#SIX MONTHS later and I notice that there was an entire paragraph like 3 times in a row this is so embarrassing -_-

[dazed-diary]

sugar, spice, and everything nice

summary: you decide to bake brownies in the middle of the night, bakugou just wants a glass of water, the two of you have a conversation

bkg x gn!reader - wc: 3.5k

warnings: just some cursing here and there, that's all!

“Ah, shit.”

You let out a curse under your breath, already moving to get a spoon to retrieve the piece of eggshell that had managed to escape into the batter. With slow and careful movements, you guided the spoon up the inside of the bowl while balancing the frivolous escapee that was threatening to slip back into the batter on the tip.

It was the middle of a Thursday night and the U.A. dorms were asleep, the students being exhausted after the recent spike in villain activities. It was understandable, being tired with everything that was going on, although for some reason, you couldn’t seem to fall asleep at all, seemingly too much on your mind. After alternating between tossing and turning in your bed and mindlessly staring at the dark ceiling for what felt like hours – a look at the time told you it actually had been hours – the urge to bake brownies had inexplicably taken a hold of you. 

For a moment you had just laid there, weighing the pros and cons of a spontaneous past-curfew, definitely-against-the-rules trip to the dorm kitchen for a midnight baking-session, when, after a couple seconds of inner debate, you had decided to just go through with it, throwing the covers off of yourself with a quiet “fuck it”. 

Now you were here, in the kitchen, trying really hard not to make a sound in order to not wake any others – you had even resolved to mixing everything with a whisk instead of a hand mixer, even though an annoying voice at the back of your head was telling you that the bedrooms were too far from the kitchen for anybody to hear you, anyways. 

Nevertheless, now you were dedicated to see this through to the end and continued on whisking away. Once you were satisfied with the look of the batter, you moved on to measure the flour, when, all of a sudden, the ceiling lights of the kitchen turned on, startling you. Originally, you had only turned on the small light above the stove in order not to draw attention from outside, even resorting to your phone flashlight to find the ingredients you needed in the cupboards, so the bright lights from above were a little blinding.

“What the-“, disoriented, you shielded your eyes and turned around to the direction of where you thought the light switches were, trying to identify whoever had busted your little baking session. Still blinking to adjust to the sudden brightness, you expected Mr. Aizawa to be standing in the doorway, ready to give you a lecture. However, you were proven wrong as a gruff voice that definitely did not belong to your sensei cut through the silence.

“The fuck are you doing?” 

Bakugou Katsuki stood at the doorway, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, both in black, and looking at you as if you had just grown a second head or something.After recovering from the initial shock (and relief at not receiving detention for your stupid idea), you tried to think of a reasonable way to justify still being up.

“Uhhh…”, you said dumbly, trying to think of an explanation that wasn’t just ‘I couldn’t sleep so I did what any sensible person would do and started baking brownies in the middle of the night in our school’s dorm kitchen. Any more questions?

Instead, you uttered a lame “I’m…baking?”. 

Wow, what a great explanation. He surely wouldn’t think you were weird now.

If he doesn’t already think that, you told yourself.

Bakugou raised an eyebrow at that, looking even more irritated than before and like he wanted to say something else, but he stopped himself, huffed out a breath of air and walked towards the cupboard with the glasses and cups, muttering something about him being “way to fuckin’ tired for this shit right now”. 

Still a bit stunned, you watched him fill a glass of water under the tab, lean on the counter and chug it. Before he could fill it up again, though, he seemed to notice your stare on him and he side-eyed you. “What.” 

Realizing that you must’ve probably looked even more insane now, you quickly avoided his piercing gaze and turned back to your brownies-in-progress, resuming your previously interrupted task of measuring the flour after muttering a quick “nothing!”

Pressing a few buttons on the scale, you added a quieter “I was just surprised to see someone else up, is all.” 

You grabbed another bowl and set it on the scale, daring to look up at him again, only to find his eyes still focused on you, much to your surprise. Somehow, the feeling of his eyes on you made you feel…nervous. You tried not to let it show and instead busied yourself with your phone, checking the rest of the recipe. Because he did not immediately make the move to head back to his room, you tried to drown out his presence as best as you could. 

Your relationship to Bakugou was…normal, you thought. As far as you were able to tell with his fiery attitude, he didn’t hate you. That was something, you supposed. He didn’t seem too concerned with you; in class when you were teamed up with him or pitted up against him in teams, he seemed to know enough about your quirk in order to form fitting strategies either with or against it, but when the two of you were teamed up there was someone else from class with you pretty much every time so the two of you had never quite been…alone like this, now that you thought about it. 

“The hell you making, anyway?” 

His voice interrupted your thoughts and you turned back to him, still leaned against the counter but his body angled more in your direction.

“Just some brownies for everyone, I thought we could eat them tomorrow after school or something.” Suddenly you had a thought. “I’ll probably just say I made them yesterday or something, they’ll probably think it’s weird I made them in the middle of the night. Like, who just bakes brownies instead of sleeping, right?”, you let out a nervous laugh at that. 

He stayed silent at that, leaving you to wallow in slight embarrassment, mulling over how you would explain to your classmates where the batch of brownies had magically appeared from. Was there a student with a brownie quirk at U.A.?

“You’re a dumbass.” 

“Huh?” You looked back up at him dumbfounded, eyes having unfocused with your internal chaotic monologue.

He rolled his eyes and walked past you, the scent of his cologne drifting past you in a wave of sandalwood and something else you couldn’t quite decipher. It smelled good. Not that it mattered.

“I said, you’re a dumbass.” Now on your other side, he grabbed the knife and cutting board with the chocolate you had prepared and started chopping.

“Wha-“, you cut yourself off, having to shake your head in order to process what was going on. “What are you doing?” 

“What’s it look like I’m doing? Cuttin’ your dumb chocolate for your dumb brownies or whatever,” he shot you a dirty look.

You wanted to argue that neither the chocolate nor the brownies were ‘dumb’, but you held yourself back. Instead, you rephrased the question because technically he had answered it. “Why are you doing that?”

He tch-ed. “Because it’s fucking late and we got team exercise tomorrow and I ain’t losin’ because some teammate of mine was too tired!” His brows were furrowed now and he was chopping faster, the chunks decreasing in size at an almost alarming rate. 

You stopped short. “There’s no guarantee for me being in your team, though.”

“What’d you say?”

“Huh? Uh, nothing, nothing.”

Choosing not to argue with him about his…peculiar way of talking, you watched him cut the chocolate. The pieces were pretty small now, however you figured it would be useless to tell him to stop at this point. Instead, you continued working on the batter, mixing the flour and cocoa powder into the bowl with the eggs, sugar and butter. A sort of comfortable silence settled over the two of you, the crunching of the chocolate under the knife and the whisk scraping the sides of the bowl somehow added to the atmosphere. 

After a while of whisking and spacing out you realized that you could no longer hear the chocolate being cut, so you turned to your right to see Bakugou rinsing off the knife in the sink. Your eyes then drifted to the cutting board where you beheld…chocolate…powder.

What in the-

You snorted. Before you could stop yourself, your whole body was shaken with giggles and you quickly covered your mouth with your hand. Bakugou’s head snapped towards you, his face contorted into an irritated frown.

“What the fuck?”, seemingly more irritated with each word, he got louder. “What’s so funny, huh?” Dropping the knife in the sink and drying his hands on a kitchen towel which was unceremoniously thrown somewhere on the counter, he walked so he was standing right in front of you. 

“Shhh”, you managed between giggles, “you’re being too loud!” After wiping a tear from your eye and taking another look at his face, where you thought you could see some confusion and maybe uncertainty hidden behind the irritation, you decided to explain the reason for your amusement to him. 

“The chocolate-“, you giggled, “you-“, you pointed towards the now-powder when you broke out into another fit of hushed laughter. 

“The fuck’s wrong with it?” he spat, looking at it for a moment before his eyes snapped back to your face. You failed to notice the tips of his ears reddening as his gaze lingered on your grinning mouth.

He genuinely seemed unaware as to what you were laughing about, so you tried to collect yourself. Taking a deep breath and holding back any more laughter that threatened to escape you, you changed your mind. “You know what? It’s fine.” Grabbing the cutting board, you dumped the powder into the batter and mixed it. “It’s perfect, see?” For better emphasis, you held the bowl so he could look at the contents, not that there was much to notice, but you somehow felt like reassuring him.

He scoffed. “Whatever.”

From the far end of the counter, you grabbed the tray you prepared and poured the batter inside before putting it in the oven, closing the door and setting the temperature. As you straightened your back, it was quiet again and the sudden awkwardness that filled the air made you want to busy your hands with something, so you started cleaning up. 

All the while you were putting back the ingredients to their places in the cupboards, you felt Bakugou’s eyes on you. For some reason, he hadn’t moved from his spot and all of a sudden you were reminded of the pajamas you were currently wearing: checkered blue pajama pants and an oversized, washed-out t-shirt with a character of a children’s TV show and the word SMILE! in bold, glittery letters on the front of the t-shirt. You felt blood rushing to your face and tried to subtly angle your body away from Bakugou. 

After another moment of silence that felt like an eternity, he cleared his throat from behind you. Currently, you were putting away the sugar (the last of your ingredients still standing around – after remembering your outfit you had tried to avoid having to use the cupboard closest to Bakugou) when you stole a glance at him. He looked like he wanted to say something, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times. 

“Don’t-“, he cut himself off, as if he was struggling to find the right words. After a pause of another few seconds, he said, “Don’t think so fucking much.”

“What?”

You turned towards him; ugly shirt forgotten. Out of all the things you’d expected him to say to you – hell, you wouldn’t even have been surprised if he’d just left without saying another word, seeing as you had basically made fun of him for cutting the chocolate weirdly – this wasn’t one of them. You didn’t even know what he meant. 

Bakugou’s brows were furrowed, his jaw clenched.

“It doesn’t matter.”, he said. “When you made the brownies, or whatever. It ain’t any of their business. You baked and they get to eat them, ‘s all they gotta know.”

You were dumbfounded. Staring at him, you searched for a reply, anything to respond, but he beat you to it. 

“Bein’ a hero too, and everything. I see you,” he ran a hand through his hair. “Hesitating. Overthinking. You’re not weak, so what the fuck are you doing?” 

You found it impossible to break the eye contact, his red eyes filled with anger and something else you couldn’t quite decipher. I see you.

He continued. “I’ve seen what you can do. Last week you fucking kicked four villains’ asses alone because they were an immediate danger to surrounding citizens. You acted fast because you knew waiting for backup from pros would have been too late and you immobilized those damn fuckers with a move that could’ve hurt the civilians if you were some extra without proper control over your quirk. But you aren’t. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. You have a strong quirk and unlike some other extras here,” his eyes narrowed at that, “you actually know how to use it. So do it. To win.”

To say you were shocked silent was putting it lightly. For a few moments after he was done talking, all you could hear was the blood rushing in your ears and you hoped your cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. At your expression, he seemed to realize the impact of his words at least a little bit. 

“Ah, shit- I didn’t mean-“ He slapped one hand over his mouth. You think you heard a muffled “fucking idiot”, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. 

In the meantime, you had somehow managed to regain a little bit of your composure to finally respond to him, albeit you were still stuttering a bit.

“Uhh, you-” Suddenly it was very hard to look him in the eyes. “I never knew you paid so much attention to me.”

That sent him over the edge. “What?!” Stumbling backwards, his expression contorted with some of his usual anger, but you could sense there was something more behind it. Embarrassment, maybe? You didn’t miss the way his eyes were darting around the room nervously, now anywhere but on you or how his cheeks seemed to just slightly redden in color, but you might have been imagining it, of course. 

Suddenly curious, you stepped forward. Untouchable, closed-off, self-centered Bakugou had just given you an extremely personal (and accurate) pep talk. He had read you like an open book, and although you’d known he was intelligent, somehow this hadn’t felt all that analytical and more…emotional.

Taking another step towards him and trying to fight the smile from coming onto your face, you whispered, “You’re being loud again, Bakugou.” After a pause, you got serious, “But, thanks, I guess. Hearing something like that coming from you means a lot to me.” 

At that, he regained his composure, narrowing his eyes. “Just stating the obvious. The only thing holding you back is yourself, it’s stupid.”

Wow, so much for some comforting words. You let out a breath of amusement, shaking your head, gaze travelling to the clock by the door. 

“Oh wow, it’s already two.”

At your words, Bakugou’s head also lifted towards the clock. “How long do these things take to bake, anyways?”

“Like, 20 minutes, I think. I better finish cleaning up, wouldn’t want to have to stay up much longer.” As you grabbed the dishes you had used, you realized something. “Hey, I’m not keeping you up, am I? I didn’t mean to make you stay here just because I started talking to you or anything.”

“You’re not doing shit.” Before you realized what he was doing, he grabbed two bowls from your hands and put them in the dishwasher. 

“Wha-”

“I told you you’re gonna be fucking tired tomorrow, so don’t complain.” He was facing away from you now, fishing the knife out from the dink and finishing cleaning it off.

You just stood there with your hands still in front of you from when he had taken the bowls, mouth opened in a slight gasp. 

When he noticed your silence, he turned around. “Stop standing around like some idiot, you wanna stay here until everyone else wakes up, or what?”

That woke you up from your stupor. He was right, you had already lost enough sleep time as it was, although even as you wiped the counters and took a look at the brownies in the oven, you were still wondering what was motivating Bakugou to stay up and even help you clean the kitchen. Especially knowing how particular he was about his own sleep schedule.

When you were finished, you took a look around the kitchen, checking for anything you might have missed. Satisfied when you couldn’t find anything, you turned to Bakugou, who was putting away his glass of water.

“Thanks,” you said, fiddling with your fingers. Him putting away the glass probably meant he would be going back to bed now, but you weren’t sure what to say. ‘Sleep well’? Internally, you laughed at yourself, picturing him counting fluffy little sheep.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” He started walking towards the door, pausing once in the doorway. “Don’t stay up too long, [name].” And with that, he was gone. 

For seemingly the twentieth time this night, you were stunned silent. He had called you by your name. He hadn’t said ‘idiot’, ‘nerd’, or anything like that. He had said ‘[name]’. 

His words replayed in your mind over and over, until you remembered that the brownies were probably almost done now. You had to force yourself to move from your position, holding your hands to your cheeks in a futile attempt to cool down the blush that had formed on your face.

The next couple of minutes passed by in a haze, and before you knew it, you were lying in your bed again, having put the finished brownies in a box in the kitchen, hoping they wouldn’t be noticed by everyone immediately. 

“What just happened?”

You found yourself staring at the ceiling again, still hearing his voice at the back of your mind. It seemed your plan to bake some brownies and then to hopefully have an easier time falling asleep was not working out the way you had envisioned. 

“Ugh, freaking Bakugou,” you groaned, dragging your hands over your face. You remained like that for some time longer, before turning to lay on your side. You took a deep breath, attempting to calm your raging heartbeat, and closed your eyes.

Sleep finally embraced you, and you slept without interruptions for the rest of the night.

BONUS:

The next day, the class was gathered at Ground Beta and preparing for the already announced group exercise by drawing lots. You were one of the only ones left who hadn’t been assigned a team yet. As your name was called, you walked to the box with the lots in it and pulled a slip of paper out.

“You’re in team C, which makes that team complete.”, Mr. Aizawa said, although you weren’t really listening, frozen in place because if you remembered correctly, team C was-

“[name].”

Your head snapped to the owner of the voice, who was none other than Bakugou. Because of course.

“[name]. You gonna stand there all day? Get over here.”

He was using your name again and you found that it made operating like a normal person quite difficult. Your body moving in the direction of your team felt almost robotic; as you tried to avoid his gaze, you nearly stumbled over your own two feet. That woke you up from your stupor, and you mentally slapped yourself for acting like such an idiot.

“I fucking knew it. Because you didn’t sleep, you’re tripping over nothing like some dumbass,” he rolled his eyes. “I fucking told ya not to stay up so long, should’ve listened to me.” 

Now you were blushing furiously and you were pretty sure your heartbeat could be heard all the way back in the classrooms, but before you could think of something to say to him, Kirishima, who was another one of your teammates, cut in. 

“What? Dude, hold on! You were with [name] last night?” The redhead looked at his friend incredulously.

You were pretty sure you saw a vein popping on Bakugou’s temple as he yelled, “Ain’t none of your business, shitty hair, nobody asked for your opinion!”

Your mouth fell open. What a way to make this sound absolutely not weird.

“Alright, alright,” Kirishima laughed, holding his hands up in mock defence and shooting you a not-so-sly wink over his shoulder. “I won’t ask, man. I won’t ask.” 

Oh god. 

While Bakugou yelled some more about how that was not what he meant with some tiny explosions coming out of his palm, you pinched the bridge of your nose, already wondering how you got yourself in this ridiculous situation.

#I literally forgot like an entire paragraph I’m such an idiot haha #like i kept looking and thinking ‘this isn’t how I remember it ending’ lol #I also hope the formatting didn't get messed up #how does formatting here even work #I am so lost on this website #and nervous lol #uhh anyways #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bakugou katuski x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki #katsuki bakugou #bakugou katsuki fluff #I also don’t know what possessed me to write the words ‘frivolous escapee’ but here we are #SIX MONTHS later and I notice that there was an entire paragraph like 3 times in a row this is so embarrassing -_-

[chocoholicannanymous]

Evil Author Day #3

February 15th is Evil Author Day - you can read more about it on Jilly James’ site, but in short it’s about posting titles or descriptions or parts of stuff that’s not actually ready for posting, the evil part being that there are no promises what so ever that there will be more.

What I’m posting under the EAD-tag either isn’t finished and might never be, or it could be considered finished only I’m not happy with it.

Either way: Enjoy. Or not.

Follows Doesn't Hurt At All, A Little Hurt (Goes A Long Way) and (It Hurts) To Have To Be This Honest With The One You Love.

Posting this one under the EAD-tag as I have never been able to be satisfied with it.

AN: Timelinewise, Kurt goes to London during the first week of April, Adam returns to England first week (or so) of June, and Kurt sends the first email to Adam beginning of August. This takes place about two weeks or so later.

Love Hurts (When You Do it Right)

Part 4 of Doesn't Hurt At All

Kurt picked up his book, read two paragraphs, then put it down again with a sigh. He'd been repeating that process now for close to twenty minutes. He'd also shredded two napkins, rearranged everything on the small table, and finished half a lemonade.

Being early for this meet-up had probably not been one of his brightest ideas.

Then again, it was possible that the meet-up itself wasn't that bright of an idea.

Kurt swallowed, looked at the time, and considered – for at least the tenth time – if it might not be best to cancel. Just...walk away, send Adam an email about being detained, and then never approach the subject again. He could do that, right? After all, it wasn't as if Adam even knew that Kurt was staying in London for the time being – he'd assumed Kurt was on vacation. (Which, admittedly, had been exactly what Kurt had been aiming at. He'd wanted to reduce the pressure on Adam. Maybe he had, but the pressure on himself? Very much present, and very much too much.)

Four minutes until he was supposed to meet Adam for the first time in nearly six months – for the first time since spooking, and refusing to be in a committed relationship. And see how well that worked, with the running back to Blaine and the getting engaged... Kurt ignored the snide inner voice. He'd messed up, and he'd done so repeatedly, and horribly. To leave now would be another mistake, and that's why he was going to stay, no matter how many butterflies seemed to have taken up residence in his stomach.

The seconds ticked by slowly, and a minute past their agreed upon time Kurt's stomach sank. No Adam. Adam, who never was late. Kurt blinked to avoid the tears that wanted to well up, and gave himself a stern talking to. First of all, he didn't really have any reason to be upset – he'd placed himself, and Adam, in this position on his own – and second, well, public transportation could be tricky. Maybe Adam was simply stuck on the Tube?

Either way, he would wait. He'd finish his lemonade, to begin with, and then reassess.

Twenty-four minutes past the hour saw Kurt out of both lemonade and hope. It didn't look like Adam was showing. Still. He'd give it until half past, and then... Then he'd go back to the apartment and cry into a pint of ice cream or something.

(A Long Island Ice Tea or five sounded tempting, but Kurt had learned by now that alcohol acted as a depressant and thus did not make him feel any better. Quite the opposite. Plus, if he drank when already down... Well. “Stupid” was a kind description of his behavior then.)

“Kurt?”

Oh! Kurt looked up, and was met with Adam's kind face. Looks like maybe I won't need that ice cream. At least not quite yet, he amended after taking a second look – it was obvious from the other man's body language that he wasn't entirely comfortable, or happy, with the situation, and it was as if he'd tried to close the shutters of his usually expressive eyes. Maybe I should make that two pints.

Kurt tried to keep his trepidation from being noticed though, choosing to nod and send a small smile the Brit's way.

“Adam. I'm happy to see you.”

And he really was. No matter the outcome of their meeting, Kurt would be happy – and grateful – that he'd gotten to see the other man again. He wanted to know that Adam was fine, that he'd gotten on with his life even after Kurt had screwed things up. In the end, that knowledge meant even more to Kurt than the possibility of losing some of the guilt he carried over his cowardly actions and the end of their relationship.

“Kurt.” There was a standoffish quality to Adam that Kurt had never seen before, not even when mocked by other students, and his heart ached knowing that he deserved it. “I have to say I was surprised to hear from you, and even more so when you asked to meet up. To be quite honest, up until just now I wasn't sure if I should go through with it.”

The confirmation of his suspicions shouldn't hurt so much, but yet it did. It wasn't anything he hadn't expected, or earned for that matter, but the words still made his heart sink even further in his chest.

“Well, while I understand that – and I really do – I'm happy you came. I know I could have tried to apologize through email, but it didn't feel right. I wanted – no, I needed to actually talk to you. And if you never want to see me again, I'll understand. I'm not going to lie, I want us to stay in touch, I really do, but I am going to respect your wishes here.”

It would be hard, yes, but somehow Kurt suspected all things worthwhile were. Also, considering he'd complained about others not being willing to respect his wishes, well. “Do unto others” and all that, right? Treating others the same way he himself wanted to be treated was a good way to live, Kurt knew, and it was time he did. Adam was a really good place to start.

“Not to be rude, but why should we? I was willing to try that, you know, when you got back with your ex, only I couldn't even get you to look at me. I have absolutely no desire to be someone for you to use when trying put yourself back together again. Once was enough. Actually, no – once was one time too many, but. I'm sure you get my point?”

Yeah, he got it. He got it straight into his bruised and battered heart, alright. But. As much as it hurt, Kurt felt he deserved it – and more, considering how he himself had hurt Adam. Still...

“I do. And you're absolutely right, it shouldn't have happened even once, regardless of how it was never my intention. I never meant to use you, never. I do understand how it looks though, I really do.

“And I don't expect you to be there for me again – I don't expect anything from you. I would love it if we could be friends, or even just friendly, but also know exactly how badly I screwed up. So, as I said, if you never want to talk to me again after today, I promise you that I will respect that. If that's what you want, I will do everything in my power to make sure you never have to see me again.”

And he would, no matter how little he wanted to. Because Adam deserved so much, the least of which was respect. Kurt had failed him too many times when it came to that. He refused to do so again.

“I just... I owe you, Adam. So, so much, for all you gave me. And if you want me to repay that by leaving you alone, then I will. But don't you want closure? To be able to let all that crap go? Because I do. I'm trying to get over it, and heal, but honestly? The past has a way of dragging me down, and I would love to be able to cut that loose, and just live.

“And I think that as long as I feel this guilty over what happened with you that's going to be hard. As for you, well, in your shoes? I'd want to know what the hell happened.”

Adam's mouth twisted into an unhappy, sour grimace for a second, then relaxed again.

“But I already know what happened, don't I? You lied to me, and you used me – intentionally or not, there's no other way I can take what you did – and then you went running back to your ex, like it was all a game to you.”

“It wasn't!”

“But that's what it felt like. You were happy to date me for weeks, months even, but god forbid you commit. Instead you went back home and had sex with the guy who cheated on you. Then you didn't tell me about it, not until Santana basically forced you. And yeah, sure, we weren't exclusive, as much as I wanted to be, but Kurt? Not being exclusive didn't mean it didn't hurt. Because unlike you? I was committed.

“Still, I thought 'okay, he's been burned, he doesn't mean to hurt you, it'll be fine, we'll get through this'. Because you promised me I wasn't your rebound, that you wanted to be over him, and that you wanted to try. And so I trusted you. I trusted you, only to have you go back to Ohio only to come back with an engagement ring. You didn't even have the decency to give me a heads-up, Kurt. I had to find out through others. Hell, I wasn't even lucky enough to hear the gossip. Oh no.

“All those stuck-up brats that only stopped outright mocking me to my face because you pulled rank with them? Yeah, they took great pleasure in informing me about your changed relationship status. Telling me how you'd finally decided to 'get rid of the trash' and such.”

Kurt felt sick to his stomach, not just because of his guilt but also because of the hurt and the venom in Adam's voice. He had a good idea of exactly how nasty some of them had been, and how they'd relished in hurting Adam. And it was all his fault. He'd fucked up, and while he'd certainly paid for it, Adam had suffered just as much.

“I could have dealt with you deciding to break things off with me, Kurt. I wouldn't have liked it, no, but I would have accepted it. But that's not what happened. Instead you just threw me aside, showing me less respect than you do than yesterday's paper. Not only did you start dating someone else, after telling me you weren't ready for a relationship, but you started dating the guy who treated you like crap and who you told me you didn't want to go back to. And to top it all off you agreed to marry him?

“And as if all that wasn't enough, you waited until everyone who cared to bully me had had a go before trying to talk to me yourself.

“You owed me better, Kurt. I don't care that we weren't boyfriends, that we were only dating casually, you still owed me more than that. As someone who was both in love with you and trying to be your friend, I deserved more.”

Kurt swallowed down his tears and his shame, because Adam was right. The way Kurt had acted was so beyond okay it was hard for him to understand why Adam hadn't simply just spat him in the face when Kurt had tried to talk to him – both back then and now.

It was, he acknowledged, a testament of exactly how much of a good guy Adam was.

“You're right. You deserved so, so much more, and the way I acted was deplorable. I owe you so much, the least of which is an explanation. It's just hard finding the right words. It's always been. And all of this, it's going to sound like a bunch of excuses, like me trying to shift the blame of my behavior onto others, I realize that. Just, this is the result of hours of therapy. Because yeah, I needed that.

“I've needed it for years.

“When I left for Lima it was only to be there for my dad. I had absolutely no intention of getting back with Blaine – he wasn't even on my radar. I was planning to come back and keep trying the dating thing with you. We were going somewhere, I thought, and I wanted to see where that was. I wanted to see what we could be. Because I looked at you, and I saw sunshine, and I liked that.

“And then I was back, and everything was closing up on me. Blaine was around from day one, everywhere that wasn't the hospital, and sometimes there too. And he was...familiar, I guess. And I know, that's not an excuse, or even a good explanation, but it's the truth.

“And the longer I was there, the harder it was to see past him. Past the memories connected to everywhere I went, past the memories all over my room, because I hadn't had the heart to clear them out. Past everyone telling me we'd been so good together, that we belonged together, that part of being a couple was forgiving each other for mistakes, on and on.

“Add that both Rachel and Santana, the only ones who knew you, kept comparing you and what we had to Blaine and what I had with him, and making it all negative. Not putting you down, just... Making you sound less. Making our relationship sound like a cheap knockoff, and all emotions between us like a pale copy of what love and passion was supposed to be. And I was enough of an idiot to think that they had a point.”

Adam's face closed off and he started standing up, making Kurt panic.

“Being with you didn't hurt!” he blurted out, terrified that Adam wouldn't let him explain. Then he flushed scarlet, as the people at the next table turned and looked at him.

“Adam, please...”

He blinked back tears as Adam sat down again, both grateful for it and terrified it'd be for nothing as Adam looked as close to furious as Kurt had ever seen him.

“What are you talking about, Kurt?”

“Do you know how many guys have been interested in me? The first was so deep in the closet that his response to kissing me – without my consent, by the way – was a death threat.

“The second was Blaine, and he only went for me after he got shot down by who he really wanted, and he wanted to change like 90% of who I was.

“The third was you.

“That's it. That's my romantic history.” Kurt swallowed back a lump of humiliation and old hurt, and continued.

“Between the two of them Blaine and David made love into something twisted. They probably didn't mean to, it just... It happened. My friends... They were always in relationships, but never truly healthy ones. There was always something, you know? Mike and Tina came close, I think, except for how they got together when she was still dating someone else.

“And my brother was going to marry Rachel, only on the day of the wedding instead of taking her to the town hall he took her to the train station and sent her to New York alone. And that's not healthy, that one person feel that they can make that kind of decision about the relationship. Of course, Rachel saying she was going to stay in Lima to marry Finn instead of going to NYADA was hardly healthy either.”

And then there was Kurt's stupid crush on Finn, and how twisted that had made things, and... Well. No need to drag up everything.

“I used to think they'd end up together some way in the end after all, but now... They loved each other, I know they did, but I don't know if they could ever have been healthy together.

“It took me quite a lot of therapy to realize that I'd pretty much told myself that it wasn't love if it didn't hurt. It took even more before I could say that love shouldn't hurt, that if it hurts there's something wrong. It took me months to be able to say that what you and I had was real. That the fact that it didn't hurt proved it was. That it could have been everything – if I'd only let it.”

Kurt hated how his voice broke and wavered, hated that even after all the work he'd put in to become stronger talking about how fucked up he'd been made him feel anything but strong.

“When I told you about what happened at the wedding you acted as if it was okay. The same happened when I wouldn't commit to you. You never pushed for more, never pressured me to do – or be – something else. And I took that as meaning that you didn't really care.

“Stupid, I know. But... It was what I knew. I didn't understand that allowing me to decide for myself was something you did because you cared – because you did like me, and because you liked me, not who you could make me into. I had forgotten what it was like to have my wishes respected, because to be honest no one's done that fully since my mom died.

“I didn't know how to be in a relationship with someone who wouldn't push for me to do as they wanted, not what I needed, who didn't try and make me less so that they could be the one looked up to. Some part of me expected you to take offense at me doing well, or use it to your own advantage. Not because of anything you did, but because it was what I was used to.

“I was fucked up, and I should have found a therapist a long time ago.”

Once he'd started it was as if he'd forgotten to keep things inside, and he just kept talking even though Adam looked at him as if he'd pulled of a mask, revealing himself as an alien. The doors were open, and everything was coming out.

“It wasn't just about romantic love either. My dad was a part of it too. He... I love him, I do, and I don't doubt that he loves me, but sometimes... Sometimes I need more. Sometimes I resent him for not giving me more.

“Dad never said it out loud, but I always knew I wasn't what he'd hoped for in a son. Parts of me, yes, but me as a whole? Never. And that made me feel as if I had to earn his love, and acceptance. It drove me into doing all kinds of things I wasn't really into, in the hope that he'd be happy.

“I learned basic mechanic skills to please dad, I watched shows that made me so bored I wanted to cry, I hid things I loved, I gave up ballet, I tried out for the football team, I tried dating a girl... All so that dad would approve. Not just of my interests, but of me.”

Saying those things hurt, because Kurt really did love his dad, and criticizing him was hard. But, they were all true, and holding back had never helped. Quite the opposite, I'd say.

“After mom died I kind of got into a mindset of doing whatever it took to keep dad – in every way. Turns out, that also meant accepting a marriage proposal because dad thought I should. I remember coming out to him, and how scared I was, because I knew that his love wasn't unconditional. I knew that I was most likely going to disappoint him, and that he might love me less for not continuing to pretend I was 'normal'. And I would have, only I felt like it was killing me. I was scared that I would lose my dad by being honest, but I was even more scared that I would lose the will to live if I wasn't.

“And then when he told me he knew, and continued to tell me he loved me even after, I was so grateful that I ignored all the warning signs. Dad loved – loves – me despite being gay, and having to accept that breaks my heart.”

“Dad hated the idea of me dating in New York, and since I never told him any of the bad things about my relationship with Blaine he thought we had been good. He liked the idea of me only being with one boy – it was the next best thing to me staying single and celibate until I turned 30 or something, you know?

“So when we broke up, and I told him it was because we couldn't do long distance, well, dad never expected us to stay broken up. He figured it was just us being young and that we'd get back together once Blaine was in New York if not before.”

It had been so obvious, or should have been, that this had been the reasoning behind Burt bringing Blaine with him to New York over Christmas. Helping the two of them reconnect. Kurt avoided even thinking about the possibility that his dad would have pushed for him to get back with Blaine even if he'd known the whole truth, but he could tell that Adam was thinking something along those lines.

“For some reason dad thought that me getting married to Blaine was a good idea, and somehow I took that as me having to do just that. As me having to repay dad's acceptance with compliance.”

He choked out the words, feeling as if his life depended on no longer holding them in. And, miracle of all miracles, Adam reached over and rested his hand on Kurt's arm in a gesture of support. Only for a few seconds, but it felt like everything Kurt could ever have asked for.

His next words came out in a whisper.

“Sometimes I wonder if me not telling dad the truth about all the ugliness in my life was because deep down I didn't trust him with it. Didn't trust him to side with me, instead of saying I deserved it for being myself.

“The same goes for the ugliness in my relationship with Blaine. I didn't tell dad, because subconsciously I didn't expect him to take my side. He... Well. Let's just say he doesn't have the best track-record when it comes to taking my side against other guys.

“And when it came down to it, he didn't this time either. When I broke off the engagement my dad immediately sided with Blaine. He didn't even stop to listen to me, or consider my wishes. In the end that was what drove me out of New York. Not Blaine stalking me, or all my friends siding with him, but my dad's failure to support me and trust that I had good reasons for my choice.”

Bringing it up still hurt so much, even after all the therapy he'd had, and Kurt knew that just a month ago he would not have been able to to have this conversation, to lay himself this bare in front of Adam.

Burt Hummel had failed as a dad, utterly and completely, and that hurt more than anything. More than his friends failing him. More than Blaine betraying him. It was almost as painful as losing Finn.

Almost, but not quite, because while it felt like Kurt had lost his dad just as brutally as he'd lost his brother, at least Burt was still alive. The option to mend the fences some day was still there.

“Anyway, that's not an excuse, just like none of it is, but it's part of why I had such a hard time believing fully in you. Having a stranger be that accepting and supportive when my blood couldn't be bothered? It had to be fake. It had to be, because I couldn't deal with what it said about my life if it wasn't. It wasn't fair to you, and you deserved so much better, but that's how it was.”

“I'm not saying we ignore everything that's happened, and just go back to dating like I never went back to Lima and got stupid. Like I didn't hurt you. I know we can't do that. Not only would it be impossible, but it also wouldn't be healthy.” He should know – he had, after all, done exactly that with Blaine. “Too much has happened, and we're not the same. At least, I'm not, and I don't really think you are either.

“But could we start again? Could we try? Because Adam, I know it was my fault, but I'm not ready to lose you. I miss you. I want you in my life. You're one of the best people I've ever met. You're someone I'd be honored to call my friend.”

Kurt almost stopped there, almost allowed fear to keep him quiet. He'd come too far though, and something told him that unless he put all his cards on the table now he'd come to regret it.

“I'm not going to lie. I'd love for us to be more than friends again – would love it if you gave me a chance to love you, because I could. So easily.

“And if you're willing to try, again, if you're willing to trust me with your heart? This time? This time I'm ready. This time I'm free to move on, to commit. It would be just the two of us, no ghosts, if you're willing to give me a chance even though I haven't deserved it.”

Kurt held his breath, impatient for an answer and scared of one at the same time. Seconds ticked by and became a minute, then two and three, and Kurt's heart sank. Maybe he was too late. Maybe he'd misread Adam, again, and all this was just about closure to the other man.

You know you had to try though. Even if nothing comes of it, you hadto. The inner whisper came, as it occasionally did these days, in Finn's voice, and Kurt listened. You had to do this for your sake, because you'd never have been truly free otherwise, but most of all? You needed to do this for him. Either way you'll be fine, little brother. You know you will. You're strong enough to stand on your own if you have to.

He was broken out of his musings by Adam drawing a shaky breath, then speaking, voice a little wavering with emotion.

“Hi. My name is Adam.”

“Hi, Adam. I'm Kurt. It's a pleasure meeting you. I don't want to be too forward, but you seem like a really amazing guy. Would you like to meet up for a cup of tea some day? Maybe catch a movie?”

And as Adam met his smile with one of his own, almost as brilliant as the ones from before, Kurt felt his heart burst with joy and the soft hum of a triumphant melody rise in his soul.

See? I told you you'll be fine. Love doesn't have to hurt, little brother. Not when you do it right. He'll show you, just you see.

~ The End ~

#chocoholic fics #ead #ead 2024 #evil author day #glee #kurt hummel #adam crawford #kadam #doesn't hurt at all 'verse

[liskantope]

A personal look back on my summer 2020

My fall semester has already been going on for a little while, but in the past week the weather has suddenly switched from hot to autumny and now it feels like the summer was a period which is truly over and which I can look back upon as (unsurprisingly) one of the most singular summers of my life.

I consider myself to be excellent at autobiographical memory, probably in the 90th percentile or so, at least when it comes to being able to recall the year or month (or sometimes week) that particular events of my life occurred.  I attribute this to often being able to connect various things that were going on in different areas of my life at the same time (rather like separate arcs in a television episode) in ways that allow me to anchor any particular memory to the time it occurred.  Sometimes there are particular time periods where the "plot arcs" of my life somehow seem to fit together really well in a united larger story or a      single flavor, whereas looking back at other periods I can with some effort remember various arcs but it's hard to hunt them out and put them together, as though they were part of a poorly-written TV episode which doesn't have any particular unity.

Summers for me have always stood apart from the years they were in (with the slight exception of the summers I spent abroad doing my first postdoc which had so little structure that my general routine was the same all year round).  This summer I often looked back at the summer of 2010 (the last divisible-by-ten year), which was an example of the former: somehow all the separate arcs going on in my life at the time -- my studying and research (sadly, this was the most recent summer when I actually felt good about how studying/research was going!), stuff that was going on in my immediate family, progress in my social life, my first forays into doing local gigs as part of a band, the weather, my      apartment/roommate situation, shows I was watching, and personal internal struggles I was facing -- feel like they were all nuances of the same flavor.  (This was back in the days that I had cable and it so happened that Curb Your Enthusiasm was on the TV Guide Channel and I was introduced to it and watched it a lot just that summer; for years afterwards the theme tune immediately brought back the emotions that came with the flavor of summer 2010.  Semi-coincidentally I've been watching a lot of Curb clips on YouTube since I noticed them appearing early this past summer.)

The following summer, summer of 2011, is an example of the latter kind of time period in my memory: I'm able to remember a bunch of separate things that went on, including a visit to Switzerland, some of the research I was trying to do, my living situation (and anticipation of a move and the shift in my social life it would bring), my discovery of the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship and being a regular attendant there the entire summer, some particular online interests, and the unpleasant bike accident I had, but it takes some effort to recall that this was all happening in the same three months.  (One thing I do distinctly remember about my living situation is that my one roommate spent most of the summer out of town and that, in anticipation of my next roommate who I knew traveled less and would be much more social, I was telling myself, "Enjoy this level of privacy now because chances are you'll never have it again." I was absolutely right in my prediction that there would be much less solitude and privacy with the next roommate who I remained living with for several years, but I sort of assumed that after that I would have found some kind of a partner to be with all the time, and... oh the irony as I sit here, still continuously partner-free, after another day of the far more intense privacy and solitude of the past six months!)

This past summer, the summer of 2020, is very, very clearly bound to become a longer-term memory of the former kind: its extreme flavor is unmistakable.  As is probably the case for most of us, my experience of summer 2020 has been shaped almost entirely shaped by the pandemic we're still in the midst of.  For me this has meant constantly being home alone (although I settled pretty soon on into a pattern of going on daily bike rides and weekly supermarket trips plus a number of other types of errands.  Also, a caveat to the rest of this paragraph is that my parents visited one weekend and that provided an exception to some of the otherwise constant conditions below.)  I became uncharacteristically super introverted and very intent on making as much research progress as possible in the absence of teaching duties. None of this has been too unpleasant, but there has been a complete and utter lack of any form of fun, both in traveling (this may hold the record of the only summer where I stayed in the same 6-mile radius the entire time) and in social events.  The one positively pleasant thing in my life this summer was discovering the most beautiful area for cycling in any place I've lived, as well as a handful of late-evening warm-summer-night walks.  The extreme degree of loneliness and the necessity of self-discipline to keep my wheels turning has been smothering, and actually I think I dealt with it much better than I would ever have imagined I could if someone had told me this was coming a year ago.

I'd say my summer was a personal success in that way and in most other ways apart from the main concrete objective of completing a research preprint, which failed quite badly and is putting my career aspirations in a very precarious place (it would have been nice to get some heavier blogging done as well).  One could say that this was a less important goal than that of not letting my mental health spiral, though, and I did succeed quite well at the latter.  (In fact, I was doing much worse in January and February than I was when the pandemic hit.)  I'm upset that my goals seem to take me much longer than I feel they should but am glad that this doesn't seem to be due to an inability to sit down and focus on the work, as was the case with research during some summers of grad school.

Part of the flavor of summer 2020 that will live on in my memory has to do with my being home alone so much of the time, never having to get near other people, in an apartment that I kept hot, that, let's just say it took me a ridiculously long time to accumulate each laundry load and there were often T-shirts draped over my sofa to be reused for an hour or two at a time over multiple days.

While I'm continuing on this gratuitously self-absorbed vein, as I've noted that I love keeping track of personal "endurance" records, I've (again unsurprisingly, because of the situation) made a bunch of them which I'll finish by taking note of here:

Longest time without stepping out of the front door: I actually was careful to make sure I never stayed entirely inside for two days in a row, but it finally happened the weekend before last (after a late Friday night walk in my complex where I may or may not have gotten back inside by midnight).  I believe it was 61 hours, or very nearly 61 hours, without exiting my apartment. This may be a lifelong record; the only other event that compares was a 2-3-day period in March 2011 when I was very feverishly ill in the wake of a snowstorm, and I don't recall how far beyond 48 hours I stayed in.

Longest time without going into my office (or even onto my campus) in over a decade of having an office: from April 2nd to August 11th.  Hardly a unique one here, but I never thought I could have handled only having my home to work in for over four months.

Longest time not going near any public transportation whatsoever, since high school: Sunday March 8th (or just after midnight on March 9th, a bus ride as the final leg of the journey home from my last trip of any sort) to 26 Sundays later on September 6th because of having to leave my bike in the shop.

Longest stretch of time not withdrawing cash or paying for something in cash: since sometime in early March and counting.  The only times I've touched the cash in my wallet at all during all of this time was on two occasions when I gave a bill to someone in need.

Longest time since age 19 not touching a drop of alcohol: since April 11th (at a virtual birthday party of a friend) and continuing.  This smashes a record from last fall of something like 54 days.

Longest time with the thermostat completely off (no use of heat or AC): from one of the last days of March to, I think, June 4th. This was nothing to do with the pandemic (in fact, it makes the pandemic situation slightly more remarkable since I've had to be home for a lot more of the time); the spring where I am was just particularly pleasant.

Longest time not shaving my facial hair: 32 days in the late summer, breaking a record from earlier in the summer of exactly a month.

There are probably other even sillier ones, such as the fact that I’m pretty sure I didn’t put on shoes from sometime at the start of June to a few days ago. You’d also think I’d break an endurance record for not uttering a spoken word to anyone, but I haven’t kept track of that.

Let’s hope future intervals in my life are much less extreme and record-breaking; that’s the gist of what I wish for everyone right now.

#personal #autobiographical memory #covid pandemic #math research #personal records #alcohol

[mediaeval-muse]

Book Review

Echo North. By Joanna Ruth Meyer. Salem: Page Street Publishing, 2019.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: YA fantasy

Part of a Series? No

Summary: Echo Alkaev’s safe and carefully structured world falls apart when her father leaves for the city and mysteriously disappears. Believing he is lost forever, Echo is shocked to find him half-frozen in the winter forest six months later, guarded by a strange talking wolf—the same creature who attacked her as a child. The wolf presents Echo with an ultimatum: If she lives with him for one year, he will ensure her father makes it home safely. But there is more to the wolf than Echo realizes. In his enchanted house beneath a mountain, each room must be sewn together to keep the home from unraveling, and something new and dark and strange lies behind every door. When centuries-old secrets unfold, Echo discovers a magical library full of books-turned-mirrors, and a young man named Hal who is trapped inside of them. As the year ticks by, the rooms begin to disappear, and Echo must solve the mystery of the wolf’s enchantment before her time is up, otherwise Echo, the wolf, and Hal will be lost forever.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: blood, violence

Overview: I picked up this book on recommendation from a friend, who also recommended Rosamund Hodge’s Cruel Beauty. I’m always looking for a fun fairy tale retelling, and there were parts of this book that I found clever and enchanting. What prompted me to give this book a middling rating was not the book’s concept or the author’s imagination, but the writing. I felt like Meyer didn’t take advantage of the opportunities for rich descriptions - either of her magical settings or character emotions - and as a result, I think the prose prevented me from fully engaging with the characters or the fantasy world.

Writing: As I said above, the descriptions in this book are rather sparse. While I’m not advocating for lengthy paragraphs that pile detail upon detail, I do think that Meyer could have offered more to make her story feel more vivid. She has some nice turns of phrases and metaphors here and there, but on the whole, I didn’t feel like her prose brought her world to life. For example, when Echo (our protagonist) arrives at the magical house and has her first meal, she describes the banquet: “I sampled little bits of everything: the meat was tender, the fruit summer-sweet, the soup hot and rich with flavor. The glass of pink liquid tasted lightly of honey and berries, and fizzled pleasingly on my tongue.” While I don’t need a catalog of all the food, I did find this description lacking - it doesn’t exactly impart any feeling of richness to me. The same is true for descriptions of the house. Descriptions are given matter-of-factly, without taking advantage of language to impart a sense of otherworldly or magical beauty. Doors are simply red, blue, green, or some other color, stairs are made of dragon scales or paper, some doors are carved with birds or trees. I wanted to be dazzled by this house, but in the end, nothing really popped for me.

The lack of rich descriptions also made for problems in portraying character emotions. While characters would sometimes act in ways that indicated how they were feeling, I felt like a lot of emotions were simply told to us. It felt like Echo (who narrates the story using a first person perspective) had very little interiority, and that her narration was keeping her at a distance from the reader. Meyer attempts to make up for this, I think, with a quirk of hers, which is to repeat something two or three times or to put something in italics. For example, when Echo and Ivan (a guide she hires to take her through the wilderness) slip through some ice, Echo describes rescuing Ivan as “I wrap my other hand tight around Ivan’s arm, and pull” or, when describing emotion, Meyer writes “he wept and wept.” It wasn’t overly irritating, but it happened enough for me to notice as a pattern.

I also thought that the prose was lacking in terms of pace. The entire book seemed to progress at roughly the same pace, which made some parts feel rushed and others feel slow. While it may not be a problem for readers who like their stories to move along, I found that it rushed through events that I would have liked to see explored more or given more emotional weight. It gets a bit better in Part 2, but I still would argue that with all the travel scenes, the pace might not suit some readers.

Plot: The plot of this book follows your typical “Beauty and the Beast” or “Cupid and Psyche” structure. A girl is taken to the home of a prince (or lord, or what have you), the latter cursed by a witch to appear monstrous by day. The prince makes clear that the girl must not look at him at night (which is when he changes back to his true form), lest he be taken by the witch forever. You can probably guess the rest.

In terms of remaking or subverting this plot structure, Meyer doesn’t do anything I’d call revolutionary. It proceeds as one might expect. Where this book shines, however, is in the details that make it unique. For example, the magical house that Echo must routinely “rebind” (something akin to stabilizing) using her magical needle and thread was a lovely image, and the threat of its “unbinding” was intriguing. The library of mirror-books, too, was a wonderful addition, and was an interesting way to think about how we “experience” stories. I also really liked the transformation scene (which readers might be familiar with if they know the story of Tam Lin, for example). The transformations really hammered home how scary and dangerous it might be to hold on to someone as they change form, and I think Meyer handled it well. I also think the stuff she does with time was clever (though I won’t spoil it for you).

But by far the biggest flaw in the plot is the lack of shape. While I got the sense that Echo wanted to help the Wolf, there were so many scenes of her wandering (the house, the mirror-books, the frozen wilderness) that I couldn’t see how scenes built upon one another to progress towards some kind of end; scenes simply happened. I also would have liked to see a recurring theme wound into the plot. While there are some (self-acceptance, the power of stories, etc.), they aren’t really integral to the unfolding of the plot. They’re just kind of there.

Characters: This story is told from the first person perspective of Echo, a sixteen year old girl who was disfigured as a child by the very wolf who pressures her to live with him years later (this isn’t a spoiler - it happens right away). Echo was a refreshing protagonist in that she wasn’t always confident in herself and didn’t have that “pretty but thinks she’s plain” vibe. However, I also found her to be a little too perfect. She reads so much about anatomy that she has basic healing skills, she teaches herself piano, and learns to fence so she can be somewhat competent in any given battle situation. Her only real faults are that she tries to help others too much - she tries to please her stepmother, but ends up angering her by being better at piano; she tries to rescue the Wolf, but accidentally angers him, etc. I wanted a little more nuance from her, some real flaw that she could grow from. I think her scars suggested that her character growth was one of self-acceptance, but I don’t think it was strong enough or woven into the plot other than the moments when she expresses some angst.

The Wolf (our “beast” in this “Beauty and the Beast” tale) is likewise a little void of flaws or interesting personality. He’s mostly there to teach Echo how to care for the house and to be mopey about his impending fate, dropping bits of lore or information when needed. I honestly didn’t get a real sense of why Echo ended up feeling affection for him, other than he was kind. Even when we learn of his connection with the mirror-books (and that’s all I’ll say about that), I didn’t quite understand the appeal. I did like the reveal towards the end of his true motives, but I do wish there was more to him so that we could see why Echo feels things for him.

Supporting characters were likewise a little flat for me. Echo’s stepmother was a bit too stereotypically nasty, the Wolf Queen lacking motivation or nuance, and Mokosh (a fellow reader) a bit too convenient. I never got the sense that they were characters, mostly just archetypes.

Other: This book doesn’t have a lot of proper worldbuilding, which may please some readers, but annoy others. Echo’s village is never really named and we don’t know how magic really works or how it fits in with the non-magical world. I was a bit bothered by the lack of worldbuilding because it meant that I wasn’t fully aware of the limits or rules of the magic, nor did I get a strong Slavic “flavor” to the story.

Recommendations: I would recommend this book if you’re interested in

fairy tale retellings (especially “Beauty and the Beast” or “Cupid and Psyche”)

enchanted houses

Slavic folklore

#book reviews

[shawnpetermuffins]

I Miss You

A/n: I hope this is good because I put this off for so long wanting to do it justice. And this is based very loosely off I Miss you.

Summary: you two broke up recently, and it's not sitting well with Shawn, even though he's the reason you broke up.

Requested by @it-isnt-in-myy-blood: Hi, I recently listened to the song 'I Miss you' (Clean Bandit, Julia Michaels). Maybe you could write a fic based on the song, angsty but with a fluff ending? Thank you... ❤️

***

Kinda_yourname

2,158 likes

Kinda_yourname Cabo sunsets >>>> anything else

•

It may have only been a week, but I'm missing it here! 😭

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I shut my phone off and toss it to the end of the bed. I should have been with her on that trip, but tour got in the way. I got in the way. It's crazy to think that if you asked me three weeks ago, I would have said that my girlfriend and I could overcome any obstacle thrown at us. But ask me again a week later, and I would tell you I was wrong. That being away from her for months at a time was too much for me and I broke it off because I thought it would be what was best for both of us in the end.

Now ask me if I still believe that.

I don't.

I haven't told anyone about us yet. I mean, everyone probably suspects because there haven't been Amy preshow FaceTime calls for good luck, and I'm not texting like a madman during dinner or when we're on our way to the venues. And I know she hasn't said anything to anyone either. How? Because for one, she hasn't blocked me on any social media - I know, I've checked at least ten times just within the last two hours. And two, she hasn't deleted the three pictures of us that she has on her Instagram. They're still there for everyone to see, me included.

Now my fingers are hovering over the keyboard and I'm staring at her name on my phone which is still My Love 😍, and I'll probably never change it. Because she is my love, and to strip her of that title because I'm an idiot just isn't fair.

Hey... I miss you

I type and backspace and type and backspace at least ten times. Because I want to text her. I want so badly to text her, but what if she doesn't want to hear from me? I wouldn't blame her if she didn't want to. I was the worst. Breaking up with her over the phone, no less because I was hurting being away from her. Never once did it occur to me that, yeah, she was hurting too. Or maybe she's with someone else. Maybe she's found somebody new. I want her happy, sure. But I selfishly still want to be the one that makes her happy.

Y/n I miss you.

I delete it one last time and open my photo gallery. I have an album saved for photos of us. Photos that I never got to post because she wanted to keep us as private as possible without being a secret. Which is why both of us only have 3 photos of each other on our Instagram. One for our six months, a year, and a year and a half. Two more months and we would have had a fourth picture.

I'm swiping through the photos landing on one I took of her when we were flying back to Canada after our first trip together. We're on a private jet because this was before we went public with our relationship. Andrew made sure that we weren't seen together in the airport or anything. She's sitting in the seat across the aisle from me, legs up to her chest, earphones in, head resting on her knees as she smiles brightly at me. There's another one of us curled up together on this tiny chair in a green room in the UK that Andrew sent me. She's literally curled into a ball on my lap, sleeping peacefully and my legs are spread in front of me, arms wrapped tightly around her body, head resting against the back of the seat.

The next one Brian took. We were at my place for a very impromptu new years party. It was just gonna be me and y/n, but she insisted we invite the guys over. And we did. It was one of the best nights of my life. We're watching the ball drop, with her in my lap, arm around my shoulder. I have one arm behind her back, the other on her thigh. I think Brian knew something was going to happen because at ten seconds to midnight he pulled his phone out and captured out first new years kiss. She's holding my face and I'm practically leaning her back against the couch. It looks like I'm seconds away from crawling on top of her, and it be honest, I probably was. She's just too perfect for me to resist.

Then there's one that Josiah took of us just a few months ago at the studio house. I had y/n on the kitchen counter, she was in these jean shorts that I loved her in and a button up that she'd stolen from my suitcase. Not that I was complaining. It looked far better on her than it did on me. I stood between her legs, my hands on her sides, slipping under the shirt a little bit, leaning her hips exposed. Not that either of u cared with her fingers threaded in my hair as casually as they were. My face is blocked by her figure, but there isn't a doubt in my mind that I was smiling entirely too wide standing between her legs.

The video that follows knocks the breath out of me. She giggling like crazy, but the camera isn't on her, it's on me. On my back, more specifically. She laughs even more when I wince at the feel of her fingers on my red, raw skin that is now home of her fingernail scratches.

"Baby? What happened to your back?" She asked, amused.

"Don't know," I said, turning to face her, my cheeks still holding a slight blush. "But I think the real question is, what happened to your neck, missy?" I pluck the phone from her hands and turn the camera to her where she's trying to cover her face. I manage, however, to take her hands in my free one and the camera focuses on the flourishing bruises that litter her beautiful neck, my favorite place to rest my head.

I close my eyes, the memory of that night filling my mind. Watching her come down from her high, my face still buried between her legs. The weight and cold touch of her hands as she pulled me up to her, into her, because she needed me closer. I can hear myself murmuring the words 'I love you' all over her skin, still remember the way her back arched when I hit the right spot again and again and her finger ran down my back over and over, once more and she probably would have drawn blood. And I may not be home, but I can smell her on the sheets, that constant aroma of warm vanilla penetrating my nostrils. God, do I miss her.

I'm only making it worse for myself by doing this, I know that. But I should feel bad. I lost the greatest thing in my life and I didn't need to. So I got back to our messages, but instead of going to type a new one, I scroll through, reading through our old texts. There's countless paragraphs of us professing our love for each other. Lots of random pictures sent, most from my side. There's conversations about getting a home together, and a dog. And her telling me how much she loves my family and me telling her how much they love her, how much they ask about her. It's all hitting me too hard right now.

And it doesn't help that im literally sobbing at 2 in the morning, in Paris. The city of love. The place she told me was her favorite trip to ever take with me. Where we stood atop the eiffle tower and I gave her a promise ring, a ring that said I would love her and keep her forever. A promise ring that was now probably in the ocean in Cabo because I tore us apart so easily.

I sit up suddenly, struggling to catch my breath. It takes a few minutes, but I'm able to pull myself out of this empty bed that would only be comfortable with y/n laying next to me. I'm scrambling through the room, picking up the pair of jeans I threw off my body earlier and slipping back into them. I find a torn work out shirt in the bottom of my back and push my head and arms through before throwing my youth hoodie over my already overheated upper body. My passport is sitting in my guitar case, and I grab both things without a second thought. My suitcase trailing behind me.

It's difficult booking a flight and carrying a suitcase and guitar all at once, but I get along just well enough and adjust myself in the lobby while I wait for a taxi. I don't text Andrew until I've made it to the airport and am in my seat on the plane, ready for take off.

Emergency... had to fly home. Promise to make it back in time for the Paris show.

And I turn my phone off before he can text or call me back. Because there isn't a damn thing that he could say that would keep me there in a city that's meant for lovers, when my lover is across the world instead of laying in my arms the way she should be.

I know I shouldn't be doing this. I know there is someone out there who is better for her. Someone who isn't constantly on the move. Someone who can come home to her every night and help her make dinner. Someone who can cuddle her until she falls asleep when she's having a particularly bad day. I know there's someone who can do those things.

But I also know that he won't love her the way I do. He won't know all the little things that I do. Like how she only uses a blue toothbrush. Always has. And he won't notice the tiny scar that she has on her right middle finger from when we tried to make dinner together one night and she cut herself. He probably won't know that she wakes up at 3:34 every single night, because she hasn't been able to sleep fully and soundly through the night since she was four years old. And he'll mess up the way she likes her tea, using tea bags instead of leaves. (She like the herbal taste that you get when you use the leaves. And she likes when you do two scoops of them, and two scoops of sugar, but just cane sugar, the rock sugar makes it too earthy. And of course, she drinks it on ice because she hates burning her tongue with hot drinks.)

I'm thinking way too much as I get off the plane, reluctantly turning my phone back on only to see texts from just about everyone I know. They're all asking where I am, but I ignore them, because what I'm about to do is far more important than anything they threaten me with. I have to make things right.

Standing in front of this door that I've stood in front of hundreds of times should make me feel at ease. Remembering all the times I had her pressed against the other side of the door because I just couldn't wait to have her all to myself. But if anything, it's making me more nervous. So nervous that my hands are shaking, palms sweating, my breathing is jagged and I know if I don't knock right now I might never get the chance again and I can't lose her for real this time. So without giving myself the chance to rethink, I knock on the door three times and I wait, handing in the pocket of my hoodie.

I wait a solid thirty seconds, which feel like an eternity, before the door finally opens and I see my beautiful girl. Her face is bare, hair only halfway straightened, and she's in those shorts I love and my old Led Zepplin t-shirt.

"Shawn," my name still sounds like heaven spilling from her lips. "What are you doing here?" She crosses and then uncrosses her arms, shifting her weight from one leg to the other before standing completely straight.

I didn't even realize I was crying until I sniffled and heard my voice crack with just three words, "I miss you."

"Shawn," she shook her head.

"I tried not to," I insisted, still standing like a fool on her door step. "I swear I did. But I couldn't stop. I looked through all our pictures and texts, and I couldn't stop myself from missing you. And I know I have no right to because I broke things off. But I was in Paris and I was miserable because Paris was your favorite place, and that was where I promised to love you forever, and I'm still keeping that promise. I was an idiot," I continue to ramble. "If there's a better word for that, then I'm that too, because I thought it would be easier if I broke things off. This tour was going to be so long and to go that long without each other, I was scared that it wouldn't be enough for you. But it's not what I wanted, y/n. It's not, and I just-"

"Shawn, stop."

I shut my mouth instantly, ready for her to tell me to leave. But what she does instead throws me completely off guard. She pulls me into the apartment and wraps her arms around my neck, burying her head deep in my chest.

"I miss you, too." She mumbles and I exhale slowly, only to inhale that scent that I love so much. The scent that is naturally her. She starts to pull away, and even though I don't want her to, I let her but she only leans back enough to take my face in her hands and before I even have time to blink, her soft lips are on mine and I'm whole again.

She's mine again and I'm never letting her go.

***

Tags: @curlyshawny @shawns-badreputation @anamariel2301 @bbellbagel

This took me longer to write than it should have, but I kinda really like it. I hope you enjoyed and I'll see you Wednesday for more content! 💙

Like, reblog, and leave feedback!!

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes one shot #shawn peter raul #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes smut #smfsource

[jungkookienoona]

Would You Like A Taste? (M)

|Part 1|Part 2|

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Summary:

Jungkook has to face the consequences of his actions.

Genre: Smut, Vampire AU, Supernatural, elements of erotic horror

Pairing: Vampire!Jungkook X Reader (Y/N)

Warnings: Swearing, Sexual Situations, Blood, slight cannibalism (it’s like a 3 sentence paragraph), Jungkook’s personality flip-flops between precious bunny and sadist.

Would You Like A Taste has taken 2 years and has been in development since before Can I Have A Taste was rewritten please show it and me some love. I love getting asks or reading tags in reblogs. And remember, my writing can’t improve without feedback.

Word Count: 6769

Jungkook snapped out of his haze when his lips met yours. What had he done? He had only given into his lust for a moment, he didn’t think it would lead into a bloodlust. He fell to his knees with you in his arms. He never wanted to hurt you. His main priority was keeping you safe. But you just had to change your regular Friday routine.

He remembered following your scent to the club; you had looked so beautiful and he couldn’t help the old feelings that crept up. How he had crushed hard on you, how he had been planning on asking you on a date. How he never got that opportunity because he got talked into going to some stupid party, where he found himself getting cornered by some chick and waking up in a ditch about a week later.

“No… No no no no! Shit!”

One of his hands stroked the hair out of your face while the other held you firm to him, your breathing growing shallower by the second. How could he fix this? Could he save you at all? His heart sank at the only option that presented itself. No. He couldn’t do that to you. But time was running out.

“Please don’t hate me Noona.” He whispered before biting down on his own wrist.

A member of staff at the club discovered your lifeless body in the alley. She shrieked drawing the attention of others in the vicinity. It wasn’t long before the police turned up.

After a few days of investigation, it was deduced that your death was due to the over-consumption of alcohol. Your family to arrange your funeral, quickly wanting you to be at peace as soon as possible. They made sure you were buried in your hometown near the graves of your ancestors. The funeral was a family event so strange looks were given to the young man dressed in a black suit who stood near the back. He watched as the members of your family went up to your open casket saying their last tearful goodbyes; waiting patiently for them all to have their turn so that he would be the last to approach. When his time finally came, he was slow to move. Guilt washed over him. He was the reason you were in there, why your family would never see you again. Upon seeing your pallored face he couldn’t hold back the need to touch you, a hand coming to rest on your cheek. You were cold.

“This was never meant to happen... It’s all my fault... I’m so sorry Noona. I’m sorry” His voice was barely louder than the deafening silence as tears ran unbidden down his cheeks, falling to his knees.

Your family watched him break down into sobs; the young man dressed in black that no one knew yet vaguely recognised.

A month passed and there was still no sign of life from you. Jungkook had been sat by your grave every night with a shovel, waiting to dig you up. But as more time passed the more he grew to doubt himself. He hadn’t been quick enough. He had drained you of too much blood. Those thoughts circled his mind for hours on end as he sat there waiting. He even wore the same black suit that he had worn to your funeral. He watched as the colours of the sky changed from navy to black and then eventually to the peach of dawn. His head hung low, accepting the fact that he had killed you, that you would not be waking up and he would not be able to beg for your forgiveness. The sun began to crest on the horizon and Jungkook picked himself off the ground. He was reaching for his shovel when he heard it. When he heard you.

You woke with a gasp, surrounded by darkness. The fuck was going on? Where were you? Last thing you remembered was getting fucked in an alley outside the club and blood red eyes. Your breathing grew rapid as you realised you couldn’t see a thing and as you wriggled in your panicked state you found you were shut in a confined space. You were so focused on yourself you didn’t hear the sound of metal scraping against dirt at an inhuman speed. But what you did notice was the sudden light that shone into, what you now realised to be, your coffin as Jungkook wrenched the lid open. His smile was almost as radiant and bright as the dawn light that haloed him.

“Noona!” He shouted in glee.

“Asshole!” You shouted back with venom.

Jungkook’s smile dropped which brought you some satisfaction. His face became serious as he placed a hand over your eyes.

“Go back to sleep Noona. Don’t worry I’m taking you somewhere safe.”

Almost as if he had cast a spell over you, you fell back into darkness.

As soon as you had called him ‘asshole’ Jungkook knew you would struggle against him. It would be much easier to carry an unconscious you than a kicking and scratching you. So, he did the first thing that came to mind. He used his creator bond to knock you out.

The second time you woke up, you were on a plush sofa in a large living room. You sat up, taking in your surroundings. The sofa you were on was pink and Victorian-esque while the walls were teal and were decorated with what appeared to be family photos. Your curiosity got the better of you. You got off the sofa, walking up to the pictures. The first one that caught your eye was a group picture. Jungkook was in the centre, awkwardly smiling with six older looking boys surrounding him. Two of them had a hand on his shoulders, a guy with purple hair and a brunette. That wasn’t the only group picture of them either, nearly every picture on the wall was one. Except for six of them. In the six remaining pictures, each boy other than Jungkook was paired up with what appeared to be their significant other. You almost felt bad for him. Until you remembered what he had done to you. Anger flowed fresh through your veins once more.

“Yah! Jungkook-ah! Where are you?” You took another look around, “What the fuck is this place?!”

You heard footsteps approaching after. From the sounds of it they were coming from above you then down a staircase and when they stopped a sheepish Jungkook poked his head through the door. He had finally changed his clothes for the first time in a month. Not that you would’ve known. He was now wearing a form fitting white top that had a few holes here and there with three-quarter-length sleeves, and a pair of leather trousers that clung to his muscular legs like they were painted on. It appeared he had decided to forgo wearing shoes.

“You’re awake again.”

“No shit Sherlock; now tell me where I am.”

“We’re in my  family’s home.”

“Family?” Confusion was evident in your tone.

“Pop culture would call us a ‘coven’ but thanks to Twilight, we hate that word.”

Well... that explained nothing to you. You saw him take a step towards and instinctively took a step back. His features looked pained at your action.

“Please... Noona... don’t be afraid of me.”

Don’t be afraid of him? After what he had done to you? Did he really think he could get away with it?

“YOU KILLED ME!”

You noticed a newspaper, the front page had a picture of you smiling and the title read ‘Girl found dead in alley by female bartender’. A bit of a long-winded title that gave away the entire story of the article and it seemed a bit strange that there happened to be a newspaper with what happened to you on its front cover in the room; but it helped you to know what had happened.

“You left me in an alley to be found by a bartender?! The poor girl is probably traumatised!” Your voice portrayed how scandalised you felt at having been left there like that.

“I left you there for you own good! At least you got found.”

“I DIED! You should’ve taken me to a hospital!”

“It was too late, Noona. I didn’t have time. I had no choice but to turn yo-”

“Don’t try and reason your way out of this-”

“Y/N, please listen to me-”

“If you say that you did this for my own good, I swear I will-”

“I KILLED YOU. I was selfish. I drained you of your blood and this was the only way…” His fists were clenched as his voice strained with emotion at first before quieting down to a barely heard whisper, tears in his eyes threatening to spill over. “I lost control. I wanted you so bad and you felt so good… It brought up a hunger for you I didn’t know I had.”

You diverted your gaze, taking another step back when he reached for you.

“Kookie…”

His eyes widened, the nickname striking a cord, “Kookie?”

You shuffled from foot to foot.

“Jungkook…”

He stepped closer and you stepped back; your back coming into contact with a wooden side table causing a vase of flowers to wobble and fall. He caught it, placing it back on the surface but not retracting his hand from beside you. You were pinned in.

“Noona, please. You have to understand.”

“How could I possibly understand?! You disappeared! Do you know how many nights I stayed up crying when you vanished? Then you suddenly reappeared years later looking almost unrecognisable! You killed me on something less than a whim!”

You pushed his chest, Jungkook stumbled backwards at the force.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“Noona…”

He reached for you again and you stumbled to the side, knees giving out. He was there, catching you before you fell with his arms around your waist as you both sunk to the floor. Your head was tucked against his chest and at first, he thought you had passed out until he heard a sniffle. He brushed a hand over your forehead, pushing back your fringe.

“You cried when I was gone? I thought you wouldn’t have cared.”

“Of course I cared. You were the sweet dongsaeng that kept sneaking snacks and vitamins into my bag when you thought I wasn’t looking while I was studying in the library.”

He was silent for a moment, hand carding through your hair,

“I was planning to ask you out before I was turned. But I went to a party, I was turned under similar circumstances to you… just without the sex.” He let out a soft chuckle at the last part.

You snorted, “Definitely wasn’t expecting to be shoved up against a wall and fucked by a vampire who just so happened to be my middle school crush.”

You felt his hand still, “I-I was your crush?”

Your cheeks grew warmer.

“Uh… surprise?”

He laughed to himself, nuzzling his nose into your hair, “I should’ve asked you out sooner. I’m so stupid.”

There was a pause in the conversation as you took a moment to think about how you would word what you wanted to say next.

“How long was I dead for?”

“A month. I almost lost hope. But at least you had a funeral; which I attended by the way, accidentally made quite the scene too. When I was turned I woke up in a ditch on a country road. I was lucky to have been found wandering lost and confused by Namjoon before I could attack someone.”

You finally looked up at him, your gaze meeting his as you realised that even though he was the one that killed you, he had at least shown some remorse and tried to give you a better start in your unlife than he had had. Even if that did mean leaving your body in an alley.

“The person that turned you… did you ever see them again?”

A grimace appeared on his lips as his eyes hazed over in memory, “I killed her about 2 months after I woke up, with the rest of my new family’s help. We had to wait for the creator bond to wear off before I could confront her but the other members kept tabs on where she was. Turns out she was considered a criminal in the vampire world.” He saw your puzzled look. “There’s a limit on how many we are allowed to turn, to keep our numbers in check. But she went way over the limit, basically turning anyone she bit. So my revenge was not looked down upon, I was getting rid of a pest.”

You felt your stomach drop at the thought of Jungkook being able to murder in cold blood. At least your death was more or less an accident on his part. But his creator’s death was premeditated. That wasn’t the Kookie you knew. Almost as if he could sense the fear that was making itself known to you again he pulled you closer to him in an attempted to comfort you.

“I was angry, Noona, much like you were- are. I had my life snatched away from me. My future was gone. I couldn’t see my family, friends or you again. I think that’s the thing that angered me most actually. That she had stolen my opportunity to ask you on a date. Even if it turns out you would’ve rejected me, I had wanted that opportunity to see if my feelings were returned.”

He had shifted you a bit while he was talking so that he could nuzzled into your neck and take in your scent, almost like he was trying to use it to soothe himself as shadows of his hatred towards his creator returned.

“You mentioned a ‘creator bond’. What is it that exactly?”

He hesitated for a second then leaned back to look at you again.

“It’s a type of… control that allows creators to control their creations for a month after they wake. It’s how I got you to fall back to sleep.”

Your eyes widened in alarm knowing that he could take away your free will at any moment, that he had already done so once. He felt you tense.

“I promise to use it as a last resort. Like if you present yourself as a danger.”

“How can I trust you not to abuse that power?”

“Because I never wanted this for you… I love you, always have. It’s never faded. But after what I’ve done to you I don’t blame you for distrusting me… If it will make you feel more comfortable I could ask one of the members’ mates to look after you for the first month? They live next door.”

You found yourself confused again. So much so it over rid your fear. Mates? These ‘mates’ living next door?

“What are mates?”

He smiled fondly at you, you felt his grip on you tighten slightly.

“‘Mates’ is short for soulmate. You know, people we’re destined to be with. Most mates are turned by the other. Though that wasn’t the case for Jin-hyung. He said that he met his mate a couple centuries ago because she was following him. He confronted her and, apparently, she had told him she couldn’t help herself, he was just too handsome.”

You laughed. You didn’t know who this Jin was but you laughed. Because from Jungkook’s tone of voice, he didn’t believe Jin’s story. You were somewhat surprised at how short lived your anger towards him was, being replaced by curiosity instead as he explained aspects of the life you would now be living.

“If you’re destined to be with them, why do you live separately?”

“Yoongi-hyung told me it was ‘to stop an eternity together from getting boring’. And though we’re one big family, we all like to have our alone time at points. You can’t exactly have that when sharing a room.”

“You said I could live with them if I wanted to. Implying that it would be fine if I decide I want to stay here with you. Why is it fine that I stay?”

He chuckled, finding your inquisitiveness cute.

“Because you’re unmated. And you’re the newbie. It just coincidence that all the females decided to live together. We would be totally okay with co-ed housing.”

“Oh… how does someone get a mate?”

One of his arms let go of you, his free hand coming up to awkwardly scratch that back of his neck, red dusting his cheeks. You realised that he was giving you what could be considered Vampire Sex Ed.

“Well first, you have to be a vampire. Then, uh, then… then you need to um… do the do…” You giggled at his awkwardness, this was the Kookie you knew. “When doing the do… uh I mean… when you’re nearing your finish… you and your partner need to b-b-bite each other and take in some of their blood. It creates a mating bond that leaves a permanent mark on the area you were bitten.”

As Jungkook described how vampires become mates you couldn’t help but think back to how you died. He had bitten you as he came. Something in your head clicked as the two pieces of information came together.

“K-K-Kookie… I think you tried to mate with me-”

“What?!”

You saw emotions flicker across his face. First confusion, then understanding, then embarrassment.

“Oh god.” His forehead came to rest on your shoulder as he came to realise that you were probably correct. The actions of that night matching up to the actions he had just described. “Lord kill me now.”

“Where would the fun be in that? I think you should continue living so you can look at me and forever be reminded that you tried to mate a non-vampire. Live with the shame.”

“Noona~!” He howled in humiliation, his face moving from your shoulder to your neck as if doing so could help him vanish into thin air. You had to stop yourself from shivering at the feel of his breath on your skin.

“Did your hyungs not educate you well enough?”

At that he lifted his head to look at you again, looking almost scandalised that you would try and place some of the blame on his hyungs. Then a playful glare made its way onto his features.

“They did. But I think I just love you so much I temporarily lost all rationality. You looked fucking hot that night Noona. Like damn.”

A thought came to mind.

“Jungkook, you ripped off my panties that night. Please tell me I was found wearing underwear.”

“Does it look like I carry a spare pair of panties in my pocket?”

“You could have given me your own.”

“I was commando, Noona, you know that! You saw!”

“I’m sorry if my memory is a bit foggy I was DEAD for a MONTH!”

At that reminder, his face fell a little, he gaze turning away from you as he scratched the back of his neck again.

“I went back to yours and grabbed a pair before rushing back to you. So, yes, you were found wearing underwear.” A small smile graced his lips at the thought of having done something right.

You couldn’t help but stare at him as he smiled, you brain noticing how much he had changed, physically. When you had last saw him, human him, he was a sweet 14-year-old with puppy fat, wide eyes and an emo style hair do. He had very much reminded you of a cute bunny. It was part of the reason you had had a crush on him. But now the Kookie that held you in his arms was chiselled, with a jawline as sharp as a knife. His eyes were still wide and doe-like but they held a maturity to them that hadn’t been there when he was younger. He had even had a growth spurt because you could remember him being shorter than you; now he towered over you. He was no longer a small fluffy bunny but a grown predator. It made him attractive in a different way. This observation caused a new question to bubble to your lips.

“I thought vampires didn’t age. Why don’t you look the same as you did back then?”

“A lot of my physical changes happened as a direct result of being turned. It kind of put my puberty into overdrive. When I looked at myself for the first time after being turned, I had completely missed out on maturing naturally and the person staring back at me was a full-grown adult. The clothes I had worn when I was turned were very… snug.”

Your eyes widened in shock. If he had changed after being turned, had you? Your hands flew to your face mapping out the surface of it to see if you could feel any changes. All you noticed was that your lingering acne problem had disappeared.

“Don’t worry, you still look like my beautiful Noona.”

You blushed.

“You still haven’t told me if you want to spend your first month here or in the mates’ house.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“I want what makes you feel most comfortable.”

You took a second to think about it before looking at him and smiling.

“I think what would make me most comfortable would be staying with familiar face.”

The smile he gave you could’ve rivalled the sun in its brightness. You felt his hand twist in the material at the base of your spine and instinctively arched into the touch. Your chest grazed his and were suddenly aware of how close you were. His eyes, slightly narrowed as he too was wrapped up in the tension, glistened in the light streaming through the parted curtains behind you. You held your breath. If you were to lean in… His head dipped, lips meeting yours tenderly, so different to the rushed hungry kisses of the night you died. You almost felt like that Jungkook and the Jungkook that held you in his arms were two different people. One was dangerous and all-consuming the other gentle and loving. He broke the kiss, pulling away to look at you with half-lidded eyes.

“I’ve missed the feel of your lips,” He breathed, eyes falling shut as he rested his forehead against yours, “I don’t expect you to forgive me easily, I know that you must resent me for what I’ve done. Nor do I expect you to love me like I do you. Knowing that you once reciprocated my feelings when I was human is enough for now.”

You felt the need to reach out to him, to comfort him. But one last thing lingered in your thoughts.

“You… On that night, you said you had been wanting me for a while, yet today you say that you never wanted to hurt me. Which one is the truth?”

“Both.”

You frowned, anger bubbling in you again but he continued speaking, not giving you the opportunity to voice it.

“After I killed my creator you were all I could think about. Were you safe? Were you healthy? Had you been accepted into that specialist highschool I had overheard you talking about every now and then in middle school? I had spent nearly every night years patrolling the area you lived in to make sure it was vampire free. There were a few incidents but they were dealt with quickly.”

He shifted the both of you so he was led on the floor with your head resting on his chest as you led beside him. One of his arms rested behind his own head while his free hand stroked your hair, the sensation soothing you causing you to relax into him.

“At the same time, I craved you. I wanted nothing more than to hold you in my arms, to hear you moan my name, to taste the salt of your skin on my tongue. I wanted to watch you wither in pleasure that only I could give. And until that night I had been successful in holding back those desires.”

You felt a faint trickle of desire spread through you at his words but couldn’t stop yourself from trying to embarrass him.

“And you ended up trying to mate me but killed me instead.”

“Obviously I didn’t realise what I was trying to do at the time.”

“Does that mean you would try to mate me again?”

“Would you be adverse to it?”

“Depends, will I die?”

“For fuck sake Noona, I just explained it all to you.” He playfully slapped your arm as a show of mock agitation, you looked up at him confused.

“Yeah, I didn’t feel that.”

“Really? I put at least some effort into that,” You nodded causing him to grin like a cheshire cat, “I made a sturdy one. I don’t have to worry about breaking you now.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Answer my question and I’ll let you know what I meant.”

You looked away from him, a light blush on your cheeks as you thought about what he had asked moments earlier. Would you be against it? He had killed you and you were still pissed about it to an extent. But at the same time you died because he was just following instinct, he didn’t mean to kill you. And if mates were people destined to be together, was it fate that Jungkook didn’t know what the fuck he was doing? That he had unknowingly tried to mate a human.

“I’m not exactly against it. Doesn’t mean I forgive you… just… the sex was good.”

“Would you like another taste?” He said, quirking an eyebrow.

You sat up, “Another taste of what?”

“Me.”

“I don’t think I have tasted you, Kook.”

“Well, I’m not wearing underwe-”

“Are you asking me to-”

“Yes.”

“You really are a master of seduction.”

Jungkook waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Don’t worry I shall teach you my ways”

“You ain’t teaching me shit”

“But Noona~!”

You straddled his lap causing him to look shook. You wiggled a bit to get comfortable accidentally creating friction over his crotch. Jungkook went from being shook to closing his eyes and moaning at your actions, hands coming up to your hips to stop you from moving so much.

“Noona, I need your answer, will you accept me as your mate? Because if you don’t want to or not ready then you need to get off me right now.”

You smirked, a plan forming in your mind, “And what would happen if I don’t move?”

“If you don’t then I’ll have you under me begging for me to mark you as mine. I’ll fuck you until your voice turns hoarse from screaming my name and my name alone. I won’t stop until you know how much I want you for myself. How much I need to have you. I’ve already gone so many years without you, I’m not willing to go a day more if I can.”

Your breathing stopped at the slight growl to his voice combined with his words. That little trickle of desire had suddenly become raging, you never knew such possessiveness could make you wet. He hadn’t even touched you. You placed your hands on his chest as your hips involuntarily ground against his growing hardness, a whimper escaping from you. You hadn’t realised your eyes had closed until a feral sound from Jungkook caused them to snap open. He grabbed the front of your dress, using it as leverage to pull you down into a heated kiss. You let out a little yelp as he flipped your positions then lightly bit your bottom lip. He trailed kisses from your lips to your neck, which he nipped and sucked at, creating small purplish marks that bloomed.

A small part of you realised that this was the Jungkook from that night. Yet you weren’t afraid. You were as welcoming of him now as you were back then. Your fingers clutched at his hair, breathing uneven. You felt his hands slip behind your back, locating the zipper of your dress and pulling it down. He sat back up and you noticed his eyes. They had gone from dark chocolate to coal black in his lust. Were your eyes the same?

“Dress. Off.” Came his gravelly voice and you were quick to comply, pulling the material up and over your head in seconds, tossing away.

He smirked at the sight of you, clearly enjoying seeing you in your underwear. A part of you wondered who had dressed you for your funeral because, honestly, when did a dead person need undies?

“Deep red suits you Noona but sadly that’s gonna need to come off too.”

You pouted, “It won’t be fair if I’m the only one naked.”

“Noona if I got undressed now this would end all too quickly. I want to savour this.” He took his top off anyway. “There. Does that make you happier?”

You hesitated, raising a hand to rest on his shoulder. It was the first time you had seen him shirtless and you marvelled at his muscular physique. Your hand moved to his bicep, giving it a light squeeze and feeling the hard flesh. Your other hand went to his pecs and travelled downwards to his abdominal muscles, feeling his breathing stutter as your fingers traced over a sensitive area just above the waistband of his leather pants.

“Enjoying yourself?”

You hummed and nodded, “I didn’t get to see you last time.”

“I didn’t really see you either. You were still wearing a dress back then.”

He grasped your waist and pulled you closer to him. His hands once again snaking up your back to undo your bra. When it came loose he tugged the material down your arms, carelessly tossing it behind him. His hand went to your shoulder, apply enough pressure for you to understand that he wanted you to lie back down. As you led back down a part of you wondered if vampires could get carpet burn.

You watched as he crawled up your body, his muscles tightened and relaxed as he moved, reminding you of a cheetah stalking its prey. He stopped once he was hovering over your form, his lips ghosting against yours as he rested his weight on his elbows either side of your head. You propped yourself up in order to capture his lips with your own, fed up with the distance that kept appearing between the two of you. One of your hands came up to grip the back of his hair so that the kiss wouldn’t break as you led back down, taking him with you. The kiss quickly growing in intensity; the naked flesh of your torsos coming into contact sending sparks of electricity through the both of you. Your other hand joined its partner in Jungkook’s hair, moaning into the kiss. Jungkook hips bucked against you at the sound, drawing another from you.

He was the one to break the kiss, eagerly kissing his way down to the tops of your heaving chest. You felt him gently run his teeth, no, his fangs over the tender flesh a moment before biting into it. There was a sharp pain at first that had your breath catching in your throat then coming out as a husky moan of pleasure. He moved away slightly, licking his lips, a cheeky grin appearing on his face.

“You’ll find that most vampires are sadomasochists. We naturally enjoy giving and receiving pain. Though if I remember correctly, you enjoyed being bitten as a human… until you realised you were dying.”

He went back to the bitemark, softly lapping at it to soothe the red area and a small moan slipped through your lips again. He chuckled, trailing his lips to your nipple and giving it a few quick teasing licks before taking the small bud into his mouth and sucking. This definitely felt way better than the quick fuck in the alleyway you had with him and he wasn’t even inside you yet. You knew he said he wanted to savour it but it was beginning to be too much, you wanted his teasing to stop. He pulled away from your nipple with a barely audible pop.

“I said I would make you beg for me Noona. I intended to do just that.”

He moved to your other breast to give it a similar treatment to the first making you keen and arch into his attentions, your hands’ grip tightening in his locks. But then he was moving again. His lips mapping your dips and curves while he travelled further down your body, every now and then biting you just hard enough to break the skin so he could lap up any of the delicious crimson that surfaced. Every piercing nip caused a burning pleasure to originate from the bleeding area.

“Does... my blood... really taste that good?” You managed to pant out. He wasn’t going to make you beg easily.

He hummed as he kissed the area he had just bitten, pulling back slightly to watch the bite mark heal and vanish, “Better than anything I’ve had before.”

A shiver ran down your spine as those red eyes from that night stared up at you. But it wasn’t fear.

“Do your eye always turn red when you taste blood?”

He smirked, “Yeah. Yours will do the same when you drink blood. In fact… I think you should know how it feels…”

He raised himself off you and shuffled forward, bringing a wrist to your lips.

“I’ll ask you what I did before. Would you like a taste?”

You hesitated. This was all new to you and quite honestly you felt as if you were thrown into the deep end. But you couldn’t deny, you felt a strong pull to bite down on the limb at your lips. So why fight against something so willingly offered? For the sake of maintaining humanity? You weren’t human anymore and it's not like humans are free from committing ‘monstrous’ acts.  Something in your gut told you to follow Jungkook’s orders.

Casting aside what reluctance you had, you allowed yourself to follow your new baser instincts. Lips parting to dig your fangs into the offered flesh. You marvelled at how easily it gave way. How the splash of life’s nectar that hit your tongue made you need more of it. Each gulp had you chasing a building high. Moans slipped out between every mouthful swallowed. In the back of your mind you registered Jungkook hitching your legs around his waist and his owns sounds of pleasure as he rutted against you. The whole act was carnal and vulgar and new. Your hips thrust upwards to meet him, making your high build quicker until, with a muffled scream, you came.

Jungkook ripped his arm from your mouth, not caring about the chunk of flesh it left behind, it would heal. He watched as you prepared to spit it out but he covered your lips with his hand.

“Swallow it, don’t want it going to waste now do we?”

Wasn’t that cannibalism? Surely Jungkook must’ve been joking. But his gaze was hard, no sign of amusement held in them. He was serious. With a shaky exhale through your nose, you chewed the meat, thrill seeping into your bones as the blood hidden inside was released, allowing you to swallow without a second though.

“Such a good Noona. Following my orders so nicely.” Jungkook cooed, caressing your cheek, “And as much as I would love to hear you beg, I’ve lost at my own game. I can’t wait any longer.”

He leant back, unravelling your legs from around him to slide your panties down your legs.

“It would be such a waste to ruin these. So I’ll just have to ruin you instead.”

“Yes Master.”

There was a beat of silence and then it dawned on you, what you had just said. Your face darkened in embarrassment, hands flying up to hide it. To hide you from your shame. Jungkook chuckled, shaking his head before focusing on your womanhood.

“My Noona has such a pretty cunt, I still remember how you tasted that night.”

You squealed when you felt his tongue lap at you slick.

“Your cum is so sweet, I would choose this over blood any day.”

You peeked from between your fingers, “D-d-don’t say things like that K-Kookie-” You cut yourself of with a cry when he sucked on you clit, two fingers working their way inside you.

“What happened to ‘Master’? I quite liked that word coming from those lovely lips of yours.”

You whined, turning your face away from the erotic view in front of you. Too embarrassed to look at him. “It-It was an a-HA-ccident.”

Jungkook paused, “Oh really? So you won’t say it again.”

You shook your head.

“Okay then, I guess I’ll stop.”

You snapped back to look at him, “Please don’t.”

He smirked up at you, “Then say it again. Call me ‘Master’.”

“P-please d-don’t stop M…. Master.”

Without wasting another second Jungkook had his tongue back on you, playing with your clit, his fingers curling you rub against your sweet spot. Hands tangled into his hair, pulling him impossibly closer as your hips bucked up, grinding against the wet muscle that dragged out whines and pleas for more. But all too soon he was drawing away from you despite the tugs on his hair.

“As much as I’d love for you to cum on my tongue, I’d much rather you came on my cock.”

He made quick work of the fastenings of his pants and even quicker in removing them. You wiggled in anticipation of what was to come, unable to keep still in your excitement. Aligned with your centre, he pushed into you with one smooth thrust, the two of you groaning in unison.

“Fuck, so tight. So hot. Just for me.”

His head fell to nestle into you neck, his body weight supported by his forearms, the sounds of his pleasure floating directly into your ear, sending shivers of desire down your spine. You legs came to wrap around his waist yet again, anchoring him to you as you encouraged him to go deeper with breathy pleas. Your hands tried to find purchase in his back, leaving red rivulets in their wake as they dug into muscle. Nips at the delicate skin of your neck sent jolts down to your core leading you to the euphoria to come.

“Keep clenching around me like that and I’ll come too soon Noona.”

You whimpered, your high not building quick enough for you, something was missing. You wanted to cum so badly. Jungkook lifted one your legs to his shoulder, the change in angle causing his pelvis to rub against your neglected clit. You withered beneath him, his name broken on your lips, a sight he had always wanted to see and Jungkook would be damned if he didn’t commit it to memory.  Catching a nipple in his mouth, he lightly bit at the nub, little droplets welling to the surface as you gave an erotic keen making his cock twitch inside you.

“I wanna cum, please make me cum.” You sobbed, fingers digging into his back, warm wet blood slicking their tips as you accidentally broke the skin.

Jungkook growled, sweat slicked hair strands sticking to his forehead as intense crimson eyes stared into your dazed ones, “Please what?”

“Please make me cum Master, I can’t take anymore.”

“Good Noona.”

A slap to your sensitive clit was all it took to send you hurtling over the edge into rapture, your back arching as your fangs embedded into Jungkook’s throat which he willingly bore to you. So caught up in you pleasure, you didn’t hear Jungkook’s cry of release, the sound of the door opening or the feeling of your own neck being bitten.

When your senses came back to you, the first thing you noticed was that Jungkook was growling, his arms wrapped possessively around you. And as you went to pull away, he refused to do the same, effectively blocking you from being able to turn your head. It seemed rather odd to you. Well odd until-

“Dammit brat this is why we have the basement!”

#networkbangtan #armiesnet #bangtanarmynet #jungkook #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook #boop #BTS jungkook #jeongguk #jeon jeongguk #jungkook scenario #jungkook fanfic #bangtan #bangtan scenario #bangtan smut

[night-filled-mountain]

For the Hozier ask thing: No Plan, Be, Talk

- No Plan - Do you believe in a pre-determined purpose in life?

No, but I think it can be helpful–for some people!–to think and act like you have a pre-determined purpose, as long as you’re not too rigid about it. Sometimes the random twists and turns of life just get overwhelming, you know? And you need to weave them into some sort of pattern–“A, B, and C all happened in order to lead me to D,” or “Despite X obstacle, I know I’m meant to accomplish Y.” Humans are pattern-finding creatures–that’s why we like stories so much. I can’t imagine getting through life without periodically making it into a story, whether you actually believe in some divine Plan and Author or not. (This is reminding me once again of that Brian W. Foster lyric I’ve become obsessed with: “And if it wasn’t designed, then I’ll be damned if I ever know why.”)

Though honestly, for me? The opposite is true. I’ve faced, and continue to face, so many mental-health barriers to having the kind of life I’d like to have, and I’ve fought (and continue to fight!) such a harrowing, hard-scrabble fight to make that life happen anyway. It’s a massive struggle, it’s ongoing, it’s every day. It’s exhausting and humiliating and entirely without dignity. So the thing that I like to tell myself about the life I want? Is that I wasn’t meant to have it. Some particularly nasty gods have played a trick on me since birth, crafting a person for whom friends/romance/productive work/artistic fulfillment/Happiness are impossible–and day after day, I’m fighting them, trying to prove them wrong. Clawing and biting at them with everything I have in me. Forcing my way out of their boxes, grasping at what I want, and spitting in their eye for good measure.

I’m sure my preference for this narrative says something about me as a person, but I leave that up to you, anon!

- Be - Have you changed much as a person in the last year? 

…I literally don’t know where to start.

In August 2018, I wasn’t married yet. I lived in a small town in New Jersey with my parents and sister, and was desperately terrified of moving (permanently) anywhere else. I had completed two master’s degrees just a few months before, but I’d never had a full-time job, and I was 250% convinced (for the aforementioned mental-health reasons, and a chronic physical illness to boot!) that I could never, ever have one. Oh, and I’d just gotten back from a visit to my former roommate (which remains the last time I saw her, not counting Skype), and I was suffering constant agony over the intense, passionate, mutually pining, emotionally needy, co-dependent mess that was that relationship.

And now?

I’m married. I live in Boston, in an apartment where I’ve paid 100% of the rent for the past six months (though that will soon be changing!). I have a full-time job that has challenged and transformed me in ways that I could not possibly have imagined six months ago. Like…literally could not have fathomed. Outside the scope of my brainpower. Beyond my wildest dreams.

I’m the head of my department…because I’m the entire department. I do heavy-duty customer service. I interact with dozens of strangers every day–children, teens, and adults–and I usually do it without a whisper of social anxiety. I pick up my desk phone when it rings. I make phone calls when I have to. I send and receive dozens of e-mails a week. I manage a budget! I place orders! I schedule programs! I answer reference questions! I operate and troubleshoot various forms of technology constantly, and teach others how to use them. I reason with, joke with, assist, educate, entertain, chastise, and discipline 20+ rowdy teenagers ON A DAILY BASIS. There have been many days, and once an entire week, when I was literally in charge of my entire workplace and everyone in it. And it was all still functioning when my boss got back.

…And it’s actually really timely that I should write about all this now, because I’m smack-dab in the middle of an extremely daunting work task, one that’s causing my ADD to kick my ass to hell and back. And I’ve spent the past few days wondering just how fucking desperate this place must have been to hire someone who’s been wretchedly sobbing over her utter lack of focus and organizational skills for almost 30 years. So it’s…quite the morale-booster to look at these paragraphs about just how goddamn far I’ve come in a year.

…Also, Ex-Roommate and I have gone no-contact, and most days, I don’t think about her. And if I do, it doesn’t hurt so much.

- Talk - What’s your best friend like? 

I have three (3) best friends, and they are MY WORLD, so get ready for this.

(1.) My husband. We’ll call him Kit, which is, in fact, a name he often goes by. He is a Gemini, which I mention only because he’s a very classic Gemini: bursting with curiosity, interested in everything, with a dizzying array of hobbies and interests that seem to change and shift by the moment. He teaches science, and used to teach history. He loves camping, sea shanties, Lawrence of Arabia, board games, and tabletop RPGs. Being a teacher, he’s had the summer off, and he’s spent it being a house-husband: cleaning our apartment, buying all the groceries, doing my laundry an embarrassing number of times, and cooking me dinner every single night. He loves being useful to people and making people happy. He’s terrific at long-term planning, but has no sense of time, and he’d be late to everything without my intervention. We have separate bedrooms, and mine is obsessively neat, and his is…not. He was once bitten by a squirrel that he was hand-feeding on the Boston Common. A few days later, he received a serious electric shock from a string of Christmas lights, and the bandage he’d placed over the squirrel bite was burned black instead of his hand. This perfect balance of cursed and blessed is, in a way, all you really need to know about Kit.

We love to watch movies and TV shows together and discuss/analyze them obsessively. We love to have looong philosophical discussions and/or debates. We take walks, we get Italian food and/or ice cream far too often, we go on jolly road-trip adventures, and we read out loud to each other. He’s currently reading me Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, which I have read before (twice) and he has not, because I love it so intensely, and I know that he will too. He’s the best person on earth to discuss virtually anything with, to be honest. He’s my DM in the best D&D campaign I’ve ever been part of. I’ve just made a new D&D character, although I don’t have a campaign for her yet, and Kit cannot stop lavishing praise on her and getting excited about her…even though she’s a hobgoblin, and he spent a significant portion of a recent car ride passionately arguing with me about the viability of hobgoblins as player characters.

He is absolutely extraordinary at admitting when he’s wrong, owning it fully, changing his opinions, pursuing personal growth, and just becoming a better and better person all the time. And I’m so damn honored that I get to be here for it.

(2.) We’ll call my second best friend Unicorn, which is a multilayered inside joke.

I met Unicorn during my freshman year of college. We lived on the same floor. I was the odd woman out among my suitemates because I had crippling social anxiety; he was the odd man out among his because he was gay. Somehow we started watching movies and TV shows together, and it became our Thing; I think our current marathon record is six or seven movies in a row. We’re both from New Jersey, and he still lives there, and there are few places in the world I feel safer than on his giant couch, in front of his giant TV, with snacks and glasses of Limeade close at hand, and his neurotic little dog nosing about. He has a pool, a massive movie collection, and an encyclopedic knowledge of state politics, because he works as a full-time environmental canvasser. His hours are absolutely terrifying, as are the physical and social demands of his job, but he still finds time to run a D&D campaign for his coworkers, and to visit the rest of us in Boston at every possible opportunity.

Unicorn is barely a month older than I am (a fellow Leo, though I think it suits him a hell of a lot better than it suits me), and he understands me in specific ways that the other two members of our little quartet just can’t. We get each other’s humor, we have similar tastes in men, we both love to swim. When the four members of our found family are all together, he is invariably the only person who notices all my little puns and innuendos, and laughs every time.  He listens to me, and asks me questions, in a way that no one else in the world quite seems to do. He made a speech at my wedding that reduced me to a blubbering mess. And, most importantly of all: He started inviting me to our college’s LGBT group when we were juniors (right after Kit and I started dating), which was how I met my third best friend, and how we all became a family.

(3.) I’m going to refer to Best Friend #3 as “Dragon,” because…he loves dragons, and because he was Unicorn’s roommate when I first met him, and it keeps the mythological-creature theme going. …And once again, I don’t know where to start, so I’m going to go dig up an old post I made about Dragon, copy and paste it below, and then figure out how to elaborate on someone who both my husband and I have identified as the best human being we have ever met.

This is a friend who invites the whole gang of us to his apartment for entire long weekends, and cooks for us, repeatedly. Who hosts “fake Christmas” every year, complete with a tree decorated with blue and silver ornaments because he is Jewish, and made all of us hand-stitched, personalized stockings, and fills them with gifts and sweets purchased specially for each of us. Who once baked me a cake just because I was coming to visit him. Who organized and directed my entire move from New Jersey to Boston because his Tetris-like car-packing skills and his utter laidback unshakable calm in the face of any task are absolutely unparalleled. Who is a goddamn wizard at literally everything, from cooking and baking and sewing to Photoshop and graphic design to painting D&D miniatures to putting together elaborate cosplays to theater tech to writing and research to courageous and tireless activism to law (did I mention he’s a lawyer?).

…That was my old paragraph, so let me add a few things. I can’t emphasize enough how much he carries that aura of calm and kindness and competence about him at all times. Never in my life had I had a cooking/baking experience that didn’t stress me out until Dragon let me help him make an entire dinner and various desserts for our friend group, and it was just…so chill. So well-organized and perfectly timed, but without ever feeling like those things took any effort whatsoever. He was so kind and patient with me, demonstrating each task step by step, then being entirely confident in my ability to perform said tasks, and never trying to nitpick at the way I did them or take them over himself. Part of his job involves teaching, and I know he must be fantastic at it, because no one else has ever been such a soothing balm and a stimulant (both at once, somehow!) to my poor, tormented ADD brain. Someday (maybe soonish!), our whole found family is going to live together, and the thought of being around Dragon all the time just makes me weep with joy. And did I mention his sweet, child-like enthusiasm for holiday celebrations and ghost tours and spooky TV shows and musicals and fantasy novels and text RP and all other Best Things? (Ok, he also loves dogs and Marvel movies, and I love neither, but I forgive him for this.)

Oh, he also officiated my wedding. And he also had top surgery today, and I have maybe never been this happy about anything ever, what an auspicious day to finish this post!

#asks from the askbox #personal #long post #she's just about to close up the library! #dungeons & dragons #d&d #dnd #this got RIDICULOUSLY long holy moly #i have a lot of feelings about my job and my friends guys

[jay-birddie]

heaven on earth// dick grayson x reader

request: none! I just really had the inspiration. though, i should get on to writing the actual requests i still have in my inbox.

pairing: dick grayson x reader

au?: takes places in the 1940′s. for some reason i got that kind of vibe when writing this. 

genre: the good ol’ stuff

a/n: wow author you’re finally puttng out fanfic again after six months.

Also, I used to keep a notebook with daily paragraphs of writing. The first 3 paragraphs are from that notebook. i feel as if i now lack the creative mind I once had in my writing, but i know that in order to become a better writer, i actually have to pick up a writing utensil and let my feelings flow.

A lady, standing there, an angelic glow radiating off her body. 

A man, standing just a few feet away, being pulled towards the light. 

Beams of light reflected off of the crystalline glasses held delicately in her pristined hand. Those hands, trained to hold a grace in their movement, kept the glass so still that even the golden wine within it would remain unmoving as her her head tipped back in open-mouthed laughter.

White satin gloves covered her elegant hands to represent her purity and youth to the rest of the attenders and potential bachelors. The oval pearl earrings clipped onto the lobe of her ear dangled back and forth in time with the movement of her head like a metronome, glittering with the pearlessence of gemstone along with opalescence of the diamonds surrounding it. She had a natural forid tint to her cheeks, and so the need to apply rouge was unnecessary.

Although at her fair age, Dick could notice the crinkles on the outer corners of her eyes that would define themselves later as she aged and mature. It was her constant smile that created his prediction, though it wasn’t a feature that he disliked but appreciated. A faux grin doesn’t cause the outer corners of one’s eyes to crease.  

Her features were so genuine, and it made Dicks heart flutter against his sternum and his cheeks match the color of hers.

He took continuous sips of his champagne only to avoid any gawking he might display, and looked around aimlessly as if he were searching the crowd for the perfect partner. But his eyes had already landed on her, through her eyes did not do the same.

The part of him that wasn’t so entranced wondered which family or organization she belonged to, as he had never seen her there before. She could just be a villain incognito, or a spy for the government, but Dick had to admit that he would spill every secret if she asked.

Her dress was quite magnificent; It was plain, yet so interesting. It was all one piece and the color of pink peonies. The fabric, from bodice to skirt was shiny, as if a shoe shiner polished it. The skirt draped elegantly down past her ankles, covering her feet as she stood there. A lengthy, thin, burgundy ribbon was wrapped once around and tied into a long, drooping bow.

The bodice was the most intriguing part of the entire ensemble: it was fitted at the waist up to the breast, where another thin ribbon of burgundy ran just below her shoulder. On the other side of the ribbon, the fabric scalloped at an upward angle all around her, making it look like her supple body was emerging from a budding flower.       

He tipped the glass back only to find that his previous sip was his last, and his glass and stalling session time had run out.

He set his glass down on the silver platter of a butler swiftly passing by, and took a daring step towards her. But then, he took a step back as soon he saw her eyes on him. They took his breath away, her delicate eyes. The soft glow of the lighting made her features look gentle, and created a twinkle in her orbs.

She smiled at him, and he thought he might faint right then are there. He returned the smile, and before his mind could realize, he continued to walk in her direction. She began to walk as well with a focus that Dick was glad remained on him, and soon their bodies met.

Dick felt his soul being pulled in, and if hers was magnet that attracted him. Her natural, uncovered beauty made her more alluring up close.

“It’s rare that one is invited to a Wayne gala, and I’ve only heard rumors of actually being greeted by the host or his family. It must be my luck that both happen to me, of all people,” she said sweetly. Her finger tapped silently against her glass and swirled the remaining drops of campagne.

“Guess you’ll be able to tell the tale,” Dick responded, shifting his arms to fold behind his back to make him seem more open and confident. He giggled softly, her lips stitched together, nothing compared to what he had seen earlier. “Which organization are you a part of? I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before,” Dick quickly added to avoid any and all awkwardness that could occur.

“I’m not affiliated with any organization. Which reminds me,” she lurched with excitement in recalling a thought, “that what Mr. Wayne’s doing with some of his earnings is the most wholesome act I’ve seen since the late Ms. Ast, bless her sol, put in her will that her manor was to be the new Gotham City Orphanage,” she said.

He studied her for another moment, waiting for her to reveal the reason she was  here. She took in the last sip of her refreshment, filling the gap in the conversation. Dick looked down at his feet as she did so, somehow amused. His head remained downturned as his eyes quickly glanced to the rim of her glass There was no lipstick mark, and Dick realized that her lips were always just that naturally spiked with blood.

“I am a humble journalist,” she said unexpectedly, her voice leaking with pride that the ‘humble’ could not conceal. Dick’s head popped up from the sound of her voice, and his left eyebrow lifted with interest. He remembered talk of women entering the literacy field, but frankly, he had never actually met one. “I write for the Gotham City Gazette.”   

“You must be one hell of a writer,” He commented, prolonging her beaming smile. She thanked him, reaching to make sure not a hair had fallen out of its curled and rolled state. She looked around for a moment, prompting him to do the same.  

“I’m going to search for that butler with the champagne. Would you like another glass?” She asked. Dick had reached his limit of two. Unfortunate, yes, but one particular night taught him how well he could hold his alcohol: barely.

“No, thank you,” He said. She began to turn as he continued, “Although, a dance would do nicely.” The words slipped from Dick’s mouth, and froze her body. He could see her lips creasing as he stood there, waiting for a response with an arched eyebrow and inquiring eyes, his lips parted slightly.  

“No one’s ever asked me to dance.” She blushed, making it look like she rubbed raspberries all over her cheeks. She reversed the half turn, facing towards Dick again and acknowledged her embarrassment by bringing her hands to cup her cheeks to cool them. Dick chuckled at the reaction but was puzzled by what she said.

“Who was that fellow just before me talking to you? He seemed very interested,” he asked.

“Just a very good friend of mine. I’ve know him for my entire life and each time I see him he’s telling me a new story. Though sometimes exaggerated, he is quite humorous.” She was so animated in her speech compared to stuffy people Dick had met at previous galas who had their arms glued behind their back and their bodies stiff as boards. “But yes, I would love to dance, though you’ll have to forgive my feet before I step on one of yours.”

Dick laughed, untying his arms and holding a hand out to finally take hers. he assumed that by now, she had forgotten about her drink. Naked met gloved as she placed her hand in his. The gloves felt new, soft like the petals of budding roses in the spring. Their steps were quick and excited as they rushed along with other couples to the dance floor. Music entered the atmosphere. It was as bright and jumpy as his heart, the allegro tempo of the violins in harmony with the piano.

They set their bodies in place and waited for the cue: Their hands clasped, and Dick thought they fit and molded together perfectly; He placed his arm around her backside, settling his hand in the indent of her side, and he tried to keep the most chaste thoughts running through him; She placed her other hand on his shoulder, and Dick felt a delicate heat flow down to his stomach and birth butterflies.

The music replaced the hushed and nonexistent voices of the dancers as feet began to move. She immediately looked down to hers, though kept in mind the eye contact that needed to be exchanged with a dance partner. Dick could see the anxiety deep within her pupils. He felt sympathetic towards the lady, remembering the first time her attended a Wayne Gala. He was so nervous, the point of his shoe didn’t even step into the ballroom.

“Hey,” he whispered. He would have called her by her name if he had known it. Her head whipped up at the call to attention. “Don’t think about your feet. The music will make them move on their own.”

She nodded slowly, still gazing at him. Like Dick said, her feet maintained in perfect sync with the music. She got excited, pulling a sudden breath of air into her lungs, and her eyes brightening in triumph.

She gained more confidence as the music reached it climax, and Dick lost count of how many successful spins and box-steps they did. But he did keep track of the many times she looked as though love enwrapped her like the film on a piece of candy, so tightly twisted, yet so easy to come undone. He wanted to the be the one to unwrap her on the nights when everything seemed right in the world. He wanted to taste the sweetness of her skin, and get drunk on her heavenly perfume.

Not once did they break eye contact, and Dick knew that anyone who saw their affection would be jealous at the sight, and wish upon a star that they could experience the same feeling.

As the music came to a fade, so did their movements, until her dress sightly grazed passed her ankles at a slowing turn. She removed one hand slowly from shoulder, but Dick could still feel the warmth from her palm and fingers. His arm unlatched from her back, but Dick remembered that he might have more intimate dances with her in the future. Their hands unclasped, but their fingers lingered in touch and their bodies remained close, and their souls molded together perfectly.  

#dick grayson x reader #dick grayson reader insert #dick grayson #batfamfic #robin x reader #nightwing x reader #OKAY SO WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE 30 FOLLOWERS I GAINED IN THE PAST WEEK??? IM SO HAPPY #THANK YOU ALL SO MCH #OH AND ALL OF YOU WHO SENT REQUESTS LIKE 3-4 MONTHS AGO #IM WORKING ON THEM I PROMISE #dick grayson fanfiction #dick grayson fanfic #nightwing fanfic #nightwing reader insert #dick grayson imagine #nightwing imagine #robin imagine #batman fanfiction #batman fanfic

[tielan]

first lines meme

RULES: List the first lines of the last ten stories you published. Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends. 

I was tagged by @beatrice-otter, and I’m going to tag @hauntedfalcon, and @somanyfandomssolittletime if they haven’t already done it. (Sorry, I’ve been offilne, and I don’t think I’ve actually checked tumblr in months.)

There’s a lot of MCU in this.

1. Steve wakes cold, muscles spasming hard from the chill of the floor. 

2. His name is James Buchanan Barnes and the world is new again.

3. The central markets of the Wakandan empire were beautiful and busy, filled with people talking and laughing, selling and bartering.

4. When Pepper Potts hired Maria Hill to work for Stark Industries, she didn’t plan to offer her live-in accommodation. She’s not entirely sure why she does at the time.

5. It starts with a woman who chooses to serve her country in whatever capacity they’ll allow her…

6. Maria’s first surprise is how easy it is to get a six-foot supersoldier past the radar.

7. Steve knows the woman who walks into the room. He’s seen her in files, in photos, and once through the scope of a sniper rifle.

8. Teyla finds that every culture moves in its own rhythms. There is an ebb and flow to the efforts of their labour, to their time spent in leisure, to their sharing of meals, and it moves in a rhythm by the movement of the sun.

9. He dreams of falling.

10. How do you measure the loss of half a universe?

Reading through these, it occurs to me that my first lines of a fic are almost always a setting hook. It describes the situation, where the main character is, what’s going on, and gives a direction to where the fic is headed.

Off the top of my head, I can’t remember starting any stories with dialogue (I have several hundred in MCU fandom alone, so there must surely be at least one in there, I just can’t recall it) but I do know that I like to start by giving the reader a hint of a situation and pulling them in from there.

It’s only a hint, mind. The setting can’t be too much information or the reader switches off. My theory is that if a reader has to wade through The History Of Your Headcanon, then they won’t read past the first paragraph. I know I struggle with reading when I’m given The Infodump Of Where They Are In The Timeline And What Their Situation Is. So I plunge straight into the nuts and bolts of the situation, and explain things later, as necessary - and sometimes not at all.

#maria hill #pepper potts #steve rogers #bucky barnes #teyla emmagan #fic #fic writing #writing #peggy carter #meme

[dawnquafam]

Any tips on actually plan a fanfic? I've always wrote my fics without planning beforehand but it isn't working very well for me (as I end up with big plot holes and fanfics that have no plot whatsoever), which makes me really sad because I end up wasting hours of work on something I will never post online. Thank you for your time and have a nice day/night! 🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈✨🌈

I’m just gonna startthis off with a little disclaimer saying that everyone needs to do a differentamount of planning, and different lengths of fics are gonna require differentamounts of planning. Every author and every fic are unique. Me personally, Iair on the side of laziness, aka minimal detail when I do actually sit down andforce myself to plan something (which I never do for one-shots, onlyintentionally multi-chapter fics and my actual book). Luckily, you sound likeme, so hopefully this’ll work for you too.

Second, before I explainmy strategy, heed this quote from Leonard Snart: Make the plan. Execute the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails.Throw away the plan.

(Ok, don’t actuallythrow away the plan. It’s the first three sentences that are important.)

If I’ve learned anything since I started writing back when I was 12, it’s that fictional charactersmay be figments of your imagination, but they have minds of their own. Thatjoke you think is absolute genius? Yeah, they ain’t gonna say it. Where didthis piece of backstory come from? Not your head, that’s for sure. Thisplotline that was supposed to be resolved within a chapter? Nope, it’s fivechapters and counting now.

Basically, they’regonna tell you what they’re gonna do. They’re like unruly children who’ll dowhatever they damn well please. Don’t bedeterred by this, and definitely do not force your will on them. If you’vegotta force it, odds are the writing will come out unnatural and clunky andyour readers will notice and you’ll hate it. You’re gonna be sad that yourgenius moment didn’t make it in, but believe me, your characters know best – it’stheir lives, after all. And sometimes, those spur of the moment ideas are farbetter than anything you could’ve come up with ahead of time.

(If you’re really attached to the idea they’rerejecting, write it in a separate doc to do something with later. Keep it foryourself. Maybe post it as a deleted scene once you’re done with the fic. Or,there was one time I started a one-shot, couldn’t figure out where to go with it, abandoned it, and it later ended up as a flashback scene in a different fic that did get posted.You never know.)

Essentially, just bewarned that no matter how much planning you do, things are gonna change. Thoseplot holes you mentioned, they’re going to create themselves, because that’sthe nature of the beast. Forge ahead anyway – fixing those is what editing isfor.

Now that I’ve spent six(6) paragraphs explaining why planning is gonna get derailed, here’s how Iplan:

First, write downkey details. Making up a new place or alien species? Give it a name (GIVE IT ANAME BEFORE YOU START WRITING ITS SCENES FOR THE LOVE OF ALL YOU HOLD DEAR, NOTDOING SO COULD TRIP YOU UP FOR HOURS) and describe it briefly (nothing fancy,you can get fancy once you’re actually writing, planning is just to get thebasics down). Same goes for any OCs you may be incorporating, be they villains orside characters or whatever – name them and give them a basic appearance andpersonality/motivation. Basically anything that needs a name, come up with itsbasics before you start writing.

A couple examplesfrom my fic Operation: Memory:

Ascorix- Criminalplanet, crowded slums, overpopulated and heavily polluted, tall narrow greybuildings, little to no plant/wild animal life

Kutral- Moarian,tall and wiry, long wavy sky blue hair, navy blue skin, unnaturally brightgreen eyes, expert art thief and murderer, superspeed (top speed 100mph);motivated by money for fancy expensive things

And while we’re onthe subject, here are some sites I use to name things, I’d be lost without them:

http://www.behindthename.com/ (forhuman peoples, and I think it can even give your person some background detailsnow!)

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/alien-names.php#.WvjToUxFy3A(alien peoples/species)

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/planet_names.php#.WvjTskxFy3A(planets/alien species - take the planet name and change the ending to -an or -er or something, like Andorians live on Andoria, Asgardians live on Asgard, etc.)

Now for the scenes(not entire chapters, just individual scenes). Just write down shortdescriptions of what you want to happen. Keep it specific enough that you canremember what you meant weeks or months later, but vague enough that you’re nottrapped and the idea isn’t completely ruined if and when an earlier scene veersoff-course. For example:

Team (minus Mantis?) goes hunting on Ascorix,split in half to cover more ground, Loki gets nervous and guilty cause itreminds him of Sakaar (“Sometimes I wonder…” “You’re a hero, Loki” “…Maybe”), trio(quad?) kidnapped

Vague enough to beflexible, specific enough for me to remember where I’m going (the level ofdetail you’ll need depends on your own preferences). And yes, you are mostcertainly allowed to not know exactly what’s gonna happen – your characterswill fill in the gaps for you. As weird as it sounds, trust the figments ofyour imagination.

If you’re like me,you’re gonna want to mark down where you think each chapter will end, and byall means, do so. But keep in mind that some scenes could go on far longer thanyou think (in my fic Hidden Heartbeat, Nidavellir was supposed to be onechapter and it turned itself into three), while others might struggle to reacheven half the length you wanted. Sometimes a good cliffhanger pops up mid-sceneand you’ll decide to end the chapter there to torture your readers (I am guiltyof this). You won’t really know until you get there.

And that sums up theofficial planning that happens before the writing begins.

Unofficially, nomatter where you are in the fic: If and when you have a random idea, WRITE IT DOWN. On a napkin, in yourphone, in your planning doc, at work/school, at 3 in the morning, it doesn’tmatter. I don’t care how good you think your memory is, just run on the ideathat YOU WILL FORGET IF YOU DON’T WRITEIT DOWN IMMEDIATELY.

And if and when yourplan switches tracks, WRITE DOWN THECHANGES BUT KEEP THE OLD SCENES SOMEWHERE. They could still inspiresomething, they could still happen but just later than you intended, the main ideasthe original scenes were supposed to convey could still be perfectly relevant,and if you’re in the middle of the story, you could eventually wind up back onthe original track. Keep every bit of your plan. Leave deleting for the actualstory.

To sum up:

Outline key details,names, and scene ideas.

Keep it flexible,but know where you’re going. Odds are details will change, but your overarchingplot will stay relatively intact.

Make a plan, butlisten to your characters if they wanna go off on a tangent. Best-case scenario,that tangent is the best part of your fic. Worst comes to worst, you can cutthe tangent from the final draft.

And, last but notleast, delete nothing, absolutely n o t hi n g, from your outline. Move it down the page, move it to a differentdoc, whatever, but keep it for futurereference.

(Whoo, that gotlong. I hope at least part of it was helpful, and good luck in your writing!)

#writing tips #planning tips #planning #fic planning

[solivar]

Time

The piece I wrote for Blackwatch Classified, @blackwatchzine.

In which Gabriel Reyes is stuck firmly in the “bargaining” stage and if I’d known about Moira O’Deorain she’d totally have been here – and very clever with the Irish Gaelic there, Blizzard.

Extracting intelligence assets was never a thing that could be described as fun – mostly because, by the time extraction became a necessity, the surrounding situation had devolved to such an extent that managing it was as much a matter of luck as planning. And, as a general rule, Gabriel Reyes despised relying on luck.

The present extraction operation was even less enjoyable than usual, primarily because they weren’t removing their asset alone. No, they were pulling their agent and her husband and her two children, one of whom was a surly teenager. Which was why Shimada was handling the actual on-the-ground removal process: the whole cyborg ninja thing was, in the estimation of the Agent-In-Command, just awesome enough to help pre-empt any difficulties. Gabe had to admit that the AIC appeared to have a point and things had gone smoothly for Shimada, his two fire teams worth of backup, and the asset-and-family. They were making brisk progress through the smuggler tunnels used to bring contraband into the city. It made being relegated to observer status at the extraction point just slightly more tolerable.

“Approaching the inner perimeter barriers.” Shimada’s voice in his ear, using subvocal communication protocol to avoid pickup by any parabolic listening devices.

“I gotcha,” the AIC drawled from a few feet away. “Deploying countermeasures in 3…2…1…” The holoscreens displaying the output of the perimeter security monitors split, feeding the false information that opened the way for the extraction team. “You got ten minutes.”

A low chuckle. “I will only need…” What he needed slid away in a sleet storm of audio distortion, loud enough that Gabe hissed and pulled the communicator out of his ear.

Jesse, in the command pod, did not react at all. Tiny explosions of darkness went off in front of his eyes, the sonic distortion increased in pitch and volume, and it felt as though someone had picked up the extraction vehicle and tilted it sharply on its side. Or, at least, it looked that way from his perspective on the floor. The last thing he saw, before the little explosions of darkness turned into an unrelieved field of the same, was Jesse turning in the command chair and the look on his face.

“So what you’re saying,” Gabriel said, twenty hours later, from a bed in Watchpoint Geneva’s medical center, “is that I, who haven’t had a goddamned sniffle in twenty years, had a seizure.”

“I could show you the biotelemetry if you insist but, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Dr. Monika Lucchesi, the head of Neurology, said. “To be specific a generalized tonic seizure with a notable sensory component. Has this ever happened before?”

Gabriel gave her the look he usually reserved for people who ought to know better asking unutterably stupid questions. “No.”

“Any family history of epilepsy?”

“No.”

“Any recent blows to the head?”

“Other than the one I just enjoyed when I hit the floor? No.”

The good doctor checked off items on her workpad. “There are a number of possible neurological causes but in order to determine specifics I recommend a full diagnostic health survey.” She smiled beatifically. “Also, there’s someone here to see you. I’ll let you two talk while I get things in motion.”

“I didn’t agree to that!” He snapped at her retreating back as she opened the door and slipped smoothly to one side to allow his visitor entry.

“All things bein’ equal, boss, I’m not sure that she cares.” Jesse smiled crookedly from the door. “Can’t say I blame her.”

“Lord save me from the both of you, then.” Gabriel rolled his eyes heavenward. “Report.”

“Exfiltration and extraction of all assets and asset-adjacent individuals was completed within the specified optimal timeframe. Liftoff occurred at 03:35 hours local time and transit was completed within six hours. The asset and asset-adjacent individuals have since been handed off to Out-processing for assignment to their new identities.” The corner of Jesse’s mouth twitched and he handed over the workpad containing all the relevant reports. “Commander Gabriel Reyes was remanded to the care of Medical upon touchdown and continues his tradition of being a total pain in the ass to all healthcare providers.”

“Wiseass.” Gabriel growled, but on cursory examination all the paperwork seemed to be in order, and just looking at it was making him more tired than he should be. “How’s Genji?”

“Doin’ okay. He didn’t have to stab anybody and I think he actually got along with the teenager, so that was a plus.” Jesse settled into the chair at his bedside. “You?”

“For the record, this was not actually part of the plan.” Gabriel hid the tablet under the sheets. “If I were going to throw something unexpected at you for your first AIC of asset exfiltration, stupid neurological tricks wouldn’t even be on the list of possible options.”

“And that ain’t an answer.” Jesse planted his chin on a fist and eyed him narrowly.

“Headachy. Tired.” Both were true, and he let his head fall back into the pillows. “Stuck here for the foreseeable future unless I pull rank and discharge myself.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that.” Jesse rose. “You look like crap, I don’t mind sayin’ that you scared the crap outta me, and you probably oughta get some rest. More than you’ve been gettin’, at least.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” But Jesse admitting to fear out loud gave him pause, and so he stayed in Medical for the duration of the health survey. And for a few days more when Lucchesi insisted on looping in Ziegler, and Ziegler insisted on running her own battery of diagnostics.

“A brain tumor? Are you fucking kidding me?”

As it turned out, she was not.

The Department of Defense did, eventually, send Dr. Lucchesi his personal medical documentation from the archives of the Soldier Enhancement Program, all but three paragraphs of it redacted. He could have told her the odds of getting any useful information out of them were slim to none but he hadn’t wanted to rob her of hope.

He quietly removed himself from field work. Pragmatically, the odds of being able to continue while receiving treatment were nonexistent. The location made it conventionally inoperable, and the extent of the secondary metastases through his nervous system left chemo as the applicable therapy. The same enhanced healing processes that had masked the symptoms long enough for it to turn into a Stage IV malignancy might not allow even that, given the speed with which is body metabolized every other drug in the world. Not for the first time, he wondered if the SEP had included a use by date on everyone that had endured it, given the extent to which its biological improvements were now helping to kill him.

Preventing Jesse from finding out was a weapons-grade pain in the ass. He had noticed the change in the active field roster – impossible not to – but initially held discretion as the better part of valor. Three months on, that was no longer true. Gabriel could and did fend off his delicate little nibbles around the edges but keeping him out of the Medical intranet had required Athena’s personal intervention to thwart him and his ICE-cutting methods. It made developing plans for the inevitable power devolution within the ranks of Blackwatch a thousand times harder. Under ideal circumstances, he would have spent another year or two easing Jesse into the idea that command responsibility was something he could handle and then another five solidifying that realization into the bedrock of his psyche and then he would have handed off the role, secure in the knowledge that his hand-chosen, hand-trained successor was ready.

Time was no longer a luxury he could afford. It wasn’t only his body failing at the worst conceivable moment. It was the entire world and the organization he’d devoted his life to building coming apart at the seams, more or less simultaneously. At that moment, sitting in his office, waiting for the newest report from medical to arrive, a handful of news streams open in one screen, the latest bullshit from New York on another, and his own structured plan for Blackwatch to outlive him on yet a third, he was forced to wonder if survival was even an option.

His system’s incoming message tone sounded. He was not particularly surprised by its content: no noticeable change in the size of the primary or secondary cancerous lesions. His body was eating the goddamned chemo before it could do its job. Nanobiotic medicine had a second-line treatment but it was highly experimental, not yet approved for human clinical trials, and possibly contraindicated thanks to his altered biology.

Ziegler thought it was worth a shot, if an experimental protocol could be approved. If he approved and was willing to take the risk.

A little more time was all he needed.

#Blackwatch Classified #Time #Because I didn't tag it right the first time #And then this blue hellsite wouldn't let me edit my original post

[book-review-and-impression]

The Trouble With God- by William F. Aicher

This entire post will include spoilers (below the cut) and my thoughts on the book itself. 

Going into this, I have no experience reading anything from this author. This book was recommended to me on Amazon and so I looked at it and investigated it and the responses to it. It appeared that this book was a hit or miss for people but there was generally good feedback.

My initial impression without reading the book was that it sounded incredibly interesting. The mystery behind why a priest would be targeted and killed seemed intriguing to me. The philosophy in the questions typed at the bottom of the summary also grabbed my attention. The cover of the book was simplistic but served its purpose. Personally, I actually quite rather like the design.

When I began reading this book, I was confused as to why the first chapter was put in. It was definitely intriguing, but it put emphasis on how short that chapter was. I would have preferred if it was longer but it is what it is. And then there was the theme of having it each day which made the first chapter actually make sense. Then I got to the second chapter; which you could say is the actual beginning/opening of the book? And then my reaction was just: why are the chapter so short? Flipping through I noticed how many chapters are there and that is just unnecessary but whatever, author’s choice and I will roll with it. 

The character, Steven, is introduced to us. Most of the time the main character should be liked but I really do not like this character. He has to defend why he has a beer in the shower and why he uses his girlfriend’s shower items to himself, but no one asked and I personally was not questioning it to begin with so why was there elaboration on his reasoning? Steven is also a work-over-personal life type of guy, which I can respect but then he’s also an asshole (for lack of a better word) to those in his personal life. His relationship with his girlfriend is just so full of tension and throughout the majority of the book I was just thinking “why are they together still?” I do like how their relationship sort of developed though.

We also get the cop, good ol’ best friend to Steven who gives him hot leads and is a one-dimensional character with basically no development. Also, how is he getting away with giving information like that to a reporter? The dude should be fired, honestly. And the dialogue he has with Steven is awkward... no one speaks like that so it sounded very generic and did not flow well but then again all of the dialogue was like this.

Then there is Karen, the bitchy girlfriend. Honestly, why were Steven and Karen still in a relationship together? She’s always yelling for no reason (is this how the author thinks women are like-- because there are only three female characters 1) a woman with shitty hair 2) a woman who doesn’t know how to mind her business 3) Karen). There is a scene where she goes out with John Paluniak and throughout it she is basically drooling over him, like honey you have a boyfriend? Like no wonder Steven was wary of you going out with him. And then... Steven actually cheats on her.

As for the writing, was there no editor? There were so many times where there was not a quotation mark and it just yanked me out of the book especially when it was at the beginning of the dialogue. Also some sentences seemed unnecessary especially in between the paragraphs of dialogue. And then there were the monologues that Steven liked to go into: like we get it you’re an atheist, calm down. It was almost like the author wanted to shove down my throat the idea that this book was, in fact, about the concept of God.

Now for the story itself. Whenever Miles and Steven would discuss the killer, they would reach conclusions and it was just like, how the hell did you reach that because you are stretching so much. And literally each person killed was connected to Karen at first (and then Jeffery died way later), so why did no one suspect her? Instead they suspect crusty ass Steven who then suspects himself because he is a budding sociopath (I say that because he does not seem empathetic at all yet he is perfectly mimicking emotion sometimes to fit i with his girlfriend). 

Skipping all the way to the end of the book, why did Steven think the killer was him when he was meeting the killer? Like clearly not if he is right there and you are awake. And then it was saying Karen “found” her lover’s body in the basement... no, she found her lover dying but didn’t find his body, she found him. And how were people going to blame Steven when he got his jaw chopped off, he clearly would not be able to do that himself? Did they think Karen did that? Because that’s brutal.

The epilogue: did Karen find out that Alana fucked her past lover? And how did that relationship even form? They literally talked for like 20 minutes, if that. And I get Karen and Steven had a poor relationship, but homegirl moved on quick. She even has a new child now, like damn. I also would have liked to have seen Miles’ reaction to his friend dying, but alas he’s a one-dimensional character. The ending in general seemed rushed and abrupt. If it was delved into more, it would have been more pleasant. Especially since the killer was never revealed.

This book took me six months to fully get through, mainly because I hated Steven as a person. The plot was good until it was decided the killer won’t be revealed. The writing and characters were all very eh. Like, they weren’t good and weren’t too terrible. I wouldn’t recommend this book, especially with the ending. I only enjoyed like two lines out of this entire book which was “The trouble with being god is god’s not real. But I am” (Aicher 253). And those lines were like the climax of the story too so...

Total rating: three or four out of ten.

#the trouble with being god #william f. aicher #book review #book reflection #book

[liskantope]

During the last few months, I read through the the entire archive of Luann comics from 1985 to the present day, as it’s freely available through GoComics. Don’t judge me. Or do judge me, I don’t care. Luann is entertaining and nostalgic (at least the period from the late 90′s through 2006 or so when I was regularly following the strip in the newspaper). Some thoughts below. (I actually wanted to write this a month and a half ago when I had just finished and everything was fresher on my mind, but that’s when holidays and all my distractions hit. This turned out to be very long and I’m not sure if any of my followers is actually interested in a review of Luann, but if anyone wants to scroll down to the final bulletpoint, that is a bit less Luann-specific and more on the lines of my usual discourse topics.)

Never mind bulletpoints; some of these are too long to be easily readable without breaking up into paragraphs!

1) I was impressed, almost all the way through, with how much sexuality is conveyed in the dialog and relationships between the characters while somehow staying within the content restrictions for a newspaper comic. (I do recall back around 2000 a particular comic coming under fire because the dialog between Luann’s parents implied that they didn’t wait for marriage, one which I was able to identify this time around.) I think Luann possibly has the most sexuality in it of any newspaper comic I’ve come across.

2) I understand that daily comic strip artists typically have to do their Sunday comics some six weeks more ahead of publication than their non-Sunday comics, resulting in each Sunday strip usually having nothing to do with the story happening in its neighboring strips. Luann consistently seems to be an exception to this, where either the cartoonist is able to follow a schedule of drawing the Sunday strips contemporaneously with the rest or he is extraordinarily good at planning a further six weeks in advance what will be going on in the story by the time a given Sunday strip will come out. That said, while I remember being annoyed that my newspaper growing up didn’t include Luann in its Sunday comics section, I see now that I wasn’t missing all that much: the Sunday strips are still mostly independent, shallow gags that often look like they could have been carried out just as easily and more space-efficiently in a daily strip.

3) Luann’s relationship with her brother Brad, which was clearly meant to reflect a classic snarky sibling dynamic, went further with the insults, name-calling, complete reluctance to acknowledge caring feelings, and occasionally outright malicious behavior than I was comfortable with (until recent years when this has simmered down now that they’re more fully grown up). Are typical siblings really treat each other by default in such an antagonistic and adversarial manner? I appreciate that I had an idyllic relationship with my sister growing up -- I mean really the closest to ideal of any siblings I’ve known -- but I wouldn’t have thought that the norm was really closer to Luann and Brad.

4) On the flip side, there’s another aspect of Luann’s life with her immediate family which strikes me as probably healthier than what I imagine as the default: the openness with which she and Brad air all their personal trials and tribulations to their parents. Luann in particular is often venting about her crushes (especially her main crush, Aaron Hill, always referred to with his full name) and coming to her parents for support over whatever teenage-style drama she’s caught up in. I suppose the fact that I didn’t feel free to be open about these types of things with my parents has much more to do with me than with them: I’ve always been neurotic about open discussion of certain things, especially my romantic interests or feelings of sexual attraction, and was somewhat more so as a teenager than now. (It would take a much longer post than this to pick apart this neurosis.) I remember actually getting into an argument with my parents over whether it’s within a normal kid-parent dynamic to mention at dinner “I met/saw the most attractive girl today!” with me convinced that it wasn’t. I have to concede that the Luann universe (fictional, but clearly based on the cartoonist’s impression of reality) is a point in their favor.

All that said, I would think that Luann might have felt kind of silly blabbering so much about her obsession with Aaron Hill to her family members (not to mention her school guidance counselor!) knowing on some level that it must come across as immature. Yet, in writing this I’ve remembered that I did plenty of blabbering as a young teenager to my family about whatever Interests I was obsessed with at the time, in a way that I kinda-sorta knew was immature but not enough to stop me... but that just wouldn’t have included romantic or sexual feelings. Also, the desire or ability to feel comfortable sleeping on the sofa in the middle of my family doing things (as Brad is constantly seen doing) is utterly foreign to me, but that touches on another of my neuroses.

5) This strip has obviously changed a lot over its nearly 34 years of syndication, which shows most obviously and superficially in the vast improvement in drawing style. In terms of content and stories it changed a lot too, and I think in a very positive direction. In fact, if I hadn’t known that it would improve in this way, I don’t think I would have bothered getting through all of the first decade of Luann. The basis for Luann in its early years was simple gags meant to reflect life of a typical teenage girl in a typical nuclear family. But there was something very pessimistic about all of it: the lives of the DeGroots, each entrenched in their roles as mother, father, teenage daughter, and teenage son, seem weary and at times slightly on the dysfunctional side. The strip could have practically be titled “The Woes of the Modern Middle-Class Nuclear Family”. It predated but was rather similar to The Simpsons in this way. Moreover, Luann, depicted as an awkward and not very attractive 13-year-old, seemed hopeless in all of the Average Teenage Girl ways, including hating everything about school; not really excelling at anything in school or out; being constantly wrapped up in spending hours on the phone with the same two friends; and never, ever, ever being able to get her the object of her long-time super-obsessive crush, Aaron Hill, to so much as glance in her direction (this theme was dwelt on ad nauseum for over a decade to the point that it got extremely tiresome and I’m surprised I got through that period; maybe what got me through was occasional acknowledgments in the voices of Luann’s friends that this obsession was over-the-top and getting pretty old).

And yet... Luann has grown up into a beautiful and talented woman with ambitions and a number of dating relationships under her belt, and the DeGroots are now held up as an example of a really admirable and healthy family (one that TJ clearly wants as his own family). While Brad’s transformation from teenage slob who lay around and ate Oreos all day into a happily married, responsible, and fit fireman is openly remarked upon, the drastic change in the ethos of the strip as a whole isn’t explicitly acknowledged. Of course the evolution happened very gradually, but if I had to point to a single turning point, my choice would be obvious: things began to drastically turn around for Luann in early 1997 when she bared her feelings to Aaron Hill by giving him a scroll containing all her memories of him (a move that would be considered obsessive and stalker-ish in another context but which finally won his attention here).

6) I think there’s a sort of trope, which the Luann character exemplifies about midway through the strip’s history, where she’s supposed to continue representing the insecure girl who feels unattractive and unpopular so that people can relate to her, while at the same time she seems to constantly attract boys (most of whom she considers really hot) and gets dates with them, so as to make for more interesting stories. I got annoyed at times at how these two things seemed to be in tension. At one point, if I remember right, Luann had no fewer than four of the boy characters super into her, including Aaron Hill even though she had temporarily decided she was through with him (this was unacknowledged later on when she went back to complaining that all those years she was in love with Aaron but he never truly noticed her). Other examples of this trope perhaps include Gus Cruikshank and George Costanza.

7) I would feel amiss if I didn’t put in a word about the Gunther character here. He’s my favorite character in the particular sense of reminding me extraordinarily of myself. If Butters from South Park is the most similar animated cartoon character to me (at least in the opinion of some friends), then Gunther Berger is, a hundred times more so, the most similar comic cartoon character to me. Not only do most of his personality traits match almost perfectly with mine (although I’m not as good with kids and don’t know anything about costume-making), his physical appearance is strikingly similar to mine, especially the way I looked as a teenager (plaid shirts and all). In fact, I sometimes wonder if, had there been (say) a call for auditions for a Luann movie back when I looked slightly younger, I might have had a decent shot at winning the part due to my physical similarity to Gunther -- I’m not an amazing actor, but there’s not nearly as much acting involved when you’re basically playing yourself.

One of the rather negative aspects of the early Luann ethos for me is not only the mildly negative way that Gunther was portrayed as the stereotypical socially-inept nerd but the level of disdain Luann treats him with (despite her own insecurities) which she’s only occasionally called out on. I’m glad to see that Gunther soon became one of the most likeable and admirable characters in the strip. Rather than feel ashamed of our likeness, I see him as reflecting some of the best parts of me and, when it comes to standing up and speaking his mind, an inspiration for me to be better.

8) Luann, throughout its history, addresses stereotypical norms, particularly with regard to gender, in an interesting (although not at all unusual) way. Let’s first keep in mind that the strip and main characters were established in 1985. The original intent of the cartoonist was clearly to portray middle-class nuclear family life, with a special focus on teenage girlhood, as honestly and relatably as he knew how. This meant in particular making each member of the DeGroot family a sort of every(wo)man: Frank is the typical father, the main breadwinner, always the one to worry about money (and the parent to go to when one of the kids wants money or something expensive), and taking a backseat with housework; Nancy is the typical mother, more emotive, burdened with all the housework and daily discipline of her kids; Brad is the typical older teenage boy, a lazy slob with little regard for cleanliness or manners spending all his time either being a couch potato or working on his car; and Luann is the typical 13-year-old girl, hating school and obsessed with boys, shopping, fashion, and talking on the phone. The strip positively revels in stereotypes (especially once we add the blonde cheerleader “mean girl” Tiffany, the unattractive nerd Gunther, and the goof-off Knute). A particular theme is gender stereotypes; in fact, it felt like a good 50% of Luann’s non-story strips, particularly Sunday ones, revolved around the differences between the genders. All of this looks pretty tiresome now and was probably tiresome already back in the 80′s.

And at the same time, the cartoonist was clearly socially progressive and a feminist (at least in the old-school sense) from the start. He made many points about the particular burdens women face and wrote many sympathetic strips about how Nancy willingly did all the housework and cooking but was expected to by default and felt unappreciated because her work went unacknowledged by everyone else. There’s a lot of focus on how the fashion industry puts pressures on teenage girls and women and how women should free themselves from basing their self-worth on how their looks compare to other women’s and on what boys think of them. In fact, the artist very deftly points out the tension between Luann’s awareness of this unreasonableness and her desire to be superficially attractive and objectified by boys anyway!

What reads as a tiny bit strange about all of this -- but only from a very modern point of view, I think -- is that all of these stereotypes are remarked upon and criticized while still being exemplified by pretty much every single character and everything they do. (Compare to Zits, debuting in 1997, where the father, a rather sweet, huggy, un-stereotypically masculine character, is shown doing the laundry from early on.) I get why someone would go with that formula, because as I said it seems at least naively like the best way to maximize relatability, but it comes at the expense of creating a subtle tension and not fully promoting the intended messages. I believe this underscores a fundamental distinction between a bare anti-conformist message and anti-conformist representation and suggests that representation as a social justice concept just wasn’t a big thing back in the 80′s and 90′s in the way it (fortunately) is today.

#luann #comics section #sexuality #sibling relationships #sex casuality #personal quirks #the simpsons #love (netflix show) #Seinfeld #south park

[philly-osopher]

Washington’s slaves

okay, look. i thought the idea of Washington as a “good” slaveowner had been debunked so thoroughly that i would have nothing further to contribute. but the other day i saw a post cross my dash that made me realize that there are a lot of bad, poorly-supported arguments out there. i can’t replicate the post, since OP has deleted it, and i’m not interested in responding to OP in particular, but rather to all the misconceptions i saw. hopefully this will be useful in correcting those! many thanks are due to @herowndeliverance for editing help :)

here are some misconceptions re: George Washington and slavery + debunkation:

“he was actually nice to his slaves!”

completely and utterly false. first of all, the simple act of enslaving someone is NOT NICE. the notion that there can be a “benign slaveowner” is utterly absurd. slaves’ entire lives were stolen from them. their labor made Washington’s fortune and gave him his social position. the ~300 slaves at Mount Vernon did often backbreaking work six days a week under extreme coercion, were kept purposefully uneducated and illiterate, and had no legal recourse if they were treated cruelly--which they were. we have direct, textual evidence that Washington encouraged his overseers to beat and whip slaves who he deemed were misbehaving, defiant, or shirking work.

worst of all, if Washington had a slave whom he considered particularly problematic, he would sell them to the West Indies. Mount Vernon’s website is a great source of info on most of this, but here all they say is that this was a way of “ensuring that the person would never see their family or friends at Mount Vernon again.” this is an almost comical understatement. anyone who’s read the Chernow biography of Hamilton knows what a hellscape the West Indian sugar plantations were; life expectancy was about eight years once a slave started work. since Washington visited the sugar islands as a young man, he wasn’t ignorant of conditions there. but if a slave inconvenienced him too much, he sent them anyway.

was Washington an especially cruel master by the standards of his day? probably not. was he nice? the whole concept of “nice” can’t apply to this situation, but even if it could, Washington wouldn’t be it.

“freeing slaves would have been cruel... for the slaves”

slaves tried to escape Mount Vernon fairly frequently. one very famous case is that of Ona Judge, one of Martha Washington’s slaves, who escaped Philadelphia just before the end of Washington’s second term as President. even though the Washingtons contacted her and asked/ berated/ threatened in attempts to bring her back, Ona refused point blank to return. she spent her whole life as a fugitive in the woods in New Hampshire rather than go back to life as a slave. and it’s worth noting that she was Martha Washington’s favorite-- she had the relatively fortunate position of working in the house. another slave who escaped the Washingtons, Hercules, was a very skilled chef, and also had a relatively “soft” job.

A short time after the cook’s escape, a visitor to Mount Vernon asked one of Hercules’s young daughters if she was upset that she would never see her father again. Her answer surprised him: “Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now.”  (citation)

i should note that nobody was able to find out what happened to Hercules. he could have been killed on the journey north, kidnapped and sold back into slavery (more on this later) or he could have gotten away. being an escaped slave was dangerous business. yet Ona Judge and other escaped slaves preferred a lifetime of poverty and marginalization to even the least physically taxing slavery, and Ona Judge affirmed her preference for freedom in multiple newspaper interviews at the end of her life.

furthermore, southerners lived in constant fear of slave rebellions. the possibility of a slave rebellion was one of the reasons South Carolina couldn’t muster an adequate militia during the Revolution. slaves actively resisted being slaves and many risked their lives for the possibility of freedom.

so let’s put it this way: if emancipating slaves would truly have been so cruel to them... why did they have to be brutally coerced into staying slaves? why did so many try to escape or rebel in spite of that? the actions that slaves took really speak for themselves to debunk the argument that freedom would have been somehow cruel to them.

“slavery was normal at the time, so Washington didn’t know any better”

first of all, not all people who were raised when slavery was normal continued to hold those ideas throughout their lives. this included people whom Washington knew and liked. John Laurens, son of a man who made his fortune off of slavery, is one obvious example. another is Ben Franklin, who accepted slavery unquestioningly as a younger man, in fact owning slaves, but completely changed his mind later in life, directly petitioning Congress to abolish slavery. the Quakers, with a strong presence in the national capital of Philadelphia, also lobbied for an end to slavery. it was far from a universally-accepted practice in Washington’s day.

okay, so clearly SOME people realized slavery was wrong. but that didn’t mean a world without slavery was something a person of average intellectual/ moral vision could conceive of, right? (notice how little credit Washington apologists have to give him here? he was just a victim of his times! he could see a way to free America from Britain but by golly, freeing his own slaves was just too much of a stretch for his poor conventional brain to make) except the idea that slavery was normal everywhere is, again, totally wrong.

during the Washington administration the American seat of government was in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania had passed an Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780-- during the Revolution, way before Washington assumed the Presidency in 1789. the law stated that any slave who stayed in Philadelphia for six continuous months would be freed. this meant that the Washingtons had to set up a rotation system, taking their slaves back to Virginia or just across the river to New Jersey (everything is legal in New Jersey) to restart the clock. the slaves were perfectly aware this was going on. we don’t have record of what they thought about it-- but let’s be real, it must have been the most agonizing, infuriating process in the world. technically Washington wasn’t breaking the law, but he was certainly using a loophole to within an inch of its life.

Philadelphia also had the nation’s largest free black community as a result of this law-- there were several thousand free blacks in the city and only a few hundred slaves. the Washingtons were the exception to the rule the whole time they were there.

furthermore, Washington probably violated the tissue-thin protections granted fugitive slaves in his own Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 when he tried to bring Ona Judge back. the law required the slaveowner or his agent to bring a fugitive slave before a court, affirm it was really them, and get the judge’s okay before bringing them back to a life of slavery. Washington twice attempted to end run around this process-- Ona refused to play ball.

citation for most of the previous two paragraphs: Never Caught, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, and this podcast where she talks extensively about the book and the research she did for it. [note the podcast seems to be aimed at old white dudes, so they do spend time on some arguments that are pretty damn obvious to anyone who’s taken a race/ gender studies class. but it still has lots of good information.]

also, there’s a Drunk History on Ona Judge that is quite good

“he couldn’t legally emancipate his slaves”

okay, that’s partially true. about 2/3 of the Mount Vernon slaves, and Ona Judge, were Martha’s. “Martha’s” slaves were actually Custis estate “dower slaves” left over from her first marriage, and held in reserve for her grandchildren. it was all legally very tied up. but the fact remains that Martha did emancipate a lot of George’s slaves (not her own) after George’s death-- not out of the goodness of her heart, mind you, but because he’d stipulated they’d be freed after she died, and she didn’t want to give them all incentive to kill her. so, George and Martha did have the legal power to free at least George’s slaves, around 100 people. the circumstances under which Martha freed them are not to her moral credit. i want to keep this focused on George because it’s already so long, but Martha benefited just as much or more from slavery as him, and respecting her as someone with her own moral agency requires we acknowledge her failings as her own. 

all of this debate about treatment of individual slaves really misses the point, however. arguing about how Washington personally treated his own slaves ignores his political actions. Washington signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 while he was President.

what’s that?

here’s some things the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (full original text here) did:

made it so that slaves escaping from slave states into free states were still legally considered slaves

made it legal for masters or their representatives to arrest suspected fugitive slaves in free states, take them before a judge, and, upon proving their identity “by oral testimony or affidavit,” (a.k.a. “yes, this is my slave, pinky swear”-- needless to say, this clause meant slave-staters could basically legally kidnap and enslave any free black person, even from a free state) return them to slavery

fined people who knowingly helped fugitive slaves

furthermore, slavery was inherited based on the mother’s legal status-- so, if a woman escaped slavery, went to a free state, and had children, her children were legally speaking slaves to her old master. this is what happened to Ona Judge. this is why she and her children were still in hiding in the woods in New Hampshire in the 1850s-- Martha’s granddaughter was still alive. legally, she owned them all.

as President, Washington’s power to do harm to slaves was far greater than as a private individual. he used that power to legally entrench slavery, extending the power of slave states to enforce slave laws even in free states.

some argue that Washington’s priority was preserving the Union/ keeping southern states happy, and that doing so required a soft stance on slavery. people who are better-qualified historians than i am can debate that point. however, even IF a conciliatory approach to the south on a policy level was necessary for Washington to get his political priorities accomplished, that still says something about what his priorities were (e.g. certainly not with helping slaves). AND, we also have to think about the example that Washington’s prominent use of slave labor as President set for the rest of the country. his personal conduct and decisions about his own household weren’t subject to the same considerations as his political actions. and yet, Washington’s choice to use slaves not only in Mount Vernon but also in New York and Philadelphia was a powerful (if implicit) pro-slavery signal.

Americans idolized Washington-- his personal conduct was seen as exemplary for the whole nation. what kind of message did it send to the nation that the Washingtons brought slaves to Philadelphia-- a free city-- during their administration? it sent the message that slavery was not just normal, but morally okay. it sent the message that slavers subverting the laws of free states was not just normal, but morally okay.

Washington’s life was enormously consequential for this country. he was a complicated person--like we all are!-- and he did make some choices that were really, really good for America, like trying to stay above political parties, and dealing effectively with the crises of his administration, and setting the precedent of retiring after two terms. his terrible treatment of slaves and his work to reinforce and normalize slavery don’t erase the good he did. but nor does the good he did excuse the bad. we simply cannot pretend that what Washington did-- towards his slaves personally, and regarding slavery politically-- is just an artifact of his upbringing. he chose to act the way he did, and if we’re going to understand the USA and the depth of the historical injury done to America’s black community by slavery, Washington’s moral failings are a critical part of the story.

#American slavery #George Washington #Ona Judge

[agnetta]

I’m in shock

tldr; every story has it’s perspective, but be sure to read the WHOLE story. Actors should be accountable for their actions, however they are still regular people. Their jobs just give them a lot more exposure.

   I just happen to look for Mark Pellegrino’s twitter for unrelated reasons and I see all of this hate. So I investigate. Let me start off by saying I love this fandom, and seeing it torn apart like this is heart breaking. However, I have a couple of devil’s advocate thoughts (slightly biased though).

Part A

1- Celebrities are just PEOPLE. They are people with lots of followers.       a) Because they have hundreds of thousands of followers they should be aware they are potentially influential so they mind what they say       b) They are still people with opinions and different ideas and backgrounds and they don’t always agree with one another, and like people they want to say their piece, whether you have 0 followers or 600,000.

B) So much of this is taken out of context. I’m not saying the context makes it perfectly un-offensive and unpolitical, but there are a few select people who research all of the information, and to prove their point highlight select tweets (that are part of a multi-tweet, or part of a back and forth conversation) and THAT is what is seen by the majority of thousands of people who don’t have the time or care to look into the details - they see the ugly stuff the handful of people who made these compilations point out and they retweet it - continuing the cycle. People take the bait but don’t they notice the tweets are incomplete sentences - therefore there must be more? I’m working on compiling context photos in response to these but really all you have to do is do an advanced search on twitter like this: whatever the text is from:markrpellegrino  and if you want to add dates instead of (or along with) text it’s: from:markrpellegrino since:year-numericalmonth-day until:2015-12-29 I for example I did: from:markrpellegrino since:2015-12-26 until:2015-12-29 or universal healthcare aka mandated healthcare is immoral from:markpellegrino and it popped up with the tweet I could click on for the discussion trail and replies.

Part 2

People are saying Mark Pellegrino systematically and consistently bullies fans over the internet - but I have combed through many many posts and I have not seen individualized, pointed bullying. The ONLY directed comment I’ve seen is about some superfan called “Lua” who they refer to as “Queen L” because she takes it upon herself to police the entire fandom of the twittersphere and she regularly (according to the actors) attempts to personally message them and “manage” over them. I’m not sure what all of that is about, I only learned about it today, and read up on some of it here.  Other than those interactions with a fan who “likes to stir up trouble” -according to other fans in the twitterverse - Mark Pellegrino only expresses his opinions on political matters. Which lots of people do, and I can tell you that I have very close friends with whom I disagree about politics. Every person is different, and I am not going to find someone who completely matches up with all of my opinions of the world unless I’m looking in the mirror. He is sharing his thoughts most people do on twitter. (Refer to Part A, 1 for my feelings on this)

However, do you know what evidence I’ve seen a lot of spreading through the support of fans? Context. The un-cut tweets. Apologies from Mark. Or if you want to see the video out of his mouth, so you don’t think someone writes apologies on his behalf. Outright support of Israel and other countries that people claim he speaks hate about. He actively engages with people who reply to his posts and his responses are patient, link articles, and he doesn’t just throw something out there and leave it, he converses. I think people are confusing discussion of sensitive subjects which he chooses not to ignore as bullying. And Yeah discussion is not a euphemism, he is not hate messaging people, he is just engaging in conversation.

Part 3

PEOPLE ARE HATING ON JARED AND JENSEN. This came as the most shock to me because I don’t follow Mark Pellegrino’s personal life much, but I am an avid watcher of fan news on Jared and Jensen. I understand that on social media a person usually shows his best self, so I’m not talking about their personal instagrams/facebook interactions.  Do you know where I have formed my opinions of Jensen and Jared? Hundreds of fan interactions I’ve read about/seen photos of out in the street. Non-convention, non-autograph events, just running into them in real life. HUNDREDS that I’ve read of them being the most charming and kindest and most caring human beings on the planet.

WHAT THE @#$*& are you talking about? “If you’re always running into assholes..., maybe the problem is you.” FIRST OFF get off your damn high horse because go ahead and TELL ME you’ve never ever had a problem with customer service in your life. Which by the way, I’ve tried searching and...he runs into these ‘assholes’ once in about every six months. If that’s how often he runs into assholes that blow his gasket then he is a fortunate man. SECONDLY, holy my Jesus. May I refer to my above paragraph of nothing but love with encountering them?

Let me back up here and say that even after a decade of paparazzi and fans they STILL say “If you do see us out and about, not at the convention, say Hi, you’re family...seriously treat us like a friend, because we are” even though they state that doing this captures the attention of a dozen other people each time they do this. Both Jensen and Jared have proved to have giant hearts and defending people in situations that they were not tied to or obligated to participate in - BUT THEY MAKE IT THEIR OBLIGATION. The best part is they didn’t praise themselves on social media for doing these things, they know you just have to stand up all the time. I’m not saying they please everybody all of the time, but as men they are pillars in our society.

Yes there’s situations like this, so we know it’s not a first time mistake from Jared. But if you were epic-ly pissed for being mistreated you wouldn’t be thinking clearly about your revenge. EVERY time he’s done this he deletes the tweet later for some reason. I don’t know and I won’t speculate. But for the record - that tweet got over 6000 likes and over 1000 retweets. That is really fucked up, however I read about the two of them A LOT, from regular people, and the fact is that for every one bad thing I read out of every 6 months or more I read amazing news about them on a weekly basis. It truly just makes me see they are more real, as cliche as that sounds. It is the truth. Not to mention JP’s full disclosure on a different time he tweeted about his displeasure with a person seems like a once and for all stand that he has the right to express his feelings regardless of who he is, and we have our right to voice our opinions as well.

Anyone who’s watched any convention interview with ANY of the SPN actors knows that Jared is the biggest prankster on the set. I am sure that you’ve met many people that don’t like people with personalities like that - not everyone gets along. To some you may seem fun and goofy, and to others you seem cocky and annoying. It doesn’t diminish how those ‘others’ feel, but it’s all a matter of perspective.

P.S. if you read any of my links read the entire conversation - the perspectives switch around a lot. ie: the last link I posted was about Jared being an ass but if you read later the same person who posted that says, “Ah, they fooled around a bit but I never heard any gripes from the crew about any of their antics.” Many other comments on the thread talk about personal experiences and second hand stories and personal quotes from the actors. So always read the full story.

#rant #jared padalecki #mark pellegrino #jensen ackles #twitter #anger

[pullcarol0-blog]

2:00PM Water Cooler 12/21/2018

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

*** Ruth Bader Ginsburg Health Update: Supreme Court Justice Has Cancerous Lung Growths Removed ***

Trade

They issue press releases:

#China's Central Economic Work Conference news release promising on external reforms: pic.twitter.com/crz2zeKEFg

— Bert Hofman (@berthofmanecon) December 21, 2018

“How to fix America’s dysfunctional trade system” [Ryan Cooper, The Week]. “Timothy Meyer and Ganesh Sitaraman at the Great Democracy Initiative have a new paper that presents a solid starting point for developing a fundamental reform of American trade structure…. Then there is the problem of pro-rich bias. Put simply, the last few decades of trade deals have been outrageously biased towards corporations and the rich. They have powerfully enabled the growth of parasitic tax havens, which allow companies to book profits in low-tax jurisdictions, starving countries of rightful revenue (and often leading to companies piling up gargantuan dragon hoards of cash they don’t know what to do with). Corporations, meanwhile, have gotten their own fake legal system in the form of Investor-State Dispute Settlement trade deal stipulations…. Meyer and Sitaraman suggest renegotiating the tax portions of trade deals to enforce a “formulary” tax system — in which profits are taxed where they are made, not where they are booked.” • This is well worth a read for all the policy suggestions. And then there’s this:

[F]or all its other disastrous side effects, Trump’s haphazard tax on aluminum has dramatically revived the American aluminum industry. Ensuring a reasonable domestic supply of key metals like that is so obviously a security concern — for military and consumer uses alike — that it wouldn’t have even occurred to New Deal policymakers to think otherwise. It takes a lot of ideological indoctrination to think there’s no problem when a small price disadvantage causes a country to lose its entire supply chain of key industrial commodities.

Yep.

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

2020

“The Democratic Party Is Getting Ready for a Very Messy 2020 Primary Race” [New York Magazine]. “The basic debate schedule itself acknowledges the likely massive field, and the potential for a drawn-out scrap for delegates that will ultimately determine the nomination. Perez said the first debate will be held in June 2019 — earlier than Republicans’ late-summer kickoff in 2015 — and the last one is scheduled for April 2020 — deep into the primary calendar, once the early-voting states and Super Tuesday have passed, and by which point the field is (usually) much winnowed. Perhaps not this time.”

“Critics Say Bernie Sanders Is Too Old, Too White, and Too Socialist to Run for President in 2020. They’re Wrong.” [The Intercept]. “Despite refusing to join the Democrats in the wake of the 2016 election, the party’s base still adores him. As of October 2018, he had a whopping 78 percent approval rating with Democratic voters.” • Yeah, but who cares about them?

2018 Post Mortem

“Americans Actually Voted in the 2018 Midterms” [Bloomberg]. • These are very interesting charts, but marred by being two-dimensional. It’s really absurd to put AOC and CIA asset Spanberger in the same blue box, or consider them both “left.”

Mattis Flap

Let The Hagiography Begin (1):

All Americans should take time to read General Mattis’s letter of resignation. It is a truly beautiful letter that speaks to our very best values as a nation. https://t.co/XY0mvqfv9q

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) December 21, 2018

Let The Hagiography Begin (2):

Sen. Schumer: "Sec. Mattis was 1 of the few symbols, the few items of strength & stability in this administration. Everything that indicates stability, everything that indicates strength, everything that indicates knowledge is leaving this administration." https://t.co/Bd79j1n4xF pic.twitter.com/22Byt1iZkh

— The Hill (@thehill) December 21, 2018

Breath of Sanity (1): “Random Observation” [Eschaton]. “Whatever the brain worms are telling him, I’m pretty sure that I’d generally prefer Donald Trump be running Not War instead of War, almost no matter what.”

Breath of Sanity (2):

Holy crap. I agree with Stephen Miller on Wolf Blitzer’s show on #CNN. He’s calling for US to get out of other nation’s wars!!! The world is upside down.

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) December 20, 2018

Breath of Sanity (3):

1. I support withdrawing US troops from all these wars, overt and covert. 2. Trump is an unstable authoritarian who cannot be trusted. 3. “Mattis was an adult” is bullshit. He’s a hawkish war criminal. 4. It’s very telling that the war party in DC is furious.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) December 21, 2018

“How the Trump-Mattis alliance crumbled” [CNN]. “Eight months before his resignation, Mattis managed to forestall the Syria troop withdrawal after the President announced during a rally in Ohio that US troops would soon be coming home. Meeting later in the Situation Room, Trump told his military and national security advisers they had six months to wrap up the mission in Syria.” • Interesting…

“Fear Mounts as Mattis Quits Pentagon” [Daily Beast] • And fear means clicks!

New Cold War

“Prosecutors win court fight over secret subpoena of a foreign company” [WaPo]. “A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday against a foreign company embroiled in a secret subpoena fight… Officials have not confirmed who the prosecutors on the case are, but on the day the court order under appeal was issued, two lawyers were observed exiting a sealed hearing before Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — who oversees grand-jury proceedings — along with five prosecutors with the special counsel’s office, including appellate specialist Michael Dreeben… The framing of the debate suggests that whatever the company is, it is not one that has a significant business presence in the United States, because foreign firms operating in America typically comply with demands from U.S. authorities for evidence.” • Hmm.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Democrats Just Blocked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Push For A Green New Deal Committee” [HuffPo]. “Democratic leaders [***cough*** Pelosi ***cough***] on Thursday tapped Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) to head a revived U.S. House panel on climate change, all but ending a dramatic monthlong effort to establish a select committee on a Green New Deal. Castor’s appointment came as a surprise to proponents of a Green New Deal. … Despite weeks of protests demanding House Democrats focus efforts next year on drafting a Green New Deal, the sort of sweeping economic policy that scientists say matches the scale of the climate crisis, Castor told E&E News the plan was “not going to be our sole focus.” She then suggested that barring members who have accepted donations from the oil, gas and coal industries from serving on the committee could be unconstitutional. “I don’t think you can do that under the First Amendment, really,” she said.” • Cool. Liberals totally on board with Citizens United. I don’t think this appointment is the end of the issue.

“Liberals No Longer Feel Your Pain” [Ted Rall, Counterpunch]. “I noticed the de-empathification of the Democratic Party during the implementation of Obamacare. I lived in one of many counties with zero or one plan on offer…. On Facebook I complained about the paucity of affordable plans in my online health insurance marketplace. “I don’t know what you’re going on about,” one of my friends snarked. ‘I found an excellent, affordable plan.’ My friend lives in Manhattan… In the 1970s right-wing Republicans like Richard Nixon promoted the cliché of the “limousine liberal”: self-righteous, hypocritical, privileged and disconnected from Joe and Jane Sixpack. I don’t know if it was true then. It certainly is now.” • Falling life expectancy in flyover isn’t even on liberal Democrat radar as a policy issue.

“Do America’s Socialists Have a Race Problem?” [The New Republic]. The deck: “Inside a raging debate that has split the country’s most exciting new political movement.” The paragraph that caught my eye: “In one notable dispute, a brake light repair initiative in the [Momentum (democratic centralist?)] East Bay DSA was flatly rejected by the chapter’s co-chairs, who refused to put it up for a vote. The repair clinics first sprouted in New Orleans as a strategy to combat police brutality, as people of color are often pulled over for problems as innocuous as broken taillights. These traffic stops can even lead to—as in the case of Philando Castile—killings by the police. While DSA chapters across the country soon began replicating the program, and embraced it as an effective way to build a stronger working-class base, East Bay leadership remained strongly resistant to the campaign. In a private conversation, one East Bay co-chair insinuated to a member of color organizing the clinic that it would look like ‘white saviorism.’ A former member of the chapter’s leadership referred to it as ‘charity’ in a blog post.” • Well, that’s just dumb. Super dumb. FWIW, I thought the headline was a bit clickbaity, and the author, though writing in good faith, probably missed plenty of local nuance. That said: (1) America’s socialists have a problem with race, because America does; and (2) America’s socialists also have a problem with class, for the same reason, and (3) the Democrat Party has a substantial presence among aspirational policy entrepreneurs of color, shall we say, who have their own strongly felt institutional objectives. Worth noting that back in the 30s, the CPUSA was one of very few institutions to defend the Scottsboro Boys (the NAACP being the other). So it’s not like there’s no heritage here to build on.

Stats Watch

GDP, Q3 2018: “The third quarter was a strong one for the economy, getting a boost from an overdue inventory build but driven once again by the most important factor and that is consumer spending” [Econintersect]. “Whether continued strength for the consumer can be expected in the fourth quarter will get an indication later this morning with the personal income and outlays report for November.”

Personal Income and Outlays, November 2018: “November was a mixed month for the consumer as personal income managed only a lower-than-expected … gain which is offset, however, by a solid and higher-than-expected … rise for consumer spending” [Econintersect]. “November was a mixed month for the consumer as personal income managed only a lower-than-expected 0.2 percent gain which is offset, however, by a solid and higher-than-expected 0.4 percent rise for consumer spending.”

Durable Goods Orders, November 2018: “A swing higher for the always volatile aircraft group gave an outsized lift to durable goods orders” [Econoday]. “The biggest disappointment, and the heart of the capital goods group, is machinery where November orders sank a very steep 1.7 percent.” • Not good, in a capitalist economy.

Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index, December 2018: “This morning’s durable goods report proved no better than mixed as have many of the recent regional manufacturing reports including Kansas City’s composite index for December which slowed” [Econintersect]. “And flattening is a reasonable description for the nation’s factory sector in general, ending what was a strong 2018 with a bit of fizzle.”

Consumer Sentiment, December 2018 (Final): “Consumer sentiment ends this month at a stronger-than-expected index level” [Econintersect]. “The feeling of this report is very much like personal income and outlays, hinting at consumer spending strength at a time of limited income growth and very flat inflation.”

Corporate Profits, Q3 2018: “After-tax corporate profits rose a year-on-year 6.1 percent” [Econintersect].

The Bezzle: “Wall Street’s Billionaire Machine, Where Almost Everyone Gets Rich” [Bloomberg]. “Eric Smidt is a new kind of super-rich. He made his fortune by transforming an old-fashioned business into a giant ATM, an overhaul aided by one of the hottest plays on Wall Street: collateralized loan obligations. Meet the new aristocrats of debt—the people and companies cashing in on a record boom in these once-marginal investments whose relatively high returns have attracted yield-hungry investors. They’ve fueled a rapid buildup in corporate debt that some think could become the epicenter of the next credit crisis but has been minting money for many.” • Oh.

The Bezzle: “Personally I’ve Never Experienced Anything Like That” [Current Affairs]. “Amazon pays employees specifically to tweet that they are well-treated and not exploited. And they’re very vigilant—I recently wrote an article pondering the ethical quandary of shopping at Amazon while being critical of its labor practices, and the very same “Fulfillment Center Ambassador” from one of the news articles about the practice (“Phil”) popped up to tell me that he himself feels he is treated fairly…. [A]ssuming they are people and not robots (however much Amazon is intent on blurring the distinction between those two categories), and they are treated well and sincere in relating their positive experiences, I think it’s worth pointing out the very simple problem with what they’re saying. ‘I have not experienced this problem personally’ does not make a very good case that ‘This problem is not experienced by others.'”

The Bezzle: “Uber’s entire business model is in jeopardy after losing its latest legal battle over the rights of UK drivers” [Business Insider]. “Uber has lost its latest court bid to stop its British drivers being classified as workers, entitling them to rights such as the minimum wage, in a decision which jeopardizes the taxi app’s business model…. Uber said it would appeal the verdict, meaning the legal process will continue.”

The 420

“The world’s biggest beer company is looking at making cannabis drinks” [CNN]. “Could Budweiser drinkers soon be swapping beer for pot? AB InBev (BUD), the world’s biggest brewer, said Wednesday that it’s teaming up with Canada’s Tilray (TLRY) to research cannabis-infused drinks. It’s the latest major company to start exploring the pot market following decisions to legalize recreational marijuana in Canada and a number of American states. AB InBev and Tilray will invest a combined $100 million into researching non-alcoholic drinks containing cannabis elements.” • My vision of marijuana legalization was always small, local growers and no corporate advertising. Oh well.

“Pot Unites Democrats, Republicans as Ex-Party Chiefs Join Tilray” [Bloomberg]. “Tilray Inc., the first cannabis company to list directly on a U.S. exchange, announced Thursday the formation of a 10-person advisory board including Howard Dean, a former presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee between 2005 and 2009, and Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011.”

Gaia

“What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life” [Quanta]. “The tree of life just got another major branch. Researchers recently found a certain rare and mysterious microbe called a hemimastigote in a clump of Nova Scotian soil. Their subsequent analysis of its DNA revealed that it was neither animal, plant, fungus nor any recognized type of protozoan — that it in fact fell far outside any of the known large categories for classifying complex forms of life (eukaryotes). Instead, this flagella-waving oddball stands as the first member of its own ‘supra-kingdom’ group, which probably peeled away from the other big branches of life at least a billion years ago…. Impressive as this finding about hemimastigotes is on its own, what matters more is that it’s just the latest (and most profound) of a quietly and steadily growing number of major taxonomic additions. Researchers keep uncovering not just new species or classes but entirely new kingdoms of life — raising questions about how they have stayed hidden for so long and how close we are to finding them all.” • Like Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Or at least not much. Although I have known some flagella-waving oddballs, generally in corporate environments…

“Widespread, occasional use of antibiotics in U.S. linked with resistance” [Harvard School of Public Health] (original). “The increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the U.S. appears more closely linked with their occasional use by many people than by their repeated use among smaller numbers of people, according to a large new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health…. ‘Our findings suggest that combatting inappropriate antibiotic use among people who don’t take many antibiotics may be just as important, or more important, to fighting resistance than focusing on high-intensity users,’ said lead author Scott Olesen, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. ‘More antibiotic use generally means more antibiotic resistance, but it seems like the number of people taking antibiotics might matter more than the amount they’re taking.'”

Police State Watch

“Alabama police department blames Satan for spike in homicides” [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]. This was the now-deleted Facebook post from the Opp Police Department:

THIS PAST SUNDAY, A YOUNG MAN WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN KINSTON. MONDAY NIGHT, A MOTHER WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN NORTHERN COVINGTON COUNTY. THERE HAVE BEEN FIVE MURDERS IN COVINGTON COUNTY IN 2018. THESE MURDERS HAVE BEEN DONE BY OUR YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS HAPPENING BECAUSE WE HAVE TURNED AWAY FROM GOD AND EMBRACED SATAN. WE MAY HAVE NOT MEANT TO DO SO BUT, WE HAVE. IT IS TIME TO ASK FOR GOD’S HELP TO STOP THIS. IT IS TIME TO BE PARENTS AND RAISE OUR CHILDREN, NOT HAVE THEM RAISE US. IT IS TIME TO FULLY SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT AND STAND BY THE OFFICERS AND DEPUTIES THAT ARE FAR TOO OFTEN HAVING TO WALK INTO THESE DANGEROUS SITUATIONS AND CLEAN UP THE MESS. FRIENDS, IT IS TIME TO STAND UP AND BE RESPONSIBLE, GROWN UP LEADERS IN OUR COMMUNITY. BOTTOM LINE, THERE ARE SHEEP; THERE ARE WOLVES AND THERE ARE SHEEP DOGS. WHICH GROUP DO YOU BELONG TO?

I am successfully resisting my urge to mock (well, except for the ALL CAPS) because of the multiple levels of tragedy: So many deaths in a small town, and the evident inablility of the local elites to cope. And it’s not any more crazypants than what you hear from a typical neoliberal economist. Just no pseudo-mathematics.

Class Warfare

“Is It Merely A Labor Supply Shock? Impacts of Syrian Migrants on Local Economies in Turkey” (PDF) [Doruk Cengiz, Hasan Tekguc, Political Economy Research Institute]. “We use a large and geographically varying inflow of over 2.5 million Syrian migrants in Turkey between 2012 and 2015 to study the effect of migration on local economies. We do not find adverse employment or wage effects for native-born Turkish workers overall, or those without a high school degree. These results are robust to a range of strategies to construct reliable control groups. Our analysis suggests that migration-induced increases in regional demand, capital supply, and productivity enable local labor markets to absorb inflow of migrant labor.” • Contra post-Mariel studies of Florida.

Xmas Cheer

“Hackers Celebrate Holidays With Fake Amazon, Apple Receipt Attacks” [NewYork Magazine]. “You get an email about an order from Amazon or Apple you’re not quite sure you placed — but who knows in the last-minute rush to make the Christmas deadline? You click through to see what exactly you ordered, and congrats, you’ve just got spear-phished. Happy holidays! Two recent phishing attacks outlined over at Bleeping Computer, work slightly differently but use the same basic principle to lure users in: send them a receipt for a purchase, get them to click through to a link to see what the purchase was for, and then hope the user makes some unwise choices.” • Stay safe out there!

News of the Wired

“The intertwined quest for understanding biological intelligence and creating artificial intelligence” [Stanford HAI]. “Thus both neuroscience and AI have deeply shared scientific goals of understanding how network performance and decision making arises as an emergent property of network connectivity and dynamics. Therefore the development of ideas and theories from theoretical neuroscience, and applied physics and mathematics could help in analyzing AI systems. Moreover, the behavior of AI systems could change the nature of experimental design in neuroscience, focusing the experimental effort on those aspects of network function that are poorly understood in AI. Overall, there is much to be gained from tighter connections between neuroscience, AI, and many other theoretical disciplines, which could bring about unified laws for the emergence of intelligence in biological and artificial systems alike, as we suggest next.” • If we really understood biological intelligence — the epigraph for the article is from Richard Feynman: “What I cannot create, I do not understand” — would handing that understanding over to, say, Jeff Bezos be a good thing? Why?

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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (4Corners):

Everything is still sunny inTucson, AZ! I love floral tapestries like this, made up of different colors and textures.

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on December 21, 2018 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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