dentistacamas

[hotmess-exe]

the way that this world we live in revolves around the portrayal of so many western powers as The Good Guys and Saviors of Democracy or whatever the fuck

and yet it was an African country that finally stepped in and took this shit to The Hague

[delta-altair]

Angry rant ahead. I've been holding back on this one but I woke up at 3am this morning to prep for a virtual astronomy conference in a European time zone next week so whoops it's what I actually feel in words instead of in vague reblogs.

Just as I have never forgiven the people who caused 2016 to happen, I will *never* forgive the Beltway media, podcast bros, pollsters who think they're the goddamn oracles at Delphi, and fauxgressive fucking idiots for this.

First of all, if I here one sniveling whining "But Kamala is a cawwwwwp-" -- if you do not posses the common sense to understand that a chaotic, open convention where the disunity of the Democratic party is on full national display would be a stake through the heart of the campaign -- WHOEVER is chosen -- then sorry but you aren't smart enough to comment on this!!! Sorry if that's fucking mean but it's true. For once the left (and I mean from the center to the wall, the whole thing yes) collectively needs to shut the fuck up, get in line, and focus on one goddamn thing for the next three and a half months.

Second, I had a much longer post with plots and everything I was going to make about the last Canadian election, but I'll make it short now. This is about *polls*, aka the "reason" why this happened (it's not, it was the media forcing the issue by refusing to show the public anything else about Biden and his accomplishment, but anyway...). Feel free to skip (but there's a cat at the bottom for anyone who actually reads my rantings), the tl;dr is that you should not trust any poll more than a week out from the election because the average person is a fucking moron.

So polling just before the previous election was called (Canadian elections are different, they can happen before the 4 year mark if the PM decides) all showed a healthy Liberal (center-left) lead. Probably majority if it holds. "If an election was held today, who would you vote for?", that was the question. But then the Liberals call the election and SURPRISE, guess what happens? They tumble in the polls so drastically they fall below the Conservatives (right) in overall vote share almost immediately. They held onto a minority in parliament because of how our systems works (we have 5 seat holding parties), but still, they took a huge hit. Why? Did some scandal happen the week after the election was called? Did the Conservatives promise everyone a free puppy if they won? No.

No, nothing happened. The reason why the Liberals fell in the polls was that people were mad that they called an early election. Despite the fact that the polls that some of the same people definitely took asked the question "If an election were held today, who would you vote for?" I guess the average person didn't have enough brain cells to rub together to understand that if an election is happening then the Liberals would have necessarily called an election. I know this sounds circular and stupid but that is literally it!! A bunch of people said "Yeah I'd vote for the Liberals if an election was happening today. Oh the Liberals (the only people who CAN) called an election, I don't like that, so I'm not going to vote Liberal."

So miss me with literally any poll that is not a week out from the actual election event. They are all nonsense. It turns out that you cannot predict human stupidity to a statistically significant degree.

We are *also* in a regime where the only thing that really matters now is turnout, and turnout is much harder to poll than voter preference, so that's another kick against polling.

I don't really have a coherent ending for this. I'm not in total doom mode because a lot of things can still turn out ok, technically. But I still remember the feeling I felt when a huge portion of American said "actually, saying you can assault women and grab them by their pussies any time you want is actually not disqualifying for being president, but we're going to make up a bunch of bullshit to explain why we're not voting for Hillary" and I still do not trust most of you because of this.

You have once chance to not totally fuck this up. Treat it seriously.

Here's my cat to brighten your day. Her name is Jupiter.

[teddy06writes]

Gonna Fix It

requested by this anon: “hi!! could you maybe do something angsty and fluffy with Fundy (or anyone really) where the reader is a trans guy? he/him”  

Fundy x transmale!reader

trigger warnings: transphobes, homophobes, some swearing (I used the words tranny and fag) {I am both gay and technically trans please don’t come for me}

premise: When your dead name is leaked, along with photos of you pre transition the entire internet is quick to judge hypercritically, but your boyfriend is quick to take care of it

(y/n/n)- your nickname

(f/l/y/n)- first letter of your name

(y/d/n)- your deadname

“blep” talking

‘blep’ texting/messaging

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

“(y/n/n)!”

“Yes Tommy?” You asked.

“How’d you feel about selling drugs?” 

You snorted, glancing up at your face cam and the messages in chat before turning your character to face Tommy’s, laughing, “What?” 

“Do you want to sell drugs with me and Wilbur?” He repeated. 

You blinked, moving your character to look at the van and then back at him, “Tommy, I would love to sell drugs out of a van with you.” 

“Yes! We have secured another one lets go! Pogchamp!” 

You chuckled as Wilbur joined vc, following Tommy’s character over to the van as he announced, “Gentleman! We have a problem, we need to find a better cover for our operations.” 

You looked around the inside of the van, filled with brewing stands and furnaces, “A hot dog van.” 

“Pfff- a hot dog van?” Tommy laughed. 

“It would be a decent cover.” Wilbur admitted, “We should do it.” 

Almost reluctantly Tommy nodded, and Wilbur moved on, “Next on the order of business, we need new recruits beside just (y/n).” 

You grinned, “I know just who to ask!” 

You started to leave vc when Tommy warned, “No Americans and no women.” 

“You got it.” 

You left vc, talking to your twitch chat as you messed around in discord, “Weird lot, them boys. Anyway- apparently I’m a drug dealer in Minecraft now! And I’m gonna recruit someone else!” 

After a few messages through discord your boyfriend called you, “Hello?” 

Upon hearing Floris’ voice chat started spamming about you being a simp.

“Yeah so Tommy and Wilbur kinda roped me into selling drugs on the smp and they told me to get more people, so I’m calling you.” You explained. 

“Angel why didn’t you just come ask me? Was the call necessary?” 

You rolled your eyes, “Shut up chat I’m not blushing! It was easier than getting up. Are you in or not?” 

“Yeah sure.” 

~~

Child: ‘(y/n) big man’

Child: ‘big (f/l/y/n)’ 

(y/n): ‘what do you want Tommy’

Child: ‘get on the server we’re making plans for our country’ 

You sighed, quickly moving to boot up Minecraft, starting stream along with it and quickly giving an intro before logging on to the smp and joining vc. 

“Ayyy! Big man!” Tommy yelled. 

“Tommy!” You responded, though significantly less enthusiastically. 

“(y/n) come to the hto dog van we’re making important decisions.” Wilbur said. 

“Okay.” You headed down the prime path toward the van, listening to the others chatter. 

“Okay so we need a name for our country,” Wilbur said as you arrived, “Something that fits. I am open to suggestions.” 

“Pog something.” Tommy offered.

“ehhhhh.” 

“Pogtopia!” He exclaimed. 

You punched his character, “That’s so stupid.” 

“Well- hmm, we’re all men here soooooooo Manburg!” WIlbur mused. 

“It needs to be more European.” Eret said, tossing you some of the block to start helping with the walls. 

“L’manburg.” You offered. 

Wilbur and Tommy burst out laughing, “Perfect!” 

“No Americans and no women! Just the way I like it!” Tommy yelled. 

Everyone began to laugh at that, and you grinned, entirely unaware of the chaos beginning to unfold all over twitter, and even in your twitch chat.

~~ Later that night you ended up flopped across the couch, Floris sending you a text from his office, ‘Don’t forget to take off the tibby prison angel’ ‘I’ll be done with this soon and we can cuddle’ 

You chuckled, dragging yourself up off the couch and shuffling off to the bathroom to change out of your binder, and pull on a different hoodie, a bigger one that you had stolen from Floris.

By the time you were done and had come back out into the living room Floris had also emerged from his office, and was staring in horror at his phone. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked. 

“You haven’t been on Twitter lately have you?” 

Immediately you were going for your phone, taking it off silence to be bombarded by notifications, “uhhhh.” 

Floris bit his lip, “I think you should read it for yourself.” 

Quietly you opened twitter, checking first the hashtag that appeared at the top of your mentions ‘#y/nisalie’ 

Your breath hitched as you opened the hashtag, immediately seeing the original tweet, ‘#y/nisalie y/n has been lying to all of us a thread: apparently this tranny didn’t have the guts to put out that “he” was lying’ 

You scrolled through the tweets, ‘Man, I can’t believe (y/d/n) thought (y/n) was a good fake name’, ‘well at least we know Fundy isn’t actually a fag’ and then worst of all, ‘Guys I found what (y/d/n) actually looks like!’ followed by a picture of you, pre transition. 

The world felt like it was caving in as you slowly sank down against the wall, tears starting to flow, “How did this happen?” 

Floris was quick to sit down next to your, pulling you into his arms, “I dunno angel.” 

You turned, sobbing into his shoulder, “Why are they like this? Wha- what am I gonna do?” 

“I’m gonna fix this,” He murmured, “I promise.” 

You curled further into his embrace, tears soaking his shirt as he rubbed circles into your back.

“It’s gonna be okay angel, it’s gonna be okay.” 

~~ You avoided the internet at all costs for the next few days, not streaming, not being active on twitter or any other socials, hardly ever leaving Floris’ embrace for more than a few minutes as more and more notifications filled your phone. 

It took a lot of coaxing from your boyfriend to check your twitter notifications after two days, and when you did you were delighted to see dozens of positive messages from real fans, and messages addressing the situation from all of your friends.

Eret: ‘dudes (y/n) is litterally trans, is you can’t deal with that then get out of this community; it’s seriously not okay to disrespect someone like that.’

Wilbur: ‘guys remember when I said trans rights and trans rights until I’m dead? Well that applies to (y/n) as well so piss off and stop bothering them’

Tommy: ‘listen up, serious tweet for once: you guys really need to learn how to recover someone and there pronouns, stop calling big man (y/n) by his dead name or get off the platform’

Along with countless others, and of course one from Floris as well, who had made a thread as soon as he saw what was going on:

‘Guys, listen. My boyfriend is the most wonderful human being in all the world. Whoever leaked his dead name or went looking for pictures of him before his transition is honestly a monster and I hope you realize the weight of your actions. Apparently we as a community have a few things to go over,

1: respect creators boundaries, if (y/n) didn’t want to tell you he wasn’t born male it’s not your business, 2: respect people’s pronouns, if someone tells you to use he/him they probably know if there right or not, 3: you can’t fucking invalidate someone like that, and put them on display as a fucking hashtag.

4: if anyone ever tries to talk about my boyfriend like this, (using the wrong pronouns, misgendering, using his dead name or in any other way invalidateing him) I will personally make sure you are never allowed on social media again’

You looked up from your phone, “Y- you got them to stop?”

Floris smiled, “I told you I was gonna fix it.”

[a-student-out-of-time]

*sigh* How does this happen to us? We have to tell our Overlord Gundham Tanaka and the rest about this, RIGHT NOW!.- Miru

*At lunch, the group reconvenes in an empty classroom in the school*

And yeah, that’s the situation...

To think such a demon would be at fault...

They shall not come within 10 parsecs of her! I swear upon my very soul!

Another serial killer...

This is so fucked up...

Sonia...a-are you sure you’d never heard of this?

No...I have never once heard of a Copycat Killer. Copycat Killings are certainly real, but those are imitations of other killers.

One that takes the identity of their victims...it is fascinating, I will admit.

*’Ryota’ eats a large sandwich* And you need my help with that?

Well, sort of. Do you know how the hell someone can copy someone else’s identity so thoroughly?

Well...it’s easier than you think.

Quick question first, though: have you ever heard of Frédéric Bourdin?

The con artist? The released a film of his story in August!

N-No? Who is he?

Well, in 1994, a 13-year-old American boy named Nicholas Barclay went missing from his home. They looked for him, but they never found out what happened. But then, 3 years later, his family got a call from someone in Spain who found someone claiming to be Nicholas.

He told Spanish officials and the Barclay family that he was Nicholas, and that he’d been kidnapped and sexually abused by Mexican, European and American military personnel and transported from the U.S. to Spain.

But...he wasn’t.

No. He was actually Frédéric Bourdin, a 23-year-old French man who had a history of impersonating kids.

23...? And...his family believed it?

Yes. It sounds crazy- not only was he older, but Bourdin knew nothing about him. He didn’t even know if Nicholas-san was right or left-handed. 

I should also add that he did not set out to impersonate him. Bourdin had no ID and no documents, and since he could not prove his identity, he was at risk of being sent to somewhere he did not want to end up. It was on a whim that he said he was an American, and he simply stuck with the story from that point on.

When he heard the American embassy to Spain had learned of him, and he would be sent to this family he did not know, he attempted to run away and hitchhike. But as fate would have it, the first car that stopped for him were people from the embassy.

Okay, but...how does a 23-year-old French man pretend to be an American teenager?

It’s about body language. He wore really thick clothes, a scarf, a hat, and never let anyone see his eyes. He acted like a scared, confused kid. He never talked much and only gave simple answers in a quiet voice. Plus, his story for why was...horrible enough that everyone, even officials, believed it.

And a lot of it was probably because the Barclay Family really wanted to believe their son was back. People...when they want to believe the person they’re looking for is right there, with them...they can ignore a lot of the flaws with the idea. Just because they want to have them back.

To be honest...I understand Bourdin. In his interviews in the documentary, he said he had a very young mother, he was born from a romance with an Algerian man and his grandfather was horribly racist. His whole life, he wished he was somebody else. He wanted a place he could feel like he belonged, where he could be loved.

I’m guessing that didn’t turn out well when the family found out...

No. After he got on the news, and the FBI got involved to track down whoever kidnapped him, a private investigator did his own digging into it. He knew it from the ears.

Not a lot of people know this, but ears are a good way of identifying people. They have unique bends, the earlobes are connected or they hang loose. It’s not something you think about, but it can be a damning piece of evidence.

I see. But...what about Nicholas-san? Did they...they ever find out what happened?

No. There’s been a lot of speculation that his older brother actually killed him, but he died of a drug overdose, so nobody knows for sure. There wasn’t enough evidence for a murder case. To this day, he’s still listed as a missing person.

Bourdin was arrested, deported and now he’s living in France. He’s a criminal to be sure, but at least he’s not dangerous.

This Copycat Killer? They’re something else entirely...

[ibelonginthepast]

Hunk for the character ask thing??

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HUNK!!!! FINALLY!!! I am such a ho for him sorry

Sexuality Headcanon: i have no particular fixed pref, he could be straight, but i like to think he's bi throughout. I think he is a believer of fluid sexuality, so he doesn't really fits himself in a label. He goes along with whoever he likes.

Gender Headcanon: I sometimes like to hc him as a trans man (ftm). He/him pronouns. He was cultured into toxic masculinity. He has had his struggles with it. He was teased for being soft because of his anxiety issues. His tendency to be emotional and expressive. He has had been a victim of toxic masculinity constantly, even adopted it and perpetuated it further for a while before giving up. He is passionate about healthy masculinity and really understands it now. He is a fierce feminist and in for breaking the patriarchy.

A ship I have with said character: the thing is i hate Canon. I dont like the first sight first meet fall in love kind of thing they did with hunk and shay, but with what I headcanon shay as, I think she is perfect for him. He would balance her head on approach to stuff, and she will balance his tendency to ponder. He is a total simp for shay. He's a sucker for a simple calm life, while shay is on the ambitious side, and he fully supports her.

A BROTP I have with said character: hance is a given. heith! I will fucking die for this. I love thinking up stories of how Keith, despite being the one to struggle to open up, will inevitably fall for hunk. Hunk is just so approachable, so welcoming, so loving. I see hunk as also very fierce. He will stand in front as a literal physical shield to protect the ones he loves. He is dedicated when he loves and he never gives up on anyone. This is something he will share with Keith. One of the only people who will relate with Keith on a soul level on this. Punk!!! I love it. So much. Hunk is just amazing at platonic relationships. Hunk takes care of pidge a lot, they are his sibling. They simp on tech together ofc!! Even tho Shiro is everyone's dad, hunk cares for him, brings him his energy drinks and blankets all the time cause let's be real Shiro is low-key wishing death all the time and does not care for himself. Hunk is one of those peeps who scream SHIRO! NO! everytime Shiro makes a bad joke about death. Hunk's caring nature extends to everyone. Allura again is bad at taking care of herself, and he helps. He defo teaches allura samoan box braids!!! Coran too. Hunk bakes with coran sitting beside, chatting unrelentlessly but here's the thing, Hunk doesn't tolerate it. He genuinely likes listening to people and knowing them. One of the reasons he goes so well with Lance.

A NOTP I have with said character: humph he could go with anyone ngl. Shunk is extra weird to me, Shiro is a dad through and through i ew shaladins.

A random headcanon:

Despite what people think, hunk thinks he struggles with words. He uses food to express love. If he feels distant with anyone, he cooks for them.

Hunk does get tired after caring for people so much, but he has healthy nice fam around him who he lets take care of him too. He knows he needs to care for himself, and after some time of struggling with it, he now proudly take care of himself as well.

Hunk has struggled with severe anxiety. He has had panic attacks, complete meltdowns. His family was a bit pressurizing in terms of his career and all, and he has always felt responsible to get an excellent job in the stem section to make his parents proud.

He got into stem because of his parents, but he developed his love for it later too. He genuinely started finding STEM very interesting.

He contributed in making of fun robots in school's stem centres all the time. He had a teacher who was obsessed with making anime monsters, and even though hunk himself hates gore and shit he had fun making those and sometimes watched those weird ass animes and talked about how those wild ass writers were defo on weed while writing the script. He bonded over weeb stuff surprisingly with Shiro ;)

He hasn't been the smartest forever, like pidge. He actually worked his way to it. He is very dedicated, hard working and passionate.

He has undiagnosed ADD, but it hasn't interferred with him fitting in much. He has been able to do his work, and he recognized some tricks to focus early in life. His anxiety drives him to work as much as it distracts him. he just discovers his ADD later in therapy.

He makes pretty notes. He has an unhealthy obsession with pastel yellow highlighter.

Hunk is very well equipped with samoan tattoo art designs and understanding them. it's something his grandparents taught him since forever. His grandfather did tattoos and he saw them when he was little. He wants to get atleast some sort of soga'i miki. He's been always conflicted about wanting Pe'a cause its so beautiful and masculine in expression and not wanting it because it's so painful and permanent.

Because he has lived in America his whole life, he has struggled with his national identity a lot. He gets taunted by by family in samoa for being American and for speaking english better than samoan. He doenst always fit in well in america either for obvious reasons. He has struggled with feeling like he belongs. Its something he bonds with Lance on.

He is passionate about dismantling the social organization in samoa and its ill effects. He understands the systems and talks about their unfairness. This is something his distant and traditional family members get annoyed at him for.

He talks passionately about the freedom struggles of samoa and the samoan civil wars. He likes listening to stories of freedom fighters of samoa and great leaders. He is very critical of European colonization and takes no shit from europe apologists.

He is low-key a Satanist and likes to tell people about how God was super sexist to Lilith and how absolutely bullshit her banishment was,, how Satan is the coolest first feminist and made her the queen she is, and how Satan is the coolest dude for being the first rebel and equalist. He talks about how he gave us knowledge, and it created the world we are in rn or else we would still be all dumb and naked in the garden. His family is Christian and religious, he has read stories from bibles and come to the conclusions himself.

General Opinion over said character: i am horribly sad but I swear to God one cuddle from this cinnamon roll will cure me of everything

IMP NOTE: I am not samoan, but I read about countries where my favorite characters are from sometimes. I have started reading about che and communist Cuba for Lance too ;) All this info is from the internet, and I cannot say for sure its all good and true. If I am wrong with anything, please point it out.

THANKS FOR THIS! Now go drink water <3

[americangodstalk]

American Gods: My opinion and review of season three’s finale

SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS AHEAD!

I took notes while watching the episode so I can give you my exact thoughts here.

This episode has two good things. Only two. 

The first was that they started to drop off some Shining vibes at the Center of America. Honestly, I was all for it. The Shining is the embodiment of the creepy hotel, and one of my favorite works, The definition of the anomalous, haunted, evil hotel. And the Center of America is supposed to be the Overlook hotel but for the gods. A creepy, dangerous place where they can break down into pure madness or oblivion if they are not careful. Too bad they did not continue and explore this more. You can see the difference between the old seasons and this one because in this one, they mix up together two different moments of the book in one episode: the Center and the vigil. In the old seasons, it would have been two different episodes to give enough screen time for each of these moments/chapters to be adapted faithfully and entirely. 

Two, the Technical Boy’s storyline. It was still too short for my taste, but I admit, they handled the revelation pretty well. Not establishing him as an Old God, but as a bridge between the Old and the New, that’s pretty clever, and making him the first and most powerful of the New, I roll with it. It also makes sense given World’s identity that he would usurp and overthrow who would have been the true leader of the New Gods. My main concern with this that they would have presented Technical Boy as dating back to the prehistoric times, which would have been very problematic for the lore (especially since the New Gods are described as an American phenomenon. And among the “things” we saw in artefact 1, was the first printing, most precisely the European first printing. Anyway)

Now for the rest and the bad parts...

I was ultimately pissed off at how they treated the passing of the body of Mr. Wednesday. It is not a “Norse tradition”, or not one I know of. The vigil thing, now that is done in accordance to the laws of the divine Old Gods, true. But in the novel it was clearly established that what happened at the Center of America was something that was bound by divine rules. RULES not traditions. That was the only thing the technical boy and Mr. Nancy agreed on. It wasn’t a matter of cultural tradition. 

As I mentionned before, the Center of America scene lacked tension. It wasn’t just a place where the god were “powerless” in the novel: it was a place where they could not attack each other because they were too careful surviving on their own. It was a place of danger, of tension, where the technical boy was starting to become mad. And here? Czernobog has sex with the receptionist. Which is another thing that disturbs me: not only is it unfitting with the setting (again, the gods are on such an hedge that they normally couldn’t be that relaxed or casually have sex like that), but it is also unfitting with the character - it is Mr. Wednesday that is a seducer who enjoys charming (literaly) young girls to get a bit of worship now and then. He is the lecherous guy, not Czernobog. 

There are VERY UNFORTUNATE implications with Shadow’s choice between divinehood and humanity. Because here, humanity is represented as black slaves, while divinehood is represented by a white man - even more a white European entity. Very, VERY unfortunate implications here. 

And what the hell is going on with Shadow’s character here? This is not the Shadow I know of, this is not the Shadow of the novel or even of the previous seasons, this is not even the Shadow of post-AG material! Since when does Shadow desires godhood? Since when does Shadow crave power and wants to become a leader? Who the hell is this? 

I still don’t get the fucking point of SHARD. What the hell is that? Especially since Mr. World is clearly Loki. In the novel, the natural tensions between Old and New were enough to draw on the war. The New Gods weren’t some kind of brainwashers invaders trying to puppet humans. I don’t even understand what Shard even is. Hell, in the novel the New Gods even carefully avoided to call themselves outright gods despite being ones, to differentiate themselves from the Old ones.

On a similar note, I realized something else with Lakeside (since it reappears). Many watchers were annoyed at Lakeside, feeling it fake, not understanding why such a town would be considered peaceful or idyllic. And it makes sense, because for most of the screen time, Lakeside showed us to turn on Shadow, accuse each other and hide secrets. In the novel, Shadow spent time with more of the people in town. He bonded with more people than Chad, Hinzelmann and Marguerite. There was much more a sense of welcoming and hospitality there. So again, they rushed it. If they wanted to make a season about Lakeside, develop the town fully. 

And poor Bilquis. She just doesn’t know what to do anymore. Oh, let me correct that: the writers don’t know what to do with her anymore. Ever since the ending of season 1 (which is technically the beginning of season 2, since they clearly reused the scripts left by Fuller and Green), she has been just wandering around, and even now... her character just leads nowhere. That’s what happen when you have a tertiary character of two scenes become a central one. Why not introduce some of the dozens of other divine characters, huh? 

And if there is a season 4, they better up their stakes, because so far the number of gods, both Old and New, on screen, has been dwindling massively. You wouldn’t believe America is filled with deities, huh? At least for the Old Gods they’re more numerous, but the New? Media/New Media is gone without a trace, these new things of Shard we can’t even identify are also out of the picture, the Caretaker disappeared, most of the Agency are just children, Technical Boy took on the role of many of the other New Gods (like gods of radio and the telephone), Money (whoever he is since his character is still confusing) isn’t even on board... Is it just Mr. World, Tech Boy and a bunch of children now? 

And I am not convinced about the Norns speaking and acting here. In the novel they were much creepier. Here, for fuck’s sake, one of the Norns looked at the ground before stepping down the frontdoor. That ruins the entire mystic mood! 

Let’s talk a bit about the vigil stuff, shall we? Outside of the fact they removed a lot of what made this beautiful (Ganesh isn’t here, Ratatosk isn’t here, Jesus isn’t here either, nobody’s fucking here), they also did something I believe to have again ruined the ritual. Here, Shadow is tied to the tree by branches - not by ropes. The tree animates itself and ties Shadow.  This is bad. Why? Because in the novel there was an ambiguity, and that’s what made the power of that scene. You didn’t know if what Shadow saw was supernatural events, real gods, or if it was a sun/thirst/hunger-induced hallucination. That’s what made it even holier, since it was precisely this same ambiguity that ruled the old religions (was it a drug hallucination, or truly a god speaking through the priest’s voice?), 

Finally I do not know what to think of the reveal of Mr. Wednesday’s death being a con, to revive himself... The sacrifice of a son wouldn’t restore Odin to his former glory, at least no by the book’s lore, it would certainly merely bring him back to life maybe, but that’s it. We all know what he truly needs to return to his all-powerful glory. I think the reveal of Wednesday as a cruel con men is also too early. This season built up Wednesday as a figure to root for, with a good and compassionate side. You can’t just ruin it all by the end of the season. It has already been ruined by season 2 and the end of season 1. Wait until season 4 for it... if there is one. 

So yeah... all in all what I have to say is. Missed opportunity. Stick to the book. 

[qqueenofhades]

(1/2) Honestly, Hilary, you are a blessing. I want to scream about your amazing Fic, how I love Immortal Husbands and the whole Immortal Family and how I had more fun learning history from your writing than in my whole damn school. But I also want to appreciate your TOG answers and meta. All the more because my friends outside the internet saw TOG as some boring movie with shitty plot and I'm just here in the corner, wanting to scream at someone who will understand about FINALLY seeing...

"(2/2) ...some GOOD queer representation, without throwing stereotypes in our faces, and I can't even begin with the found family trope because THE FEELS. Anyway, what I was trying to say with this rambling: thank you. <3"

....I’m sorry what. Who. Who is saying this. Straight people? I feel like the answer is definitely straight people. Because they have had EIGHTY FUCKING THOUSAND shitty action movies with the Boring White Man Hero, the disposable Muslim-coded (or actually Muslim) villains, the equally disposable eye-candy female love interest who either gets fridged or is secretly evil, Grimdark Everyone Is Secretly Bad And Nothing Matters crap philosophy, Moral Hand Wringing Over Superhero Violence, on and on. So of course they can moan and whine about “iT’s nOt OrIGinAL” and apparently not sufficiently Grimdark and Amoral, and how the dynamics of the team are completely reshuffled in a way that actually doesn’t prioritize THEM, and like.... this is why I never trust media only beloved by straight people, and only ever watch anything after it’s been recommended to me by a trusted queer friend. Because sometimes I remember the difference, and WHOOF.

Because: the gays and people of color DESERVE formulaic action/superhero movies as much as the Generic White Bro (in fact, we can all agree, far more than the Generic White Bro). This is the trap where every piece of media that’s not made by a Mediocre White Man has to be the best all-time of its genre, apparently, rather than using some of the same well-loved storytelling tropes but recoding them and re-deploying them for a more diverse audience. Instead of the Hard Bitten White Man Action Hero, we have Andy and Nile (two women, and Nile as a young Black woman who literally cannot be shot to death, in the year 2020, is fucking revolutionary on its own don’t @ me). As I said in my first meta, even Booker, who comes closest to fulfilling that trope, is made the closest thing to a “villain” there is on the team and even then for entirely sympathetic motives that rest on him having teary-eyed conversations with Nile about how he misses his family and feels like he failed them. His emotions help drive the story in an actually GOOD and useful way, rather than sacrificing everyone else to coddle him through his feeble heterosexual manchildness (why yes, I AM staring directly at the Abomination without blinking). Nobody in the story is EVER penalized or made a fool of for loving their found family (itself an intensely queer trope, even before the queerness of the individual characters) or trying to do the right thing even in the middle of the horrors, and frankly, I just want to consume more media with that as the main message. I’M SO FREAKING TIRED OF GRIMDARK. GOD. IF I WANTED THAT I COULD JUST TURN ON THE NEWS.

And of course, my BELOVED Joe and Nicky: an interracial, interreligious gay couple that has been wildly in love for literal CENTURIES and gives me the opportunity to do things like write the most self-indulgent historical romance backstory fic ever with DVLA. They met in the embodiment of religious conflict and have transcended that, there are never any cruel jokes or expectation for you to congratulate the narrative for being so beneficent as to give you “an exclusively gay moment” (fuck you Disney!). Joe and Nicky’s love story is central both to who they are as characters, doesn’t revolve around them being suffering or being Tormented over being gay (when the cops pull them apart for kissing, they beat the cops the fuck up, WE STAN), gets to unfold naturally in the background of the story with these beautiful little beats of casual intimacy (the SPOONING /clutches heart) and since THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DIE, no chance of the “burying your gays” bullshit. Even when they’re captured first by the bad guys, and I briefly, upon first viewing, worried that they were going the Gay Pain route just for cheap emotional points, they remain constantly united and fighting together and able to do stupid things like flirt when they’re strapped to gurneys by a mad scientist. Then the rest of the team ends up right there with them, so it’s not something that happens to them alone, and Nile comes in to save everyone’s asses, and Joe and Nicky get ANOTHER beautiful moment of fighting the bad guys and being worried about each other and tender even in the middle of this chaos and GOD! MY HEART! MY WHOLE ASS HEART! I LOVE THEM!

And just the fact that it’s not the Evul Mooslim Turrorists or Boilerplate Scary Eastern Europeans or whoever else who are the bad guys, but Big Pharma, nasty white men with too much money and not enough ethics, the CIA (at least tangentially; they could have pushed a lot harder on that but I’ll give Copley individually a pass), and the very forces that want to stop the Old Guard and discount what they do (helping the little people) as worthless... GOD. That is fucking POWERFUL. They literally take the time to explain with Copley’s Conspiracy Wall that even the little things the team does, when they can’t see it themselves, spiral out through centuries and have positive effects down the line. And it’s NOT just in the Western world (no scene in the movie takes place in America, none of the main four characters/heroes are American, and they only go to England when the English villains capture them). They’re in Africa, in Asia, in South America, in all these places where the Western/imperial world order has harmed people the most and in a way that Euro/American audience often gets to forget. On the surface this might be an action movie with Charlize Theron beating up men (which I mean, that alone is fine if you ask me) but there are SO MANY WAYS in which it achieves these deeper moments of meaning and subversion of the narrative that we are so often fed and the ways it could have done this (i.e. the same old Mediocre White Man ways).

I love the fact that the team unabashedly LOVES each other as their family members (I will never get over them all liking to sleep in one room even in their safe house in France), even when they struggle, and that they continue trying to make it right and never consider leaving Booker behind, because he screwed up but they still love him (and he them). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that this movie gave me not just Joe and Nicky but Andy and Quynh: two completely badass queer couples who kick tons of ass and have romance and Drama and rich and well-realized lives outside being used as emotional manipulation or suffering porn for straight people. (I realise it’s only been two weeks since the first one released, but where is my sequel, I have Needs. Especially Andy/Quynh and Quynh/Joe/Nicky needs). I was disappointed that they’d gotten rid of Quynh in a Bad Medieval Way to cause pain for Andy and then shocked and DELIGHTED when she turned up alive in Booker’s apartment at the end of the film. I LOVE that this movie gave me Nile Freeman and everything that she represents in the middle of this hellish year. I even love Booker! BOOKER! When he’s usually the character type I can’t stand and have the least patience with!

So yes. I have watched it three times already. I am sure I am going to watch it several times more. It just makes me so happy.

[dansedan]

greetings as promised here is... chapter two lol

II.

When he joined the order, Jonathan Edgar Quiffrey thought he’d finally found a cushy job- privacy, quiet camaraderie, a well-stocked library and decent meals- somewhere he could diligently putter on existing without concern for his past or his… bodily absences. But then he got sold off to America, and it all came tumbling down around him. No more Friar Brian sneaking him the Classics, dreary English summers with the light stinking breeze of the Thames flowing about, or Mozart hymnals on the proper organ, just… well a whole lot of dust, so far. Dust and Julius Stevenson.

It felt a little like Déja-vu, so close to the process of the erstwhile marriage of his girlhood: the dowry payment, the journey off away from home, the strange man now responsible for his well-being (although Sir Ernest Doyle had nothing on young Stevenson and his incredibly frustrating, rugged, naïve charms). His companion (really owner, if he could admit it) was shockingly tall, tan and well-built, like some clay study excavated from the studio of one of the renaissance masters and set loose amongst horses and cowpoke. He cut a sleek silhouette, broader at the top only slightly, sure and steady legs extending for eternity, deliciously straight and suggestively muscular under his dress-pants. He had the luxury of a soft and satiated gut, but muscle too, from farmhand work, most likely. Stevenson the older was a cattle rancher off in the deep southwest, an enterprising immigrant who had managed to deepen his pockets with American money, and apparently a fellow Englishman. His son carried little of that nationality in his appearance- silky, thick, black hair betraying his native claim to American land, though cut and parted in an overformal Europeanized style. He had striking eyes, deep black and shining with a healthy dampness that made them twinkle. Quiffrey had to fight to ignore them as they followed him during their daily hubbub, dig his face into his bible or fuss around with the saddle and its million ties and protrusions.

He’d open random pages, dig through them to find stories, ideas any remembrance to replace the rumbling panic of the stare burning at his cheek. If nothing else, he supposed at least this trip gave him the opportunity to earn his title- how long had it been since he had studied the actual bible this hard?

It was always interesting, that moment of opening a page at random and having to commit to it, a sense of irony and of communication. Always different, too- you had your classics:

“God so loved the world, that he gave us his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” which was harmless, even comforting. But then along came:

“Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself- and Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself” which quite frankly had caused him to erupt into a fit of coughs at seeing it appear on his only barrier against Stevenson’s broad and undressed back, as they prepared for bed in a hotel one night. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, it was dangerous, especially with- “ Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow, and his belt.” More than the skin and name, that witnessless wedding, by standards of their people. “I am my beloved and my beloved is me.” The simple exchange of valued material, the faith of near nudity.

Though always the sting at the back of his mind- “it is abomination”- as disconnected as he was from the sanctity of things, it wasn’t terribly enjoyable to hear that from what was ostensibly his boss (as much as a sheaf of paper could be a living man’s superior, he supposed). Still, there was “above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” Which… well, he’d better hope it does, at this rate.

The journey itself is fine- they have travelled with more than enough comforts so far, only a few nights in the desert itself- and despite the distance still left to cover he’s been able to work a little here and there, to work enough. And the work is easy, the path is easy as long as the study is constant, and it is for him, because the constancy is comforting. It comes easy, and even leagues away from home he’d rarely had to do anything outside his habits.

The issue was not the dessert- the issue was Stevenson.

He was in no way a bad man- much the opposite, he was open, stoic, quiet- but god, so obvious, in a way only sheltered young men can be. That bread-and-butter upbringing that knows not guilt or artifice more elegant that lying about one’s curfew or feeding scraps to the dog under the table. Quiffrey did not know if he would survive months more of his constant, open staring, jittery grazes overly charged when trying to pass along firewood or supplies, or his new and inconvenient little habit of attaching himself onto his back during his homilies.

It was all so loud, so naturally possessive, that it took a rather terrible effort to constantly refuse the urge to shake the younger man about like a ragdoll, insisting that he notice he was on a holy mission and maybe ogling a strange older man the whole time wasn’t really part of the process? That maybe he should have some shame about being ragingly possessive over a man he had spoken about ten sentences to in all the time they’d spent together and also did he remember the man was a bloody catholic priest and what sort of insane cocktail of lack of self-awareness and intimidating bravado was necessary to just naturally assume that there was both nothing wrong with the situation and also that he had no say in it and just had to go along? And maybe, maybe if he was going to ignore all of those glaring contradictions and faux-passes the least he could do is not suddenly turn bashful the moment he started to respond at all? Because, as much as he’d pushed himself to ignore it, it was Stevenson’s response to any attempt at a friendly exchange that had pushed the frustration from mild offense at some lonely kid perhaps projecting onto him as feminine to a baffled awareness that the whole thing was serious, or god, at least too real to ignore. That speech in the coper’s house which was supposed to be a thanks, a playful payback, something to both break and further distance them, had suddenly become a sign of something dangerously close.

“and god is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” maybe it was heretical but that sounded like absolute fucking bollocks right about now. In a priory, working through manuscripts and studying and helping out with mass he could stand perfectly happy to ignore his living body. It was part of the job description, part of the choice he’d made to devote to it, but it was also what had landed him here- pious, immutable, well-studied brother Jonathan, of course he could do well on a mission. But it was different here. It was different in the campgrounds between cities, where the vastness of the frigid dessert left both men as lonely players on an empty stage. Utterly alone, feeling naked before the permanent glance that hung between them, then impossible to ignore or brush off as coincidence. Even turned away from each other, on opposite ends of a meagre fire, the sandstone felt like a feather-bed with his awareness of his partner’s movements, the mind creating dips, waves and undulations in the surface where there were none. Even the other man’s breathing, the soft unconscious grunts of effort spared in unknown dreams.

“let us be not like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober” Quiffrey spent enough nights wide awake. Wide, wide awake, with only holy words and silence as his cover.

Until even that was yanked away from him- or rather, stolen.

[raspberryjones]

At This Time...

Sitting here paralyzed for days, trying to figure out what more I can do. Quarantined, distracted from grading these final papers by the fires in my feed, knowing that donating to activist organizations and RT’ing, on top of crying, shaking and cursing, is not nearly enough. Plus, just about anything I say/do on the socials feels like a f*cking performance. All of it — except the anger and the stream of information that continues to reassert the utter disdain that this country’s White supremacy (not just Tr*mp, but the whole friggin’ establishment) has for Black and Brown people, here and throughout the world. The insidiousness. 

Even wallowing in my own exhaustion — jobless, hope on a tattered string, watching the powers that be f*ck the populace over in every way imaginable… All of it feels self-pitying, when I can recognize my privilege and be struck by the existential sorrow that, even before this week’s events, or the racial disparity of the pandemic’s victims, surrounds most Black American lives. When I hear my Black and Brown friends and colleagues express their own exhaustion, as so many have over the past five days, it has the weight not just of the moment, or a political term, but of history. Personal, familial, written in volumes, reaffirmed constantly — and running contrary to America’s dip-shit self-mythologizing. 

And yet... Despite this horror-show past, with white supremacy’s attempts to subjugate them for generations, Black America’s ability to move society forward has been beyond fucking remarkable. The creation of culture, the strength of moral character, the depth of communal compassion. It is no overstatement that the moral and creative compass of not just Black excellence but of the African-American community I’ve known, has been among primary lodestars of my life in this country. And while I do not expect all other folks to feel the same way I do, I most certainly judge those who feel contrary — or those who dismiss the notion that, if anyone’s ever made this hard land great in the past, it’s been Black Americans.    

And that in the struggle to understand the fullness of this account, you will find pretty much all contemporary crises. It’s incredible that, in 2020, a majority of people still don’t comprehend the connections between systemic white privilege and Black death in the headlines, between colonization culture and the overwhelming inequality rampant in American society, between the contemporary malaise of the Western imagination and the whitewashing of the media. For a person who does not simply work in/with culture founded on the Black experience, but gets their very lifeblood form it, this is a hard fucking pill to swallow. The big “YOU don’t get it!” 

So, when thinking about WTF else I can do, as a writer who deeply supports Black American communities in the struggle against white supremacy, I thought it worthwhile to reiterate some of this historical record’s personal and social importance. Having just spent a semester teaching NYU sophomores about how we got here — while re-reading classic texts by LeRoi Jones and Ralph Ellison and Isabel Wilkerson, Nikole Hannah Jones’s massive new one, and discussing the contemporary settings of these ideas with DeForrest Brown Jr. and Angel Bat Dawid — what I believe should be our collective mission is fresh and clear in my mind. 

This is where music comes in. It’s especially important that anyone who listens to contemporary music in the 21st century, also participates in reappraising these whitewashed texts, restoring Blackness back to the center of this culture. Not only to acknowledge the proper origins of the forms and ideas that are so important to it — and thus, acknowledge the people who developed these forms and ideas —  but act accordingly in times of crisis, requiring us to use our white privilege to support pro-Black and anti-colonialist positions in a way that could actually lead to structural change. To “see something, say something” when companies belligerently monetize the (Black) people’s culture and do not recompense the community, or when cops act like overseers that treat Black lives as wanton boys do flies.

Because… Here’s the thing: blues and jazz are the basis of all great new music of the last 100 years — paving the way for the post-modern Black electronic music (hip-hop, house and techno and electro) which is the core of pretty much all popular sounds of the 21st century. And the Black experience is the DNA of these musics — meaning, in the clearest terms, that we don’t get to have this music without the burden that preceded it. This is at the core of the accusation that “loving Black culture more than Black people.” You do NOT get to do one without the other, and still call it “love.” 

Unlike European art, that original Black music is not the product of some art-school- and conservatory-learned experiments. Or of commissions from a royal court. Or of direct updates on thousand-year folk forms. Oral traditional and molecular memory aside, Black American music’s past was almost completely — genocidally, is also a word — wiped away in the Middle Passage. So when it came to fruition in the years during and after Reconstruction, it did so as a personal Black expression of what to do and how to live in this new, foreign here-and-now, far from “home.” This music is, simultaneously, a lament and celebration, complaint and utopia, art and evidence, personal diary and modernist work. Nothing like that had been conceived before, and it was so revolutionary that almost no one’s been able to build a next-level to it since.

It was also the first musical art-form original to the United States. Now imagine: the engine of this art-form’s motivation was a desire to express oneself within a society that did not want to hear any of what you had to say. A society that, in many cases, did not regard you as fully human. And yet think of how Black music expresses the full spectrum of humane truths and emotions. Actually, fuck it, don’t read me telling you about it. Go listen to the Wesley Morris episode of the 1619 Project podcast, who does a far better job than I of narrating Black American music’s wonders. This is why remaining on the sidelines, or providing only cursory support to the uprising, does not sit well.    

It is crucial that people around the world know this history when they hear a variation of these musics being described as “global phenomena” or “universal,” or divided into “genres.” Such terms might seem neutral, or even complementary to its creators; but at their core, they move to dilute the role that the Black experience played in its birth. And distancing the music from the people who made it (and why), mitigates the music’s values. What was once specific becomes conditional — out goes the particularity of its expressions (feelings, words, citations), and in come market-democratizing generalities, like capitalization and trends, elements that tend to be elevated by whoever controls mass communication. This is how a local culture becomes a global genre, and how some people who make “techno” or “jazz” music in [insert European city here] can’t comprehend why “neutrality” towards George Floyd’s death is a betrayal of their creative work.

But... They will do as they will do. And, as I said before, we will judge them - because it is on these very decisions and proclamations that the intention of the art-work (a crucial aspect in the value of the art-work — its contemporary “aura” some might say), that artists and their audiences are judged. And when I mis-step, my Black friends and colleagues will also judge me, and the humility and self-reflection with which I handle this will say volumes about what my cultural intentions are. Because for the rest of us, there never has been nor will continue to be a disconnection between the culture we have sworn allegiance to, and the need to change society’s norms, to speak about the need for social justice, and to continually reassert that #BlackLivesMatter and #BrownLivesMatter. 

And that if you continue to engage with the words and ideas that I hope to continue putting out into the world, this is their starting point. That music — for all its glory and hope and joy and wrenching feeling and fuck-you energy and let’s-love energy and all that — is neither the beginning nor the end. It is one narrative of history’s arc. That chapters of this history are being written all the time, some quietly and some in push-notifications, and that what’s going on outside our windows at this moment, is a major scene of the permanent record. To be quiet is to be complicit. I choose not to be complicit. I hope that you make that choice as well.  

[stormtrprinstilettos]

Fun’s for Free: Chapter 1 - Roger x (fem)Reader

Summary: It’s 1978 and you’re a music journalist assigned to follow Queen on their North American tour. Only problem is the magazine you write for has not been kind to the band in the past, and someone has a hard time letting that go.

In this “episode”: We’re setting the tone here. Consider this a prologue of sorts.

Word Count: ~3.3K

Warnings: language is about all you’re going to encounter this time (wink wink)

Tagging: @sunshine112 @culturefiendtrashqueen (I think you asked to be permatagged! If it wasn’t you, I’m sorry!) If you want on the tag list, let me know!

[A/N: Being that this is fiction, the time of one particular critic quote being used in here is off, but all are verbatim quotes that have been made about both “News of the World” and “Jazz” in a certain publication. Also, this is the “Jazz” tour that happened 5 or 6 months after their European tour for “NOTW.”]

You’re starting to get impatient, tapping your fingers on the conference room table, listening to everyone else discuss their story proposals they’re throwing out to the editor, Mike, before he doles out the new assignments for the month. Working for a music magazine was your dream job, but you quickly realized that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. At least for you. You were always assigned the stories no one else wanted to touch – one of the “benefits” to being at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole. You almost felt like you were being taunted every month when you had to sit in on these staff meetings because you knew you’d never get assigned anything you actually wanted to do. Sure, every now and then you’d get a good one, but those were few and far between.

“Y/N,” Mike calls out. “I have a big one for you.” You start to groan inside, trying to figure out what ridiculous venture he was going to send you on this time. He walks behind you and puts his hands on your shoulders, something he always did before giving you bad news. “How does two months away from my bullshit sound?”

You turn and glare at him, dreading what he was going to tell you. “Jesus, Mike, if you want to get rid of me…”

He starts to howl in his laughter. “Never,” he says as he pats one hand on your shoulder. “Why do you always think the worst?”

“Because you always give me the worst,” you chuckle. “So what is it? Sending me to a war zone this time? Clearly it’s something nobody else wants to touch.”

“Well, it does have the potential to be one,” you hear Candice, the assistant editor laugh from across the room.

You glare at Mike with a profound sense of worry and see he’s still laughing. “Oh, it won’t be that bad.” After dismissing everyone else and clearing the room, he sits next to you and gives you a cheesy smile, which only makes your concern grow more. “Calm down. I’m not sending you to Guatemala.”

“Just spit it out, Mike,” you groan as you drop your head into your hands, anticipating the dread he was about to bestow on you.

“England. You have your passport, right?” His stupid smile never left his face, and you start to glare.

“Two months in England?” you ask suspiciously. It sounded almost too good to be true. “What’s the catch?”

“No, just a week in England,” he informs you. “You’re going on a tour.”

“A tour of what?”

“Not a tour of anything. You’re going on tour. You’re writing about a certain big name rock group on their North American tour.”

Your mind starts to race as you look at his cheesy grin, trying to remember what bands are going to be touring here soon, then your mouth drops with dread. “No, Mike. You can’t do this to me.”

“A dream come true, yeah?” he snickers.

“No!” you yell. “After the reviews Barry gave them? Are you fucking kidding me? Send Barry!”

“Barry turned it down,” Candice says. “So did…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mike interrupts and turns back to you. “I think you’d be perfect for it.”

“Why? Because you’re some sadist who gets off knowing you’re throwing me to a pack of wolves?” You keep trying to protest, but he just sits there with that stupid smile you want to slap right off of him. “How much do you think we’re even going to get out of them? This magazine has been brutal to them.”

“That’s why I want you to go,” he tells you. “Because I think you hate us more than they do.”

“This is going to be a disaster,” you mumble. “But, fine, I’ll do it. I have no choice. I need to pay rent.”

“Great!” Candice exclaims. “You leave in three days. I’ll have your plane ticket for you tomorrow.”

“When is this ‘journalist’ supposed to get here?” Roger grumbles. “I don’t want to be here.”

“You’ll have to face him at some point,” John chuffs. “He’ll be with us the whole tour.”

“She,” Miami corrects. “They’re sending a girl. Y/N something. I never heard of her before”

“Perfect. They can’t even send someone who knows what they’re doing,” Roger groans. “Not that I expect anything less from a magazine that said Genesis was better than us. Fucking Genesis. ‘More listenable and far superior’ is what they said.”

Freddie starts laughing loudly. “You take things too personally. When have any critics liked us?”

“I believe they once called you a Robert Plant knock off, Fred,” Roger reminds him.

Freddie’s laughter just gets louder. “I’ll knock off Robert Plant any day as long as I keep getting the money I do.”

“You can all play nice with whoever she is but I intend to…” Roger is cut off before he can finish.

“If she’s pretty we all know what you intend to do,” John quips.

“Oh fuck off,” Roger groans as he walks away, but not without continuing to yell. “Fascists! They called us a fascist rock band! That was this week!” He keeps yelling but no one is paying him attention anymore.

You’re standing in the doorway, hearing all of this going on, feeling like you’ve just witnessed your death. There is no way you can muster the strength to walk in there and introduce yourself now. “This is going to be a fucking nightmare,” you mumble under your breath.

“Ah, Rog must have read the new review,” you hear someone say behind you. Startled, you quickly turn around and your face is eye level with a chest, which you realize belongs to Brian May once you look up. “You’d think after all this time he wouldn’t get so mad about critics. The rest of us find them funny.” He looks down to you and smiles. “I’m assuming you’re our shadow for the next couple of months,” he says as he holds out his hand. “Brian May, nice to meet you.”

You smile and shake his hand, thankful to know there’s at least one person who won’t want to grind you into mulch. “Y/N Y/L/N, and yes. I’m the shadow.” You turn your head and peek back into the rehearsal room. “Maybe I should come back tomorrow,” you mumble.

“Today’s just fine,” he tells you with his soft, calming voice. “Come on,” he puts his hand on your shoulder and walks you in. All eyes in the room immediately dart to you, and you’ve suddenly been overwhelmed with a great sense of intimidation. “This is Miss Y/L/N. She’s…”

“Ah, the writer,” Miami interjects as he scampers over to to shake your hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Jim…”

“Call him ‘Miami,’” you hear Freddie say with a laugh. “He prefers that. What are we supposed to call you?”

“Y/N,” you reply. “Please no ‘Miss’ anything. I hate formalities.”

John walks over to you with a smile on his face and a quiet giggle. “He’ll have a new name for you in a few days.” You give him a smile and shake his hand.

“Come sit, darling. I need to know all about you,” Freddie says as he pats the floor next to him. You glance back at Brian who is giving you an encouraging grin and join Freddie on the floor of the mock stage that’s set up.

For the next 20 minutes you happily answer their questions, and they yours, of course. None of this was on the record, more of an introductory chat with the people you are going to practically be living, eating and sleeping with for the next two months. To say you’re relieved is an understatement. No matter their status in the music world, they were all extremely down to earth and quite charming, so much so that you completely forgot about the scene you witnessed earlier, until…

“You must be the journalist,” you hear Roger hiss with an emphasis on the “t.” No one even noticed him walk over.

You start to stand up and introduce yourself. “Yeah, I’m…” But he stops you.

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles and walks over to his drum kit. You press your lips together and sit back down, attempting to start your conversation up again, when Roger starts to beat his drums with an obnoxious and incessant pace, seeming to be doing so purposely to annoy you, at least that’s what you gather from the smug look he’s giving you. “Are we here to rehearse or chat up the broad?” he yells.

You roll your eyes and chuckle at his juvenile behavior, as do the others, and walk to the other side of the room to talk to Miami. “Do they ever take a break?” you ask. “They just finished Europe a few months ago.”

All he can do is laugh. “No, they don’t. And it’s exhausting.”

“I saw them in New York last year. They’re phenomenal.” His eyes grow wide with shock. “Just because one of our critics is rough doesn’t mean we all hate them,” you giggle. “I happen to be a fan.”

After three hours – and a lot of wondering as to how they manage to go for hours without passing out – they finish for the day and everyone heads for the door. You’re standing outside, your suitcases at your feet, watching everyone pile into their cars and have no idea what you’re supposed to do or where you’re supposed to be going. The first to leave is Roger, and he does so just as obnoxiously as he beat on his drums earlier, tearing out of the parking lot like he was in a hurry. “You can ride with me,” Brian says from behind. You turn and give him a curious look and he starts to laugh. “We’re going to the house.”

“Oh, I thought I was supposed to go…”

“No, you’re stuck with us,” he smiles and shrugs. “Sorry.”

When he pulls up to the house, you see everyone else walking inside, feeling intimidated all over again for reasons you don’t know. “I can go to a hotel if I’ll be in the way,” you tell him. “I don’t want to intrude or anything.”

“You’re not intruding. We’ll go inside, I’ll help you get your things to your room, then you’re joining us for dinner.” He takes note of your raised eyebrow and right lips and tries to be more reassuring. “And after dinner, Roger and Deaky will probably go to the pub, Fred will do whatever it is he does, Jim will go to bed and…” He stops and laughs. “You’re not intruding.”

You start to rub your eyes with your fingers and join in the laughter. “This is just too much,” you say with a sigh. “I just got thrown into this 4 days ago. Never had the chance to mentally prepare for any of it.” You drop your hands in your lap and give a shy smile. “And it’s not like everyone is exactly happy that I’m here.”

He throws his head back and laughs quietly. You quickly picked up that everything he does is done quietly (even when he was arguing during rehearsal earlier) and that’s why you felt comfortable around him. He wasn’t intimidating at all. “Ignore him,” he tells you. “He isn’t fond of people calling him a fascist.”

“No one called him a fascist,” you laugh. “I surely didn’t call him one. He needs to grow up. I didn’t write any of that crap.”

After getting settled in your room and freshening up, you head out the door to join everyone for dinner. “What are you doing here?” you immediately hear Roger grunt. “Are you going to be everywhere we go? We get no privacy at all?”

“Nice to see you, too,” you groan as you roll your eyes. “And don’t worry, I won’t be everywhere. You’ll have all the privacy you need in the bathroom.”

You start to walk away, but he isn’t done snipping. “That’s a shame. You’d probably have the thrill of your life if you got to watch me shower.”

“Don’t count on it. I’ve seen John Bonham naked. That was a thrill.” You turn and walk away, smirking to yourself. If he wanted to keep being testy with you, you were going to dish it back. You didn’t have the desire or the patience to deal with some arrogant asshole.

You walk into the dining room where you hear everyone talking and wave. “There she is!” Freddie calls out. “Come sit.” You take your seat next to him and exchange your pleasantries with everyone. “We were just discussing where we’re going to put you on the bus.”

“Fuck’s sake, put her with the equipment,” Roger groans as he sits down. “She doesn’t need to be with us every second.”

You slam your hands on the table, finally having had enough of his bullshit. “Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but…”

“She’s riding with us,” John snaps. “If you have a problem with it, you can ride with the equipment.”

Roger’s eyes glare at you, ignoring what John just told him. “My problem is that out of all the so-called journalists we can possibly have with us, they let someone from your piece of shit magazine come along. And you…”

“Stop it, Rog,” Freddie snaps, but he doesn’t.

“… waltz in here like …”

“Ignore him,” Freddie leans over and whispers. “He’s a bitter old hag sometimes.” You can help but giggle, and when Roger sees that, he becomes even more enraged.

But you take Freddie’s advice and ignore him, instead of baiting him like you want to, and decide to focus on Freddie. “What city are you most looking forward to?”

“New Orleans!” he exclaims. “We have a ridiculous party planned for the album release. It’s going to be absolutely salacious.”

The rest of dinner was spent talking to everyone except Roger, who was sitting at the end of the table, silently seething over the fact that everyone was getting along with you, which only encouraged you to be even more chipper than usual. You normally give everyone a chance after meeting them even when you don’t take to them immediately. You’ve dealt with this before – many times in fact – on your other assignments, and those that you got off on the wrong foot with usually always ended up being pretty cool, but you decided hours ago that you didn’t like Roger. You weren’t being fooled into thinking the feeling wasn’t mutual. You don’t know why you weren’t going to give him a chance. It’s not like he was being terrible – you’ve dealt with worse. And his attitude wasn’t nearly the worst you’ve encountered. There was just something about him that grated your nerves and you can’t quite pinpoint what it is. What you do know is that you’re taking great pleasure in knowing your mere presence is bothering him.

“Come to the pub,” John insists as everyone is standing up from the table. You can hear Roger groaning in the background, which, of course, makes you want to go, but you’re insanely tired and just want to go to bed.

“Thanks for the invite, but I’m really tired,” you reply with a smile, before hearing Roger start to mock you. “I had a long trip,” you explain, and his mocking gets louder as he walks to the door to leave. You’re trying hard to ignore him, but it’s hard to do. “You know what? Let’s go,” you tell John. “I could use a drink.” John smiles and throws an arm around your shoulder, walking you out the door.

You made sure you didn’t drink too much, just enough to relax and get a slight buzz. Drinking didn’t make Roger relax, at all, having the opposite effect in fact. It seemed like all he wanted to do was argue with you, and you happily obliged.

“‘More of the same dull pastiche,’ you idiots said,” he spit out. “If you hate our album so much why are you here?” he asked you.

You roll your eyes and grunt. “I didn’t write that. I never even heard the new album.” He starts to sarcastically chuff and tries to say something but you don’t give him the chance. “He hated your last album too, but I…”

“What’s your name anyway?” he asks with slightly furrowed brows. “Wait, are you the one who did that interview with Zeppelin back in…”

You start to laugh. “How do you think I got to see Bonham naked?” You raise your eyebrow and give him a smirk as you take a sip of your drink. John is finding the whole scene amusing and can’t stop laughing.

“Do you make it a habit to see drummers naked? I need to know so I can make sure I’m covered at all times.”

“Nah,” you say before you take a slow drag on your cigarette. “Only those I find impressive, so you don’t have anything to worry about.” You give him a sarcastic wink and take another sip of your drink, making a mental note of the narrowed eyes he’s shooting in your direction.

John starts to choke in his laughing fit and quickly finishes his beer. “I think it’s time to go now,” he says and grabs your arm, pulling you out of your seat and out the door before Roger has the chance to say anything back.

“I have a feeling this is going to be terrible,” you moan to Mike on the phone. “Everyone is lovely, but that fucking drummer…”

He starts to roar with laughter. “You always have issues with the drummers, Y/N. Why?”

“Because they’re all so cocky and carry a grudge against the world,” you sigh. “This one, though. Can you believe he can sit there and rattle off every negative thing that Barry ever wrote? And he’s blaming me for it.” You’re starting to get annoyed just thinking about it. “I’m sure it’ll get better. It’s just not exactly a great first impression. I’ve dealt with worse.”

“Just get us a good article out of all of this and I’ll see you when you’re in New York next month,” Mike chuckles before hanging up the phone. You roll your eyes as you do the same and when you turn around, Roger starts fussing.

“I will have you know that I absolutely carry a grudge. I am very proud of what we’ve done and…”

You hold a hand up telling him to stop. “For someone so worried about privacy, you don’t care about invading the privacy of others,” you snap. “And how many times to I have to tell you that I didn’t write anything negative about you or the band?” He opens his mouth to talk, but you hold your hand up again. “I’m tired. I’m cranky. And your ridiculous whining is now starting to bore me.” His eyes follow you as you walk away, wanting so bad to snip at you, but he can’t. “And stop looking at my ass,” you yell out as you head down the hallway.

When you disappear, and as Roger is standing there speechless, John and Freddie walk up to him, chuckling. “Don’t say a fucking word,” he fusses them. “She’s beautiful, yes, but she’s a nightmare.”

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #16 (1980)

Cerebus is going up the stairs while Lord Julius is going down them. In the same direction.

Cerebus is often touted as the greatest independent comic book of all time (for various reasons) but I'd like to point out that Elfquest told an incredible story with beautiful art in just 20 issues as opposed to 300. Plus it had an elf orgy. Also, I know it continued on after the first 20 issue story arc but we can ignore the rest of the story because there was never another elf orgy and also the rest of the series concentrated too much on Skywise's fear of dying which was totally valid but was often used as a foil to make Cutter seem braver and more loyal to his wolf roots but really just showed he was stubborn and dumb and totally didn't fuck as many elf maidens as Skywise did. Cerebus does have some sex in his comic book but since the first sex he has is when he rapes Astoria, I don't think anybody was really clamoring for any more of that. I mean, sure, some people were! I didn't mean to erase the sickos and perverts out there. Sorry, jerks! I'm sure the "A Note from the Publisher" bit by Deni seemed like a good idea when starting out on a harrowing self-publishing journey like that of Cerebus. But it quickly became a space where Deni just says, "Self-publishing is fraught with hardships and also this is a really good issue! I won't spoil it! Goodbye!" I won't be sad to see the divorce happen! That's an okay thing to say because it already happened, right? It's not like my wishing for the end of their marriage in 2020 somehow brought about the end of their marriage in the early 80s. Is it? I never took a college course on cause and effect so who the fuck knows? Unless that Critical Literary Theory class was about that?! Oh my God! I think I understand it now! Dave's finale to the "Swords of Cerebus" essay that has been broken up over the last three issues describes how he was consciously drawing the Eye of the Pyramid cult leader's gigantic penis while drawing the snake. Sorry to report, though, that he's being sarcastic. Apparently Dave is above using phallic imagery to make a point about patriarchal themes. Only fucking hacks do shit like that! Take that, whoever wrote fucking Beowulf!

Even if Sim can't see the humor in everybody assuming he made a giant snake dick joke on purpose, he can still be extraordinarily funny with the least of materials.

This issue takes Cerebus to his first fancy dress party (that's a costume party for all of you people who aren't British (which is also me but only because I was born a citizen of the United States of America who didn't have a choice but knew it was a huge mistake as I was learning about Monty Python's Flying Circus and Dave Allen at Large in elementary school and The Young Ones in junior high and Red Dwarf in college)). Cerebus changes out of his vest and puts on his costume: a furry black jumper (that's sweater for all of you people who aren't British (which is also me but only because I was forced to watch mostly American popular entertainment until the advent of YouTube and now I mostly just watch Taskmaster over and over (by the way, is Taskmaster as good for people who don't know all of the "contestants" or do I enjoy it more because I recognize and like almost all of the people on the show?)). Lord Julius is dressed as an, um, a, uh, Estarcion matador? I have no context in which to guess what he is.

Certain people like Cerebus because he says what's on his mind. I purposefully used the passive voice here so you can't prove one of those people is me.

Lord Julius has a follow-up joke that leaves the reader thinking, "I guess all Pavrovians are fat?" That's Dave Sim continuing his work on Estarcion continuity! Remember how Pavrovians are the, um, you knows of Estarcion! You know the nationality I'm thinking of! The ones that are all the things people usually find insulting! Come on, you know who I'm talking about. The dumb fat arrogant stupid naive gullible ones! Yes, that's it! Americans! Try to remember Dave is Canadian. You have to think of Americans through Canadian eyes (which are the equivalent of smart, cynical Americans)! E'lass and Turg have gotten tickets to The Festival of Petunias so they can steal the Wyndmel Diamond. They're the duo composed of a giant muscular man and a little bitty shrimpy guy who last encountered (and were beaten by) Cerebus in Issue #6. E'lass is dressed like some kind of small dirt dwelling creature so I hope Cerebus gets offended by his costume and stabs him in the throat. There isn't enough random slaughter in this book about barbarians.

I haven't wanted to fuck a fish this badly since The Littler Mermaid.

I suppose I could have said "since Splash" in that last caption to seem more normal and less perverted but then you'd know I was lying. The assassins make a move on Lord Julius but Cerebus comes up with a plan to stop them that involves inducing the Palnu elite to throw herring-and-onion dip at them. Is that a parodied scene from Duck Soup or Conan the Barbarian? In the confusion, the lead assassin slips out through a secret door and E'lass, having just stolen the diamond and becoming increasingly paranoid that somebody saw him, slips through it as well. Cerebus and Lord Julius follow, having noticed the assassin but not E'lass. Most of the pursuit's tension comes from E'lass believing Cerebus remembers him and is now going to use the excuse of this new crime to murder him. It's more tense than I've even described because I really need Cerebus to murder somebody in this Swords & Sorcery book already. Reading this book waiting for a murder is like firing up a porn video on your laptop with your dick in your hands and realizing after five minutes that the video is almost over and was just a teaser for a pay porn site. Cerebus threatens to quit his job just before battling the assassin so he can negotiate a term of 8 bags of gold and a horse in exchange for killing the assassin as a pension before he goes. Julius agrees and Cerebus takes out the assassin with a rock to the head. I mean, I guess it's a murder so yay? But I was really hoping for some stabbing. Meanwhile E'lass lives through the cliché of the criminal whose paranoia gets the better of him and he tosses the diamond into a huge pit so he doesn't get caught only to discover that they never knew he took it anyway. Everything is wrapped up quickly and thoroughly with Cerebus given money and motivation to move on from Palnu. Dave complained about his heavy use of cliché in this Palnu trilogy and I have to say I agree with Dave. But I only agree with Dave on this point! Don't take that out of context and start raving on Twitter that Grunion Guy agrees with Dave's Issue #186 rant about girlfriends being illogical which is also secretly a rant about a guy who needs to get laid so badly he puts up with partners he probably wouldn't even be friends with and then finally just decides orgasms are evil and religion is super awesome but only if you smash all three People of The Book religions into one bland mash paste of ancient dogma. In the epilogue, Lord Julius receives a letter from his niece Jaka in which she expresses delight in possibly seeing Cerebus again. I guess Dave learned from Howard the Duck that comic book nerds really love for their anthropomorphic heroes to be fucking statuesque women. Perhaps every guy develops a fetish of being with a woman whose breasts are at head level due to being hugged constantly by their female relatives when they're ten years old. Deni's brother Michael's first installment of the "Aardvarkian Age" essays appears in this issue. It gives more details to the various nations of Estarcion and their inhabitants' culture, ruling styles, and brutality of their armies. I thought I'd be more interested in this than I actually wound up being. Maybe I thought it would be funnier? Instead, it's just a bunch of facts about made-up kingdoms to make them sound more believable by making them more like European countries in the Middle Ages. If this entire bit were just lifted from a history of Europe with the names of actual countries replaced by Estarcion countries, I wouldn't even notice. Mostly because I know nothing about European history. As I've always said, "Those who know about European history are doomed to repeat it, boring every single other person at the cocktail party." Dave apologizes for the quarter price increase of the comic book in the Aardvark Comments pages. Why, I hadn't even noticed! Probably because this is the Biweekly reprint issue and I purchased it as a collection off of eBay. Some people write in and discuss how Cerebus is a very fine and funny comic book. I nodded along in agreement as I read the letters. I only touched my private area twice while reading and neither time was for pleasure. The most surprising thing about "The Single Page" is that it clearly states who the comic was authored by: Kent Featherly. I don't know why so many of these single page comics aren't more clearly labeled. Isn't part of the reason for having them exposure for the artists drawing and writing them?! Not putting an effort to let a large audience know who you are and how they can read more of your work just sounds like something I would do. By the way, you should play this game I wrote, Starship Troopers: The Game. You can find it on the hard drive of my laptop. Cerebus #16 Rating: B. Look, it was funny and well drawn and all that. But even Dave said it relied too heavily on cliché plot devices. I've got to lower the grade when even the author points out some of the story's flaws! And I'd probably have come to the same conclusion without having been influenced by Dave Sim because I'm like the best Internet comic book critic who isn't a critic and isn't actually reviewing comic books. Also I almost forgot this evidence: I'm a Grandmaster Comic Book Reviewer! Nobody else can make that claim and if they do, they're plagiarizing me and I'd like you to point them out to me so I can send them a threatening email in which I pretend to be my own lawyer who is really good at suing dumb-dumbs.

[ain-t-bovvered]

15x03 Commentary

  bunch of tired and caffeinated Europeans ( plus a sleepy American) scream together, and then die and try to get on with their day ( lol AS IF)

Hello and welcome:

@purpleskiesandcherrypies  (Nat)

@dean-winchesters-bacon  (Kat)  

@waywardbaby  (Zee)

@ain-t-bovvered  (Giulia)

Opening my phone in the morning: 

 What the fuck happened

Kat: You don’t wanna know

Kat: You’ll find out soon enough

Zee: Yeah ok I went to tumblr. Why did I do that ?

Kat: SHAME ON YOU

Giulia: BECAUSE U HAVE 0 PATIENCE

Kat: If you wanted to know I could have told you

Zee: I just opened the freaking thing and glanced at the first thing on my dash. Clearly, it was the wrong thing to glance at.  I yeeted out

Giulia: I DON T WANNA BE HERE

Giulia: will I cry

Kat: Do you want the honest answer

Giulia: No

Kat: Didn’t think so

Giulia: Im so tired already

Zee: Oh shush

Kat: Don’t I know it

Nat : ok i'm read

Nat : or not . whatever

Giulia: I’m not!! Help

Giulia: Ok im ready

Kat: Question first!

Zee: Uh oh

Giulia: I don t like it

Kat: With the download, do y’all have the green CW screen first?

US: no

Giulia: * stressed* Why 

Kat: Because I watch my recording, I don’t download so I want to make sure I start in the same spot

Giulia: Oh ok.... Geez

Zee: Are we ready?

Nat : Are we all not ready

Kat: I think we are right?

Nat : 3

Nat : 2

Nat : 1

Nat : go

Giulia: Ghost’s town again yay

Nat : Unpopular opinon: I hope Ketch dies

Kat: Sames

Giulia: Well he done anyway so

Kat: ...

Giulia: GREAT

Nat : idgaf about Ketch

Nat : AH GHOST TOWN THE 3RD YAY I'm so happy

Kat: Love these random ass hunters

Giulia: I see white pants I think Jensen jib10

Kat: SHUSH

Nat : Legit wanna throw my laptop away

R: The "Rafforza l'incantesimo"

my italian ass: GASPS

Giulia: Look at Rowena pretty dress

Kat: Yyyeessss that dress

Giulia: Also she brought a change

Zee: Came prepared

Nat : She's the thing that keeps me watching at the moment

Kat: Of course, it’s Rowena

Nat : UGH I felt that

Giulia: I felt dean

Zee: For me it’s deans legs and cas’s fed up face

Giulia: That place again

Giulia: What

Nat : Insert Joey gif: I'M SOOOOO SICK OF THIS TOOOOOWN

Giulia: Noted

oh look me walking with my tall friends

that door banging scared the shit out of me

R: Prendi cio che è debole, rendilo forte. D'una piuma d'oca, fai una spada.

Take what’s weak and make it stronger. Of a duck feather make it a sword

Giulia: OH ITALIAN

Zee: Is she speaking Italian?

R: Dalla nebbia, cemento possente, impenetrabile, inflessibile.

From fog, mighty concrete, impenetrable, inflexible

Giulia: SHE IS

R: Rendilo forte.

Make it stronger

Giulia: And pretty well too

Kat: It’s not working Sam

Zee: Connection lost. Check server

Giulia: Oh no

Kat: And down she goes

Giulia: Thanks

Zee: A real drink

Giulia: Lol

Kat: This look ��🤣🤣

Giulia: Gotta use it

Kat: Love the silent conversations

Giulia: Fuck off belphy

Nat : Ah angry ghosts . What else is new

Zee: I kinda love his sass

Kat: Same but I still want to stab him

Nat : Wow, imagine this was the last three episodes. It's over in a freaking ghost town. I'm still salty, can you see?

Giulia: Yeah that would fucking destroy me

Kat: Not at all you hide it so well

Giulia: That’s not who we are

Zee: Go Dean!! Tell them

Giulia: AWE SAM

Kat: Aw Sammy

Giulia: SAM

He’s so gentle . Such a big gentle giant, I love him.

Zee: Control your face Sam

Kat: That doesn’t happen. At all.

Giulia: YOU SHUSH THE FUCK DOWN

Giulia: that strap tho

Nat : Not gonna give up

Kat: He never does. Take a knee

Nat : He's like a leave in the wind, give up not giving up give up not giving up

Zee: Is he us?

D: Oh, I'm not freaked. I'm angry, okay? I'm pissed.

Giulia: I M PISSED TOO

Kat: THAT PISSED WAS SO COUNTRY

Kat: Jensen your Texas is showing

Giuls: And I’m loving it

Giulia: I need more then

D: Th-This... This sloppy-ass ghostpocalypse... that's Chuck's ending? No. No, I don't think so. After everything that he has put us through? I'll be damned if I'm gonna let some glorified fanboy get the last word.

Giulia: SLOPPY ASS GHOST APOCALYPSE

Nat : Sloppy Ass Ghost Apocalypse. Yeah, that's about sums it up

 Zee: Glorified fan boy

Giulia: dean speaking up for the fandom 

S: Anything useful in there? R: Not a thing.

sure

Nat : You don't have eyes

Nat : snorts

Zee: You don’t have eyes

Giulia: Ok that was funny

B: I got an idea, but, uh... you're not gonna like it.

Giulia: DON T

Giulia: TOUCH

Giulia: MAH BABY

Kat: You okay bb?

Giulia: no  I’m fear 

Kat: What

Giulia: Because i just remembered the season trailer. And i wanna be wrong

Zee: Surprised moose

Nat : Did he just say, minions

Nat : But that would mean that Belphy would stay on earth?

Kat: No he’d be in hell

Nat : Ah

Giulia: Ah

Giulia: ... I don t like this

Kat: DIBS ON SAMUEL

Nat : Dibs on Samuel

Giulia: Dibs on samuel

Zee: Dibs on Samuel

Nat : Hey

Giulia: AH sam witch confirmed

Nat : I'm calling Dibs on Dean then

Kat: NO

Giulia: Cas🙋🏼‍♀

Zee: Was waiting for Kat

R: Whoever does this, they'll be unprotected. No salt circles... all manner of angry spirits right up in their grill.

Nat : So yeah, Belphy wants Cas

Giulia: NO Don t look at my bb

B: I want protection.Muscle.

D: Yeah, Cass’ll go.

C: Well, it sounds like I don't have a choice.

Giulia: DEAN

C:

Zee: Dean threw him under the bus

Giulia: ugh

Kat: Oh babe

Giulia: COME ON

Nat : Dean would literally do anything now

Nat : That's how desperate he is

Kat: YUP

Nat : I see more of Ketch than I ever wanted

future me: ain’t that right

Zee: His underwear are ridiculous

Kat: SNORTS

Nat : Kill him

Giulia: Jesus lady there is an apocalypse going on

random demon I don’t care about: And you won't give them up? Not for any price?

K: Not at any price.

Giulia: Aw ketch

Kat: ya happy Nat?

Nat : AHHHHH OMG YES

Giulia: Eh

Giulia: We are at 2 spn final season deaths already nice

Zee: Casually strolling the graveyard

B: You know, your part in all this is, uh, pretty dangerous.I mean, you could die, get trapped in Hell. Your friends might never see you again. Funny, 'cause, uh,they didn't seem to think twice about it.

R.U.D.E.

Nat :lol Cas

Giulia: AHAHAHAH

Zee: Ok

Kat: Hhhhhhhaaaahahhaaa

Giulia: DO I LOVE HIM

Giulia: witch stuff

Nat : And what's Dean's role in this?

Nat : I think I got distracted

Kat: Outside by the hole  

Giulia: Being grumpy 

Nat : Ah where he should be 😉

Kat: Ready and waiting lol

Giulia: Well you’d want him in

Nat : Well, not the whole of him

Zee: FOCUS LADIES 

Zee: so fed up

C: Yet you needed protection, "muscle", for this?

B: Okay, you got me. I wanted company. I wanted your company. What? Shouldn't we at least try and be friends?

Nat : Belphy is Giuls

Giulia: WOW

Nat : You would want Cas' company too

C: You are not growing on anyone. Sam and Dean are just using you. Don't mistake that for caring about you, because I can assure you they don't.

B: Wow. You learn that the hard way?

Giulia: AWE NO BELPHY SHUSH 

Kat: Cas should know

Nat : Sush

Giulia: OH THAT REALLY STUNG

C: You're wearing Jack, who was like a son to me, like a coat.

Zee: Like a son to me

C: It's an abomination.

Giulia: im sad. I’m so sad

Zee: I think you should wait

Kat: It’s gonna get worse bb

Giulia: DON T PUSH HIM

Nat : Why does Cas has to go in first

Giulia: what else is new

Zee: The muscle

Nat : Ah

Nat : Do we trust him?

Kat: WHAT DO YOU THINK

Zee: No

Giulia: I hate how I can recognize enochian

Giulia: I trust bel so little

Nat : I don't think he should say that out loud

Kat: SUNG

Giulia: Oh

Zee: What?

Giulia: WHAT

Kat: SING IT CAS

Giulia: OMG WHAT

Nat : Don't do it?

C: ♪ Toh-luh dah... ♪

Giulia: OH COME ON

Kat: That’s all you get lol

Giulia: fuck  Oh great that was the “musical”

Nat : Ah Dean's at the hole

Nat : snorts

Kat: There might be a couple seconds more I can’t remember

Nat : Sam just thinks that he should be with Dean when this all goes to shit

Nat : And I cry

Giulia: ...great

Kat: Nope

C: ♪ ... mee ♪

Zee: Like an angel

Nat : WELL

Giulia: Oh fuck off

Zee: Oh fuck

Giulia: Well

Nat : Who is she again

Giulia: Ardat Some demon who wanted to kill bel

Nat : Ardat Lili is a dangerous storm spirit from ancient Sumeria, a vampiric succubus who visits men at night

Giulia: Thanks Hermione

Kat: Thanks google

Zee: Nerd

Nat : At least I know how to work google. Unlike the majority, it seems

Giulia: well I’m doing 3 things at the same time

Giulia: Everybody wants to rule hell. Nobody learned a thing from Crowley

Zee: It’s been a while since Cas got smacked

Giulia: He’s a fucking angel

Giulia: OF COURSE

Nat : THERE WAS A VACANCY. Pfffff

Kat: Ugh he’s so annoying

 Zee: That close up Giuls ? 

Giulia: I KNOW EXCITING

Nat : Ah the wind in Dean's hair

Nat : I need that close up Giuls   

Kat: The wind in Cas’ trench

Nat : lol in Cas' shirt

Giulia: that hand holding

Kat: 😭

Giulia: I’m having anxiety

Zee: We see

Kat: YOU SHOULD

Nat : Shouldn't Cas go out before it closes. Before Dean throws that bomb in?Ah, too late

Giulia: I can t take it

Giulia: DEAN.  DEAN FUCK

Zee: COME ON

Kat: He’s got business

Giulia: CAS

Giulia: what

Kat: IT’S NOT HIS FAULT AT THE MOMENT

Giulia: What is happening

Giulia: I’m so angry at everyone

Kat: CAS IS MAD

B: It's me... Jack.

Giulia: JACK SHUT UP

Zee: NO

Giulia: OH NO

The struggle Castiel going through is painful ok. I hate it , HATE IT.

Nat : Ah so Jack is gone?

Kat: His body I guess

Giulia: I HATE THIS

Nat : For good?

Giulia: FUCK NO

Zee: WTF

Giulia: WHAT WAS THAT SIGH

Well this destroyed me .

future me: AH JUST YOU WAIT DUMB BITCH

Kat: That wasn’t Jack

Nat : Because he's still in the empty, right? He's forgotten there

Giulia: FUCK

Kat: Death has plans

Zee: CAS

Oh you can see the moment Castiel feels like he’s got nothing left . great.

Nat : What

Giulia: ROWENA

Nat : WHAT

Kat: JUST FUCKING WAIT

R: Won't need that where I'm going.

Nat : Ah fuck

R: Magic can do anything, Samuel , can contain anything... even the vast multitudes of Hell.

Giulia: I HATE THIS

Zee: WHAT?

Giulia: NO

Nat : If I pay the price

R:"Death Is an Infinite Vessel."  A spell so simple it draws its power from its caster.Just two ingredients.

S: Rowena, why didn't you tell us?

shut up Sam 

R: Because, dear, the first ingredient is my own still-coursing blood. And the last is my final breath.

Giulia: I DON T LIKE THE PRICE

Nat : Rowena loves them to much

Zee: Hold on HOLD ON

Giulia: i love her so much

R: I'll absorb the ghosts and demons and return them to Hell.In time, my body'll break down, and they'll be released right where they belong.

S: No, no. No. Rowena... no.

Giulia: GREAT

Nat : NO AH

Giulia: I DON T WANNA SEE SAM CRY

R: To perform this spell, I have to die. And it has to be you that kills me.

Nat : Right, in every death book of Rowena, she's killed by Sam

Kat: POOR SAMMY

Giulia: OF COURSE GREAT

Zee: HE GOT OUT

Kat: SEE HE GETS OUT

Giulia: BUT AT WHAT PRICE

Kat: MIGHT BE BETTER IF HE STAYED THOUGH

Giulia: WHAT ?! YIKES 

R: My real, permanent demise is at your hands. It's in Death's books.

S: Yeah, well, you know what? Screw the books.

Us: *LOUD GASP*

D: Wh-What about the Crook?

C: It's gone. It was destroyed.

That what is so ..... wow

R: I don't care about anything enough to take my own life.Not you, your brother... not even the world. But I believe in prophecy. I believe in magic. And I'm here, and you're here, and everything we need to end this right is in our hands.I know this in my bones...it has to be this way. Do it! Kill me, Samuel!

Nat : I'm-

Kat: 😭😭😭😭😭

Giulia: I’m

Zee: INDONT WANNA WATCH

Giulia: I CANT TAKE ALL THIS

Nat : Fuck, Sammy

Giulia: OH MY GOD SAM

Nat : Sam is too fragile for that

Kat: I BELIEVE IN PROPHECY AND MAGIC 🤣😭😭

R:   I know we've gotten quite fond of each other, haven't we? But will you let the world die, let your brother die, just so I can live?

Giulia: NO SHUT UP

Zee: Shut up Rowena

Giulia: NO

Giulia: NO

Nat : Dean's pissed. What else is new

Giulia: NO NO

Nat : NO

Giulia: SAM

Nat : NOOOOO

Giulia: FUCK

Zee: God damn

Kat: NNNOOOOOOOOO

Giulia: STOP IT

Kat: She says Dean’ll die and Sam gets stabby

Giulia: NO ROWEEEENAAA

R: That's my boy.

Kat: THATS MY BOY

Nat : Of course

Giulia: WHAT IS THAT FACE SAM

Giulia: FUCK OFF

Giulia: FUCK THESE EPISODES

Nat : OH NO

Giulia: SHIT

Kat: IS IT BETTER OR WORSE THAN BORING

Nat : SAMMY CONTROL YOUR FUCKING FACE

Giulia: IM NOT READY

Giulia: NO DON T SAY THAT

Kat: JUST LIKE CROWLEY

Giulia: COME ON

Zee: CAN THE MUSIC NOT

Nat : CAS

Giulia: CAS BB

Giulia: WHY AM I SO TIRED

Zee: IMAGINE HOW SAM IS FEELING

Nat : HENLEY

Giulia: oh dean is in the nude

Zee: BUTT NAKED

Kat: SUCH GOOD SINGLE LAYER HENLEY PORN

Giulia: Oh he was crying In his room

Nat : Does Sam actually fit in the bed?

Giulia: Ah yeah ketch too

Kat: Okay I know it’s super sad but these boys are looking GOOD

Giulia: I KNOW AND IM SANGRY

I’M STILL MOURNING OK 

C: How's Sam?

D: Not great.

Kat: Get ready babes

C: Sorry about Rowena.

Giulia: No i refuse

Zee: WHAT?

Nat : NO

Giulia: Fuck

Nat : Don't you throw this in Kat

D: You're sorry? Why didn't you just stick to the damn plan?

Giulia: I DON T WANNA WATCH 

C: He wanted to eat every last soul to take over Hell, Earth, and every...

D: Yeah, and we would've figured it out... after. With Rowena.

OK but listen...figuring it out later could have been worse , although it’s true that Rowena was a real great asset. Idk man I’m hurting

Giulia: i can feel dean’s anger

Nat : Dean control your anger

C: Something went wrong. You know this. Something always goes wrong.

D: Yeah, why does that something always seem to be you?

Kat: Oooohhhh boy

Nat : WHAT

Giulia: NO

Nat : DID YOU JUST SAY

Giulia: DEAN  U FUCK

you can see the shock and hurt and heartbreak on Cas’ face but it’s fine , it’s fine WE’RE FINE

C: You used to trust me, give me the benefit of the doubt. Now you can barely look at me.

They both so hurt and I cannot bear this

Zee: Can’t breathe

C: My powers are failing, and... 

yeah can we talk about that ? becasue...why the fuck

C: and I've tried to talk to you, over and over, and you just don't want to hear it. You don't care.

Nat : The eyeroll

Giulia: I HATE THIS SHIT

Kat: I know bb

SO ANGRY

C: I'm... dead to you.

SO SAD

Nat : The eyeroll

Giulia: I HATE THIS SHIT

Kat: I know bb

Giulia: IS THIS FANFIC

Giulia: I READ THIS 364830173 TIMES

C: You still blame me for Mary.

Giulia: NO

C: Well, I don't think there's anything left to say.

D: Where you going?

IS THIS FANFIC

Nat : CAS IS GOING AWAY

Nat : CAS STAY

Kat: You knew it was happening bb

Zee: WHAT

Zee: THE

Zee: FUCK

C: Jack's dead. Chuck's gone. You and Sam have each other. 

Giulia: NO THIS SONG

Nat : I know

Kat: I know

C:  I think it's time for me to move on.

Zee: STOP HIM YOU ASSUOLE

Nat : I knew it but I'm not happy about it

Kat: Group hug

Giulia: WELL DEAN LOOKS REGRETFUL SO AT LEAST THERE’S THAT 

Kat: As per usual. He lashes out then is sorry about it.

Nat : That's human

Giulia: HEY YALL CAN TALK TO MY CORPSE

Giulia: TRAILER TIME BECAUSE IM IN DENIAL

Giulia: MEH

Nat : Yeah well, the next ep is kinky

Giulia: gag me

Kat: Yup

Giulia: My heart is broken. This ep destroyed me

Kat: I know bb

Zee: DONT LIKE THE PROMO

Giulia: FUCK OFF THE PROMO I DON T GIVE 2 SHITS ABOUT IT

Kat: But Jensen directed

Zee: Dean was exceptionally assholy

Nat : We'll get Lumberjack Dean

Kat: That too

Giulia: dean is on a real fine thread

Giulia: I think that’s when there is samifer

Kat: Well the red was there And it was red when we see bearded!dean

Giulia: I currently don’t give a shit honestly

Kat: They’ll make up by the end

Giulia: Yeah i wanna see when

Giulia: Whatever I’m so tired

Giulia: Fuck off

Giulia: Im also pretty real sad.  And that hasn’t happened in long on spn

Kat: Jensen said in an interview it hasn’t happened yet so we’ll see

Zee: We all are

Kat: I know. I knew exactly how y’all would react

Giuls: Ok but it’s not even about destiel. I just hate to see them fight instead of working together

Giulia: My stomach hurts too now. I should go. Kat go the fuck to sleep. And nobody talks to me about the ep

Kat: I AM TALKIN TO ZEE

Giulia: Hush i can still hear you over the sound of my soul crying

Zee: In my defense, I told her to sleep

Kat: Give your soul a tissue

Kat: She did. Many times. I didn’t listen like usual

Giulia: That vinyl now looks real good to ease my pain. Not gonna lie

Zee: Take me with you. I’ll probably be a mile back but still

Giulia: I rewatched the end briefly because I’m a dumb bitch.  And yep, i can confirm i screamed into my pillow and got actually teary eyed and boi am I dumb to get actually tears for a tv show jesus and it’s only ep 3 but the threat of the ending is getting tight around my neck already and this is stupid, and fuck. And bye

Giulia: People are hating over everything right now

Kat: Yup. People hate Cas, people hate Dean, people hate the town (@Nat )  Plus, I think it, being the last season, makes people lash out more.

Nat : Hey

Kat: Did I lie?

Nat : No but it still hurts

Kat: Well they’re away from it now At least there’s that

Giulia: Why, where are they Idk

Kat: Do I have to say it?

Giulia: Say what

Kat: Where people are. I don’t think you wanna hear it

Giulia: Exactly

Kat: So we won’t say it lol

Giulis: For what it’s worth all the people throwing hate at Dean and Castiel can all suck my dick.

If you want to get tagged send an ask HERE or to @waywardbaby or a smoke signal, idk whatever I’m tired af.

TAGS: @wayward-angelgirl  @destiel-honeypie      @mariekoukie6661      @dragontamerm       @closetspngirl    @rainflowermoon     @mattiecat       @bunnybaby121115  @aliaitee2    @jacks-word-of-the-day     @4evamc       @dammitsammy     @legendary-destiel   @winchesterprincessbride    @destielhoneybee     @ravenhg @evvvissticante @emoryhemsworth​

[janiedean]

Haha yeah let's make fun of Americans for their shitty education system that's failing them, we're so European and enlightened! Next we can make fun of their school shootings and all the people that die because if the bad healthcare system. They totally deserve it!

…. anon for fuck’s sake I’m the first person on the face of this planet to not make fun of americans for their shitty education system which y’all know because I talk about it all the fucking time and I spent the last year reading nonfiction books about exactly the issue because oh guess what I’m interested in the topic and I would never make fun of school shootings or their healthcare except when pointing out that no first world country shouldn’t have public healthcare, but y’know what?

ALL THESE PSEUDO-ACTIVISTS ON TUMBLR DON’T GET TO PLAY THIS CARD.

because, my dearest darling anon who assumes I don’t know shit about how the us of a works when it’s 90% of what I’ve been reading about since I was twelve, the shitty education system in the US of A mostly affects… hmmm… poor people, and waaaiiitttt, what are the teen poorest states in the US?

Mississippi

New Mexico 

Alabama

Louisiana 

West Virginia

Kentucky 

South Carolina 

Arkansas

Georgia

North Carolina

now, nvm that I just read a book on cotton pickers in alabama this summer that gave me nightmares to the umpteenth degree which if was at all read by tumblr would cut off the white people/incest jokes by a good half, let’s check a moment. for whom did those states vote during the last elections?

Mississippi > trump

New Mexico > clinton

Alabama > trump

Louisiana > trump 

West Virginia > trump

Kentucky > trump

South Carolina > trump

Arkansas > trump

Georgia > trump

North Carolina > trump

hmmm. waaait. what do y’all say on tumblr about people who vote trump and states where trump won? that it’s all racists who should die and if they lose their jobs fuck them because they should have known better to vote for trump? hmmmmm. oh, yeah, the US school system is so great that this is the literacy level:

aaah, 14% plus 4% of non literate people means that 18% of the population pretty much can’t read functionally, and hmmmm how much is 18% of the US population? 327,2 million. how much is 18% of 327,2 million?

58.8.

hmmmmm… where do most of those almost sixty million illiterate people live according to you? I’ll spoil you: most likely in poor areas. hmm, what jobs did most of these people do in the 70s/80s? I’ll tell you because I read on the topic, they worked manual jobs in factories ie steel mills and similar places… which ah, wait, all closed because either economic crisis or whatnot, and no one thought that a lot of those people didn’t have other marketable skills. and aaah wait what did trump say? let’s make america great lIKE IT WAS, FUCK THE PARIS AGREEMENTS, LET’S GO BACK TO COAL -

ah.

yeah.

I absolutely can’t understand why would any of those people vote for trump, huh?

now: guess what, I absolutely understand why they would, and mvho is that if the US left would concentrate on, hm, reforming the public school system so literacy rates go up and people don’t fall for trump, it would solve 99% of their problems, buuut what do I see on tumblr? all people saying that whoever voted for trump is a neonazi and should die.

and now we get to the point: MY PAL, YOU CAN’T BE AN ACTIVIST OR CALL YOURSELF AN ACTIVIST AND NOT LISTEN TO OTHERS AND KEEP ON STEWING IN YOUR FUCKING IGNORANCE. I don’t laugh about the poor people failed by the public US educational system - my problem is kids on tumblr who all go to college or some private school paid by their parents who also pay for their internet and most likely their computers and who SAY THEY’RE ACTIVISTS who not only don’t know fucking shit about the issues in their own country, but presume and have the arrogance to push US social categories on OTHER COUNTRIES while not even knowing how the fuck their own social categories work because if y’all entitled people on tumblr had a fucking clue of why people make incest jokes about alabama you wouldn’t be laughing at them and you would stop not including classism in your precious social analysis of your country’s issues which almost never includes categories y’all wanna laugh at. AND YOU CAN’T BE AN ACTIVIST NOT CARING FOR THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE THAT DON’T VOTE WHERE YOU VOTE, INCLUDING THE POOR WHITE PEOPLE WHO VOTE DONALD TRUMP. 

and on top of not even knowing how your fucking country works and only wanting to fight for the rights of people who think like you - because if you look at the notes on the post for the fundraiser in favors of the miners of harlan county kentucky from this summer it’s full of people saying they deserve to die because kentucky is a red state, and btw as I just got some birthday money I gave them some fifteen bucks too but hey, keep on telling me I make fun of poor americans anon -, you show up on posts where people discuss their issues in their countries according to their societal standards and you presume to know better than us how our countries work and sorry but my pal, I say that the school system failed SO-CALLED COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO, GOING TO COLLEGE IE FUCKING HIGHER EDUCATION, SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN ASSUMING THE ENTIRE WORLD REVOLVES ALONG THE US SOCIETAL CONSTRUCT.

now: I 100% have a lot more sympathy for poor americans who can’t afford going to the doctor and most likely die in shootings and whose teacher didn’t bother with them in obligatory school because they decided they weren’t smart enough than for fucking entitled college kids on tumblr who declare themselves activists and then proceed to read the entirety of world history through american lens and prove the stereotypes about US americans way more right than any person actually affected by crappy public schooling might.

if you go into fucking debt to go to college - which btw I consider a total travesty and y’all should just fucking vote sanders and get on par with most places where you don’t have to join the army to get a chance at an education - I would assume that college gives you an education good enough to give you enough reading comprehension to understand whatever the hell I say in posts that I used to make extra-long and extra-detailed so that people who don’t have the context might get it.

since y’all obviously don’t have it, then your overpriced, crappy sub-par higher education failed the shit out of you. and it’s high time someone informed you of that.

now please go troll someone else and possibly go find dale maharidge’s books including the ones out of print that I went to hunt down on abebooks because they’ll enlighten you re all the things you, as hopefully an activist, should do to avoid trump 2020. now I’ll go back writing my novel in which I’m taking care to point out that y’all’s calvinist society is a damned dystopia and I sure as hell hope you think before messaging people this stuff next because I’m really fucking tired of y’all purposefully misreading everything I say.

sayonara.

[justalittlelitnerd]

Frankly In Love by David Yoon

*Photo courtesy of penguinteen.com*

Title/Author/Publisher/Year Published: Frankly In Love by David Yoon | Published by Putnam Young Readers in September 2019

Plot Summary: Frank Li wants nothing more than to be in love. But it’s not that easy. Love never is, but especially not for Frank who has seen first hand what happens when his parents don’t approve. So Frank lives in the hypothetical: is it better to date someone who is Korean to appease his parents (but then they will always be involved) or date someone else that they might not approve of (and become ostracized)? But when Brit Means looks at him a little differently, it’s no longer a hypothetical because Frank Li is falling and falling fast. The only problem? Brit is white. Lucky for Frank a fellow Limbo (Limbo referring to the Korean-American children of his family’s friends who came over from Korea together) is in the same predicament. Joy and Frank come up with a scheme to date who they want with their parents none the wiser. They will fake date each other. It seemed like the perfect solution until Frank begins to suspect he might not be entirely faking it. 

Ugh, okay, so I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book so please just bear with me. Honestly, I hate saying it but I had such a tough time getting through this book. I think the main issue, as always, was my expectations. The way I’d heard people talk about it I was anticipating a cute, fun YA romance with my favorite trope, fake-dating-turned-real, and I guess in a way that is what it was? But I was vastly unprepared for Frank. Or the fact that this book is stuffed to the gills with tropes. 

Frank is weird, by the end I would say that I loved him, but I was initially caught off-guard by the way he talks and thinks and I found it made it harder to get into his character and thus the story. Additionally, his relationship with Brit feels like it comes out of nowhere and suddenly they’re in a fairly serious relationship? And *SPOILER* he ends up cheating on her with Joy. Normally, I don’t like to include spoilers or I hide them, but I feel like this is an important issue I had with this novel. I almost stopped reading because Frank is supposed to be the good guy and in that moment (and the following pages when he tells Brit) he was a fucking jackass. The only thing that slightly redeems him is that he immediately recognized it as cheating and didn’t waste time telling Brit or lying to her about it, but it still sucked. 

However, that all being said, the book holds some important discussions about what it means to be Korean-American, Asian-American, or really just anything with that dreaded hyphen. There’s talk about whiteness and how the privilege of belonging to the majority tends to erase those immigrant stories and identities. There are discussions of blackness not only because of Frank’s sister but because of Frank’s best friend. Race is interwoven into every aspect of this novel and David Yoon does it with grace and care and without fear.

Anyway, if you’ve read this and have thoughts feel free to respond! I’d like to see what other people who’ve read it thought about it in all of its chaotic glory.

Warning: Keep reading at your own risk because I have included a spoilers section for a few important details I wish I had known going into this book because they could be potentially triggering (nothing is graphic which is probably why it wasn’t heavily mentioned in discussions about this title). And as always my favorite quotes because damn does David Yoon have a way with words.

Spoilers:

Frank’s dad gets shot while working at The Store and almost dies, but survives only to find out that he has cancer and less than a year to live which sparks a fight with his longtime friends which means that right when Joy and Frank get their shit together they don’t feel like their parents will approve because there’s a rift so like fuck a happy ending I guess? 

Quotes:

She was brave—braver than me—but now I wonder if being brave is worth it. The brave go first into battle. But that makes them the first to go down, too.

In Language class Ms. Chit would called this code switching. It’s like switching accents, but at a more micro level. The idea is that you don’t speak the same way with your friends (California English Casual) that you do with a teacher (California English Formal), or a girl (California English Singsong), or your immigrant parents (California English Exasperated). You change how you talk to best adapt to whoever you’re talking to. But it’s not just about adaptation, as Ms. Chit explained. People can code switch to confuse others, express dominance or submission, or disguise themselves.

I feel my stomach wave hello. My ears grow warm. Gravity eases enough to loosen all the joints and nails and screws holding the world together until all its pieces are slowly tumbling free in a soft huge space lit only by the white rectangle beneath my thumbs. My girlfriend is texting me.

There’s an anger in my heart the color of dark red ready to paint the walls with curse words, but there’s no point in getting into all that.

Let me tell you something. I live to make people laugh. Parents, siblings, friends, lovers, doesn’t matter. I just have to. If you for some reason don’t know how to make someone laugh, then learn. Study that shit like it’s the SAT. If you are so unfortunate as to have no one in your life who can make you laugh, drop everything and find someone. Cross the desert if you must. Because laughter isn’t just about the funny. Laughter is the music of the deep cosmos connecting all human beings that says all the things mere words cannot.

American girl, they okay. When Mom-n-Dad say American, they mean white. When they refer to themselves—or me—they say hanguksaram, or Korean. I never call myself just Korean. I call myself Korean-American, always leading first with Korean or Asian, then the silent hyphen, then ending with American. Never just American. White people can describe themselves with just American. Only when pressed do they go into their ethnic heritage. Doesn’t seem fair that I have to forever explain my origin story with that silent hyphen, whereas white people don’t. It’s complicated. But simple. Simplicated.

But I feel bad for Brit, whose immigrant stories have most likely been washed away like surf erasing sandwriting. She may call herself European-American, but to most of the world she’s just white. As a member of the majority, she belongs everywhere. As the product of a long, mixed-up heritage, she belongs nowhere.

Saying it makes it feel more true. I get the feeling that the more I say it, the truer it will feel over time. And eventually this truth I’ve created will weave itself into every fiber of my reality, until it moves naturally with my every gesture like a favorite shirt I can’t help but wear always.

It’s like my heart has turned to lead and is now too heavy to carry alone, so Joy is helping me.

At first, I can’t tell why this is so hard for me. But really I’m lying to myself. I know exactly why it’s hard for me. Because down this conversational road is the acknowledgment of a fundamental difference between me and Brit—a fundamental difference of being—and I can’t bear to admit that such a difference exists. Brit—wise, awakened, aware Brit—belongs to a white majority whether she wants to or not, and is entitled to all its privileges—also whether she wants them or not.

I look at Brit a little differently now. Like there are more rooms than I realized in the house of her heart, and not necessarily neat-and-tidy ones.

She is scared to death saying this. I can see it in her eyes. I can smell it on her skin. Because love is more terrifying than anything. Love is a mighty blue hand coming straight for you out of the sky. All you can do is surrender yourself and pray you don’t fall to your death.

[blessed-but-distressed]

#FindEmmaSwanAFriend

Feeling left behind by her more successful, settled friends, Emma Swan moves to Scotland on a whim. Sure, she’s winning at Instagram, but something is still missing from her new life. Fortunately, her friends back home are on it. #FindEmmaSwanAFriend goes viral. Enter Killian Jones, reluctant columnist, who is on the hunt for his newest subject, and may just have found her. CS AU 

***

also on ff.net and ao3

***

Tagging: @katie-dub , @wholockgal , @kat2609 , @whovianlunatic, @optomisticgirl, @ladyciaramiggles, @the-lady-of-misthaven, @emmaswanchoosesyou, @ilovemesomekillianjones, @biancaros3, @cigarettes-and-scotch-whisky, @ms-babs-gordon  @ab-normality, @andiirivera, @fangirl-till-it-hurts, @onceuponaprincessworld , @natascha-remi-ronin, @kiwistreetswan and whoever else asks me.

***

A/N: Part 2 of 2. Hope you packed your crash helmets. This is a bumpy ride. Eternal thanks to @fraddit for holding my hand as I put this together. Maybe it’s not ready yet, but it’s spent enough time living rent-free in my head.

***

Killian

August W. Booth. Killian would never admit it, but he knew the name, even before Emma Swan had tumbled into his life. He’d remembered seeing it grace the spine of a book on the shelf of his old flat, back in London. He’d remembered asking Milah about it, and he remembered her non-committal response.

“It’s alright,” she’d said, flopping down onto the bed beside him. “If you’re into Americans who read too much Kafka travelling the world to ‘find themselves’.” She’d even done the air quotes, and he’d smiled at her honesty.

And in the months after she was gone, and he was left with nothing but her meagre possessions, he’d picked it up and read it cover to cover, in an effort to be closer to her.

But it really was just a book.

Killian didn’t want to ‘find himself’ on a Thai beach. Or follow in the footsteps of obscure European authors. Or even consume a questionable amount of hallucinogens. He had just wanted to wake up in a world where Milah still slept soundly beside him.

He’d donated the book to a charity shop on Camden High Street, along with most of Milah’s clothes.

He’d never imagined he’d meet the author. Or that he’d kind of hate him.

How to describe that first moment with August W. Booth? At first, Emma had been beside him, her hand held tight to his sleeve as they waded into the party throng. And then, with something that sounded like a choked sob, she was gone.

It was only when the crowd parted that he saw the spectacle for himself. Emma Swan, laughing. Damn near hysterical laughing, having launched herself at this bearded bloke in cable knit jumper. He’d barely caught her, but he had, even if he’d knocked over his beer in the process.

“Emma Swan, as I live and breathe!” The man, August, had declared, lifting her off her feet. “Have you gained weight?”

She smacked him on the shoulder, but her smile was still beatific, even as he set her back down. Killian had never seen that smile. Not once.

“Lost it, actually. Didn’t you hear? I run now. Like, habitually.”

“Now I come to think of it, Ruby did say something about that. But I assumed she was joking.”

Another smack. Another round of smiles as they talked over each other, trying to make up for lost time.

Killian was not a wallflower by nature, but something about the ready intimacy of their chatter kept him on the periphery, hovering awkwardly by a potted palm he highly suspected to be fake. He was just reaching out his hand to check when he felt a tug on his prosthetic.

She was dressed like Hilary Clinton, her blonde wig drunkenly askew. “Why’s your hand made of plastic?” she asked with all the tact of someone six vodka cranberries deep. “It is real? That’s sooo weird. Did you have some, like, terrible accident?”

Her accent was American, but much more the bubbly Southern Californian version than the one he was used to. He didn’t find it endearing.

“Hilary!” he greeted her with a forced smile, snatching his prosthetic back from her grasp. “Long time no see. How’s Bill? Still a complete cad?”

Her face was a picture of confusion. “My name is Hadley?” She looked down at her pantsuit, and then it seemed to dawn on her. “This is just a costume,” she explained slowly. “You know, for the party?”

“You don’t say! My apologies, Hadley. I mistook you for a woman of substance.”

It was not the most gentlemanly brushoff, but it did the trick.

Hadley squinted up at him for a few long moments, before tipping the rest of her drink down his front. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

He was, and he did. And thanks to her dramatics, the rest of the room were fast becoming aware of the fact too, even as her (seventh?) vodka cranberry seeped miserably into his shirt. He looked up just in time to catch Emma’s raised eyebrows as she approached, August following in her wake.

“Uh, do I want to know what you said to Hilary to piss her off?” she asked.

“Nothing she hadn’t already heard on the campaign trail,” Killian muttered, fanning his shirt away from where it was sticking fast to his chest. “I don’t know what it is about this party, Swan, but it doesn’t much approve of our outfits.”

Emma opened her mouth to retort, when a hand suddenly appeared in front of Killian’s face, attached to a weaselly-looking novelist.

“August Booth. You must be the Graham Humbert I’ve heard so much about?”

And he thought having a drink thrown over him would be the most aggrieving event of the evening.

“Killian Jones,” he corrected, delivering a slightly firmer handshake than necessary. “And I’m leaving.”

***

I feel like that could’ve gone better. ES

Are you okay? ES

Jones? ES

I’ve had worse things thrown at me than a girly cocktail, Swan. I dare say I’ll survive. KJ

Probably. But that’s not what I meant. ES

You should probably get back to your surprise visitor. He came a long way to see you. KJ

August is big boy. He can handle himself for a few minutes. Are you at home?  ES

No. KJ

So you’re walking around at large with a huge purple stain down your shirt? ES

Apparently so. KJ

That’s not weird at all. ES

How fortuitous then, that I’m not your problem. KJ

Wow. Okay. I guess you’re not. Fuck you very much. ES

***

It was a foolish idea. He had reminders set on his phone that pinged at regular intervals to remind him of exactly how foolish an idea it was. And yet, there he was anyway. Half a bottle of Captain Morgan later, standing outside Tink’s building in Newington, leaning on the buzzer.

The intercom chirruped into life. “If you don’t have a pizza, I don’t know you.”

He grinned, and leaned close to the speaker. “Margherita Cheese, extra olives.”

There was a pregnant pause. And then the front door buzzed open.

It wasn’t terribly late, by their usual standards. Barely past sunset, now they weren’t long past the solstice. And yet when Tink opened the door she was definitely wearing pyjamas. The kind one actually slept in, rather than entertained in.

Not that she seemed to care either way, tearing the pizza box from his hands with barely more than a nod in his direction. He followed her in anyway, and sat in her kitchen as she devoured half of it before coming up for air.

“Hungry?” he teased.

“My flatmate has us all on the Keto diet,” she shrugged by way of explanation. “It’s been hell. You know how many Greggs franchises I have to walk past on my way to work? It was only a matter of time until I cracked. But I’m glad it was you,” she crooned to the last of her pizza. “You were worth the wait.”

“I can’t decide if this is pathetic or adorable,” Killian mused.

“Definitely pathetic,” Tink declared, closing the box at last. “But you’re one to talk. You look rough as guts. And what did you get all over your shirt?”

He knew he should’ve stopped home to change first.

“Vodka cranberry, I believe.”

“Ooh,” she said, folding her hands under her chin. “The plot thickens. A deliberate attack?”

“It... may have been.”

She snorted. “You always know how to charm a lady, Jones. Until you don’t.”

“You never seemed to mind,” he reminded her, with a sly smile in her direction.

“Yeah, well,” she shrugged, before hooking a thumb in her direction. “Pathetic, remember?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said silky, letting his hand come to rest on hers. “In fact, I seem to recall a rather impressive list of talents…”

Tink slid her hand out from under his, to slap herself in the forehead. “So that’s what you’re doing here! It all makes sense now. You’ve had a shit night, and now you thought you’d show up, and what? I’d take you into my bedroom and help you forget all about it?”

“No, I just-”

“Just thought I was your standby girl. And I get it. I really do. Lord knows, I played the part enough times. But, honestly, Killian, wouldn’t you rather be with someone you’re actually crazy about? Like, oh, I don’t know...” She tapped her chin meaningfully, “...Emma?”

Something inside of him constricted at the sound of her name on Tink’s lips, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t want to think about her, or any of it. To hell with them.  

“Who’s Emma?” he replied, leaning in again. “All I see is you.”

He saw the slap coming, but his reactions weren’t what they were.

“Hey, you know we’re friends, right?” she said, her words a direct contradiction to the stinging of his cheek.  “I know we made a mess of things, but I thought we could still talk to each other. What’s going on? Because you’re not here because you find me completely irresistible.”

“Don’t I, love?”

It was a last ditch effort, but she wasn’t buying it.

“No, you don’t.” She sounded a little sad when she said it. “So start talking, or your drunken arse is getting an Uber. And you can start with what happened with Emma.”

“Nothing happened with Emma,” Killian muttered, looking around her kitchen for a possible source of alcohol. Any alcohol. So consumed was he by the search he didn’t catch Tink spiriting his phone from his pocket until she was already back in her chair again, scouring through his latest messages.

He really should’ve changed his passcode months ago.

“Oh, yeah, sure, I stand corrected,” she said, sliding it back across the table towards him with a roll of her eyes. “Nothing happened at all.”

Anger flaring, he snatched it back. “That’s really none of your business, love.”

“It is when you’re sitting in my kitchen, smelling like a distillery, and looking to use my body to distract you from your problems.”

God, he really was an arsehole. No wonder everyone he knew despised him. At last his eyes alighted on a stoppered bottle of brown liquid tucked away on top of the fridge. He stood up to retrieve it, and removed the stopper with his teeth.

He ducked down to take a whiff. Brandy. Perfect.

He found a pair of relatively clean glasses in the dish rack, and poured a generous measure into each.

“Peace offering?” he asked, slinging one of them in Tink’s direction.

Her glower didn’t abate any, but she accepted the glass anyway, wincing as her first sip hit her tongue.

“Needs water,” she said, handing it back with a cough.

Killian dutifully filled it up from the tap, and returned to his old place at the table. Just his performing this small act seemed to soften her somewhat, because the anger faded from her eyes.

“Look, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m trying a new thing. It’s called: ‘I only sleep with guys who are actually into me.’ And you know what? It’s going pretty good. I don’t wake up feeling like shit all the time.”

There was a novel concept.

“I’ve been an arsehole,” Killian summed up.

“Sometimes,” Tink agreed, with a comforting pat to his shoulder. “But I knew what your deal was. You get into bed with a guy with a missing hand and another girl’s name tattooed on his arm, you don’t really expect it’ll work out long-term.”

Now it was his turn to snort. “Aye, I suppose I deserved that.”

“You did,” she said, with an unapologetic grin. “But it’s okay. We were both just biding our time. Me until I grew some self-esteem, and you until your heart healed over a little.”

He wondered if it had. The wounds had been there so long, cut so deep, he rarely pressed them anymore. Rarely tested the strength of the scar tissue that had grown in their place.

“Well then,” he said, raising his glass. “To your self-esteem.”

Their glasses clinked, and he took his first sip. The brandy was thick across his tongue, but warming. A little burst of liquid courage to ask the question he’d been turning over and over in his mind since he’d glanced into Emma’s eyes on that settee, and felt things start to shift.

“You ever feel like there’s some things you just can’t get away from, no matter how hard you try?” he asked.

“My parents named me Tinker Bell. What do you think?” she replied, deadpan.

“Fair point,” he conceded, suddenly wishing he’d never opened his fool bloody mouth.

Unfortunately, Tink was not a mind reader and she didn’t let it go. “Are you talking about Milah?”

It had been so long since anyone had said her name aloud, he couldn’t entirely stop himself from flinching.

“Yes. No.” He shook his head. “Not entirely. I just… I’m not sure there’s ever really any overcoming the fundamental truths of our past.”

“Fundamental truths?” she asked, confused. “Like what?”

“Like, for example,” he began, wetting his lips with another syrupy slug of Brandy. “Everything my brother has ever done in his life has been to distance himself from our father. He’s got the upstanding, family man bit down. He’s a card-carrying member of the bourgeoisie. But when push comes to shove, they still made the exact same mistakes.”

She cocked her head to the side, considering this. “I mean, there’s a genetic component to addiction. And idiocy, arguably. But I don’t believe in that ‘sins of the father’ bullshit. You are who you make yourself into. I’m not saying it’s easy to break the pattern, but it’s doable.”

Killian wanted to believe that. But he wasn’t so sure he did.

“I couldn’t,” he pointed out. “When I lost Milah, I-” The rum in his stomach roiled, and he wondered if he was going to throw up. He wondered how long it would take for Tink to throw him out after. But after a moment, the feeling passed, and he realised she was still waiting for him to finish his thought. “I… I was no different,” he finished, feeling foolish.

“So you lost someone who mattered to you, and you handled it badly?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make you your Dad. It makes you a person with a heartbeat.”

Killian stretched his prosthetic out on the table in front of him, considering the shiny piece of hardware. His most expensive souvenir from the shortest trip he’d ever taken.

“It’s not a liability, you know,” Tink said gently, nudging his prosthesis with her glass. “The hand. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

It was. And it wasn’t. Drunken Hilary’s ill-timed comments had certainly hit their mark, but it wasn’t just the hand. It was what it represented. The very permanent reminder that he was no longer entirely whole.

Most days, he was fine with that. It was much the same as his tattoo. He liked having that proof. However tenuous. However painful. It was a tether to a time he’d been truly happy, and it was a comfort to him, to know he hadn’t imagined it.

Lately, he’d begun to wonder if he’d held on too long.

Tink had said so herself, they’d never stood a chance. That hadn’t bothered him so much before, because he hadn’t really been looking for one. At least, not with Tink.

“I think I fucked up with Emma,” he blurted out.

“Oh, you think?” Tink sneered, downing the last of her glass.

“I… definitely fucked up with Emma,” he agreed, tipping his head back to finish his own drink. It burned, and he let it. He deserved it.

This time it was Tink who reached for the bottle, pouring them another measure each. She didn’t top this one off with water

“To bitchy texts,” she declared, holding her glass aloft. “Ruining everything.”

Killian drank to that.

“So, are we past the denial portion of the evening? You like her, right?” Tink had that twinkle in her eye again. The same one she’d had when she realised the stain on his shirt hadn’t been an accident. Dirt. That was all she wanted.

“I… sometimes.”

Tink rolled her eyes. “Way to commit”

“She’s attractive,” Killian shrugged. “And I find myself... attracted.”

Tink blew a raspberry. “Oh, c’mon. I read your column. You are not subtle. You might as well start drawing ‘KJ 4 ES’ hearts all over your homework.”

“They aren’t that bad,” Killian scoffed.

“Really? Have you read the comment section lately? People ship it!”

“People are little old ladies with too much time to spend on Facebook between soap operas,” Killian responded blithely.  “I’m not overly concerned with their opinions.”

“How about mine? I saw you two sing an Elton John medley together, remember? That wasn’t attraction. That was fireworks.”

“It was stage theatrics,” he corrected. “Besides, it doesn’t matter now. She’s not the forgiving type. I’m not getting back in her good graces.”

“So why screw everything up in the first place? Jealousy?”

Yes.

Killian sighed. “A friend of hers is in town.”

“Like a special friend?”

“Like an old friend. Her oldest. She’s different with him. Happier. I’ve never seen her smile so much. I didn’t even know she could.”

“And you wish that was you? Making her happy?”

Yes.

Killian snorted. “She doesn’t want me.”

“How do you know? Did you ask her?”

As if that was something he could casually slip in a conversation somewhere. ‘Here’s your pint.. Oh, by the way, I quite fancy you and I was wondering if you fancy me back?’

“I think you’re forgetting she has already has a suitor.”

“Who? That Grant guy? They’ve been on what? Two dates? Two dates is not a relationship. Even I’ve spent more time with her than that.”

“Her friend certainly seemed to know all about him..” Killian swallowed back the bile in his throat at the thought.

Tink looked skeptical. “I doubt there’s much to know.”

“And I’ll remind you that this is all for naught, since we’ve established that I made a complete tit of myself, and she’s never speaking to me again.”

They both went silent at the thought. Tink refreshed their drinks.

“Well, then,” she said, offering up her glass for another impromptu toast. “Here’s to learning how to grovel.”

***

I’m sorry. I’m a complete arse. KJ

Yep. ES

***

Killian awoke in a strange room, his mouth dry and his virtue intact. It took him a moment of watching the dust motes dance in the shaft of morning light above his head to figure out exactly where he was.

Tink’s flat. It looked different by day. Shabbier. More lived in. He’d ended up on the sofa somehow, alone, twisted up in a crochet blanket into a strange configuration that would give him hell later. He was still wearing all of his clothes. Even the shirt with the cranberry stain down the front.

He could hear a radio somewhere nearby, giving a bleak update on the state of traffic on the City Bypass. Pipes shuddered, and soft feminine whispers punctuated the spaces between. The smell of burnt coffee grounds wafting up from the cafe downstairs, as the city woke to a new day.

He lay his head back down, and scrubbed at his face with his hand.

How many drinks had it been, all told? Eighty? Too many, he admitted to himself, as he surfed an accompanying wave of nausea.  It was time to find a new crutch. He wasn’t a student anymore.

“Hey, you’re up.” Tink’s voice was fuel to his headache, but her tone was friendly. He sat up to see her standing in the doorway, holding a giant steaming mug in her hands. The underlying tension of their usual morning after routine was gone. She looked comfortable, in a way he’d rarely seen.

“That for me?” he asked, hopefully.

“It is. Thought it might help with the, ah, sore head.”

It did. From the very first sip, Killian felt the fog in his head clearing, and life returning to his limbs. “Thanks, love.”

She nodded, and stepped back. “I was going to let you sleep, but uh, well… your sister-in-law is here.”

Killian nearly dropped the mug. “Elsa’s here?”

“In the kitchen. She showed up about ten minutes ago. You want me to send her in?”

Elsa. In Tink’s kitchen. Like his life hadn’t been strange enough lately.

“What is she-?”

“She didn’t say. But she-” Tink hesitated. “She looks rough. Kind of upset, you know?”

No, he didn’t know. Elsa was the queen of poise. She rarely let her feelings show, least of all to practical strangers. Was it Liam? The boys? Dammit, where was his phone? Had something happened?

He was already on his feet when Elsa rounded the doorway. And even with the warning, it was still a shock to see her. She did, indeed, look rough. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, her face noticeably puffy. She’d forgone the implacable facade she carried with her into the outside world.

“I’ll just… leave you two alone,” Tink said, backing out of the room.

He took a few steps towards Elsa, and then hesitated. “Is everyone-”

“Everyone’s fine. Alive. Healthy. I promise.” She tried for a reassuring smile, but it did nothing of the sort. “Robin told me you might be here. And I’m really sorry to intrude-”

“Elsa,” he said firmly, grasping her by the shoulders. “You’re never intruding. What’s happened?”

She bit her lip, but a single tear still managed to escape, unbidden, trailing down her fair cheek. “You know, I was beginning to think he was cheating on me?” She rolled her eyes heavenward, like that might stem the tide.

Oh god.

“He’d never.” Coming to Liam’s defence was automatic at this point. A reflex.

“No,” she agreed. “He’ll lie, and he’ll steal,  and he’ll gamble, but he won’t cheat.” The sound might’ve been a laugh, if it wasn’t so bitter. So hard. “I know everything. About the money. Weaver. He called me at work, asked after the children. He knew their names. Where they go to school. He even knew the colour of Lachie’s scooter!”

Fear slid into his abdomen like a blade, sharp and cold. “He wouldn’t-”

“He won’t!” Elsa’s eyes flashed defiantly. “I paid him his money. I did everything he asked. Malcolm Weaver has no reason to come near any of us, ever again.”

It was a curious mixture of relief and anxiety, all muddled together, making Killian’s head swim. And somewhere in the mix, guilt. A sense of culpability. “I should’ve told-”

“No,” she said, eyes shining with renewed anger. “My husband should’ve told me. He should’ve trusted me, like I thought I trusted him. And he never should’ve put you in the position of having to lie for him. Or lie to your family. And your eye-”

Her tears were flowing freely now, and Killian’s grip on her arms tightened. “He’s an idiot. And he’s too proud for his own good. But you know he never wanted to hurt you, or disappoint you. You or the boys.”

“I know,” Elsa hiccuped. “But he did. Not because he made a mistake-” She physically swatted the idea away. “We all do that. But because he couldn’t be honest with me. That’s not the marriage I thought I had.”

“Had?” The way she’s said it, it sounded so… final.

Elsa swiped a sleeve across her cheeks, mopping up her tears. “I love him, Killian. You know I love him. But I can’t look at him right now. Anna asked me to stay. I’ll take the boys to New York for the summer. I don’t need them getting caught up in all this.”

“But you are coming back?” The lump in Killian’s throat had nearly doubled. As much as he’d resented being the black sheep in a flock of prize Merinos, he couldn’t quite imagine a life now without them.

Elsa smiled a dim smile. “This is home. And you Jones Boys, you’re home too,” she said, gathering him into a fierce hug. “And you’re always going to be a part of this family, with or without Liam. You know that, don’t you?”

It was an oft-repeated phrase of hers. Always trying to include him. Always trying to set him at ease. But it had never really rung true, before. He’d never been wholly convinced. They were a family, and he was an interloper. A squatter. He’d come to terms with that.

It wasn’t until he found himself crushed under the weight of Elsa’s furious embrace that he finally let himself see it. It wasn’t just Elsa’s bird bones that had a hold on him. It was her affection for him. Her love. The well ran deep, the force more formidable than he would have imagined. A sister’s love.

“Aye,” he said, letting his chin rest atop her shoulder. “I know that.”

They separated a bit, and she smiled her first real smile. “Took you long enough.”

“I’m a Jones,” he shrugged wryly. “We’re not the smartest.”

“No,” Elsa agreed, sweeping his hair from his forehead like he’d watched her do for Lachie and Callum a thousand times. A protective, nurturing gesture. Automatic as breathing. “And what did you do to your shirt?”

***

I am your problem. That is, I wish to be your problem. KJ

I confess: I was an almighty dickhead the other night. And if you don’t forgive me for that, I would understand. KJ

I made you feel as if you weren’t important to me, but that isn’t true. We’re friends. Good friends, I hope. I was angry at so many people that night, but none of them were you. You just got caught in the crossfire, and I can only apologise for that. I would like to do so in person, if you’d permit me. KJ

You give good apology, Killian Jones. But I know how good you are with words. ES

Not good enough, apparently. KJ

You know you made me feel like an idiot, right? For thinking we were friends? ES

We are friends. I’m just a spectacularly bad one, sometimes. I could blame the drink, or the stress of Liam’s secret, or Hilary’s tactless comments about my hand, or August not having a clue who I was, or even how fucking raw I was after sitting on that settee with you. But the truth is, sometimes I’m not quite the man I want to be. KJ

Maybe you don’t want to be friends with someone like that. I wouldn’t blame you. But I also think you understand, perhaps better than anyone, why we push people away without really meaning to. KJ

A little fucked up. A little scared. KJ

I understand. ES

I mean, I’m still kind of pissed. ES

But I get it. ES

Pint? KJ

Busy. I’m babysitting a novelist, remember? They’re very high maintenance. ES

Bring him along. Don’t you think it’s about time he learned of the wonder that is Open Mic Night? They moved it to Friday this week. KJ

Oh no. That can only end in heartbreak. ES

Heartbreak Hotel ;-) KJ.

Maybe next time, Jones. ES

I look forward to it, Swan. KJ

***

Emma and her novelist never made an appearance at Open Mic Night, though Killian spent half the night watching the door anyway. Not the entire night, mind. Robin was being far too entertaining for that.

His bereaved, beloved Robin, who’d taken the stage and was attempting a version of Wild Thing complete with a series of hip gyrations which made Eddie Vedder’s relationship with his microphone stand seem chaste.

A courtship display if Killian had ever seen one. All directed at the brunette in the front row, who looked decidedly more like the university administrator she was than Killian remembered last time he’d seen her. As Wonder Woman. Out of costume, she was better recognised as Regina Mills, University Vice-Chancellor.

Apparently they were dating now. And things were going well.

He could only confess to a little jealousy. Robin, more than anyone he knew, deserved a little happiness. Though when things started to get hot and heavy after Robin’s encore, Killian was only too happy to make his excuses.

***

Returning home to the big empty house in Merchiston brought mixed feelings. Killian still preferred his bed to the medieval torture device which was Tink’s sofa, but there was something unnerving about the place with the boys gone. Without laughter, or chaos, or the 60% chance of treading on a stray Lego brick with your bare feet at any given moment.

He was almost disappointed when he made it down the hallway unscathed in the dark. Right up until the moment he switched on his bedroom light, and found a dark clad figure standing directly before him.

His scream was not particularly masculine. Not as he stumbled backwards, and not as he picked up the nearest object and threw it with all of his might at his would-be attacker.

The boot caught the figure upside the head, hard enough to have him swearing. By the second string of curses, Killian realised his mistake.

“Bloody hell, Liam. Do you have a death wish?” he asked, dropping the second boot and coming to his brother’s side. “I thought I was about to meet my fucking maker.”

“My. Mistake,” Liam ground out through gritted teeth, hands still clutched to his head where Killian had struck his blow. Liam didn’t have to ask who he’d mistaken him for. Even after Elsa’s intervention, the spectre of Weaver’s goons loomed large in their imaginations.

And that’s when he saw it, lying on the rug where it had fallen during their altercation. The Galaxy bar.

Liam’s eyes followed his gaze, crinkling slightly despite his pain. “Happy St Killian’s Day, little brother.”

***

-KJ has sent you a document file-

What’s this? ES

I’m sure even you can recognise a Word document when you see one, Swan. KJ

I mean, why am I getting it? You’ve never sent me a copy of your column before it’s published before. ES

I’m trying something new. It’s called ‘consideration for other people’s feelings’. KJ

Huh. Seems kind of out of character for you. ES

I probably deserved that. KJ

You definitely did. ES

This column touches on some… more sensitive topics. I’d feel more comfortable having your approval before I took it to Liam. Would you please indulge me? KJ

Fiiiine. ES

... ES

Um. Wow. ES

Too personal. Understood. Consider it vanquished. KJ

No! I mean, yeah, it’s personal. But it’s… real. I never really… It’s good, Killian. And if Liam doesn’t have a problem with it, then I don’t have a problem with it. ES

You’re positive? Once I post this, there’s no taking it back. KJ

Positive. ES

As you wish. KJ

[angrylizardjacket]

giselle/roger nsfw headcanons no-one asked for

except for my dear, filthy Queen Giselle Defense Squad @prettyboyroger & @ginghampearlsnsweettea. Disclaimer; I’m 20 and don’t know shit about being pregnant/having kids/being an aging rockstar, okay?

70s (beginning of their relationship) 

i don't know how to phrase this politely

angry??

like they'd been both passive aggressive and openly hostile to one another for a few years

so when they first hook up after their terrible setup date it's sort of a 'i can't believe i'm doing this, but /yes/ i want to, please for the love of god stop talking you're ruining it, roger'

she makes sure he gets her off the first time they sleep together 

they don't actually sleep together for a few weeks after the first date, like they go out, and it's weird at first because of course it is, and they usually take separate cars there and then back to their own homes, and they feel like they're in a weird gray area because they don't know if it'll last 

one night, it's like eleven and roger's come straight from rehearsals, and he hadn't told her he'd be showing up, but he's on her doorstep and she's smiling at him like 'what are you doing here' and he just kisses her

"what are you doing here?"

"i- is that a joke? i mean, i can leave if you really want me to" 

"don't be daft, come inside."

sex is fun, and they're adults and rock musicians it's not like they don't know what they're doing 

and i mean that both metaphorically and physically 

giselle is Flexible and roger can keep a rhythm like nobody's business and both of them have excellent stamina i'll tell you that for free 

they still argue a lot, but a lot of the time they argue just to have angry or makeup sex 

they're both switches, but giselle leans more towards being more dominant 

roger smacked her ass when they were hanging out with the rest of the band and she almost decked him on the spot, instead when they get back to his place, she makes him apologise and she teases him so much as punishment that he's Begging for her to touch him before she does 

they sleep together often, but it always feels quite casual, despite the fact that the relationship is serious; it's like the john mulaney quote when he's asked the last time he made love "made love? in college, but i had sex yesterday"

late late 70s/early 80s 

they're comfortable with their relationship and things become more intimate and like... softer? if that makes sense 

like giselle wakes up late one sunday morning and roger's sitting at the kitchen table and he's cooked them both breakfast, and like, it's not the first time but something about it just makes her heart melt and they have sex in the kitchen

neither of them are really the type to say 'i love you' during sex, but she's sitting at the edge of the kitchen counter and he's kneeling with his head between her legs, she's got her hand in his hair and she just whimpers 'god i love you' and he takes a moment to pause, press a kiss to her inner thigh and look up at her with a smile 'i love you too' 

so now it's sort of a coin flip between sweet and more playful, or a combination of the two 

they're also both insufferable teases 

giselle gets invited to sing at a red carpet event and she brings roger along, and she stops to do an interview and he leans in and whispers something to her completely straight faced like he's a secret service agent informing the president about the presence of a bomb or something, and giselle just freezes and the expression on her face is that she's just been given some very surprising news when actually roger's just told her exactly what the sight of her in that dress makes him want to do, and that he knows how close the nearest bathroom is if she's interested 

it takes her a full ten seconds to reboot her brain, and she finishes the interview without acknowledging anything had happened - as soon as the interview's over and they've walked far enough away, she does smile a little bit 

"i don't trust you not to ruin my makeup, so not until after the show" 

"okay, that's wise i suppose, but still..." and he trails off and gives her a /very obvious/ look over, and it takes a surprising amount of giselle's self control not to let him have his way (what can she say he looks damn good in that suit) 

after roger cheats on her, and they get back together, there's like three months where he's barely allowed to Touch her 

when she finally sleeps with him again, it's slow, deliberate, and he treats her like a queen 

it's another apology on top of all the others he'd given 

and she'd stopped being outwardly angry about it in the past few weeks but it all comes back 

"i cannot fucking Believe you think you could ever find someone better than me" 

it's easily some of the best sex roger's ever had and it was out of Spite

sex goes back to being angry/makeup sex for a while before giselle concedes, missing how soft and sweet he could be at times 

okay so 'All The Queen's Men' was written about the American leg of their tour, where they'd already gone through the European leg, and the rest of queen had found out the hard way during that first leg that the adrenaline of performing really gets both roger and giselle going

there's a fifteen minute intermission between their performances, and they alternate who opens for who 

after a particularly incredible performance by giselle, she's absolutely glowing with energy and adrenaline and roger can tell, and he takes her back to her dressing room for a quickie when he's meant to be warming up 

he ends up being about three minutes late and has to run on stage, and freddie calls him out on it, asking him where he's been 

roger sits himself behind the drums and leans in very close to the microphone, smirking 'just helping a friend practice her falsetto' with absolutely zero subtlety 

freddie looks like he regrets asking and the line becomes Iconic amongst queen fans, especially girls who were thirsty over roger 

the public still don't really know about giselle and roger being married, especially since they want to keep their relationship quiet after the whole cheating thing happened, people know they dated but it just sort of.... never really hit the public eye if that makes sense 

a lot of girls like to claim it was them that he was talking about, and even though people speculate about it being giselle, even after the article comes out, some fans still think he might have been talking about someone else, that he may have cheated again, which giselle thinks is one of the dumbest things in the world when she reads it, she doesn't confirm anything until Much Much Later 

she posts a #flashbackfriday clip of the line on instagram, since the concert was recorded, with the caption 'so that's what the kids were calling it back then.... '

lilith and rosemary are used to knowing too much about their parents because there's countless books, articles, and documentaries about them, but they still play mortified in the comments

okay jumping back to the 80s and the tour 

after a show you cannot leave them alone for five minutes 

okay not after every show, but after a Lot 

whoever opened the show for the night will be all over whoever closes the show, and they disappear together almost immediately 

they'll eventually turn up for drinks at the after party; giselle looks mostly innocent, her clothes aren't too dishevelled and she ties her hair back so it doesn't look too messy. roger always has the smuggest smile and if he's got a hickey or scratch marks, he's doing all he can to show them off

giselle doesn't get on her knees for just anyone, but damn if she didn't drop when roger came off the stage at intermission and she saw him in eyeliner and leather pants for the first time in person (a la We Will Rock You at madison square garden in the movie)

tbh she did not enjoy sucking dick when she was younger, but the way it makes roger moans is like music and she's grown to enjoy it, but only with him 

giselle is very good at keeping quiet and not getting caught, and roger likes to try and test this 

the rest of the band have learned to knock on the door of every smallish space they want to enter, closet, cupboard, bathroom, etc, because if giselle and roger are in there, there's a 70% chance the door is locked, but only a 40% chance you'll be able to hear them in there 

one time (early in the tour) brian comes to tell them about the afterparty, he listens at the door and it seems safe, but he opens it, and roger's got giselle pressed against the dressing room mirror, and he dress is pulled up around her waist and she's biting her hand with her head throwing back and she's been struggling so hard to keep quiet, the moment she sees brian she lets herself be loud, shouting 'Fuck Off' at the top of her lungs and she reaches blindly to throw a can of hairspray at him before he closes the door, and so the seal's been broken so she gasps and moans over roger's fucking laughter at the whole situation, but they're both too close for it to have ruined the mood 

early 80s (trying for baby)

it starts because honestly, John and Veronica's kids are So Cute and things are finally settling down between Roger and Giselle, and they're both sort of like..... we could have kids, like that's a thing we can definitely do

also they're well aware their kids are gonna be outrageously pretty 

giselle doesn't do things by halves and so she goes to see doctors and she and roger sit down and actually talk about having a plan, and what it would mean for their lives to have kids 

the doctor is like..... the best conditions to conceive are stress free ones (being rockstars is kind of counterproductive) 

so essentially they plan to Officially start trying for a baby in about a year, once their lives have calmed down a little and they can dedicate time to this, ahem, endeavour 

that being said, before this, giselle was quite vigilant with birth control, but once they've planned everything she goes off of it so that there's time for any hormone changes will be corrected by the time they're actually trying for a baby 

and at first they're still using condoms because The Plan, but after a while it just sort of becomes a 'well if it happens it happens, but it's not like we're tracking anything just yet so it's not like there's that high of a chance' 

they fuck Everywhere 

both of them try and justify it as 'maybe a different place/position is better for conception' which they both know is bullshit but it leads to some pretty interesting sex

also public sex

not that that was something either of them was Super into before, like they'd done it a lot on tour, and when they were first together, but now 

"what if our kid was conceived at the grammys" (1983; giselle had been nominated for best music video for Heaven Sent) (it would be their third year in a row fucking in the bathroom at the grammys, which giselle is actually very proud of) 

like she knows it's a joke but giselle's also Super Into It 

they try to wait until after the award show, but giselle wins, and the moment she gets back to their seats he pulls her into the bathroom and eats her out, telling her how proud he is 

they fuck at the grammys, and then procede to get high and fuck at the afterparty too 

it's honestly one of the best nights of giselle's life and she remembers about 65% of it 

also, roger meant the conception thing as a joke but...... whoops. 

they're almost a year ahead of schedule 

giselle panics at first because it's Too Soon, but roger's there 'we've literally already got a plan? just change the dates, we'll be fine' 

but also they're both Super Excited!! 

for the first few months they're still all over each other 

he's So Enamoured with giselle when she's pregnant, he very genuinely thinks she's the most beautiful woman in the world 

"what if our kid is prettier than us" is an actual thing he's said; "we're both very attractive people, Zelle, what if that kid gets only the good parts of us and has no, like, humanizing flaw regarding looks?" 

"excuse me, roger, what do you think is my humanising flaw regarding my looks is?" 

"that's my point! we don't have one either; this kid might end up being the most attractive person alive!" 

when the ultrasound reveals that they're having twins giselle cries, she's so excited but also so nervous to carry twins

roger spins her around in a hug as soon as she's standing (he went with her to the appointment and was just frozen when they got the news, staring at the picture of the ultrasound absolutely shocked, but in a good way) and she has to be like 'careful, gotta take it easy' but they're both ecstatic!! 

i won't go in depth because it personally squicks me out, but there's definitely pregnant sex

roger's so proud of himself and of giselle 

they officially tell the rest of the band when they have them over for dinner, and giselle hasn't really planned exactly how she wants to tell them, but before dinner even starts she hears roger in the living room talking to freddie, and he announces 'also hey look what we made' and she peers in and sees him pull out the picture of the ultrasound, and just the way he's so casual about it just eases her anxiety so much, and she can't help but grin because Roger's smiling so brightly as Freddie hugs him so tightly, and they call the others over 

roger sees giselle by the door and he waves her over, wraps his arm around her as they're both showered with congratulations 

"i knew you were worried about it, and if i recall we were supposed to keep your stress levels down" he murmurs it to her so she's the only one who can hear it, and they're smiling at each other, and the other three don't know what's being said but they've literally never seen the two of them so in love (which goes back to the bickering in public, sweet in private thing) and it's like 'ah yes, these two really do belong together'

late 80s/early 90s (after rosemary's born) 

first of all, literally any of other band members are happy to babysit but rosemary ends up preferring to stay with John and lilith doesn't have a favourite but Jim's the only one who can tell her it's bedtime who she'll listen to without being told twice 

Roger and Giselle fool around a lot when the kids are still babies/toddlers since they sleep in another room, but once the kids are able to walk around and open doors and they're no longer in cribs it becomes a lot harder 

they're interrupted A Lot even when they think they have time 

rosemary's asleep in her crib upstairs and lilith's on a playdate, and giselle finds herself pressed to the counter with roger's hands in her shorts as they're preparing dinner, and he tugs her pants down right as there's a knock at the door 

"fuck, is it 5:30 already? that was quick" "don't worry, love, we can finish this tonight" roger smirks, kissing her quickly. 

giselle pulls up her pants and opens the door where lilith's friend's mother is dropping her off, and the other woman gives her a Look and giselle's not sure if she looks flustered or if it's because she's Giselle, but either way the woman doesn't say anything, she just smiles and thanks giselle for letting lilith come to the park 

when the girls get older and can look after themselves on weekend mornings, there's a lot of sleepy, quiet morning sex for roger and giselle

it's a rare moment of peace that they get to themselves and they're going to make the most of it 

having kids has changed their lives dramatically, and so a lot of the time they take advantage of their alone time in the shower 

idk i don't have huge amount of headcanons for this era i'm sorry 

late 90s/present 

they're disgustingly affectionate once the girls move out 

not that they weren't sweet and loving before, but now they don't have to worry about embarrassing or scarring their daughters 

even though they're getting older they still can't keep their hands to themselves, maybe now moreso than before 

especially after both the girls have just moved out 

there's a moment when they're both still in pyjamas, or well, giselle's in pyjama shorts and her shirt's been tossed somewhere to the side and roger wasn't wearing a shirt to begin with, and she's sitting on the counter, he's standing between her legs and he presses a kiss to her collar. she's got her hands on his hips, her thumbs dipping below the waistband of his pants, and he's got one of his hands is on the small of her back, holding her close, and the other on her breast, his thumb gently brushing over nipple, and she just starts laughing 

"it feels like we just moved in all over again"

it becomes almost a game, but it's so much more tender and sweet this time around, they're having fun and reminiscing in their own way 

so yeah, Super affectionate and handsy now that they can appreciate their time to themselves, if that makes sense

Lets Talk About Brian and Roger Going On Tour Again; 

giselle performs with them at one of their tour stops, and after she's finished her songs, she thanks the crowd and goes to leave, but turns back and runs up the drumrisers to give roger a kiss, and the whole crowd awwws 

"no, please don't encourage them" brian's there pinching the bridge of his nose and having flashbacks the 80s tour. roger pulls giselle in for a proper kiss and brian looks like his soul has left his body; "also just a heads up to the crew, i'd avoid roger's dressing room after the show" 

giselle pulls away from roger who's now laughing his fucking ass off, and she grabs the microphone and it squeals but she doesn't care, she gets super close to the microphone and just says "that was one time, brian"  

"one time that you saw, at least" everyone hears roger correct her, and the crowd is going absolutely mad, brian's just laughing (it was a long time ago after all) and giselle finally leaves the stage

he's right tho, performing still gets both of them going So Much