#there's something to be said about the intersection of this kind of talk and the way we view disability btw

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having a lot of inarticulate thoughts about pericles' genderousness this evening, in particular how i imagine/interpret his expression of it having changed over time, but they will not coalesce. when will my one brain cell for queer readings return from the war

[websterss]

THE DEVIL WEARS CONVERSE — LUKE PATTERSON

SUMMARY: If there's one thing Caleb is scared of it's the color red and the devil.

WARNING(S): angst, some fluff, implications of smut, some making out

WORD COUNT: 3,604

PAIRING: Luke Patterson x fem!Reader

A/N: I hope you enjoy it! Feedback is always welcomed! This was one fic I lost when I made a new blog and was reposting my works.

MASTERLIST

You had caught Luke's eye as soon as he stepped out onto the floor. Many people flaunting and going amidst their night caught his attention. He felt that he and the guys were a little underdressed for the fancy club, but it had been your appearance alone that had you catching their eyes like flies. They were drawn to you in particular. Luke most of all, couldn't sway where his sights were directed towards.

"Hey boys, I'll be right back." He made to move past Reggie, his hand on his chest in passing but was stopped when Willie intersected him. Luke looked down at the hand that Willie pressed against his chest. He scoffed in amusement. "Where's the fire?"

"N-Nowhere, but there could be. I wouldn't recommend it. Not her. Y/n isn't someone you just go up and talk to." Willie's face fell with fear.

"Oh yeah, why's that? Is she important or something?" Luke laughed, but Willie wasn't finding Luke's advances towards you hilarious. "She off-bounds?"

"Yea- Yeah, she is in fact," Willie said nervously. After taking notice of Willie's shift in tone when he spoke of you, Luke's eyebrows furrowed with curiosity.

"What are you getting at, Willie? You seem protective." Luke questioned as he put two and two together. He was almost certain that Alex was Willie's crush, he didn't take him to swing both ways or had he simply misread him, that and the way he reacted just now…it seemed unprecedented. "I thought you liked Alex?" Luke crossed his arms.

"I do- It's not like that. Just- Just promise me you won't approach her. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you guys." Willie pleads.

Luke couldn't help but raise a brow, Willie was acting like she was some sort of monster. "A heartbreaker then, that's okay Willie. I've had my fair share of girls like her." He smiled boyishly. He reached up to slap Willie on his upper arm in reassurance. "Nothing's going to happen." Luke shrugged off Willie. Willie was being dramatic. The interest of doing something irrational intrigued him like a child who was told to not play with fire.

"Luke, I mean it. She's not even a regular. You won't see her that much. She's only ever here on business."

"Only ever here for business, huh?" Luke repeated curiously with an eyebrow up. "Then why can't I talk to her? What's gonna happen, Willie?" Luke wasn't one for following orders, that was not in his nature. He couldn't stand being told what not to do, it only made him crave what he wasn't meant to have or do even more. So, it was no mistake that Willie had made one just now. This little curiosity of Luke's was going to get the best of him. The way Willie made it sound like you did some kind of illicit activity intrigued him even more. "What, does she work for the mob or something?" He said half-jokingly with a brow lift. It was only natural to be enticed by a beautiful woman whom people were being tight-lipped about, it only made you seem more interesting and willing to know more about in his books.

"N-Nothing good." He muttered softly. "Why don't I show you guys to your table?"

"Yes, please!" Alex raised a finger, eager to move past Willie's sudden fear-stricken face.

"You guys go ahead. I'll be right back." Luke finally did move past Reggie and began making his way over to you.

"Luke, I wouldn't!" Willie exclaimed.

"I'm just gonna say hi." He turned to walk backwards as he faced him with a cheeky smile. Then turned as he approached the empty bar, beside you and the bartender giving you your drinks with shaky hands. That had him raising his brows with interest.

-

"Hi Marcus, long time no see." You flashed the man with a sweet smirk. Marcus's smile fell upon the realization you were sitting before the bar. He stopped cleaning the glass in his hands letting it fall to the ground with a smash. He winced at the sound of it breaking. He remained composed as your smile didn't let up. You were the mere image of innocence, you conjured up the identity of a teenage girl this time around. Last year you looked older, dressed up as a woman in a black dress, but this by far was his least favorite one on you, your childlike nature and appearance was scaring him shitless. Your soul was pure rotten, you by no means represented youth and innocence.

"Y/n." He dipped his head in greetings.

"I see Caleb still keeps you around." You tilted your head.

Because he knows I can keep you tranquil. He wanted to say but opted not to. "I'm the only one who can make a dirty cocktail." He lets out nervously.

"That you can, sweetie. Though I'm more in the mood for something sweet tonight, like you." You poke his sternum. Your sweet angelic laughter unsettles him, but he laughs along with you. Knowing Caleb would have his soul again if he made you angry.

"Perhaps a living soul?" He offered with a timid smile.

"Hell no, Lucifer knows I deal with too many of them back home as it is. Why on earth would I waste my time on one tonight? Though you do have a fair amount of them tonight..." You hum surveying the floor. You turned back to the bar. "How about a slushy, make it strong, and fruity." You order.

"So you're not here to collect a soul?"

"I have other matters to tend to Marcus. I've been getting screwed over you see. My bargain with your showman has not been followed down to the last letter, and I am not happy Marcus." You sigh. "I mean how stupid does Caleb peg me? Stealing souls from me." Your laughter darkens with every word that escapes you. "I am a woman of business, and I don't see my need to be tethered to one so insidious. You understand, Marcus?"

Marcus nods furiously. "Where's Willie? As of now, he's my new eyes and ears. Caleb still has his soul right? Of course, he does that's how he controls you all. If this gets out to Caleb sweetie, I'll be the one to devour that pure soul of yours." You raise a brow in question gesturing to his chest. Marcus nods and snaps his fingers. Your requested drink appearing before you. You raised the glass to your lips and let your shoulders drop. "This is why I love you, Marcus."

"Am I no longer your eyes and ears?"

"No." You could see Marcus's disappointment flash in his eyes. "You've been upgraded to my personal assistant."

Marcus felt honored. "Oh wow. Does this mean I don't have to be behind the bar anymore?"

"Only when we come to the club, but other than that..." You snap your fingers nonchalantly. Caleb's stupid stamp floated off of Marcus's wrist. The poor man looked as though he'd cry.

He did.

"Consider it a gift, sweetie. That's all you're gonna get...really." You shrug. You didn't like getting too sentimental with others. Marcus palmed his mouth. Covering it to muffle his cries. You looked around hopefully no one was watching the scene unfold before you. You shrink in your stool and take another sip of your drink. You took another gulp of your drink, enjoying the flavor it had, it was indeed what you had asked for.

"Marcus." You called his name softly when the tears finally stopped flowing. "Look at me." Marcus's head raised and eyes widened with fear once again. "Stop, please."

"S-Sorry. I'm good, I'm good." You nodded with him, your eyes widened with concern. "Thank you..." He muttered softly.

"Sure." You laughed out nervously wanting his hands off you. “Marcus.” You spoke sternly this time which brought him to pay attention and made him stop touching you. “How about another drink, yeah.” You shifted the mood, hoping to reassure him by taking his mind off of being freed by you. "Surprise me this time."

"Yes- Yes, right away." He composed himself as best he could and began to make your new drink.

Luke's gaze was fixated on the bartender's shaky hands, having caught the last of your conversation with him before he grew close. It was something that caught his attention to no end. A burning hole in his brain as he wondered why you had such an effect on people, good and bad. He wanted to know more about you. So he sat on the stool right beside you.

He turned towards you; his hands were resting on the counter, as he tapped along to the melody playing throughout the club. Luke's gaze met yours, raising a brow as he took notice that you were eyeing him. It made him a little self-conscious, but he hid that fact with an amused smirk.

"Nice shoes." His grin brightened. "I'm more of a vans guy myself but I think it's time I make a drastic brand change." Luke turned in the stool, next to the very pretty girl, who looked completely out of place. Your leather jacket and dark blue denim, not to mention your incredibly red shoes, didn't fit the club's dress code.

You peered over the glass in your hand. Your eyes narrowed curiously at the curly-haired stranger who unashamedly sat in the vacant seat next to yours. Surely he had to be pulling your hair. When you saw no falter in his charming smile, you played along. Hoping to amuse the poor lad unaware of the person you were, of your identity. Most would cower at the sight of you but his lack of knowledge told you all you needed to. He was clueless...and a pretty sight. You set your drink down and smirk, turning your full self towards him.

"Thanks. I had them dyed with the blood of the damned." You stuck your leg out, tilting your head in admiration of your shoes.

Your brows pinched closer together upon his laugh. You were confused by his reaction, what had been so funny? You were being your most sincere.

He snickered again, trying hard not to laugh, in fear of offending you. He let out another brief laugh, trying his best not to lose it. It was the way your words so casually rolled off your tongue that got him. He smirked. "Damned you say. Does that mean that you had to damn them yourself or were they already damned and you just decided to take advantage of the opportunity." He joked around, though curiosity filled his mind as he wondered what your answer would be. He sure wasn't expecting your sweet angelic tune that escaped you as a response. Your head fell back. Marcus stilled, looking at the new stranger who caused such a reaction from you and then at you. Was this a stroke you were having and he was completely unaware? He opted to join in, his fake laughs weren't noticed by you luckily.

He eyed Luke as though he put the moon in the sky. He got you to laugh. Completely unheard of.

Luke felt satisfied. His grin widened as he softly joined in on your bubbled display of joy. "I mean they do make killer shoes. I kind of want some now." He shrugged with half interest.

Marcus finally released a stifled laugh. The poor man was holding it in, not knowing where you two would take the conversation. "I can't say I've ever had the urge to wear shoes made of human blood," He spoke in an attempt to keep the energy at bay.

"Well," Luke started, "they're rather fashionable, right? I mean, I know leather clothing is still in style, you're perfectly on top of that trend already." He joked back casually. You felt something strange in your chest as he raked his eyes up and down your entirety. "All I'd be missing is the shoes..." He bit his lip.

"Yeah?" You looked back at him amused. "You want a pair?"

"Why not?" He entertained the idea.

"What is happening?" Marcus mouthed in shock.

What was happening indeed? Didn't he know who you were? His lack of fear was the most shocking part of this whole interaction. Surely he wasn't one of Caleb's newest edition of collected ghosts. Another soul he had taken, or made Willie lure him in to take it while he's blindsighted by the pretty picture Caleb paints for him. For once you wanted to lay your claim on a soul. To rub it in Caleb's face for stealing your portion of the bargain. You extended your hand out to him and asked him what any wise girl would do. You asked for his name.

"I'm Luke." He took your hand gently. Unaware of the marking you placed under his skin. Your bargains, your markings, were more subtle than Caleb's, where he wanted to show them off, you kept yours hidden behind a mere handshake. Along with the idea of never actually telling them you had done so.

"Pleasure." Your grip on his hand remained firm and tight as your eyes searched his own. You could already envision Caleb brewing with envy once he sees you and Luke engaging in a friendly, and dare you say romantic conversation. Luke didn't appear to know the full truth of what was going on. He appeared to be so blindly curious and unaware. So you went ahead and lit a spark to that curiosity as you pressed a finger to the back of his hand, caressing the length of it.

"Luke," you said slowly, testing it out. The name sounded nice; it rolled off your tongue perfectly. Luke, Luke, Luke. He would be your plaything for tonight, perhaps another time as well should you choose to extend that privilege. You felt a tinge of regret for marking a soul as pure as his, you could feel his warmth the second he sat down, but that was soon washed away with his charming grin; it made you want to make him break his moral barriers all the more. He seemed so different from the others, he was your next perfect leverage on Caleb. "I'm Y/n." You leaned forward, Luke's eyes falling in a daze at your sultry voice and doe eyes.

"Y/n..." He breathed out, mesmerized.

"Marcus I want a private space." You turned to the poor lad who was still stunned that this one guy alone was able to sweeten you down like honey. Get on your good side in the blink of an eye. "Now!"

-

Willie had paced back and forth, going over what he would say to Caleb as he waited for him at the bottom steps of his dressing room. When the man of the hour finally descended the steps Willied perked up.

"Oh hey um, Caleb." He smiled. "I brought those ghosts I met, um it's still cool they're here right?"

"Of course William! I even reserved a special table for them." Caleb shrugged him off nonchalantly.

"Woah! Uh alright, um thank you!" Willie reeled back, not expecting him to do something so nice.

"No, no, thank you!" Caleb sipped at his tea and watched as Willie made his way to leave but turned the wrong way.

"That way!" Willie laughed as he turned to go in the right direction this time.

"Hey William, while I have you here. Make sure to let me know when Y/n has arrived. I need at least half an hour to ready myself before her arrival."

"Oh, Y/n? She's already here." Willie shook his head confused, hadn't he known?

Certainly not, it appeared.

"What!" Caleb screeched, making Willie to flinch. The cup in his hands clattered onto the steps. Willie shrunk in on himself as Caleb berated him. "You useless monkey, why do I even keep you around? Oh my god, I'm not even dressed. Quick go make sure she gets everything she wants. Hopefully not my soul...Whatever she wants give it to her. A lifer's soul, it's hers. I don't care. I need to go look presentable. Go!" Willie straightened out as he walked away from Caleb's dressing room with haste. Caleb ordered staff to make sure you remained in a good mood. He was late, you had been earlier than expected and he was about to lose his shit.

-

When Caleb dispersed from the dancers and band, you had rolled your eyes as he made his entrance past the golden curtain.

He gulped nervously when his eyes danced back and forth between you sitting back on the sofa, and Luke kissing down your neck like a lovesick puppy. You hadn't stopped his attack on your skin. Caleb straightened out, clearly his throat to make his presence known.

"I don't like being kept waiting, Caleb, I have better things to do." Your voice broke in soft breaths as Luke found your sweet spot.

"Y/n, nice to have you back my sweet. We've missed your presence at the club and I-"

"Don't patronize me, ghost." You rolled your head back against the cushion.

"Ah, I see you've found our special guest of the night." He laughed nervously. "Have we bored you already, the night has only just begun." Caleb was thankful he didn't have to find you in a much more compromising situation. As he watched your hand run through Luke’s hair, a pang of emotion rose in him, jealousy? Anger? Regret? He felt his emotions bubble over as he watched Luke's lips meet your collarbones, his hands running down your back to your waist. Caleb bit his lip to keep an audible curse from escaping his lips.

You smirked, he was lucky that Luke wasn't getting too ahead of himself, but seeing how things were playing out at the moment it wouldn't take much for Luke to slip. Your attention turned back to him once Luke's lips had moved elsewhere on your body.

"Caleb, how stupid do you think I am?" Your question had caught him off guard.

He was speechless for a few moments before he regained his composure. He laughed a bit in your face. "Y/n, it's obvious," He took a deep, shaky breath before continuing. "He's a soul I promise to you in our deal. I got two more waiting on you out on the floor."

Luke's head dropped lower to your chest, his kisses stooping lower down your blouse. Caleb's eyes narrowed at the sight.

"Luke's already mine." You sigh in contentment. "I meant about the souls you’re taking for yourself, Caleb."

"What of them?" Caleb's face remained emotionless. He kept his arms crossed while your head was nuzzled into Luke's neck, you were barely holding on to the conversation while your chest had been preoccupied with Luke's hot breaths. His hands slide up and down your body.

"You can't even deny you've broken our bargain." You reminded him, your mind clouded with the sensation of his kisses. "You know what happens when people cross me, Caleb." You giggled as your breath hitched with every word spoken. You placed a hand over Luke's curls to stop him from continuing his kisses down your torso, his lips rested on your chest instead.

"Surely, we can work something out." He begins softly.

"I don't think so." You spoke plainly, your eyes finally focusing on Caleb. Your hands placed on the back of the sofa, you were feeling a bit confident and sassy, something Caleb hadn't seen for a good while, not with him at least. You sit up causing Luke to fall off you. You grip his chin gently and turn his face towards Caleb. You watch as the ghost shrinks back into the shell of the man that he is as Luke's gorgeous brown eyes flash red at him.

You staked your claim on him. "You touch the other two, and this all goes away." You gesture to the room, to the entirety of the club. "I’m going to need Willie's soul by the strike of midnight. Poor thing needs a break from you seeing as you can't do your job properly. He's mine until I say so. You understand, Caleb." You recline back into the cushion.

"Yes ma'am." He nods, feeling like a child being scolded.

"You can see yourself out now. It's like you said; the night is only getting started." Your angelic laugh is one for his nightmares. Not to mention your red eyes. You hold his gaze as you push down on Luke's curls, his body sinking to the carpet before you. "You might not want to stay around for this next part Caleb. Wouldn't want to traumatize you as it is." Caleb gasps and turns in place of the sound of your zipper being pulled.

Caleb's jaw went slack. His head tilted to the side. He tried hard to hide his surprise, but he wasn't sure what he should have said in this occurrence. "Right… I will be leaving. Enjoy yourselves." He uttered stiffly. Caleb retreated out of the room.

Luke's warm hands gripped your thighs, squeezing them slightly. His lips moved back up to your neck. His fingertips trailed lightly along your collarbone, his breath hot, you could feel his blood rushing. Once you were sure Caleb was out of earshot you pulled Luke up by the collar of his shirt.

"What's wrong?" Luke's dazed-out look had you feeling a smidge of guilt. "I thought we were having fun?" He breathed out a laugh as he tried to lean in to kiss you.

"It's not that kind of business, baby. Another time." You gripped his chin and sweetly placed a kiss on his lips. 

[neversetyoufree]

The way Noé Archiviste is written is so good. I'm so obsessed with him.

He's such a protagonist—endlessly hopeful against adversity and filled with kindness and attempted understanding toward everyone he meets. He's a good person! He wants to save everyone! He is genuinely and utterly without any sort of cruelty or unfair bias.

Yet, the more the series goes on, the more he's written as a very obvious parallel to our antagonists.

The most blatant example of this is the Ruthven parallel. Ruthven once happily said that he liked vampires, and in the same way, he liked humans. Noé repeats this exact same line when he has tea with Ruthven.

This parallel doesn't reflect too poorly on Noé, since it's pretty clear that something Happened to Ruthven to change him between his speaking that line and him becoming our antagonist, but it is an interesting way to tie the two of them together. It raises certain questions in readers' minds. In what other ways are Noé and Ruthven still similar, and how might Noé change to become more like him?

Then there's Noé's toxic optimism. The "you should be a little bothered, actually" aspect of him. Noé is the mirror to Vanitas's toxic pessimism. He latches onto the good in the world to a fault, and in this way he detaches from reality and endures an endless series of abuses to his person without even understanding they're abuses.

That is also one of the defining traits of Mikhail. Misha is unsettling in part because he is completely detached from any understanding of severity. Misha happily recounts being abused and watching his mother die not because he's cruel or hateful, but because he doesn't understand what's happened to him or why those things are bad. Misha wants to bring Luna back to life because he's in denial of the reality of their death. He believes he can just resurrect them and everything will be fine, and he'll get to play happy family again.

If Noé went just a little bit more extreme with the over-optimism, he could disconnect from reality just as badly as Misha has.

Finally there's my favorite parallel—the tie between Noé and his Teacher. Noé Archiviste has a tendency to watch others in fascination, trying to figure them out from the sidelines while he fails to understand his own impact on them, and he absolutely loves the Blue Moon. He thinks the Blue Moon is beautiful. Teacher spends his time collecting interestingly damaged children in putting them in awful situations, apparently just for the fun of watching what they'll do next, and he calls The Vampire of the Blue Moon "the most beautiful creature in the world."

Noé's curiosity-driven fascination with Vanitas's trauma and his love of the blue moon—neither of these are necessarily a problem on their own, but when written in direct parallel with The Count of Saint Germain, they become somewhat alarming.

In the same way that Misha is "worse" than Noé because his obliviousness to his trauma leads him to harm others, Noé's teacher is surely a worse person than him because he lets himself harm others in pursuit of his interests. Noé doesn't do that. But what would it take for that to change? He's pushed boundaries before. He learned to hurt Astolfo and Misha in the name of protecting those he cares about. What other strange places could his headstrong nature lead?

What might Noé do when his fascination and his obliviousness intersect? When the parts of him that are Teacher and the parts of him that are Misha overlap? What would he do to see Vanitas again? What might he do without letting himself realize how terrible it was?

Noé is a good person. He's one of the best people. But in his attentiveness and his optimism and his love, there's the seeds of something that could lead him down a very dark road. Each of the above antagonists is a little bit a part of who he is.

Misha wants to bring Luna back to life. Ruthven is working toward some mysterious aim with the dead or dying Faustina. And given how he talks in mémoire 55, I wouldn't be surprised if Teacher also had an interest in bringing back The Vampire of the Blue moon in one form or another.

In all his fascination and love and hope, would/will Noé be able to let Vanitas die when death is preferable to the alternative? This is a story about the inevitability of death, and the denial of that inevitability creates nothing but horror and perversion. Noé is growing and learning to understand both Vanitas and the moral complexities of the world, and we can only hope that he learns enough. We can see through his many reflections in other characters what he might become if he can't accept painful reality.

[ftmtftm]

I've been scrolling through your blog, and I saw your post about discussing the racialized nature of gender. As someone who has several transmasc POC friends, and someone who's a nonbinary POC themself, I wanted to give my 2 cents.

It's important to understand that "woman" in the "man vs woman" gender binary is a colonialist, white supremacist construct, especially in Western countries where you are the numerical minority. My trans friends aren't on T, they haven't gotten top surgery, we are all quite young. But they all have numerous stories about being addressed as "sir" which brings them euphoria but as one person said, while we were making fun of the amount of white people in our club, "Due to my race and skin color, I get masculinized."

And again I'd like to emphasize, that since we're young, none of us really have medically transitioned due to financial and familial barriers. Their hair is long, our binders we definitely have notable chests, and even if they dress masculine, it's notable that no one in our communities would ever gender us properly. It's often white people calling them "sir." Again, I think this reflects how gender performances in mainstream queer communities are deeply White. Like, trans boys talk about having haircuts, but only one of my friends has that wavier, more manageable hair that will help them pass. When you've got curly/kinky hair, the standards are different. For a white person, what's the difference between a "girl" Afro and a boy "Afro"? White cis people have a harder time identifying us, and literally talk to any black girl, and they'll tell you about being mocked, dehumanized, and called "manly".

I don't have much else to say. These are just my personal experiences. But if you want to be an ally to POC in the queer community, this is why it's so fucking important to bring in colonialism/imperialism/white supremacy into discussions of queer liberation. My biggest gripe with ignorant white queers is when they ignore their white privilege, and act like "cishets" (AKA the patriarchal system regulating sexuality and gender) is the only enemy. Because cishet POC deal with plenty of shit with being infantilized, masculinized, feminized, seen as brutish & dangerous, the list goes on. Doberbutts had a post saying, "Believe me, your family's going to care more about me being black than my queerness." towards his white partners. Acknowledging and creating a framework that centers these intersections of queerness and race into your beliefs is true allyship. This is why if you're not anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, ACAB...I do not think you care for queer liberation. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Please don't view this post as an attack. But this is my perspective, and I thought you'd be receptive to me sharing my lived experiences.

Oh I absolutely don't view this ask as an attack, and I really appreciate you bringing these things up because you're right! Like, just very plainly: You are right and your and your friends lived experiences are extremely important to the conversation on the racialized aspects of gender.

It gets me thinking about where Misogynoir and the social White Fear of Black manhood intersect for Black trans men in particular. Because Black women and Women of Color in general are masculinized by White gender standards and the ways in which Black trans masculine people are gendered in alignment with their identity is absolutely not always done with gender affirming intent. In fact, it's often actually done with racist intent or is fueled by racist bias when it's coming from White people or even from non-Black POC.

That's kind of restating things you've said but differently, it's just such a topic worth highlighting explicitly since it's extremely relevant to the conversation that's been happening about Male Privilege here the last few days.

I do think I know exactly what @doberbutts post you're talking about and yeah. It's just truth. It's something Black queer people have been talking about for ages in both theory and in pop culture (my mind immediately goes to Kevin Abstract and "American Boyfriend") where Black queer/trans identity is both materially different from (neutral) and is treated differently from (negative) White queer/trans identity in multitudes of ways and those differences are worth sharing and exploring and talking about.

Genuinely, thank you for sharing! I try really hard not to lead these kinds of conversations outside of explicitly referencing back to non-White theorists because I don't particularly feel like it's my place to do so, but I will always provide a platform for them because they're extremely important conversations to be had.

[mesetacadre]

So, like, have any of you actually ever had a conversation with a fascist offline about what they believe? I have.

To be clear, this wasn't a sit-down-let's-talk conversation. He (the only one) tried to start shit, and we (me + 2 comrades) confronted him in the act and regrettably got into a 30-minute "conversation".

Fascists, individually, are very mentally feeble. They are cowards who always seek to start conflict while trying to make themselves out to be the victims. This is, of course, until they gain enough popularity and canon fodder to throw 20 unstable fascists at anyone they don't like. But until this exaltation occurs¹ and their organizations enter a relatively stable cycle (in contemporary liberal democracies, they last between 2 and 7 years before disintegrating), there remains a contradiction between their aggressive desire to seek confrontation and their individual and collective insecurities. Fascist ideology is mostly not rooted in reality (more on this later), and it also has an important component of self-hate. They are an inferior specimen, unable to achieve what the fascist martyrs before them achieved (in Spain, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera usually occupies this position), and to add injury to insult, it's those who they perceive as weak and undeserving who rule over them. They ignore this perceived inferiority by joking about being chads, the superior race, or non-degenerates. But behind their rhetoric and "humor" there is usually a tinge of insecurity and hate against anyone who doesn't fit their increasingly narrow standard, including themselves.

This fascist we talked with kept referring to Jewish conspiracies, to the freemasons in every position of power, to old Falangists, to fascist "theorists", to some kind of esoteric spiritualism within the bounds of Christianity, somehow, and hyperborea. He talked about communists, how they were already in the government (referring to the social-democratic PSOE), how we were degenerates, how the day will come, etc. He attempted to scare us by saying that he was an ex-member of this more notorious fascist party and that they were looking for him to beat him up, which isn't something you admit to people you're trying to start conflicts with. After a while of his ramblings, one of my comrades couldn't help but laugh at him. It was all very ridiculous; I don't remember exactly what he said that made my comrade laugh. He got slightly more agitated, and the conversation ended in ~5 minutes.

Individually, fascists are also not the brightest people you'll encounter. For somebody to internalize fascist beliefs, they have to be unconsciously willing to never dig deeper about their beliefs, to contrast them with one another, or to contrast them with other fascists. They'll read a text (they may be stupid, but a lot of them do read more than you'd expect) about, say, the concept of race, and never really address the fact that it contradicts their own beliefs, or a fellow fascist's beliefs about the nation or about Europe.

And a really interesting thing is that fascism is far from a monolith. It's more akin to an entelechy². The specific contradictions of fascism manifest themselves much more between individual fascists than within a single individual. Like I mentioned before, there are contradictions when it comes to race (racialists like the nazis vs anti-racists like Falange Auténtica), to Europe (the idea of a Great Europe vs every idea of Nationality/Empire, which generally coexist poorly), to the nation (its intersection with race and/or Europe and how it interacts with these), to the reaction against progress (a conception of fascism as progressive, reactionary, or neither³), to science (a realist position based on scientificism such as race science and Kameradschaftrecht (nazi feminism) vs metaphysical conceptions, such as esotericism or the Thule society, reliant on aesthetics and mysticism), or to the economic policy (bourgeois positions, corporatism, vs workerist positions such as Strasser or Bombacci).

These contradictions aren't unique to the contemporary fascist situation of fragmentation and the peculiarities of social media either. Back in the 30s and 40s, there was a lot of disagreement on who counted as fascists. On one end, during the rise of the NSDAP, there was a small cadre of orthodox fascists who narrowed fascism "a la Italiana", and did not consider nazi-fascism to be fascism because of its differences on the scientificist conceptions of race. The Nazi party repressed this small wing. On the other end, it was a prevailing position in the USSR to not consider fascism to start with Italy's fascii di combatimento, but rather in Russia's Black Hundreds, having a broader conception of fascism.

This fascist we talked with considers himself a Carlist⁴, while another member of his groupuscule considers himself a national-socialist, while being Moroccan, and a third is a run-of-the-mill reactionary concerned with the 2030 agenda, globalism, immigrant invasions, the great replacement, that sort of thing. When fascist groups are relatively small and lack any form of inertia and/or formalized structure, their activity is extremely sporadic. There is no discipline to be found, no real planning or broad strategy, they are, rather, a group of similarly-enough-minded friends who sometimes like to do some vandalism or threaten/agitate leftists of any stripe. Their only method of growth is to generate controversies, fights, have a provocative tweet go semi-viral, to generate noise. When it comes to agitation for the fascist, concrete ideology is not relevant. They appeal to both rage and the satisfaction of, for example, seeing x annoying leftist org get their posters ripped off. Discussions of fascist theory rarely, if ever, influence their pragmatic activity, sometimes it's more similar to a circlejerk to see who has the most esoteric, exaggerated and offensive positions.

This is not to say fascist infighting is irrelevant, far from it. Fascists have their own petty disputes between groups, periods of extreme fractionarism, inter-fascist and intra-fascist violence. But when it comes to the philosophy of action, to how they apply all these beliefs, you'll be pressed to find meaningful, material differences. Some might be more or less aggressive, more or less esoteric, more or less contrarian, more or less effective. But they all rely on building that momentum, that controversy -> confrontation -> growth -> controversy cycle. The moment fascist groups lose that momentum, or one too many campaigns fall flat and fail to garner attention, they'll start to turn against themselves, to deteriorate their own structures in the permanent search for conflict that their beliefs demand. There is no way to hold the belief that, for example, race is a scientific category that makes the white/national/aryan/european/whatever race constantly threatened to disappear without exhorting you to seek conflict, whether it's against immigrants or other fascists who don't place as much importance on race.

If you find yourself in the context of a few small fascist groups festering and seeking conflict, it is a strategic error to confront them outright. Unless you're willing to downright kill them or injure them severely enough (with the bigger threat of legal repercussions that entails), fascists will be able to turn your explicit opposition against them into ammunition to attract more reactionaries to their own ranks. The best you, as an organized communist, can do in the period before exaltation, is to quietly collect information about them, study their patterns, and exert as much opposition as is possible without letting them turn it into a visible confrontation. If you're going to cover up their symbols and posters, do it when they can't film you or try to start a fight. If they're threatening someone to provoke them to then cry and hue about the rabid leftists, use the fact that they have low numbers, record them, and intimidate them without physical violence. Even if you can leave them writhing on the floor in a fight, they can use that as ammunition, but they can't use a video of them putting their tails between their legs and running off. You can't debate with fascists, this much is clear. You also can't just use violence to scare them away, because they'll use that violence to gain momentum, and then you can end up with an actually decently-sized and consistent fascist organization.

This is how we have been opposing these small groups of fascists attempting to grow through controversy. We opposed them non-visibly, effectively and professionally. When this group of about 15 fascists total (they never appear with more than 4 at a time because of their inconsistency) encountered this, they were at one point scared enough to stop all activity for about 2 months, and after that have yet to appear again. Meanwhile, other, more infantile orgs, overreacted by opposing them with full force and very publicly, which only encouraged the fascists to keep going and wasted energy in a futile back-and-forth, as well as putting their members in unnecessary risk by engaging in unplanned situations.

¹ Throughout this entire post, all analysis of the behavior of fascists offline assumes this exaltation has not occured

² Entelechy here means an impossible ideal, built entirely in the imagination, or with an unstable and shoddy manifestation.

³ Fascism often positions itself as a revolutionary movement, while other times it places more importance on the opposition against progress.

⁴ Carlism is a Spanish political current originating in the rejection of Isabel II as a legitimate heir to Fernando VII, it became very intertwined with Franco's dictatorship and the Falange during the Civil War

[fermented-writers-block]

Not gonna lie, with the Spot’s upcoming time mucking shenanigans as suggested by the flashes of the future in Miles’ vision, I would not be surprised if the dimensional collapsing theorized by Miguel to come from averting too many “Canon Events” will turn out to be a side effect of something the Spot will either do himself or set up to screw with Miles.

Particularly, with how much his origin monologue to Miles and Jeff centered around the idea that he made Spider-Man and vice versa, note how incredibly well that mentality would dovetail with Miguel and the Spider Society’s belief that the “Canon Events” are what made them Spider-Man.

@kindaorangey has a good post pointing out how the Spot’s mindset of “filling the hole with more holes” is a pretty apt metaphor for the way Miles, Gwen, and likely the other spider people diving into the identity of Spider-Man as a crutch for dealing with the isolation caused by said identity, but suffice to say, OP and @sir-adamus had these tags which I'd like to use as a jumping pad:

For this, we can analyze Miguel and Spot as two sides of the same coin, where Miguel’s side is about allowing canon events to play out through inaction, and Spot's side could potentially lead up to (as a side effect of his grudge against Miles) actively ensuring that only those canon events happen, with any deviations that don't fit into their views being cast aside.

The former position projects personal traumas as absolutely necessary and destined to happen onto others, the latter position rejects any possibility that things could go differently in a quite literal manner. But in the end, both ultimately are about "filling in the hole with more holes" and dictating what Miles "should" be like.

Miguel doesn’t think Miles is a real Spider-Man and that him becoming Spider-Man was a mistake that never should have happened, all from his obsessive mentality surrounding Canon Events. He and by extension the other Spider-Men stuck in their hole of guilt and fatalism, surrounding themselves with other Spider-Men stuck in their holes of trauma and grief to where they have formed an echo chamber that tells them Miles cannot save his father's life and that they cannot do anything to save people anymore.

And in the Spot's case, the metaphor already came from him, but it's all about obsessively centering his new, lonely existence around being not just A, but THE nemesis to Miles' Spider-Man. He lost everything and has nothing except his connection to Spider-Man. To fill that hole, he's not only only making himself a villain that Miles will actually respect. He's going to try his damnedest to make sure that Miles reaches his full potential as Spider-Man just like he talked about in Mumbattan, and fill the hole with more holes in Miles' life until Miles is devoid of everything except the Spot.

Given the flashes of future events in Miles’ vision, if and when the Spot inevitably hears about Miguel's theory of Canon Events, it would only be fitting if the Spot retroactively becomes responsible for all the previous dimensional destruction the Spider-Society dealt with. And thus, Miguel's theory obsession would be its own recursive creator.

A vicious cycle of telling themselves that things have to happen a certain way, of blaming uncontrollable circumstances on something they think they can and should control, and of refusing to let go of the spiral they've fallen into.

After all, Miles already had an Uncle Ben-type event and the Spot is trying to set up a Captain Stacy-type event. Since the logical conclusion to the themes of Miles choosing what kind of Spider-Man he wants to be and not allowing preventable tragedies to happen would be that Jeff lives, well…

It would only be narratively fitting for the Spot to try to set up a Gwen Stacy event later down the line.

Because if Miles being bit and the Spot getting caught up in the collider wasn't destiny, if the intersection of their lives was simply due to circumstances they had no control over, if the dimensional collapses weren't because preventing Canon Events is inherently destabilizing to reality in of itself, then Miguel and the Spot would have to look inwards and actually try to figure out how to fill the holes in their lives.

So Miguel tells himself that what he does has to be done, that only he is strong enough to do it, and that everyone should follow his lead and stop caring.

As for the Spot?

If he fails to kill Jeff and Gwen, and when it's proven to everyone else that Canon Events are not required lynchpins of reality like Gwen found, he might just decide to try to make them actual lynchpins across time and space.

Or at least, making it so that the only realities that can exist are ones where those events happen.

Aka trying to forcibly changing the multiverse so suffering huge tragedy becomes an inherently integral part of Spider-Man the concept, rather than a mere possibility. So many Spider-Men and their dimensions getting hurt in the crossfire, and all in the process of targeting Miles Morales specifically.

Truly, it would be quite resonant if and when the Spider-Society let and help Miles get to save his Captain and Gwen Stacy. Beating the Spot would no longer be about the concept of stopping a threat to the multiverse and their canon events, but about metaphorically ending the cycle of suffering and finding a way to move forwards beyond the guilt. They probably can’t actually change the past, but with this, they can fight to prevent it from happening to others.

[loveandlegacy]

the mutation must survive

singed, viktor, power, and progress

ok i said!! some while ago that i think the line 'the mutation must survive' is deeper and/or more sinister than it seems at first and talking with a few friends finally motivated me to articulate the whole. red-string board thing in my head about the themes of progress and power in arcane and specifically what singed and his estranged mentee, viktor, represent at the intersection of both.

ime most off the cuff responses take ‘the mutation must survive’ to mean something like ‘one must survive at all costs’, or that singed, the line’s speaker, believes that nature is brutal, and survival by any means necessary is always justified. i’ve always been kind of dissatisfied with that reading because there’s already a character who expresses this belief in so many words (silco), and it seems unnecessary and redundant for singed to have a world philosophy that's basically a duplicate of one of the major characters.

so what is he doing? what does ‘the mutation must survive’ mean and why is singed the one who says it? despite having quite a lot of influence on the story, singed is far from a major character, why have him say anything that feels Thematic at all?

there’s a lot going on in arcane, and conversations about power and progress recur frequently. characters approach the question of both from different positions, but the story makes the point that each begets the other. they're inextricably intertwined.

jayce, enchanted by magic, consistently reiterates that piltover should step into its destiny as the city of progress and embrace the arcane. he gets his way eventually and inadvertently creates tools of power - the atlas gauntlets and the mercury hammer - and uses them violently against the already downtrodden zaunite workers in a shimmer factory. heimerdinger opines about piltover’s legacy of progress, oblivious to the literal human cost of his idealism, and fearful of “a world that cannibalized itself over power and pride.” silco proclaims power as the avenue to revolutionary and liberatory progress.

on the fringes of these interwoven ideologies, we have singed. the story never presents him as an agent who cares about power in the same way that any other character does. granted we like have to pause here to define what 'power' is in the world of arcane, and that has a multifaceted answer. for the individuals seeking some kind of social control or liberation or domination, arcane outlines systemic power as some combination of wealth access, the ability to enact wide-scale violence without fear of retribution, and a willingness to use the first two to further one's own interest.

i imagine most people in piltover would follow heimerdinger’s example and say they don't care about having this kind of power, or that they think pursuing it is dangerous or kind of gauche, but implicitly piltover's whole existence is all about systemic control - and how power permits dominion over zaun in particular. this implicit disposition all comes out very explicitly in like. marcus. and the other enforcers and their brutality.

and then in the undercity there are varying attitudes about what to do with systemic power. vander gives up on the pursuit of power and liberation after the day of ash in the hopes that the enforcers will meet him halfway for a peace he’s never really granted. caitlyn’s statement that the people of zaun live in fear of “violent crimelords” implies that the chem barons deal in very direct acts of violence-as-power for the sake of amassing greater wealth. silco is obsessed with "real power" belonging to people who will fight for it (ie ruthlessness, the willingness to use violence and/or wealth to further his ends).

in a standout contrast to this, singed doesn't really express any interest in this type of systemic power. even in cases of violence, his behavior is framed as an almost personal interest compared to other characters. marcus, the chem barons, silco, vi, sevika, and even ekko and jinx all have intimate relationships to violence, but their intimacies are somewhat utilitarian. brutality is one act among many that a person might undertake in the interest of self defense, intimidation, protection of a loved one, or political domination. in other words, violence is a social tool and not a curiosity in and of itself.

by contrast, the story rarely confronts singed with circumstances that would require violence. he never needs to defend himself except in the one instance where silco threatens him after jinx’s shimmer infusion. and singed doesn’t physically fight with silco, he only states the obvious: that he saved jinx’s life.

he also never uses brute force to intimidate anyone. he has no loved ones to speak of, much less protect, and he never demonstrates any interest in organized violence for the sake of politics on the scale of silco’s vision or vander’s naive idealism. if anything, the story presents him as a man who was doing what he wanted to do long before he met silco and as a man who might continue to do what he wants to do with or without someone in political need of his skills. and what he wants to do could loosely be defined as scientific research but veers pretty wildly into the realm of malpractice and torture.

maybe the easiest thing to scan about singed is that he’s a solitary man with a sadistic interest in interpersonal power, primarily held over his patients and test subjects. he demonstrates some glee in condemning a cat to die by way of a shimmer-sickened mouse and he cheerfully informs jinx that the agony of her shimmer infusion will “only get worse.” so we could maybe say that violence comes easily to him, but an interest in political, social, financial, or military control is absent.

instead, he chases after progress.

out of the show's ~6.5ish hr runtime, singed has less than 10 total minutes on screen, and he spends most of that time talking about life, death, or survival ("will he live?" / "long enough"; "she's dying….the mutation must survive"; "rio will live"; "i thought you understood. the mutation must survive"; ”[shimmer] should provide everything one needs to survive a violent transition"; "i know the look of a doomed man"; "are you prepared to lose her?"; "sometimes death is a mercy"; "i saved her life").

he never abjures death and he doesn't glorify life. death is a mercy. a person can live ‘long enough’, which isn’t the same thing as living especially well. all these lines of dialogue frame him as the man who stands at the boundary between life and death and who views both things as obvious consequences of nature, equilibrium-like in their relationship if left undisturbed.

progress, though, requires one to contravene nature’s apparent life-death equilibrium, as he tells viktor repeatedly.

in his first meeting with viktor, singed describes rio as a "rare mutation that [he] cultivated" - presumably from some other genetic lineage that occurred by way of stochastic process. this selective breeding is his first intervention on life and death, on what genes are expressed and passed down through generations. he then goes on to say that rio is dying. i'm attempting to prevent that - another intervention.

everything dies, and there's no reason to believe singed takes issue with that fact in a general sense. a later scene even reveals that he isn’t trying to save rio’s life out of sentimental attachment to her, and in one of his culminating interactions, he tells silco sometimes death is a mercy, all of which suggests that even if “the mutation must survive”, survival isn’t always the better outcome for the subject in question.

looking at these two statements - ‘the mutation must survive’ and ‘sometimes death is a mercy’ - side by side, singed’s attitude highlights that there’s value in diverting what might have been the most obvious or best outcome for an organism if there's a chance the consequences will prove interesting by his metric. all well and good, if not for one problem:

nature has made us intolerant to change.

on the global level of arcane as a text, this statement seems to be true, particularly of people with access to systemic power. the piltovan council is incredibly inflexible and suspicious of change regardless of whether that change is likely to benefit them (hextech) or endanger their interests (zaun's liberation). zaun's most powerful figures, the chem barons, are similarly resistant to change. they would prefer to dispense with silco's vision for liberation because it destabilizes their present-moment interests. the underground's former leader, vander, had completely given up on the possibility of change before he died. silco even accuses him of this directly, in an observation that draws a circle around singed's point that real change is quite hard for most individual people to embrace: you'll die for the cause…but you won't fight for one.

despite his revolutionary ideology, even silco has a brittle attitude towards change. his liberatory strategy involves reproducing a violent, class-stratified regime within zaun where the chem barons comprise the ruling class in question, presumably doing as little for zaunites as the council of piltover. his aspirations are noble! but even for him, change involves retracing the boundaries of a known quantity.

whether or not change is necessarily always a good thing in arcane is a conversation of its own, but it's clearly a desirable thing to singed. after stating that an intolerance to change is common among [us], he adds: but fortunately, we have the capacity to change our nature (emphasis mine).

given this context, i think it’s worth returning to the note that power and progress are deeply intertwined in arcane, with different characters pursuing both in different ways. singed seems like an oddity at first in that he’s disinterested in systemic power but interested in progress, as outlined above. but his disinterest makes sense. his vision of progress requires a power mechanism that seems almost orthogonal to intercultural struggle. given everything described up to this point, singed’s ethics (or his cosmology, or whatever you want to call it) can be summed up as:

living things are resistant to change

change is desirable because it produces interesting, unexpected outcomes

being able to influence or alter the expected outcome of biological events is therefore also desirable, given the first two points

in this way, power and progress are not separate for singed any more than they are for any other character. but for most of the figures in arcane, power and progress have some attachment to society. through singed, certain forms of power take shape in the slippery alchemy of biology and chemistry.

shimmer is power because it drives living things off whatever course their natal biology set for them (it should provide everything one needs to survive a violent transition). genetic engineering is power because creates novelty (the mutation itself). manipulating the circumstances such that the mutation can survive (lol) is power too. arguably, creating those circumstances is the most influential force pervading all life, and the one that is most emblematic of progress: evolutionary power.

it’s easy to confound this. ‘evolution’ is pretty frequently conceptually misapplied irl in kind of shitty popsci and pseudoscientific texts. so i want to pause here and say: don’t take ‘evolutionary power’ to mean ‘the pursuit of optimization’ or ‘in search of an apotheosis’ in this case. singed doesn’t articulate an interest in specific end states for a mutation’s survival. even for rio, his interest is dispassionate. she must survive for the circular reason that he wants to know if she can survive by infusing her with the precursor to shimmer. he never opines about a subject’s teleology - that’s silco’s deal.

in other words, on the occasions where singed discusses survival, survival alone is the only qualifying criteria of interest - ‌[he’ll live] long enough; the mutation must survive; i saved her life. the quality of life for the subject or the general function of the mutation in a state of survival never comes up. when he tells viktor that shimmer should provide everything one needs to survive a violent transition, he also cautions him about the cost of said survival, implying that the other side of this rapidly-approaching event horizon might actually be the opposite of optimal.

if you take this path, they will despise you…

all this paints singed not as a man invested in the eugenic concept of survival of the fittest, but as the eerie steward of change itself. evolution drags all things along in its inexorable tide, mutations are the delimited space between what was and what will be, violent transitions are the catalysts for change, and whatever survives the fallout is the interesting data from which new truths about that change can be divined.

if you want to know what a mutation looks like on the other side of the catastrophic break between ‘before’ and ‘after’ - well. you’ll have to manipulate the circumstances such that the mutation survives. and if you succeed, and if you gather new, glittering fragments of truth out of the wreckage - if you’ve learned something novel - that’s progress.

but what does all this have to do with viktor?

taking everything together, singed’s presence in season 1 foreshadows quite a bit about viktor’s arc in season 2. i’m going to turn away from what i guess is pure analysis at this point and into the realm of theory-crafting from here on out, so…enjoy.

if viktor goes the way of league lore (and i assume he mostly will), his fate quite literally includes the word ‘evolution’. but in contrast to singed, viktor’s glorious evolution is all about a certain apotheosis. he is likely to become his former mentor’s obverse, leveraging an engineered evolution towards a specific telos, rather than dwelling at the threshold of change itself.

as an audience member, i hope the story doesn’t set viktor on a redemption arc. even if the narrative continues to build out his choices as understandable reactions to his circumstances, it's better to sit in the mire of people digging their own graves. and i do think viktor’s history with singed might make redemption impossible.

at the end of season 1, viktor tries to steer himself off the path he’s chosen, realizing too late that it involves the literal blood sacrifice of the woman who loved him. but we all know he won’t stay the course. he’s touched the void, the hexcore is hungry, and even if he escapes the hexcore’s direct influence, he’s about to witness the crumbling of what little good will exists between piltover and his home.

depending on which version of the lore you prefer, viktor’s eventual rise to accidental cult leader happens for one of two reasons. he either takes up his quasi-transhumanism because he comes to view his faith in human goodness as a product of emotional naivety (the new lore) or because he specifically wanted to carve out the jealous parts of himself that left him feeling broken after stanwick’s repeat betrayals (the old lore). in arcane, i think the story will change again.

in a last-ditch effort to cure his own terminal illness, viktor returns to his creepy former mentor for help. he claims to ‘understand, now’ what singed told him all those years ago about mutations and survival. knowing what comes next (sky’s death), one has to wonder if he really does. after all, before giving viktor the shimmer variant that might save his life, singed pauses to warn him that love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress.

it’s a leading line that invites a lot of questions. what love, whose love? sky’s maybe. or jayce’s. or heimerdinger’s, whose love is very flawed, but is arguably still love that viktor could lose. those are all compelling particulars or parts of the puzzle of viktor’s life, but i think singed is pointing viktor towards something more totalizing.

throughout season 1, viktor’s story has deviated from his league lore somewhat. he hasn't really been preoccupied with human error; instead, he has both desired and rejected different kinds of affection. rather than grappling with jealousy or heartbreak over stolen work, he wants to help the undercity - but ultimately mourns the fact that his illness will steal his opportunity to build a legacy, not his chance to make the world a better place.

summoned back into the role of necromantic mentor, singed seems to intuit this new emotional framework when he reminds viktor that progress has no room for love or legacy. those are the two sacrificial lambs required for progress to take place.

but if viktor truly believes what singed says (and it seems like he does at least a little bit), i don't think he’ll be able to abandon the want for either on his own. even in the wake of killing sky or in the wake of what we assume will be a very painful falling out with jayce, the story still frames him as a person with the basic human desire for closeness. he's afraid to tell jayce what he's done to sky, after all. if progress, otherwise known as the glorious evolution, is to proceed, he'll have to cut out his own heart not for the failings of jealousy or illogical inefficiency, but because the need for love and recognition has made him selfish.

he won't succeed, obviously. not the least in part because no need or feeling is entirely black or white. love brought him to his friendship with jayce. legacy made him brave enough to defy heimerdinger and chase magic. but pain, loss, and self-loathing distort all things, and i think that, in viktor's view of himself, the fragile yearnings of the human heart will become grotesque, the source of all his own wrongdoing.

in this way, singed’s unifying thesis has loaded the spring-trigger guiding viktor’s trajectory. if viktor hopes to forge a better way for the people of zaun, if he hopes to build something new in the world, he'll have to eviscerate himself first. such is the bloody price of progress, and so goes his evolution's apotheosis. it's not the man who matters. the mutation must survive.

[boricuacherry-blog]

After James Franco published his fictional account entitled "Bungalow 89" where he claims he didn't sleep with Lindsay Lohan, just read her a bedtime story about bananafish, Lindsay countered with a short story of her own:

James Franco says we did not have sex, and one of the things I learned growing up in a family of chaos was to respect other people's truths, even if that truth is something they made up driving home wasted in an Escalade that I frickin bought. Anyway, since he has shared his version of events, I think it's only fair I shared mine.

It was a few years ago. I don't remember if I was sober or not. I think I probably was. I actually never even really drank that much, and as I told Oprah, I only did coke 10-15 times, so statistically, the chances are good I was not wasted when this happened.

I was wandering around the Chateau Marmont, which is a hotel. I will say that I do like the Chateau because there are lots of beautiful flowers tended by people who care as deeply about tending flowers as I do about my passion, starring in films.

I had just taken a swim in the pool where, per the advice of several therapists, I had taken some time to imagine that I was one of any number of various sea creatures.

Afterwards I had taken a leisurely shower and then put a deep conditioning pack on my hair. So I was just walking around inhaling the scent of night blooming jasmine and my deep conditioning pack when one of the bungalow doors opened.

This guy stuck his head out. I didn't know who it was. In fact at first I thought it was this guy who worked at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Beverly Hills and I was like, what is he doing here? "Hey," he said.

As I got closer I saw that it was that actor who always wants people to think that he's smart but I still couldn't remember his name.

"Oh hey," I said.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"I'm deep conditioning my hair," I said.

"Why?" he said. He said it in this really challenging way, like deep conditioning your hair was against the law.

"Uh, because it has a lot of split ends from being so color treated and all the extensions that I have used over the last few years, being an actress who cares about my craft, the way that Chateau Marmont flower-tenders care about flowers."

He shook his head. He was kind of good looking I guess but there was something about his face. He looked so serious, like he had just finished reading 1000 books and had to read 1000 more or he was never going to get to watch TV again.

He said, "Have you ever thought about all the time you spend deep conditioning your hair? Have you ever thought about the expectations that society places on you as a celebrity and how you exploit yourself by responding to them?"

I said, "Duh, that's all I think about. But deep conditioning my hair is one of the ways I find my center."

"That's beautiful," he said. He actually got a tear in his eye. Then he said, "I'm sorry, it's just that the intersection of the banal commercial world with narratives about inner peace triggers a conditioned, sentimental response in me that produces something like actual feelings."

It was all clear now. "You're James Franco," I said.

He asked me to come in and I did. I sat in a chair.

"Can I read you a story?"

He said it was called A Perfect Day for Bananafish. I don't remember very much about it, except at one point, he stopped reading and started to explain to me that it should really be called something else gross and dumb because of something about the fish being phallic which personally I feel like he made up. I can't really remember. I was so tired, but somewhere, a little voice piped up and let me know there was actually a really brilliant way to get through the next hour of my life without having to walk all the way back to my room, and I was like, "If I have sex with you, will you stop talking?"

I am a lady, so I don't want to tell you what happened next.

[shina913]

The Thrill | KNJ

The Thrill (An Intersect drabble)

✫✫✫Intersect Masterlist✫✫✫

Pairing: KNJ x Fem!Reader

Rating: M 🔞; NSFW

Genre: Established relationship; fluff; smut

Warnings: tooth-rotting fluff; grand romantic gestures; cussing; clit play; breast play; dirty talk; unprotected penetrative sex in a committed and monogamous relationship; soft aftercare

Word count: 2,993 words

Summary: “Nooo...stop it.”

A/N: I guess this is the result of the amalgamation of all the boyfriend/thirsty content that Namjoon has been dropping lately. I really have no excuse when it comes to him. I say this as my BFE!Yoongi WIP pouts in the corner, mid-smut scene--you’re next, I promise!!! 🤪  Thank you, Sim @itdoesntmatterwhy​​ for reading this through and giving me some good notes!

A/N2: The Thrill is one of my favorite Miguel songs. It’s so much better live than the original recording.“We can be the riot in the air tonight/Start the kind of trouble you can taste.”  I debated cutting it off right before the smut but then...Joon’s Smoke Sprite verse happened so...you can blame that for the second half of this!

A/N3: You don’t need to read the series to get into this. I included some callbacks but they’re not necessarily crucial to be able to understand this drabble.

“Baby! Have you seen my–”

You giggle to yourself as this neverending saga of Namjoon asking, ‘have you seen this thing that I always use and yet I always forget where I keep it,’ continues.

“Check the first drawer on your left-hand side of the hallway cabinet,” you yell from the bathroom. You hear him let out an audible sigh of relief as he retrieves the item that he needs for your trip.

“Got it, thank you! Never leave me, please,” he calls out when he re-enters your bedroom.

You laugh while reaching for your face wash to begin your bedtime routine. You also had a flight to catch tomorrow.

From your bathroom, you hear Namjoon scuttling around–distant sounds of drawers opening, closet doors sliding on their track, then followed by the rustling sound of things being stuffed into his suitcase.

You press your face oil gently into your skin, the last step in your skincare regimen. Afterward, you double-check your cosmetics case on the counter to make sure that you had all of your travel essentials.

From your peripheral vision, you catch his reflection in the mirror. When you lift your head, you find him leaning against the doorframe, eyeing you intently.

He wore a dorky but affectionate smile on his face while his arms were crossed over his chest.

“Lose something again?” You ask in a teasing tone.

He shook his head slowly. “I found everything I needed.”

“Well, as we always say, if we forget something, we can always buy it out there.”

He nods vaguely, not really caring about anything else. He still stood there, sporting the same grin on his face.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs.

“And yet you’re just going to stand there gawking?”

“Nah, I’m just…thinking.”

Your eyebrows lift in curiosity. You lean your hip against the bathroom counter, somewhat mirroring his posture.

“About what?”

“How lucky I am to be with you.”

Your breath hitches and your cheeks flush. “That’s it?”

“And I’m also thinking how glad I am that Celina forced us to work on that contract bid together,” he chuckled.

You laughed in turn and thought back on how your relationship began. His unexpected nostalgia piqued your curiosity. 

He gently pushes off the doorframe and saunters toward you. He stopped short, lifted his hand to your cheek, and brushed it with his thumb. “You’re so beautiful, my love,” he whispered.

The sentiment made warmth bloom within your chest. Then, looking at your reflection in the mirror, you let out a soft chuckle. 

“What’s so funny about what I said?” He asks.

“I mean, look at me! I look all funny,” you replied. You still had your spa headband on and looked like a glazed donut since your face oil hadn’t quite set into your skin yet.

“You know I don’t care about that,” he waved you off. “And for the record, I am looking at you. I think you’re beautiful whether you’re all done up, dressed in your sexy power suit; or bare-faced in your flannel pajamas.” He planted a soft kiss on the tip of your nose.

“Okay, what’s gotten into you?”

He shrugs, still grinning. “I’m just really looking forward to our vacation.”

But the way he smiled roused more suspicion in you. “Uh-huh, sure.” 

You’d booked this trip a while ago and you had to make sure that you and Namjoon had synchronized your calendars months in advance to have a quiet, uninterrupted week where you both could unwind and reconnect.

Namjoon also insisted on booking a couple of island excursions for you, which was a shock because he didn’t usually like having scheduled activities while on vacation. We go on vacation to get away from schedules, he often said.

He remained tight-lipped about what he has planned. The only hint he’s given you was that it would be totally unexpected and to pack comfortably. It was no help to you at all.

You finally take off your headband and stow it under your skincare drawer. “I’m pretty excited, too. I can’t wait to find out what you have planned for us.” 

He bit at his bottom lip to stifle a laugh. “Good. I’m glad you’re looking forward to it!” His arms snake around your waist, pulling you close to him. “Actually, while I stood back there watching you, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek of what I had planned before we leave. It’s nothing huge.” Then he squints one eye and gestures with his thumb and forefinger. “Just this small, tiny thing,” he grins mischievously.

While your mind races about this ‘surprise’, he breaks away from you and sinks his hand into his pocket. As you watch him get down on one knee, you swallow the grapefruit-sized lump in your throat. It takes you a few seconds to realize that he was holding up an open box in his hand. In it was the tell-tale ring that had been burning a hole into your brain since discovering its existence.

Your hands fly up to cover your mouth in shock at the sight of it. It was anything but small or tiny– judging by the solitaire’s cut.

“YN, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

You were completely dumbfounded. You’d thought about this moment; pictured it over and over in your head. What the scenario would be, what he would say to you, and how you would feel. You’d even planned potential outfits!

And now, it was actually happening. You’re standing in your bathroom, barefoot, dressed in a worn-out sleep shirt and your underwear.

You were so utterly overcome with emotion, the first words that come out of your mouth are, “Nooo…stop it…” You whined softly through your trembling fingers as the tears start pushing their way past your eyes. 

It was not exactly the reaction nor the response that he envisioned. Confused, he asks, “I’m sorry, what? D-did you just say…‘no’?”

He also looked like he was on the verge of tears, but for a completely different reason.

When your brain cells manage to click again, you laugh through your sniffling. You hastily kneel right in front of him. “Oh, no…baby…” His face crumples at the sound of ‘no.’ Realizing your mistake again, you continue to rectify the situation. “I didn’t mean it like that,” you explain.

Finally, you grab his face in your hands, bring it closer to yours, then plant a lingering kiss on him. You look him right in his eyes, and squeal, “Yes, of course, I’ll marry you!” 

He cracks a hesitant smile and in the softest voice possible, he asks, “Really?”

“Yes, Namjoon! I love you!” You kiss him again and apologize. “I was just so…overwhelmed by the moment and ...how,” You took a second to glance down at your pants-less state, “…Uhhh… comfortable, I look.” You babbled and laughed through teary eyes.

“I really didn’t mean to say ‘no’ and scare you. I panicked and it just sort of slipped out,” You were still shaking, feeling as if your heart would burst from so much joy and love for him.

He breaks into a throaty laugh, his chest and shoulders vibrating, much to your relief.

“I seriously didn’t expect this, though,” you remarked in earnest.

“Are you kidding?” He deadpans, thinking back to when you saw the ring’s order confirmation email on his phone. “You mean to tell me that you weren’t expecting this? At all?” his tone is light and teasing.

Since finding out about the ring, you’d been secretly trying to search where he’s hidden it. Your little brother, Jungkook, had been discouraging you from doing so because it would ruin the magic of the moment. 

“I mean, I had hoped that it would happen during our trip,” you admit shyly.

“Hah! I gotcha there, didn’t I?” He says smugly. In reality, Namjoon had asked Jungkook to keep the ring hidden at his place after the day you found out to throw you off the scent. It worked out perfectly.

You rolled your eyes, but not in annoyance. He was being playful and you had to hand it to him; he pulled off this surprise successfully. 

While still on the floor, he carefully pulls the piece of jewelry out of the box. He takes your left hand and slides the ring up your finger. It was a perfect fit! He brought your hand up to his lips to kiss it, making you feel butterflies in response.

The fluttering compels you to kiss him again, celebrating this moment. Unable to stop smiling, your cheeks feel delightfully sore through the rest of the night.

******

When you crawl into bed together later that night, he makes a confession. “You know, I wasn’t actually planning on proposing tonight,” he laughed. “I had a whole thing planned when we got to the hotel. Jungkookie helped me coordinate. Dinner by the beach, flowers, and a ukulele player. He even called one of his buddies to do this wild drone shot…”

You listen as he continues to talk about his original proposal plan. You laugh and shake your head at the extra effort that Jungkook convinced his Namjoonie-hyung to make so you can be completely blown away.

You smile in appreciation as your brother has always been supportive of your relationship from day one. It was only right that you’d still make an effort to act surprised when the dinner happened–if only to hear Jungkook’s elation at the news.

“What’s changed your mind? You don’t usually blow your load early,” you teased. He glared while you cackled then he pinches the ticklish spot on your hip bone, making you yelp and recoil your body.

He’s laughing as you try to defend yourself from another ticklish assault from him.

“I don’t know…” He shrugged. “It’s just that, I saw you standing in the bathroom. While watching you, all of these memories came flooding back. Specifically, the moment I first saw you.”

“On that web conference?” You laughed at his recollection.

He nods wistfully. “I was in denial at first but I unconsciously knew that you had me right then. So I thought–fuck it! I didn’t care about where we were or what we were doing. I just knew that I wanted to be with you…forever.”

You beamed through your happy tears and pepper him with kisses.

*******

You wake the next morning like you’ve woken just about every morning since you’ve been with Namjoon–with him pressed into your back, his lips kissing down your spine slowly and lazily. It’s blissful, mind-numbing. And, as always, your melt under the warmth of his mouth rousing you from your dreams. 

The friction of your skin rubbing together takes you from warm to blazing in a snap. The feel of his morning arousal brushing your thighs awakens your senses.

You reach back, pushing your fingers through his morning mess of a hair, sighing your contentment.

“Morning,” he murmurs, peppering soft kisses on your shoulder while rolling his hips into your ass at the same time. His hands creep up from behind you to palm your breasts from underneath your shirt. You gasp softly when he gently pinches a hardened nipple.

“You ready for me, baby?”

Your body responds to his call instinctively. Your need for him is incessant. “Always.”

You reach back between you two and pull on your underwear’s waistband halfway down. Namjoon tugs on it the rest of the way through, lifting your knees up to completely rid yourself of them.

You wriggle toward him to find that he’d already stripped off his shorts. He palms your center, sucking and kissing your neck while his fingertips tease your clit.

You part your legs for him, not just wanting to give him better access but your ache for him has grown into a steady hunger.

You grind your hips into his touch, making him laugh huskily into your ear. “A little impatient, are we?”

“You started this and now you want to pump the brakes?” You sassed.

“There’s my firecracker,” he smirks before his teeth graze the shell of your ear. “Go ahead then. Put me in.”

As much as you loved when Namjoon took command during sex, it thrilled you even more when he relinquished control to you.

You reach between you two and wrap your fingers around his cock. He groans when your hand slides down his length slowly…teasing him until he groans impatiently, making him nip at your flesh. “Okay, you’ve made your point!” His annoyed protest makes you giggle mischievously.

You line him up to your center, brushing the tip against your wet folds, making him curse under his breath.

In one slow, calculated movement, he’s inside you. You grip his hair, crying out in unison once you take him to the hilt.

In an instant, you’re both floating on cloud nine, mere moments after waking. And you know that’s Namjoon’s intention each time— to start your day being reminded of how much he wanted and desired you…how much he loved you.

One look, one word from this man and he has you all worked up in a frenzy. You listen to him whisper sweet nothings in your ear, how good you make him feel, how he wishes he could spend hours and days just like this. You take comfort in the deep baritone of his just-woke-up voice. It was right on par with his bedtime voice, when he says that he wants to fuck you senseless, leaving you completely sated before you drift off for the night—thighs still trembling.

You lean into his touch, tilting your neck backward to offer your mouth to him. He takes it, tongue dipping right in, cupping your jaw whilst he savored you. 

Your bodies move in perfect synchronicity like they were made specifically with each other in mind…because they were. You’d never question the sense in that especially when you’re so close and intimate like this. 

“You still with me?” he whispers.

“Yes,” you manage to respond.

He pulls out of you and you let out a whine of protest. “On your stomach,” he says gruffly. 

Lost in a fucked-out daze, you obey.

He slides over you while you were stretched out on your stomach. His hand pushed between your hip and the mattress, reaching between your legs to cup you in his hand. You were so wet and slick for him. You let out a muffled moan when palmed your clit.

“I want you this way,” He says, brushing his lips across your cheek.

He reaches for his pillow with this free hand and then shoves it underneath you while lifting your hips to the angle that he wanted, preferably one that would let him sink in deeper.

“Joon…” The manner in which you said his name was a plea. He’d left you empty for too long and you were anxious for him to fill you again.

He acknowledges the need in your voice. “I know, baby.” He shifts, urging your legs apart. Then, he gently presses on the small of your back, urging you to bend lower, angling your ass up higher for him.

With his hands on your hips, he slid back into you. You fisted at the sheets on either side of you, relishing the stretch to your center.

“Fuck, yesss,” you dragged out.

He picked up the rhythm, feeling the air seize from your lungs whenever his hips slam against your ass. You pressed your face hard into your pillow, gasping and moaning incoherently while he continues to pound into you mercilessly.

His teeth gritted, barely restraining the growls that surged from his throat. His chest heaved against your back, his ragged breaths ruffling the hairs on the back of your neck.

His hips churned, fucking into you; pushing in further. He could feel your walls around his length. They clench in ripples that make his cock twitch in excitement.

The pressure building up within him was persistent but he was capable of keeping it under control. He wanted to give you all the pleasure he could offer. Your moans of satisfaction are more than enough to set off his own release.

You whimper, helplessly writhing under him while he punishes you with each stroke. Reaching between your legs, you rubbed circles on your pulsing clit, making your cunt tremble then tighten around his cock in a vice-like grip.

Finally, you tip over the edge. Cumming with a loud, lingering moan.

Aroused by your orgasm, he shut his eyes and dropped his forehead to your cheek. He inhaled your scent and let go, coming just as hard, his ass flexing as he filled you.

A few beats later, Namjoon gingerly turns you over on your back, pulling the pillow from underneath you and tossing it to the side. Exhausted, he collapses on you but is careful not to squish you. Although, if you were going to be honest, you loved the feeling of his full weight on top of you.

He was crowding you now, where he will remain for the next few minutes while he snoozes on you, nuzzling and kissing your misted neck. You hold onto him and savor the moment you cherish each morning before you have to get up and head to the airport for your trip.

He rubbed his damp hair against your cheek. “Love you.”

Your head turned, your lips seeking his. Breathing into the kiss, you reply, “Love you, too.”

You sigh into his shoulder as you settle, pressing him tightly against your chest, getting him as close as you possibly can. In your own silent way, you’re telling him that you’re also happy to remain where you are.

Smiling softly, he lifts your left hand up to his lips to kiss the ring he had given you last night. Your heart squeezes, relishing in the promise of forever with him.

You’ll always think back fondly on that magical evening when you said, “No…stop it.”

Intersect Series Masterlist | Main Fic Masterlist

You’ve reached the end! Thank you so much for reading!

If you loved it, please comment, reblog, or send me feedback! 📩. I love hearing from readers! If you didn’t like it so much, I would still like to hear about it. Help me become a better writer! 💜

Tagging: @itdoesntmatterwhy @internetjunkdrawer @purplewhalewrites @yu-justme @joonschocochip  @majamarantha @yoongukie-ff @shesoldbutcute​

[xviiper-rents-houses]

The Boyfriends:

Some self indulgence— again. School's getting a lil' trickier so I decided to write something to help out with my anxiety. Lemme know if you guys like it! There are two characters of mine here, just wrote them up. If you guys want to submit fanart or ask in character questions about them, feel free to! (P.S. I would love fanart! It's always so cool to see what people think of your writing and then play around with the description and make something outta it)!

Reader is referred to as you/your pronouns, as well as they/them.

TW: Yandere behavior; stalking, possessiveness, obsessiveness, killing, animal killing/abuse, degradation, threatening, killing family members. Murder is said blatantly but, not described in detail.

Short drabble:

Here in the big city, you had found yourself a comfortable place to live. It had all the necessary amenities; bed, bathroom, kitchen (that also served as your dining room) and since you had an extra room, you decided to let that become your office. You managed to strike a good bargain for your home, being able to pay the bills by yourself and without straining yourself over many jobs. Here in the big city, you were comfortable.

You weren't alone in your place. You had neighbors. You lived in an apartment complex at a busy intersection, so many people came and went. Moved in, moved out. More and more neighbors moved into the apartment complex you chose to live in because of the good costs and many moved out because of the quality of neighbors. Some of them were elderly and other middle aged. And a new pack of young neighbors disrupted and caused a major move. Besides that, all, for the most part, were kind, welcoming, even bringing you baked goods, as well as inviting you over to just learn about who you were.

You told them what you felt mattered and were comfortable with talking about. It would seem you left a good impression, since you were invited out a lot more. Your life was comfortable. Until you had new neighbors. Not just any new neighbors. A youthful couple that had moved in next door had caused quite a ruckus in the stark hours of the night. You didn't want to imply their actions but, it was getting to a point where you struggled to sleep. They were too loud. You felt very aggravated and just...wanted it to stop.

And so, the next morning, you knocked on their door. The day you knocked was the day you didn't have work, giving you time to take care of personal matters such as self expenses and maybe bills and perhaps, something that was fun. The door opened after a five minute wait, two heads poking out and what looked to be paint on their face. You narrowed your eyes to get a closer look.

No, it actually looked like blood. Oh God. Were your new neighbors actually serial killers? Had they moved in and decided to start their own horror film? Come to think of it, Meemaw Stacie, an elderly woman who baked you oatmeal raisin cookies every Saturday, had been missing for the past two weeks. She mentioned that she was going to go on vacation. But, that was only for three days. You felt your stomach knot and heart drop all the way down your chest and it must have shown on your face because that door slammed shut.

You stared at it for a good long while, thinking. Just what happened? Were you that scared? What about that thought of Meemaw Stacie? You didn't want to believe or assume but, now you were noticing a fowl smell coming from just under that door. You were about to turn around, leave and rush to your apartment. To trust your gut. To run and call the police, shout out for help or anything— then the door opened, again. You yelped when your hand was snagged out of nowhere, pulling you back.

I don't want to die! I don't want to go next! Please, just let me go! You weren't sure what you said exactly but it all meant the same thing: freedom. And just when you were about to sound the alarm, a hand softly sealed your lips and you got a better look at the new couple. There were no more red stains, there wasn't an odor anymore and everything seemed fine. Aside from...the shorter one, who appeared to be a thin male, having smeared ash on his face.

"It's not what you think!"

Sure looked like it. Now, who said that? It wasn't the shorter man. No, it was the taller man, who was by appearance's definition; a jock. The little man was ducked low, keeping your mouth shut with his hand and the taller man was holding your hand, keeping you in place. This was an uncomfortable situation, you could not stop breathing so quickly.

"Please, we were just preparing some beef tender."

You barely relaxed, easing up just a little bit when your mouth was free. The little man had shrunk his hand away but, his wide, crystal blue eyes didn't break their gaze. The taller man did not let go, he kept his grip. Why would you have blood all over your face if you're just cooking meat? Why did it smell so bad? You frowned, managing to tear yourself free from the strong man's grip and jump away for just some space. Something wasn't adding up; that couple's story just didn't make sense. It looked like they washed their faces and changed in a hurry.

"You don't believe us, do you?"

The little man walked out, his boyfriend trying to step in but, quickly, he was ushered aside. You looked down at the little kan. His pants were white. You were expecting them to be covered in blood. All you saw was a small man with icy blue eyes, white pants and a comfortable sweater. That sweater was a periwinkle pink, words embroidered, "Cute AF." Interesting choice of style, you thought. But that did not make you feel anymore comfortable around these peculiar neighbors. Their actions were obtuse.

"Damien, couldn't you have waited," the tall man who had a vice-like grip on your hand, asked, chiding his lover. Damien was the man in the periwinkle pink sweater. "You're being rude. For God's sake, you slammed your hand over their mouth!"

"I don't see anything we can't fix here. They (you) just have a problem with us, right? Were we being too loud?" Damien brushed off all the allegations, treating them as if it were only child's play. His voice was sickly sweet, too sweet. Damien's face looked...fake. Not genuine. You couldn't quite place it.

Slowly, though, you nodded. Yes, they were being too loud. You nodded, again. Yes, you wanted them to be quieter. They stared at you, oddly. Like they were communicating something through a secret language of movement. Damien, the only name you knew him by as of right now, tilted his head left and right, studying you like a painting. His boyfriend rested his chin in his hand, temple creasing as he thought over these silent and nonverbal meanings. The air suddenly felt colder. You didn't want to be here anymore.

You backed away, slowly. Your eyes didn't leave them, unsure of what could happen. You knew they were covering up something nasty. The taller moved forward, his frazzled and contemplating attitude replaced with a joyful and open behavior. His arms opened wide and he grinned a bright beautiful smile that anyone would fall for. That anyone would feel oh so comforted by. But not you. You didn't like the way it curled into a Devil's smirk just at the edges. He radiated bad energy.

"Why don't you come back for dinner in two hours? We'd love to have you over, " he said as he took your hands and held them to his chest. Damien squeezed in, planting his hands on your wrists and gripping tightly. You got to study them even more. Damien, he had those same icy blue eyes but freckles over tanned skin that stretched tightly across his face. He looked emaciated. And his boyfriend. He had blonde hair, sunglasses and overall, a muscular build. He looked like if a golden retriever became a man. "I'm Chris by the way, this is Damien, my boyfriend."

As charming as they were trying to come off, they could not erase the events that just happened. You quickly broke off the contact, just wanting to be out of that horrible situation. You didn't catch their looks as you ran down the hall and into your apartment dorm, locking it and deciding to take the fire escape down. Chris and Damien gave each other a shared look. Both smiled in a strange way. You were going to face trouble.

Blurb/headcanons:

Chris and Damien are a couple that recently moved into your same apartment complex. They bounced from their small town to a big city to take on more victims to satisfy their dry feelings of emptiness. Killing seemed to be the only way that brightened up those dull feelings but, with the amount of murders they were committing in that small town, it didn't feel exhilarating anymore— it started to feel like a routine. Plus, they were catching heat. Something had to be done and moving seemed to be the correct way to go about it.

Chris and Damien are madly in love with each other— they make sure to let everyone know that hat, especially when they're on the hunt. Very much yandere x yandere. The boyfriends work well together, killing as many people as they can, with no discernable pattern. The new city gave them new prey to play around with— starting in the lower levels, to mid suburbs and to tackling classic highschool clicks to get a rile out of the police force. But, even that got boring.

That is, until they meet you. That hallway encounter gave them a whole new purpose. Chris and Damien were going to provide for a new friend. A best friend, actually. In their own twisted way. You are the one person that they'll invite over almost daily so they can chat your ears off. You fit the description of the third wheel they wanted, someone that they could help by chasing away any romantic involvement. Chris and Damien decided that right there and then in that hallway, you were going to be a part of their little family. No one was going to get close to their best friend. Not ever.

Chris and Damien protect you and your interests, (well, for what they deem is good in your life). They are stupidly sneaky and manipulative in the way that they stay in your life. Chris is definitely the muscle in the couple, (aka— jelly jar opener) and Damien, the thinker. If you are going to rat them out, complain to your tenant or call the cops, the Lovers are going to track your existing family down and threaten them. Don't play around. Let's say you have a pet; Chris doesn't care how much it hurts you, he will kill it if you complain about himself and his boyfriend.

Damien even celebrates Chris's animal abuse, paying for the remains of that critter to be taxidermied and set on display in THEIR apartment. If YOU want to go see YOUR pet, you will have to knock on The Lovers' door. And if you go over and knock on that door, asking about your pet, they'll let you in and taunt you. "Oh your sweet cat's dead! Don't worry, we put some of the blood in this bottle. They don't call ketchup cat's blood for nothing!" Depending on your reaction, they will laugh at you if you express genuine hurt/sadness. It's just an animal. You've got your friends to comfort you now.

On another note, Chris and Damien are so cynical about their way of keeping you. They lay in bed, plotting out their next kills, (mind you, they have work the next morning as well!) and how to make the perfect targets that'll keep you shut up and compliant. Pets are easy to kill, people as well. Why don't they target an entire friend group that you had in highschool? Damien is howling in laughter and Chris is sneering at the sheer absurdity they'd go through to make a clear point. Those losers weren't actually your friends. You have Chris and Damien, the only friends that you will EVER need.

Chris and Damien aren't kind to you. They are very cruel. Meemaw Stacie had an unfortunate end, not because of you, (well, actually yes because the boyfriends just liked how you looked) but, because she would be their official first kill in this complex. And many more to come. The tenant died after you spoke with him, Chris and Damien made sure to make it a point that they were the ones who did it. But when the heat came on them by the media, their practiced theatrics threw the blame outside the complex and got Chris and Damien off Scott-free.

Less and less people come to live in your complex, the world putting shade on the place and claiming it to be haunted. Now, it was an attraction to gain money. You would wait for the next crew or group of people to come in, ask for help and pray that they would listen. And that Chris and Damien weren't around to keep you from fleeing.

Thank you guys so much for reading! I really hope you guys liked it. I don't see much for platonic yanderes so I figured, “Hey! Why don't I add some more content?” As always, have a good day, drink water, eat food and rest. And the most important thing: write/read fanfiction <3!

(p.s. I didn't know what the <3 meant at first! I thought it was a little alien with its eye closed and doing a cat smile 😭 I thought: :3 = <3 I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS A HEART)!?

[maddiem4]

I think one of the great things about the word "transhumanism" is that it leads you to make interesting connections through the metaphor of the transgender experience. And yet, not enough people take that invitation and run with it!

Like, okay, take the Cyberpunk universe, in the Capital C, CD Projekt Red sense. Kind of a fraught approach to its genre, but we can see that in more detail through the trans lens. People are empowered to customize their bodies in ways that feel better to themselves... but access to these customizations is gatekept by major corporations rather than available through socialized medicine. An underground DIY community exists, which mostly works for people but carries risks. These customizations can carry a cost of lifetime medication dependency, which is easily worth it for a lot of people, but can be a practical problem for (again) access reasons. And there's a lot of people who get upgrades they don't necessarily want because they feel that it's necessary on a practical level to get and keep jobs, which - that's not like the real life trans experience, but you know what it means? This is a forcefem world fantasy, except for a thing that isn't a gender. No wonder it has an "strangely enticing yet profoundly problematic" aura, we've seen that before!

There's a lot to be said here about the changing sense of self, and the sense of self incorporating changes. But I think what I want to talk about is arguably the biggest fumble of the world building - cyber psychosis. The idea that if you replace enough pieces of yourself, you lose your humanity and go insane. This obviously doesn't hold up to questions like "does my psychosis meter go up when I put on glasses or take my vitamins?" It doesn't have to, it's about feelings. There's something very queer respectability politics about the fact that most protagonist characters in this universe are modified, but look down on the people who went "too far." The literal dehumanization of modified people is an ugly thing to canonize as a mechanic of your universe. It's internalized transphobia for the characters and the authors - just, for a thing that isn't a gender.

I think if you really set out to write a transhumanist story about the economic pressure to transition in ways that increase your dysphoria rather than decrease it, you could easily write a better Cyberpunk. That's the power and clarity you get from engaging intentionally with the transgender metaphor. It's not the only connection that makes sense to explore - transhumanism intersects with a lot of topics and that's the intellectual joy of it - but I think you leave a lot of potential on the table if you're not checking in with the transgender allegory at some point in your writing process.

[lord-squiggletits]

IDW Megatron and Optimus weren't friends before the war. Here's why that makes their ship dynamic more interesting.

One comment I've heard among people comparing IDW1 MegOP to other continuities of MegOP is (paraphrased) that since they weren't friends before the war, there isn't as much material to ship them with/they don't have an established dynamic/they don't have ~*history*~ that makes them be the bitter exes we all know and love them to be.

In this meta post, I'm going to contend that the IDW1 MegOP lack of friendship before the war is actually a benefit to their dynamic in this continuity, not a negative. Although they didn't get a lot of time together before the war in terms of quantity, the quality of their interactions and the weight it gave their future rivalry is due to the tragic nature of their relationship: They saw a glimpse of each other at their best in their youth, but like a tragic myth of old, circumstances conspired to keep them apart, traumatize them, and turn them into people who couldn't trust or reconcile with each other.

The IDW MegOP's first meeting is like a fated encounter, almost as if it was destined to happen. The way that one single brush can change the entire course of history.

I like to call this a "love at first sight" moment because, although they're not in love, it has this sort of storybook magical quality to it where this one single moment has a lot of weight. This one moment where they saw each other at their best and could have a positive interaction.

When I say that they met each other "at their best" here, I'm referring to Megatron's pacifistic essays and poetry that represent his pure revolutionary spirit and care for Cybertron, and Orion's trait of showing kindness and encouraging individual freedom despite his position of authority. The way that their first encounter was so brief and unassuming makes us, the readers, yearn for more. Doesn't Megatron's silent glance behind him in that final panel make you wonder what he's thinking? They only had that one brief talk at the rodion police station but it went on to ricohet the rest of their lives. Orion started thinking about the corruption of the system due to Megatron's writing. Megatron looked back at Orion with curiosity/lingering feeling after he was escorted out of the station. Even Megatron being put on Messatine was indirectly due to Orion, since Orion delivered that speech on his behalf.

It's almost like literal chemistry, where two particles bumping into each other once can cause a chain reaction of other particles bumping and bumping and bumping until suddenly those two particles are back together.

It's a sort of magical real life scenario where you meet a stranger just once but something they did or said to you makes you remember it and think about it for a long time afterwards. except in this case the MegOPs are (un?)lucky enough to meet again. And they start a war.

I also really like that Megatron and Orion/Optimus spent most of their pre-war backstory apart from each other, because I feel like it makes them stronger characters individually instead of making all of their most important moments be about each other. This is more of a comment on fandom than canon, but many romantic stories fall into a pitfall of a relationship where the two people obsessed with each other: their romance is the most important relationship they have; the entire plot revolves around whether they're happy or upset with each other, it can even make their relationship seem unhealthy and like they have no meaningful relationships outside of their romance. In terms of MOP in other continuities, I feel that putting too much emphasis on their friendship kind of cheapens the worldbuilding and political conflict. True, it's nice when the personal and political intersect in the MegOP's lives, but sometimes I feel (especially in fanon) that the "they were friends but then they disagreed and now they're not friends" concept sometimes ends up being written as if this one simple friendship conflict was the basis of a whole war.

The benefit of IDW1 MegOP is that because they spend their pre-war time apart from each other, they develop separately as people and end up transforming into someone different from their "love at first sight" moment. I like that Orion had relationships with people like Shockwave, Roller, and Zeta, and Megatron had his student/teacher relationship with Terminus and the whole arena thing happening.

Both Megatron and Orion went through traumatizing events during this time period that changed their worldviews for the worse and made them more cynical. Megatron suffered an attempted brainwashing, losing his mentor, his first killing, then being stuck in the arena. Orion went through the loss of Shockwave to a fate worse than death, then the disappearance of his best friend Roller, then worked for Zeta and began to doubt in his ideals/goodness as a leader. In that time between the MegOP's first encounter and their ensuing encounters in a military conflict, they came back as very different people than the first glimpse they got of each other.

Since they only had that ONE first glimpse they had of each other, then met again only to be disappointed by each other's fall from grace (in each others' eyes), this sets up a lot of angst. They wonder if that first glimpse of each other was really true or if it was a lie. Should they trust in those "good" versions of each other they saw so long ago? Do those people even exist? Are they or were they ever worth believing in? Does that man I saw still exist or did I just WANT to see something good in him? That man ruined my life and I hate him for fighting against me, he's a hypocrite. I thought that man was a good person, but he's betrayed the hopes I had by becoming a violent criminal warlord/working for the evil government I thought he opposed.

It sort of has the vibes of a "love at first sight" story gone wrong where their first encounter was kind (I like to imagine Megatron was touched or at least curious about Orion, a cop, telling him to keep writing and be vocal) but then they descended into their worst selves. They only had that one small glimpse of each other at their best but now they're in a scenario where they can only be enemies.

The longing and disappointment is more obvious on Orion's part about Megatron, because Orion got this shining glimpse of Megatron at his best and most passionate, only to encounter Megatron again and all those good parts have been buried to leave only his worst. Megatron's POV about OP isn't really shown, but I feel like it could be interesting to write headcanons about it. How did Megatron feel about Orion making that speech on his behalf? Getting moved to Messatine because Orion made him so public, and all the bad things that happened there?

Yes, their first encounter was brief and they didn't really have a personal relationship before the war. But that brief encounter changed the trajectory of their entire lives. When you combine that with the fact that they saw each other as their "ideal selves", it creates that valid obsession between Megatron and Optimus. It is kind of unhealthy LMAO, because they do kind of become obsessed with each other based on an incomplete view of the other as a person. But then the war happens and they keep having personal and professional encounters that would give them opportunities to meet (such as in diplomacy meetings like Tyrest's peace negotiations and other political things that come with war). And those repeated meetings would only cause them to get to know each other better. Then you get into more mythical/legend-like story dynamics where Megatron and OP have to learn how the other thinks tactically, and their tactical knowledge becomes so intimate they start understanding how the other thinks and it's very dramatic lol. The typical our-enmity-is-so-deep-it-could-be-love enemies to lovers fare.

TLDR:

Circumstances outside of their control drove them apart, made them into different people, and kept them from becoming friends. It makes IDW MegOP feel legendary or mythical, like some sort of epic Greek tragedy of two people who were always 🤏 this close to being friends. There's longing there, and tragedy, imagining what might have been if they'd only been able to talk again, or if they had somehow been able to influence each other before they went down the bad path (violence and crime for Megatron, following Zeta and becoming Prime for Orion/Optimus). But despite that, their natural chemistry perseveres, and they talk to/about each other in a way that shows they still think of each other even when apart.

[brother-emperors]

hi!! i’m a classics major and am so entranced by your art and how you interact with history and literature, it really inspires me and expands my brain all the time. SO spicy.

anyways, I was wondering if you’d be comfortable talking a bit about your degree (s) and how they’ve influenced your artistic/critical analytical processes??

oh man, I have exactly zero degrees. like a true jester, I went to a trade art school, so I don't even have an art related degree, I've got a certification of surviving hell completion

the way art and history interact for me is that a lot of it circles back to trying to find ways to talk about something. history doesn't necessarily repeat, but it often rhymes, haunts, and cannibalizes. some eras of history are equal parts history and a stage, and a stage serves as a place to say something without necessarily having to be in it. the bossism politics of the philippines rhymes with the faction politics of the late republic more often than it doesn't. watching the marcoses crawl back into power was like watching the medici return to florence. duterte said he was like julius caesar crossing the rubicon, and over 6,000 were murdered under his regime. somethings are the same.

a lot of it feels like a puzzle, and I like it when pieces come together. more often than not, there's something current going on that prompts me to look back into history for something comparable, either as a stage, or just to feel like I'm not losing my mind, that other people had to deal with this shit too.

I was a teenager when the original assassin's creed games were coming out, and I used to go to libraries with other fans and we'd just sit in the non fiction sections and read everything that was on a shelf, and then go outside or whatever and start talking about where the games diverged from history and try to figure out what the next game would do based on whatever we learned. and I just kind of. kept doing that even when I stopped playing the games because the story sucked ass, but because there's already a second intersection of fiction working along side historical analysis, it unlocks a bunch of other stuff in the back of my mind while I take notes on something.

the gore you read in the thebaid reminds me a lot of imperial chines torture literature, and now we've got imperial horror and while we've moved out of the ancient Mediterranean but it's a whole body of work that I'm now looking at while thinking about rome, and somewhere in there, I'll probably find some literary theme that's cool and I'll start researching whether or not someone's examined like. the renaissance from that lens. what does the gore mean. what happens when history unfairly maligns and scapegoats someone. what happens when a foundational sacrifice goes wrong.

one of the most gut wrenching things I ever read was about how rome took any record of spartacus' words and buried it, and now I spend too much time thinking about what words we put in the mouths of dead people.

[saphronethaleph]

Visiting Time

The front door opened with a crash.

“Sonic!” a voice shouted. “You’re not getting away this time!”

Tails lifted his welding mask, and turned off the torch. Then he hopped out of his garage, and into the main living area of their house.

“Hi, Silver,” he said.

“Tails!” Silver replied, waving. “Great to see you again. Where’s Sonic? I’m here to pay him back for what he did!”

“He’s out at the moment, not sure where,” Tails replied, shrugging. “What did he do, exactly? There’s a lot of stuff it could be…”

“You mean he’s been doing a lot of stuff he needs to pay for?” Silver asked, going over to one of the sofas and sitting down.

Tails shrugged. “No, not really, but he’s done a lot of stuff, and a lot of that could get misinterpreted! That’s the way it usually works, like with the Iblis Trigger or when Shadow got mistaken for him.”

Silver frowned. “Iblis Trigger?”

“I don’t actually know myself, but my research turned up a note from myself!” Tails replied. “It was back last time we broke time… no, maybe the time before last time?”

He scratched his head, then shook it. “Anyway, Sonic isn’t the Iblis Trigger, I’m supposed to tell you that. How’s the future, by the way?”

“You know, same old, same old,” Silver said. “Hey, can I get a mug of cocoa?”

Tails blurred into the kitchen and began mixing some up. “So… post apocalypse?”

“That’s same old, same old, for you,” Silver concurred readily. “This time I guess it’s global warming?”

“Huh,” Tails frowned. “I was pretty sure my Ring Energy Generators would prevent that, by using clean energy instead of fossil fuels. Any specifics?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing to do with fossil fuels,” Silver shrugged. “When I said warming, I meant literally. Volcanic eruptions and lava and stuff.”

“Oh!” Tails said. “I guess we might need to talk to Chip and see if he knows what’s going on… so what do you think Sonic has done, exactly?”

Silver floated over the cocoa and took a sip. “Man, you’re good at that… anyway, he built a giant robot and was using it to attack people.”

Tails gave him a perplexed look.

“Okay, look,” Silver began. “I know that realistically speaking it was probably actually Eggman who did it. But you know Sonic, the best way to get him to help out is to challenge him to a battle and then work from there.”

“I have trouble arguing with that,” Tails said, flicking both his tails, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, hold on a minute! I have something I’ve been working on to try and help with this kind of thing!”

He scampered off into his workshop, and Silver shrugged before drinking some cocoa.

A minute or so later, Tails came back with an odd-looking contraption.

“This is a recent project!” Tails explained, flicking some switches, and a little generator thingummy began to spin faster and faster with an ascending whiiiiir sound. “Aaand… there we go!”

Silver leaned in to see what was going on.

“...so, what does it do, exactly?” he asked.

“It detects inconsistencies in the fabric of space and time!” Tails explained, both his namesake tails flicking back and forth. “I got the idea after Sonic told me about this one time where I never met him and I ended up making myself cyborg tails. And this other time where I was a pirate. And, well, all the other times we’ve messed with that kind of thing… anyway, it detects where parallel lines of time are resonating with our own timeline, and identifies the points where our own history is being driven off course, because a different world is leaking into our own through a micro-hole to a universe only a few picometres in the ana or kata direction.”

Silver frowned.

“I’m not exactly an expert on temporal mechanics, but that sounds extremely specific,” he said. “How could you possibly identify those?”

“Well, it was easy enough once I had a big enough sample set,” Tails shrugged. “Which took about a month. Anyway, uh… okay… there we go!”

He pointed to the screen. “See here? Your personal timeline intersects with Sonic’s timeline in about a week, and you’re carrying one of the Chaos Emeralds at the time. The… yellow one, I think.”

Silver rummaged in his quills, and brought out a blue Chaos Emerald. “The blue one, actually.”

“That must be it!” Tails declared. “You need to bring the yellow one instead, because otherwise you and Sonic are going to be trying to go Super with two blue Emeralds and no yellow one. Once you’ve done that, that should fix the timeline until the next time it breaks.”

“Huh,” Silver mused, draining the last of his cocoa. “I guess that makes sense… I’d better go and find the yellow one instead. And work out what to do with the few weeks I’ll get to enjoy being in a non post apocalypse.”

Tails gave him a thumbs-up. “No problem! This just shows the value of my P.L.O.T. hole detector!”

[aheathen-conceivably]

Now that we know a little more, clearly Gio is pretty ticked off with the situation - considering the feelings that he has about his and Jo’s relationship already, combined with the guilt and likely irritation of her finding out about his lying, now also combined with her demanding part ownership of the ranch - he doesn’t have a lot of leg to stand on. He has to just, deal with it, because it IS all their lives’ on the line, and nothing he’s tried to do has worked. I voted for Zelda to be most pissed, but I think she and Antoine are really just sad for now, so Gio might run away with the title after all 😭

Oh HELLO my friend! I love that we’re still playing the game of “Who Will Snap First!” (Game show pending). You’re hella right about one thing, as things shift and move, everybody’s numbers start to kind of adjust don’t they? Cause ahem, yeah, Gio is ~not pleased~ at the moment, and like you said, he doesn’t even feel like he has the “right” to be angry (which is its own sort of compounding factor, isn’t it?).

Is it time for a Gio deep dive? Welp. Gather one gather round my darlings because you know I can never resist….

Ted Talk with a Heathen! (Obviously under the cut because I’m a madlad)

First and foremost let me say that for whatever else Jo may do or how she demanded it, she is damn right not to pay off a loan without some legal backing in return. Now does she know this? For sure. But does she also know that she did it to get under Gio’s skin in a way that nothing else could? Absolutely. I’ve talked about it a little here, but Gio’s entire mindset is wrapped up in this farmhouse. It is his American dream. We also need to remember that he did what he said he never would in order to get the money to buy it, which is involve himself in his family bootlegging back in the 1920s. He even admitted to Antoine that after their one deal he tried to get out, but “once they get their teeth into you, once they know where you are, they don’t let you stop.” So Gio saved up this money by going against his own moral code and then ran from it to a place he thought he could establish himself as a “legitimate” American.

And I know yall like to rag on him about “making bad choices,” and while that’s partially true, Gio is just horribly, horribly unlucky. Buying land in the American West was incredibly fortuitous at one point in history, and it’s these stories that prompted Gio to do this at all. He’s an example of how not only can we buy into propaganda with our money and our dreams, but how they intersect with historical circumstances in ways far beyond our control or predictions.

Now to add to this, Gio knows what Jo has just done. She’s essentially taken part of what’s incredibly personal and precious to him as “payment” for what he did to her: which was trying to control her into fitting neatly into his dream when she had told him no multiple times before. In doing so he took away what was most precious to her: control and autonomy over her own life. It’s why he’s not really fighting her, and that deep seated Catholic guilt is simply telling him that this is retribution. But you can only write off someone else’s actions as righteous for so long, can’t you? And to make matters worse, let’s not forget….

Gio is not stupid. He knows something is going on between Jo and Val. How much of him thinks it’s just flirtation? How much of it is genuine or is just Jo once again trying to “get back at him”? But he’s staying quiet about it for a reason, most likely the same reason he’s willing to roll over and let Jo take 1/4th ownership of his dream. He’s motivated by guilt and ideas of righteous payback, yes, but he’s also taking a gamble that Jo is working through his betrayal in a way that he has to let her get through, and he’s attempting to let go of control to show her that he won’t do it again.

Essentially, he’s overcompensating for his actions and using his own compliance as a sort of “play” in their game to keep the other person where they want them. Is this potentially more motivated by love and less problematic than him directly lying to her to get her to stay? Y’all can make the call on that, but now at the very least, he’s the one suffering for it rather than her.

Now with all that going on, how far is this man willing to bend? How intuitive is Jo to when she’s pushed him too far and how much of her even gives a damn? Welp. There’s your questions on today’s episode of 1930s: Arc Two! Who Will Snap First? with more info coming at you tomorrow! 🫡

[prettygirl-gabi]

The Heartbeat of the Island

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Rating: Teen And Up

Warning: reader being called out of name: "cunt" (ONCE), reader calls rafe a cunt, Angst, !soft rafe (whattt), slight fluff, happy ending, lmk if I missed any

Category:F/M

Fandom: Outerbanks (obx), Netflix TV series

Relationships: S1 beginning of S2 rafe x !Pogue f plus-size reader

Summary: Rafe and a plus-size Pogue reader clash as enemies from opposite sides of the island, but simmering tensions ignite unexpected passion, leading them from rivalry to a slow-burn romance.

Thinking about making a pt2... lmk

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"Rafe Cameron". Even his name felt like a punch to the gut. Every time I heard it, every time I saw him, my insides twisted. He was everything I wasn’t. Tall, lean, golden-haired, and rich—the epitome of a Kook. And me? I was a Pogue. Curvy, hip dips, no thigh gaps,dark-haired, a little rough around the edges. I worked at a local surf shop, spent my evenings with my friends by the beach bonfires, and wore my outsider status with pride. But there was no denying the fact that the Kooks ruled this island. And Rafe Cameron? He was their king.

I first ran into him—literally—during the off-season. Tourists had gone home, leaving the island to the locals. It was a brisk morning, and I was jogging down to the pier. My mind was lost in the rhythm of my steps, the ocean breeze tugging at my hair, when out of nowhere, someone barreled into me.

“Oof!” I stumbled back, landing on the rough wooden boards of the pier. Pain shot through my elbow where it had struck the ground.

“Watch where you’re going,” a deep, irritated voice barked.

I looked up, and there he was. Rafe Cameron in all his infuriating glory, standing over me with a scowl on his perfect face.

“You ran into me,” I shot back, scrambling to my feet. I wasn’t about to let him intimidate me, even if he was towering over me like some kind of Greek god.

He sneered, crossing his arms over his chest. “Maybe if you weren’t so busy daydreaming, you wouldn’t have been in the way.”

I opened my mouth to retort, but before I could, he was already walking away, his long strides carrying him down the pier as if nothing had happened.

“Asshole,” I muttered under my breath.

***

A few weeks passed, and I did my best to avoid Rafe Cameron. It wasn’t hard. Our worlds rarely intersected, and that was fine by me. But the island wasn’t that big, and fate—or whatever twisted force controlled this place—had other plans.

It was late afternoon when I found myself back on the pier, sitting on the edge with my legs dangling over the water. The surf shop had closed early, and I’d needed some time to think. The sky was a watercolor of pinks and oranges, the sun slowly sinking into the horizon. The peace of the moment was shattered by the sound of footsteps behind me.

“You’re in my spot,” a familiar voice drawled.

I turned, my heart sinking when I saw Rafe standing there, hands in his pockets, looking at me with that same annoyed expression.

“Last time I checked, this pier didn’t have assigned seating,” I shot back, trying to keep my voice steady.

He didn’t reply right away. Instead, he walked closer, stopping just a few feet away from me. His eyes were locked on the ocean, not me, and for a moment, I wondered if he was going to ignore me and sit down anyway. But then he surprised me.

“You always hang out here?” he asked, his tone oddly neutral.

I blinked. Was this Rafe Cameron actually making small talk? I shrugged, not sure where this was going. “Sometimes. It’s quiet, and the view’s nice.”

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “I come here to think,” he said, almost to himself.

I studied him for a moment. His usual arrogant air was missing, replaced by something almost...human. It threw me off, and before I knew it, I was asking, “What do you have to think about, Rafe?”

He let out a harsh laugh, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “You’d be surprised.”

Silence fell between us, the only sound the gentle lapping of the waves against the pier. It was strange, being here with him, not fighting. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I found myself speaking before I could stop myself.

“You know, you don’t always have to be an asshole.”

His gaze snapped to mine, a flicker of something I couldn’t quite place crossing his features. But then it was gone, replaced by that infuriating smirk. “And you don’t always have to be so sensitive.”

I rolled my eyes, but there was no real heat behind it. “I’m not sensitive, Rafe. I just call it like I see it.”

“Is that right?” He stepped closer, and I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “And what do you see?”

I swallowed, suddenly very aware of how close he was. His blue eyes were locked on mine, and for a moment, I couldn’t find my voice. This was not how I’d expected this encounter to go.

“I see a guy who thinks he owns the world because he’s a Cameron,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. “But I also see someone who’s more than just a Kook.”

His smirk faltered, just for a second, and I wondered if I’d said too much. But then he surprised me again.

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said quietly.

“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to bet there’s more to you than you let on.”

He didn’t respond, just stared at me, his eyes searching mine as if trying to figure something out. Before i could open my mouth again he says "Go fuck yourself, cunt." And then, without another word, he turned and walked away, leaving me more confused, pissed than ever.

***

Our interactions didn’t stop there. Over the next few weeks, we kept running into each other—at the pier, in town, at the beach. And every time, there was a little less animosity, a little more...something else. We argued, sure, but it was different now. There was a tension between us, one that neither of us seemed willing to acknowledge but couldn’t quite ignore.

It all came to a head one night at a party on the beach. The bonfire was roaring, music blaring, people dancing and laughing. I was sitting on a log, nursing a drink, when I felt someone sit down next to me. I didn’t have to look to know who it was.

“You’re not exactly the life of the party,” Rafe commented, nudging my shoulder with his.

“Neither are you, cunt” I shot back, but there was a smile tugging at my lips.

He was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Why do you hate me?”

The question caught me off guard, and I turned to face him, searching his eyes. There was no trace of his usual arrogance, just genuine curiosity.

“I don’t hate you,” I said slowly. “You just...you make it really hard to like you sometimes. You know like when you called me a cunt for example.”

He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that sent a shiver down my spine. “I guess I deserve that. I do genuinely apologize for calling tou a cunt, you were right and it hurt to have a pouge tell me something ona deeper level.”

I bit my lip, debating whether or not to say what was on my mind. But in the end, I figured I had nothing to lose.

“You know, Rafe...you don’t have to be the person everyone expects you to be. You can be...more.”

He looked at me, really looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a vulnerability in his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. “And who do you think I can be?”

I hesitated, then reached out, taking his hand in mine. His fingers were warm, strong, and for a moment, I just held on, feeling the connection between us. “Someone who’s not afraid to be himself. Someone who doesn’t have to put on a front.”

He stared at our hands, then back at me, something softening in his gaze. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It’s not,” I admitted. “But it’s worth it.”

For a moment, we just sat there, the firelight flickering around us, the sound of the ocean in the background. And then, slowly, he leaned in, his eyes never leaving mine. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I didn’t pull away. When his lips finally brushed against mine, it was soft, tentative, as if he was testing the waters.

And then, just like that, the kiss deepened. His hand came up to cup my cheek, and I melted into him, all the tension, all the animosity between us dissolving in that moment. When we finally pulled apart, we were both breathing hard, our foreheads resting against each other.

“Maybe I’ve been wrong about you,” Rafe murmured, his thumb brushing against my cheek.

“Maybe we’ve both been wrong,” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper.

He smiled then, a real, genuine smile, and I felt something warm bloom in my chest. Maybe this was the beginning of something new. Something real.

And for the first time in a long time, I found myself looking forward to what came next.

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‐Thank You For Reading!🩵🩶

-prettygirl-Gabi✨️🎀