#( new steps | verses | james )

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How plausible sentence generators are changing the bullshit wars

This Friday (September 8) at 10hPT/17hUK, I'm livestreaming "How To Dismantle the Internet" with Intelligence Squared.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit":

https://locusmag.com/2023/09/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-plausible-sentence-generators/

Here's what happened: I got stranded at JFK due to heavy weather and an air-traffic control tower fire that locked down every westbound flight on the east coast. The American Airlines agent told me to try going standby the next morning, and advised that if I booked a hotel and saved my taxi receipts, I would get reimbursed when I got home to LA.

But when I got home, the airline's reps told me they would absolutely not reimburse me, that this was their policy, and they didn't care that their representative had promised they'd make me whole. This was so frustrating that I decided to take the airline to small claims court: I'm no lawyer, but I know that a contract takes place when an offer is made and accepted, and so I had a contract, and AA was violating it, and stiffing me for over $400.

The problem was that I didn't know anything about filing a small claim. I've been ripped off by lots of large American businesses, but none had pissed me off enough to sue – until American broke its contract with me.

So I googled it. I found a website that gave step-by-step instructions, starting with sending a "final demand" letter to the airline's business office. They offered to help me write the letter, and so I clicked and I typed and I wrote a pretty stern legal letter.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a campaigning law-firm for over 20 years, and I've spent the same amount of time writing about the sins of the rich and powerful. I've seen a lot of threats, both those received by our clients and sent to me.

I've been threatened by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ralph Lauren to the Sacklers. I've been threatened by lawyers representing the billionaire who owned NSOG roup, the notoroious cyber arms-dealer. I even got a series of vicious, baseless threats from lawyers representing LAX's private terminal.

So I know a thing or two about writing a legal threat! I gave it a good effort and then submitted the form, and got a message asking me to wait for a minute or two. A couple minutes later, the form returned a new version of my letter, expanded and augmented. Now, my letter was a little scary – but this version was bowel-looseningly terrifying.

I had unwittingly used a chatbot. The website had fed my letter to a Large Language Model, likely ChatGPT, with a prompt like, "Make this into an aggressive, bullying legal threat." The chatbot obliged.

I don't think much of LLMs. After you get past the initial party trick of getting something like, "instructions for removing a grilled-cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible," the novelty wears thin:

https://www.emergentmind.com/posts/write-a-biblical-verse-in-the-style-of-the-king-james

Yes, science fiction magazines are inundated with LLM-written short stories, but the problem there isn't merely the overwhelming quantity of machine-generated stories – it's also that they suck. They're bad stories:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

LLMs generate naturalistic prose. This is an impressive technical feat, and the details are genuinely fascinating. This series by Ben Levinstein is a must-read peek under the hood:

https://benlevinstein.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-large-language

But "naturalistic prose" isn't necessarily good prose. A lot of naturalistic language is awful. In particular, legal documents are fucking terrible. Lawyers affect a stilted, stylized language that is both officious and obfuscated.

The LLM I accidentally used to rewrite my legal threat transmuted my own prose into something that reads like it was written by a $600/hour paralegal working for a $1500/hour partner at a white-show law-firm. As such, it sends a signal: "The person who commissioned this letter is so angry at you that they are willing to spend $600 to get you to cough up the $400 you owe them. Moreover, they are so well-resourced that they can afford to pursue this claim beyond any rational economic basis."

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

Here's the thing: the fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit":

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit

LLMs may not be good at generating science fiction short stories, but they're excellent at generating bullshit. For example, a university prof friend of mine admits that they and all their colleagues are now writing grad student recommendation letters by feeding a few bullet points to an LLM, which inflates them with bullshit, adding puffery to swell those bullet points into lengthy paragraphs.

Naturally, the next stage is that profs on the receiving end of these recommendation letters will ask another LLM to summarize them by reducing them to a few bullet points. This is next-level bullshit: a few easily-grasped points are turned into a florid sheet of nonsense, which is then reconverted into a few bullet-points again, though these may only be tangentially related to the original.

What comes next? The reference letter becomes a useless signal. It goes from being a thing that a prof has to really believe in you to produce, whose mere existence is thus significant, to a thing that can be produced with the click of a button, and then it signifies nothing.

We've been through this before. It used to be that sending a letter to your legislative representative meant a lot. Then, automated internet forms produced by activists like me made it far easier to send those letters and lawmakers stopped taking them so seriously. So we created automatic dialers to let you phone your lawmakers, this being another once-powerful signal. Lowering the cost of making the phone call inevitably made the phone call mean less.

Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.

Chatbots are the nuclear weapons of the bullshit wars. Want to generate 2,000 words of nonsense about "the first time I ate an egg," to run overtop of an omelet recipe you're hoping to make the number one Google result? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate fake complaints or fake positive reviews? The Stochastic Parrot will produce 'em all day long.

As I wrote for Locus: "None of this prose is good, none of it is really socially useful, but there’s demand for it. Ironically, the more bullshit there is, the more bullshit filters there are, and this requires still more bullshit to overcome it."

Meanwhile, AA still hasn't answered my letter, and to be honest, I'm so sick of bullshit I can't be bothered to sue them anymore. I suppose that's what they were counting on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/#robolawyers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #chatbots #plausible sentence generators #robot lawyers #robolawyers #ai #ml #machine learning #artificial intelligence #stochastic parrots #bullshit #bullshit generators #the bullshit wars #llms #large language models #writing #Ben Levinstein

[ecstarry]

@jegulus-microfic - street - 254 words / february microfics

“You really shouldn’t touch that,” Regulus turned at the voice of a man. He was not prepared for the sight of a handsome, tall man, with glasses, and messy —quite lovely if he’s honest— hair.

"Thank you for the tip, but I assure you, I'm well-versed in museum etiquette," he responded, attempting to conceal the flush creeping up his neck as the man's gaze lingered over his body. 

“I’m James,” Regulus reached for James’ extended hand. “Regulus.”

“I haven’t seen you before, Regulus,” James said with a tentative tone. 

"If your intention is to flirt with me, I'd suggest delving into your library of pick-up lines for something a bit more compelling," Regulus remarked, careful to conceal just how tempting he found the idea of anything James proposed.

His comment rewarded him with the absolute most gorgeous smile Regulus had ever seen. Oh gosh, please ask me out. 

“You’re mean,” and you’re hot he thought. “Let me take you out, please. I might beg if you say no,” James took a step closer as he asked. 

"Isn't it a bit early to have you on your knees, James?" Regulus teased back while arching his brow, causing James's cheeks to flush with a pink hue.

"Please, allow me to take you out," James responded slowly. Regulus couldn't help but enjoy seeing this new man becoming flustered. 

“Okay,” Regulus offered him a smile to accompany his response.

"There's this great place right down the street," James said, reaching for his hand. This time, Regulus didn't let go.

#jegulus #james potter #james x regulus #regulus black #gay dead wizards #jegulus fanfiction #jegulus microfic #harry potter fanfic #i love them so much #ao3 #i love them your honor #i love them both #look at them #marauders #sunseeker #starchaser

[alexander-arcturus-black-lupin]

I see the new look, hoping you can maybe gift us a shot based on that y'know 👀 maybe library, fluffy, Remmy shi- (feel free to completely deny this)

Well ofc

Library

You thumbed the pages reading but not reading, your gaze flickering the the messy-haired boy beside you. Headphones in, one hand on his book the other on you thigh. He was unreal in the golden light of the afternoon, his hair brilliantly unruffled.

It was comfortable at first, grounding. Now with every stoke on your thigh, your mind cleared and faded to black. You cleared your throat and flipped the page.

"What you reading love," his voice a husky low from not talking.

"The dead poet's society, it was a muggle book i got back in London," You blab.

"Read it to me," he says coming closer. "I'm interested."

"Oh me Oh life of the faithless of these re-curring," you pause and look over at him, his eyes on you in rapt attention. "Of endless train of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish, what good amid these oh me, oh life?"

"Answer," he says, eyes still on you. "That you are here that life exists; and identity and that the play goes on and on and you may contribute a verse,"

"You know it? Of course you do which book haven't you read?" you ask incredulous as he buries his head in his arms before looking at you sheepishly through his hair.

"May or may not have read it a couple times," he grinned. His scars pulling as he smiles. You're mesmerised by it.

"Sure~," it came out breathily shocking you yourself. You meant to whisper it.

He freezes for a bit, his eyes unfocusing. Then he blinks and he's back to normal.

"What's wrong," Did you do something wrong?

"You-" he stops and tilts his head. "You pretty witch," he says softly.

His statement shocks you and your cheeks heat up.

"You better not be going with Larrot or Larron or Lall- whatever his name is for The Ball the ministry is holding."

"Remus? Are you insinuating something,"

"I'm insinuating a lot of things, one you're gonna dump him." you hum coming closer.

"Two, I'm going to be stepping in to replace your botchy date," you hum again as you lean in.

"Three," he paused.

"Three?" you prompted. You had just noticed how closed you'd gotten. Both your breathes coming in shallow currents.

"Three, I kiss you like i love you, which i do, then and now only if you let me," his hand coming up to caress you cheek. "Only ever if you let me,"

"I'll always let you, Moons," you say. He grins his mesmerising grin and dips in to kiss you, so softly you feel yourself float. It's comforting how his hands wrap around you and bring you in. Settling on his lap.

"Well, Well, Moony finally grew up," you break up to find Sirius and James standing over by the bookshelves. Sirius clicked the polaroid you hadn't noticed him holding. Remus' tugged on your skirt fluently as he picked you up, like you weighed nothing. (Werewolf strength you bet)

"Gonna keep this for the grand-kids," you burrow your face in Remus' neck as he tells of his friends. Your lips tingling, reminding you of what just happened.

I just kissed Remus John Lupin and i liked it and he likes meee

Blushing kicking screaming sprinting foaming at the mouth hyperventilating just Remus~ bro fr ayusDgHiunhaHNHbujgbBNUINubymhlksnlwkKgq

#remus john lupin #remus lupin #remus lupin fanfiction #remus lupin fluff #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin x you #remuslupin #remus lupin x y/n #remus lupin x oc #remus lupin x fem!reader #Remus lupin x f!reader

[caltropspress]

Earl Sweatshirt: A Geography of Grief and Growth

I made myself the poet of the world. The white man had found a poetry in which there was nothing poetic….I had soon to change my tune.

—Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

I suggest that we do not necessarily need to hear and know what is stated in its entirety, that we do not need to “master” or conquer the narrative as a whole, that we may know in fragments.

—bell hooks, “Teaching New Worlds/New Words” (1994)

Breakin’ ’em down to micro-fragments.

—Saafir, “Battle Drill” (1994)

What is asked of me is not to ascend but to descend.

—Robert Bly (1990)

1.

Earl Sweatshirt’s arc, swerving and dervishy, isn’t difficult to see, as we’ve witnessed it with him—we’re either interlocutors or interlopers, both with questionable motives. So when Earl looks back on school daze, as he does on “OD,” we look back with him (though ours is often an imperial gaze [HOW COULD IT NOT BE?]). We tee-hee and titter as we hear that “somebody tooted in the student commons,” tooted being the most puerile word for gas he could have chosen. An array of scatological options were ignored. It’s a deliberate gesture toward juvenilia. He doesn’t want his expression to be too mature, ha. He wants to welcome you to the romper room, ha. Remaining a kid until the moment he expires, apparently. So he sets the adolescent scene: the student commons. “The bell rang,” and the accused student was spared the prolonged opprobrium. In about four seconds, the student will begin to post. He “went home and argued in the comments,” channeling his embarrassment elsewhere, talking shit (shit) on the internet behind the safety and quasi-anonymity of a screen—an odd facade. He can walk right up to your avi and diss you. That’s his philosophy. The public humiliation replaced with a private self-possession. The discomfort of the crowd exchanged for the solace of solitude.

2.  DID AN ANGEL SPEAK?

The sonics of “tooted” and “student” are twee, giggle-inducing. We laugh along with the concatenation of m and n phonemes [somebody | student | commons | rang | went | home | then | in | comments]. The near-homophonous commons and comments scan hysterical. With “OD,” it’s easy to confuse adolescence with adulthood. That “somebody” committed this social transgression seems defensive. Maybe it was him—the subject, Earl, Thebe—seeing as how the rest of the song is delivered in the first-person. Embrace the Age of Immaturity. Channel the Fat Boys: Darren Robinson’s flatulent beatbox. Place it beside the disorderly lyrics that Bobbito spits: “I write my own shit from finish to start, / Diminish the heart, / I eat a knish and then I fart.” Like the Cenobites, Earl kicks a dope verse, and only that. “I keep my sentences short,” he says on “EAST.” Beauty is brevity, brevity beauty. A “brevity pack,” as Earl has referred to the Feet of Clay songs. He strives to be live ’cause he got no choice. He runs his own business like James Joyce. In A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man, a similar flatus incident unravels. At Clongowes Wood College (Stephen Dedalus’s Coral Reef Academy), a “stout student who stood below…on the steps” by the name of Goggins “farted briefly.” Sonically, the sentence shares much with Earl’s opening line. Dixon asks, in a “soft voice,” “Did an angel speak?” But the others react with bellicosity and name-calling (stinkpot; flamingest dirty devil). Goggins doesn’t retreat home; he simply asks, “It did no one any harm, did it?” You still bet that you can harm me, but you don’t alarm me, Goggins might say another way, reprising Del the Funky Homosapien, echoplexing Masta Ace. 

3. 

Earl “watched the doppler move,” the wavelength shift—the siren song of the “toot,” something insidious—or maybe it’s just the tremors we’re feeling. Woop, woop: that’s the sound of the beast, KRS would say. The frequency shivers. The shift, the movéd doppler, means Earl is immediately older, he’s the child who “get[s] introduced to violence,” even if he acknowledges the line was inspired by his nephew on a playground in South Africa, experiencing apartheid reincarnate as a whiteboy cuts him in line for the slide. Cranly, bullying Goggins, “shove[s] him violently down the steps.” The doppler moves. It slides into violence—like the violence visited upon the MOVE compound located at 6221 Osage Avenue in Philly in 1985. Gradations of black/white. ELUCID mentions the “gray on [his] face showing age” on his Osage (2016) project. Isn’t it strange—how the youngins can turn cold, hoarfrosty, in an instant? The grayscale cover to ELUCID’s tape is graced by a photograph of Birdie Africa, the sole child survivor of the siege. The bone fragments of the MOVE children have since been used in anthropology courses at UPenn and Princeton—case studies. It’s a good trope. Fascinating stuff.

4.  TRYIN’ TO TRANSFORM YOU BOYS TO MEN LIKE DAYCARE

When JuJu of the Beatnuts asked, You want pain?, he wasn’t referencing the dramatical-traumatical pain Earl negotiates—JuJu’s question posed a ruffneck and ruffian pain on “Watch Out Now.” Somewhere closer to Marcy, where Jay-Z’s streets was watching. Earl clocks minutes, anaphoric with what he watches (I watched the doppler… / I watched a child…), much like Dylan’s portentous hard rain in which he saw endless racialized visions: “I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it”; “I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’”; “I saw a white ladder all covered with water.” For Earl, the ladder is a slide. The saw is watched. Witnesses all.

5.

In “Theory as Liberatory Practice,” bell hooks writes that she “came to theory because [she] was hurting”: “I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing.” hooks says that she “came to theory young, when [she] was still a child,” citing Terry Eagleton who argues that “[c]hildren make the best theorists.” Children, Eagleton insists, possess “a wondering estrangement.” No wonder, then, that “since a jit” Earl has found no use in “giving up.” He rather make it make sense. 

6.

I beat you to the point. Having gained experience, there’s nothing you can tell Earl that he doesn’t already know, that he hasn’t already seen. He’s seen enough, had enough. He doesn’t await the mob’s pursuit; he places the noose on himself, he RE: DEFines it within his own lexicon. His noose, therefore, “is golden.” He’s a young youth, rockin’ the gold [noose], DEATHWORLD goose. He speaks with criminal slang, with a split tongue like ELUCID. Where ELUCID was “true and living, actual—no dull axes, owner of all heads,” Earl is “true and living, lonesome,” with no skulls to keep him company. He has to square up with the “pugilistic moments” on his own. 

7.  I AM OLDER THAN I ONCE WAS AND YOUNGER THAN I’LL BE

I’m thinking of “The Pugilist at Rest” (1991) by Thom Jones, whose epileptic protag describes a “grainy black-and-white photograph” of the bronze statue called The Pugilist at Rest. The pugilist, with a pocketful of mumbles, has “slanted, drooping brows that bespeak torn nerves” and a forehead “piled with scar tissue.” Torn nerves and scar tissue—sounds like the physical manifestations of grief. And, yes, Earl has grieved, and he continues to grieve—as listeners, we’re accustomed to his grief pedigree, as per Ka. In the past, Earl was “panicking a lot”—he just “want[ed] [his] time and [his] mind intact.” That’s a cold fact.

The narrator of “The Pugilist at Rest” readies himself for a cingulotomy—a psychosurgical procedure that will “cauterize a small spot in a nerve bundle in [his] brain.” In other words, he wants to keep his mind intact. The neurosurgeon promises the operation will lift “the heaviness of a heart blackened by sin,” which is what convinces the narrator to agree to it. Good grief, he thinks, he’s been reaping what he sowed. He “can’t go on like this,” barely living “with a deadening sense of languor,” a phrase which calls to mind Earl’s lethargic, slugabed flow. Feeling insane in the membrane, like he’s a Soul Assassinated, exploring the depths beneath his whooligan behaviors. 376 was a brothel. “Good and evil are only illusions,” Jones writes. In anticipation of the surgery, the protag considers the worst-case [so what, so what] scenario: “If they fuck up the operation, I hope I get to keep my dogs somehow.”

8.  MOURNING & MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLIA

Grief carries its own antidote along with it.

—Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland (1798)

“Grief is the door to feeling,” Robert Bly says. But Earl, on “Grief,” told us he “ain’t been outside in a minute”—and that minute, whether we’re speaking with criminal slang like Nas on “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” or not, is an eternity. Earl hadn’t crossed that threshold, hadn’t kicked in that door. MIKE would realize it much later on “No Curse Lifted (rivers of love),” how you “had to walk through the grief,” even if it “was the worst feeling.” In 2015, though, Earl found these passageways distorted. Like the undulating photograph on the cover of his first mixtape. Like the blur-obscured selfie on the cover of Some Rap Songs. Like the static-scrambled cover of I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Earl’s dealt in fragmentary confuzzled noise for a full career. He’s been standing on the corner, red burnt, moving down alien lanes paved by GBV, greenthinking to himself. It ain’t hard to tell that Earl “don’t act hard” and yet is a “hard act to follow.” The density or opacity of his exterior notwithstanding, grief don’t come easy. “As men,” Bly says, “we’re taught not to feel pain and grief as children.” So Earl spits somnolent, numb-tongued and slack-jawed. Like he said on “Cold Summers”: muffle my pain and muzzle my brain up. 

“I’ve been alone in my shit for the longest,” he spit on “Grief,” and in work as recent as “Vin Skully,” he’s still figuring out “how to stay afloat in a bottomless pit.” Bly says that “we receive something from our father by standing close to him—something moves over that can’t be described in material terms.” Bly speaks of being in a “conspiracy with his mother” from early on. Earl finds himself “thinking ’bout [his] grandmama” while he wallows and lies in a bottle. “Grief” catalogs all the things his mama taught him. Earl’s work, of late, is autodestructive. He peels away and pastes back haphazardly. He vibes with this Bly shit: “If you can deny something so fundamental as grief in the whole family, you can deny anything. And then how can you write poetry if you’re involved in that much denial?”

Bly goes on to quote Alice Miller, the psychoanalyst who gave us The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979): “When you were young, you needed something you did not receive, and you will never receive it. And the proper attitude is mourning.” Mourning is the proper attitude, not blame—mourning. Mourning makes its way through moaning and mumbling—Earl’s current intonation. On “Grief,” he “cut the grass off the surface [and] pray[s] the lawnmower blade catch the back of a serpent.” Philip Larkin’s poem “The Mower” (1979) leans more literal: “The mower stalled, twice; I found / A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, / Killed. It had been in the long grass.” Larkin’s speaker genuflects before the innocent critter, recalling how he “fed it, once.” Now, he mourns how he has “mauled its unobtrusive world, / Unmendably. Burial was no help.” Earl, of course, is less forgiving of the serpents in the grass. They’re threats, not friends. Still, a void opens up when the mower—(and let’s not forget the lawnmower is a modernized scythe)—does its mowing. Grief is the door to feeling, and on the other side:

Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time.

9.  NOBODY KNOW WHO MADE THIS WELL, FOR IT WAS HERE WHEN I WAS BORN

“Come get to know me at my innermost…”

Riveting, Earl raps. Earl raps are riveting. We fix to the flow—riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s. We’re invited to know Earl, to become familiar, and his “innermost” is a constant vacillation between optimism and [afro]pessimism. The sudden switches—these switches on bitches like fixed with hydraulics—establish what Danny Schwartz, writing for Rolling Stone, called an “uneven terrain.”

Earl’s “family business [is] anguished,” and that’s recognizable. We’ve known Earl (on “Chum”) with the “pendulum swinging slow” and low. He holed up, hostage-like, in his “heart’s bottomless pit.” Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842) brand of captivity. “I was sick,” that narrator says, “—sick unto death with that long agony.” Something tells me there should be an exclamation point there (SICK!). Earl Sweatshirt was down, down, down. “I was in the fucking pits for like 10 months post my pops dying,” he said in an interview. The Spanish Inquisition ain’t shit.

But for these countless downs, “OD” tracks the ups like naloxone in the nasal membrane. “Now I need atonement,” Earl notes—he makes a case for reparations. He “sets the goal[s]” like some motivational speaker. If “half [his] wings is broken,” he can “spread the other for [his] brodie OD.” Somewhat circumspect as he’s “tiptoeing,” yet the approach is laden with “too much love.” Even when his “sister showed in a rut,” he’s joining arms with her and “getting over, sending up.” That rut she walks—like Eudora Welty’s worn path (1941)—is a path through the pinewoods, and she’s suddenly Phoenix Jackson. “She was very old and small,” Welty writes, and she moves “with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.” Even with her pentium processing and pendulum low, she swings back up—the rise of her namesake. She screams phoenix, her feathers and flames are one skin. “Living in the moment,” Earl raps, and his craft is bars. “You been corrupt”—and, sure, who hasn’t?—but you recover with “some ginabot.” Welty’s Old Phoenix surveys a spring “silently flowing through a hollow log.” She bends and drinks and says, “Sweet gum makes the water sweet.” It’s the equivalent to Earl putting “shilajit in his sippy cup,” which is “healing cuts revealingly.” And, yes, from a “sippy cup,” so we’re back to toddling around again (“Since a jit,” he says). “I can’t give enough,” Earl raps, his last winding-sheet made of nard and myrrh. 

10.

We crouch and teeter, caterwauling along the ledges, for we’ve got these clumsy feet of clay. This is the intended effect[/defect]; this is the rubble of what Earl calls the “crumbling empire.” This is us feeling the violent vibes of the “death throes” he speaks of. Why would we expect anything to resemble traditional song or rhyme structure when the earth quakes, civilization trembles, and Earl’s dungeon shakes? His chains have fallen off. The tenor is tremors. He’s living the trife life—hell on earth—but still living. Earl’s done trying to not look down—he embraces an outer appearance which scans dour; he deliberately gazes into the pit, inviting the vertigo, for it “haunts the whole of existence,” as Fanon says. But Frank B. Wilderson III promises a “vengeance of vertigo.”

11.

Gallons of rubbing alcohol flow through the strip, and Earl’s lips. He’s “refilling the pump”—his heart, yeah—but with a sawed-off shotgun, hand-on-the-pump posture. There’s “no concealing it,” not even with a concealed carry permit. He brandishes right back at “the enemy up in arms bearing snubs.” The mood swings; been down so long it looks like up to him. The turns require tourniquets. This is some Battle of Dak To torture—somewhere between Retaliation and the Heavenly Divine. Emotional turmoil seems violent by design, and Earl’s “memory [is] really leaking blood.” Fear not, the blood is “congealing, stuck.” Like Havoc says, “The Mobb rollin’ thicker.” Prodigy cites it, too: “This ain’t rap—it’s bloodsport.” But Earl has known that all along—he’s been “mobbin’ deep as ’96 Havoc and Prodigy did” since 2013.

12.

HipHopDX’s Kevin Cortez referred to listeners having to “sift through the muddle” in order to appreciate the bars, but where muddle suggests a disorderly conduct, a kaos network, Earl’s style, more appropriately, models. The woozy, wavy, and inner-conflict-war-torn vocals model an abstraction that anticipates the listener’s loyalty. This is what I’ve got, brief and cryptic as the gesture may be, the model says. Writing for NME, Dhruva Balram described Earl’s lyrics as “slurred,” but slurry is the form.

13.

If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side…

—Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (2005)

So if we’re giving ourselves over to the woozes and waves, we’ll just as well find ourselves lost. Let’s go—like those tourist books run by students—and let’s wander eastward. Follow our napkin-scrawled directions and disorientations to a somewhere elsewhere. Let’s go east for a second, for a spell, on a lark, in the dark (word to AKAI SOLO). Earl’s bloodwork contains “pieces of slums”—or more aptly, [sLUms]. He’s hand-to-hand with that Jungle Boy MIKE, but also the god Mike Davis. “[T]he cities of the future,” Davis wrote, would be “constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood.” Just the same as an Earl Sweatshirt verse is built—under the tutelage and overstanding-sharing, symbiotically, with MIKE. Davis says our cities aren’t “cities of light soaring toward heaven,” but a world that “squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.” Smells like somebody tooted in the student commons. Smells like a slum village, something we’ve smelled before—possibly coming straight from the slums of Shaolin. 

14.  ACID EASTERNS

Earl trekked to the East and squinted into “one beacon in the dust weaving”—like Clint Eastwood arriving out of the hazy horizon ether of High Plains Drifter (1973). But Earl is heading to the East, blackwards. And though Brother J claimed you can’t define what’s direct from the East, Jeru told us on The Sun Rises in the East that you can’t stop the prophet either. So on “EAST,” Earl traverses a tricky terrain—it’s tricky, tricky, tricky because it’s an acid western landscape: an acid eastern.

The path isn’t direct or linear—it zigs and zags like rolling papers, and stimulates the same. “Double back when you got it made,” Earl says at the start of his journey “EAST.” The objective is to talk sense condensed into the form of a poem like Special Ed once did on “I Got It Made.” Instead, Earl’s poems—his L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poems—skew [non]sense, go form[less], and vaporize rather than condense. Lyn Hejinian in cinnamon Timbs: “constant change figures / the time we sense.” The narrative is hallucinogenic (note: “how the story careen against the bars”). Earl’s bindle contains “thirty racks and weed [with] no fat in the collard greens.” That’s how he gets funky on the mic like an old batch. That’s how he gets sincerity on the mic: “Off top it’s me—no cap, / I don’t bottle things.” That buck that bought a bottle could’ve struck the lotto, maybe. But Earl’s “canteen was full of the poison [he] need[s].” He gets where he’s going like El Topo, bereft. The “trip was long and steep”—that being an acid trip—so let me see you try to ride a horse into the chasms of the canyon.

“EAST” is a death meditation, a grand duel between Dantean and Donneian lyric voices [he damn-near well should’ve double-tracked the vocals]. In a 2015 interview with SPIN, Earl is asked about the worst thing he did that year, to which he replies: “Umm…acid?” He elaborates: “I took it at a time when I really didn’t need to be taking acid. I had like a fucking existential crisis at, like, four in the morning. But it was tight. We reeled it back.” Jodorowsky called El Topo (1970) an “eastern” in that it “incorporat[ed] ancient eastern wisdom in the materiality of American cowboys.” For Earl, it’s more a rhinestone cowboy—he holds the cold one like he holds an old gun (as evidenced in the “EAST” music video). DOOM was no stranger to grief, of course, and the rumors persist regarding the bad acid that precipitated Subroc’s early demise (“Bad Acid” also being the original title for “December 24”).

Estranged Earl, alienated—a high plains drifter (not Clint Eastwood, though) who rechristens a town “Hell” through a baptism of blood. Like the Beastie Boys’ version, Earl pulls out a pair of pliers and pulls a bullet out of his chest. He pulls through, true and living. “I’m long distance from my girl,” Mike D raps, so he’s “talking on the cellular,” but Earl is more alienated than that—beyond racking up roaming charges, immersed in dead zones. He “lost [his] phone and consequently all the feelings [he] caught for [his] GF.” Relationships can’t be sustained in these bleak and barren locations. All the blood has been drained from the ruddy faces—sanguine scenery. In his essay “On the Acid Western,” Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses how the subgenre “refuses to respect or valorize bloodshed.” Memory really leaking blood. Congealing. Stuck. To paraphrase Rosenbaum, Earl’s acid eastern “formulat[es] a chilling, savage frontier poetry to justify [his] hallucinated agenda—a view at once clear-eyed and visionary, exalted and laconic, moral and unsentimental, witty and beautiful, frightening and placid.” Earl’s “innocence was lost in the East,” and obsessives speculate whether this refers to Samoa or New York City—how far east we going? Countless spirit-questers pit-stopping at ashrams, searching for that Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal guide. 

“I wait a beat,” Earl says. His canteen stays filled, auto-replenishes. His “cognitive dissonance shattered” and the “necessary venom restored.” Jodorowsky reportedly once taped snakes to his chest for an experimental theater performance. As if it matters if you think it matters anymore. Or, as ELUCID says, “Words mean things but don’t have to.” Acids and bases. Occident and Orient. Western and Eastern. Up is down.

15.  NOTHING LIKE US EVER WAS

Earl’s “EAST” accordion beat—or whatever Orkes Gambus Al Fata instrumentation is at work—is more madcap than madvillainous. In my head is Erick Sermon, though, speaking about how “the flow slow…like a jazz player, or someone on the accordion” on “Knick Knack Patty Wack.” But I’m less concerned with the flow of air through bellows—compressing and expanding—than I am with Earl’s rendering of wind. (Somebody tooted.)

“Let the dead be dead,” Carl Sandburg says at stanza’s end in “Four Preludes on the Playthings of the Wind” (1920). Later, he reports, “The only singers now are crows crying.” And so Earl, a lonesome crow, reminds us—and himself—that “the wind get the ashes in the end” on “December 24.” The whining, wheezing consonance of /-nd/ in “wind” and “end” manages to evoke both the wind itself and the circularity of life. The bar whooshes and whips until we’re at our end, the terminus. That circularity, that full circle: ashes to ashes. “We are the greatest city,” Sandburg repeats, “the greatest nation: / nothing like us ever was.”

Global winds be blowin’—[Of the Soul]—and so billy woods cites that same line on “Haarlem”: “Thebe said the wind get the ashes in the end, bruv.” Check the configuration of the rhime: 

The wind | gets | the ashes | in | the end   {birth}                    {life}                {death}

Even that get does work—whether it’s the violence of Death Grips’ “get got”; Too $hort threatening you to “get in where you fit in”; or the satirical sadism of Keenen Ivory Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. The wind wins out—it gets what it wants. On “EAST,” the wind—infinitely personified—“whispered to [Earl], ‘Ain’t it hard?’” It ain’t hard to tell that it is. How about some hardcore? Yeah, we like it raw like M.O.P. But those burns yield ashes. In Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” (1989), she struggles with the words she uses, knowing “[t]his is the oppressor’s language / yet [she] needs to talk to you.” I know it hurts to burn, she writes, but writing is no less ardent. “The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning.”

Let me bring it back to Robert Bly. “In the ancient times,” Bly says, “the movement for the men was downward—a descent into grief. It’s referred to in the fairytale as ‘the time of ashes.’” Ashes, he explains, is the “code word for the ‘out of it’ time.” 

We know what it is like to take ashes in our hands. How light they are! The fingertips experience them as a kind of powder… Ashes, we note, find their way into the whorls of our fingertips, cling there, make the whorls more noticeable, more visible, more clear to us. We can take our own fingerprints with ashes.

Ashes, then, aren’t simply for the wind’s taking—ashes are for us, are necessary for us to transcend the grief the boys, the men, and the man-child experience. Bly points to the various cultures that have used ashes in initiation rites: “Ashes Time is a time set aside for the death of that ego-bound boy.” Ready to give up, so you seek the Old Earth. The elders cover your face—even your whole body—with ashes “to make [you] the color of dead people and to remind [you] of the inner death about to come.” Consider Earl’s ashen white face produced in the negative imagery of the “Grief” music video.” “The word ashes contains in it a dark feeling for death,” Bly says. “Ashes when put on the face whiten as death does.”

Earl Sweatshirt is a far cry from knocking blunt ashes into caskets.

16.

Feet of clay, hands of light…

—Moor Mother and billy woods, “Furies” (2020)

For Cheryl I. Harris, Earl’s mother, the feet of clay refer to a vulnerability we all possess no matter how formidable we may appear to become. Earl invokes the King of Babylon’s dream, a dream of an idol “meant to represent all the empires of the world,” echoing Sandburg’s imperious “greatest nation.” Earl believes “we at the feet of clay right now…We posted up live from burning Rome.” Imagine the ash pile. So Earl is here, ostensibly, to turn the disco into something dismal—how Mtume becomes “MTOMB” with its entombed sonics, as if he’s rapping from within a wall, the victim of some Poe immurement. 

17.

“I remember woods,” Earl raps on “OD.” “I remember Endom when he wasn’t remembering much, / I remember love healing the ruptures.” I remember is also the refrain and title of Joe Brainard’s poem-memoir, a term which aptly describes much of Earl’s recent output. Brainard’s memories bum-rush into the present:

I remember a dream I used to have a lot of a beautiful red and yellow and black snake in bright green grass. I remember painting “I HATE TED BERRIGAN” in big black letters all over my white wall. I remember liver.

If Earl recalls love “healing the ruptures,” then he also likely recalls Fanon: It is essential to convey to the black man that an attitude of rupture has never saved anyone. But Fanon also speaks of young Black men “maintain[ing] their alterity. Alterity of rupture, of conflict, of battle.” Earl, “feeling rushed, grew up quick.” He echoes Biggie, who “grew up a fucking screw-up,” and Raekwon, who “grew up on the crime side” (though Earl’s mama taught him, as we know from “Grief,” how to avoid the pigs, persecution, and prosecution). Eyes on the clock, Earl acknowledges this “trip around the sun” is his “25th,” so “give it up”—his survival alone deserving of a standing [on the corner] ovation. He celebrates life with “gin and rum.” Again, notably not gin and juice—murder was never the case. The only death is the inner death, the death of the ego-bound boy, that Bly describes. Earl’s gin is the drink of be[gin]ning, of genesis (“Light them Phillies up then…”), of Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, when I was dead-broke, man… “We wasn’t supposed to be alive,” Earl says, yet here he stands.

18.  RUMINANT

Stare at the Feet of Clay album cover—an evocation of folkloric imagery: a Grimm forest with gnarled tree branches—and the enchanted, diabolic goat lying in wait. Earl’s parasocial following speculate G.O.A.T., of course, but I’m more inclined to mythopoeic possibilities. The Feet of Clay goat glares like Baphomet but frolics like a faun over fractured beats. “OD,” Earl has stated, “brought [him] up out of [his] little wreck”—a wreck of wracked nerves. Adrienne Rich encourages “diving into the wreck” (1973).

I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power.

Earl’s right there with her, submerged and blacking out, but still surviving: Really leaking blood, but refilling the pump.

In her essay “Teaching New Worlds/New Words,” bell hooks invokes Rich’s struggle to navigate the “oppressor’s language.” For hooks, as a Black writer, managing that is even more difficult and historical. “I think now of the grief of displaced ‘homeless’ Africans, forced to inhabit a world where they saw folks like themselves, inhabiting the same skin, the same condition, but who had no shared language to talk with one another, who needed ‘the oppressor’s language.’” hooks explains how Black folks have “remade that language so that it would speak beyond the boundaries of conquest and domination.”

Earl Sweatshirt, especially in his later work, has “altered [and] transformed” English, just as “enslaved Black people took broken bits of English and made of them a counter-language.” The emotional wreckage is also a linguistic heap of fragments—micro-fragments, if we’ve learned anything from Saafir. Earl, in the tradition of his ancestors, “put[s] together [his] words in such a way that the colonizer ha[s] to rethink the meaning of the English language.” “The grammatical construction of sentences in these songs” by Earl, just as by the spirituals of hundreds of years prior, “reflect[s] the broken, ruptured world of the slave.” That crumbling empire Earl mentions was faulted by feet of clay.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2019, sharing a dais with his mother, Cherly I. Harris, Earl spoke to this lineage directly: “Rap music is slave music—the modern-day iteration of it. Slave communication had to be encrypted. You got a code.” He shifted: “If I know what I’m saying…I can teach it to you.” On Feet of Clay, Earl is teaching to transgress. “I’m cracking my own code,” he says to an audience member during the Q&A, “how it comes out garbled…,” and then he trails off, as if making a deliberate effort to keep his answer cryptic.

hooks always saw language as “a site of resistance.” This included the incorrect usage and placement of words—she called such practices a “rebellion.” Weaponizing syntax. hooks recognized rap music as a continuation of this fight—the latest [sound]clash, hip-hop artists as rebels without a pause—while still acknowledging the collateral damage it might cause.

Rap music has become one of the spaces where black vernacular speech is used in a manner that invites dominant mainstream culture to listen—to hear—and, to some extent, be transformed. However, one of the risks of this attempt at cultural translation is that it will trivialize black vernacular speech. When young white kids imitate this speech in ways that suggest it is the speech of those who are stupid or who are only interested in entertaining or being funny, then the subversive power of this speech is undermined.

Or, as Earl once said on “Chum,” “Too Black for the white kids and too white for the Blacks,” an axiom he’s come to loathe. Perhaps Fanon had the better bar on this subject: “The white man had the anguished feeling that I was escaping from him and that I was taking something with me. He went through my pockets. He thrust probes into the least circumvolution of my brain. Everywhere he found only the obvious. So it was obvious that I had a secret.”

Despite the pitfalls (and, yeah, the pit is bottomless), Earl’s words play [wordplay] a part in retraining minds, all while exorcizing his own demons through a steady diet of ashes and fractures. hooks promises us that “in the patient act of listening to another tongue we may subvert that culture of capitalist frenzy and consumption that demands all desire must be satisfied immediately.” Through his embrace of a language that indulges in passion and cerebral coding, Earl “heal[s] the splitting of mind and body” so common within Western metaphysical thought. Earl Sweatshirt speaks “words that do more than simply mirror or address the dominant reality”; he builds blips into a reality that is worth the rewind.

Images: Dead Man, dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995 (screenshot) | Teen at 1990s computer photograph, Unknown (c. 1996) | James Joyce, Age 2, Unknown | ELUCID, Osage album cover (2016), photo by Michael Mally, Philadelphia Inquirer | The Boxer at Rest, bronze statue, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, Italy (330-50 BC) | Alphonse Legros, The Pit and the Pendulum, second Plate (1861) | High Plains Drifter, dir. Clint Eastwood, 1973 (screenshot) | Subroc on an Apple IIc, Unknown (c. 1987) | Earl Sweatshirt, “Grief” music video, 2015 (screenshot) | Arthur Rackham, The Water of Life, Grimms Fairy Tales (1916) | Dead Man, dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1995 (screenshot)

#earl sweatshirt #underground hip hop #rap #backwoodz studioz #elucid #billy woods #moor mother

[fiveht]

hi Five, Merry Christmas! I'm on holiday from work and I'm going to spend the weekend rereading Disarm and Head over feet as a Christmas treat for myself. I know you've been having a tough time and I totally understand wanting to retreat from fandom when people are being shit, so I hope you're well and I hope you're having a lovely holiday.

Hi!

I keep meaning to drop in and say something; I've gotten a lot of really sweet messages and I would flood timelines if I tried to respond to all of them, but I want to say thank you to all of you, truly. I'm so, so glad my silly little story made you guys happy. This verse was lovingly extracted from the ailing brain cell that Bestie and I share, and we are absolutely tickled that it struck a chord with so many people.

I work in healthcare and a lot of my co-workers have children (and I do not), so I'm taking a ton of overtime right now so they can have time off with their families. That makes it hard to stay up on fandom participation. I'm not absent because people are being assholes -- with one or two very notable exceptions, everyone has been amazing -- I'm just overworked and tired.

To answer some questions, I would love to write more for the Adore series. I've already written a few snippets for what would be a third instalment, so it's definitely not out of the question. My motivation and creative drive are very fickle things, so I can never make promises, but it's possible. I do know that I can't write and be fandom-social at the same time, so I wouldn't be around these parts much if I were to work on another story.

Things the sequel might contain: a return to Sirius' POV, more Rieka, more James, more of Sirius' backstory, a step into a slightly more defined D/s relationship for daddy and baby (some of which is new ground for Remus, too). None of these are guaranteed (nor is the existence of the fic at all), but they are elements I would like to write and/or have a very tenuous foundation for in the form of rough notes and half-written scene intros. So we'll see what the new year brings. 😊

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to every last one of you, and thank you for making this year so incredibly lovely for me. ❤️

#asked and answered #this is my only day off until new year's and i am getting day drunk #see me fall asleep in a couple hours because i am definitely too old to be drunk at 3 in the afternoon #side note: i finally read all for the game and i'm mad that no one told me it was basically a queer romance with a sports background #i hate sports AUs and sports in general #but this shit was gay enough to negate that bias

[datura-tea]

when gwen came back to vault 101, no one cheered. no one welcomed her back. which is to be expected - there were some who blamed her for what happened. butch thought that was bullshit, but no one would ever hear him defending gwen. especially not gwen. so he watched from a distance when she stomped into the vault in her too-big boots, dried blood in her hair, dusty and dirty and standing taller than he had ever seen her.

gwen lit up when she saw amata, but quickly dimmed when amata approached her hesitantly, as if scared. butch can't blame amata; this new gwen, wasteland gwen, looked like vault gwen only in passing. wasteland gwen was rougher, tougher. imposing. her rifle slung easily from her shoulder.

butch wondered if she had ever killed anyone with it.

butch decided to break the silence. he pointed at gwen's rifle. "ever killed anyone with that thing?"

he leaned against the door as gwen and amata talked, noting gwen's frown deepening the more amata filled her in. she was all business now; very serious, impartial and indifferent. asking questions like: what happened here? what do you want me to do? how much are you going to pay me? which unsettled butch a little. gwen was never a joker, but she never took anything seriously, either. to see her stone-cold and stern (like james) was new, and it was concerning.

so when gwen passed him on her way to the overseer, he walked in step with her. she nodded at him. he nodded back. they stayed like that for a few blocks, just quiet. which was new, also. before, they would've been talking each other's ears off, firing off insults and jabs one after another.

gwen rolled her eyes. "hi, gwen," she said in a deepened voice. "it's nice to see you again, gwen. i was so worried about you, gwen." she sighed. "just shot wilkins with it."

"wilkins is dead?"

"fuck if i know. i didn't stay to check." she doubled back to peer into the clinic. she turned to butch, her hands on her hips. "look, what do you want from me?"

butch looked her in the eye. no need to beat around the bush, then. "i need to get out of here, man."

gwen shrugged. "then get out of here. what's stopping you and your dinky little knife?"

"dinky? what are you calling dinky?" butch bristled. "this thing's sharp as fuck."

"that shit can't peel an apple. that shit's barely worth a cap."

butch frowned. "the fuck is a cap?"

"wasteland money. it's dumb." gwen entered the clinic as she talked. butch followed her. "they use fucking bottlecaps."

"there's money up there?" brotch taught them about money and trade, but they didn't use it in the vault. "no vouchers? no rations?"

"no, man. you find food or you trade or you starve." gwen was rummaging through the rubble in james' office. "i've just been eating cold cram."

"but you're eating what you want," butch said. "you have a choice."

"yeah, i guess. it's just..." gwen sighed again and faced butch. "i'm not gonna lie, dude, it's bad out there. you get shot at, you get chased by randos, you eat 200-year old shit because you can't find fresh food. there's choices, sure, but it's between two shitty choices all the time." she gestured at their surroundings. "but, even with all that... it's loads better than this shithole."

butch whooped. "so you'll help me escape?"

"i'm going to do what amata wants, and that's to get the door open. what you do after that is your business." gwen went to the framed verse on the wall and opened it. "here we go."

butch went to her. she took out a bobby pin and a screwdriver and jimmied the lock, which broke with a small click. the safe opened, and gwen took out a small bag and some schematics. she stuffed both in her battered pack.

"okay, butch, i'm gonna go deal with the overseer," she said, patting his shoulder. "go do... whatever you want. go fucking wild. no one in here, or out there, cares."

"thanks?" butch watched her walk past him. gwen stopped when she got to the door.

"if you do get out, though," she said, "i live in this house in megaton. right at the entrance. you can't miss it. you're - and i can't believe i'm saying this - welcome there."

butch felt warmth bloom in his chest. it felt weird and gross, but not unwelcome. he smiled at her. she smiled back. and then she was gone.

#shh peri shhh #my writing #gwen #vault kids #spoiler alert! gwen kills the overseer and when amata exiles her she just shuts down and leaves them without even a goodbye #just turns around and fucks off and takes out her hurt and anger on the next fucker who dared to cross her #and butch gets lost and misses megaton and just meanders until he gets to rivet city #where they meet again and team up :)

[hangmanbradshaw]

guess this is the first time I send you an ask so HIIIII STEPH!

gonna go for the song 52 on your spotify wrapped for hangster 🩷

p.s.: your christmas stories are giving christmas movie-watching tradition vibes! still gotta read them but my heart always gets warm when a new notification arrives on my email

xoxo

Omg HI!!!!! Welcome, welcome :D

(omg I hope you love them when you read. they're definitely warming my heart writing them....enjoying it way too much)

Oooh 52 omg excellent choice. It's Don't Blame Me by Taylor Swift soooo this was too much fun.

“Seresin.”

Jake froze where he was leaning against the bar as a warm body pressed against his side. He didn’t have to look to know who the voice belonged to- it was a sound that haunted his every thought, both waking and dreamed. He didn’t bother turning, hardly even flinched a muscle on the outside even as his heart pounded hard in his chest, turning his ears to cotton.

“Mickey, I’ll have another.” He said to the bartender, signaling at his empty glass. “Top shelf, on him.”

Mickey nodded and swiped the most expensive bottle from the shelf, pouring the amber liquid into his glass and sliding it over. Bradley didn’t argue it, he never did.

“Heard you were back in town. Take care of that business in LA?”

Jake hummed as he ran his finger over the edge of the glass. He kept his eyes focused there as he replied, “You know I did.”

“Hope you didn’t miss me too much.”

“I didn’t.”

It was a lie. They both knew it.

Bradley didn’t signal for a drink, but that wasn’t surprising. He liked to be in control, hyper aware of everything despite how cool he always played it. He leaned his elbows back against the bar and looked out at the crowd as he said, “Rumor is something big is going down. FBI’s been raiding your places. They’re saying your dad’s lost his touch.”

“Are they now?”

“Sure are. A couple of your people have come to us, asked to pledge new loyalty.”

He finally turned and faced him, leaning on his own elbow as he stared at the deep brown that was focused on him. Bradley looked the same as he always did- short curls pushed back, dressed down in jeans and a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt compared to Jake’s perfectly pressed three piece suit. Two sides of the same coin, he’d always thought. The son of power always dressed like it verses the son who dressed it in his own way. If anyone else had tried to wear an outfit like that, they’d be laughed at. Bradley was revered. 

“Any chance you’re gonna tell me those names?”

Bradley smirked, those eyes warming. “No way in hell, Hangman.”

“Mm. I’ll find them my own way.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.” Bradley replied, lips curling smugly. “They’re scared, you know.”

“We’re dealing with it. You might as well hold off on dancing on our graves, cuz we ain’t dead yet. We still run this city.”

“Half of it. For now.”

He hummed again and shot his drink back in one go. Mickey raised the bottle in question, but he shook his head and tapped the bar as he stepped away. The crowd was thick, but they parted as easily as the red sea as he walked, waving his men off. He didn’t have to look back to know Bradley was throwing some bills on the bar and following, the sea staying clear for him as well, his own men hanging back.

The cold air of the city winter burned his skin as he pushed out the back door into the alleyway. He barely had two seconds to feel it before he was being turned and pushed back against the brick wall. A hand cupped the back of his head, protective and possessive as lips pressed against his. He let Bradley kiss him, let him have his fill just enough to quench his thirst before he pulled back. Bradley blinked at him, eyes wide and dark and still so thirsty, those massive hands of his scalding on his hips. 

“How bad are things, really?” 

“I told you, we’re handling it.”

One of Bradley’s hands moved to cup his cheek instead. He ran his thumb over his lip and said, “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. If the infamous James Seresin finally falls, I’m getting you out.”

“Good luck with that.”

“We’ve already crossed every other line, what’s one more?”

He pulled back a bit and studied him for a moment. He was sure the surprise had to show when he said, “You’re serious. Fucking around with your rival’s one thing, you can’t seriously think-“

“My dad’s offered yours a deal.”

It stopped him dead in his tracks. Bradley’s words were rushed, serious. “What deal?”

“The bureau’s on your asses. What’s to say we won’t be next? You have half the city, we have the other…it’s time we remind them who’s in charge here.”

“You’re talking about joining forces?” He asked with a blink. “They’re never gonna go for that. No way in hell is he gonna trust that, not when you didn’t ask for anything.”

“We did though, and he agreed.”

“And what’s that?”

“You.” Bradley replied as he kissed him again. He pulled back and whispered against his lips. “The youngest son of James Seresin for the heir in waiting of the Bradshaw empire.”

His heart damn near froze in his chest. He pushed him back so he could look into his eyes when he said, “You traded for me.”

“I did. It’s you and me, baby.” Bradley said as he cupped his cheeks and ran his thumbs over the skin there. “We’re gonna run this fucking city."

#anyone else wanna play send 'em in! #thanks friend this was way too fun #asks #my fics

[christinesficrecs]

Bit of an odd request maybe but do you know of any fics that features Sterek when they're older? In thier 30s or 40s and getting together for the first time or as an established relationship? Thank you!!

Oh yes! I am definitely a fan of future fics. 🥰

Believer and a Homecoming by lsdme | 11K | Mature

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Stiles hasn't seen or heard from Derek in ten years. It's a bit of a surprise to find out about Derek's return to Beacon Hills through Tinder.

One Door Closes by KouriArashi | 27.7K | Explicit

Derek knows that Stiles is too young for him, but Stiles doesn't agree. Eight years after Derek rejects him due to the age gap, they meet again where Derek has settled in Wyoming as a ranch hand, and Stiles is the new deputy, and still pissed as hell about the way Derek turned him down. Things don't go as either of them planned.

into the ripe air by unpossible | 13.3K

Stiles,” Ted says as he rounds the front of the car. His eyes flick to Derek, and then to James, and there’s an indefinable change in his face that has Stiles’ shoulders tightening and he takes a long, slow breath, the better to take careful hold of his temper, because there are consequences for everything he says and does now, and he’s not a sixteen year old smartass anymore.

(Never) Let Me Go by Jerakeen | 5.8K | Explicit

Now Stiles is older, not exactly wiser, but definitely well-versed in hot guys, and he feels qualified to say that yeah, his memories are spot on with the hotness factor, and Derek hasn't changed a bit.

Watch as the waves, fall back into place. by DropsOfAddiction | 32.5K | Explicit

Derek rakes his eyes over Stiles’ exposed arms and his gaze lingers on the lithe muscle there. The evidence of years of staying in shape, working as an FBI field agent is blatant and was he always that hairy?

Derek’s mesmerised by the dark hair running up his arms and it’s only when Stiles clears his throat and flails his hands at him that Derek manages to bring his eyes to his face.

Stiles’ brown hair is longer and he looks taller somehow, fitting his body in a way Derek’s never quite seen on him. He looks totally comfortable in himself, propped there against the jeep like he does this every day, like he’s not making Derek readjust his entire world view, just by being there.

Derek scents the air blatantly and he steps closer to him, pleased with the way Stiles’ heartbeat spikes a little, despite his cool demeanour.

“Hey Hale. Looking good,” Stiles grins, still not moving an inch, even when Derek’s only about a metre away.

everything you do [sends me higher than the moon] by crossroadswrite | 4.5K

When Derek opens his door to see Stiles standing there with four full suitcases, his massagers’ bag thrown over his shoulder, two big cardboard boxes that barely close and his demon cat cradled on the crook of his elbow all he can say is, “Why?”

Not “what” not “what happened stiles” not “get out” not “please let me kiss you this pinning thing is really getting old for me” not “why are you bringing satan into my home”.

Just a simple “why”.

The Rest of Your Life by paradis | 4.1K

“Seemed like a buttercream guy,” Stiles says innocently, and grabs two forks and pours two huge glasses of milk. They eat in silence and when Stiles finishes his mouth is filled with the too-sweet taste of peanut butter icing and chocolate cake, and he’s full, but he feels good, too. He stares at Derek, who’s licking his lips after his last bite of cake. “I think I’m probably not straight,” he says suddenly. And Derek says, “I ripped down the whole top floor of the house this morning thinking about Laura.”

Much Ado About You Two by clotpolesonly | 2.2K

In which Professor Stilinski and Stiles are such different people that nobody makes the connection.

Until I Stayed Away Too Long by melofttroll | 14.8K | Explicit

NY Times bestseller Derek Hale hates a lot of things about being a modern author. Like being recognized, like needing a social media presence, like not being able to buy his own boxed spaghetti noodles without being asked for a selfie. Facing writer's block, he escapes to his old hometown of Beacon Hills, at his sister's insistence, for some reprieve and hopefully motivation. It's there his attention is captured by a gangly, socially awkward teacher, and the tiny little toddler at his side who know him only as that one basketball player who fled town at fifteen after his girlfriend burnt his house down.

#asks #sterek fics #ficrecs #future fic #idiots in love

[cricketnationrise]

5pm, Balmoral, King James, change by Taylor Swift please?

interestingly, this will be my first movie-verse piece. (this is why i love the ficlet fests i always get a huge range of prompts).

I focused more on the first stanza of the song, especially And it's a sad picture, the final blow hits you / Somebody else gets what you wanted again for this ficlet, because the rest of it feels more like Henry than his grandfather to me. I hope you like it, and thank you for all your enthusiastic comments in my inbox, they brighten my day! 💜🦗

want your own ficlet? followers can submit their own here using these guidelines through January 31, 2024.

❤️🤍💙❤️🤍💙

5:00pm, balmoral

The world outside the windows of his private den is dark. 

Not the streetlight-reflected dark of nights at Buckingham, no. Balmoral has always been remote enough to see a bevy of stars on a clear summer night. Tonight though, the Scottish weather seems to be mockingly imitating James’ mood. A violent summer storm had risen up shortly after he’d arrived on the property this morning, dumping rain and harsh winds battering the stone fortress he’d retreated to. Tonight, the stars will be out of sight, and even the moon likely to be hidden away by dark clouds. The howling wind had finally died down a few hours ago, gentling to the occasional rustle of wet leaves.

His den is only lit by the dying fire.

James stares into it, unseeing, and lets his mind race. A log finally gives up its structural integrity, collapsing into embers at the bottom of the grate with a shower of sparks. He’s too lost in his thoughts to stoke the flames up in reaction. The grandfather clock in the corner chimes five in the evening and James finishes the last dregs of his drink with a heavy sigh. The empty bottles on his bar cart mock him just as much as the full ashtray at his side.

The staff will be laying the table for dinner right about now, but James is far past eating, his mind still stuck on yesterday’s events. The news reports play in his head in an unceasing loop; he wishes he had the energy to find another pack of cigarettes, to refill his drink—anything to drown out the echoes.

“The Prince of England’s Hearts embraced his own today…”

“...a revolution for this country…”

“No member of the Royal family has ever been publicly out, but Prince Henry…”

“...Royal glass closet shattered today when His Royal Highness, Prince Henry stepped onto Buckingham’s balcony, hand in hand with First Son, Alexander Claremont-Diaz…”

“...leak that prompted protests in support of Prince Henry all of last week…”

“...Prince Henry’s appearance with the First Son today sparked celebrations in the streets across the whole United Kingdom.”

The voices of the news anchors swirl and layer over each other in his head until he can’t separate individual words any longer. James hunches in his leather chair, elbows on his knees, and grips his forehead between his hands, hard, in a futile attempt to make it stop. The pressure allows the noise to recede to a murmur, like someone listening to the radio in the next room.

It’s enough to let him breathe again, to take stock of himself, but once he starts, he wishes he hadn’t. Because now, all he can think about is the look on Henry’s face when he and the American had come back inside yesterday afternoon, flush from both the sunlight and their joyous reception.

Henry didn’t even look at him full-on, but a glimpse of his profile had been enough to knock the breath from James’ lungs with an agonizing jealousy. He himself had never felt even a fraction of what he’d seen on his grandson’s face:

Pride.  A fundamentally uncaring air for anything other than the boy at his side.  And a blinding, aching, incandescent—

Happiness.

#cricket writes #shygryf #ficlet fest 500 #rwrb #post waterloo letters #and post balcony scene #king james pov #shout out to shygryf for reminding me who tf king james was #as i fully forgot henry's grandfather had a name in the movie #whoops

[yandereunsolved]

✨ Dumb shit Kai and James have done as Benji ✨

✉ Who is Benji? Read this post.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

✨ Killed the president & ate him

Yep, in this alternate universe he canonically killed the president. Through pulling personal ties Kai was able to get the president to stay at the Cortez. James and Kai fused into Benji because he is the mostly living and legal owner of the Cortez. Benji invited him to a private dinner, even though the presidents secret service was there. He got some of the ghosts of the Cortez to kill the president in his sleep. They scared off the secret service.

Benji got hungry because of his ghoul nature and got rid of the evidence. Ms. Evers cleaned up the crime scene. So the president just mysteriously disappeared. Naturally this would put the Cortez under a lot of publicity. They could possibly even have higher government agencies looking into the hotel and finding some evidence.

So Benji paid off a few people under the table and suddenly the president killed himself. One of his secret service agents totally cremated the president after so there's no evidence. Kai was upset that he didn't get to kill the president by himself and become the ruthless dictator. :( James tells him that it is all in due time.

✨ Forgot he has four arms & fell down the steps

Benji was walking to the lobby of the Cortez when he felt a weight around his back. He freaked out a little and thought someone was attacking him. He forgot that he has a second set of arms. He ended up tripping down the stairs. Thankfully, Liz was the only one near and she wouldn't dare cross Benji.

✨ Ate an entire bag of desert edibles

No explanation. James isn't well-versed in new age drugs and Kai occasionally indulges in a blunt when he needs one. Benji got interested in them and just ate an entire bag of them. He must have crossed several spiritual planes because he couldn't even walk correctly. He was tripping and slurring his words. He almost missed his kill and he almost fell down the chute.

✨ Convinced Ms. Evers that he was the devil

Have stranger things not happened? Miss Evers is more bothered that a misogynistic hooligan got to fuse with James before she did.

Benji basically began terrorizing her in his free time. She thought that her handsome and perfect James would never do this. Kai would never dare go against James. So it must be the devil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She gives off kinda homophobic Catholic mom vibes tbh. Like you have a half chance that you are gonna get called you a slur, or she'll give you cookies and call you sweetie.

✨ Committed unspeakable atrocities and somehow gained an entire fan base of simps

Kai's cult members + all the people James has seduced :) ♡. Benji is running for president in the next election... (he already killed the last one so if ykyk).

#evan peters characters universe #evan peters characters #ahs #ahs fanfiction #fusion #crossover au #kai anderson #jpm #james patrick march #benji antero march #american horror story #ahs hotel #ahs cult

[late-to-the-party-81]

The music that we make

AN: I made the mood board for this 'verse last year for @firefly-in-darkness' moodboard challenge. Then, @the-slumberparty posted their week four writer challenge - Across the Universe. Having just written an alternate universe fic as part of the week three challenge I had to come up with as another one. And then I remembered this! Hope you enjoy.

Beta’d by @lunarbuck

Dividers by @firefly-graphics and mood board/banners by me

Masterlist

Summary: Bucky Barnes is the handsome, but focussed Conductor of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra. You are the newly placed first chair Violinist. Your love affair with him is a secret, for fears of favouritism. You may be the musician, but he’s the one who plays you like an instrument.

Relationship: Conductor Bucky Barnes x First Chair Violinist Reader

WC: 3.7k

CW: Dickish behaviour, Excessive alcohol consumption, bit of fluff, Smut (Oral -F receiving, Edging, Overstimulation, PinV sex, Rough sex, Aftercare), Dom/Sub dynamics (‘Sir’ kink), Potential Power Imbalance, Some angst, Musical references.

The last strains of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 faded away. There was a moment of heavy silence and then the audience burst into applause. Your heart was beating hard in your chest, your head dizzy from being carried away by the music. No matter how many times you heard or played the New World Symphony, it was still as magical as it had been when you’d first heard it as a child. 

When Marisa, the lead oboeist, had played her solo, you swore you’d felt a tear run down your face. And the melancholy minor key of the flautists, the rousing harmonies of the brass, then you and your fellow strings entered, bringing something light and ethereal. The layers of symphonic pieces spoke to your soul in a way no other music did. How did small black dots on a page somehow encompass the entire complexity of the human condition? The sadness? The joy? The anger? The passion?

The audience certainly agreed. They were all on their feet.

Your eyes flicked up to where he stood; your conductor, James Barnes. Up and coming, somewhat of an enfant terrible in both conductor circles and orchestral circles alike. He worked hard. He worked his musicians harder. Always trying to get to the central core of the piece and evoke all those emotions tangled up in its composition. And he was full of emotions himself. All of you in the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra had seen the joy and the anger. But only you had seen the sadness and the passion.

The sadness was when you’d gone to see him in his office after a particularly difficult rehearsal that had left several orchestra members on the verge of tears, and as first chair, the one he’d selected when he’d started his tenure, you were the conduit between him and them. The passion came a bit later.

Tap tap tap

You lightly knocked on the door. Today’s rehearsal had been bad. Barnes had obviously been in a bad mood before you’d even started, walking in with a face like thunder and barely talking before tapping his baton on his podium. It had only gone downhill from then. The flautists’ timing was off, the lead horn was flat, and the cellists obviously didn’t grasp the depth and nuances of the composition.

At the end of the session, he’d practically stormed out, leaving most of you in shock. 

“He can’t treat us like that…”

“I realised I was flat and was re-tuning before he even said anything…”

“He didn’t have to be so awful about it…”

You sighed as you realised what you had to do.

You listened nervously outside of the door, waiting for the invitation to enter. It didn’t come. You knocked again.

Tap tap tap

“You either want to come in or not. Commit to it, for fuck’s sake.” His angry shout penetrated the door and filled the hallway.

Fine! If that’s the way he wanted it…

Bang bang bang

You put all your strength into the knock, wincing a bit and shaking your hand at the pain in your knuckles.

“Come in!”

You opened the door and stepped through, not sure what you were expecting to find, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t finding your erstwhile leader sitting on the floor, back to the wall, bottle of bourbon in hand, in a room that looked like it had been ransacked. Then you looked at him properly. His usually well-coiffed hair was in disarray as if he’d been pulling and tugging at it. His face was flushed, eyes red-rimmed, and cheeks wet. Somehow, his pathetic state did nothing to detract from how attractive he was.

You immediately dropped to your knees in front of him and plucked the half-empty bottle from his grasp. He flailed, trying to reclaim it, but you kept it out of reach.

“What the actual fuck, Barnes? I’m guessing from all of this,” you gestured to the room and then to him, “that there’s a particular reason for you acting like a complete douche earlier?” You stood back up, placed the bottle on the far side of the room, and snagged a bottle of water from the shelf behind his desk. You held it out to him, and he took it from you sloppily. 

Despite your intentions to rip him a new one when you’d arrived at his office, now all you wanted to do was comfort him and try and find out what was wrong. You slid down the wall next to him, and he turned to look at you, his eyes still glazed and unfocused.

“You gonna tell me what happened or what?”

His lip trembled, and he fell forward, his head resting in your lap as he started to sob. Without thinking, you started to stroke his hair. How long you were there, you weren’t sure but you eventually realised that he’d fallen asleep. Carefully you snagged his sweater from where it was discarded on the floor, folded it up, and managed to slip it under his head as you slid your legs out from under him. There was a throw on the small couch and you dragged that off, placed it over his slumbering form and, with a small backwards glance, left.

Barnes was a vastly different man at the next rehearsal. He still looked as though something was eating him, but he was kinder and more forgiving, well for a conductor at least. He didn’t mention his previous behaviour, and no one else brought it up. Conductors were known to be volatile, and everyone just chalked it up to one of those things, and they assumed you’d talked some sense into him. But you knew better. 

When the rehearsal came to an end, Barnes walked over to you. He watched for a moment as you loosened your bow and placed it into the case above your heirloom violin.

“Ummm, I was wondering if I could talk to you. In my office. When you’re done?” You gave him a small nod, taking in how tired he looked. You wondered how much sleep he’d actually gotten after you left him. He flashed a brief smile, and you couldn’t take your eyes off him as he walked out of the rehearsal room.

Ten minutes later and you’d waved off your colleagues, telling them you needed to check in with Barnes about the upcoming season. This time when you rapped on his door, it opened almost immediately. You were taken aback by the smile that greeted you because such a thing on Barnes’ face was so uncommon.

He opened the door wide and stepped to the side, gesturing for you to enter. As you did so, you noticed how it bore little resemblance to how it had looked on your last visit. Everything was definitely in its rightful place now.

“What can I help you with, Sir?”

At the honorific, his lips twitched. He didn’t say anything at first, but walked over to the sideboard and poured two short measures of his remaining bourbon. You realised he’s seen the flicker of consternation that flashed across your face when he shot you another wry smile.

“Don’t worry, this is the only one today, and that’s how I plan on it staying.” He strode back towards you, miles away from the drunken, pathetic mess of your last interaction. His moves were cat-like, predatory, and you were reminded about how attractive you found him. “But no, there’s nothing you can help me with - I invited you here to say thank you. Thank you for being so kind to me when I absolutely didn’t deserve it. I was anticipating the backlash, but you didn’t give it.”  He took a sip of his drink, and your eyes were drawn to the movement of his throat as he did so. You felt a rush of heat suffuse your body and took a sip of your own. However, the burn of the liquor did nothing to cool you.

“And thank you for just staying with me, and not probing. I’m used to dealing with everything alone, and you made me realise that maybe I don’t have to all the time.” He looked down for a moment, his lips curling up into a soft smile as if caught in a happy memory. “I can’t remember the last time someone stroked my hair until I fell asleep and then tucked me in. It was probably when I was a child.”

You wished he hadn’t said that because the way you were thinking about him was definitely not motherly.

“Oh, and you don’t need to call me ‘Sir’. James, or even Bucky, is absolutely fine, especially when the others aren’t here.” He finished his drink and placed the empty glass down on his desk. Another step towards you and you were practically toe to toe, forcing you to tilt your head to keep eye contact. And what eyes they were. Ice on a clear day, but also sometimes sea mist, swirling in the sky. You swore you could write your own symphony about his eyes alone.

His long, slim fingers, which held the baton with such precision, plucked your glass from your fingers and placed it… somewhere. You weren’t paying attention. No, your attention was on the tip of his tongue as it peeked out from between his lips and swiped the residual bourbon from them.

“Unless - and I hope I’m not reading this wrong - you’d like to call me ‘Sir’?”  You heard a strange noise, only to realise it had come from you, a sort of strangled moan. Your heart was beating in your ears, and your lungs were burning. You should move, but you didn’t want to. How could you? James Barnes was standing in your personal space, his gaze fixed on you, asking if you wanted to call him ‘Sir’. You should say something. Something meaningful, or at least coherent.

“Yes. Sir.” The words left your lips like a sigh. Okay, it was nowhere near as meaningful or coherent as you’d wanted, but you no longer cared because he was kissing you, his hands cupping your face, and your own hands were clinging onto his shirt lest you fall on your ass with how jelly-like your legs were. His tongue traced the seam of your lips, and you opened them to let him in. You were ready to be devoured by him, to go down in flames and be sacrificed at his altar in honour of him.

You didn’t even realise he’d steered you around the room until the back of your legs made contact with his sofa. The only reason you didn’t stumble was due to your grip on his clothing. Barnes urged you down, his larger body hovering over yours as his lips broke contact and trailed down your jaw and neck.  Your sharp, indrawn breath seemed to spur him on as he laved your flesh with kisses and soft nibbles.

Bucky’s hands had left your face too, roaming down your body over your clothes, and your hands worked on their own to return the favour. They dipped to his waist, before working their way under his shirt to feel the warm firmness of his skin. You were burning up with need. With passion.

“Please, please, please…” His teeth scraped lightly along the column of your throat before he raised his head to look at you again. Your fingers dug into the flesh of his lower back, urging him onwards to wherever he wanted to go, wherever he wanted to take you.

“You want more, sweetheart? You crave it, don’t you?” The backs of his knuckles drifted down your cheek. “You’re my Allegra, aren’t you? Going full pace, excitedly, and without worry. I know what you need.” His lips captured yours again, but with an intense hunger. His hands worked efficiently on your clothes, and it was a matter of moments before you were bare beneath his gaze. His eyes roved over every curve, every swell and dimple. Every small scar and stretch mark. You were not ashamed of your body, but under his singular attention you felt overwhelmed, your eyes closing in response.

“Do not hide from me, Allegra.” You felt the trail of his lips across your stomach, the light graze of his stubble. “You will keep your eyes open for me.” Despite the heaviness weighing them down, you forced your eyelids to rise. There was no ice left in his eyes now, only dark wells of lust pulling you under. You kept watching him as he moved lower, dropping to his knees and nudging his shoulders between your thighs.

“You will watch, my little songbird. You will watch as I taste you and learn you. And you will ask me before you come. Your orgasms are mine to bestow. Do you understand?”

“Yes…” You breathed out your response. He raised an eyebrow, signalling that he wanted more from you. “Sir. Yes, Sir. I understand.”

“Good girl…say red if it gets too much.” His voice was deep, and rumbled up his throat like a purr. You had little time to think about it as his mouth curved into a smile, then he dipped his head lower, and…..ohh!

It took all your willpower not to let your eyes close again under his erotic onslaught. His own sparkled knowingly as his lips roved over your pussy, making good on his word to discover all there was about you. His tongue, which had explored and claimed your mouth, slotted between your folds and swirled around your clit before moving down to dip inside your weeping channel. Your fingers clutched for purchase, one on the fabric of the small couch, part of you registering it was the throw you’d covered him with, and the other in his brown hair.

“Oh, God! Fuck!”

He fucked you with his tongue, his nose pressing up against that most sensitive part of you as his hands cradled the backs of your thighs, with your legs over his shoulders so he could move in even closer. You’d never had anyone come close to making you feel like you were feeling now, untethered and a slave to currents you had no control over. There was a tightness to your belly, like a string wound too tight.

“Please, Sir. I need to come.” He shook his head slightly, his eyes never leaving yours. You whimpered, and he granted you a small mercy by changing his focus, sliding his lips back up your pussy to wrap around your clit and suckle it gently.  You cried out, eyelids fluttering before you forced them open again at a small pinch to your thigh.

Bucky then moved his hands, one placed at the base of your spine, holding you up and open, and as he continued to torture you with his mouth, he traced around the opening of your pussy with one finger before sliding it into you. Your body shook, clenching as you tried to hold off your orgasm.

“Please!” You’d never begged for anything before in your life. He broke contact briefly to growl out “No” and then returned within a heartbeat, his finger sliding in and out of your wetness. When he added a second, your legs trembled again, and you bit your lip. In response, Bucky grazed his teeth over your clit, forcing your attention on him and he shook his head again. It took you a moment to realise that he wanted to hear you, hear your cries of ecstasy.

“Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky. Oh God! Please, please, please!” 

The bastard crooked his fingers, massaging your sweet spot, and tears started to roll down your cheeks at the effort you were using to control your body as it was swamped in sensation.

“I can’t! Please! I can’t, I can’t. Sir! Need to come. Need to come.” 

His eyes bored into yours, holding you on the precipice, and you swore that the word he’d told you was climbing up your throat. 

Then he nodded.

And you screamed. 

Your back arched, and you could no longer keep your eyes open. The world was both white and black against your eyelids, complete static, as you felt electricity run through your body. The hair on your arms was on end, every nerve in your body sending conflicting signals to your brain. Up was down and down was up and you couldn’t breathe, but were also dizzy from too much oxygen…

You must have blacked out because when you opened your eyes, you were wrapped in the throw, and Bucky was squished on the sofa with you, your head on his lap as he gently rubbed his hand up and down your arm.

“Hey, there you are, sweetheart.” His smile was warm, and you broke into one of your own in response.

“Hey.” You stretched your arms above your head and flexed your toes. “Oh my God, I feel wiped out and…” A thought suddenly struck you. “What about you?” You moved your head and realised that ‘little’ Barnes was still half awake.

“Don’t worry about me. This was all about you. Trust me, you letting me do that was enough for now.”

You smiled coyly. “For now, eh? Does that mean you envisage us spending more time together?” He flushed, so different from the dominant persona he’d just displayed to you. He rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Well, I wouldn’t say no. But, like only if you want to. No pressure or anything.”

You nibbled at your lower lip, thinking. “We’d have to keep it between us. The others wouldn’t like it. They’ll think you only gave me first chair because I agreed to sleep with you.”

Bucky nodded, leant down, and kissed you gently.

That was the beginning of your secret relationship.

Somehow you’d both kept it quiet, you and Barnes managing to maintain a professional relationship in the rehearsal room before you’d retreat to his office where he’d take you apart before putting you back together again. The first night he fucked you with his cock, you lost count of the number of times you came, and by the time Bucky finally allowed himself to spill inside the tight clutch of your pussy, you were like a rag doll, just allowing him to move you up and down his cock, like a living sex toy.

It was evident from the first that he loved to hear you, loved the noises that you made. It was as though he had made it his mission to try different things with you, just to find out what new noises he could drag from you. And you had never thought you’d crave the submission he wanted from you, but giving over all the power and control was freeing. Trusting him completely brought you peace. But now the season was at a close, and you wondered what that would mean for the pair of you. Would the passion fade away without the music there to draw you together? Or would you still continue to make your own private symphonies?

The audience was still applauding, and Bucky was taking his bow. He then gestured to you, a broad smile on his face and you stood, taking your own, before the pair of you turned to the rest of the orchestra, encouraging them to rise and receive the accolade as well. You all deserved it - you’d all worked hard. You smiled until your face ached and until the adrenaline started to subside, leaving a strange melancholy feeling in your stomach.

You started the lead-off, guiding your fellow musicians backstage to where you would all clean your instruments and put them back in their cases. Some of you were then going to go out to a bar and toast a season well done.

“You got a minute?” Barnes was beside you, face neutral, and you schooled your expression into something similar.

“Sure.” You closed the latches on your violin case and then followed him down the corridor. He stopped, looked around in each direction, before taking your hand and then drawing you through a door. As soon as it shut, his lips were on yours, and your hands were in his hair.

“I need you, Allegra.” His body pressed up against yours, his erection pushing into your stomach.

“You have me, Sir…” It was the truth. He had you for as long as he wanted you. You didn’t know how long that would be, but you’d enjoy it while it lasted. 

Bucky deftly opened the fly of his pants, pushed your long black skirt up and your panties to the side. You hooked your leg around his hip, opening yourself, and he plunged into your wet warmth in almost one stroke, swallowing your shouts and whimpers with his mouth. He slammed in and out of you like a man possessed, and all you could do was hold on.

“I want to take you home, Allegra. No more trysts in offices and store cupboards. I need you on my bed where I can really take you apart. And I need you in it in the mornings when I wake. No more living this life pianissimo. I need it and you, forte. What do you say?”

Your heart soared and the sounds of a thousand symphonies filled your ears.

“Yes, Sir!”

Tag list: @jobean12-blog @bucky-bucky-bucky-bucky @tuiccim @yarnforbrains @sidepartskinnyjeans @flordeamatista @krissy25 @bodeckersdiamonddoll @goldylions @luxeavenger @wheezy-stucky @doasyoudesireandlive @chemtrails-club @seitmai @talia-rumlow @peaches1958 @pono-pura-vida @jen-with-a-pen

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes au #Orchestra au #navy and roo's sleepover #bucky barnes x y/n #late writes

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

The Book of James, Chapter Four, Verse Fourteen (in the steps of Solomon)

everything is vapor

mist

futile

vanity

or so Solomon's God-granted wisdom said.

life is fleeting

time standing still even less.

to belong anywhere takes too long

sometimes just fitting in works best

until you're on the road again

and no one feels like home

no one would even miss you

if they even know your name.

so you put it down on paper

write it to a new face

hand it off onto a character

so you don't have to hold it anymore.

nothing lasts forever

not much lasts more than a year or two

and home doesn't have a definition.

people write their songs and spin their stories

of a place called a hometown

and you sit and listen and act like you know

any of what they say.

everything is vanity, so Solomon said

mist

vapor

incorporeal

you can't hold onto anything.

so you set it down in stone

in ink and artwork

pass it on to someone else

even if they only exist

as words on a page and a song in a mind

she's you but not really:

she's better. they always are

so you set it down in story

place it on the table

all that loss and fleetingness

finds its final resting there.

everything is mist

vanity

vapor

you can't hold it

and you don't have to hold it anymore

~ L. T.

#maybe this is just about creativity as an outlet to loss #marjories is like cheat therapy bc of the military kidism and loss. #Lu rambles #Lu writes #sometimes i think i could write poetry

[rockshortage]

For val: 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15

5. Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech! Will they give one, and what about?

I think she needs to be more fleshed out before I can name a specific thing, but:

Whoever asked her to give a speech will be regretting it very soon, because there is one topic she is always prepared to ramble on about. It is some sort of insane and passionate opinion she holds about something. Perhaps how it should be illegal to recycle the parts of a defeated battle robot into a new robot, those parts are now tainted with defeat, and they have no right to enter the battlegrounds again because the defeat will rub off on the new robot and make it suck more and she has the detailed tournament history charts to prove it!!

6. Who will they take advice from, no matter what it is? Who won’t they take advice from, no matter what it is?

She will always listen to what her lil bro Gabriel has to say – although that doesn't necessarily mean she’ll follow the advice.

Definitely not taking any advice from RedEye, she cannot take a single thing that guy says seriously.

8. Do complex puzzles intrigue or frustrate them?

They frustrate her more often than not. The only time she likes figuring things out is when she’s messing with robots, but even then she needs to step away pretty soon after hitting a snag with something. Why won’t this thing just work the way she wants it to? 😠 She has a bunch of unfinished projects because of it.

11. They’ve won the lottery. Spend, or save?

Maybe she’ll put a little bit to the side for emergencies but most of it will be spent in no time. First, the happy occasion demands a big ol’ party with no expenses spared. Then you need to take care of a bunch of things for yourself and your friends. Maybe some strangers too while you’re at it, fuck it. And while you do that you nourish yourself on expensive foods and drinks you’ve always wanted to try and hey – remember all that work you have to do that you don’t want to do? You can afford to employ an assistant now to do all that crap. Because of this, you will have more time to plan elaborate pranks on Redeye, which may require bribing a person or two (*cough* Gage *cough*).

13. Name one thing their parents taught them.

Maybe this is a bit clichée for a Lone Wanderer but I need to start somewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That bible verse James teaches her early on in life, that was so important to the mother she never got to know, really becomes important to her too. There’s the core message of generosity in there, and it often guided her through her quests in the capital wasteland, even if it was to her detriment sometimes. She’s still generous these days, even as part of a raider gang, but perhaps a little smarter about it. Not as naïve as she used to be.

15. What would they consider a waste of time – other than school or work?

Hmmm, none of the options I came up with really grabbed me, but I think this one is the least boring of the bunch:

That whole courtship song and dance when someone is interested in being in a relationship is needlessly complicated and a drag to Val. What happened to just walking up to a person and asking them straight up if they’re interested? The whole romancing and flirting stuff comes after establishing a first baseline of what each person is looking for. Much easier that way.

#ask meme #val #the she

[redhead-reporter]

º ✧ 。 shaye don't be lazy, write up all the verses you have !

NO, i think i'd rather pull my hair out by the roots and stuff myself into a meat grinder 🥰 but i WILL give you a brief summary of each, just so you all know your options when deciding to interact with mj ! some of these are SHIP LOCKED - aka she is always in those relationships with that specific version of the character when i write in those verses. but the others are wide open for shipping if that's your thing :)

insomniac verse - mj's MAIN/DEFAULT verse !

threads based before, during, and after the events of marvel's spider-man (and soon to be the sequel!). mj is an associate editor at the daily bugle, focused on the "city beat" aka crime and politics. she is dating peter, unless otherwise specified ahead of time, and lives in a one bedroom apartment in greenwich. she was childhood best friends with harry osborn and serves as a sort of big sister to miles as he steps into his own as a spider-man

tasm verse - ship locked with @labwebs !

this verse draws heavy inspiration from insomniac but there are some key differences/details - in this verse mj was one of gwen's BEST friends, though they ran in such different social circles that she never met peter while they were dating. this mj is also much more comfortable with the concept of the multiverse because of her boyfriend and has traveled to different universes herself.

actress verse -

fresh out of ESU, a once in a lifetime audition brokered by her favorite professor skyrocketed mj into fame. she landed the role of kinsley james, a young lawyer with a temper as fiery as her hair, on hbo's latest juggernaut eros (think scandal written by the succession writers). nominated for an emmy for supporting actress after the first season, mj's star continued to rise after it was announced that she would be playing the lead role of rebecca in the long past dawn book series movie adaptations. she splits her time between new york and LA, depending on where she's currently filming.

ITSV verse -

mj is the wife and partner of peter b, not to mention the mother to his perfect child, mayday. she has taken a break from her acting career to focus on their daughter, and occasionally volunteers at the F.E.A.S.T. center in the free time she gets when Peter takes their daughter places he shouldn't.

noir verse - ship locked with @surpriseattack !

ohhhh wow look ANOTHER reporter!mj. yes, yes it is and you'll LIKE it. mj works side by side with noir on his various cases as his partner, even if the title is unofficial. she had dreams of becoming a model or an actress when she was in school, and frankly still does if you ask her. but when the depression hit and she saw the DEVASTATION around her, the injustices flattening entire neighborhoods while fat cats only grew uptown, she turned her gift with words into a more impactful career.

college era verse -

mj is in her junior or senior year studying journalism at either ESU or GCU (for those who know lol rip). she's heavily involved with both the student newspaper and also the theater department, starring in several shows a year. a known party girl, mj never says no to a night out and rarely ever comes home alone.

top gun verse - ship locked with @brdshwed !

this is the only verse that i actually DID write up; you can find the details here

#º ✧ 。not the girl i was or used to be insomniac verse #º ✧ 。yeah he's pretty amazing tasm verse #º ✧ 。my angel is the centerfold --- actress verse #º ✧ 。it will be heavenly to hold you in a dream --- noir verse #º ✧ 。you're a sunflower into the spiderverse #º ✧ 。these are the days you’ll remember college era #º ✧ 。i'll be right here hold my hand top gun verse

[gatekeeper-watchman]

Daily Devotionals for March 5, 2024

Proverbs: God's Wisdom for Daily Living

Devotional Scripture:

Proverbs 10:22-26: 22 The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it. 23 It is as a sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of understanding hath wisdom. 24 The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. 25 As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation. 26 As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him.

Thought for the Day

Verse 22 - God grants prosperity without sorrow to those who obey Him. Rich people who fail to share their wealth find sorrow attached to it, for they fear losing it. Fear has torment and is a form of sorrow. So is loneliness. The rich are surrounded by many people, but few friends. Their money attracts swindlers and those looking for a free ride. They often buy friends, and their wealth can replace God in their hearts. It then becomes a curse, robbing them of peace and joy.

Verse 23 - Some time ago, my friend and and I visited a coastal city under a hurricane warning. We stayed indoors and turned on the television. News reporters tracking the storm interviewed a crowd of people drinking and having a "hurricane party" on a nearby island. Everyone was warned to leave the island since the hurricane was expected to strike there before hitting the mainland. One drunken young man-made sport of the situation. Scoffing at the warnings, he boasted that he was not afraid of a windstorm. One reporter stayed on the island and filmed the terrifying effects of the hurricane as it hit the hotel. Large windows facing the ocean were suddenly blown in by fierce winds. The explosion of glass and water sent the partygoers and the reporter running to the basement for cover. In the last shots filmed, I noticed the young man who had dismissed the storm, running in terror. The thing he had scoffed at had become a reality that he could not control. He was the epitome of a self-confident fool. A worse predicament than that young man's awaits those who mock God. Eventually, they will face His wrath, and not the fury of a mere hurricane. God warns man to leave his sin before he is judged for it, just as the people were warned to leave the island before the hurricane struck. The wise will submit to God now.

Verses 24-26 - To walk in rebellion is to walk in Satan's territory and make ourselves easy targets. God is not punishing us when things go wrong; it is the result of our walking away from His protection. To step back under it, we must repent, but even then, fear may torment us. If we submit to God and resist the devil, then he must flee, and we can walk in God's grace (James 4:7-8). As a tornado destroys everything in its path, Satan destroys the wicked. The righteous, however, will stand through life's storms because Jesus Christ is their firm foundation (Romans 6:23). No one wants to send a sluggard (lazy person) to do a job. God does not choose such a person for His work either. If we desire to be used by God, we must learn how to work well for people. God commissions faithful people who do not shirk responsibility.

Prayer Devotional for the Day

Dear Father, thank you for giving us such good advice in the Bible. Give us the grace to heed it. Lord, help me to do a good job at each task that is before me. I want the works of my hands to glorify You. Lord, I ask You to keep Your hand of protection on me and my family and my loved ones. I pray for all who read this devotional that You will also protect and guide them. Reveal Yourself to them in a deeper way. Touch and heal them and bless each of them this very day. Give us all the grace to overcome the things in our lives that are not pleasing to You. You are so good to us, Lord. I am very thankful for all You are doing in my life and the wonderful work You are doing in the lives of Your people all over the world. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. From: Steven P. Miller@ParkermillerQ,  gatekeeperwatchman.org Founder of Gatekeeper-Watchman International Groups, Tuesday, March 5, 2024, Jacksonville, Florida., USA.  X ... @ParkermillerQ #GWIG, #GWIN, #GWINGO, #Ephraim1, #IAM, #Sparkermiller, #Eldermiller1981 Founder on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Sparkermiller.JAX.FL.USA

[ciaossu-imagines]

Personalization Prompt #2 – Ketchup

BLACK: what face claim from an anime, comic book, or cartoon do I associate with you?

Oh, this was a hard one! Of course, there’s that sort of lean towards your icon or plain out just seeing you as Apple, but just taking a step back, I think I have to go with a cartoon character here instead of an anime character, but Audrey Ramirez from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, is probably the closest I could come to how I picture you!

WHITE: what flame type and box weapon do I think you’d have in the khr!verse?

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s a couple different ideas I do have for you as far as Flame types go. Of course, because of your impressive creativity and interesting ways of thinking, there is the desire to put you as a Mist Flame, since you are someone who could easily create things with that brilliant mind of yours. However, overall, I do think you give off the Aura of someone with a Rain Flame slightly more, so I do have you as a Rain Flame type. As far as box weapons go, I definitely think a Rain raven box weapon would be what you use, because of the obvious spiritual, emotional, and intellectual beliefs around the bird. In my head, it normally perches on your shoulder but it can fly around, spreading the Flames over a fairly wide area or it has the added ability of being able to calm and almost tranquilize whoever it lands on that is not you.

RED: what aesthetics do I associate with you?

The smell of home-cooked meals and the act of making food alongside friends or family, with shared laughs and memories to treasure forever. Backpacking abroad, new adventures with every step of a hiking boot clad foot. Calm and peacefulness. Kindness, always choosing to reach out a hand to those in need. Intelligence and compassion mingling beautifully. Thesis papers. Always having multiple things on the go, always moving and doing and thinking. Soft music in the background, soothing the soul. Bright smiles and sun-bathed skin. Soft faux-fur.

BLUE: what are three songs I’d put on a playlist for you?

LOST BOY, ruth b.

A CLOSE FRIEND, james newton howard

I SWALLOWED HARD, LIKE I UNDERSTOOD, 65daysofstatic

YELLOW: what fictional world out of all my fandoms would I picture you in?

Obviously, hands down, it’s Katekyo Hitman Reborn. However, I could easily see you fitting into both the Nanbaka, Servamp, and Saiyuki universes!

GREEN: who would I pair you with out of all my fandoms?

Obviously, for KHR it’s Reborn. For K Project, it’s Munakata. For Nanbaka, it’s Jyugo. For Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! it’s Goemon. For Bungou Stray Dogs, it’s Akutagawa. For Servamp, it’s Tsurugi. For Saiyuki, it’s Hakkai. For Eyeshield 21, it’s Kid. For Ronin Warriors, it’s Rowen. For Kekkaishi, it’s Makio. For GetBackers, it’s Emishi. For Black Cat, it’s Train. For Karneval, it’s Gareki. For Gangsta., it’s Nic. For Bleach, it’s Byakuya. For Naruto, it’s Kakashi. For Deadman Wonderland, it’s Nagi. For Ouran, it’s the twins, both of them. For Durarara!!, it’s Kadota. For Yu Yu Hakusho, it’s Kuwabara. For Gintama, it’s Kondo. For Mystic Messenger, it’s Yoosung. For Ikemen Revolution, it’s Kyle. For Blush Blush, it’s Cashew. For Date Warp, it’s Nathaniel. For Hatoful Boyfriend, it’s Sakuya. For The Outsiders, it’s Sodapop. For Class of the Titans, it’s Neil. For Ultimate Spider-Man, it’s Harry. For Gravity Falls, it’s Stan. For The Mighty Ducks, it’s Adam. For The Covenant, it’s Tyler. For Jungle Fury, it’s Dom. For Ninja Storm, it’s Cam. For Mystic Force, it’s Nick.

PURPLE: what gif reminds me of you?

PINK: if you were an AU, what type of AU would you be?

Maybe I’m being influenced by recent conversations we’ve had, but I do think it would be an isekai AU, based around platonic bonds and building a found family 😊

RAINBOW: if i were to write a khr sequel, following Tsuna’s demise, and could only use my reader’s as characters, who would you be?

Okay, I have two ideas…bear with me as they’re both kind of implausible, but I like to believe fun nonetheless. We’re going to set aside the fact that going canon means there will be no future generations of Arcobaleno, but if there were, I’d see you as the next Rain Arcobaleno. Otherwise, I see you as part of the Vongola, as one of the medical team…as in, someone finally realized how important mental health is in the Mafia and you work alongside the doctors and nurses helping the Family members maintain their mental health and you have friends and family and loved ones and your life, despite being a part of the Mafia goes nice and peacefully and you’re treasured and valued and it’s all nice and soft and peaceful and I like that for you.

#unrequested prompts #ketchup