#Especially since i used to have a severe alcoholic in my family - he's in treatment now

[leadandblood]

Okay but is nobody gonna talk about "my father drank gin" and "put a bullet through my head before i drink gin" like is nobody going absolutely insane over that-

Well i am and im gonna talk about it.

The tragedy of children picking up drinking because they saw it in their parents and so it's much easier to fall into it. And their brain justifying being drunk on something else, as a defence mechanism, against feeling just as bad as their parent. They're drinking something else, so they can't be exactly like them right? But in reality it's often just as bad and sometimes even worse.

This is also genius because all you get is two innocent lines and that's all it takes for you to realise Crozier's past with alcoholism.

"my father drank gin" could just be a thing you say during a toast. "aah, my father loved gin, it's nice remembering things about him" but no. Here it's said so bitterly and hatefully, you know for a fact he drank a lot and Crozier HATED that about him. We can also assume he's dead from something alcohol induced.

And then the other line "put a bullet through my head before i drink gin" - despite what the words actually say - is also something you could say as a joke, when your friend offers you gin, you know. "you want me to drink WHAT??" Sort of thing. But here you kind of feel like... He means it. It's said with so much resentment and stubborness, he might as well mean it literally. "Kill me before i become my father." Because Crozier hated him so much he wants to become nothing like him. Even when it's through impressive mental gymnastics.

It's just agony to think about-

#Especially since i used to have a severe alcoholic in my family - he's in treatment now #And he's doing better #We just have to sort out the issue that caused it #And even i fell into that “nothing like my parent” thing for several years and i had to fight against myself a lot to stop thinking that wa #Anyway #By the gods #I swear #Jared Harris is making me insane #the terror #francis crozier #the terror amc #Amc the terror

[tojiscumdumpster]

CHAPTER ELEVEN- TOJI

⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀✧ summary page

 Life has really been fucking with me these last six weeks. Work’s hell. The apartment we live in went up by four hundred dollars. And to make matters worse, Megumi and I have been rockier than ever. 

 That’s the thing that’s bothering me the most.

 It’s over simple shit, too. 

 I try my best to be a laid back parent and only go full on dad mode when needed, but I think the kid has taken advantage of that. All I ask is three things from Megumi:

 Don’t get into fights, and if you do, don’t get caught. 

 School night curfew is eight. Weekends are eleven.

 And lastly, tell me your whereabouts.

 But what does he do instead? Miss curfew. Leave the house without telling me where he’s going, and now he’s on a two week-suspension from school since he got into a fight. 

 Grant it the fight was justify because some kids were fucking with him and talking shit about his lack of English, but shit, Megumi. 

 At least he won. 

 One side of me was saying that’s my boy, and the other side had to ground him. 

 Let’s just say he wasn’t too happy with me after that. 

 I’m surprised he actually listened to me, though. But with him listening, I’ve been getting the silent treatment, no eating meals together, and been avoided like I’m the plague. 

 Parenting is not a walk in the park, I know that. Especially when you’re a single parent. When times like this hit, I think of my late wife more than ever. 

 With her death anniversary right around the corner, I can’t help but miss her and wish she was by my side. 

 I can’t do this shit alone. I was not raised in a loving environment, and considering the fact that my old man was an abusive drunk that used me as his punching bag, I damn sure don’t know what the fuck it feels like to have a father. 

 A mom? Don’t know either. Old man wasn’t faithful and was sleeping around with different women, so my mom could be dead or alive. Who knows? 

 My late wife knew all of this, not the severity, but she knew I had a shitty family. Yet she managed to see something good in a motherfucker like me, to the point we had a kid together.

 A kid that fucking hates me. And I’m the only one to blame. 

 God, maybe I should listen to Kong for once. I’m forty-two. Shit, maybe it is time to settle down and look for a housewife. Someone who’s willing to help raise a fifteen-year-old boy. 

 No, what the fuck am I saying? Since when do I listen to that fucker?

 Never. I trust him, though. Hell, do I really have a choice since he helped me take care of Megumi when I was going through my episodes in the early years of my wife’s death? 

 But my kid is my responsibility. Getting a woman involved isn’t going to help my relationship with Megumi. That’s some shit I need to fix myself. 

 Kong and I have one unorthodox ass relationship, but he’s the only bastard I actually consider a friend, and I know he means well. 

 He is Megumi’s godfather after all. Besides, the last thing I want to do is to ever make Megumi feel like I’m trying to replace his mom. Far from it. 

 Maybe loneliness is just catching up to my old ass.m, and the only woman I think of breaking me from my no relationship rule is Y/N. 

 Y/N fucking L /N. 

 That woman drives me insane in more ways than one. 

 After our first date over a month ago, we’ve been talking nonstop. Texting. Calling. Casual dates every now and there when time allows us. If I’m being real, Y/N is the only reason why I haven’t ripped my fucking hair out. 

 People would usually turn to alcohol to depend on the burning sensation it gives you to get drunk when feeling stressed. But me? Y/N is who I get drunk off of. Her energy is fucking addicting, and the reassurance she gives me… who know I needed so much of it. 

Like any other man, I don’t turn to anyone to help with my problems. I’m a prideful motherfucker who has the ego the size of a galaxy. However, I don’t have to be the way around Y/N. I sound sappy as shit, I know. 

 Guess that’s what happens when you become vulnerable. 

 The only reason why I haven’t had sex with her yet.

 I know myself. When I was younger, I only saw sex as a way to make extra cash when I was struggling after I got disowned by the Zen’in. The older I got, sex became more meaningless to me. I can be balls deep in pussy, no matter how good it is, and have no type of feelings attached. Me making a woman come or them making me come doesn’t mean I’ll start buying them roses and shit. 

 It wouldn’t be the same with Y/N. 

 Not saying I’m on the verge of falling in love with her, let alone loving her. But seeing how much we talk, how jealous I fucking get, especially after figuring out she works at the same school as her ex-fiancé, I don’t want any other fucker to even breathe the same air as her.

 Not even myself, but I’ll still be selfish enough to do it.

 That’s the thing about Y/N. I feel myself growing more selfish when it comes to her. I want her time and energy to only be for me. She’s mine without her knowing and I’m planning on keeping it that way. I can admit that’s probably a dick move, but I can’t find myself falling in love again. 

At least, I’m forcing myself not to.

 Hearing her moan my name. Seeing her face when she comes. Knowing what it feels to have that sweet, tight, warm fucking pussy clench around my fingers. I’ll become a starved and possessive man the moment she’s like that around my dick. 

 I’ll catch feelings.

 I’ll want her above me, beneath me, all over me twenty-four-seven. I’m not an easy lover. I can admit to that.

 But that won’t stop me from…

 No, I won’t say that.

 It’s strong. Whatever emotion I feel about Y/N, and I can’t help but think it has something to do with her being so damn familiar. The more I talk to her, the more I know who she is. Maybe in another lifetime I’ve loved her before. 

 Even saying that in my head sounds crazy as shit. The dreams about her aren't helping, either.

 “Get a hold of yourself, Fushiguro,” I mutter to myself. I look at the time to see it’s eleven thirty. “She should be on her free hour right now.” 

 Maybe a phone call wouldn’t hurt.

 “I’m busy,” I grunt.

 I couldn’t even call Y/N before Kong called me to fucking be clingy. He claims he only calls me to check on the kid, but Megumi has his own phone. 

 “Mad because I’m not your girlfriend? Sorry, I had you first, Fushiguro.” I hear him puffing out smoke from his cigarette. “Be grateful you have a fucking friend to check on you, you fucking jackass.”

 I chuckle, sarcastically saying, “Awe, I consider myself very lucky.”

 “Fuck you.”

 “Sorry, not interested,” I replied. And this is what I mean by unorthodox friendship. “Assuming you got some information for me?” After that Zen’in fuck purchased the club ownership last month, I had Kong do some digging for me.

 All the bullshit he was spewing about Naobito forcing everyone in that family who doesn’t have a kid, to have one, and taking interest in finding Megumi, I couldn’t take shit like that lightly.

 Not when my kid is potentially involved.

 Knowing how those Zen’ins’ get down, they always find a way to get what they want. Even if it results in blood.

 “I found some files about that Naoya shitface you told me about… Looks like he’s the real deal,” he says.

 “Meaning?”

 “Meaning he is your cousin. Looks like your old man’s brother had some unwanted kids of his own.”

 “Having kids in the family just to leave them dry is a fucking ritual in that shitty ass family.” I get up from bed and go to the kitchen to grab a ginger ale. “What else you find out?”

 “Zen'in owns half of the real estate in Tokyo,” he tells me, clicking his tongue. “Those bastards keep growing and growing by the minute. So if what this Naoya is saying is true, I can only imagine Naobito is doing this to have the city fear the name Zen’in, even after he’s six feet under.”

 I scoff. “For an ego stroker? So what the fuck does this have to do with my kid?”

 “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

  Over my dead fucking body if they think they could come even twenty feet near Megumi. I have no problem going back to that violent lifestyle that I’m trying to escape when it comes to protecting my kid.

 Actually, I’m hoping that they do because I’ve been itching for a stress relief and permanently getting rid of those Zen’in fucks just might be the way to do it.

 Maybe I should pay them a visit on my trip to Japan in a few months.

 I run my hand through my hair and sigh. “Alright. Keep me posted.” An incoming call comes through and I see Y/N’s name flashing my screen. “Gotta go.”

 “Your girlfriend’s callin-” I disconnected our line before he finished his bullshit to answer Y/N.

 “I’m so close to fucking pulling these braids out and choking my boss with them.” Ha, that’s a funny way to say hello.

 “I’m trying to wrap my head around why hearing you threaten to kill someone is turning me on?” I tease.

 She lets out a soft breath. “I’m sorry, big guy. Work is being a pain in my ass right now.”

 “I see that. You cursed twice. That’s something expected from me.”

 “Well, it’s kind of inevitable when you’re a high school teacher,” she argues. “And actually, no. I expect four curse words in under a minute from you. So I think my two words will be alright.”

 I smile while walking back to my room and close the door behind me. “Talk to me, sweets. What’s going on?”

 “Other than finding out that my name was unknowingly submitted to take part in the state’s teachers summit, nothing really.”

“Is it that bad?” 

 “No. It’s actually a good opportunity to voice your concerns as a teacher to the school board, but quite frankly, I’m tired of going. Only one teacher is selected every year to represent each school in the county and it’s always me.”

 “And what is this summit shit? Why do they need teacher representatives?” I hear her smile through the phone when she explains the summit, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of me cursing already. “Probably this isn’t what you want to hear, but I can see why you’re always chosen. You speak your mind well, and I can see the passion you have when it comes to your students.”

 “Well, yeah, but every teacher should be that way,” she counters. “And the summit this year is four hours away from us, so they made it a weekend convention. A weekend, Toji?” 

 I arch my brow. “And who submitted your name?” Her silence tells me my answer. “You sure this fucker isn’t trying to win you back? Abusing his power as your boss to get you to himself for the weekend seems like a man move I probably would’ve done, too.”

 “You would?” she incredulously asks.

 “When it comes to you? Absolutely. Zero questions asked.” I can almost guarantee the silence from her again is because she’s blushing, something I find fucking adorable about her. “You there, Miss L/N?”

 “Toji, I’m at work,” she answers.

 “Admitting that your mind is in the gutter?”

 “I-uh, no. Just reminding you to get your head out of it.”

 I tip my head back and laugh. “Cute. So when’s the summit?”

 “In three months.”

 “And you can’t pull out?”

 “Unfortunately, no. Unless I can prove that it’s due to a medical or family emergency, I’m out of luck.” No doubt in my mind that her ex pulled this shit intentionally. I mean, I get it. If I lost someone like Y/N as my fiancée, I would be going through hell and back until she was mine again. 

 But too bad for this fucker that isn’t the case anymore, and I don’t tread lightly when it comes to people fucking with what’s mine.

 Mine, that’s exactly what Y/N is.

 “I’m way too hungry for this crap,” she says, pulling me from my possessive musings. 

 “And you didn’t eat because?”

 “Someone kept me up last night on the phone, so I overslept and couldn’t get a decent breakfast before work this morning.” 

 I chuckle, remembering our two a.m. conversations that turned into her masturbating while I was talking her through it. “I’m sure that person is sorry.”

 “Doubt it.”

  I look at the time again to see it’s noon. “What time is your free hour over?” 

 “One. Why?”

 “Grab lunch with me.”

 She playfully hums to consider my last minute invitation. “I guess I can squeeze you in.”

 “Squeeze me in?” I mock her response while laughing. “Appreciate it, Miss L/N.”

 “I’m sure you can find a way to show me your appreciation.”

 I smirk. “Forgot you were at work?”

 “Whatever, Mr. Fushiguro. Text me the address and I’ll meet you there.”

 “Alright, alright. I’ll see you,” is the last thing I say before disconnecting the call.

 Smiling to myself like a fucking lovesick idiot knowing that I’m about to see Y/N has me surprised myself. Like I said earlier, this woman drives me insane.

 And I think I’ll grow to not mind it.

PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER

no discussion question this chapter. but would love to hear your thoughts ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

#anime x black!reader #anime x reader #toji x reader #toji fushigro x reader #toji x black reader #toji fushiguro x black reader #jjk x reader #jjk x black reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x black reader #toji angst #jjk angst

[skeletonfarmer]

I know tumblr is not the best place for relationship advice but pls lol

Also fair warning this is a long post and TW for mention of suicide

Some backstory: my boyfriend (21) and I (22) have been together for two and a half years. I struggle with severe depression and occasional psychotic symptoms (mood swings, hallucinations, irrational thoughts, etc). I was also diagnosed with cancer in January 2022. I recently had to quit my full time job due to mental and physical health reasons, so he is the only one working right now.

So for the past several months, but especially the past few weeks or so my boyfriend and I have been arguing a lot and I’m not sure what to do or if it’s healthy.

There’s always an array of things the arguments are about but usually they can be boiled down to one of us not feeling appreciated/not feeling loved/feeling like we’re being taken advantage of.

Our most recent argument started yesterday afternoon. A mutual friend of ours surprised me yesterday late morning and helped me clean our apartment almost the whole day, it was like 4-5 hours, with a break for lunch of course. Later on she had asked me if my bf and I could babysit because her fiance had gotten tickets to a baseball game and she wanted to go, but she didn’t wanna ask her mom to babysit since she had been watching her all day. I agreed but let her know that it would probably just be me.

Later when we were on the way back to her apartment my boyfriend had gotten off work and gone home. He called me and was immediately rude as I answered the phone, and he complained about how when we were cleaning/organizing, we moved some of his stuff to where he didn’t like it. He was mainly upset that we moved his (large amount) of alcohol bottles to a separate shelf rather than it taking up 1/3 of our already limited counter space. I told him that if he didn’t like where we put the stuff then he should help me clean on the weekends so he could decide where it goes himself. He got really upset and said that since he works and I don’t, it’s my job to clean and he doesn’t have to clean since he works, and that I should know it’s rude to “throw his stuff on a shelf in the corner”

Our friend hears him and when she sees him she goes off on him for awhile about how you talk to someone you love that way, and I didn’t hear much of what was said but what I did hear it sounded like he mainly put blame on me and put me down to try and justify his words and actions.

We argued about it on and off for the rest of the night but I thought by the time we went to bed we were fine.

When we woke up this morning within 30 minutes he was mad again, this time about how we don’t have enough money for groceries this week, bills, or gas for him to get to work. The way he said it made it feel like he was blaming me for not being able to work, so I felt guilty and asked my mom for $30 to help with groceries. He also somehow got a refund for our dinner we had last night, so that was $25-30 back.

After we go grocery shopping I have to go make a return at Big Lots, and when we’re walking out he insists on going into the liquor store next door. I say okay but let him know he shouldn’t get anything since we don’t really have money to pay our bills. Well after 20 minutes in there he buys a bottle of liquor, not sure what or how much but most of the stuff he was looking at was $30-45.

I get visibly upset and when he asks I tell him that it’s irresponsible for him to have an attitude with me and get mad about not having enough money for bills and food, to where I have to ask family for money, but then he goes and buys alcohol. This causes another fight and he goes off on me about how he’s “tired of me bitching at him” and that I won’t let him have fun, I have a problem with everything he does, etc.

A couple of months ago he had mentioned that I need to be more appreciative of him because not many people would have stayed with me through my cancer treatments and my psychiatric hospital stay for a suicide attempt. I haven’t brought this up to him since he said it but I think about it often.

I know I am definitely not perfect and I know I can get an attitude pretty easily sometimes, but I feel like he doesn’t give me as much credit as I deserve. My mental health makes it extremely difficult for me to regularly keep up with house chores, and I always let him know when I’m having a particularly bad day and not much will get done. At the time he says it’s okay but he always holds it over my head the next time we have a confrontation. I really do love him but I am also so tired of feeling like I’m just a maid that’s shitty at her job. I don’t know how to go about fixing this or if there is any way to even do so.

[painintopurpose]

What I wish I knew before leaving a narcissist

I met and married my husband when I was 20 years old. At the time, I had no idea I was marrying an abusive man. I didn't realize it until at least five years into our marriage. As ridiculous as that sounds, it's true.

Society today recognizes abuse as only physical. That's what I used to believe anyway. Since my husband never hit me I would have never thought I was being abused.

At first I struggled to say it. I was embarrassed. I learned that what I was experiencing was abuse, but I couldn't quite understand how. It took a couple of years before I could confidently say that I was being abused.

Before I go on, let's become a little more familiar with the word, abuse.

verb/əˈbyo͞oz/

use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.

treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.

noun/əˈbyo͞os/

the improper use of something."alcohol abuse"Similar:misusemisapplicationmisemploymentmishandlingexploitationperversion

cruel and violent treatment of a person or animal."a black eye and other signs of physical abuse"

As it turns out, there's a whole world of abuse out there and violence is only the tip of the iceberg. It's been argued that emotional abuse can be worst than physical abuse, and after experiencing both, I absolutely agree. Physical abuse was obvious. It's scary, painful, and cruel. When I was being abused emotionally, I didn't recognize I was being abused, and that's what makes it so dangerous.

For years I thought I was going crazy. My anxiety was through the roof! I started having panic attacks and my emotions were out of control. Life was overwhelming to me. I went into counseling and to several different psychiatrists, desperate for help, but I never found relief. I felt like a failure as a wife and a mother and I couldn't understand why.

After years of searching for answers and seeking help I finally discovered the world of narcissistic abuse and right away everything made sense! Everything clicked in an instant but soon after I went into denial. My husband was my best friend and together, we built a life. In fact, I had no life outside of him. I devoted my life to building our family. I wasn't ready to admit I was being abused, I didn't want to believe it, but once you learn about it you can't go back to being ignorant. You start to see it in every part of your life and eventually it becomes overwhelmingly obvious. You start to watch and notice things you never noticed before.

I would catch him unlocking the truck after I locked it then later yelling at me for forgetting to lock the door and blaming me for any potential damage that could have caused. I started to pay more attention to my actions and noticed that he would hide things I put down and deny ever seeing it in the first place. It was gut wrenching because I thought about all the years I've spent with this man. How many times has he done this to me? He convinced the entire time that I was losing my mind and I believe him. I took the blame for everything. I hated myself. I felt like a terrible wife and a bad mother but it turns out that he was the master pulling the strings the entire time.

I didn't want to leave for several reasons. First and foremost, I did love this man, even if he didn't know how to love me in return. Second, we built a life together. I put everything into that life, I couldn't imagine starting from scratch. Third, I was all his. I lost touch with friends and family, (which is an intentional abuse tactic), and didn't know anything outside of him and our life together. The world outside terrified me!

I eventually accepted that what I was experiencing was abuse, but I tried to find a way around it. I tried to convince myself that the abuse isn't so bad, or that maybe if I talk to him about it he'd be willing to change. How foolish and naive, but I just didn't want to lose everything and everyone I knew and loved so much! I didn't want to lose my entire life. I tried to study as much as I could on the abuse I was experiencing because I thought if I knew enough, I would know how to navigate around it. After a couple more years of trial and error I finally had to accept reality. I was in an abusive relationship, and it's impossible to deny it. He won't change and there's a strong chance that since I was now aware of the abuse, he would discard me. I couldn't stand the thought! Come to think of it, he discarded the mother of his boys when he met me. It was textbook. When they lose interest in you or when you figure them out, they keep you around until they find someone else to take your place and with the snap of a finger you're tossed out of their life and replaced right away.

I eventually had to accept that my only option was to leave. It was terrifying, but the alternative scared me more. So I had to come up with a plan - and I did - and that's why I'm writing this today. In 2019 I made a plan to leave then left. Today, in 2023, I am currently living in a homeless shelter and I've lost everything including custody of my one and only child. The past four years have been horrifying, worst than I ever imagined. I find myself longing for a second chance because if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't be coming to you from a computer at a homeless shelter.

Let's get into it - things I wish I knew before leaving a narcissist;

It's not all their fault. This one feels harsh but hear me out because I feel that without understanding this, you'll be stuck with a victim mentality and that's a dangerous place to be. Here's why - Victim mentality is when you believe you have no control over things that happen to you. People who have a victim mentality have often suffered through trauma or hard times, but haven't developed a healthier way to cope. As a result, they develop a negative view of life, where they feel that they don't have any control over what happens to them. I've been trapped in a victim mindset and it caused so much damage in my life. It set me back tremendously in my healing journey. It's so destructive and will waste so much of your precious time, trust me on this one! Before you take any step forward it's vital that you understand this concept so you don't fall into the trap of victim mentality. So, step one, understand your part in the relationship and take responsibility for it. DON'T BLAME YOURSELF! I can't stress that enough. You're not at fault. By taking responsibility for your role you're able to better understand why everything happened the way it did, what you need to do for personal growth, and it will help you to better understand them. It all starts with you. Taking responsibility for your life is one of the most empowering moves you can make!

People won't get it. The concept of emotional abuse is a fairly new concept. Most people aren't aware it exists. We still have a long way to go to bring awareness to our society. On top of that, it's designed to be subtle and difficult to recognize. Without any knowledge that it exists, people won't be able to spot it when it's happening. Think about it, how long did it take before you realized you were being abused? It's very complex and there's not enough awareness for people to recognize it. So don't jump out there expecting support, like I did, because you most likely won't have any. The courts aren't up to date and neither are many mental health professionals. I used to find myself wishing that my husband would hit me just one time so that I have proof of abuse and I would believe it myself. You get hit one time and there's a world of resources at your fingertips but a psychological abuser knows that and that's exactly why they don't lay their hands on you.

Your reputation has most likely already been damaged. A smear campaign is repeated uses of smears in an attempt to try to damage someone's reputation. Long before you realized you were being abused your abuser has most likely been behind the scenes telling your family and friends that you're the one with the problem. You may think that there's no way my family would believe those lies but here's the kicker - they don't run to your families and friends saying that you're the bad guy. Instead they say that they're concerned about you because you're acting different. They act like a person who's concerned about you, but at they same time they are spreading lies and rumors about you. They've also probably already filmed or recorded you blowing up at them after they pushed you over the edge. Of course their abuse isn't recorded, but your reaction is, and that's all anyone ever gets to see.

You most likely have brain damage. Neuroscientists have discovered that long-term narcissistic abuse can lead to actual physical brain damage. This damage can cause problems with memory, focus, and concentration. It can also lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

Without evidence, you'll get nowhere. Yet getting evidence of abuse that's invisible, from an abuser who's extremely hyper vigilant, after learning that what you're experiencing is abuse, while grieving your entire life, seems nearly impossible and sometimes, it is! If you can figure out was to start collecting evidence as soon as possible without them knowing, start immediately! You will never have too much. And be aware that they are constantly collecting evidence against you, even if you're not doing anything wrong. They way they flip the script and manipulate situations makes it easy to convince the audience that you're the bad guy.

You're going to most likely lose everything you've ever worked for and will have to start from scratch.

You must grieve! Grieve the relationship you thought you had. Grieve the love you lost. Grieve the life that you built on all those lies. Grieve your lost hopes and dreams for your future. Don't run from it, don't hide, don't avoid it - let it run its course. It's going to be horrifying and painful and you'll want to run but don't because the grieving process has to happen regardless and it will eventually catch up with you.

For now this is all I have time for, but if anything else comes to mind I'll try to include it as soon as possible. When all is said and done I'm not going to lie, this will probably be the hardest thing you've ever had to go through and you will probably never be fully prepared. However, it's possible and if you keep going you will survive! If you find yourself confused or alone I hope you will reach out to me because I completely understand how overwhelming, confusing, terrifying, and lonely all of this can be.

#narcissistic ex #post separation abuse #advice #narc #help leaving abusive relationship

[imaginethatneathuh]

Silence: Elijah Mikaelson - TVD/TO (Request)

Elijah Mikaelson x partner!reader, romantic

Elijah is upset with you for drinking so much and the two of you fight.

Request from Wattpad.

TW/CW: Drinking, controlling partner, fear, might be something else I've forgotten.

Word count: 2.4+ K

Completely unedited.

•

Swaying to the music and feeling the hot bodies around you, you smiled. The Mystic Grille back home was great and all, but places like this, places no one cares about who you are and you can let loose, are the absolute best. Though that may be the alcohol talking.

You had five, maybe six, shots. Plus, of course, a fuck ton of beers prior to said shots.

Despite Elijah’s warning, one you didn’t really care to listen to, you had gone out.

Kol, of course, came along for the ride. After all, if his brothers wouldn’t let him have any real fun, then he’d tag along with you and find some trouble of his own.

A pair of hands rested on your sides.

The contact of someone you knew wasn’t your partner caused you to turn around in fear.

Kol stood there, smirking.

“Don’t worry, it’s just me, love,” he said, shouting over the music.

Realizing it was him, you relaxed and smiled.

“I wanna do more shots,” you said, bouncing around.

Kol laughed. “You keep this up, I might not be able to get you home without Elijah knowing.”

“Shots, Kol, shots,” you said, dragging him to the bar. “We are doing them.”

Kol allowed you to pull him along, smiling. “God, Elijah is going to kill me in the morning.”

“What?” You asked, not hearing him.

The bartender smiled politely at someone and handed them a martini.

The bright lights of the club’s neon lined bar reflected off Kol’s pale skin, making you giggle slightly.

The bartender smiled, placing their hands on the edge of the bar.

“What can I do for you?” They asked.

“Shots!” You shouted, continuing to bounce.

Kol nodded, giving the bartender a polite smile.

“Water them down a bit, will ya?” He asked, leaning over the bar slightly.

The bartender looked at you then back at him before nodding.

“Gotcha,” they said.

•

Kol, with one arm wrapped around your waist and the other holding your arm over his shoulder, made his way to the front door of your place.

“Come on,” Kol said. “We’re almost there.”

You laughed.

“Almost pear,” you said, still laughing.

Kol smiled a little, shaking his head.

As the two of you reached the door, Kol tried to grab your keys from your pocket but failed. You moved away from him, giggling.

“Y/N,” he said. “Let me get the keys.”

He tried getting them again but you moved away, landing against the wall and falling, all while giggling.

“Nuh-uh,” you said, smiling at him in your drunken state.

Kol sighed and tiredly smiled at you. He picked up the keys that had fallen out when he fell.

“Come on, love.” He reached for you but you crawled away on all fours. “Y/N, you need to go to bed. Elijah --”

“He is not my daddy,” you said, crossing your arms and pouting.

The drizzle from earlier made its home on your trousers.

Kol glared at your childish actions. But he couldn’t really fault you for that. He would have acted the same way and besides, you were drunk. Most people do and/or say stupid shit like that. It wasn’t surprising, really.

While talking, neither noticed Elijah as he walked over.

“Am I not?” He asked, causing Kol to whip around.

Eyes wide, Kol’s mouth opened to say something but Elijah held up his hand.

“You can go,” Elijah said, his gaze only leaving you for a split second to look at his brother.

Kol shrugged and tossed him the keys.

Elijah caught them with one hand.

Instead of walking over and helping you up, he walked to the door. He didn’t even bother to say anything as he did so.

“Elijah,” you called.

He ignored you.

“Eeeliijaah,” you called again.

He kept ignoring you as he unlocked it.

Pouting, you got up but stumbled. You couldn’t help but laugh a little as you fell. The ground wouldn’t be so bad to sleep on. Sure, you’d be wet in the morning, but you’ve done it before.

Elijah stood at the, now open, door.

Of course, he wanted to go back and pick your drunk-self up. He was your partner and did love you very much. Even if you had directly and purposefully disobeyed him.

After fighting with himself for a good minute, he went back and picked you up. But, using his vampire-speed, the two of you went inside and he tossed you on the sofa.

You sunk into the soft, blanket covered sofa, grinning. Though the ground and grass of your front lawn was fine to sleep on, a sofa was definitely better. Not as good as your bed, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“I knew you loved me,” you mumbled, pulling one of the throw pillows into your grip and quickly falling asleep.

•

At the Mikealson’s place, you relaxed in one of the sofas, hiding your face from the sunlight. As much as you enjoyed the relative silence of the house, you hated how open the rooms with sofas were. But, it wasn’t that bad.

There was this crushing force being applied to your skull from pretty much all angles. Since you got onto the soft, warm, comforting sofa, you hadn’t left. Every time you moved, the ground under you felt like it was swaying and you wanted to puke. The mere mention of eating also had a similar effect. The feelings were slowly diminished, but not as much as you wished they had.

Elijah, your current partner and favourite person, walked into the area of the house you were desperately trying to sleep in. He said nothing as he poured a glass of alcohol.

The mere sound of it made you cringe.

You pulled the blankets tighter around your body. “Do you wanna join me? I could use some cuddles.”

He didn’t say a word.

“Elijah?” After realizing he wasn’t going to respond, your shoulders slumped. “Is this because I got drunk?”

His silence spoke volumes as to what he was getting at.

“You’re really going to give me the silent treatment because I wanted to have some fun?”

He sipped the dark liquor from his glass, turned away from you.

“Okay, fine. Two can play at that game.” You fell back into the sofa and buried yourself.

If he was going to ignore you, you would ignore him, too.

•

Several weeks passed by and he still hadn’t talked to you. It was really starting to get under your skin, but Elijah seemed cool as a cucumber. As always.

Happily, you threw your arms around Kol’s neck. He was sitting on the sofa, making it that much easier.

“I’m bored,” you said, pouting.

He flipped the page of his book. “Your point?”

Straightening, you smiled. “Let’s go to a club or something! I want to party.” You mimed dancing, tossing your hands into the air like you just don’t care.

Kol laughed and set his book down. ‘You sure? Elijah still hasn’t talked to you since last time and that was weeks ago.”

You nodded, still dancing to nothing.

“Fine, but he gets pissed again, don’t go blaming me,” he said as he got up.

•

The pulsing music felt good as you swayed to it like there was no one else there. It felt good in your soul. The three or four drinks you’d had definitely helped loosen you up. They let you move to the music in a way you usually wouldn’t which is just what you needed.

Kol, instead of dancing with you, sat at your table and watched, drinking and smiling. A few girls had taken peaks at him. When he looked over at them and smirked, they giggled and looked away. The Original had that effect on people, especially girls.

Someone comes up from behind and starts dancing with you, getting a little too touchy for your liking.

You turnt to Kol, giving him a look that said “help”.

He nodded and stood, leaving his empty glass on the table.

Before Kol could reach you, someone else pulled the stranger away.

“What the fuck, dude?” The rando asked.

Elijah cooley glared at them before turning to you. “We’re leaving.”

“Oh, no, fuck that, you can’t make me do shite,” you said, crossing your arms. “I’m having a good time and I ain’t about to let you ruin that.”

The two of you glared at each other for a while before Elijah grabs you and drags you away.

“Elijah!” You yelp as he pulls you along, his strength far exceeding your own.

Kol hoped that the two of you would actually talk about Elijah’s overprotectiveness so the hostility between the two of you would go the fuck away and he wouldn’t be stuck between you two anymore.

•

The bouncer for the club watched as Elijah dragged you away but said nothing. Still, he watched on with narrow eyes.

You turnt back and waved goodbye with a smile. It was your way of letting him know you were fine.

He nodded to you, a polite smile on his face.

Elijah dragged you along to his car, opening a door for you.

“I’m not getting in,” you said.

Elijah sighed. “I do not wish to compel you, my love, but I will if I must.”

The defiance you tried to keep up faded as you got into the passenger seat of the black sedan.

•

Elijah sipped on a glass of whiskey, sitting on the sofa in the living room. His suit jacket lay over the arm and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

When he had found you gone, he wasn’t surprised but still the anxiety of your disappearance had made him feel like puking.

Despite his rather cold actions toward you lately, he loved you more than he had loved anyone else in his life. He’d said it before about other lovers in the past, and he had loved them greatly at the time, just as he did with you now. But now is slightly different to back then. Now, there were other monsters he had to fear, ones that could find him and, more importantly, his family much easier than before. That family now included you and you had no way to protect yourself from the horrors his family had to face.

He mentally slapped himself for even considering being with a human.

With all the dangers of just being around supernatural creatures like himself, being with one romantically was even more dangerous.

Elijah downed the rest of his drink and set the glass down. He leant back into the sofa, staring at the ceiling.

“So, what?” You said, walking into the room. “You can drink, but I can’t?”

Elijah sighed and closed his eyes. “I don’t feel the effects the same as you do, my love,” he said. “I’ve also had one drink over the course of several hours, not a bunch over the course of not even an hour.”

You rolled your eyes.

In a random act of defiance, and right in front of Elijah, you poured yourself a glass of whiskey. It was your way of saying “fuck you, you controlling arsehole”.

He didn’t try to stop you, not even when you downed the entire glass.

“You should eat something. There are still leftovers in the fridge,” Elijah said.

Ignoring him, you poured another drink and downed it.

“My love,” he said. “Please, eat something before you go to bed. I can make you something if you wish.”

“Fuck you.”

The vampire sighed and rubbed his face. “Why are you like this?” He mumbled.

“Why do you have to be a controlling prick?”

He looked up as you drank more from the decanter containing whiskey. His jaw tightened but he said nothing.

“What? Can’t admit it so you ignore it?” You asked. “And I thought you were the mature one of the lot.”

Elijah stood and began to leave. “I’m going to reheat some leftovers for you. It’ll be in the kitchen when you’re done.”

“Don’t.”

He looked back. “Don’t what?”

“I want answers, Mikaelson, not fucking food.” You set the decanter down with a thud.

Turning back to you, Elijah sighed. “I’m rather tired, Y/N, can we do this tomorrow?”

“No. I want answers and I want them now. You’re being a total fucking control freak and I want to know why.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not trying to be.”

You crossed your arms and scoffed. “Well, you are. I’m safe with Kol. He knows how to make sure I’m okay when I drink. I don’t need you butting in.”

Elijah got closer to you. He looked down before meeting your gaze, his voice hardening. “And what if he loses track of you at a club or bar? What if you find yourself in a dark alley? What if there’s someone there? Someone we’ve-- I’ve done wrongs to? What happens then?” He asked, torturing himself with the idea.

You looked him up and down, finally understanding what was going on in his head. “This isn’t about my drinking, is it?”

Elijah shook his head.

“Doll, why didn’t you just talk to me about it?” You asked, getting closer and taking his hand. “I’d be fine with drinking at home or somewhere you believe’s safe.”

He shrugged. Elijah, ever respectful, brought your hand to his lips and kissed it.

“I hate thinking about it,” he whispered, pulling you in close. “I hate thinking about you getting hurt. When I sleep, it’s plagued by different scenarios, each one more horrific than the last. And even if I don’t, I still stay up and play and replay things that could happen to you.”

You kissed him softly on the forehead. “Elijah, you don’t have to worry about that. Not when my best friend is Kol Mikaelson and my beloved partner is Elijah fucking Mikaelson. What vampire, or witch, or werewolf, or whatever, in their right mind would try it?”

Elijah chuckled. “Not many of them are, my love.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll stop going out to clubs and bars and shite.”

He shook his head. “No, no. I was being too ‘over dramatic’, as Rebekah would say. Just, please, tell me and take Kol with you.” Elijah cupped your cheek and rubbed his thumb across your skin. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you either,” you said, smiling at him.

#elijah mikaelson #elijah mikealson x reader #the vampire diaries #the originals

[plannedparenthood]

Racism is a Public Health Crisis Experienced in Personal Tragedies

I was 12 when my 17-year-old brother died. He was not shot by police or targeted by white supremacists, but racism killed him.

Richard had bipolar disorder, and our family relied on Medicaid for health care. After a brief stay in one of very few mental health facilities that accepted Medicaid in Chicago, he became extremely ill with a high fever and trouble breathing. We took him to the hospital, where he was not tested or x-rayed. Instead, he was given an inhaler and told to take ibuprofen. When his condition worsened, we went back to the ER, where staff diagnosed him with pneumonia in both lungs. He was admitted to the ICU and put on a ventilator. Five days later, as my mother and I finally took a break from living in the ICU to shower and change clothes at home, Richard died.

It is not a question to me whether Richard would have received better care if he wasn’t Black. There is a straight line from his Blackness to the health care options available to him to his treatment to his death.

Racism is a public health crisis. It manifests in dramatic inequities in health outcomes across the board — including three times as many COVID-19 infections among Black people and nearly twice as many deaths than white people. It manifests in the daily grind of discrimination and stress on Black bodies. It manifests in where we live, the health care available to us, and how we are treated. It manifests in which mothers must mourn sons who died too early, which sisters grow up without brothers.

Because of the long legacy of redlining and an economic system built on racism, Black Americans are disproportionately relegated to living in poverty-stricken areas. And since most health outcomes are determined by things like poverty, income inequality, wealth inequality, food insecurity, and the lack of safe, affordable housing — the social determinants of health — in all of these areas, Black people have to overcome 400 years of the deck being stacked against us.

If we do manage to get care, we often receive a poorer version in comparison to white people. In 2016, half of white medical students and residents surveyed held false beliefs about biological differences between Black people and white people — beliefs with deep roots in slavery, when physical violence was seen as acceptable because people believed enslaved Black people had “thicker” skin than white people. The medical students and residents with these false beliefs rated Black patients’ pain lower and made less accurate treatment recommendations.

Black women are doubly dehumanized. For centuries, we have been denied the rights and resources to make our own decisions about our bodies. Our desires are dismissed, our pain is ignored, and our needs go unmet. And it kills us. It’s why Black women are more than three times as likely to die of pregnancy and childbirth-related causes.

The racism in the U.S. health care system is borne out in these numbers, and in stories like my brother’s … and mine.

In 2018, I made the decision to get an abortion. I went to a local clinic in Brooklyn. I did not feel ashamed about having an abortion, but I was treated as if I should be. I was forced to have two visits with two ultrasounds before the procedure, and was ordered to go from room to room without being given any information about what was going on or what would happen next. I was seen by several doctors who didn’t even attempt a decent bedside manner and couldn’t pronounce my name.

The first doctor simply told me, “You can’t smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol,” without giving me any information on my options or asking me if I’d like to continue the pregnancy. I had to ask several times for information on abortion. I was then reluctantly, coldly told that medication abortion was “out of the picture” because insurance wouldn’t cover it. I felt like I had no control over my body.

If this was my experience in Brooklyn, in a state with liberal abortion laws, I can only imagine what people in states where access to abortion is even more restricted must be experiencing.

Trust me when I tell you: Black people feel pain. And we thrive in spite of it. For decades, Black people — Black women in particular — have been at the forefront of the movements to hold this country accountable to its promise of equality and justice — the Civil Rights movement, women’s suffrage, the LGBTQ+ movement, and reproductive justice. Black women started Black Lives Matter, now recognized as among the largest protest movements in U.S. history.

It isn’t enough to tear down statues of Confederate generals (as much as they should be). As American white supremacy meets this moment of reckoning, Black people still suffer from health inequities because of racism and a for-profit health care system.  We will only see change when we start to break down and rebuild the longstanding institutions that have historically been used as tools of oppression. We need to tackle the racial inequities in health care head on. Racism as a public health issue needs to be widely understood, especially by all who enter the medical field.

The health care system is killing us, as surely as police are. No more Black people should die from racist violence, or from illnesses that could be treated with just a little more care. No more Black women should experience the dehumanization I felt while getting care that is my right to have.

Racism is a public health issue, and all lives will matter when Black lives do.

-Leanna at PPFA

Leanna Burton is a media assistant in the Communications & Culture division at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was born and raised in Chicago, IL and studied journalism at City University of New York - Brooklyn College. She is also a musician and freelance writer whose main focus is lifting the voices of people in underserved and undervalued communities.

#Racism #Public Health #Black Community #Health care #Justice

[whereisten]

True Love

A Jeno fic that’s a part of our Halloween Series!

Summary: You, an employee at an entertainment company, are immune to the charms of their biggest star Lee Jeno.

Pairing: Rockstar! Jeno x female reader

Genre: romance, drama, fantasy, suspense

Warning: alcohol use, smut mention, stalking, manipulation 

Word Count: 4.3k

(A/N: Hiya! I’m so sorry for the delay! It’s been so hectic lol! Thank you so much for your support and patience! Hope you enjoy! And shoutout to Krys for keeping me sane and for all of her love and support. I love you! :D)

___

To everyone in the world, Lee Jeno was the epitome of perfection and rock royalty. He was a gifted musician from the very young age of five, having specialized in several instruments in his childhood. However, his heart gravitated to the guitar. He became a trainee at LCF Entertainment and along with four other trainees, they became the world famous rock band, Temptation.

He was ranked in the top 23 in World Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive this year. He was a walking and talking Adonis with a heartwarming smile.

Jeno was a man of many talents but he certainly didn’t let it get to his head. He was a humanitarian, a UNICEF ambassador, fostered shelter animals, was the proud owner of three cats even though he was allergic, a great family man (funding his siblings’ college tuition and providing for his parents so they could retire early), etc. He did it all and he had it all.

How could anyone be immune to his charms?

People wondered who would be the queen that would reign beside him when he settled down. Frankly, one couldn’t be anything short of a supermodel on the verge of sainthood. So many hopeful contenders were discouraged from pursuing him.

Jeno’s dating life was non-existent, the paparazzi dreaded to inform.

But you were an employee of LCF Entertainment so you knew the truth, as well as the true nature of the famous Lee Jeno. He was basically like any other young man with an inflated ego. He was cocky, a huge flirt when the cameras were off, very picky, and demanding. But no one ever dared speak a word of his true nature to the paparazzi. And you always wondered why. Someone had to bring him down a few pegs.

You were the staff photographer and videographer, in charge of capturing Jeno’s good and “relatable but still unbelievably glamorous” sides. When the camera was on, that was when you felt at ease.

It didn’t help that Jeno liked you either. Although you’d been working with Temptation and the individual members for a few years now, it was only recently that Jeno really was set on it pursuing you.

When you switched off the camera after the recording of Jeno’s backstage vlog, he sat comfortably at his makeup chair and proceeded to ask, “Y/n, will you go out with me now?”

You answered immediately, “No.”

Jeno gave you a sad puppy dog face. “Why not?”

“We’ve gone over this. I would get fired.” You wanted to spare his feelings so that was what you always said when he asked you out.

Jeno groaned. “You would not. I wouldn’t let that happen.”

You snorted. “You think you have that kind of power, Lee?”

He liked when you called him by his last name. “That’s because I do have that power, y/n. The new company building is funded solely out of my earnings from my last solo album.”

You whistled. “There’s that humility I’m always reading about in O!What Magazine…”

Jeno smiled. “You read articles about me?”

“I do when my name is in the article, boss.” You started packing up your equipment, ready to call it a day and head home.

Jeno got out of his chair and stood over you. He smelled of Dior Sauvage, cologne from his latest brand endorsement. He wore his stage clothes from his solo concert rehearsal. A sleeveless jean jacket top that parted down the middle to show his abs. Along his abs, silver chains dangled and added a nice glimmer effect when he was on stage. The entire team was thrilled to see how the audience would eat it up.

He whispered into your ear, “Y/n.”

Truthfully? He was attractive. You’d always had a little crush on him but it was of a shallow nature. You liked him for his looks. Not so much for his personality. You’d known too much.

If Jeno had been any other regular guy, you would’ve been open to a one-night stand.

But Jeno wasn’t just any regular guy.

You tried to hide the fact that shivers ran down your spine. “Stop.”

He chuckled. “But I can see you through the reflection, y/n...You're crossing your legs…”

You’d hoped he wasn’t that perceptive but it turned out he was. You hid away the fact that you were turned on. Your panties were damp but you’d be damned if he ever knew that.

You met Jeno’s perfectly lined eyes as he looked at you unapologetically. Everyone else from the staff already left. Jeno’s manager was waiting downstairs to take him to the radio station J-423 for his upcoming interview.

You were breathless now. “Jeno, you’re going to be late-”

He pulled you into him and kissed you, easily slipping his tongue into your mouth and working magic against yours. You couldn’t help but return his kiss. His mouth was paradise and you wondered what else he could do with it.

He let you go after a few minutes and cupped your face. “So are you going to deny that there’s something going on here?”

You tried to catch your breath as you wiped your lipstick off of Jeno’s mouth. “No, I guess not...But this is where it stops.”

Jeno frowned. “Y/n…”

“I know where I stand. And you know it, too. And Jeno, I don’t like you that way...I’m sorry.” You caressed his face and grabbed your things, leaving Jeno with an unreadable expression on his face.

___

As a member of LCF Entertainment, your ultimate goal was profit. That was what you had to know from the very beginning. There was no such thing as LCF Family or truly prioritizing the idols. Everyone was after themselves. Whoever brought the most money to the company would get the most attention and special treatment. And that was Jeno.

And you, an aspiring film director, were thankful to be on his team because this experience could open doors for you in the future as a director. Sure, Jeno was a diva and he couldn’t stop flirting with you, but the experience wasn’t all that bad. And yeah it was frustrating that the media and the public perceived Jeno to be the nation’s sweetheart. But in the end, he wasn’t hurting anyone.

He was only hurting people’s wallets.

Temptation’s merchandise always sold out quickly but Jeno’s individual merch was always the first to sell out. And it was the first to get resold for twice and sometimes even triple the price. The fanbase was very merciless and selfish with each other. However, the scalpers were the true evil. That was less money going to your company, after all.

Even though frontman Jeno was the most popular member of Temptation, it was Temptation’s drummer Xiaojun that you had a massive crush on for a long time now. You even accumulated a secret collection of his merch. You were two photocards away from completing your Xiaojun album photocard collection.

Xiaojun even admitted to liking you back but you both kept it a secret from everyone else in the world, especially LCF. You two weren’t about to compromise your jobs. However, since Temptation was the biggest moneymaker in the game and the boys had been with the company for quite some time now, their dating ban was lifted.

Which explained why Jeno had been asking you out all week, not caring who listened and it freaked you out.

If Jeno’s fans ever found out he asked you out, they would pin the blame on you.

A week had passed since you told Jeno you weren’t interested in him. You felt bad for hurting him but you were also worried about his mood. He had the power to get you dismissed. You refused to believe he would be so cruel.

And up until this point, you were right. You were still employed and Jeno spoke with you like any other day, talking about camera angles and new concepts for upcoming shoots.

The end of another work week and Xiaojun surprises you on your way to the bus stop.

“Y/n,” Xiaojun pulls up beside you in his Porsche. He looked so elegant in a pale blue sweater and blue jeans. His face was concealed by a mask so he could leave undetected. But you’d recognized those eyebrows anywhere.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

“I...I think we should finally talk…”

“About?”

He smiled. “About dating.”

You nearly dropped your phone out of your hand from the shock. “Really?”

He said, “Get in so I can drive you home!”

You nodded fervently and got into his passenger seat. Was this really happening?

On the drive home, Xiaojun told you he wanted to take it slow and have indoor dates with you first. You couldn’t agree more. He even surprised you with a brand new pair of AirPods after you told him that your brother took them from you.

The first of many gifts, he told you.

You got home that night and screamed excitedly into your pillow so as not to frighten your roommates

___

It has been a month since you and Xiaojun started seeing each other. You were on cloud nine. He would visit you at your apartment and would play with his dog Bella. Bella loved you a little more than she loved Xiaojun so you two would always bicker and end the night in each other’s arms.

Jeno noticed the spring in your step as you filmed his cooking vlog. He was showing his fans how he cooked breakfast for himself when he had down time. He was in a plain white T-shirt and a pair of drawstring trousers. He looked relaxed and for many, delectable, as his hair was wet from a shower. He was trying very hard to get your attention once again.

He anticipated you averting your eyes and stuttering at the sight of him but nothing. You whistled while you adjusted the tripod’s position.

“What’s got you so happy?” Jeno asked.

You nearly jumped at his question. You decided to be upfront. “I’m seeing Xiaojun.”

Jeno’s cool facade nearly cracked before your very eyes. “Oh?”

You apologized. “I’m sorry, Jeno. I should’ve told you that I liked Xiaojun…”

Jeno was furious. What the hell did Xiaojun have that he didn’t? Jeno was more muscular, taller, more talented, wealthier, more attractive...He was superior to Jeno in every way and everyone else knew it, too.

He honed his acting skills and replied evenly, “Why are you apologizing, y/n? So you like someone else...I’ll live.”

You realized maybe Jeno didn’t like you as much as you thought so you felt relieved to hear his dismissive tone. “Right. Good. I just...thought you should know…”

You and Jeno continued the shoot. He acted like nothing had happened and even behind the scenes, he joked with you and asked you which of the female trainees he should ask out. You berated him because female trainees were not allowed to date and he knew this very well. Jeno was back to his arrogant self and you were relieved.

___

You got a text from Xiaojun that he was finishing up a filming schedule with his bandmates. You wouldn’t be able to see him today because the schedule was running overtime.

He told you to go to dinner with some friends at Osaka Moon. His treat. He was good friends with the chef, apparently. You were on your way to the restaurant to meet your friends.

You were shocked at how down-to-earth Xiaojun still was after achieving so much fame and then he would do things like this. It gave you whiplash but you were having the time of your life with him.

However, you noticed him across the street. Xiaojun always wore different wigs and masks for his disguised outings with you.

But this time, there were no disguises. His side swept blonde hair and his thin framed glasses. There was no mistaking that it was him.

Was the filming for the show at the Downtown Hotel?

You were about to call his name when you saw another woman wrap her arms around him and squeeze his ass. She had long wavy brown hair and a slender frame. She could’ve been a model or a singer. They both entered the expensive hotel. Very bold of him to take her out so publicly when he was still intent on hiding you.

You felt like someone knocked the breath out of you. You shook your head in disbelief.

Immediately, you dialed Xiaojun’s number and there was no answer. You called four more times and nothing.

Son of a bitch, you thought.

He played you. You should’ve known he was no different than any other dickhead A-lister.

You decided to call his bandmates. It turned out that the filming they’d done today wrapped up over two hours ago.

Haechan had no idea where he was. Jisung didn’t either. Jaemin was equally perplexed. Last but not least you called Jeno.

He answered. “Hello?”

At this point, you couldn’t hold back your tears anymore. “Jeno…”

“Y/n? What’s wrong?”

“Do you know where Xiaojun is?”

“Not specifically...he did mention he had a reservation at the Downtown Hotel…”

You sniffled. “He did?”

“I thought he was meeting you…”

“No, he wasn’t…”

“Oh...Oh, shit, y/n. I am so-“

“It’s okay...Thanks Jeno. I’ll see you on Monday…”

You told your friends to have dinner without you and to make sure to spare no expense because your so-called boyfriend was buying. You told them Xiaojun finished at the last minute and wanted to take you dancing.

A total lie so you could wallow at your local bar.

You sat right by the bar and downed a few glasses of beer. Just to feel anything else besides the betrayal you felt.

A half hour later, you were even more buzzed now. A young man sat beside you at the counter.

He started, “Hello, gorgeous.”

You looked at the young man. He was stunning. Another face that belonged on television. Another one of those who was capable of seducing you and tossing you away the very next second.

You flipped the bird. “Bite me.”

The young man scoffed and tried again, “Feisty, aren’t we?”

He got closer to you and you began to feel uncomfortable. “Please leave me alone…”

“Tsk tsk. A beautiful girl like you in tears? You need someone who will bring your smile back.”

“And you’re the man for that job?” Someone interrupted.

You were shocked to find Jeno here. He looked gorgeous in a black leather jacket and dark jeans. His hair was slicked back the way you liked it most and wow, you may have had one too many drinks...A few customers recognized Jeno and started whispering and taking their cameras out.

“Jeno?” You nearly lost your balance as you got up from your chair.

Jeno grabbed you immediately before the other guy could.

The stranger said, “Why do you get to put your hands on her? Just cause you're some pretty boy with mediocre music...I’m sure she’s nothing compared to who you’ve bedded before-“

Jeno socked him in the face and escorted you out of the bar. The stranger cursed you both out as you left. Jeno led you quickly into his manager’s car that he borrowed for the night. You felt a little dizzy.

Jeno fastened your seatbelt.

You smiled at him. “Thanks.”

He looked at you in concern. “Are you okay?”

You shook your head. “Why are men scum, Jeno?”

Jeno sighed. “I’m so sorry about-“

“Don’t say his name...I...never want to see him again...God, now I have to sell all of his merch…”

Jeno frowned in confusion and continued, “I’ll take you home…”

You didn’t want to face your roommates. “No...Can I…Spend the night with you?”

It took all of Jeno’s might not to get out his car and raise his fist in the air. But he composed himself. “Are you sure?”

You nodded, wanting to forget all about Xiaojun and have one thoughtless night with Jeno. “Yes.”

Jeno drove you two to his penthouse suite. He was cautious around you and you were ready to shrug away your inhibitions.

Jeno helped you remove your coat at the entrance. “Take a seat. I’ll get you some water.”

You sat yourself on the couch and opened your legs wide, exposing your panties underneath your skirt. “Jeno, fuck me right now so I can forget his sorry ass.”

Jeno hesitated then but seeing how irresistible you were...He couldn’t help himself.

He asked again. “Are you sure?”

You nodded. You were buzzed but not that buzzed. You wanted to spite Xiaojun. You wanted to acknowledge the part of you that longed for Jeno for so long, too. You’d be stupid to deny that you fantasized about a night with him.

You hesitated before but now you said, why the hell not?  

You and Jeno made love that night. Jeno was over the moon that you were finally in his arms. Sure it was a rebound but the look in your eyes when he was inside you had to mean something. There was a promise there and Jeno held onto that glimmer of hope.

Jeno took you home the next day and he was very cool about the whole night. Right before you returned home. you reminded him about how this was a one night stand and thanked him for a wonderful night.

You were resolute in dumping Xiaojun and simply going back to work. Thankful you only ever worked for Jeno anyway. And as expected, Jeno was his usual self: cocky, flirty, sending his food back for random reasons.

Xiaojun came under the fire for going to a hotel with a potential prostitute. The identity of the woman he was seen with remained a mystery. He tried convincing everyone that the woman was not a prostitute but he couldn’t remember how he met her or what she looked like. That night and along with how crazy Xiaojun sounded caused the company to encourage him to leave. Xiaojun’s contract with LCF Entertainment was terminated.

The week after you and Jeno made love...You started catching feelings for him. Every glance. Every fleeting touch. It drove you mad. And suddenly that one night stand was something you wanted again. And again. And again.

You accompanied Jeno and his manager as he attended a gallery opening. You were in charge of his photos for his social media. He looked extremely dapper in his red suit. You just wanted to rip his clothes off and make love to him in front of all of the guests. Becoming a work of art yourselves.

These thoughts you’ve been having used to scare you but now...you owned them. Tonight, when you got him alone, you would tell him how you really felt. You hoped you weren’t too late.

Jeno’s manager excused himself to get some refreshments. Jeno observed a painting while you took some more photos.

“Stunning,” you said aloud.

Jeno’s eyes grew at your words. “Wow, y/n...All the years we’ve worked together and you’ve never made a comment about my looks…”

Your face grew warm then. “I’m feeling a little bolder these days…”

He grinned. “Is that so?”

“Jeno, I won’t beat around the bush…I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night…”

“Y/n…”

“I know I said it was a one night stand and...You’ve moved on…”

Jeno started, “I haven’t…”

You were shocked to hear it. “Really?”

He moved closer to you and moved the camera away from your line of sight. “What are you saying, y/n?” His voice was dangerously low.

“I’m saying...that I want to be with you, Jeno.”

Jeno’s smile looked so gorgeous then. He was the true work of art at the gallery. “Well, y/n, I’ve made my feelings abundantly clear for a while now…”

He kissed you then. And the cameras started flashing.

You were on cloud nine. You finally released your suppressed feelings for the rockstar before you.

___

You’ve been together for two years now. He made you feel safe and loved. He showered you with gifts and trips to the most beautiful parts of the world.

As for the response from netizens and the company? Jeno had all the power and he could handle a few naysayers. Your job as his photographer and videographer remained intact. And you were well on your way to transitioning to your own film projects: your dream.

You and Jeno had become a couple to root for. They called you The Prince and The Pauper Turned Princess. You hated your label but whenever you looked at Jeno’s eyes, any anxiety or anger quickly faded.

Jeno had a solo performance in your city tonight and you were seated in a private booth. He was performing so well, moving from instrument to instrument. Driving people to tears with his long low notes. And then he surprised everyone with his announcement.

“Before I perform ‘Changed Your Mind’, I want to give a shout-out to the woman of my dreams, y/n, who is here with us tonight.”

The stadium roared in excitement and many heads turned to you. Your eyes never left Jeno.

“Y/n, I love you so much. We’ve come so far, baby. And I want us to never stop. Which is why…”

He got down from the stage and was escorted by security down to the crowd. He ran his hands past adoring fans as he made his way to you.

He entered your booth with his camera crew and security close by. “Y/n, will you marry me?”

You cried out, “Yes!”

Jeno picked you up and spun you around. You kissed passionately. The crowd’s roars thundered now. It was a celebration. You didn’t care that all eyes were on you now, as well. All you cared about was Jeno. And he loved you more than anything else in the world.

You truly found your soulmate and you couldn’t be happier.

___

Jeno finished his show and was backstage cooling down with a bottle of water.

“Good job tonight,” a woman said as she stood at the door of Jeno’s dressing room.

“Thank you, sis. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jeno’s older sister Yeeun sat on the couch of the dressing room. “How does it feel to have her in your clutches now?”

Jeno smirked. “Pretty damn great.”

“And I’m here to collect my payment, little brother.”

Jeno sighed. “Really? It’s been two years.”

Yeeun looked at her manicured nails. “I’ve been busy.”

Jeno laughed. “Screwing over taken men? I’m sorry, I meant screwing taken men?”

“Nope. That task was a one-and-done deal. How is that poor boy doing these days?”

“Xiaojun? He’s back at school getting his master’s...He’s happy.”

“Has he tried to contact y/n since then?” Yeeun asked.

Jeno chuckled. “No. Why would he?”

She smiled at him. “They were sweet together. And you tore them apart because you couldn’t take no for an answer, could you?”

Jeno rolled his eyes. “And what about it? I have a right to get whatever I want. Do you know who I am?”

Yeeun sighed. “Yes, you repeatedly tell the family group chat who you are every week. And we all take it because you pay us well…”

Jeno and Yeeun had conspired against you and Xiaojun. Jeno stole Xiaojun’s phone and Yeeun charmed Xiaojun to join her for a night at the hotel. Jeno planned for you to go to Osaka Moon so you could see Xiaojun and Yeeun together.

Jeno watched you as you broke down in tears, calling each of his bandmates. He made sure he was far enough away by the time you called him. He played the part of a concerned friend very well. He had to take up acting, another field he would surely dominate. And with you as his director? It made him hard just thinking about it.

Jeno didn’t coincidentally find you at the bar. He’d been tailing and that stranger who hit on you was only an added bonus. Jeno could play the unsuspecting hero and you would eat it up. And that you did. He was satisfied to know that you wanted to sleep with him. He didn’t care about being a rebound.

Even so, he wasn’t going to take any chances. So after you left his penthouse the next morning, he took the bedsheets you came on and the strands of hair you left behind and got to work.

Did you really think Jeno amassed such success and wealth all on his own? He had a little help from his family and their friends from Hell, of course. Jeno’s family came from a long line of Satan-worshipping witches. Jeno was the youngest of the descendants.

Human sacrifice was only a small token of the Lee family’s appreciation to Lucifer. So Jeno’s deception of Xiaojun was almost nothing in the list of gruesome things Jeno has done to reach the top of his game.

Yeeun was able to literally charm Xiaojun with her own special concoction. Once she and Xiaojun had sex, she wiped his memory of that hour and left him alone at the hotel. Confused. Disoriented. Worried.

As for you? Well, you were the most irresistible creature in this world. Your immunity to his charms was only the first step in his growing feelings for you. You were brilliant and talented at your craft, always capturing his best features on camera. You were gorgeous. He was surprised you didn’t become an idol at LCF yourself. You were warm and sweet and giving. Even if the company was cutthroat, he saw how you’d be with your coworkers and the other idols. You were just a pure, loving girl. And he desperately needed you. Desired you. Craved you.

He simply had to call you his.

With your samples, he was able to create the perfect spell to make you his.

Forever.

That was what Jeno called true love.

[Fin]

#nct #nct 127 #jeno #lee jeno #jeno boyfriend #boyfriend nct #nct dream boyfriend #nct dream au #nct dream x you #Nct dream fic #Nct dream scenario #Jeno scenario #Jeno blurb #Jeno imagine #Jeno x you #Jeno x reader #nct dream x reader #Nct x reader #Nct x you #Nct Jeno #Nct dream Jeno #Nct halloween #nct halloween blurb #nct au #nct imagine #nct scenarios

[copias-thrall]

Cause I'm Young and I'm Here and So Beautiful

A look into the rise and fall of Mary Goore's flash-in-the-pan modeling career.

~12.5K Mary Goore/Reader *drug/alcohol use; mentions of past child abuse; brief homelessness; plot no porn; POV shift*

This fic was inspired by and is very loosely based on Aurelio Voltaire's early days in NYC in the 90s, though I have set it in Boston in the early aughts. 😊

Many thanks to the artists who did commissions for this! 🥰

One Way Streets

Mary stepped off the regional rail and gripped his backpack. He had $72.57 in cash rolled into his socks and a give-em-hell attitude.

When he’d packed his bag the night before, he wasn’t even sure if he’d go through with it, but he couldn’t stand being home anymore. Some of his friends had told him he was crazy.

"Three more months, dude. You got this. Just finish high school, then bounce."

But they didn’t have to live with his dad and the step-monster. Every day was a new indignity. Having them bitch about his music and his style was one thing—that he could have dealt with—but everything else had just kind of…escalated.

Now that the kiddies were older, they’d turned into gremlins. They’d somehow sensed that Mary wasn’t their beloved older brother—he was some sort of half other. They’d stopped questioning why "mom was so mean" to him and had accepted that she was because there was something wrong with Mary. They realized they could be little shits and blame everything on him.

And dad just didn’t care. He’d throw up his hands and say, "I have to live with her"—as if Mary wasn’t in the same boat.

Dad hadn’t stopped her when—in a rage—she’d smashed every single vinyl album Mary had owned because the twins ruined her nice tablecloth. He’d shrugged when she cut all Mary's guitar strings so he couldn’t play "the devil’s music." He’d held Mary back when she took a match and burned all his secret stuff that Mary kept under his bed—action figures, books, guitar mags, journals—in the backyard because he got detention for smoking. He hadn’t said a word when the police showed up after she came at Mary with scissors because he’d dyed his hair black and he’d pushed her away before she could scalp him.

Mary thought for sure he was going to get carted off to jail as she screamed about him terrorizing the family and being afraid he was going to kill her sons in their sleep, but the officers had just looked at her bored and told her being a teenager wasn’t a crime.

So, no: Mary couldn’t wait 3 more months.

He’d scraped together what money he had left from his secret shifts working as a busboy under the table at a local dive downtown, packed his backpack with the essentials, and walked the 5 miles to the train station instead of going to school.

Eighteen was 10 weeks away. He could fudge it for a few months, especially since he could already get away without using his fake ID to get into shows most of the time.

So, to the big city it was.

He shifted his weight and tried to pretend that he belonged here in Boston, but actually facing the busy streets was a lot different from looking at a bird’s-eye view map. He had a printout in his pocket, but he didn’t want to look like a doe-eyed tourist. So he set off down the seemingly labyrinthine streets in the direction he could have sworn was the correct one.

It wasn't.

When he came out a side alley into Faneuil Hall, he almost wondered if he'd gone through a fairy portal, since he was clear on the other side of town. Begrudgingly, he checked his creased map, and set out once more.

And ended up spit out by the State building.

Finding the hostel turned into a fraught adventure, and he got turned around several times more. When he tried to ask for directions, most people pushed past him while one lady shoved $5 at him. He used the cash to buy a hotdog, and it was the vendor who ultimately gave him directions in his thick, Southie accent.

Of course, making it to the hostel ended up being just part one. The rates were almost double what it stated online ("Sorry, honey—that site hasn’t been upgraded since the 90s."), and two nights were practically all his savings. Mary had thought he’d at least have a couple of days to find a job, not 36hrs.

He left the hostel, wondering for the first time if maybe he shouldn’t go back home…but he decided it was a nice day out. Surely there was some place he could hunker down. Just for the night.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the cops at every fucking turn telling him to move along. And any place out of line-of-sight seemed to already be inhabited.

He finally found a place behind some rocks in the Seaport where he didn’t think he’d be murdered in his sleep, curled around his backpack, and drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Mary woke up damp from the dew and the morning sun streaming into his eyes. The birds were creating an awful racket, but Mary guessed it was as good an alarm clock as any.

He ran his fingers through his bird's nest of hair, and he made his way back to the South Station. The men’s room may have smelled like a sewage treatment plant, but at least it was free. He had expected it to be mostly empty at the crack of dawn, but it was full of commuters making that last run to the head before they had to take the train 2hrs out of the city for work.

And it was a sight: a bunch of suits with their fancy lattes washing their hands, and Mary in the corner trying to surreptitiously wipe down with paper towels under his Misfits t-shirt and his shredded jeans. At school, he’d have probably gotten into several altercations by now—no one would have let him just turn into Mary Goore without a fight—but this was Boston, and no one gave him more than a cursory glance.

Just another college kid.

It emboldened Mary to go full-out in the kind of way he had only done when going out to the punk shows downtown at night: kohl all the way around his eyes, and some on his cheekbones; mascara because his lashes are long and thick, and he knows it (his dad had said it made him look hard, and Mary had sneered that maybe that was what he’d been going for. But maybe it had been because he’d liked the way it had made his green eyes pop.); a smear of the step-monster’s fanciest matte lipstick on his full lips; and airplane glue in his hair to give it that lift.

He made a kissy face at himself in the mirror, and headed back out.

It was a nice Spring day—almost boiling in the direct sun—and it tempted Mary to wear only his battle vest, but even he kind of figured applying to jobs half dressed was a mistake.

He walked all over the city, trying not to get lost, looking for any kind of work—dishwasher, busboy, barback—but all he had to show for it was blistered feet and a raging appetite. The only good part of the day was that he noted any restaurant or bakery that looked like it might toss perfectly good food at the end of the day.

He and his friends had become experts at dumpster diving in his podunk town, and he felt confident that he had a good feel for a jackpot. Mary staked out a bakery and was rewarded with a find of "old" bagels. He shoved as many as he could into the nooks and crannies of his backpack before slinking off to the Commons to inhale at least two of them.

Cold, stale dough never tasted so good.

He watched the tourists and the professionals walk by in ones and in groups while he ran his bare feet through the grass. Some laughed with each other as they sauntered down the path while others seemed singularly intent on their ultimate destination. A pack of dogs ran and played with each other as their owners looked on fondly, and nearby the baseball diamond hosted a casual game.

Mary counted his lucky stars that his first week in Boston was April at its kindest—always mild during the day, even when it turned cloudy, and a few times even downright warm. The nights turned chilly, though, and it had Mary in more layers than an onion. If the birds or damp didn't wake him, his butt cramps from being curled in a tight ball all night did.

He spent those days walking around the city proper looking for work. He wasn't adventurous enough to make the leap across the bridges to Cambridge just yet, but his travels gave him a good sense on how the different sections of Boston connected—and showed him potential places to crash at night. He didn't even mind living off day-old garbage food and drinking from bubblers (he'd bought a water for the express purpose of reusing the bottle), but the barren wasteland that seemed to be the job market was beginning to weigh on him.

At home, he could always find a shit job if he was willing to put up with shit hours and ridiculous requests. Here, though, Mary was just one of many desperate people willing to do desperate work.

And he didn’t look particularly trustworthy or reliable.

@dipendancesld

Hashtag WTF

I’m scrolling through Insta on the T, and I’m way down the rabbit hole of hashtags. New content was at a minimum this morning (how can I follow accounts in triple digits and only see the same 4 posts?!), so I’d started with some art tags and ended up where I usually end up—trolling social media for blurry pictures of my boy.

His band has been a local staple for years—or at least that’s what he told me on our first date. I had just moved from New York after a nasty breakup, ready to start fresh, and I’d seen him at a coffee shop hanging posters for his next show in his leather jacket, asymmetrical Metallica crop top, and stomping boots.

Fresh had never looked so good.

Then, a few months back, an online publication had featured his band in the year’s 50 best bands "you’ve never heard of," and now the band's starting to gain traction.

He’s starting to gain traction.

Finding the new online content of him first has become a game the two of us play. We had to stop counting images posted from the popular fan accounts because Mary's now acquaintances with most of them, and I said it was hardly fair to snipe me that way. Mary had pouted—but it was to cover up his grin. So now we troll for the pictures of his latest gig or at his favorite haunts from either his  casual fans or one of his new ones. I even have a whole range of hashtag typos saved if I really want to triumph, since Mary just doesn't have the attention span.

I usually win, though, by virtue of not keeping Rockstar Hours—and because Mary doesn’t have a smartphone. Mary delights in spending the wee hours while I'm sleeping finding new content, and I'll often wake to one he's pulled up on my laptop and a "suck it" sticky note stuck to my monitor.

(But I’m reigning supreme.)

There’s a thirst tag I sometimes comb through (for reasons), and today I’m desperate for that morning serotonin to keep me from dozing off, which is why I stumble across a particularly convincing cosplayer in some…risqué poses and outfits.

The dude is really good, and I have to admit he really does have Mary’s mannerisms down pat. He’s younger and a little skinnier than Mary is now, but his facial expressions are on point. I zoom in to see the contouring technique because he's using one of those filters to make it look old…and that’s when I sense something off. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but usually there’s an uncanny valley to his serious cosplayers, and this dude looks so real. He’s even 100% accurate with the mole placement, which is something I never see.

My heart does a flip-flop.

Is that…actually Mary?

Foundling

Mary's sixth night in the city, it rained. It was more of a brief Spring shower, but it was still enough to soak him and his backpack through. He shivered through the early morning hours until the sun came up, then he made his way to the Commons to lay his belongings—and himself—out into the sun to dry.

By midday, he had a slight sunburn across his nose, but most of his things were dryish—though the food was a soggy lost cause. He cut his losses and decided to buy a sausage from the hotdog vendor, even if that meant he was down to $52.37 in his sock bank.

It was the most amazing thing he'd ever eaten in his entire life (sometimes he still dreams of it), and he gobbled it down as he sat in the grass and watched the show of people pass by.

He could take today off from his job search.

Just another Groundhog Day of rejections.

A gaggle of kids about his age walked past, and he lit up when he saw them: studs and bright hair and cuffs and combat boots. They ran and shrieked and shoved at each other, and Mary had never felt such longing to be a part of something.

Not that nebulous feeling of "my world is out there somewhere," but "my world is right there if I can just get to it."

And he realized maybe he could.

These were his people.

Mary hopped off the bench and approached the boisterous group.

"Uh, hey…guys."

The pack stopped and looked him over, confused but not hostile.

"Oh hey, man" said a girl with green fins and a studded, leather jacket.

"Hey."

I have nowhere to go. Can I go with you?

"Sorry, I forgot your name."

"Oh, you don’t—"

A guy in a tight striped shirt, snake bites, and blue hair interrupted him.

"Shit, were you in my intro into film class last year?"

Mary was a high school dropout.

"Nah, dude. I’m new and shit."

…But he wasn’t stupid.

A curvy white goth with bleached blonde hair and a cream princess dress smiled at him.

"Aww, that’s rough, honey. If you think about it, they really ought to give transfers on-campus housing. It sucks to be so new and away from the action."

Mary nodded. "Yeah. Sucks."

"Well, we’re going to The Pit, wanna come?"

"If you guys don’t mind…"

"Fuck, the more the merrier!"

Mary smiled as they assimilated him into the group. He found out the goth’s name was Vanessa ("But call me Vanity."), green fins was Alexa ("Or Alex. I’m trying it out."), striped shirt was Billy, and the two other punks were Mandi (Manic Panic red) and Aaron (band tee, spiked collar).

No one laughed at him when he introduced himself as Mary or asked him why he had a girl’s name.

They took him onto the T at Charles MGH, and Mary marveled at the setting sun over the Charles River before the train ducked underground to barrel in Cambridge. At Harvard, they ushered him off the train and directly into The Pit, and Mary almost cried when he saw the pit rats there playing hacky sack, strumming guitars, and smoking cloves. Mary watched as his group high-fived, bumped chests, and hugged nearly everyone there before introducing him as if they’d known him for years.

He was shit at hacky sack, but he accepted a round on the guitar and shared a clove with a white girl who had a rat's nest of hair.

"Fuck their beauty stands," she said when she caught Mary staring.

Mary smiled and pointed to his own mess of hair. "Fuck ‘em," he repeated.

She cackled and handed him a brown bag with what he expected to be whiskey, but tasted like turpentine.

She laughed harder at his face as he coughed, and she pounded him on the back.

"Moonshine, dude. Lenny makes it in his bathtub."

"Which one is Lenny," Mary asked as he wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Oh, he’s not here. He goes to MIT. We have a strict trade agreement—booze for pot. I’m Katie."

Head fuzzy, Mary had made out with her until Aaron tugged on his arm.

"Shit dude, we gotta go before the T closes. You live close to here?"

"Uh…"

"Aww, I think he got into Lenny’s moonshine," said Vanity. "If he’s a transfer, I bet he’s at some shithole in Allston. You in Allston, honey?"

Mary just nodded.

"All right then," said Alex, taking charge. "We’ll put him up tonight. There’s no way he’s gonna make it back to Allston by himself, and I’ll be fucked if I’m trekking out there without a BU party to crash."

Mary wobbled slightly as Alex took his arm in his and led him to the T.

"Ok, we gotta go now or we’ll all be hoofing it."

They took Mary back to their dorm by the Hatch Shell and signed him in as a guest.

"Is this ok?" Mary asked warily—he didn't want to get kicked out in the middle of the night.

Mandi patted him on the back.

"We do it all time. No one really gives a shit. Vegan Mick dropped out 2 semesters ago and they don’t even check for his ID."

That night, Mary slept in the common room on a lumpy couch that was half as long as he was.

It was heaven.

The next morning seemed like the end, and Mary slumped as Vanity to sign him out. For one brief day he'd been a part of something, and now it was back to Mary, party of one. But Vanity took one look at his face and asked if he wanted to get breakfast at the dining hall.

Of course, he wanted to…but he thought of the dwindling cash in sock bank and hesitated. Vanity, bless her, misread his trepidation.

"It's on me, sweetie. I know most transfers don’t opt in. Too expensive when it’s not bundled. No worries, I got a ton of points I don’t use."

Alex and Aaron were already half done with their food when Vanity and he joined them, and they looked on in amusement as Mary ate half the breakfast buffet.

When the subject of classes came up, he shrugged off questions.

"None this morning."

Alex narrowed her eyes at him.

"What year did you say you were?"

"Sophomore."

"Not a freshman?"

Mary shook his head. "I’m not a freshman."

She seemed about to ask another question, so Mary quickly changed the subject.

"I thought I’d spend the day applying for jobs. You guys know of any place that’s hiring?"

"No work study?"

"No."

"What kind of work you looking for?"

"Shit, anything. I’ll sweep the fucking floors."

They bandied about ideas, places for Mary to try, but no one had any leads. Too soon, some unknown gong had them scurrying to get to class.

Mary suddenly panicked.

"Hey, do you guys mind if I spend the night again? I mean…"

"Yeah, sure," said Vanity. "Aaron?"

"Yeah, man. Meet me after class and I'll swipe you in."

It apparently was a time-honored tradition, passed down from upperclassmen to underclassmen, on gaming the guest system. Most kids used it to essentially move their significant others into their dorm rooms, but a handful every year used it to give haven to others who had questionable housing situations.

So, just like that, Mary had a place to rest his bones.

@dilfpassing

A Deeper Look

I’m so intent on scrolling through the comments on the grainy pics—which I'm sure now are actual scans—that I completely miss my stop, and I have to put my phone away so I can wheeze lightly jog my way to where I work as a receptionist at an alternative hair salon.

It’s really important that I start a good hour before we open so I can return any calls left on our voicemail first thing in case I can fit anyone in today. Which means I have to shelve my find for now, much to my irritation.

Mornings are super-busy because apparently there are some people in the world that like getting up with the sun and want everything done by noon. (June Cleaver’s salon lets me get away with a lot—like coming to work in denim short-shorts and ripped tights, free hair colors, and a snarky attitude—but late start times aren’t one of them.) I honestly don’t have room in my brain to obsess about the pictures because I’m too busy answering calls, making coffee, settling accounts, and giving the new customer spiel for the 57th time to a walk-in.

It’s just after midday, when Penny, the shampoo girl, collects my cash for the salon-wide sandwich run, and I finally have a moment to breathe. And obsess.

I take out my phone again, and I have to retrace my steps because of course the app has refreshed, which is why Sonia has the time to look over my shoulder.

"Missing dream boy’s dick so much you gotta spend your lunch hour ogling pics of him on the internet?"

I zoom in on the one of maybe!Mary in his underwear.

"Who does that look like to you?"

Sonia makes a guh sound in her throat and backs away.

"I don’t need to see your intimates!"

"That’s the thing! It’s not mine!"

"Your boy’s nudes get leaked??"

I wave my arms around.

"I don’t freakin’ know! They may not even be him. Fucking. C’mere and help me out!"

Sonia warily creeps back over, and so does Ryan, since all the yelling has attracted him.

The three of us peer over the phone as I scroll through the images again.

By the time Penny comes back with lunch, we’ve gone back and forth on who’s in the images—Mary or a fake—and I haven’t been able to do any actual research. The afternoon rush starts, and I have to table the whole thing again, having made no progress at all.

It isn’t until near-closing, when most of the other stylists have gone home—and it’s only June who does the post-work crowd—that I can really dig into the matter.

A deep dive and a couple of defunct, decade-old forums later, I find that what I took as an aspirational hashtag was actually the name of a zine called "Heroes."

There’s like, zero online trail about it—except for a few other grainy scans of other pages of articles, poetry, concert pictures, and art—but it seemed to be an early aughts missive for local underground culture and color.

It still doesn’t explain why Mary’s in there in various states of undress and poses.

Or why Mary has never said a word about it to me.

Stripped Bare

Mary settled into a sort of routine. He spent most days looking for a job—any job—with his backpack full of food from their dining hall. Most nights he rotated couches on different floors so the RAs didn’t notice that he basically lived there.

He made friends with Vegan Mick for about 5 seconds until Mary had eaten an entire Rotisserie chicken from 7-11 in front of him. Mick had launched into a whole spiel, and Mary had pointed out that Mick's jacket and Docs were made of leather. He’d only meant it as a joke—a callout in answer to a callout, like he'd do with his friends back home—but Vegan Mick had turned purple, then iced Mary out every time he saw him after that.

Oops.

The brief friendship had lasted long enough, however, for Mick to give Mary some tips and tricks of being homeless.

Homeless.

That had been a tough pill to swallow. Until Vegan Mick had put Mary’s situation like that, Mary had just thought of himself between places.

But it was true: he didn’t live anywhere. He skated by on the kindness of his new friends, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the ruse of "transfer student who didn’t like his shithole apartment and was too busy job searching to concentrate on classes."

He still spent a few nights a week finding an out-of-the-way place outside to hunker down in or huddling in with Katie and a few of the other gutter punks under their boxes in the corners of the T stations. He knew they would have been more than happy to make room, anyway, but Mary always emptied his backpack of all the pilfered dining hall food for distribution amongst them.

It honestly wasn't so terrible now that he had friends and a warm place to go on cold or rainy nights, but.

He needed an actual place to live. To afford an actual place to live, he needed a job. To get a job, he needed a place to live.

It seemed like a catch-22, and he began to despair that he’d never get ahead…until Mandi offered him a leg up.

Mary was sitting on the grass in the Commons in the shade, thinking that with summer coming up, maybe he could fudge it until the gang came back in September. There was always Katie and The Pit, and Mary was sure he could chip in somehow.

Mandi sat down next to him.

"I thought that mess of hair was you, Mare."

"Hey, Mandi. What’s kicks?"

"You still looking for a job?"

Mary put his head in his hands and sighed.

"Don’t remind me."

"You over 18?"

Just last week. But Mary hadn’t said, since they thought he was a Sophomore.

"Yeah."

"Wanna be at least 21?"

Mary grinned at her.

"That’s what my fake ID says."

She laughed, a tinkling thing.

"You got anything against strip clubs?"

Mary furrowed his brows at her.

"Uh…what’s the right answer here?"

She shoved him playfully.

"Do you want a job?"

"Yeah?"

"Then say no."

"No. No problems with strip clubs." He squinted at her. "Are they looking for male strippers?"

She laughed again.

"Definitely not." She canted her head at Mary. "I mean, you're very pretty, Mare. I could probably put you on as one of the girls…even with these triple As," she flicked playfully at his nipple, which had him grunting and batting at her, "but I was thinking more behind the scenes."

Mary held up his arm and made a weak muscle.

"I don’t think I’d be much of a bouncer, Mands."

"You said you’d wash dishes, sweep floors and shit, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, the club I work at—"

"The club at you what now?"

Mandi gave him a strange look.

"Yeah. The strip club I work at."

Mary’s eyes bugged out.

"As a…waitress?"

"As a stripper, Mary. Duh." At his dumbfounded look she shook her head. "It’s kind of extra credit, as a dance major. I’m going to turn it into my thesis. Plus, I make hella bank."

She swept her arm across the park that made up her college "campus."

"How else do you think I can afford this rock-and-roll lifestyle? Not all of us are here on scholarship or mom and dad’s dime."

She tilted her head at him.

"I thought you’d get it."

When Mary didn't respond, she touched his shoulder.

"Mare. I know you don't go here."

"W-what…? I…"

He looked at her, wide-eyed as the blood drained from his face.

"Hey, it's ok. I'm not gonna tell anybody. Not if you don't want me to."

Mary looked down. "Thanks." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You know that means I've got no address."

Mandi bumped his shoulder and waved his words away.

"A lot of the girls dance. Paddy is used to dorm rooms as addresses. You can use mine."

Mary looked at her, hoping he could convey every ounce of gratitude he was feeling.

She grinned and punched him in the shoulder.

"So, you up for it? Sweeping floors and bussing tables?" She leveled a look at him. "Cleaning up puke?"

Anything.

"Fuck, I’m desperate, Mands. I’ll hold their hair back if it means a paycheck."

"That’s the spirit!"

***

Mary was sure Patrick was part of the mob—or at least in cahoots. The guy had taken one look at Mary’s ID and had said, "But how old are you really?" and Mary had said, "Nineteen."

Patrick had thrown up his hands. "Well, you ain’t gonna be serving alcohol anyway, kid. Your job is to do whatever I tell you. Some asshole breaks a bottle, you clean up the glass so the girls don’t hurt themselves. Some idiot ralphs all over the toilet seat, you scrub the shit out of that fucker. A bachelor party leaves a table a hot mess, you better be out there clearing off the table for the next one, got it?"

Mary had nodded.

"You show up at 5 to help the girls set up the bar. You stay til whenever it takes to close down—but you only get paid 'til 2am—and you get an hour to eat, unpaid. You don’t bother the girls, and," Patrick had leaned in, "you don’t steal from me."

Mary had gulped and nodded emphatically.

Patrick had jabbed a finger at him. "That includes the booze. If I get fucked because some snot-nosed, underage kid is drinking with my good friends Jim and Johnnie, I’m gonna be very put out."

"Got it, sir."

"Don’t call me sir. I’m Paddy to my friends, so you can call me Patrick."

"Yes, Patrick."

Patrick had looked him over.

"You get paid as an independent contractor just like the girls, so you gotta deal with your own taxes, you got that? I’ll start you at $10 an hour."

Mary’s eyes had gone wide. Back home he was lucky to get 5.

"Ten…?"

Patrick had tilted his head again.

"No, you’re right, 12. Do a good job, and I’ll think about raising it to 15."

Mary had to physically stop his jaw from dropping.

"You do weeknights for now so if you fuck up it’s not that much of a problem. If you don’t fuck up and the girls don’t hate you, you can get weekends. Deal?"

Mary had sat up straighter. "Deal." He’d held his hand out, but Patrick had just looked at it until Mary pulled it back into his side.

"Ariel vouched for you, so I’m giving you a shot. Don’t make her regret it."

Mary had shaken his head as Patrick had handed him some forms to fill out.

"Come back at 4 tomorrow with these and we’ll get you started. Now, get out, I got shit to do."

Mary had taken the forms and skedaddled.

Mandi was outside waiting for him, all smiles.

"Did you get it?"

"Yeah, but fuck—your boss is scary."

"Nah, he’s a teddy bear."

***

The job was awful.

The puke was an almost nightly occurrence, and by the end of the first week, little cuts covered Mary’s hands from the broken glass. The customers were loud, rowdy, and acted as if their mother was going to clean up after them.

Mary swore he would never get the beer smell out. It now lived in his soul.

One dude punched Mary and broke his nose for no reason Mary could tell before the bouncers dragged the guy away. The girls gave him some tampons to stop the bleeding, and Mary finished his shift.

Patrick paid Mary in cash at the end of every week with a "It’s your job to report that, not mine," and at the end of the month, Patrick bumped Mary up to $15/hr. He worked 5 days a week because, according to Patrick, "The Lord gave us a day of rest, and you get one day off per week."

Mary never reported a single cent to the IRS.

The girls loved him, and joked that Patrick had gotten them a pet. They showed him winged eyeliner and smokey eyes and how to contour. They guffawed when they watched him try out their shoes like a newborn deer. On slow nights, they tried to show him pole techniques.

He saw the gang less and less because by the time they were getting out of class, he was going into work, and when he was done work, they were crawling into bed. Fortunately, the desk sitters seemed to forget that he wasn’t an on-campus "student" and didn’t even bother signing him in anymore. There were a few sticklers, but Mary found that—while back home he was less than scum—here, he attracted all the right kinds of attention…and a smirk with the right compliment went a long way.

By the time their school year ended, Mary had saved up $1,000 (and he needed to transfer his money out of sock bank and into the ripped lining of his jacket).

Even though they didn't know just how much they'd saved him, Mary showed up on the last day as thanks to help them all move their stuff into family cars or rented trucks. They hugged him goodbye and said to ring them next semester.

Mandi bopped him on the nose and told him to keep his nose clean.

Mary took a sublet in Allston with 2 BU kids and a Berkley grad student. The "room" was a closed-in porch with a sleeping bag left by the last resident—but it was $400 a month until September, utilities included.

At first, Mary didn't know why the gang was so snobby about Allston, but the summer seemed to be one continual party. It didn't matter what day Mary got up, there were always broken beer bottles and stale beer on their front stoop, and the apartment had a designated watering can for washing away the vomit that dripped down from the top porches to their own.

But he took it in stride, and when he wasn’t at the strip club or sleeping, he was partying with the BU kids, or letting the Berkley grad show him better string fingering techniques.

Mary still tried to get out to The Pit with what groceries he could spare, but Katie had moved on with some of the others to do a protest tour with an activist street band that had come through town, and without her or the gang, it made Mary feel lonely.

By the end of the summer, Mary had saved up enough money for first, last, and security. He even had some left over to buy more than ramen and some new clothes. To Mary, it felt like a million dollars. He rented a garden-level apartment in the cheap part of Jamaica Plain for September 1st and spent that entire day with the BU dudes driving around in their rented truck for Allston Christmas’s best furniture finds.

Mary ended up with a mattress that he hoped on a wish and a prayer didn’t have bedbugs, a mismatched set of dishes, plastic drawers that were slightly warped, and a broken futon frame he swore he would fix. Throw in a few sets of slightly used string lights, and Mary’s cave felt downright homey.

When the gang got back, he simply told them he’d dropped out.

"Yeah, I just don’t think college is for me. Music’s my real passion, you know?"

Alex had groaned.

"I knew that Berkley kid was gonna be a bad influence on you."

Mary shrugged.

"My grades were shit anyway. But I’m still around, you know. The strip club’s only a block from campus."

"Because we saw you so much then," deadpanned Billy.

"Hey! Stop piling on Mary," said Vanity. "He’s following his path."

Mary shot her a wide smile.

"Thanks, Vanity."

Patrick finally gave him a little more leeway with his days off, and Mary started taking Saturday night to join the gang in Harvard Square for the shadow cast of Rocky Horror. One of Aaron’s classmates, Amber, was in it, and they all wanted to support her.

Mary felt that something again. That thing that told that this was his place and his people. This eclectic group who got up in front of strangers every week in their underwear for free enthralled Mary.

He and Amber bonded immediately, and Mary began going even without the gang. The cast welcomed him in as an honorary groupie, and Mary's friendship with the gang waned. There was still Mandi to cavort with at the strip club, but now when Mary wasn't there, he was at any one of the Rocky crew's apartments getting high and playing dress up.

"You’ve got such a Look, Mare," sighed Amber. "I’d kill for your cheekbones."

"I’d kill for your tits."

She slapped him playfully. "Don’t be gross."

"No, I’m serious. Someone once put it in my head that I'd be a hot chick."

The girls had giggled and proceeded to dress him up in bras and corsets with cutlets. They added a wig, and the glo-up surprised even Mary.

Still buzzed, they went out for girl’s night and hit up all the bars in Fenway and flirted their way to free shots from the dude bros before batting their falsies at bouncers to let them into the clubs ahead of the line and without the cover.

The cutlets eventually became a nuisance—and soon they were all flapping them about above their heads as they danced—but Mary had loved the feel of the lace and satin corsets against his skin.

When they’d all collapsed in a pile at the end of the night, Mary wondered if they’d tell him where to get some lingerie for himself.

***

By August, Mary was ready to quit the strip club.

He was tired of cut fingers (they were making it hard to play the guitar he’d bought), the drunks, and the sick everywhere. Now that he had a little cushion, he thought maybe he could at least find something with better hours.

Mandi had graduated and was well into a summer internship at Disney in hopes they’d bring her on as a dancer.

Alex had also graduated and moved out to LA to make it as a film editor.

Vanity and Aaron had started dating after finals, and they had moved in together in Cambridgeport for their last year.

Billy had stopped going to classes before dropping out altogether. No one seemed to know what happened, and when they called his home, his mother just said he was unavailable.

There didn’t seem to be much reason to stick around the Grid anymore, and it was a bitch of a commute back to his place if he wasn’t going to hang out with the Rocky crew. He landed a job at a record store that was walking distance to his apartment.

Patrick seemed surprisingly sad to see him go, saying, "Ah, the good ones smart up," and gave him a $500 bonus for not "fucking up."

Tim, one of the older Rocky people, turned out to not live too far from him, and when Mary started hanging out there, so did the party.

Now that Mary was no longer shackled by the strip club’s hours, his world opened a few more degrees. He spent his nights dressing up while he watched the cast rehearse. (When he showed them a move or two he learned from the women at the club, they tried to get him to do a guest star as Frank. But Mary had shaken his head and said that wasn’t the kind of performing he wanted to do.)

When they weren't rehearsing, they dragged Mary to TT The Bear’s, The Middle East, and The Milky Way Lounge for underground shows. They took him to fetish night at ManRay after a trip to Hubba Hubba for pleather and lingerie, and Mary made a lot of new friends.

Sometimes, Mary would show up to work straight off a night out in his club clothes, eyeliner smudged and lipstick smeared. It should have got him fired, but his boss just shrugged.

"I used to keep rockstar hours too."

Mary still wore all his old vestiges—his battle vest and his ripped jeans—it was just that now he sometimes added a corset and heels.

Wherever Katie was now, he hoped she knew he was still fucking their beauty standards.

ry.omen Insta

Answer Me This

I practically vibrate the entire way back to our place. I'm still trying to wring information out of the internet like it's too-wet clothes, but the only thing I accomplish is making myself motion sick on the bus, so I put my phone back in my pocket and breath through my nose.

When I get home, Mary is sprawled across the couch in his pjs with various limbs hanging over sides and edges as he watches some extreme sport show on my laptop.

I wonder if he just got up, but I see the start of dinner on the stove, so I decide not to snark at him.

"Hey," he says without looking up.

I am, however, gonna need some answers on "Heroes."

I gently close the laptop, and he meets my eyes.

"What?"

I climb onto the couch, and Mary’s limbs recede like vines to make room for me as I scroll through my phone to my photo app where I’ve saved screenshots.

"Lucy," I say in a terrible accent, "you have some ‘splaining to do!"

Mary squints at me and takes my phone, his expression morphing into one of surprise.

"Shit, babe. Where’d ya find these??"

"So they are you!"

He chuckles.

"Christ…I haven't thought about these in fucking years."

"Mind telling me what the fuck?" I ask, my hands on my hips.

I'm only half joking.

Mary grimaces at me.

"Ah."

"I'm gonna need more than that, mister."

He rubs the back of his neck.

"Fuck, you know those were hard times for me."

I know about his family, the homelessness. I know he tried out a lot until he found a life that fit. He'd given me the overviews with occasional anecdotes filled with names I never remembered.

But none of them included naughty pictures.

I worm my way under his arm.

"Yeah, I know, Mare."

His hand strokes down my arm.

"I mean, shit. I was kinda an asshole, you know?"

I wrap an arm around his chest.

"You're still kind of an asshole, Goore."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

When he doesn't say more, I poke him hard in the side.

"I’m literally dying here."

He laughs a little.

"Fine. But you gotta remember you asked."

Model Behavior

One day, Mary was walking down the street on his way to drinks with the new friends he'd made the weekend before. It was a good day. He wasn’t hungover as fuck, his makeup was only smudged artfully, and he was pretty sure he was going to get laid.

A guy in a leather jacket and tight jeans maybe a few years older than Mary stopped him on the street.

"Hey, man! I love your style."

Mary batted his eyelashes at him. "Thanks, dude."

"You ever think of dark modeling?"

Mary squinted his eyes at him.

"Dark what now?"

"You know—modeling but like," he gestured up and down Mary’s form, "for dark beauties. Show the world beauty isn’t cookie cutter."

"For like what? A website or some shit?"

The guy dug into his pocket, pulled out a card case, and handed one to Mary.

Heroes Greg Karson, Photographer/Web Design Butera School of Art

Actually, Mary had heard of this. It was a zine about the local happenings around town—concerts, art shows, parties, etc. There was a stack of them next to "Rrriot!" in the record shop. He’d flipped through one occasionally, mostly interested in the band reviews.

"We’re really on the lookout for anyone with the right look. You know, wear stuff you already own."

"So like a street fashion spread?"

"Well, we might do a little more with it, but—you know how it is. Most of the budget goes toward printing costs."

Mary perked up.

"Would I be paid?"

Greg laughed.

"Peanuts, my dude. But yeah. Even if it’s a T token. You interested, then?"

"Hell yeah!"

"Mind if I take a few test shots."

Mary smirked at Greg.

"How do you want me?"

"Just natural."

Putting his hands in his pockets, Mary arched his back and gave Greg his best snotty hipster face.

Greg dug out a digital camera from his carrying case and took a dozen or so pictures of Mary from different angles while telling him to turn this way or that.

Afterwards, the two of them huddled over the camera and scrolled through the shots.

"Aw yeah, this one. I love the attitude. The guys are gonna love it. You have a number where we can reach you?"

Mary gave him the number of the record shop. (His apartment had a phone, but he’d never gotten around to wanting to pay for service.)

Later, he and Amber looked up the Angelfire website on the back of the card. It was one page that contained the mission statement, bios of the creators, and locations to pick up the zine.

"Omigod—you’re gonna become a famous model, Mare!"

"Yeah, right. You know most of it ends up in the trash, right?"

But when Ben called, Mary said he was game. He directed Mary to a co-op in a converted warehouse in Dorchester, and Mary brought his favorite clothes in a borrowed duffle.

A girl in cat pajamas opened the door and pointed at a set of metal stairs with her cereal spoon.

On the second floor, Mary found Greg setting up a makeshift studio. A girl with multiple piercings and yarn dreads leaned against the wall in her black babydoll dress.

Mary sidled up to her.

"You here to model, too?"

She gave him an unimpressed once-over.

"I’m the art director, asshole."

Mary flushed hard as she turned to Greg.

"Couldn’t find one with brains?"

She turned back to Mary.

"I don’t know if you thought this would be a good way to meet chicks or what, dude. But I’m letting you know right now that I’m here on my day off to make sure this adheres to our aesthetic, so if you're not serious, fuck off."

Mary rubbed the back of his neck.

"Shit, sorry. I was expecting a dude named Ben."

She waved her hand in the air as if dispelling Ben.

"The Bens are morons. Good idea, terrible execution. I’m here to make sure we remain true to the idea of 'Heroes,' so don’t fuck up my shoot." She gave him a once over. "Christ. You have any experience?"

Greg turned from where he was testing the white balance.

"Angelique, stop harassing the talent. We get it, you have a degree from RISD."

Angelique snorted.

"As if I don't hear you going on and on about being a professional photographer. 'Hey, lemme shoot your portfolio, baby.' Whatever. As if we're not your only professional credit."

"Hey—you wanted a photographer for peanuts? You got me. You wanted models for peanuts? You got him."

Mary gave her his full snaggle-toothed grin.

"I take T tokens."

Angelique sighed, then pasted on a smile.

"Hi! So happy you’re here!" Her smile drooped. "You got your wardrobe in there?"

"Yeah."

Mary handed her the duffle, and she handed him release forms.

"Here: sign these"

She pawed through his offerings.

"Not bad, not bad." She pulled out a corset and his heeled boots. "We'll keep you in your jeans and have you wear your jacket over your corset. Cool?"

Cool.

The shoot was as professional as a shoot in a warehouse in what Mary was taking to usually be a living room could be. Angelique directed Greg with what she wanted. Greg called out positions and expressions for Mary to pose in.

It was surprisingly hard work, and by the end of a solid hour, his smirking lip was getting tired. Angelique and Greg scrolled through the shots, murmuring to themselves and nodding.

Mary waited—greeting at the other inhabitants as they squeezed by on their way either up or down—until Angelique approached him.

"That’ll do. You mind if we post on our website?"

Mary preened.

"Yeah, that’s kosher."

She handed him a pen and pocket notebook.

"Write down a quick bio."

He scribbled down a quick elevator pitch

Into general skulking and metal \m/

and handed the notebook back to her.

"Great, thanks."

She handed him a $20 bill, her eyes skimming him up and down.

"Next time we should show off those hip bones. Just jeans, I think."

Mary perked up. "Next time?"

"We’ll call you."

***

"Omigod, omigod!"

Amber perched on the record store counter, flipping through "Heroes," as Jon peered over her shoulder.

"Mary…look at you!"

Mary tried to swallow his smug smile.

Failed.

"Yeah. I’m hot shit, ain’t I?"

She bopped him on the nose with the newsprint.

"Don’t be vain."

He showed her his toothy smile.

"I like to think of it as confidence."

"So did Icarus."

Mary snorted and went back to putting prices on the new CDs.

"The camera loves you," said Jon, who was always quiet and reserved as you please…until he put on Frank’s corset and heels.

Mary had tried flirting with him, but Jon always ducked his head and played it off.

"Thanks, man," said Mary, giving him a softer smile.

"So??"

"So what, Amber?"

"Are you gonna do it again?"

Mary shrugged.

"I mean, if they call me, sure."

But he was kind of hoping they would.

When the next issue came out weeks later, Mary stared at the cybergoth on the pages and felt himself deflate. Listlessly, he thumbed through the delicate print, barely skimming the section devoted to the World/Inferno Friendship Society’s set he’d been at the week before.

He set it down with a sigh before he picked up his guitar and plucked out a tune he was trying to coax into a riff.

By the time a Ben called again, Mary had given up the modeling thing as a one-off.

"Hey, dude—thought maybe you guys forgot about me," Mary said in a teasing tone.

The Ben on the other end chuckled.

"It’s like herding cats to get shit out. Nah, dude—we definitely want you to be one of our regulars. You in for next Saturday?"

He was.

***

Over the course of a year, "Heroes" had Mary come out multiple times for shoots. Mainly, Mary wore his own clothes and did his own makeup, but occasionally, Angelique wanted something specific.

"How comfortable are you with boudoir shots?"

"With what?"

"Like a pinup, but more…saucy than sexy."

I'd pose nude if you paid me enough.

(Sure, he was a noodle boy, but he knew he had the goods.)

"Yeah, I’m cool with that."

Angelique brightened at him.

"Great!"

She picked up a set of complicated leather garters and thrust them at him.

"Put these on."

Mary had only ever worn lace garters—mostly out to clubs, but occasionally under his ripped jeans for an extra pop—but he found he liked these even more, liked the way they emphasized his thighs.

"Hey—where’d you get these…?"

(He was already thinking of what he could pair them with for goth night.)

"Local leatherworker. He mostly does pieces for Renn Fairs, but he'll also do custom. I can give you his info."

She led Mary into what was clearly someone's bedroom.

"Don't fuck anything up, or Joye will never let us use this again."

Mary shot her his best shark smile.

"Hey, I only mess up the sheets if someone asks."

Angelique gave him a flat look and called for Greg.

(But when he draped himself over the bed and told Greg to "Paint me like one of your French girls," Mary could have sworn she almost smiled.)

On one memorable occasion, she brought in a guy whose rope bondage demo she watched at a sex convention.

"Put on some of that lingerie and we'll truss you up. You ok with that, Goore?"

Mary ran his fingers over the coils and gave her a wolfish smile.

"You know I'm game for anything."

She gave him a vulpine smile of her own then, and she looked down at him from the height of her platformed boots.

"Good. I thought you should be submissive for once."

Mary had no witty rejoinder for that.

He listened with interest as the guy carefully explained what he was going to do, complete with pictures, and he relaxed easily into the process. (They put bunny ears on him, and it would be much, much later that he got that particular joke. Well played, Angelique.)

The ropes hadn’t let him do much posing, but Mary had kind of liked the constriction, and his thoughts were already on asking Amber to help him create a more versatile version for fetish night.

He’d left that day with a new kink…and the guy’s number.

"Why not just do one big shoot?" he asked another time. "Get it all done in one big bang!"

Angelique held up his garments to eyeball over him.

"Honey, we never even know if there's gonna be a next issue. The Bens spend most of the time arguing. My god you should hear them—Ben bankrolls the whole thing, so he says he should get final say on shit, and Benji wants total artistic control because it was his idea, because 'he's the graphic designer', and because it's his Kinko's employee discount they use."

She gave Mary a curled-lip smile as she tossed a few items at him.

"In the end it's this bitch you're looking at who gets shit done."

Mary began to change (they were long past modesty).

"How'd you get involved?"

"Went to school with Benji."

"Ben too?"

"Neg. The Bens are childhood friends. Ben works some cushy start-up job, so Benji lets him bankroll them both. Rent, utilities—everything. I love Benji to death, but he's a giant mooch."

"Shit, that must be nice."

Angelique shrugged. She stood back to appraise Mary's look.

"It's fucking lame. But it least it gets us fucking paid."

Mary didn't say I'd do this for free. Instead, he struck a pose and said, "I'm just happy for the exposure."

Angelique rolled her eyes and went to fetch Greg.

***

That year and a half would become a nonstop party with Mary as one of the VIPs; he wouldn't say no to anything—be it casual sex, club appearances, or whatever drug the current pretty thing was offering him in the bathroom.

But recognition started slow.

At first, it was customers who would leaf through the zine and recognize Mary.

Then, it was the occasional scenester who’d stop him on the street in JP as he walked about, and Mary would pose for grainy cell phone pics.

Soon, he was being approached at shows and clubs. The first time it happened, Mary was high off his new infamy and ready to please. A woman in a black bandage bra and pleated skirt with bondage straps approached him, and Mary was already thinking of what he could do with those.

"You look like that guy in ‘Heroes’!" she'd shouted to him over the music.

Mary had flashed her a crooked smile and leaned in.

"Maybe I am the guy in ‘Heroes’."

She'd given him an exaggerated once over before sidling closer with hooded eyes.

"I dunno…you're wearing way more clothes."

Mary had pulled his mesh top down by the collar in a tease as he'd curled over her.

"Take me somewhere more private and I’ll let you do a comparison."

She'd compared him all night.

And that was before he and the other "Heroes" models formed their own posse.

The Bens had thrown a BBQ and had invited everyone they'd ever met. There were people packed into their little 2 bedroom in Brighton, spilling down the back stairs, and equally packed into the little square of shared backyard. Ben had taken the 12-pack of 'Gansett beers Mary had brought, then introduced him to the other dark models.

"Now you're all here!" said Ben. He slung his arm around Mary. "Guys, this is Mary. Mary this is Mayhem, Lesley, Lola, and Bryan."

Mayhem was a rivethead, and Mary took to him instantly, but he was wary of the others. Lesley was the cybergoth who'd been in the first issue after him, and Mary still felt a bit salty at them, even though Mary knew by now the Bens rotated the models. Lola, the romantic goth, reminded him enough of Vanity that he felt guilty for losing touch with her and had him projecting a little. Bryan was a metalhead, so: competition.

Mary had thought they'd get along like cats and water, but weed, booze, and "Never Have I Ever" went a long way to creating a shared bond.

And there it was again. That pull. The magnetic force telling him that he'd found the place he was supposed to be. They quickly coalesced into their own pack, calling themselves the "Deathbutantes" (because they always killed it when they debuted for the night).

It had been rare for Mary to miss Friday and Saturday night shenanigans with the Rocky crew, but now, every night was Friday night. There was always a show or a concert or club that one of them knew about—and if they couldn't get lucky with the local color, they'd just go home with each other.

Mayhem taught Mary what Lola jokingly called the "grab a bat" dance, and the two of them cut quite the picture on the dance floors.

Lesley took to Lola, and the two of them could always be counted on for scintillating conversation in dark corners when Mary's limbst needed a break from flailing about.

The clubs weren't really Bryan's scene—take him to a sticky hole in the wall with concrete floors and a stage close enough to feel the sweat from the bands, and he was in heaven—but he liked to come along to hang. He'd drink PBRs, rub Lola's feet when she invariably abandoned her heels for the evening, and argue with Mary about the purity of death metal.

Mayhem and Lola weren't really into live music of the screaming kind, so—while Lesley, Bryan, and Mary bounced off each other in the mosh pits—they'd save a "home" base at one the bartops.

Amber noticed Mary's diminishing presence and stopped by the record shop to call him out.

"So you're not dead! Could've fooled me."

Mary was organizing the albums into order, and he grunted at her.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a cad. I'll make it up to you."

"You missed game night."

"Sorry. Jethro Tull played some tiny venue in nowhere Mass, and Bryan was salivating. I mean, Jethro Tull. Can you blame me?"

He looked at her, arms out wide in supplication. But she just blinked at him.

"You have no idea who Jethro Tull is, do you?"

"Sorry, dude. But christ, Mare. You should have invited me. I'd've gone. Maybe I would have even liked them. Now you'll never know."

"I could just lend you an album."

"Nope! The moment passed. Too late!"

Mary riffled through the stock and shoved a Jethro Tull CD into her hands.

She tapped it against her thigh.

"So, when do I get to hang?"

"I can get us into 80s night free."

"No, I mean, with your cooler friends. Your 'murder models', or whatever."

"You wanna hang out with the Deathbutantes?"

Amber scrunched her nose.

"That's so fucking pretentious."

Mary kind of liked it.

"Dunno if they're really your scene."

"Oh? And what's my scene?"

"Musical theater on crack."

She mock gasped at him, "Called out!" before smacking him with the CD. "Whatever. You love musical theater on crack."

Mary draped his arm around her shoulders.

"Yeah, I do. But I don't live it, you know? You guys have your niche—and fuck…I love to visit—but it's not mine."

Amber looked up at him, her expression serious.

"So the Dumbutantes are your niche?"

Mary shrugged and went back to shelving.

The Rocky crew had been good to him. They'd taken him under their wing, no questions asked, and helped him realize things about himself. Tim had taken him to the ER when Mary had come down with a serious case of the flu. Matty had taught him the basics of sewing. Gretchen had held him after a bad trip. Omar and he had had many drunken heart-to-hearts about their shitty home lives.

And Amber was his best friend. She'd been his #1 cheerleader for years and had never been afraid to call him out on his shit.

So yeah, he loved the Rocky crew…but they laughed at anyone who took anything too seriously. Mary would show up to game nights in his latest creation—with everyone else in pjs or jeans & hoodies—and they'd tease him about trying to impress the wrong people. He'd try to talk about the newest guitar god he'd been mainlining, and they'd make snoring noises at him.

How could he explain the kinship he felt with the Deathbutantes? That they were as serious about music as he was, that they just…got why he felt the need to dress the way he did to express the way he felt inside on his outside.

Instead, he said, "I'm just trying shit out, Ambs." He quirked his eyebrow at her. "I gotta do something while you guys do your real-person jobs."

(Amber had recently started as a junior marketing assistant at the American Repertory Theater. "Purely mercenary," she'd said. "Maybe it'll give me a leg up during auditions.")

She made a disgruntled scoffing noise in the back of her throat.

"Fuck, don't remind me. I actually gotta go to bed a reasonable hour now."

"Don't worry." Mary winked at her. "I'll keep ya honest."

"That sounds a lot like my head in a toilet, Mare."

"I'll hold your hair back."

She gave him a good-natured shove, and he pretended to cower.

If she wanted to cross pollinate, who was Mary to stand in her way? So, he invited her out the next time the Deathbutantes went to a show, and it went exactly like he thought it would.

They disliked her, and she was equally unimpressed. They thought she was too loud and frenetic, and she thought they had no sense of humor.

"I fucking told you," Mary had snorted as they sat on the curb sharing a clove.

"Shut the fuck up, Mare."

But she'd put her head on his shoulder.

"They make you happy, though. So I guess I approve. Just as long as I don't have to play nice."

Mary still hung out with the Rocky crew—there were still game nights and drug-fueled sex parties and theater games—but the Deathbutantes introduced him to the underground scene. They always seemed to have insider knowledge about the best up-in-coming bands and the secret shows. Theme nights at the goth clubs were always a must, and they rarely missed one. Sometimes, Angelique would crash, and they'd take the commuter rail to Providence to party at Club Hell before collapsing in a sweaty, smeary pile at a friend of a friend's hole in the wall.

As a bit player in the Rocky crew, Mary had been another made-up face in the crowd. As a certified member of the Deathbutantes, Mary became the face.

They all did.

The owners loved them because they bought round after round at the bar, and if word got out that the Deathbutantes were there, their admirers came to spend money as well. The employees loved them because they were fun and talked to them as equals. The clientele loved them because they were pretty young things.

Sometimes, though, Mary wasn't in the mood to party or get laid, so he talked to the DJs instead. He'd buy them rounds and stay past closing to help them pack up while they talked about the history of punk and 80s new wave and nu metal. There was one in particular, Dave, that Mary even considered a friend.

The two of them would sit in the club past closing, sharing a whiskey and talking about life while the bartenders closed down and cashed out. Occasionally, Dave's other friends would be around, and they'd all walk back to his place; he'd fool around spinning in his home studio, and they'd drink box wine as they danced and laughed before Mary would have to sit on the ground in an intoxicated exhaustion, good for only thumbing through Dave's vinyl collection.

Mary was just happy to talk shop with another music aficionado, but Angelique had pointed out that he should leverage his minor clout.

They'd been waiting for Greg to finish setting up, and Mary had been struggle city after a particularly hard night out. It was all he could manage to sit there quietly and hope some god would put him out of his misery.

"You need to get your shit together," Angelique had said out of nowhere.

Mary had cracked a puffy eye and had slowly (as to not bring the nothing in his stomach back up) turned his head to her.

"As if I haven't seen your melted ass on the floor wanting to die."

"Fuck, Mary. You've turned it into an art form."

He'd closed his eyes and given her the finger, but that hadn't stopped her.

"You wanna be a rockstar, boy? You can't just sit on your ass and hope the right person on the right night hears you. You're effervescent and charismatic—heads turn when you walk into a room and not just because of your skinny jeans—but you need more than air, Mary, which is all you are right now."

"Fuck you, Angela."

She'd clapped in front of his face, and she was lucky he didn't Exorcist bile all over her.

"You're a fucking pain in my ass, Goore. I'm doling out the good stuff, try not to bite my hand off, k?"

"All right, all right!"

"You wanna start that band? You wanna get play and amass fans? Well, make that demo you're always droning on about and give it to those DJs you're alway fanboying over. Fucking network, Goore."

At the time, Mary had been too hungover to care, but her advice would sink in…

Eventually.

For the time being, Mary was content. He loved the attention, and it made him feel invincible, made him feel like it was finally His Time. And he was going to make up for every slight, every unfair situation, and every beat down with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

With his newfound nightlife, Mary's day job had become an afterthought. He started sleeping through opening shifts, but with the extra foot traffic Mary brought to the store, his boss seemed resigned to let Mary slide (after a stern talking to and a pay docking).

The shadow cast had started using him as a mascot of sorts, and he was happy to show up on Saturday nights and hype up the waiting line with a pseudo striptease. (Even if it was sometimes to kick off his evening with the Deathbutantes and not hang with the cast after.)

Mary started a band ("auditioning" any and all of the many admirers who said they’d be more than happy to join it), and after a few false starts and a couple of lineup changes, they began working on an EP. (At least, when Mary showed up to rehearsal, they did.)

A Boston Phoenix reporter got wind of the Deathbutantes and called around about doing a story on them. The Bens were excited about the exposure that meant for their zine, and Angelique and Greg were excited about what it could mean for their careers. Mary did a brief interview over the phone where he answered questions about his style and talked about his dream of making his band a household name.

Mary saw his name up in lights, and he was reaching for it, full speed ahead.

But then things turned.

The story fell through at the last minute with no further explanation or contact by the reporter.

His boss finally fired him after Mary showed up too high to function too many times—or not at all.

The shadow cast had a turnover, and suddenly he was old news—a cringey hanger-on.

A trip to the clinic and a round of antibiotics for an STI had him way more wary of who he hooked up with.

"Heroes" lost momentum when imitators popped up and Ben cut off the gravy train.

Angelique moved to NYC for "better opportunities," and the Bens took their brand of counterculture to Portland, OR.

Greg took down the website when he got offered a legit job as an apprentice at a food magazine, and that was that.

The physical zines were cheap things, most ending up papering the sidewalk after trash day or lining the bottom of cages. Without the online presence, did Mary's "modeling career" even exist?

Mary was a little sad to see the era go, but when he woke up in Maine on the hood of some girl's car and only a hazy recollection of how they'd gotten there, he was beginning to see Angelique's point. He needed to get his shit together if he was ever going to become a rockstar. And frankly, he kind of felt like he needed to spend an entire month eating carrots and hydrating.

The 24/7 party had always been an ephemeral thing; it had been sand passing through his hands in a finite amount as he'd tried to hold onto it

He put himself on detox, and waking up sober for the first time in months felt like a revelation. And as it turned out, playing the guitar without badly shaking hands was way, way easier.

He found another job in another music store, and his starter!band was bringing butts into the smaller venues, like Toad.

He still had his old Rocky friends and the Deathbutantes. The club and venue owners still let him in for free, and Dave was always happy to give his demos a spin. By anyone's else's measure, he was steal one of the scene's darlings.

But Mary was beginning to realize that he needed to stop seeing himself as that scared kid who’d arrived in Boston 4 years ago with only a backpack, $72.57 to his name, and void where his family should be.

He needed to stop finding people to please into loving him.

Instead, he needed to live for himself and let them love him for who he was—fuck ups and all.

@slimylayne

Epilogue

"Honestly, that’s probably the reason I even got a band together," he says. "I was still kind of shit at guitar, but people came to see ‘Model Mary’ perform in his underwear."

He shoots me a smirk.

"I’m sure there’re pictures out there of me looking more glam than metal. I kind of played up the whole pinup thing for a while."

"Fuck, I would kill, literally kill to see that."

He pulls me into his lap until I’m straddling him.

"I could open up my underwear drawer and show you right now."

"Goore, you temptress."

I lean down to kiss him, and his hands sneak under my shirt, but I pull away again.

"I kinda thought I knew all your torrid secrets by now. Shit, how come Dave's never needled you about it?"

After 2 years with him, I’m surprised I hadn't even heard a peep from his oldest friend.

Mary snorts.

"Dave would miss shit hanging off his nose. Great dude, amiable as fuck, but he's always had fucking tunnel vision for his music."

I smirk at him.

"Sounds like someone else I know."

Mary pulls a face at me, and I apply kisses to every line until he laughs and bats me away.

"But really, Mare—how come you never told me about your brief career in blue steel?"

He blows out a breath, his hands smoothing up my thighs.

"Fuck. Cuz maybe I was a little embarrassed at how off the rails I was then, ok? Didn't want you to know what I fuck up I was." He takes my hand and kisses my palm. "And even I know it's a shit move to pitch woo at someone by telling them about banging half of Boston."

I make a face at him, and he laughs.

"Yeah, that’s what I thought."

His hands rest on my waist.

"Christ, everything about that year's a bit fuzzy, and it was like 10 years ago. Sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else, honestly. And shit—most of those people aren’t even around anymore. College kids who moved on and 20-somethings that grew up and moved who knows where. I used to watch Amber have—what is it when it’s four people?—and now she lives in bumblefuck Pennsylvania with 3 kids. After she left, I just kinda drifted away from all that."

He shrugs, his eyes downcast.

"I’m sorry, Mare," I say as I smooth his eyebrows.

He shrugs again.

"I mean, we all kinda keep in touch. It's like the only reason I have Facebook."

"When was the last time you even signed into that?"

Mary grins at me.

"Lola's birthday."

"One of the models? What happened with them?"

Mary bites his lip and thinks.

"Mayhem found religion after an OD and kinda ghosted everyone. Lesley followed a girl to New Hampshire. Uh…Lola pursued a PhD for something sciencey involving renewable energy with sugar beets in Idaho, and Bryan moved back to Florida to care for his grandma, who raised him."

Mary leans his head back on the couch and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I mean, shit. We were fucking babies back then. Head empty except for a good time and unlimited potential."

I run my fingers through his hair.

"You miss it?"

His eyes pop open to look at me.

"Fuck no. Not for a million dollars. Too many question marks." His eyes glint as he runs his hands down me. "I like what I got going on right here."

I wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss his forehead. The fucking sap.

Mary picks up my phone and scrolls through the pictures again.

"Fuck. I used to be goddamn adorable, though. Half this shit wouldn’t even fit me anymore."

I squish his little potbelly, and he grunts at me indignantly.

"Do you still have any originals?" I ask.

He shakes his head, his eyes wistful and his smile sad.

"Nah. Got destroyed when my roof collapsed and leaked everywhere. Fuck, landlords are useless. Glad we fucking own now, babe."

He scrolls up, scrolls back down.

"Just these four?"

I nod.

"Yeah. They were the only ones I found—and I did a lot of searching."

"Christ, I think there were at least 10."

I smile ruefully at him. "It’s not gonna be long anyway before they make their way into the popular tags and shit starts coming out of the woodwork."

He tosses my phone onto the table.

"Whatever. Just shows that I’ve always been cool."

And then he’s kissing me again, his hand tangling in my hair.

"You know, I’m your family now, Mare. Just for you."

He brings my hand up and kisses it.

"Fuck, I know that. Why’dja think I put a ring on it?"

#mary goore #longfic #gender neutral insert #aurelio voltaire

[mwolf0epsilon]

“Eps’s Notes on The Illusion of Living”

It's taken me nearly three months to get this done due to writer’s block kicking my sorry butt. But, as promised, here are my notes on the "Illusion of Living". Good god has this been painful… But I did have a lot of stuff I initially thought of Joey somewhat confirmed for me, and got a few extra interesting tidbits of info that I feel are very curious...

--{Key}--

Italics are my opinion

--{Key}--

--{Quick retelling of the book’s contents}--

    The Drews were among the more impoverished families in New Jersey, and Joey's father briefly worked in the silk industry to make end's meet before opening his own shoe store (that his mother oversaw profits for as the accountant). As such there were obvious limitations to a lot of Joey’s upbringing (like a lack of toys to entertain him with, and very few family vacations/trips that were memorable).

According to Joey, the shoes sold at his family’s store were primarily designed for people in the working class (clunky shoes and boots that would endure wear and tear rather than be flashy or comfortable to wear, which Joey complained never really fit him right), and had one singular design that was simply improved upon rather than any variety (I suppose the saying here would be “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” but Joey really seemed to have some sort of issue with this, as he disliked his father’s works).

    Joey's mother was a hardworking housewife and the primary parent when it came to rearing her child. She educated and played with him more than his father, so Joey was much fonder and emotionally close to her than to him and, while Joey’s father wasn’t an absent parent by any means, he was definitely more engrossed in working to sustain the family.

This family dynamic definitely had some impact on Joey, especially since his mother got him interested in the art of storytelling in general, and he seemed to have a lot more respect for her than for his father. In fact he even had a few reservations regarding his father’s mental integrity when he discovered his talent for making voices in a rather odd manner.

It should be noted here that, while Joey's father was strong, he looked deceptively frail and wasn't considered a particularly brave man by any means. He was however regarded as a bit of an entrepreneur, and Joey was very concerned that he may not be sane (which was a bit of taboo at the time, considering treatment for mental health issues hadn’t advanced past lobotomies and other disturbing medical malpractices) because he talked and sang to himself in curious little voices while he worked. Curiously enough, while a patient and loving man, Joey's father wasn't aversed to cursing around his young son (although Joey himself doesn't seem to use crass language, even if it was normalized in the household). Another curious thing to note is that Joey greatly dislikes mud, and especially hated it as a child (alluding to his later obsessive cleanliness as an adult).

    Because of the financial issues his family suffered through, Joey didn't have a radio or many books growing up, and was thus more fond of Vaudevilles (specifically theatrical comedy, tragedy, and bizarre/surreal acts) which were pretty common in his city of birth. This interest for theatrics and third person story perspectives mixed terribly with later events in his life, like how at age 10 he witnessed a potential murder/suicide (Jesus christ...). Through this event he realized that there were different kinds of people in specific situations, especially when faced with the finality of death. Joey goes so far as to describe how theatrical the death was (Almost sounding disconnected from the reality of the situation as he noted that the crowd and even his own father seemed more like characters to him than real people). However, since Joey's neighborhood was ripe with strange people, he wasn't unfamiliar with bizarre events happening around him. Seeing a motorized ambulance was more amazing to a 10 year old him than actually caring for the death of a stranger at the front of his father's store.

    At age 12, Joey went to Coney Island for the first time, and the journey excited him greatly since he didn't get to leave home very often. The trip to Coney Island was magical in a sense, and later in life he hoped to replicate it in Bendyland to a more permanent degree (the trip back home ruptured the magical effect, which he didn't want to happen with Bendyland).

Joey has his own set of rules he plays by which he considers his life’s philosophy that he calls "The Illusion of Living". This was inspired by several events in his life, including his father passing the time by playing make believe (the Shoemaker and the Elves). This unique perception of what illusion and reality are (“the same thing”), seems to point to Joey having developed a dissociative personality disorder from a young age, which got progressively worse as he grew older. This in addition with the ADHD patterns he displays in his confusing rambling writing (and Joey rambles a LOT), and the almost OCD behaviour in regards to cleaning up after himself, indicates Joey lacked impulse control and was more prone to listening to intrusive thoughts.

Joey's view of reality was often confusing to others and he greatly enjoyed poking fun out of slowly getting them to his point of view. Conversations with Joey were thus quite frustrating to some, but no less curious to others that actually tried to understand what the “Illusion of Living” was about (Like Nathan). According to Joey, only a few people ever got close to understanding it.

    Joey enlisted to fight in the first war after he lied about his age (He was 15 years old, a year younger than the required age to enlist at the time). Out of all the positions in the army, he seemed most interested in comms, and considered himself more decent in communicating than actually fighting in the front lines.

It seems like Joey greatly enjoyed how he looked in uniform, and was also particularly finicky about his looks in general despite being in boot camp.

He made friends in the army, Private Donaldson and Private Eckhart, which Nathan (who worked at the tech lab that Joey later worked for) attests to being accurately described in the book. They were slightly older than Joey and were also interested in communication tech and shared his sense of humor. They also influenced Joey's social life, and tried to get him to date some gals that he wasn’t remotely interested in (the first indication that he may not be straight).

    Another close friend Joey had in the army was Lottie (a communications officer) and he used to "chaperone" her whenever the four went out to party. He seemed to have a considerable amount of respect for her (which is likely a result of growing up observing his mother, thus understanding that women were competent in positions where other men would scoff at the idea of them working at all). As such he was quite supportive of the War's “Hello Girls” (comms female officers). Interestingly enough this contradicts Joey's sexist persona that he seems to take on in Dream Come to Life (a mask that seems to be among many others he employs to fit in with the rest of society).

Lottie was his special gal pal in the platonic sense and, while he often ate alone to be left with his thoughts, she usually sought him out to talk to.

Joey only ever empathized with people he was close to, often reserving telling stories to comfort his friends specifically. It was the only way he could brighten their day (which later supposedly helped a disillusioned Lottie when she was sent to serve in London). What one could take away from Joey’s days as a soldier was that he was incredibly perceptive in terms of studying people. He easily recognized people’s handwriting, and was greatly fascinated by others’s personalities.

He could also easily charm people just from reading into what they might be interested in, and liked the thought of subliminally impressing others (which he later incorporated into his cartoons). It’s never mentioned, but Joey was likely honorably discharged since the war ended in 1918 and didn’t need to return to the service of the military when the second world war hit (keeping in mind Joey appears to have mobility issues later in life, he might have not been fit for field duty).

    At age 19 Joey ended up involved in investigating the murder case of Walter Richmond, a signal corps soldier Joey met briefly in his service days. The victim in question was responsible for documenting the war efforts, not being necessarily that great of a photographer, but taking a certain amount of pleasure in capturing the most viscerally gruesome pictures possible for shock value. How Joey got involved was a curious thing in of itself, since he didn’t know the victim all that well, nor cared to get to know him. Detective Adam Sinclair (a tall hulking man wearing the typical trenchcoat and fedora combo, who’s most noticeable features were his aged face and unshaven 5’o’clock shadow) tracked him down to his little minimalistic (and obsessively clean and tidy) apartment to question him. Joey was initially unsurprised that an ex-soldier ended up dead (not from the war, but likely ptsd), and was instead surprised that it was a murder case. He ended up inserting himself into the case as Sinclair’s shadow to help solve it. The reason was mostly out of self-interest, but his perspective did seem useful to the detective in the end. Throughout the investigation Joey displayed a few particular traits that indicate his attentive and peculiar nature, such as the way he reads others (their way of dressing and upkeep of posture), the manner of which he judges a good handshake, his distaste for smoking (which was taught to him via the idea that if something smells bad it’s usually bad for you) and drinking (he tries to be careful with alcohol intake in general, as he’s more accustomed to beer than drinks like champagne which one could over-indulge recklessly without noticing). Joey’s fascination for taboo subjects (war, violence, and death specifically) is also noted when he observes the victim’s photographic works.

This is a prevalent theme in an art gallery event where these particular subjects seemed to linger strongly in his mind, to the point where he noticed when one of the photos he recalls having seen before during his brief meeting with Richmond, appeared to be missing from the display. A detail that appeared to be dismissed by others, but of great interest to Sinclair.

    During this same gallery event, there was an incident set up by the murderer that involved a firecracker and a crowbar that set off a lot of panic. Joey’s work at the signal corps labs saved him from the brutality of the trenches, but he's apparently familiar with the effects of severe PTSD (And ironically notes that reliving the same painful event over and over again is his definition of true horror/personal hell).

It became very apparent to both Joey and Sinclair that the murderer was amongst them, and that this onslaught of panic was a message: That the murder of the frontline photographer was personal.

They did in fact come into contact with the perpetrator and, after a while of radio silence between Joey and Sinclair, the case was solved with...Minimal success. While Sinclair knew who killed Walter Richmond, he unfortunatelly did not have enough proof to convict her (the sister of a casualty of war that could have easily been saved, had Richmond not left him for dead because it fit his narrative of the war just fine), thus allowing her to get away with literal murder. Worse yet, the resolution of the case seemed to further disconnect Joey from reality and consequence. He gained a disdain for Adam Sinclair where once he’d respected him as an authority figure of sorts, finding that he’d accomplished his role and still failed miserably. In the end, the only thing to come out of teaming up with Sinclair was learning a social skill that Joey employed later on, by mirroring back certain aspects of a person so they’d be more comfortable around him. Otherwise the detective became nothing more than a distant memory. Unimportant in Joey’s later narrative.

    Two years later, Joey started working for a bookstore where he began satiating his vast hunger for knowledge, now that he had access to all sorts of books he could never afford as a child. Joey is fairly well read with an interest in various genres, although it was previously noted that during his army service people made fun of him for especially liking fictional novels. Joey being Joey however, wasn’t overly fussed about others’s opinions on what he sought enjoyment from, especially when it came to storytelling. Aside from getting his reading quota filled out, his bookstore job also helped him develop his salesperson skills through reading his customers. Through his experiences with his father’s shop and shadowing Sinclair, he had by now understood that people were highly superficial, and that he could apply whatever knowledge he gathered from them into how he sold his pitch to them. His charisma seemed to lure in customers.

    While working at the store he met Abby Lambert who he immediately noticed had an eye for art. Joey quickly became friends with her and seemed to greatly appreciate her no-nonsense attitude towards life in general, going so far as to respect her capabilities as a working lady where other men would be disdained with her difficult attitude. In fact, he wondered why anyone wouldn’t hire her to do a job she could clearly handle, just because she was a woman (again contradicting his sexist persona). As a connoisseur of the arts, Abby was the one to fully introduce Joey to her favourite craft. He especially took an interest in Impressionism and its influences.

Abby also supposedly introduced Henry to Joey, which the latter insists wasn’t really that remarkable of an event since Henry was “unimaginative” and “lacking in talent” due to his specialty in cartoon caricatures, and not the richer awe inspiring paintings Joey seemed to prefer (basically Joey spends any given time in the book trying to make Henry seem as insignificant as possible out of pure unadulterated pettiness, which physically pains me).

Ironically, in terms of entertainment, Joey later favoured cartoons as the more appealing form of films since most other mediums didn’t really spark his interest, even if the genres were ones he found fascinating (I suppose that despite films being works of fiction most times, Joey likely thought real life actors were far too limited in their acts due to the natural limitations of the human body).

Returning to Abby, her friendship seemed to be more impactful to Joey than most others. Like with how he preferred his mother’s company to his father’s, Abby seemed to be one of few people he actually felt comfortable around, to the point where her criticism didn’t bother him. She was also mindful of him, where she could recognize Joey’s “preferences” and made it a point to clarify to him that their outings were purely platonic so he wouldn’t get uncomfortable in those situations.

    Three years after meeting Abby and Henry, Joey became a manager at the bookstore and Henry began working there as well (by Joey’s suggestion it seems), and only then did they sort of start developing a meek little friendship of sorts (although Joey seems very dismissive about it and focuses primarily on Abby).

During that time, the idea to start his own business came about from two different events that happened that year. The first being his first ever theatrical script that he wrote and performed with Abby at a gallery event. During the performance of this little play (the theme of which was an angel and a demon discussing their role in influencing a mortal’s life), Joey discovered that he greatly enjoyed controlling situations and got way too into it (even considers what he could get away with in the name of entertainment, such as if he could act out actual violent or scandalous behaviours if he proclaimed it a part of the show).

The second event was his father sending him shoes once a year (which, because Joey disliked the make of his father’s shoes, he tried to get him to stop by pretending they weren’t arriving at his address or that they were getting stolen). As a means to ensure he got them, Joey's father started sending the packages to the bookstore. A doodle and writing on the package ended up inspiring Joey to create his own studio as he wanted to take flight in the entertainment industry.

    Having thus decided that he wanted to open up a film studio of some kind, Joey immediately set off to get himself a memorable mascot. He had a vague idea of what he needed and what might be appealing to an audience, but he wasn’t particularly skilled in character design and openly admitted to this. Abby, who was also not particularly good at drawing cartoons, understood that her more realistic style wouldn’t really help (or appeal to) Joey, so she enlisted Henry’s help. Knowing that Joey was a bit picky in regards to how he evaluated art, she thought perhaps she could persuade him to take a liking to Henry’s works (which he wasn’t particularly fond of, due to Henry mostly working with pen-drawings of cartoon characters and caricatures that looked very unremarkable to him) if he could only see him actually work his “magic”. Joey was reluctant to bring Henry into his business plan, but upon actually reaching a design within a few minutes (that took a few tries experimenting with animal and human features in more detailed and then simplified ways) of Joey giving some directions, he seemed to be sold on bringing Henry on board.

Henry designing the company mascot was thus the final push to open up Joey Drew Studios.

The two began their partnership not too long after, and from then on out things got interesting very quickly.

    The history behind the studio is...Not an easy one to validate in terms of whether or not Joey is sincere or even really knows certain dates (the more I look into the beginning of the book and the later exposition of information, the more I realized either Joey was starting to trip himself up on dates or his memory was visibly failing him). There are a lot of discrepancies in the dates provided, with some going back on how long Henry remained in the studio (even claiming to have at some point surrounded him with other animators and even a lead artist a year prior to his departure), when Sammy and Jack were hired (He says he hired Sammy in 1929 during the Wallstreet Crash, but later says he hired both him and Jack after the Wallstreet Crash), among other things... Joey Drew Studios was primarily funded by Mrs. Richmond (the mother of Walter Richmond), as Joey had forged friendships with the people involved in the case he’d helped Sinclair investigate (including the murderer whom he had grown to respect).

While other investors aren’t really brought up, it’s implied Nathan also had a hand in helping the studio taking off, as Joey often met up with him at the Russian Tearoom whenever he could. During these private meetings, Nathan would impart advice on Joey. Advice which he seemed to not care for, as he already had his own concerns at the time.

It seemed that his main plan was to acquire a talented and capable team to achieve his dream. A team Joey thought he wouldn’t need to "baby-sit", as he specifically wanted to hire individuals that were as studious and capable as he saw himself (curiously Joey mentions that Henry’s work ethic was exactly what he wanted, as Henry had never held work back or needed to be checked up on, which to Joey was an invaluable attribute).

For at least two years, the Bendy Cartoons were nothing but silence and sound effects (something we actually see in-game in BatIM Chapter One when the projector suddenly turns on and we hear nothing but the clicking of the projector and Joey’s whistling), which put them at a bit of a disadvantage when it came to competing with other animation studios.

This soon changed when Joey came across Sammy Lawrence and Jack Fain at a party he was attending on his 30th birthday (which he wasn’t celebrating, the party was a completely different event so supposedly Joey doesn’t care much for his own birthday).

He was already familiar with Sammy’s musical skills (mostly playing the piano quite masterfully), as he’d seen him perform at the theater when Sammy was still a teenager. Noticing him and Jack at the party was entirely accidental and was mostly due to the fact that, while Sammy was trying to keep out of the spotlight as he played, Jack’s showmanship shone through and caught Joey’s eye with how boisterous he was in their musical performance.

Joey approached them once their act was done and managed to convince them to work for him. Jack seemed to be immediately on board, while Sammy was a little more guarded in his agreement and immediately set up his stipulations for the job. This seemed to lean Joey’s interest towards Sammy (who Joey was unhealthily fascinated with because he was clearly not an easy man to control) more than Jack (who he likely considered too easy a read in terms of character, thus not much of a challenge to sway or condition).

     By 1933 Joey officially bought the entire building the studio was set up in (which up until then was occupied by other people seeking their own ventures). Expansion and new hires likely started a year or so later and continued on despite financial instability, and between 1941 and 1942 Joey was already starting to work out how he’d get Bendyland to be just as perfect and spectacular as he had always envisioned (which was difficult because he never really got it to feel just right in his eyes, and something felt off to him).

In between listing several different projects, vaguely describing an innovative techniques (Sillyvision which seems to be linked with the Golden Ink?), and even setting up his own 7 rules on how to animate to help set up a guide for aspiring animators, Joey slowly drifts away from the studio topic and finalizes his book rather abruptly.

He insinuates there’s a lot more for him to tell but little to no connection with the “Illusion of Living” philosophy and he’d rather focus on his actual physical work with the Studio than sit down and write further, so he finishes off on a rather...Vague note.

--{On Joey Drew}--

Year of Birth - 1901 (Day and month are never mentioned, but it's possible that his favouring of the autumnal season alludes to a fall month) Year of Death - ??? (Supposedly he's died, hence why Nathan claimed the Bendy IP) Birth City: Born and raised in Paterson "Silk City", New Jersey (Joey doesn't seem to have an accent, so he likely masks it, or made an effort to lose it). Physical Characteristics: As a child he used to have curly hair (Considering the era’s general fashion and style, it’s very likely that Joey either cut his hair too short to see the curls, or simply uses too much gel to seem more presentable) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Homosexual with Demiromantic subtones (Joey seems to be closed off in general, but more appreciative of the male figure. Could be interpreted as demisexual however, since Joey himself doesn't seem to like wasting time around people he doesn't have much of a bond with) Notes: Here are several notes I’ve compiled about Joey and his opinions on certain things and people. There’s a lot to look at as this man rambles like an old lady at a friday night bingo event, and thus I had a lot to take in!

Laughter is important to him.

Seems to be a dog person.

Likes Cheerios (yes this was a super necessary detail I had to jot down).

Considers having his ideas disclosed without permission to be disloyal.

Seems to have some sort of dissociative personality disorder (likely brought on by trauma or another undiagnosed mental disorder).

People-Watcher by nature.

Was taught by his father that the shoe makes the man (aka the art of studying people through their shoes).

Joey believes in the saying "The Truth is in the Pudding", a saying his mother often employed.

Never had enough money to own a pair of nice fitting shoes until he was 26.

Is narcissistically vain. Easily takes insult if people assume he can't look presentable.

His service in the army gave him experience with "experimental tech".

Enjoys music a lot, and he was considered a great dancer.

Finds modern feminine fashion standards appealing.

Disliked the way those with money romanticized lacking material gains. Found it personally disrespectful in a way, since he himself came from a poor family.

Seems appalled by too much color on one's wear (Joey is the goddamn fashion police).

Very picky about the arts.

Apparently disliked Henry's art style(???).

Lets people believe Henry is the creator of the toons, in an act of being holier than thou. (You lying son of a gun, stop lying to everyone and yourself whaddahell).

Joey's analogy of Henry starting a journey but Joey being the one to reap the benefits, is likely the truest thing he's said in this nightmare of a novel (boastful bastard...).

Thinks of Bendy as his firstborn, muse and messenger.

Took an art class with Abby (likely not a full art course, just a simple class to get the gist of it?).

Considers art the doorway to immortality.

Doesn't like post-mortem success (it frightens him, even). He'd rather be successful in his lifetime.

Admits to making mistakes, but not many. He also thinks mistakes don't need to be permanent.

Doesn't know what true rest is like, and is unsure if he'll ever be content enough to rest. On that same note he seems to really hate sitting still and his mind tends to wander, which he notes Nathan recognized with ease, even reserving a specific look for him (It’s the ADHD baby).

His friend Kyle was a lazy person and a gossip, which were traits Joey found annoying.

On their first meeting, Joey described having a desire to shove Sammy off a roof to see a more human reaction from him.

Assumes Jack is jealous of the attention he gives Sammy, or that the duo's relationship is strained, despite him barging into their lives out of the blue and making him feel like a third wheel.

Seems to think of himself as some sort of a messenger (going so far as to akin himself to the god, Mercury). His life’s mission is to help those who don't know they need to be helped (mostly through spreading happiness and laughter in such a dark and dreary era of human history). Bendyland is essentially Joey's means to fulfil this desire, as well as to chase his own need for a properly realized mixture of immersion and illusion.

He wanted Bendyland to be perfect, even the plot of land it might be built in needed to be perfect, so he inspected it himself with Nathan once he bought the deed.

Appears to refuse to call Bertrum by his proper name once he’s corrected the first time. Referring to him instead as either Bertie or Bert (toying with him perhaps? Testing boundaries?)

Doesn't drive. He instead hired a personal driver, Simmons.

For a little while he was living the American Dream, but thought of how he lived as less of a shared goal and more of a personal one (again setting himself apart from others).

His days were quite flexible and he seemed to despise set routines. He also doesn't like sleeping in. He liked to take a walk in central park early in the morning.

Joey used to make his rounds around the studio but the installation of the Ink Machine changed that habit a bit.

Nonchalantly notes that Shawn Flynn got a little defensive if he needed to be corrected on his work (OCD much, Joey? He was painting a lot of dolls by hand, slipups happen...).

He had priority meetings with Sammy, "meetings" with Jack (Sir what are these quotation marks for, are you snogging Jack while no one’s watching???), then met with the art department preceding the writing department, and finally he met with Grant Cohen in accounting to discuss finances and budget.

He had the final say in ALL paperwork regarding studio affairs.

Upon reading about it, found the concept of bringing in real animals to produce Disney's Bambi as funny, and joked about how trying to do so with Bendy and Boris would be chaotic.

Noted that Abby and Sammy were likely the only two people who closely understand the philosophy of the illusion of living, but not quite…

Was terrified of being misunderstood. Joey didn’t want to only be able to show half-truths, like a mirror reflecting the world darkly. Rather ironic considering he was quite deceitful in his adult life.

His desire for the world to love Bendy seems to be a projection of wanting to feel loved himself (quite honestly if one were to apply the theory of the id, ego and superego, it seems to me that Bendy is essentially Joey’s id, while Joey himself could be considered the Superego. The chameleonic social mask he wears is thus the ego. At the end of the day Bendy and Joey are and aren’t the same entity...).

Originally he didn't want to make a memoir (likely because he can't be direct and needs to work around the truth to fit him). It could also be that Joey didn’t want to linger on the past nor in death. He wasn't sure where it fit with his philosophy and thus tried not to explore too deep into it (existential dread?).

He wore custom tailored suits, and as of beginning writing TioL he had recently taken to wearing cravats (ever the vain man I suppose…).

Despite considering revisiting the past unnecessary, he couldn’t deny doing so if the time called for it. In fact, the Archives are Joey's memories of the past and he's sentimental enough to collect mementos of bygone eras.

Joey has trophies at home, the deeply personal things he couldn’t bare part with. Like the first sketch of Bendy, a napkin with the design of Bendyland, a letter from Henry, a ticket from a Vaudeville show, and his set of shoes he wore when he was surveying the plot of land where he planned to build Bendyland.

--{On Bendy}--

Notes: Here are a few notes I’ve compiled about the Little Devil Darling himself, and a few curiosities about his creation and the inspiration behind his character.

Bendy was officially created in 1928. According to Joey he was born of a dream, supposedly out of necessity, and he always had this idea of a little devil character doing mischief.

Bendy started off as a realistic little boy with a tail and horns (Abby’s attempt to bring to life Joey’s vague idea). Then, when Henry got involved, he became a cartoonish goat creature. The concepts were quickly worked out from a toony clothed amalgamation of both previous concepts, to a more intermediate design more closely resembling Bendy, and then finally, after Joey requested a simpler more shapely and less detailed toon, Bendy became the iconic  little imp clad in only gloves and bowtie.

Joey named him upon seeing the completed design. There are two origins for his name: That of Walter Benjamin Richmond, who’s nickname in life was “Bendy” (a rather morbid homage considering what happened to him), and the mere fact that in Joey’s eyes, his little cartoon imp “bent all the rules”. Henry seemed to appreciate the name.

Bendy is meant to be the devil on one’s shoulders, much like the devil in Joey’s first theatrical play. He is however, a lot more like a little kid playing pranks on people. He is also a sort of embodiment of both the population and human morality (society at its most flawed point, but also quite relatable).

Buster Keaton was an inspiration for Bendy’s many shenanigans and movements, which were always meant to be fluid and a bit bouncy.

--{On Henry Stein}--

Year of Birth - ??? (It’s never mentioned how old Henry is, but I assume he’s around the same age group as Abby, since they were friends and likely went to the same art course. It’s likely that he’s younger than Joey, but not likely by much.) Year of Death - 1963 (It’s not really confirmed if Henry died when he was put into the Cycle, as he doesn’t seem to notice anything odd about himself, but it’s safe to assume the process very likely involves human sacrifice). Birth City: ??? (Unknown, it could be that he was born and raised in New York but Henry lacks a noticeable accent) Physical Characteristics: Average looking? (Irrelevant, he could honestly look like anyone really...) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Presumably Heterosexual (He’s a married man in the 1930s-1960s, he’s either straight or hiding his sexuality, he seems to really like Linda however so could go either way really...) Notes: Here the few notes I could gather of the Henry info we got from TioL. It’s not much but its at least something to work with!

Henry is unremarkable appearance wise (to the point Joey forgot his face easily at first).

The way Henry dressed (mismatched and ill-fitted) indicates he likely grew up in poverty and likely only had hand-me-downs.

He mostly worked with pen-drawn cartoon character designs that were unremarkable but distinctly caricature-like (the Butcher Gang concepts were likely displayed in the gallery Joey attended, as noted by a comment he makes about them). Even if Joey apparently didn’t particularly like his style, Henry’s artwork was one of the final inspirations for the creation of Joey Drew Studios.

He is described as able to draw quite fast, great at taking directions, and as being a good animator. Overall Henry never really had any real need for someone to keep an eye on him which made him an exemplary worker.

According to Joey, Henry used to give pep-talks before he left the studio. This seemed to annoy Joey considerably for some reason (perhaps he was envious that Henry was generally a more likeable person).

Henry is remembered as forgettable, whereas Joey is flashier and more memorable.

Interestingly enough, Henry never claimed to own the design of Bendy, and was more interested in being business partners with Joey than starting a fuss about who owned the rights to Bendy’s creation (It’s very likely that he willingly gave Joey the design because Bendy was his character, and that instead the designs Joey did steal were that of Boris the Wolf, Alice Angel, and the Butcher Gang, the five other more notorious characters in the Bendy franchise).

--{On Abby Lambert}--

Year of Birth - ??? (It’s never mentioned how old Abby is, but I assume she’s around the same age group as Henry, since they were friends and likely went to the same art course. It’s likely that she’s younger than Joey, but not likely by much.) Year of Death - Possibly 1946 (Upon finally losing himself to the ink, Sammy seemed to have been actively hunting the Art Department and any stragglers that he encountered in the studio, so it can be assumed she died in the chaos) Birth City: ??? (Unknown but more likely to be born and raised in New York than Henry) Physical Characteristics: Frizzy hair, even when bobbed. Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Potentially Bisexual (She seemed to be acutely aware of Joey’s “peculiarities” so it’s possible she’s either a member of the LGBTQ community or perhaps an ally. Whatever the case it’s up for debate and interpretation.) Notes: Here are several notes I’ve compiled about Abby and some of her traits and mannerisms. There was surprisingly a lot more to work with than I expected.

She wasn’t really into the typical female fashion of the time. In fact, Abby wasn’t exactly fond of the typical mannerisms associated with women and was both notoriously rude and dressed herself in a “scandalously” modern manner (which is basically code for more practical less femenine clothing).

According to Joey, Abby is a very focused and determined person, which is why he admired her greatly. She didn’t know when to quit, however, and sometimes took things too far or involved others in situations or projects they didn’t want to be involved in.

She wasn’t very good at drawing original cartoon characters, and Joey was apparently not overly fond of her attempts at putting his ideas to paper due to her more realistic art style.

Abby was very insistent on Joey looking at Henry's works, even if he wasn't particularly interested in them (While it’s never said if she enjoys his art herself, it can be assumed she appreciates it enough that she’d want their mutual friend to see the potential Henry had).

She didn’t join the studio as the replacement Director of the Art Department until 1931, as during its founding she was still finishing art school. She and Henry never worked together. Despite this, she and Henry remained in touch even after he left for Pasadena.

--{On Sammy Lawrence}--

Year of Birth - ??? (From how Joey describes him, it can be assume Sammy was a teenager around either Joey’s early or late 20s before they officially met on Joey’s 30th birthday) Year of Death - 1946? (Sammy is one of few people who was turned without being killed first so it’s hard to tell if he’s really dead even within the Cycle since it’s a time loop...) Birth City: ??? (Sammy lacks a noticeable accent so it’s hard to tell where he’s from). Physical Characteristics: Has been described as bird-like and insect-like, with either brown or blond hair that’s kept longer than the typical fashion of the time (Not much more is known about his actual appearance but it can be assumed he’s either average sized or on the tall side considering his in-game height and build) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Potentially Biromantic with a lot of Demiromantic subtones. Possibly Asexual? (Again this is pure speculation on my part because he did seem interested in Susie but isn’t really a people person in general. Does seem to know how to reign in people tho, so ???) Notes: Here are a few curious notes I’ve compiled about Sammy, the circumstances behind his hiring, and how much control he actually had as the music director.

He has an unusual appearance that, while not necessarily described as ugly, was clearly outstanding enough that some people were put off (Buddy) and others thought him handsome (Susie). His hair is also described as messy.

Sammy is an avid smoker.

He was among a few other musicians employed by the theater to drown out projector sounds and match the mood in silent films. Because he was good at improvising music on the spot, Sammy was excellent at carrying the story presented on screen through his melodies, which was what caught Joey’s eye when he first saw Sammy perform.

Sammy also recognized Joey and didn’t believe his dismissal that he was a “town person”. In fact, Sammy pinpointed the recognition to the fact Joey was that one loner that sat in the front row of the theater he played at.

It becomes very apparent that Sammy is suspicious of people in general. The way he observes others indicates he’s had some sort of struggle growing up. As such, he’s not big on sustaining conversations and he managed to aggravate Joey slightly by the way he addressed him on their first proper meeting.

Sammy had a songbook he shared with Jack, meaning they had a strong trust bond, which is why he only agrees to work for Joey based on Jack’s willingness to also be hired. Even so, he immediately set up professional boundaries for his position. He hired his own people without Joey’s interference, and he only ever indulged him if Joey was being particularly exasperating.

It’s very likely that since Sammy was the one hiring who worked for the music department, that he was the one who hired Norman Polk. This theory is made stronger by the fact he immediately demanded a projector and projectionist booth so he could better do his job.

Despite his surly disposition, Sammy is a no nonsense sort who wants things done and over with, rather than sit around and stall. As such Joey considered him one of the best decisions he made in terms of career.

Funnily enough, because the band seemed to be skittish around Joey, Sammy specifically prohibited his presence in the music department unless they had a scheduled meeting. This likely meant Joey was scarcely ever seen in the music department so as to not aggravate Sammy in person.

Alice Angel’s bigger (and failed) presence in the franchise is likely a consequence of another one of Sammy’s stipulations upon being hired. He had immediately noted that if the studio wanted to go anywhere, they’d need a female character (Perhaps Sammy really believed what he told Susie due to despising Bendy and actually favouring Alice as a character).

--{On Jack Fain}--

Year of Birth - ??? (Possibly around the same age as Sammy or a little older?) Year of Death - ??? (He was gone long before a few other people in the studio, likely in the first few experiments Joey performed) Birth City: ??? (Hard to tell, he doesn’t have an easily identifiable accent). Physical Characteristics: Has been described as an atrocious dresser (This man likes wearing bright colors!) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Potentially Homosexual subtones (Not enough information provided to tell) Notes: Sadly lacking in the information department for Jack.

Jack is incredibly sociable and trusts easily. He's described as making bad jokes but laughing genuinely at them. His smiles are contagious.

Jack is an optimist sort who sees the good in any situation (even when being led around in a dark creepy room by a peculiar stranger).

--{On Bertrum Piedmont}--

Year of Birth - ??? (He was retired, so it’s likely he was around his 60s or early 70s when Joey first met him) Year of Death - ??? (It’s unknown when exactly he ended up in the Ink Machine but it’s very possible he was killed when all hell broke loose in the studio) Birth City: ??? (No clue). Physical Characteristics: Joey describes him (rather rudely) as a very portly man. Sexual/Romantic Preferences: ??? (No idea, chief...) Notes: Lacking in the information department like Jack, but what we get is a lot more substantial.

Bertrum was actually retired when Joey managed to get a hold of him. It took a bit of detective work on Mrs. Rodriguez's (Joey's secretary) part to actually find him as well, so he was not an easy man to get an appointment with.

His creative vision impressed Joey enough that the latter he ignored his apparent dislike for reminiscing so as to get him on board of the Bendyland project.

While discussing the Bendyland Project, Bertrum confidently jokes about it being quite the catch. He agrees to joining forces with Joey as long as he gets full creative control of the entire project. Although Joey agreed to this, he still managed to fight Bertrum on a few ideas, which annoyed him greatly.

It’s very likely that it didn’t take long for their initially friendly relationship to sour into open hostility on Bertrum’s part.

--{On Wally Franks}--

Year of Birth - ??? (No clue, but he was very likely in his late teens or early adult years when he was first hired as the studio Janitor) Year of Death - Supposedly still alive (I really do hope he got outta there like the letter insinuates...) Birth City: Brooklyn, New York. Physical Characteristics: ??? (All we know is he likely wears overalls and a sport’s cap) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Possibly Heterosexual (Unless the letter is a forgery, he apparently has a wife, kids and grandkids) Notes: I’ll admit I didn’t expect to get Wally lore, but here we are!

Wally's actually quite skilled with maintenance. He can tinker with the projectors, other machinery and even plumbing. His schedule is a little off however, but Joey turns a blind eye to it because he gets the job done without question.

--{On Allison Pendle}--

Year of Birth - ??? (No idea! But she was relatively well known when she was hired!) Year of Death - ??? (She was likely lured back to the studio after everything went down but before Henry) Birth City: ??? Physical Characteristics: She’s a beautiful tall blonde according to DCTL Sexual/Romantic Preferences: ??? (She and Thomas are married but I honestly have no clue how to feel about her, she’s a mystery to me.) Notes: Extra minimal Allison lore for your Allison Pendle lore needs.

She was a famous Broadway actress before joining the studio. Interestingly enough, Joey was the one to hire her to replace Susie, not only breaking Sammy’s stipulation on the matter but also stirring Susie into becoming resentful towards Sammy and actually trying to recover her former role at all costs (even her own life).

--{On Nathan Arch}--

Year of Birth - ??? (He was likely a little older than Joey since they were in the army at the same time but Joey lied about his age to enlist earlier) Year of Death - N/A (Still alive and kicking) Birth City: ??? Physical Characteristics: ??? (I guess Boswell Lotsabucks is sorta modeled after him so go off on that???) Sexual/Romantic Preferences: Heterosexual (He has a wife and son and doesn’t give me any other vibes besides and overall instinctual distrust) Notes: Oh boy...I do NOT trust this man...

Immediately upon beginning reading TioL you get the impression that Nathan is not only trying to appear friendly and trustworthy by referring to himself as Nate A, but also that he’s trying to cover for Joey and make him appear more personable to the reader. But to what gain exactly?

Nathan is, like Joey, very narcissistically vain, and is also writing a book of his own (an autobiography maybe?)

He’s a smoker and prefers cigars.

When Joey discusses his childhood, Nathan is unable to contradict or confirm anything as he noted that Joey was always very private about his origins.

Nathan seemed truly surprised and impressed with Joey’s ability to make up uncannily believable stories, even suspecting that his accounts of “Lottie” might have been false as he couldn’t find any of the supposed letters Joey sent her when he started working on republishing TioL (it’s likely he could see that Joey often lied to himself just as much as he lied to others).

It seemed to Nathan that Joey was rather oblivious of subtle compliments.

By the manner of which Nathan phrases it, he seems to think of Joey as a professional and kind man, capable of seeing the good in others. That said, Nathan remarks that Henry's departure was a great betrayal for his friend, and that the latter shouldn't have been so "gracious" and "forgiving" towards him…

When the studio began to struggle financially, Nathan worried that Joey might not be aware of the issue at all, or that perhaps he was lying to himself to cope. He also later notes that Joey’s memories seemed to have deteriorated in his old age. He was often mixing up information and seemed rather guilty, which Nathan considering to be very unbecoming of the man he knew Joey to be.

A lot of the deeply philosophical Joey and Nathan interactions seen in the book might actually have occured between Joey and Henry (the "I think therefore I am" conversation is an especially telling one for me), hence why Nathan doesn't recall them. It also seems more likely because they contradict the way Joey portrays Nathan, but seem to fit his portrayal of Henry better.

#Bendy and the Ink Machine #BATIM #The Illusion of Living #TIoL #Notes #Reference

[foilfreak]

Headcannons for my favorite One Punch Man rarepair: Golden Ball x Spring Mustachio

Both joined the Hero Association around the same time and knew of each other in passing, due to living in the same city, but didn’t officially meet until about 8 months in, and as a result of that, these two did NOT like each other at all during those first 8 months. Spring Mustachio thought Golden Ball was just another crass and reckless delinquent using heroism as a legal outlet for violence, and Golden Ball thought Spring Mustachio was an entitled rich boy who was probably paying his way up the hero ranks. When the two heroes were finally forced to formally introduce themselves to one another at the first annual Hero Association banquet, or some other equivalently pointless publicity stunt the Associacion probably put on at some point or another, they were shocked to find just how wrong their initial judgments of one another actually were.

Despite Golden Ball’s appearance, what with the bleach-blonde hair, slightly baggy clothes, tall, muscular frame, and the lollipops that Spring Mustachio correctly guesses are a substitute for cigarettes, Golden Ball is actually incredibly intelligent, having earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering (this particular headcanon is inspired by @batneko) from a highly prestigious university (currently considering going back for his PhD if he can save up the money), and all of his signature weapons are his own personal inventions. Likewise, Spring Mustachio, despite having the appearance and persona of someone who grew up having everything handed to him on a silver platter, had long ago rejected the escalator to success his parents had offered him in the form of taking over as head of their family business, in favor of going out on his own to explore the world and everything it had to offer, mastering the art of swordsmanship and opening his own restaurant (where even after hiring a decent sized staff, he still took up menial tasks such as washing dishes and serving guests) along the way.

After getting to know each other at that first meeting, the two heroes became surprisingly fast friends, their personalities mixing rather well together on top of having many shared interested, and even began hanging out outside of their hero duties, where they already spent a considerable amount of time together considering how frequently the Association paired them together for missions. Most of their time outside of work was spent at Spring Mustachio’s restaurant, engaging in casual, slightly teasing conversation over onion rings and a couple rounds of beer after a long day of hero work. Later on into their friendship however, it became much more common for Golden Ball to also come into the restaurant during the day to bother the older man during his shift, not that Spring Mustachio minded the company one bit, especially if it meant having a couple of extra hands available to dry the dishes he’d just washed. It eventually got to the point where it was pretty much common knowledge throughout the city that if Golden Ball wasn’t out on a patrol or sent away on a mission for the Association, the first place you ought to check if you’re looking for him would be Spring Mustachio’s. Likewise if it’s Spring Mustachio you’re looking for and the restaurant is a no-go, try your hand at getting ahold of Golden Ball, cuz wherever he is, chances are that Spring Mustachio is standing right next to him. Its a wonder how the whole city doesn’t start assuming the two are dating when they begin referring to each other as ‘Gold’ and ‘Spring’, during hero work, and exclusively by their first names when off the clock.

The two heroes remain nothing more than close friends for full year after their first meeting, and while both had developed more-than-friendly feelings for one another over that time, neither were planning on doing anything about it, not wanting unrequited feelings to potentially ruin the incredible friendship they’d formed, among the other internal struggles that come with accepting that you’re attracted to other men in a society that, although no longer criminalizes homosexuality, definitely still doesn’t view it in a positive light by any means. Spring Mustachio has been in the closet his whole life and plans to keep it that way to avoid the potential social backlash. Golden Ball on the other hand didn’t realize he was bisexual until grad school and has since only managed to work up the courage to come out to his (thankfully incredibly supportive) family and closest childhood friends. Needless to say neither of them were in the headspace to even think about confessing, especially when they had so much to lose should it not go well, and both heroes were content to simply let their feelings die out over time if it meant that their friendship would remain intact.

Things change however, when Golden Ball’s place gets totally trashed in a monster attack, and the younger man finds himself staying with Spring Mustachio at his house until it can be repaired. Now not only do both men have to deal with their budding feelings for one another, but they also have to deal with their budding feelings for one another while also figuring out how to coexist in the same space, made even more interesting by the fact that Golden Ball has two pitbulls, Gizmo and Tonka, and Spring Mustachio isn’t the biggest fan of dogs (spoiler: Spring Mustachio falls in love with the sweet little puppers and spoils them absolutely rotten, much to Golden Ball’s amusement). Over the couple of months it takes for Golden Ball’s apartment to be fixed the men learn several things about each other that never would have come to light in any other context, including, but not limited to: Spring Mustachio’s extensive collection of alcohol bottles from all the drink’s he’s tried over the years (and of course all the stories that come with those bottles), Golden Ball’s horrific nicotine addiction being the result of an undiagnosed anxiety disorder that got BAD toward the end of undergrad and was forced to come to an end when he had a heart attack at 25, the tumultuous relationship Spring Mustachio has had with his family (specifically his parents) since breaking away from the plan they had created for him, the fact that Golden Ball is easily the biggest nerd that Spring Mustachio has ever met (and probably the smartest too), the brief run Spring Mustachio had as a competitive fencer in his early 30s that Golden Ball thinks he should get back into, the adorable way Golden Ball talks to his dogs when he thinks no one is listening, and so much more.

These things of course only cause their feelings to worsen and the situation just continues to spiral out of control from there. Im torn over whether I want them to actually get together in like a nice, mature way, like they ultimately end up talking abou their feelings to just get them off their chests, you know like adults, or if i want them to confess after getting into a huge fight, like maybe one of them got really hurt and some things they didnt actually mean were said and so they didn’t talk for a bit but then they end up tracking each other down and confessing after the tension finally snaps or something like that. I’ll leave that up for you all to decide but what i will say is that they get together just as Golden Ball’s apartment is finished being rebuilt, but with his lease being up at the end of the month and having already settled rather comfortably at Spring Mustachio’s place, he decides not to renew the lease and just stay where he is, much to Spring Mustachio’s delight.

As for their families, Spring Mustachio tells only his older sister and younger brother, who are confused, but ultimately supportive and happy that their brother found someone he truly loved and wanted to be with. His parents end up finding out somehow and while they aren’t exactly thrilled about it when they first learn that their eldest son is dating another man nearly 20 years his junior, they are, to their credit, polite and avoid making any inappropriate comments on the rare occasions he and Golden Ball do agree to visit the estate for dinner. Golden Ball initially only tells his parents, but things rarely stay secret for very long in his family, and not even a week goes by before his grandparents are calling asking if he’ll be bringing his new boyfriend to the cookout at the end of the month. Spring Mustachio has a fantastic time meeting the plethora of grandparents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and close family friends that make up Golden Ball’s wonderfully lively family, though he does end up getting thrown into the pool by Golden Ball’s older brothers at some point, as is custom treatment for “new members” of the family. He doesn’t seem to mind all that much, especially when Golden Ball’s mother finally breaks out the baby pictures and he gets to coo over how adorably plump his boyfriend was as an infant, much to said boyfriend’s growing embarrassment.

For professionalism’s sake they decide to keep the relationship on the dl and though the two are rarely seen apart, they save the more intimate moments and actions for behind closed doors. No need to give the press an excuse to start shit.

Let me know what you think of my headcanons and what your headcanons are for this rarepair if you have any!!!

#one punch man #opm #golden ball opm #golden ball one punch man #golden ball #spring mustachio opm #spring mustachio one punch man #spring mustachio #mine #headcanons #golden ball x spring mustachio #golden mustache #ship

[spursnroses]

So I’m still trying to process what happened last night. I need to write it out because I have no one nor place for it. First, I am going to warn you that this post will contain triggers such as mental illness, suicidal ideations/suicide that involves a family member, violent threats/verbal abuse, sexual abuse, alcohol abuse, and family death. Please do not read if you cannot handle such heavy content.

Last night my mother ended up drinking quite a bit, and we got into a fight.

She threw a temper tantrum for a very stupid reason - her phone died and her only phone charger was too short because over a couple of weeks ago my cat chewed up her other one which she left out despite knowing about his chewing habits by the way. She ranted about wanting to kill my cat/wishing he would die. She then threatened to take my phone and break it, so she made several attempts to grab it from me, but I refused. It turned into a wrestling match - I tried shoving her off me.

Of course, I grew upset. I kept telling her to stop or that she was making me angry. She wouldn’t listen. She deliberately kept me from going into my room so I could remove myself from the situation. I finally gave up and pushed my phone into her chest: “You want my phone so damn bad. Here you go.” I walked past her into the bathroom to wash off the blood from the scratch she gave me in the process.  This made her angrier and shoved my phone back into my jacket’s pocket violently and tried to rip my jacket. She started to mock me for being hurt. She deflected by making claims that she was just playing around and that I always treat her she was such a horrible person and mother. That she’s an abuser. That I should go live with my “father” who never had anything to do with me in my entire life.

I tried to defuse the situation once again by trying to console her because I already felt tired by this point. I brought her a cup of water then she went to bed hoping she’ll just sleep it off. I was wrong.

She came back out and rummaged through the kitchen’s drawers. I pleaded with my mother from killing herself for however many times. She first cut her arm and her leg. She stood there in the kitchen with a knife to her throat. Eventually, I was able to calm her down. When she returned to her room, I immediately hid all the objects she could hurt herself with and she finally went to sleep.  For many years, ever since I was a child, I lived with a severely mentally ill and single parent. My youngest memory of her mental illness remains fresh in my mind - I would be six years old and get up in the mornings to make breakfast and wandered outside alone while she still slept in bed almost all day. I found myself terrified by her violent outbursts or meltdowns - I would lie through my teeth to avoid her anger - sometimes I still am terrified. She depended on me a lot for emotional support despite being a child; wanting to be the best daughter, of course, I did whatever I could to make her happy. People would constantly compliment me on how mature I was for a young girl.  I used to be highly sensitive during my early childhood - I would cry at the simplest “no” - but I think it had a lot to do with emotional neglect. As I grew older, I detached myself from emotions. Today I still struggle with expressing how I feel.

I carry a lot of trauma from life - my mother, though most of it is unintentional, emotionally manipulated and abused me for who knows how long and her past boyfriend who sexually abused me when I was five and six years old. Growing up deaf came with no easy tasks too. I already knew I was different from other kids when I walked on the playground with no friends. I experienced constant fatigue and anxiety.

Recently, I lost both of my grandparents who helped to raise me; they were my biggest support system. In 2015, my grandma unexpectedly grew ill and passed away on my birthday. My grandpa had early-onset dementia, and it was awful and stressful. He eventually succumbed to his bodily ailments in 2019. I watched and said my final goodbyes to both of them on their deathbeds. That’s when the drinking escalated especially since my grandma died. Alcoholism runs deep in my family. My grandpa, unfortunately, drank, his brother and sister also drank to themselves to death, and now my mother and aunt drink heavily.

When my mother drinks, she binges to the point she rages or blackouts. She has called in sick to work multiple times before because she’s so hungover. 50/50 of the time when she’s drunk, she’ll start picking fights with me. On a few occasions, it has become physical such as blocking my path or cornering me but most of the time it evolves into name-calling, berating, and guilt-tripping. She often breaks things when she goes into a white-hot rage. There are dents on the walls of the bathroom. A few weeks ago, she shattered one of my grandma’s possessions. She once ripped the front door off its hinges which I later fixed.  She sometimes brings strange men to the house, and last year, one of them crawled into my bed naked and grabbed my wrist waking me up. It scared me so badly. Thankfully he didn’t do anything to me because I jerked away and asked, “What are you doing?” and he left my room. I woke my mom up and had him leave. My mother still had the gall to say I was just dreaming it. After that incident, I installed a lock on my door and sleep with a tazer under my pillow.

I have accepted at this point in life it is out of my control. I can’t stop her from drinking. I can’t force her to seek treatment.

She always had a poor temper and suicidal tendencies though. It just intensified with alcohol. One time she took a bunch of pills with vodka and fell in the shower mostly unresponsive. I called my aunt for help, and she came over; so did the paramedics. She spent a few days in an institution for observation and treatment, but that never really helped her. This was not her first episode; she ended up there a few times - over a year ago her former counselor called the police on her and they came to the house. One of the policemen found the pill bottle with my name on it and accused me of giving my mother the bottle though this situation was beyond my control. She ended up at the hospital then transferred to the institution for suicide watch. She never became the better for it. She refuses and claims nothing ever helps her. Lately, I have been trying to distance myself from my mother. It’s difficult to set boundaries because she constantly crosses them. I have grown to become very angry and resentful especially towards her. My mother is extremely emotionally enmeshed. She depends on me for emotional support, but after so many years, it is starting to wear me down. I no longer want to feel responsible for her emotions. I honestly have no support system in place. I don’t have any close friends to talk about what I’ve been going through. My aunt is clueless about what goes on at home, and I don’t intend to tell her about it because I know it just would cause more problems.  Sometimes, I just want to scream, kick, and cry. My life can be literal purgatory. I feel very trapped. I want so badly for something or someone to whisk me away from this life. It amazes me that I don’t act as fucked up as I truly am.

#i feel a lot better after writing this #thank you if you read this i just needed the space to pour this incoherent mess of my mind

[scorpio-karma]

Would Vicki have been more interesting as a newborn vampire than Caroline?

Now I’m going to preface this by saying that I don’t hate Caroline. I did enjoy watching her character, but I also saw where her functionality ended which was about the end of season 2, maybe mid season 3.

So I saw a version of this question on reddit and it got me thinking. First about the fact that Vicki was always a character who was meant to die, so as result they did put much care into her characterization. And second, what characterization was actually put in to Vicki as a character. 

Now she was never really all that liked and even by me  but I remember reading this comment about that did change my perspective.

Vicky. Alcoholic, unemployed and irresponsible mom which basically makes Vicky the main breadwinner of the family prior to her death. Deals with it in a bad way via drugs. Tries to keep her brother from it and supports him. Was nearly raped by Tyler Lockwood (remember she kept saying "no" and he kept on going? Yeah, that's sexual assault) but Jeremy was thankfully around to stop it. Treated like dirt everywhere she goes and has no support system other than her brother (who is younger and she wants to protect in her own way). Compare her to Elena: lost her parents but her aunt Jenna was infinitely kind enough to take her and Jeremy in (meaning that Elena did not have to drop out and become the main breadwinner), from an affluent family, her brother might have gotten into drugs as a result of parents' deaths but so far he's sticking to the non-lethal stuff (mostly weed), and has the unconditional love and support of family and friends. Honestly, I kept on wondering why people were going all "poor Elena" like she was the only orphan in town and nobody ever did anything for Matt and Vicky. Honestly, I was waiting for someone to make a comment on the classist double standard but nobody did.

Vicki to most people was kind of an annoying character who had no direction so her death wasn’t really that sad, in that none of the audience was mourning her. But her death did have impact. It added stakes, stakes that essentially disappear because of Caroline. She was the first newborn Vampire that we saw (I can’t quite remember if Logan was turned before or after this) and was the audience’s first experience with bloodlust, heightened emotions, and all those “bad” things that come with becoming a vampire, but most of all the short life span one could have if they didn’t get this in control. She was part of the reason why we all feared for Caroline’s life when she turned at the beginning of season 2. That she’d lose control and have to be killed because she would be “irredeemable” which in hindsight is ridiculous logic. The only reason Vicki became “irredeemable” and needed to be killed is because she tried to kill Elena, meanwhile Caroline actually killed someone and no one (besides Bonnie) batted a lash. 

But anyways, had Vicki not died, had she been the one that they took a chance on, I think it might have been more interesting. Now Vicki is a mess of a character for I guess random reasons because like I said before they didn’t spend too much time on her characterization. What we do know is that she had a crush on Tyler. Though she was the older sister she acted a lot more like the younger one. She was in love with Jeremy, or rather being treated with respect for the first time which does add a nice layer to why she does some of the things that she does. She’s stereotypically what happens when everyone treats you like trash--she doesn’t know how to accept kindness. And she’s selfish, although I wouldn’t exactly call the desire to live selfish, but she does put her own wants and needs before others by putting them in danger by being around her. Which plays into her other and most prominent quality which is she’s impulsive. And I think that would have made her a bit more interesting a newborn vampire and would have been better at illustrating the struggle.

By the end of season 2, actually by the middle of season 2, Caroline had pretty much mastered being a vampire which is why everyone says she’s better as a vampire than human. And due to this the stakes of becoming a vampire severely reduced. No longer did you really fear them becoming an uncontrollable monster that needed to be killed and by the time Elena becomes one it’s almost not a big deal. Elena does struggle, but like Caroline by mid-season it’s not much of an issue and her “struggle” becomes a Delena plot device to the point that I actually do wonder if she was really having issues or was it the sire bond because she has no issues with control after it’s broken unless you count the “hallucinating” thing which I don’t.

Vicki built this presidence with vampirism and turning that deteriorates (along with a lot of other lore in this universe) because it’s made out that the only people with controls issues have the “ripper gene” which is flimsy at best since Stefan is the only one who has it despite the fact that Lily does too, but shows none of the traits. 

Then there's the dynamic with the Salvatores. Caroline and Stefan do have a nice friendship, but with Vicki's background as an addict I can't help but think of the possibilities of how her and Stefan relate to the other, but even better, them back sliding together. Think season 6 humanityless Steroline, but actually good and in season 1. I don't know about you, but I found Stefan hella boring in the first season until the Miss Mystic Falls episode and he almost kills Amber Bradley. Now this is a symptom of the bigger problem of Elena hindering characters, but it would be great to add some good character moments along the way.

And then there's what she could have added with Damon. Now I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again, Damon's treatment of Vicki was one of the few things he did that made sense, especially when using the "it's what vampires do" excuse. He feeds on her, when she keeps surviving his attacks he decides to invest in her and turns her, and all their sexual encounters were consensual. Literally all the vibes they wanted for Damon's character were achieved with Vicki without all the unnecessary rape.

And then last, but not least, there's the added dynamic with Matt. He could still go full vampire hatred and it would be so much more nuanced with Vicki alive than with the noncommittal version with her dead. He could go full Gordon Walker from SPN and there might be a point to keeping Matt around.

In conclusion, Vicki was a character who's potential was wasted, and once again, a character with more relevance than Caroline. Seriously, so much screentime was wasted on her.

#vicki donovan #tvd #anti Caroline Forbes #i guess??? #stefan salvatore #damon salvatore #anti elena gilbert #anti stelena #anti delena #getting this out of my drafts #been here for years!!!! #and thanks to a convo with JazzyWazzy89 #i can finally finish it

[thelastyetfabolousmidwestmadman]

Detective Conan Deconstruction/Plot Twists/Subversion's

Howdy!

I've been thinking a lot because I haven't slept or been made sensible enough to see reality through rational means of comprehension.

For a black and white series of tales such as Gosho Aoyama's DCMKverse I can sure think of a multitude of ways to turn it grey. So many dark, bloody possibilities, such a endless plethora of grief, angst, and schadenfreude, of voided bowels and lost innocence, so many terrifying ideas yet so little time...

Anyway, to summarize the contents of all that verbal diarrhea, my mind has created a vast orchestra of sinister ideas that I can't put them all in one or more stories. Some of them I'll use later, some of them I will not. I guess my main inspiration for this stream of consciousness that shouts madly into the abyss of the World Wide Web, is the idea that some intrepid, curious wanderer may come across my inane rantings and be inspired to write their own atrocities.

Or maybe it will the stoke the wondrous imagination of a writer who is more of a sick fuck then I am, (:

There are five areas that can be twisted into something cruel. They contain the following:

Cases

Heists

Romance

Character Flaws

Black Organization

Get it on!

Case’s

Suspect Gets The Last Laugh- Killer is revealed but manages to poison the victim with Ricin or something more subtle allowing the target to die a couple days later. Simple enough.

More Then One Killer- The killer is caught! However a quick look back at the scene reveals he wasn’t alone and he ain’t spilling the beans.

Hannibal Lector Wannabe- A killer decides to fuck with our beloved Teen Detectives by playing a game of manipulation and horror while he threatens their loved ones into continuing.

Escaping Through Statute Of Limitations- When Our Teen Detectives decide to give their customary breaking speech,

Killer Gets Out Of It, Now After Detectives- The killer proves much too clever and sees through our casts tricks. Maybe he begin’s to notice Conan’s con and swears revenge out of his ego.

Loved Ones Hurt In The Crossfire- They were too quick for Conan’s soccer ball, Heiji’s sword, Kogoro’s Judo, or Division One’s reflexes. The bullets, blades, bludgeons. and Pelvic Thrusts couldn’t be avoided and the innocent were hurt before they could be saved.

It’s Too Much All At Once- When the cast see a suspect state his intention to kill himself, especially in the early episodes, the cast would dare them to do it, thinking it is a bluff. It isn’t.

All For Naught- Going down a dark rabbit hole isn’t worth it, if a killer turns out to have escaped or has been dead for a long time.

Big Troll- There was no murder or kidnapping, they just wanted to humiliate them.

Green Mistake- Not all detectives succeed at once. Sometimes they make mistakes... Okay just here me out here. I sincerely doubt that all those amateur detectives despite their talent have a perfect track record in solving cases or even not getting a innocent person hurt. Just look at Heiji’s, Kogoro’s, and Sera’s early (or in Kogoro’s case many) mistakes. It’s statistically impossible to get it right all the time.

Victim Is Worse- Conan and the gang successfully prevent a client from being murdered. The criminal screams at them, telling them how evil he was, and how this was mistake. When they learn of the clients sick actions, they understand why.

Romance

Waiting For Someone Who Is No Longer There- Lets think about the situation between Shinichi and Ran for a sec. if your like me you come to a unfortunate realization that was also in the OVA “Stranger In 10 Years.” Shinichi may never get back to the way he was. Maybe there is no antidote. What if he disappears in that time? And I don’t mean move on, I mean dies without anyone knowing. Ran now has to deal with both a missing Shinichi and a vanished Conan. Yet, throughout her whole life Ran holds out hope, waiting for them. Waiting for Shinichi to call. She refuses to fall in love with someone else and becomes obsessed with finding them... Until in her old age, she dies.

The Sleeping Sleuth Sleeps Around- Okay just listen to my reasoning here for a sec. I know many of you are probably sharpening their knives in the comments but let’s really think about this for a sec. This is the same Kogoro who smacked the butt of one of the Black Bunnies, and repeatedly motorboats whatever young woman he comes across. I doubt if Eri is okay with that. Plus, alcoholism and nymphomania is not a winning combination. He could easily make a mistake while in his delirium.

Shinichi’s Toxic Jealousy- Once again bear with me on this. I don’t think either Shinichi (or Kogoro for that matter) are evil. They have flaws just like any other person. However, Shinichi can be sort of a dick with it comes to how territorial he is with Ran. Just look at Eisuke. Unlike most of the perverts who are after her, Eisuke is a genuinely nice guy and Shinichi treats him like garbage. That got me thinking... Maybe Shinichi’s claims about wanting Ran to be happy aren’t entirely true. A part of him knows what he’s doing is wrong but a selfish side can’t. What if Shinichi’s jealousy starts to hurt Ran severely? Again it have to be written well so Shinichi doesn’t come off like a unrepentant dick but I think there’s something there.

Character Flaws

Hot Headedness Get You Or Others Killed- This idea concerns Heiji mostly. A rather temperamental fellow isn’t he? Always rushing into danger without thinking or having trouble with guile... Ain’t that a losing combination innit? I wonder how many criminals can take advantage of that eh? How easy it would be to trick Heiji to go into a trap if Kazuha is threatened, how simple it would be to switch a blunted blade with a sharpened one, how effortless it would be to get important information, how utterly painless it would be to manipulate him... Well I’ll leave you lovely sick bastards to come up with more.

Dysfunction Junction- Let’s talk about the Mouri’s. They’re... Not healthy to say the least. With Kogoro’s gambling/drinking/man-whoring problem barely touched upon, as well as his abuse of Conan along with Eri’s absenteeism I can say that’s a huge target for blackmailers, debt collectors, and Count Of Monte Crisco wannabes.

Conan The Gremlin- Y’know for such a seemingly innocent little boy, he sure gets into a lot of trouble don’t he? Murders keep happening around him like a curse, and that animal tranquilizer can’t be healthy for Sonoko and Kogoro... Plus people could find out who he truly is and... Well it would probably be really messy wouldn’t it?

Incompetence From The Police- In all seriousness, let’s think about this for a second. You have a overburdened police dealing with a intense rise in the murder rate, illicit narcotic consumption, and terrorism... But before we can get any further let’s talk about real life Japanese criminal procedure. In Japan you can be held for 21 days in a tiny dark cell without due process or access to a lawyer. Your are also being interrogated with the police officers using abusive tactics such as telling you how ashamed your family would be, something that can’t happen in a culture based on Confucian values. You confess but take it back only to find that you’re basically fucked since Japan has a 99% conviction rate regardless of innocence. If your a drug addict, you are literally considered nonhuman by the public at large and due to the Reaganite standards treatment isn’t a option. If your on death row, you are never told when your going to die and even if innocent is unlikely to get out. Stressed at the rising crime rate, the police refuse to investigate any suspicious death and just like in Osaka (yes this actually happened) will simply not add to the police statistics. If your a police officer what are you to do? Just a few years ago there was so little crime and now your stressed to the bone. You’re largely conservative and full of pride so you won’t admit that you must change tactics. This quick jump to conclusions and borderline incompetence can be seen in so many episodes of Detective Conan that’s it’s a wonder that more people haven’t been wrongfully convicted or got away with it... Or perhaps they have.

Black Organization

Government Corruption- Given how much sway the BO has, it got me thinking. What if everything wrong with the Japanese Government is because the BO IS the government. Something sorta akin to how the Russian Mob are basically government officials. So many possibilities other then the usual blackmail, assassinations, and bombings. Electoral fraud, jury tampering, manufacturing consent, subtle revisions of the law to encroach on democratic rights such as those the Third Way, and Neoconservatives did in the west. So many more subtle yet intriguing ways to go about this! Perhaps the BO serves as a lobbying for other more savory companies that proudly align with them such as legalizing gambling or deregulating protections.

Caught!- The BO discovers Conan’s true identity. Hell follows.

Heists

Heist Bombing- Some madman or maybe the MK organization decides to bomb the Kid Heist. Lots of people die, are traumatized and have to deal with the aftermath. I’ll leave the rest up to you guys.

Crazy Fans- Self explanatory until you really think about it. If Kaito Kid is real in this universe, how toxic is the fandom? How many of them have pedophilic undertones with the beloved Kid Killer? What if a stalker discovers Kaito’s real identity and goes psychotic? Riots could happen! So many possibilities! Doesn’t have to dark like in my sick mind, can be played for laughs.

One last thing, because of how long this took to write, a certain beloved detective’s birthday is here.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHIN-CHAN!!!

#magic kaito #detective conan #kaito kuroba #shinchi kudo #conan edogawa #ran mouri #suzuki sonoko #Black Organization #Eri Kisaki #Eisuke Hondou #Sato Miwako #heiji x kazuha #heiji hattori #kazuha toyama #sera masumi

[monikaluedesigns]

Love this photo. I’m dropping off a supplies arrangement of jewelry bead/craft station. Sharing is caring!

My diagnosis of Interstitial lung disease in 2018 was a bummer. Didn’t know how or why my immune system began attacking my lungs. Doctor did tell me no more cutting or sanding stones. Should have worn a better mask. I had become so wary of the medical establishment, especially complaining about my trouble breathing for several years, and just being told it’s my allergies or my Asthma. Problem has always been my very sensitive immune system and various reactions to most chemicals, even perfumes and makeup. Thankfully my only food issue was dairy.

The biopsy didn’t offer any markers that I might benefit from newer treatments or studies. The possibility of lung transplant was mentioned, then not again after the biopsy. What was prescribed were steroids, limited time then onto the drugs used for anti rejection as in the case of transplants. Hmm. So I forgo the steroids the dr prescribed and I began a more alternative medicine choice. Started meditating more, trying to be as positive as possible, and releasing my burdens to the universe. I ate only organic non GMO foods, more vegan dishes, less sugars, 0 white sugar or white starchy foods, drank planets of water, only a glass of wine maybe once a month, till I stopped partaking of any alcohol.

I slowly added and increased doses of Mullen tincture for my lungs and cough. Still use her works nicely for me. Wild green onion, and other plants used for the lungs. I used more organic teas and less caffeinated products. Started mushrooms supplements. Ate more of them too.

My buddy gifted me a ceremonial healer. Like my grandpa used to do for people. It felt good. My mind set was of, I had a pretty good life and was filled with gratitude for a wonderful family, best husband, kids, and especially that my mama had lived with us throughout my kids lives. She journey on 2016, my grief was hard. So if I was going to go I wanted it to be naturally. And for 3 years my lung disease was progressing slowly, tho I could feel it.

I’ve seen several alternative physicians and herbalist talk about how drug industry and most conventional medicine folk are in cahoots and just wanna increase their profit margins our expense. Heck so are they, be it in an alternate respect. It’s become a huge industry too. It’s a capitalist society after all.

Anyway as Covid hit I began to think how so many were also being affected by lung disease. So many perishing, alone and too often rapidly. Early on we became mask wearers. My family cared that much about our health. They said it was to protect me. 💖

Then a day before thanksgiving, for his 61 birthday my hubby had been up and working, he exclaimed the pain in his neck and back so bad he drove himself to hospital, collapsed paralyzed, rushed into emergency surgery to rebuild his neck, Happy Birthday! Also found cancer. He was there during the holidays, all that time we could not visit because of COVID restrictions. He passed within weeks. We were left unprepared, emotionally and financially. He thought he’d have time to plan since I was had been given 3-5 yrs, and I was clearing the third. Ya just never know!

Tho it’s going on 7 months since he joined the ancestors, we’ve found our footing and our grief is less consuming. Our anxiety less frequent. That’s a blessing. My own health condition made me think I needed more time on Mother Earth, so after 3 years of the alternative path, I returned to my lung specialist and this time I chose to take his medicine. I had even waited till the doctor could answer my concerns about the COVID vaccine for me. I took my 2 Pfizer COVID vaccines, waited till the second dose was in my system a bit longer before slowly building up to the prescribed Prednisone dose. The Steroids facts and side effects list is long, it will lower immune system. Here’s what I can say, after 2 weeks the pain I had in my chest for over a year, causing more frequent vomiting and discomfort had begun to ease, now a months worth of doses it’s almost gone, it must be helping with the inflammation. I even can again work in my garden, and walk around with more energy. I’m not in the clear, there is nothing that will cure me. Maybe just help me along for a few more seasons. So yeah people have to do what they feel is right for them. I so far have.

I’ve even had a spike in creative energy, I’ve done some jewelry repairs and redesigns. That’s very invigorating for my spirit. I sure do enjoy stringing along, in more than one respect, so to speak. 😁

[purpledinosaur1988]

Ever been in one of those situations where you put your trust in the wrong person. Yeah me to. I used to be "friends" with this female who turned out to be TOXIC! She caused so many problems in my life to a point where she would use me to lie for her, watch her brat of a child. When I met my husband back in 2014, the toxic female would try her best to break me and him up. It was early days in our relationship and she would always expect me to drop everything including date night plans to help her out of sticky situations. After seeing the effects of how miserable I was being made to feel, my husband eventually got me to walk away from the toxic female and finally be happy. I felt so much better without being associated with her. We never spoke again, would avoid each other in public etc. Fast for to a few months ago, I was waiting on a bus to work, she approached me trying to use my child as a pawn to win back "friendship" by telling me that my son's nan had passed away, saying I was to unblock her as she missed me. Obviously I didn't unblock her from my socials and the next time I saw my son I asked his uncle how his mum (my son's nan) was and that I hadn't seen her in awhile, he answered saying she is still struggling with the whole pandemic but is much better than before. That cleared that up. The toxic female told me a malicious lie. I mean has she no better things to be getting on with than trying to get me to fall for her BS 🐂💩 again.

My life has improved massively over the years I have been with my husband, we met in 2014, engaged in 2015 & married in 2016. I don't have a big circle of friends and I am okay with that as I would rather surround myself with those who are positive influences to me. Those friends hold a special place in my heart ♥️ I have my 2 best friends who I have been friends with since high school so they are more like Sisters to me.

If anyone feels there are red flags in your life with certain people. Please don't ignore them as you deserve to be happy.

Signs to look out for

1. You feel on-edge around this person, but you still want them to like you. You find yourself writing off most of their questionable behavior as accidental or insensitive, because you’re in constant competition with others for their attention and praise. They don’t seem to care when you leave their side—they can just as easily move on to the next source of energy.

2. They withhold attention and undermine your self-esteem. After first hooking you with praise and flattery, they suddenly become reclusive and uninterested. They make you feel desperate & needy, ensuring that you are always the one to initiate contact or physical intimacy.

3. Plasters your Facebook page with compliments, flattery, songs, and poems. They text you dozens, if not hundreds of times per day. You come to rely on this over-communication as a source of confidence.

4. Quickly declares you their soul mate. And for some reason, you don’t find it creepy. They tell you how much they have in common with you. On the first few dates, you do most of the talking and they just can’t believe how perfect you are for them.

5. Compares you to everyone else in their life. Ex-lovers, friends, family members, and your eventual replacement. When idealizing, they make you feel special by telling you how much better you are than these people. When devaluing, they use these comparisons to hurt you.

6. Lies and excuses. There is always an excuse for everything, even things that don’t require excusing. They make up lies faster than you can question them. They will always blame others—it is never their fault. They spend more time rationalizing their behavior than improving it.

7. No startle response. Total absence of anxiety, fear, and worry where there otherwise should be. They are also very easily bored by the familiar. You write this off as calm and cool, often feeling inferior and over-sensitive because you have normal human emotions.

8. Insults you with a condescending, joking sort of attitude. Smirks when you try to express yourself. Teasing becomes the primary mode of communication in your relationship. They subtly belittle your intelligence and achievements. If you point this out, they call you hypersensitive and crazy.

9. Uses social networking to provoke jealousy and rivalries while maintaining their cover of innocence. They once focused all of their attention on you, but now they post ambiguous videos and statuses to make you doubt your place in their heart. They bait previously denounced exes with old songs and inside jokes. They attend to new activity and ignores yours.

10. You find yourself playing detective. It is never happened in any other relationship, but suddenly you are scrolling back years on their Facebook page and albums. Same with their ex. You are seeking answers to a feeling you cannot quite explain.

11. Surrounds themselves with former lovers and potential mates. Brags that their exes still want to sleep with him/her, but assures you there is nothing to worry about. These people make you feel jealous and give off the perception that your partner is in high-demand.

12. Hyperbolizes emotions while displaying none of them. They make passionate statements like “I have never felt so happy in my life” in a completely robotic voice. It sounds like an alien trying to explain how they imagine human emotions might feel.

13. You are the only one who sees their true colors. Others will think they’re the nicest person in the world, even though they are used for money, resources, and attention. They will not care because he/she strategically distracts them with shallow praise (often done over social networking). Psychopaths are able to maintain superficial friendships far longer than their relationships.

14. Accuses you of emotions that they are intentionally provoking. They will call you jealous after blatantly flirting with their ex over social networking for the world to see. They will call you needy after intentionally ignoring you for three days straight.

15. Cannot put themselves in your shoes, or anyone else’s for that matter. You find yourself desperately trying to explain how they might feel if you were treating them this way, and they just stare at you blankly.

16. You are engaged in constant conversations about their ex. You know them by name, and you know everything about their relationship—at least, your partner’s version of events. The ex becomes one of the most frequent topics of discussion in your relationship.

17. You find yourself explaining the basic elements of human respect to a full-grown man/woman. Normal people understand the fundamental concepts of honesty and kindness. No adult should need to be told how they are making other people feel.

18. Focuses on your mistakes and ignores their own. If they’re two hours late, do not forget that you were once five minutes late to your first date. If you point out their mistakes, they will always be quick to turn the conversation back on you.

19. Suddenly and completely bored by you. Gives you the silent treatment and becomes very annoyed that you seem to be interested in continuing the passionate relationship that they created. You are now a chore to them.

20. The ultimate hypocrite. They have extremely high expectations for fidelity, respect, and adoration. After the idealization phase, they will give none of this back to you. They will cheat, lie, insult, and degrade. But you are expected to remain perfect.

21. Sometimes it seems as though they’ve forgotten who they’re supposed to be around you. They adopt different personas for different people—transforming their entire personality to match various audiences. It is always very eerie when they slip and accidentally use the wrong mask for you. You will start to feel that their personality just does not seem to add up.

22. An unusual amount of “crazy” people in their past. Any ex-partner or friend who did not come crawling back to them will likely be labeled jealous, bipolar, an alcoholic, or some other nasty smear. They will speak about you the same way to their next target.

23. Flatters your deepest insecurities. If you are self-conscious about your looks, they will call you the sexiest person in the world. If you have got a need to entertain, they will say you’re the funniest person they have ever known. They will also mirror your greatest fantasies, playing whatever role is necessary to win your heart.

24. Frequently comments about what you are wearing and how you look. They try to arrange you. You become obsessed with your appearance, noticing flaws that likely don’t even exist. During and after the relationship, you will spend significantly more time in front of the mirror.

25. You fear that any fight could be your last. Normal couples argue to resolve issues, but psychopaths make it clear that negative conversations will jeopardize the relationship, especially ones regarding their behavior. You apologize and forgive quickly, otherwise you know they’ll lose interest in you.

26. Obsessed with humiliating successful, kind, and cheerful people. Delighted by the idea of breaking up friendships and marriages. If you work hard to maintain interpersonal peace in your life, they will make it their mission to uproot all of it.

27. Gaslighting. Blatantly denies their own manipulative behavior and ignores evidence when confronted with it. They will become angry if you attempt to disprove their delusions with facts.

28. They expect you to read their mind. If they stop communicating with you for several days, it’s your fault for not knowing about the plans they never told you about. There will always be a self-victimizing excuse to go along with this.

29. Selfishness and a crippling thirst for attention. They drain the energy from you and consume your entire life. Their demand for adoration is insatiable. You thought you were the only one who could make them happy, but now you feel that anyone with a beating pulse could fit the role. However, the truth is: no one can fill the void of a psychopath’s soul.

30. Your feelings. After a run-in with a psychopath, you will feel insane, exhausted, drained, shocked, suicidal, and empty. You will tear apart your entire life—spending money, ending friendships, and searching for some sort of reason behind it all.

We can find that normal and loving people do not raise any of these flags. After a negative encounter, most survivors face the struggle of hypervigilance: who can really be trusted? Our gauge will swing back and forth for a while, like a volatile pendulum. We all wonder if we have gone absolutely mad for wanting to believe the best in an old friend or a new date, but also feeling sick to the stomach when actually spending time with them.

It is important to develop our intuition, but that is a personal process. The world is mostly full of good people, and we suffer a double punishment if we miss them due to the fear of being hurt again.

People need to set aside some time to get in touch with their feelings, and become comfortable with a balance of awareness and trust. The reflection offers understanding about our emotions. It helps provide understanding for which old relationships need to be refreshed, and which toxic patterns need to be abandoned and replaced by healthier ones.

Society conditions us to ask “does this person like me” instead of exercising critical thinking and asking “do I like this person?”

#toxic people #toxic frienship #manipulative #red flags #don't ignore this #alerts #trust your instincts