petunia sister relationship right off the bat. I wanted their relationship to be loving and close but also quite tense on Petunia’s part; she is inherently an anxious, cynical, and insecure person, and being the younger sister, in this case, of someone as charismatic and charming as Lily isn’t easy. at the same time I wanted to emphasize how devoted Petunia still was to her and how much she idolized Lily’s looks and intelligence. I also wanted to get across some of her more obsessive compulsive behaviors and the effect they have had on her childhood.  I also have always liked writing Severus and I think the back and forth between him and Petunia not just in the first chapter but throughout the fic is very interesting, bc they really have a lot in common personality wise. both are very jealous and possessive people, both are quite insecure about themselves, from their appearances to their personalities, both find it difficult to make friends and difficult to hold their tongues when they’re upset. in any other circumstances, I think Petunia and Severus really could have become good friends. I also wanted to emphasize that while Lily can be somewhat oblivious to Petunia’s unease and insecurity, she is a very loving person and a good sister. I didn’t want the fic to be about making Lily out to be a villain or a bully in order to make Petunia look better, or just them constantly battling each other. chapter 3 was also really important to me bc it sets up Petunia’s first impression of James and Sirius, and I think it kind of shows how they were both little shits as children haha. in that, she has no delusions about them and recognizes that both of them have the potential to be quite nasty little bullies when push comes to shove. obviously eventually she comes to consider both friends and close allies, but James comes into Hogwarts as essentially this very coddled and spoiled little prince who’s used to being showered with affection and attention, and Sirius’ whole persona is that of a kid who treats everything as one big joke because it helps him forget about his abusive home life.  I also really love the line where Marlene shakes James’ hand but says, “Galleons really do jangle in the same pocket” referring to the Potters and Blacks being well known for their money, something James is secretly a bit insecure about. Remus and Petunia’s meeting in chapter 5 was really important to me because he is her ‘in’ to the Marauders simply by virtue of being such an accepting and compassionate kid, despite his own trauma and illness. Petunia’s not naturally inclined to feel a ton of sympathy for other people, but she does for him, and he really opens her up in a lot of ways to becoming more accepting of the Hogwarts experience. that her eventual reaction to discovering he is a werewolf is not terror and disgust but sympathy and a desire to help is probably one of the first major signs of her character development. chapter 8 was also really fun bc it’s the first real one on one Petunia and Sirius interaction! tbh I think a lot of readers assume I began the story out of a desire to write a romance between the two, but it was actually *not* in my initial loose notes for the story. I hadn’t really focused on any kind of romance for Petunia at all and it ended up just sliding its way in the more I thought about it. the two of them are very different but in some ways well-suited to each other; Petunia is almost *never* impressed by Sirius’ antics and he is I think someone who would want to be challenged and pushed back on by a partner.  in that same token chapter 11 is pretty important to me bc suddenly we’ve made it to 4th year and both Petunia and Sirius’ home situations have worsened. I actually was not entirely happy with that chapter at the time because I disliked writing in the kiss between them so early on, and I felt like I was rushing into the romance. however, in the long run I think it worked out, as they clearly don’t jump into a relationship from there, and with the emotional intensity of the two of them opening up to one another it made sense.  I also really liked the acknowledgement from Petunia that she sees through all the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ posturing- Sirius *does* care about being rejected and hurt by his family, he *does* care about not having a good relationship with his parents, and he *does* want that sort of easy affection and love that James has with his parents and Petunia has with her father. his problem isn’t that he doesn’t care; he cares rather a lot

chapter 14 is obviously a big deal within the story bc it is the point of Lily and Severus’ big fight which pretty much ends the friendship. I was going crazy at the time trying to figure out how/when to include it, since Severus is at Hogwarts, Lily is at home in muggle school, she hasn’t seen his problems with James and co. or all the bullying and violence, she doesn’t know much about his growing interest in the Death Eater cause... but in the moment what matters to Lily is him threatening her sister. I think at the exact moment she sees Severus having cornered Petunia down by the river it all sort of slots into place for Lily and she realizes A. he is not the same little boy she befriended, he is a potentially violent 15 year old, and B. his hatred for Petunia mostly stems from the fact that she is the unwanted replacement of Lily in his life. so with all that suddenly crashing over her, Lily really snaps and without much thought for her own safety, gets between the two of them and dresses him down once and for all.  also, the love between the two sisters is just really touching right then and there, as Petunia finally realizes Lily would truly do anything for her. the fight in chapter 16 was also a favorite moment of mine bc finally all the background stuff comes to a head in Sirius and Petunia’s relationship. she realizes he’s been kicked out of the house and has hidden it from her, and his poor reaction is of course, to mock her over acting as though they’re ‘going steady’.  then of course comes the nasty realization that the rumors about Sirius being in a relationship with her contributed to said disownment, and Sirius admitting to her that he got into a fight with Lucius Malfoy over a ‘joke’ about harming Petunia. this is what really sends Petunia into a spiral- she knows Lucius to be a Death Eater and the idea of Sirius in any way antagonizing him horrifies her. which then leads into the big issue between them, on top of all their communication problems- Sirius has every intention of fighting Voldemort’s forces, whereas Petunia wants to keep her head down and live a normal life. this is not something that can be easily resolved, given how stubborn both of them are. he regards it as his duty to throw himself into the fight and to prove how he isn’t like the rest of his family, especially jr. Death Eater Regulus- whereas Petunia thinks he has a death wish.

I don’t want to just summarize the entire fic so I’ll stop there haha. but yes, I am still really fond of Flowers and the relationship between Petunia and Lily and Petunia and Sirius. the epilogue was really just me giving them all a hug and sending them on their way like a proud parent. (I’m actually surprised people liked the epilogue, especially people who commented that they preferred the fic’s epilogue to the one at the end of Deathly Hallows, since I think the two have a lot of similarities in terms of the main characters having settled down into more ‘normal’ adulthood with a couple of kids).

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN TREVOR

But it worked so well, and we knew that buyers would have a big pool of potential users, at least. Web browser.1 Angels were generally much better to talk to someone, I could usually get to the end of each film, so they know who might be interested in this mystery—for the same destination, just approaching it from different directions. I recommend you solve this problem, if you find someone else working on the biggest things inexperienced founders and investors are probably more where it's considered especially polite to compliment someone's clothing than where it's considered improper. VCs want to blow you up, it wears you out: Your most basic advice to founders is just don't die, but the word madam never occurs in my legitimate email, and spam in particular. Basically at 25 he started running as fast as possible. And what are the universities thinking?

The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users. When you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no one wants to be the thing-that-doesn't-scale that defines your company.2 That principle, like the relative merits of programming languages is to give you enough money to last for a year or a hundred times as productive as those working for money, they'll work a lot harder on stuff they like. 5-7% of a company like Apple and think, how hard can it be? Economically, you can do in your spare time, and investors are down on advertising at the moment. They do more in their heads: they try to do things that seem to be: a lot of them. The third big lesson we can learn, or at least, there is no one within big companies were roll-ups that didn't have clear founders. When I look back it's like there's a line drawn between third and fourth grade. That's what makes sex and drugs, it would be good to solve?

Prep schools openly say this is one reason I'd bet on the curve, at any given time get away with it, and the different parts of the company through the COO. Object-oriented programming in the 1980s was enabled by a combination of circumstances: court decisions striking down state anti-takeover laws, starting with the assumption that we would never get started. Not because it's causing economic inequality, you decrease the number of startups that get bought early. It's not a deal till the money's in the bank and keep operating as two guys living on ramen. I'm optimistic. They think that there will be ten JetBlues.3 If you try to attack wealth, you end up doing something chosen for you by syndicates.

And you don't want to see the Valley itself, but it goes fast. What Happened to Yahoo August 2010 When I went to.4 What this means in practice. That makes him seem like a winner, they may avoid publishing's problems. After reading a draft, Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell has made a handy calculator you can use them as communication devices.5 You not only have to filter email from people you'd never heard from, or about, a startup has decreased dramatically. Startups are that constrained for talent. But it's harder than it sounds.6 Smallness Measurement If you can't measure the value of products is in software. You don't have to rely on. Hackers just want power.

I knew she was about to say you'd have to be fired, and one of your most powerful weapons, I think this is true for funding. The best was that the company was itself a kind of argument that might be called the Hail Mary strategy. They don't have time to work, just like a software company. But it hardly ever is. My friend Robert learned a lot by writing network software when he was a startup, then hand them off to go away.7 Sun. Oxford had a chair of Chinese before it had one of English.

Which means the slowdown that comes from being in America. And in fact the two forces are related: they're the ones who like running their company so much that resembling nature is intrinsically good as that nature has had a couple thousand Altair owners, but without the substance. Ditto for hacking. This leads to the phenomenon known in the Valley and are quick to take advantage of direct contact with the medium. We were all starting from scratch, that's a really bad sign.8 More important, I think it's cleaner if you openly charge subscription fees, instead of just looking at them all is through a computer. Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert and Trevor read applications and did interviews with us. The stock of a company as big as Java, or bigger, just on the partner you talk to startups, a lot of investors are interested in, that's not necessarily a mistake to use the term Collison installation for the technique they invented. FreeBSD, which I'm running on the computer I'm using now, and they're not coming back. Court hierarchies are another thing entirely. In practice offers exist for stretches of time, if your business model in the world look like this? Startups don't win by winning lawsuits.

5 spams per 1000 with 0 false positives. When I was in college that there were about 20,000. What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they get paid by doing or making something people want is not the real test. Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay your expenses while you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.9 Wouldn't that at least someone really loves. Sex, or something just as bad. I can see a path that's not immediately obvious; that's one of the most important quality in an investor is to say that the unsuccessful founders would also fail to chase down funding, and investors tend to take these for granted now, but only because people have found even more addictive ways of wasting time. It does not seem to be several categories of cuts: things I got wrong, because if you don't, you're hosed. So we should expect founders to do it yourself. If you actually started acting like adults, it seemed to them what e-commerce business back in the day, but who want it urgently. 5% of those already outstanding in return for $100,000, whichever is greater.

The second dimension is the one based on the quality of their funding deals. So I want to zoom in on one detail of this picture. If it turns out, though, that even with all the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up shit. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a suitable recipient for the size of the market anyway. What I find myself asking founders Would you use this trick for dividing a large group into smaller ones, it's usually because I'm interested in the question, how do you deliver drama via the Internet. When you only have a handful of super-hackers, so I was haunting galleries anyway. But I know the real reason: the product is only moderately appealing. Better to harass them with arrows from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.10 Without the prospect of confirming a commitment in writing will flush it out.

Notes

Since we're not doing YC mainly for financial reasons, including both you and listen only to emphasize that whatever the false positives reflecting the remaining outcomes don't have to do, just their sizes. The problem with most of their origins in words about luck. It was common in the imprecise half. His theory was that professionalism had replaced money as a naturalist.

If you wanted to than because they need them to represent anything.

From? The way to fight. The Harmless People and The Old Way. I know, Lisp code.

Do not finance your startup.

Why go to grad school you always feel you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what I think is happening when you depend on closing a deal to move from Chicago to Silicon Valley, but as the average car restoration you probably do make everyone else books a package tour. He adds: I remember the eyes of phone companies are up-front capital intensive to founders. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would to us that the money they receive represents wealth—wealth that, isn't it? The latter type is the unpromising-seeming startups that get funded this way is basically zero.

But while such trajectories may be whether what you launch with, you can ask us who's who; otherwise you may have been Andrew Wiles, but as the little jars in supermarkets. Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or mining equipment, such a different type of mail, I have so far done a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say, ending up on the other direction Y Combinator. This is an instance of a business is to carry a beeper? This trend is one of those most vocal on the LL1 mailing list.

The First Two Hundred Years. Who continued to live inexpensively as their companies took off? The conventional 1 in 10 success rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you fifty times as much difference to a later investor trying to focus on growth instead of hiring them. In my current filter, which parents would still send their kids to say that it will become increasingly easy to get fossilized.

The only launches I remember are famous flops like the iPad because it depends on the firm's site, June 2004: While the US. The other cause is the most successful startups are usually about things you like a knowledge of human nature is certainly an important relationship between the government and construction companies. People tell the craziest lies about me. Patent trolls can't even trust the design world's internal standards.

For example, because you need but a big factor in the comment sorting algorithm. Horace, Sat.

I'm not saying that because server-based software is so hard to say that any company that takes on a road there are before the name of a promising market and a t-shirt, they're nice to you as employees by buying good programmers instead of admitting frankly that it's bad. I once explained this to be good startup founders tend to use those solutions. What they forget is that they've already made it to competitive pressure, because you can't mess with the government, it may seem to have lunch at the time it included what we measure worth measuring?

[fadedtoblue]

Some spoiler-y thoughts on DDS3

I finally got a full night’s of sleep after being awake for about 24 hours lol, so I think I can start communicating like a regular person again. I feel like I still have a lot to process about DDS3 overall, but I thought it might be nice to share a few thoughts while it’s semi-fresh, and maybe later I’ll try to expand on them as need.

Anyway, spoilers below the cut....:)

Overall, this was a wonderful and satisfying season of Daredevil - it felt like they took the things that were notable about S1 and S2 and improved upon them by leaps and bounds. The result was a S3 that was sharply focused and consistently written, plotted like a single focus story (a la S1) while in actuality serving a broad group of equally important characters and intertwining storylines (like S2) - yet I never felt like they lost their grip on the steering wheel. There would be moments in the plot where I’d think, “Wait, are they going to address that plot point / answer that question, etc?” and in the next scene or at least by the next episode, they did. Whoever was in charge of keeping their scripts consistent and not leaving plot holes, extra gold stars to them b/c they did a fucking fantastic job. Kudos to Erik Oleson for coming in with a very clear and intentional plan and executing the shit out of it. 

Here are some things that were notable for me this season:

Matt Murdock. Look, I was pretty worried coming into this that we were getting Dark!Matt and not much else - I love my emo son as much as the next person, but it was hard for me to imagine how we’d get to a positive ending if all we were getting was dark and more dark. And while yes, we did get a lot of dark and emo and raging at God Matt, there were clear and purposeful moments of growth he made throughout the entire series to get from the Matt that washed out of Midland Circle, barely alive, broken and bereft over losing Elektra to the Matt at the end, accepting who he is as DD AND Matt Murdock and ready for whatever the future holds for him and his friends. 

Quick aside for my Mattelektra peeps: I wish he could have actually talked about the events of Midland Circle and better processed the trauma of that and losing Elektra - for the most part, it all gets grouped under ‘general rage at God and life’ during the early episodes and none of the people around him at the time, namely Sister Maggie and Father Lanthom, actually understand what happened with Elektra. BUT we do get shown a bunch of Mattelektra scenes from DD and TD and I realize that the show really didn’t need to do that, so I’m trying to be grateful that we were shown that little glimpse into Matt’s mind right before he comes to. Because it was necessary reminder that part of why he’s broken is not just that he lost some of his senses and abilities, but because he lost Elektra - again.

Thanks for indulging my moment there everyone lol. Anyway, Matt Murdock was A++++ in all scenes and states of clothedness. In conclusion: I still love him. 

Avocado Trio feels. As someone who has always enjoyed this trio, but maybe not as much the individual characters on their own, I am really pleased that they actually got the band back together again, and not only that, I came out of this season with positive vibes for both Karen and Foggy but ESPECIALLY Foggy. Goddamn, Foggy was the fucking MVP. First, he looked damn good this year. The haircut and the suits are working for him. But also, this particular team of writers actually wrote Foggy in a way that feels more true to what I had always wanted from Foggy - someone who was smart, resourceful, caring, and most of all, THERE FOR MATT. I felt like his decade long friendship with Matt finally paid off in his characterization and he wasn’t being pushed off to the side to further someone else’s narrative. My favorite moment was when Karen was ready to throw in the towel, but Foggy talks about how everyone has abandoned Matt and he’s not going to do it too. It warmed the cockles of my cold, cold heart. 

I’m also pretty satisfied with how they finally revealed Karen’s backstory and damn if they didn’t make me feel sad and impressed with her at various points - her phone call with her dad / her dad telling her to leave after Kevin’s death and the 1v1 face off with Kingpin being two such examples. She might not ever be a favorite of mine but she was represented well this season for sure. I’m also grateful that they actually allowed her and Matt to air their shit out in a semi-realistic way. They acknowledged there was a lot of shit and baggage and didn’t just try to rush them to some kind of romantic conclusion. In fact, this season was refreshing in that romance was never a primary plot for any of the characters! There was enough going on with the story that the sort of angsting that kind of plot usually brings would have just been distracting. Any relationships were contained to people who were already in them, like Foggy and Marci, or Kingpin and Vanessa. The focus for these characters was really on rebuilding trust and the overall friendship / family bonds between all three. That was one of my hopes for the season and it delivered :). 

Okay, I’m getting to the point in this post where I’m getting tired with my own babbling LOL, so I’m gonna try to bullet point some more notable moments:

Kingpin - Smart and menacing and I loved the take on him as being this ultimate spymaster. It was really well done and I think once you saw the full breadth of the conspiracy - it was really good. And I guess in this same point I’ll shout out Vanessa - I was SO glad to see her again and dang, she just has a presence on screen that is hard to match. I am looking forward to seeing her as badass Vanessa Fisk - maybe she hires a freelancer named Elektra Natchios as her own personal assassin since Bullseye is gonna have it out for both Fisks?? Would that not be an AMAZING duo?

Dex aka Bullseye. I loved how they established his origin and his psychopathy - it made a lot of sense to me how this inherently broken, mentally ill person could have flown under the radar for as long as he did, and that someone like Fisk would be able to manipulate him to his own ends. Wilson Bethel is easy on the eyes for sure, but I thought he did an amazing job playing a guy who always seemed on the edge of cracking. He played all the shades of Bullseye very well. I’m looking forward to seeing him again as the primary big bad and GIVE ME BULLSEYE v ELEKTRA YOU COWARDS. Speaking of which, that reminds me, I want to point out the Bullseye was literally a diagnosed psychopath who was incapable of showing empathy whereas they kept trying to tell us Elektra was a sociopath but she clearly is not - she definitely had some sociopathic tendencies, which likely developed from her very messed up upbringing and exposure to violence, and when they bring her back, she will probably keep on some of those characteristics b/c of the sort of fighter than she is, but let’s just put it to rest already. And yeah, I want those two to give me a 1v1 fight for the AGES. DD who? 

Sister Maggie. LOOK. I don’t feel like I should have been surprised with any of the stuff that happened with Maggie but everything about it was a HIGHLIGHT. I loved the way Joanne Whalley conveyed the character - every time I saw her and Matt interact, I knew it was gonna be good. When they finally reveal her as Matt’s mom (whew!), I was genuinely moved. When she realizes that Matt has found out her secret and is gone, the way she runs to his bed and completely breaks down at losing her son again? I WAS A BLUBBERING MESS. The forgiveness and acceptance in their reconciliation was something my soul desperately needed and I’m so glad we received. We better see more scenes of the Murdocks together in the future!

Ray Nadeem. Um, who would have thought I'd be so sad to lose Ray by the end of the season! The overall FBI conspiracy felt surprisingly fleshed out and was something I got pretty damn invested in (SO MUCH better than the conspiracy in TPS1). All the shifts and turns and betrayals of this particular storyline could have been very cheesy, but they ended up being working because they were almost character moments first? Because we know Ray and his relationship with Hattley, with Dex, even overall with the FBI, and then of course knowing his home life and his family...every time shit hit the fan, or a personal betrayal occurred, it really hurt. And that we got that super fun escape sequence with Ray and Matt in their civvies and then Ray’s final act of heroism with his dying declaration...RIP Ray. You will be missed. 

God, I haven’t even touched on the non character stuff, like the fights and shit, but I gotta wrap it up now before I bore myself to death :). I’m curious what everyone else thought of the season - feel free to hit me up if you wanna chatter about it!!

[elizadoolittlethings]

Toby Hadoke’s adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s The Road aired on October 27 to great acclaim. Here, Hadoke talks about the necessary alterations for the story, as well as its tributes to the first production…NB This portion of the interview contains major spoilers for The Road. If you’ve not heard it yet, do so now!

Do we know if Nigel Kneale ever considered The Road as a radio script? It’s clear that what Brian Hodgson and the Radiophonic Workshop did back in 1963 was what he was after from the start – it was never going to be a big visual thing.

One of the big comments I got back from [Radio 4 Commissioning Editor] Jeremy Howe when we first pitched it was: “How is this going to work with the climax relying on a juxtaposition of the sound that we can hear and the visuals of the characters in the time period they are in, and the incongruity of hearing those sounds laid over the image of the people in that period clothing?”

He was quite right about that. Charlotte Riches who’s produced it has been a great advocate of mine and done pretty much everything I’ve done for radio; she’s an extremely experienced producer, and is brilliant and very hot on scripts. She said that the edit on the final five minutes of the play was the biggest and hardest job she’d had, and she’d produced hundreds of hours of radio drama. She gave herself a five-day edit on this because she knew this was going to be a biggie.

When you can see the pictures, you know where you’re supposed to be looking; when you’re listening on radio you have to create the points of view and it’s difficult to go, “Are we now with the haunting, or are we still in the woods, and those in the woods can hear the haunting?” On telly, we can see the people who can hear the haunting listening, so we have an anchor. On the radio, you go, “Why are we suddenly with the haunting?” It was really confusing to work out where the listener’s point of view was.

They say the pictures are better on radio – but when you need to create a very specific one, it has to be much harder. I think it works – there’s a lot of very clear audio cues placing us in the period before we get the stuff that’s out of place. Therefore we know the juxtaposition has to be doing something. In the radio version you’re giving us all their reactions through the haunting…

We had to keep cutting back to them. In the original, the haunting is just a series of fractured sounds, whereas in ours, it was Charlotte’s idea that we needed a narrative in the haunting to follow. We have a mother and a lost daughter character in the haunting who are entirely our invention, so we have a little mini story to follow within the haunting itself, otherwise we weren’t quite sure if it wasn’t going to be too fragmented and too confusing to follow.

All the dialogue in the haunting is entirely new, and we planned that quite hard… apart from the object that you can hear that is taken from the original BBC tapes. Although the play doesn’t exist, I had a bit of a brainwave. I dropped Mark Ayres an email and said, “I don’t suppose in your hall of records for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop the sound effects for The Road exist?” and he said, “I’ve got a tape here that says The Road.” He’s a superstar and sent me what was there, and we seeded a couple of bits in just because it’s a play about sound travelling through time, so why not have sound from the original play travelling through time to us? I thought that was nicely appropriate and a nice nod to the great people who went before us.

The original version was post-Cuba with the threat of nuclear holocaust very present – did you consider changing what the tragedy was that caused the haunting or did you want to keep it as close to the original as possible?

Unfortunately Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un came along and Putin as well in a sense – so I think a nuclear holocaust is something that’s still possible, and I didn’t think there was anything else it could be. It needed to be the present day, sure, but although we’ve got them listening to the news on the car radio, I didn’t want it to be too specific. Although it’s intended very much that the day of the haunting is the day that we’re listening to it – it’s happening to us – I thought it would sound a bit hokey if I embedded it too much in the very present in terms of our immediate references.

I think it would have worked in the 1980s when the BBC very kindly did a nuclear holocaust season and they showed The War Game, and Threads was on. I remember it was the first nightmare I ever had – I slept in my sister’s room because I watched The War Game and it scared the shit out of me. It was a real threat – I lived in the countryside, and my mum still lives there; there was a radar dome on the hill and we’d always talk about that if there was a nuclear attack, they’d take out that radar dome so we’d be in the fallout anyway. We wouldn’t escape by being in the country.

It definitely was a present and terrifying threat and I just think there’s nothing else that would quite match it. The world could be wiped out by flood or famine, but I don’t think that gives you as visceral a kick.

The big difficulty we had was with one of the sounds: I thought we should have one of those nuclear sirens going off, but I made some enquires. I asked a couple of MPs and Andrew Smith (who wrote Full Circle for Doctor Who and is a former police officer), as well as Tom Harris, the former MP, about what would happen in the event of a nuclear holocaust, and the consensus was that sound is now outmoded. That alarm wouldn’t happen.

The argument, though, was people still associate it with a nuclear attack, and we should use it but in the end Charlotte made the decision not to. I would have been comfortable using it, because it’s a really useful shorthand. We didn’t, and I think that helped to divorce ourselves from the 1960s setting, but it did mean we did not have available to an aural shorthand that says immediately, “There’s a nuclear bomb!”

So you have to find a way of doing it in the dialogue without having someone say, “I always thought I’d die in a nuclear war!” Or, “Look Jane, here’s a warhead!”

The mother and daughter bit sells that – as they’re describing the cloud. The bit that’s haunted me [and still gives me goosebumps when I transcribe this a few weeks later] is the mother saying, “Close your eyes and make a wish.”

That’s the bit that Charlotte really loved; she said when she read it she got chills down her spine. That’s nice because I wrote that bit!

The actors in the haunting include some quite well known actors, and the girl is the daughter of the producer. Nigel Kneale’s biographer, Andy Murray, is in there somewhere – he lives round the corner from me.

How much of the 40 minutes up to the haunting did you have to rework for radio, and how much could you keep scenes intact?

Unlike [Matthew Graham’s radio play of] The Stone Tape – which I thought was very good, but was a very different retelling of the story with new characters etc. – I felt we had a slight responsibility to present the play that we cannot experience because the tape was destroyed. In the shadow of Nigel Kneale I am humbly shrouded – I had no desire to go, “And what is Hadoke’s take on Kneale’s work?” This is very much my attempt to bring the brilliance of Nigel Kneale to a current and wide audience.

There are some brilliant lines in there, but by the very nature of radio, there are changes. On telly, if you have someone talking to somebody else for two pages, you can keep cutting back to the other person for their reactions to remind you they’re in the scene. You can’t do that on radio. Some of Charlotte’s notes would be – “Jethro speaks here, he hasn’t spoken since page 32, we need to bring him in beforehand, even if it’s to drop off a drink or cough, or something.”

There were various practical things: when we get to the woods, the cart gets stuck on a knot, and that’s just to bring us into the scene. A lot of that is Charlotte’s producing experience, creating the picture for the listener.

The big thing that we brought in to it was because the scenes were quite long – which they can be on television, and certainly could be on television in 1963. For this we needed all the stuff in the woods between Big Jeff and Lukey. In the teleplay it starts off with them setting up and then they bugger off pretty quickly. In this, the stuff with Big Jeff and Lukey and Tetsy that we keep cutting back to is largely mine, setting up the ghost story and having more of the history of the haunting cut with the philosophical discourse. It was felt that we needed to have a bit more toing and froing and to get in the wood location, where the climax takes place, quite a lot earlier. Most of the stuff between those characters, and the stuff about the bones, was all new just to have a bit of a mystery around the haunting.

I had fewer characters at my disposal so I had to roll a couple into one. In the original there’s a character called Sam, played by Rodney Bewes, who is Tetsy’s sweetheart and they’re in the woods. I think it was Charlotte’s idea we roll them into one, and Sam’s the dog now!  And it gives Tetsy a bigger role now.

There was a whole big team of guys helping the Squire and in my first draft I’d written lots of grunts, and cries of “You up there!” We just pared that down to Big Jeff and Lukey who do all the factotuming, because a big load of extras grunting is great on television to fill the picture but on radio it’s not particularly helpful.

In terms of the characters and the main thrusts of their arguments, the dialogue has been tweaked here and there, but large chunks are 100% Kneale. It was already great, so why mess with it?

How involved with the casting were you?

This is the great relationship I have with Charlotte – she knows I’m an acting geek. I didn’t know you could do this until we first did a play together; she said, “Who do you think?” and I suggested a few names… and they were all in it!

We were originally going to do this in Manchester and we were going to use all local actors for the supporting parts, which I’m passionate about because I think the BBC should use more local actors when they’re recording in a place. But because we’d got Mark Gatiss it looked like we’d have to do it in London, and if we were going to be in London, and it’s only a day [recording], we decided to aim high!

We batted a few ideas back and forth. I suggested Hattie Morahan straightaway just because 1) she’s a brilliant radio actress and 2) her dad directed the original which again I thought was a beautiful tie in to the past. Charlotte knew Hattie because she’d done loads of radio. I hadn’t known their connection. Hattie was a yes pretty quickly.

Mark I mentioned was a fan in the pitch – but I didn’t ask him if he’d be in it until we got the go ahead. He was definitely the first person to be contacted, before I’d written the script but after the commission. It then depended on his availability. We were on standby for quite a while – you can’t cast until you’ve got a date – but then we got a date finally from Mark and we moved pretty quickly.

Knowing we had Mark early on we knew would bring people to it – audience-wise and cast-wise. Actors know they’re going to be in a production that people are going to want to take some notice of and if it’s got the nod from somebody who can pick and choose their work, that helps.

I wasn’t 100% certain Mark would want to do it, because he tried to remake it and wasn’t successful so I thought he might be pissed off that somebody else had. He’d also done a readthrough of it on stage a few years ago, so maybe he’d played the part and got it out of his system. He’s always been very nice to me when I met him, so the approach wasn’t totally out of the blue and I thought he wouldn’t tell me to piss off, he would let me down gently. That’s the fear when you get in touch [with actors] out of the blue: you don’t want them to be rude to you, but I knew from my limited experience that Mark wouldn’t be mean, so I went for it.

Francis Magee is a brilliant actor and an old mate of mine and I wanted to give him a job – not that he needs one! He never stops working! I love him to death and I could just imagine him as Lukey so I suggested him.

I worked with Colin McFarlane years and years ago; he’s got a brilliant voice. I suggested him.

We had a few names in the frame for Big Jeff and then Emily, the production assistant, suggested Ralph Ineson because she always wanted to work with him. I said, “Go on offer it to him. It’s a little role at the bottom of the credits, he’s not going to go for it…” and he said yes. I wasn’t going to argue with that – he’s got the perfect voice for a tall Northern man.

Tetsy was quite hard to cast – Susan Wokoma was the only part I didn’t cast. I’d not worked with her before but she’s very much of the moment and brought a very different energy to it. She was Charlotte’s suggestion.

Then Adrian Scarborough – we had loads of ideas for Sir Timothy and there was an actor in the frame who couldn’t do it. It’s a potentially very boring part because he’s slightly stiff and credulous. I needed somebody who was able to bring a slightly different energy to it. I thought of Adrian whose work I’d always liked – I’ve seen him on stage a lot. He’s an interesting left field idea so I suggested him and Charlotte went, “ooh let’s try him”. I thought he’d be good but he’s even better than I thought. It’s a tricky part and he’s made it really sing. I’m  really happy with what he did with it.

Has this whetted your appetite for more Kneale adaptations?

It’s really helped me with my Quatermass book because [Nigel Kneale’s widow] Judith Kerr came to the recording. I’d been trying to get in touch with her to talk about the Quatermass book, but I’d never been able to get past the agent. She came to the recording of The Road, she was delightful, I chanced my arm and said I’m doing a book on Quatermass. I took her for dinner, and she took me round to the house. She’s got the Thing from The Quatermass Experiment out of a plastic bag in the corner of the office; she took me up to Nigel’s office where there’s a Martian sitting in the corner and gave me access to stuff I had no idea existed.

[Added October 29] Have you been pleased with the play’s reception?

I’m staggered – the response had been amazing. I mean, I knew there’d be a small coterie of people like me who would be keen on it (but then they might have hated it because it’s not 100% the original, so even they were a worry!) but the response has been huge. We trended on Twitter! And loads of people who knew nothing about the play before have got in touch to say how great it was an how floored they were by the ending. Someone even Tweeted to say it’s got his 11 year old son into radio drama which has made me overjoyed!

And then last night I got an email from Judith Kerr saying how much she enjoyed it and that “Tom would have loved it.” I’m not afraid to say that got me a bit emotional. So job done. It’s been a totally thrilling experience from start to finish and I’m very lucky to have had this opportunity.

The Road is available to listen on iPlayer. Read our review here

The first, spoiler-free, part of this interview explains how Toby came to adapt The Road

Photos from the recording (c) Toby Hadoke and used with kind permission.

[kirito-kuro-no-kenshi]

Suguha Mod’s Birthday!

For those of you who’ve been following me for a few years, you might remember that I’m not the only person ever to run this blog. One of the others, Makoto, better known as Suguha Mod, did most of the work running this blog until I had to move away, whereas she stayed behind and continued her duties as a nurse.

Today is her, if I’m not mistaken, 27th birthday, so I called her up to wish her a happy birthday. She was very, very happy to hear from me after so long and apologized for forgetting my birthday. She wanted me to let all of you know that she misses being Suguha Mod and that she hopes you all are doing great and enjoying life! Isn’t she just the sweetest?

Since it’s her birthday, I figured I might as well share with all of you the story of how we met:

I no longer remember exactly when these events took place, but, during the summer of, I think, 2014, I was traveling on-foot, destination no longer recalled, and was passing by the only hospital in town, fittingly. A drunk driver ran off the road and onto the sidewalk, where I dashed and threw a young woman out of the vehicle’s path and, in the instant before impact, braced as well as I could before I was hit at, I think, something like 35 miles per hour.

The woman I threw out of the way was still minorly injured, as she still hit the hood of the car, but, having taken the full impact, my shit was wrecked pretty hard. Surprisingly, I was able to stand back up, likely due to adrenaline, and check on the woman and the driver, who were both alright, in spite of hairline fractures along both my forearms, several broken ribs, near-breaks in both my femurs, and loss of blood.

Fortunately, as I mentioned, we were literally right next to the town’s hospital, where I was escorted into the emergency department by a couple of paramedics, who initially asked if I needed a stretcher, though I declined, unaware of just how bad-off my legs were, and walked in with them, albeit not as quickly as I normally would.

Since I was alert-and-oriented, able to stand and walk, with no apparent issues breathing, and didn’t seem disoriented in any way, the paramedics were content to bandage the bleeding and then escort me in to get checked over, where it turned out I was damn-near broken everywhere. I simply hadn’t realized it due to not feeling much pain; I thought my only issues were the bleeding that had already been bandaged and later bruising.

I was confined to a bed in the emergency department, though I often got back up restlessly, and my injuries were tended to by a kind young nurse with long, wavy brown hair and bright green eyes, and she remarked that I was one tough cookie for taking the impact and only sustaining the injuries I did, then flirtatiously added that my athletic physique probably helped a lot. Her name was Amy, but her nickname was Makoto because her hair and eye colors were the same as Tachibana Makoto from 50% Off, her favorite abridged series, as well as mine.

Since the doctor didn’t want me walking around with two fractured femurs, Amy wheeled me down to the cafeteria for a meal, at which point she’d also clock out for a break so she could sit and eat with me. We quickly became friends and got to know each other quite well. After one of her comical jabs at me during lunch one day, I wadded up a napkin and playfully tossed it at her, which, to my horror, went down her shirt, which, combined with my frantic apologizing, made her lose it with laughter.

After she helped me recuperate and I was discharged from the hospital, we kept in touch and even got together now and then to do stuff together for fun. This served a double purpose for her: Not only was it fun to hang around as friends but she was also able to keep tabs on whether or not I was training too hard, and, if I was, she’d force me to stop, much to my chagrin and to her amusement.

After I’d completely recovered, she took interest in my Kirito blog and asked how she could join in the roleplay fun, to which I replied she could make her own character blog or join in with mine since we were both busy and two busy people running it might make for a complete and active blog, which she enthusiastically agreed to and picked Suguha as her character, since, by that point, she thought of me as a little brother of sorts, so it was kind of an inverse of Sugu and Kirito.

We actually became roommates a while after that, though, of course, keeping separate rooms and beds and whatnot, since we weren’t married; we’re both Christians. I was in college and the apartment complex she lived in was shut down because the owners were apparently part of some really serious illegal activities. Since her family lived far away and it was easier, we agreed that she should move in with me temporarily.

Once I finished college, it was time for me to move to another location for various reasons, like work and family, whereas she had to stay and continue her nursing career, so, with sadness and heavy hearts, Amy and I parted ways with the promise that we’d always be friends. Life got busy for each of us, so we didn’t keep in touch much, but it was always wonderful for us to hear from each other. Even if it isn’t the romantic type of love, Amy and I certainly love each other very much.

A few of you might remember my mentioning almost a year ago, I think, that I convinced one of her lifelong friends, who’d had strong feeling for her for many years, to ask her out, which he did, and that she said yes. I’m very happy to announce that, on New Years Day, which I think is the one year anniversary of the official beginning of their relationship, they will be getting married!!

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend due to just finding out and already having my schedule for the next few months too filled up to rearrange and make room for the wedding, but you can be sure I’ll be sending gifts, my congratulations, and my blessings to them for their wedding!

Also, don’t tell her I told you, but, the pictures she’s used of herself on here aren’t actually pictures of her; she’s camera-shy like me, so she used site model Angie Varona as a faceclaim of sorts since she looks just as much like Angie as I look like Markiplier. She said it made her feel like an undercover secret agent or something. Isn’t that adorable?

[stopforamoment]

Sense and Sensibility (5 of 7)

Sturm und Drang

Sense and Sensibility (5 of 7)

Book: The Royal Romance (After Book Three)

Pairing: Bastien Lykel x OFC Rinda Parks

Word Count: 1,421

Rating: R for Language and Discussion of Rape

*TRIGGERS discussion of rape and unwanted sexual contact

Author’s Note: Obligatory disclaimer that Pixelberry Studios owns the TRR characters and my pocketbook with those darn diamond scenes. OFC with all of her quirks is all mine. My apologies if Tumblr or I do something stupid when I try to post this. The keep reading link shows up on my laptop but not my phone. Ugh.

This series takes place in week three of the school year, and Bastien and Rinda are about to go through their first major friendship challenges.

Summary: Rinda and Bastien try to explain their perspectives to each other.

Bastien looked at Rinda’s eyes and turned away. Golden topaz. The look of controlled fury that he hoped would never be directed at him, but there it was.

When he had the courage to look at her again there was so much pain in his eyes. “Rinda, it’s not that simple.” He took a deep breath. “It’s about defending the king, but it’s also about defending the country. And sometimes things need to be done that, that seem cruel to a civilian.” He looked at Rinda, gauging her reaction. She returned his stare without flinching.

“Constantine’s rule had been, well, challenging. Regina is his third wife. His first wife just left court. She couldn’t handle it, so she left her son Leo behind.” Rinda had been studying recent Cordonian history since she arrived, so she knew the basics and nodded that she was following along. “Then his second wife, Liam’s mom. She was . . . perfect. She complemented Constantine so well. She softened him, she advocated for the people. Education, literacy, social reform. But she wasn’t from Cordonia. She was French, and she was a commoner. Some people called her ‘The French Whore.’” Bastien spat out the words, furious at the memories. “The people loved her, but there were factions who despised her because she was a foreigner and didn’t have royal blood. So she was assassinated, and now there’s Regina. Constantine changed after the loss of two wives, and he deliberately sought someone who would be strong, but in a different way. In a hard, cold kind of way. And then Leo abdicated and Liam was forced into the role. Then there was Constantine’s declining health and the need for Liam to find a suitor. A suitable suitor. Constantine was concerned about the monarchy and the country, but he was also afraid for Riley because she is a foreigner, like his second wife. And you’re right, Rinda. Riley is so strong. She rose to every challenge, and the people loved her. Liam loved her. So Constantine gave an order to do the lowest thing he could think of. Even worse than an assassination. And I carried out his orders.”

…….

“So, what I did. It’s the same thing as the people who covered up your rape. I’m no better than them, and I know that. And that’s why I needed to tell you.”

Rinda was quiet for a long time. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. Bastien couldn’t look at her. He just stared at the wall, waiting. Giving her time. Giving her space.

“Bastien, I don’t think it’s completely fair to say that. Those men were just looking for a paycheck, and what you do is more than that. And intellectually, not emotionally, I can wrap my brain around hurting one woman because it could ultimately protect an entire country. The needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many. Whereas with me, it was just protecting some rich kid asshole who will never have to deal with consequences.

“I think part of what’s messing me up is that you’re an honorable man. You’re a good guy, as cliché as that sounds. So I’m getting tripped up with reconciling the honor of protecting king and country with what ultimately ended up being a shitty, asshole way to sabotage a woman. I think, what I mean is that I’m shocked you didn’t refuse Constantine’s orders or at least talk to him about it. I know your role is to protect the king and obey his orders, but you’re head of security with power of your own so you can protect people.”

Bastien took some time to think about the best way to answer Rinda. “My primary roles are to protect and serve the king. I’m in the military, Rinda. Like any soldier, I must obey orders, and those orders come directly from the king. I’m not the king’s advisor and my power is ultimately meant to be used to protect him and Cordonia.”

Rinda was slowly nodding her head. Not that she was agreeing, but she was acknowledging that she heard him and was taking it in. “I’m glad that you told me about what happened to Riley and your role in everything. I know you didn’t have to do that, that I probably would have never found out. Thank you for that. And thank you for listening to me and for explaining your perspective. I know we view things very differently, but I do understand where you are coming from, and at least logically I understand why you carried out that order. Bastien, was there anything else you wanted to say?”

Bastien looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Rinda smiled. “Sorry . . . Jameson and I always did that. I need some time to process things, and I need to be away from you to do that. That’s why I asked. It’s kind of an ‘any last words’ before I retreat into myself for a bit.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think so. But I’m glad that you listened to what I had to say.”

Rinda gave a small smile. “Bastien, I’m just saying this to be honest with you. Just be warned that I do hang onto things for a long time.” Bastien nodded, but he knew better than to do any more than that. “So I might be awkward with you, or I might ask you the same questions and have you tell me the exact same thing again. I know that’s rehashing. And it might be something where I suddenly bring it up again out of nowhere, and I’m not doing that to hurt you or fight dirty. It’s honestly something where I didn’t even know it was bothering me until something else triggered it.” She gave a sad smile. “That sort of happened when I started talking about Jameson and his injury just now. I hold these grudges and can’t fucking let go of some things, and I never know what’s going to set me off again.”

Bastien gave her a thoughtful look. A lot of things about Rinda, the things she said and didn’t say, made more sense the more he got to know her. Lorinda Rose Parks. Rinda Rose. So many layers of petals to make one beautiful flower.

Rinda gave a shaky laugh. “I’m seriously a pain in the ass, but I’m telling you what I do, what I need to do. So like I said, if there’s anything else you wanted to say, or if you want to tell me how you need to process stuff like this, please let me know.”

Bastien was silent. He didn’t know what to make of Rinda’s explanation and what he should do about it right now, but he could see that she was trying to give him a roadmap to navigate the next step of their friendship. It sounded like he just needed to give her space and to be patient when she brought this up again. Fuck. Did this discussion even accomplish anything? He hated this shit. Relationships. Complications. Why did he have to care about her so much?

Rinda stood up. She didn’t say anything, but he knew that was his clue to leave. “I am glad that you came, Bastien. Thank you.” Bastien stared awkwardly, not sure if he should take her hand or . . . normally she took the lead, rescuing him when he wasn’t sure. Rinda started at him a moment, and slowly shook her head. He wasn’t allowed to touch her, but she did speak again. “We’re going to be okay, Bastien. And we’re still going to work well together to protect the kids. But anything more than this, for right now, I’m either going to shut down or lash out. I need to defrag now. I’ll see you Monday, okay?”

Bastien nodded. He let himself out and Rinda shut the door, not bothering to walk him out or watch him out the window.

Now it was time to unpack the baggage, take out each piece and overanalyze it. It was time to throw away the logic and to embrace her emotions. To hash, rehash, second guess, and replay every word, every facial expression. To submerse herself in the pain of his betrayal, without any guilt of whether it should even be considered betrayal to her or not. All that mattered tonight were her own perspectives and feelings--logic and Bastien’s explanations be damned.

[looselucy]

March

March 3rd marked a few things. A month since I had gone to Harry’s home for reading week. 18 days since I had last kissed Harry. The day I would finally see Liam again. Then, last but not least, mine and Harry’s birthday.

It was a Wednesday, which was fine for everyone else, since not one other person from my flat was in a lecture on a Wednesday, except me. My alarm sounded at half past 8. I had woken up alone, which I had done since that final night with Harry. But it was good. We’d finally come to our senses and stopped our cuddles. It wasn’t even something we discussed, it just happened. We hadn’t shared a bed since that last night, but our relationship had never been better. I’m not even sure why, really, but everything was just brilliant. We had been getting closer and closer, and it was just completely platonic. I think after getting that house together, myself, Harry and Zayn had all gotten closer. We were so excited about living with each other. For just over a fortnight, it felt like all I had done was laugh, and realise that the people I lived with were some of the greatest people of all time. We had gotten so lucky. But waking up at that time, on my birthday... Meh... I wasn’t feeling too great. I grabbed my phone and turned the alarm off, staring at the time, and trying to think whether or not I really needed to go to my lecture. Out of nowhere my bedroom door began opening itself. I moved so I could stare as Zayn quietly started to sneak into my room, on his tippy-toes, dropping the act as soon as he saw I was awake. “Well what the fuck are you doing?” He huffed, disappointed. “What?” I chuckled, lying on my stomach, facing the door. It was pushed open the rest of the way, Mike, Tally, and even Ringo stood on the outside, a giant cake in Mikes hands. “We were gunna wake you up and surprise you!” Zayn complained. “Well, I have a lecture, don’t I?” I told them. “Yeah, I always forget. Because you never go to your Wednesday lecture.” “Yeah, I suppose.” “I think, as well, because-” Zayn tried. “ALRIGHT, YOU TWO, YOU’RE WASTING TIME!” Mike yelled. “Up you get, Pippa-Potamus, we’re going to Harry’s room.” “Pippa-Potamus? For fuck sake. Always with the horrible nicknames.” I sulked. “GET UP!” “I’M NAKED, YOU IDIOTS!” “YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES!” Mike cried. They all scuttled out of my room back into the corridor as I got out from under the sheets and picked up a pair of tiny sweat-shorts and my sports-bra, then putting on a bright red hoodie, snug and ready to go. When I stepped out, they were all stood eagerly outside Harry’s door, facing the right way to go inwards, idiotic grins on their faces, Mike still proudly holding the cake like he had cooked the damn thing himself. I was willing to bet money he hadn’t. “Harry’s gunna be impossible to wake up.” I sighed as my door closed behind myself. “Not with the racket we’re going to make.” Zayn cocked his brows. “How the hell do you know Harry’s sleeping habits anyway?” Mike tutted. “And also, you were longer than two minutes!” “I was not!” I protested. “You definitely were.” “Why does everything involving all of us together take so much effort?” Tally stomped. “I’m sorry about this, Ringo.” “It’s funny.” The tiny girl giggled. “I wasn’t more than two minutes.” I scoffed to Mike. “OH MY GOD! Why are we all just stood staring at Harry’s door?” Zayn groaned. “Alright. Knock on the count of three.” Mike prompted. “Why do we need to count?” Zayn sighed, exhausted already. “I thought we weren’t knocking, I thought we were going straight in?” Tally puzzled. “Oh shit. Yeah. Alright, on the count of three, we go in.” Mike nodded. “NO! LET ME ASK AGAIN, MIKE, WHY ARE WE COUNTING?” Before the argument could continue further, the door in front of us was flung open, Harry stood there with a face like thunder, just in his underwear. That in itself, was enough to shut me up. I grinned at the tattoo, mesmerized. “Seriously, guys.” Harry huffed as we stood in silence. “It takes a hell of a lot to wake me up, and you’ve all just succeeded without any problem. You weren’t even in my bloody room, and you’ve woke me up.” “That’s weird, Pippa-Potamus said you’d be hard to wake up.” Mike chirped. “Why are you here?” Harry said, clearly half asleep. “Oh shit, yeah. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” Zayn tried to regain some sanity. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” The rest of them tried their best to say that in time with another, but it was absolutely all over the place. There was a groaning sound once they were done, an absolute lack of enthusiasm and lack of pride when it came to their efforts. “Well, where’s my happy birthday?” I whimpered. “OH for fuck sake.” Zayn dragged me from the side and practically chucked me into Harry’s room. I balanced myself and stood next to Harry, eagerly awaiting my happy birthday from them, grinning like an idiot, whereas Harry was still stood there like he couldn’t quite fathom the bunch of imbeciles he had to live with. “HAP-” “No, Mike.” Zayn cut in. “This time, we need to count to three.” “Oh. Yes, no, you’re right. Good idea, Zayn. Okay, on the count of three-” “Well do we go on one, or do we go on zero?” Tally asked. “We go on zero.” Zayn was losing his mind. “I thought we went on four.” Mike broke in. “What?” “So like, one, two, three, and then go on four.” “NO!” Zayn must have been close to tears. “It’s three, two, one, and then you say it.” “Ohhhh. No of course, yeah, got ya. Okay, who’s counting?” “I would like to count.” Tally raised her hand. “Okay. Please count before I kill myself.” Zayn wept. “Good. Three, two-” “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” Mike raised the cake in the air. Zayn started banging his head against the door-frame, Mike looking happy at first, but then glancing round to everyone else when he noticed he was the only one who had said happy birthday. “I cannot cope.” Zayn spoke, more to himself. “What happened, guys?” “You ruined it!” Tally told Mike. “I didn’t!” “You said it too soon.” Ringo squeaked. “Did I?” “Okay, one last time!” Tally groaned. “Three, two, one.” “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” They had finally done it, and I felt so proud of them for eventually getting there. I glanced up to Harry with the biggest smile on my face, and I could tell he was just about holding in his own smile, a mix of not wanting to be awake, really, and finding the whole situation just as amusing as I was. Mike extended his arm, easily able to balance the large cake in his giant palm, as Harry glumly took it from his hand. He lowered it so we could see what was on top. It was blatantly a cake they had purchased, but also, they had bought some form of decoration stuff so one of them could scruffily write ‘Hap Birth Pip + Haz’ on the top of it. “Did you realise there wasn’t enough room for the whole sentence?” Harry asked them. “I wouldn’t necessarily say we realised.” Mike sighed. “This is actually the second cake we bought. On the previous cake we wrote ‘Happy Birthday Har’ and then ran out of room. So we ate that one and got another.” “I still feel sick from the last cake, so I definitely don’t want another.” Zayn hurled. “Can I go back to bed?” Ringo groaned. “Yes. I need to get ready for my lecture.” I added. “Thanks for the cake though, guys. It’s beautiful.” “You can’t go to your lecture! It’s your birthday!” Mike argued. “I don’t feel like you care about my education, Mike.” “I think you’re right. I don’t.” “Well, I do. So, I’m going.” I shrugged. I gave each one of them a kiss on the cheek as I pushed past them, Mike turning his head at the last moment and catching my lips, which made everyone laugh. I punched him gently in the chest and then went back into my room, knowing that that was probably the best start to a birthday I would ever have. + + + “I’ll be round later for drinks, okay?” Ed smiled. “Yeah yeah. S’all good. Make sure you’re looking dapper.” I grinned as we began to part down our correct paths. “I can’t believe you would say that to me, Pippa. I always look dapper.” He joked offense. “Of course you do. What was I thinking?” “I don’t know!” Ed skipped off happily, rips in his jeans, a beanie on his head, scuffed shoes, and I could barely even imagine Ed being dapper. He suited that scuffed look, he was so sweet and endearing and all round wonderful. I wrapped the scarf he had bought for me a little tighter round my neck, excited at the prospect of slightly warmer weather heading our way as I walked the short distance from where myself and Ed parted every day, and got back into our flat, more than excited for the birthday celebrations to begin. I got up to the top floor, and the first thing I saw when I walked in was Zayn laying down on the kitchen floor, staring up to the ceiling. “What happened to you?” I giggled. “Harry hit me in the dick.” Harry poked his head around the corner so I could see him, smiling triumphantly, an egg in his hand, for some reason. “He’s right, I did!” He chirped. I threw my bag outside my door again, and started to head towards them, Zayn still staring up to the light on the ceiling like he was thinking about the meaning of life, a sombre look on his face. Once I was inside, I noticed that Harry also had two more eggs in his other hand, and as he stood in the middle of the kitchen, he began juggling the three of them, his tongue poking out between his lips as he concentrated. I was having a strange day. “How’s your birthday going?” I chimed in. “Really good.” He kept his eyes on the eggs. “How’s your birthday going?” “Apart from the lack of egg juggling, I’m doing pretty good.” “Yeah yeah. Well, we’re pretty busy right now so...” Harry trailed. I looked to the ground to see Zayn nodding away, one hand clutching at his goods. I whipped my head back round to Harry. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” I cried. “Yeah. Go to your room or something. This is man’s time.” “For men.” Zayn added. I simply shook my head, a little confused by what the hell I had just walked in on and why they were so eager to get rid of me, but swung on my heel regardless, bobbing down the corridor and wandering into my room, exhausted. I burst out screaming and crying as soon as I saw Liam sat smiling on my bed. “OH MY GOOOOOOD!” I whelped. He grinned and jumped up to his feet, running up and taking me into the biggest hug I had ever experienced in my life. I couldn’t quite believe the body my arms were around. Not only that it was my brother who I hadn’t seen since I was 13 years old, but even the size of him. When Liam had left, he had a head full of curls, a weedy little frame, an innocent glisten in his eyes. Now I could feel the scrape of his facial hair on my forehead, the sheer mass of him, his tense arms and large frame. I couldn’t quite believe it. My brother was a 24 year old man. Of course, he was bound to have changed, but it was a lot to take in. I just kept blubbering away, gripping onto him like my life depended on it, probably ruining the white t-shirt he had on as I cried, covering the thing in mascara and tears. “Shh. S’okay, Pippa.” He tried to comfort me. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re actually here.” I could have been better. I could have been dealing with the whole thing a lot better than I was. It was a mix of emotions. I knew happy tears would happen, that was a given, especially since it was me. But I couldn’t help but notice I was overwhelmingly sad, and I knew that was because Liam felt like the only part of my family that still worked, the only part that still made sense, that still made me happy. Even after years apart, Liam knew me better than anyone, and he could sense that from me. I wasn’t just crying because I was happy to see him, I was crying about a whole mix of things. He held me so tightly it felt like I was going to explode. I’m not sure how long that lasted, but it was a long time. By the time Liam pulled out of the hug, I had run out of tears, wiping my damp cheeks on either shoulder, trying to take in the image of the man in front of me rather than the boy I had known.I had seen pictures, but none could have prepared me for the real thing. “Well, you’ve changed!” He sighed and smiled. “I should hope so. It would be slightly concerning if I still looked thirteen.” I wiped my cheeks again. “You look like an adult.” “Good! I am, I guess.” Liam sat himself down on the bed, so I sat next to him. Then the strangest thing happened. All I could think about was how I wished we had cups of tea for the catch-up we were about to have, but I didn’t want to leave Liam for even a second, whether it was to make tea or not. Then there was a little knock on my door, before Harry used his elbow to push down the handle, a cup of tea in each hand, an innocent little look on his face as he walked in, bringing the tea to us. “You’re amazing.” I gulped as I stared at him. “I went for a middle ground and made you a tea-one.” Harry said to Liam. “I feel like everyone can be happy with a tea-one.” “Tea-one is exactly how I take my tea.” Liam smiled to him. We both took a mug from his hand, and I swear to god I had never been so fond of him and everything about him. Just because of two bloody cups of tea. “Thank you.” I said quietly. “Don’t mention it.” He winked at me. Before he left, I noticed a stain on his jeans that couldn’t be anything other than egg. I giggled quietly to myself. As soon as Harry was out the door, Liam rolled his eyes. “What?” I hit his arm. “You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend!” “What? He’s not my boyfriend!” “He’s not?” Liam gawped. “Nooooo. Definitely not my boyfriend.” “Oh. That’s weird.” I hate admitting it even now, but I blushed and cooed at the thought that Liam had come to the conclusion myself and Harry were together. I tried to brush past the moment, but my cheeks were practically aching in zero seconds flat. “So, how’s things?” I asked hesitantly. “Okay.” He shrugged. “Me and mum just moved into this tiny house. S’weird though, cause like... she’s obviously built up things for years. So many things, which obviously fit in a big family home but... there just isn’t enough room anymore. It’s sad, seeing her try to fit everything into that place. Strange.” Guilt swallowed me whenever we spoke about that kind of thing. The thought that I hadn’t even been to see either of my parents, made me feel like such an awful person. I only had myself to blame. “Seen much of dad?” I asked. “Other than work, no.” “How is it? Working with him?” “Hm.” He looked down to the floor. “I don’t think he really wants me there. Y’know how me being gone as brought us closer together? I think for dad... I dunno. I think he feels like he doesn’t know me anymore. We’re like... strangers.” I would have started crying again, but I had no more tears left in my system. I guess maybe it was also kind of numbing, hearing their relationship was like that, knowing my father and me would never be as close as we once were. “I never thought our family would end up like this.” I breathed. “Me neither. But, I don’t think we should dwell on it. I’m going back home tomorrow, so we don’t have time to be sad.” Liam perked. “What we do have time for, is lots of merriment's and drinks and birthday celebrations. So as soon as these cups of tea are done with, we are going to move onto the vodka that I bought you. No mucking about tonight, Pippa. We’re going all out.” He jumped up to his feet and offered me his hand, a giant grin on his face, a sparkling of sadness in his eyes, but one we were both willing to push past. It wouldn’t be hard either, because I had my brother back. + + + My towel was wrapped tight around my body, as I exited my room and began strolling down the corridor. The first stages of getting ready for my night out were about to begin. And I was already three vodkas down. But before I could get anywhere, Harry’s bedroom door opened, and he poked his head out to see me, his eyes squinted and his lips curved. “I sensed it was you.” He whispered with an idiotic accent. “And I sensed, you were a twat the very second I met you.” I retorted. “You want your present?” He lifted one brow. “We said we weren’t getting each other presents!” “But as you know, Pip-Squeak, I am full of shit.” That was all well and good, but what I wasn’t happy about was the fact that I genuinely hadn’t bought him a present. I wasn’t sure how to say that to him, especially given he wanted to give me mine then. “Harry-” “I don’t care if you didn’t get me one, okay? I know we had a deal, but Harry Styles doesn’t play by the rules.” “Please don’t speak about yourself in third-person.” I tutted. He widened his door as an open invite, and so I had to go inside. Maybe I was a little bit angry that Harry had gotten me a present and I hadn’t gotten him one. One, because it wasn’t fair. Two, because it was like Harry had beaten me, which was probably his plan because we were both insanely competitive, and it was only worse when it came to each other. The little bastard had done it on purpose. He shut the door behind me and then scurried up to his wardrobe like an excited child, leaning in and grabbing a terribly wrapped gift for me. “Nice wrapping.” “Shut up.” He scoffed. It was quite obvious what it was, due to the feel of it, and the bizarre shape. So I quickly unwrapped it, smiling like an idiot at the thought of a new teddy. I wasn’t really expecting to unwrap a penguin though. My face dropped. “You got me a penguin.” I shuddered. “I thought about your other penguin teddy, Lulu, and how it means so much to you because it was a certain time in your life. So, I thought maybe this one could symbolize a different time of your life, and hopefully mean just as much to you... In time.” I stroked at the fluff, a little struck for what to say. It was different to Lulu. Slightly bigger, definitely cleaner due to how new it was. Lulu had seen some rough times through the years. This one also had on some cute, little, blue shoes. “I never thought you’d be the type to buy thoughtful gifts.” I swallowed. “It seems you still have a lot to learn about me.” He smirked. All I wanted to do was learn. All I wanted to bloody do was find out every single detail about him, to fucking study him and know the reasons behind every single aspect of his character. Learning about his family had answered so many questions I had about Harry, but I had this desire to know everything. I bit my lip and held the teddy a little tighter. “I’m gunna call him Luke.” I smiled. “WHAT?” I jumped thanks to his loud voice. “I thought you were going to call it Harry?” “Never in a million years.” I giggled. He genuinely looked offended. He folded his arms across his chest and shook his head at me, bitterly disappointed by my choice of name. But Luke and Lulu was definitely cuter than Harry and Lulu. On top of that, naming a teddy after Harry was a little bit creepy. “You’re a bad person.” He huffed. “I’m going for a shower.” I shook my head at him. “Thank you, though. I love it. I really do.” “You’re going for a shower?” He questioned, like it was weird. “Yes. That would be the reason I’m wearing a towel...” I trailed. “Thought you were just teasing me.” He grunted. I forgot to mention, that even though myself and Harry hadn’t kissed or anything since Valentine’s Day, we had definitely flirted. We kept it to a minimal, as much as we could, but it seemed our natural instinct now was to just flirt with one another, to say things like that, to let our eyes travel one another like we were ready to pounce. It never went too far, but it was noticeable. “It wasn’t my plan. But I don’t mind teasing you.” I smiled. “I didn’t think you would.” I bit my lip again, but I knew I had to leave otherwise I would have just jumped on him and ruined this whole friendship thing we were doing pretty well at. I didn’t say anything else, I just left his room, kind of having to take steady breaths in and out, my little legs carrying me down the hall and through the kitchen as quickly as they could. I placed Luke down in the corner of the room before hanging the towel on the hook and getting into the shower I always used, still smiling about yet another flirtatious encounter with Harry. As I stood under the beating hot water, I thought about how I would react if I was to see Harry with a girl again. If he kissed someone, or slept with someone, or anything. I loved to think I would be fine with it, but I wasn’t sure I would be. Thankfully, Harry had barely even looked at another girl for the past few weeks. I washed myself slowly, trying my best to stop thinking about him. I heard the door open after I had been in there a couple of minutes. “MIKE, I SWEAR TO GOD YOU’RE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE!” I yelled. There was no reply. I continued showering naturally, playing through my hair, but turning to look through the misted shower-curtain, a little wary. With good reason. I watched as Harry came and stood right in front of my shower cubicle, just staring through to where I was. I barely flinched. I stared back, still rinsing through my hair, my body tingling at the sight of him watching me, feeling a new fire burst within my stomach. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, how still he was, how I was almost sure I could hear his heavy breathing, despite the downpour. I was so disgustingly turned on as I thought about him seeing me like that, the blurs and lines of my naked body. We were totally silent. He watched me and I watched him, noticing his hand trail down to his crotch as he stroked through his jeans, and I played with my hair, trying to stand and hold myself in a way I knew he would find appealing, at the same time as being as natural as I possibly could be. I wanted him to see more, maybe just as much as Harry wanted to see more. But if Harry was to draw back that curtain, or if I was to do it, in a strange way, it would have been taking it too far, it would have been too much for us to handle. Harry looking at the blurred image of my naked, wet body, was mysterious and secretive. That’s how we worked. That shower-curtain was the only thing stopping me and Harry from taking things a step too far. Even though, if there was a line, we had definitely already crossed it. It stayed that way for a while. My eyes could just about make out that Harry’s hand was buried deep into the front of his jeans, and the first noise he made whilst he was in there was so sexual and raw, it took every single ounce of strength I had not to moan out loud. I grabbed at my breast, tipping my head backwards, and I knew that would tip him over the edge. “Fuck.” He grunted. “I can’t... Fuck.” He practically ran out of there, and I was once again in the shower-room alone, left feeling so satisfied about what had just happened between us. I breathed out heavily, pressing my back against the tiles and staring up to the ceiling, only now realising I was panting, finally touching myself softly, fuelled by the knowledge that Harry was in his room doing exactly the same thing, because of me. + + + Harry and Liam were stood talking about something or other in the corner of the kitchen. I have no idea what they were talking about, but they were both using their hands a lot and it looked like they were deep into a discussion. It was quite foreign. Liam had been gone for so long, I had never realised how much his approval of people meant to me. He hadn’t had much of a chance to bond with Zayn, at that point, but he had spent a lot of his evening with Ed, and even more of it with Louis. I had told him what happened between me and Louis, but I also told him that we were fine, and Liam wasn’t the type of person to hate someone unless they had done something specifically to him. So it was weird, realising that even Liam getting on with Louis meant something to me. “So then Jenny was like, Mike, you’re not even a good actor. And I said, Jenny, yes I am a good actor, you’re just a dumb bitch. Then she went all crazy on me and shouted loads of stuff and, yeah... I think I’m in love with her. A little bit.” “Mike, how often do you fall in love?” Ed grinned, taking a sip. “Hm. Quite a lot, Edward. Quite a lot.” “If you carry on calling me Edward, I’m going to start calling you Michael.” Mikes face dropped at the mere idea of that as I laughed down to the floor, glad to be in a kitchen full of people. There were a couple there from my course, some from Harry’s, all of our friends were there, it was crowded and loud and exactly what I wanted. It was about to get even better. “PIPPA!” I heard Zayn yell from the doorway, catching my attention. “I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU!” I heard Mike curse at the sight of her before I even realised that Grace had just re-entered her old home. I barged past people, probably knocking a few drinks out of people’s hands in the process as I finally wrapped my arms back around the girl who I loved so much my heart could barely cope with seeing her again. “Holy shit, you came!” I gasped into her hair. “IT WAS MY IDEA!” Zayn chirped from the side of us. “I said you should invite her just so she could say no and then you would be EVEN MORE surprised when she did turn up. YES, I’m a genius!” She pulled out of the hug and grabbed at my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if she genuinely looked different or if I was convincing myself she looked different. “Look at your little face.” She growled. “Oh Pip, it’s so good to see you!” “I am so bloody glad you’re here, woman.” I quickly went into a whisper. “Oh my god, is Mike freaking out behind me?” She quickly glanced over my shoulder, then back to me, eye to eye. “He seems to be, just a little bit. Why?” “We think he’s in love with you.” I whispered. “What? Holy god, don’t, I would marry Mike tomorrow!” “Don’t let him hear you say that, because he’ll be down on one knee in seconds.” The look of joy that crossed her face was one that let me know automatically, that Grace felt the same way towards Mike as we were sure he felt towards her. It only made me curse her even more for leaving uni in the first place. “Hi!” I heard from my other side as Harry pushed in. “I’m Harry Styles. I moved into your old room. Pippa tells me she’d rather have you here, and that’s saying something, because I am an absolute treat.” “You’re a dick.” I scalded. “I’m not.” He shoved his hand in my face, still addressing Grace. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Grace.” I liked that he had finally learnt her name, and who she was. But I hated how charming he was. His eyes sparkled, and whenever Harry was meeting someone, it was like how attractive he was just boosted. I could see the love hearts forming in Graces eyes, despite what we had just been discussing about Mike. Harry was too charming for his own good. He was barely trying. “Please ignore him.” I moved his hand off my face. “He’s the biggest wanker you will ever meet. I’ve told you about him before. You’ve never heard anything good about Harry Styles fall from my mouth.” Grace seemed a little bit baffled by the two of us, but this was us flirting, mixed with the beginning dimensions of our relationship, where we couldn’t stand one another. “You two are weird.” She shrugged. “Nice to meet you, Harry.” “Pleasure.” He said, taking her hand. Grace then went to rekindle with everyone else from the flat, whom she had missed in the months since she had left, as I dragged Harry off to one side, unable to hide my jealousy any longer. I was enough drinks down at that stage. “You stay away from her.” I whispered harshly, pointing a finger. “I know she’s beautiful, but you’re not allowed.” “And why’s that?” He moved dangerously close to me. We found it harder, after a few drinks, to keep our distance, and I wondered if everyone there was just a little docile, or if people were catching on that maybe we had something between us. “Because Mike is in love with her.” I scalded. He moved so his lips were by my ear, one hand tucked onto my waist, moving so close to me I had to press my back against the kitchen counter. I breathed him in. “Is that the only reason?” He whispered seductively. I swallowed hard as he moved back from my ear, holding his face close to me, studying all my features as he waited for a reply. I couldn’t lie, in that moment. There wasn’t even any point in lying. Harry could see right through me, not just because I was completely transparent when it came to my emotions, but because Harry and myself were so stupidly similar, it would never be hard for him to read my thoughts. He knew every twitch and every emotion, because it was more than likely he would be feeling the same thing. “No.” I choked, defeated. “That’s not the only reason.” I refused to give him any more than that. I didn’t feel any need to say what the exact reason was, because he knew. He probably wanted me to voice it just to weaken me a bit, just so he had the upper-hand, the power. “Well,” He shrugged, nonchalant. “I’ve only got eyes for one girl in this room, and it’s not Grace.” The smirk I knew all too well kissed at the left-hand side of his lips, and the worse our flirting got, the harder I was finding it to keep away from him. He pushed away from me triumphantly, strolling over and striking up a conversation with Louis like none of it had ever happened. I downed the rest of my drink.

[marnathas]

The struggle of actually wanting things that are unlikely

Right, this is a bit of something I've touched a bit in... venting posts not too long ago, but it might feel good to just break it down completely. The whole thought process of what do I actually want, how realistic I think it is, and how being around various hypno and kink communities affects that and my perception of it. I won't pretend this'll be an optimistic thing, but yeah let's do it. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Ok, so this is in the context of what I want relationship-wise, and I'm going to skip the idea of play partners altogether, as while that's fun, deep down I want more than that. So let's list things out:

The "Duh" stuff: Get the boring stuff out of the way first and not touch it more. I'm a straight dude, wanting a girl near my own age, who I'm attracted to, yadda yadda yadda, obvious and boring shit, nothing really interesting comes out of it unless you want me to go into what exactly I consider attractive or my "type". This is just here for completeness-sake, and not getting mentioned further. Oh, and the obvious qualifier of is attracted to me as well. That's a small mention but it obviously makes or breaks the entire thing! That part is actually important and where I keep having zero fucking luck. XD

Locality: Yeah, I want someone in my city/area. Long-distance isn't something I want to do, and I really really want cuddling and snuggling and holding someone close and all that nice physical stuff. This is kind of obvious too, but you'll see it makes it much more complicated when I start adding the rest into it.

Hypnosis: Now it starts getting complicated. I am, at the core of it, a hypnofetishist. Hypnosis is the core of my sexuality, and at the moment, I very much doubt I'd feel sexually fulfilled in a relationship that didn't involve hypnosis.

Dom/sub/power exchange: Natural extension of the hypnosis, and being into kink. It took me a fair while to realise, and get comfortable with, but yeah, I want someone subby (at least during play and in the bedroom). To some degree I'd naturally go in that direction anyways now I think. I've sort of accepted that dommy part of me.

Monogamous: Hey, I'm mostly a monogamous person. Not entirely, but close enough that that's the most likely direction I'd go in a relationship. On one hand, that's not a hard qualifier. On the other, it's a lot less prevalent in the kink/hypno communities than it is outside those, so it does narrow things a bit.

The rest of BDSM: This is less important, but again it follows on from the previous things. I'd love someone willing to experiment and explore BDSM outside of hypnosis and power exchange dynamics. But this isn't a fundamental thing I need as much as the previous two, it's more optional, but I do want it.

To summarise: A monogamous subby girl in my area who's into erotic hypnosis and ideally more of kink too.

And maybe some of you reading this are going "That's a pretty brief summary.". Well, as a close friend of mine once bluntly put it; "Marn, you're looking for a girl in Melbourne who's into being hypnotised, that's so hard to find, you're going to have to compromise somewhere." And the unfortunate reality of it is, she's probably right.

So, let's be blunt myself. The hypnosis community is fucking tiny. I know it is, I freaking run the thing in Melbourne so I know exactly how big it actually is (not big). And as of yet my success rate of getting people interested in trying hypnosis who aren't already interested is nil. So it feels like I either have to compromise on long-distance (doesn't feel good), the hypnosis (feels even worse), or find someone and hope to hell they'd then be interested in being zonked (and end up at the previous result if not). It's several things that each narrow down the field a lot individually, and then throwing them together translates to "you're fucked, and not in the hawt way".

That's the short part of how realistic it probably is, which is honestly probably not very. So how on earth has being in the kink/hypno community affected this?

The big thing, is it's opened my eyes up to what exactly I want. My realisations of needing hypnosis and power exchange and being properly interested in kink and dom/sub stuff are only fairly recent. They've come over the course of this year as I've made friends, talked to them about various things, been shown what actual normal kink relationships are like (as opposed to the super heavy stereotypes that... had also been what I'd seen at first). Now, I'm glad I came to these realisations, I'm sure I'd of eventually reached them at some point. Better now, than later on and realising I'm unhappy about something and why. But at the same time it's made me less optimistic of ever finding someone, when I was never that optimistic in the first place.

But, there's also the problem of realising I want all of this. Now, deep down, I probably always did. But not knowing it, or being able to convince yourself you don't want it that badly is a bit of a blessing in of itself. As an example, I spent the last few years prior to this one not bothered much about relationships. I'd of been happy if something happened, but it wasn't on my mind much, so I was relaxed about it all, and not stressing about it, and all of this. And then over this year, things happened to prod me a bit about it, give me faint sparks of hope and desire, and all of a sudden I wanted it, and it was now on my mind and I was stressing because of it.

And once that spark of want or need ignites, it's very very hard to douse. Because you know it's true, and at best you can just ignore it or try and run away from it, but it's there, and it'll always be there. And that's the downside of being in the kink and hypno communities, and realising all these things about myself. Because it's sparked that desire in me for what I want, and that desire may never actually happen. And then as a result it just causes pain and longing, and doubts as to why bother joining and being in them if that's all it's sparking in you. There's the lingering thought that if I never jumped into them, I wouldn't be feeling those wants, and be a bit happier as a result, or if I left maybe I'd be able to supress it all if it's no longer in my face all the time, although I think that's not much of a realistic option anymore either. I'd just be pretending to myself.

Last thing I'll touch on, the actual being in the community, and how that feels. I touched on that a lot more heavily in previous posts, but I do feel somewhat out of place with what I want, believe it or not. Ignoring the local or not bit, and speaking mostly about the online community, I see a lot of people wanting to play around lots, and do a lot of casual stuff, whereas I'm after something more dedicated and serious at this point. Hell, I recently got turned down by someone after talking for a while, because they wanted to play with multiple people as opposed to just me, so it's not just me feeling weird. Currently, I feel like even if I didn't care about the local/physical bit, I'd struggle to find someone within the community because of those reasons.

Hmm, it's just kind of nice to have it all written down and on paper (well, internet). Who knows. Maybe this helps someone else struggling put their feelings into something concrete and understand them. Maybe someone who's been through this before me has some sort of insight they can say. I dunno. I've currently been really lost and struggling with this in particular for a while now. It’s a hard struggle just wanting to be happy, and knowing some of the things you want are just probably never going to happen.