#flight changes are so expensive you heard it from me

[technitango]

.

#went to kcon for all three days #got so horribly sick the day I was supposed to go back home #I couldn't even fuckin move lmao #had to delay the flight and everything #flight changes are so expensive you heard it from me #😰😰😰😰😰 #taemin though #worth every painstaking hour of being sick #🙏🙏🙏🙏 #techi personal #but yeah I'm back and can finally catch up with tdj rewatch hopefully I'm just so fuckin tired holy shit

[winkwonkwankwenk]

Nanami Head-Cannons!! (SFW & NSFW)

SFW

Works like a dog to provide for you, definitely works overtime and stacks vacation days like change in a jar. Some weeks you only ever feel him peck your cheek in the morning and the next time you see him with be the weekend- if you're lucky.

He misses you constantly, so much that he'll often accidently type your email along with his usual ones and you end up knowing all the company's trade secrets. Oops.

He sends you gifts every day he's away, from flowers to cakes to flights to your favorite places- he gifts you so often you've got a closet just for all the teddy-bears and a greenhouse to preserve your bouquets.

The two of you stay in a massive house so it's very lonely when he's gone. He makes sure to call you at least twice a day, morning and night.

He knows what time you wake up and time you go to sleep because he's memorized your sleeping pattern. He knows when to send chocolates and shopping money because he has your period app on his phone too and pays close attention to the notifications.

He came home to you crying in bed one night and called out of work for a month to make up for loss time. Ever since then, even during busy seasons, he makes sure to at least spend a week with you.

During his days off, he treats you to expensive dates cute strolls through gardens. He wants to impress and please you daily, and worries if you don't seem to be enjoying yourself. "Do you want a different dish?" and "Honey, we can go somewhere else if you'd prefer to" are phrases you've often heard when he's getting into his head.

He has a photo of you in his wallet and several in his office. Your wedding photos decorate his desk, along with vacation photos and cute pictures he snuck of you when you weren't looking. You're his Lock screen, home screen, and background on all of his computers.

He's never raised his voice at you and he never will. Even when the two of you fight, he can't help but dote on you and promise you the world. Whatever has you upset, he'll fix, even if it costs him an arm and a leg. "I like when you express yourself, Honey." He'll apologize for anything he's done to upset you and when you struggle to communicate he patiently waits and praises you for every word you manage to say. "Tell me what's on your mind and I'll do everything I can to make things better"

He's a funny man, his humor a mix of sarcasm and corny jokes. He'll tell you knock-knock jokes when you're sad and awful dad jokes when the two of you have calmed down from an argument but you can't help but laugh when he pulls you into a warm hug. How are you supposed to stay mad at such a charmer?

He'll feel guilty when he comes home to see you cooked dinner days ago and he never got to eat it. To make up for it, he'll cook you breakfast and leave it out for you before he heads off to work- even if he's exhausted. It's the least he can do.

NSFW (Kinky stuff ahead per usual hehe)

He has...scandalous pictures of you locked in a drawer of his desk. They come in handy during late shifts when he needs to let off steam and doesn't want to wake you. He'll bite down on his tie and groan as he jerks off under his oval desk.

He gets so turned on when you pull his tie. One night, he came home tense to see you having a late night spa session in the bath. You asked him to join and he insisted on showering to get off the grime of the office but then you pulled his tie with those dainty little hands and pulled him into the water. You thought he would be mad, but then he stripped out of his clothes before you could blink and fucked you senseless. Something about the pressure around his neck really gets his blood flowing.

Nanami caught you listening to him working out once and made sure to invite you to join him. He pinned you under him as he did push-ups, making sure you heard every grunt and groan. "You like that?" He whispered into your ear as you squeezed your thighs together under him. "I'll make sure to be extra vocal from now on."

Phone sex- the two of you have it at least once a week. Sometimes the pictures in his desk aren't enough and he has to wake you. His breaths are heavy, voice husky as he shows you his boner. "Look what you do to me, Y/N..." He'll whisper as your groggy eyes struggle to focus, "Help me fix it, okay Honey?"

He found your toys in the closet one day when he came home and was pissed. Not because you were using them but because he wasn't there to watch. He asked if you'd be okay with him having a camera in the bedroom to watch you and was so excited when you said yes. From then on, you've made sure to give him his own special liveshow- always sending him a text before you masturbate.

One day, he had left his lunch at home, so you brought it to him only to accidently interrupt a meeting. Before you could apologize he had you in his lap in his big office chair, secretly fingering you. You buried your face into his thick neck to stay quiet and squeezed his shoulders for relief. The moment the meeting was over he bent you over his desk and rammed into you.

His voice is so soft and sweet during sex, especially when he coos and praises you while talking you through your orgasms. "Y/N, look at me, Honey." and "Such a good girl...keep clenching like that, okay?" along with "What a pretty woman you are...I'm so lucky to have you."

His favorite positions are Mating-press and Nelson because he gets so deep inside of you he can feel your womb eagerly opening for his release.

He's got a monster. It's not eight inches, not nine, not even ten- 12 girthy inches casually hangs between his legs. He always makes sure to prep you well before even pulling it out.

Your pleasure over his- always. Even if he can barely keep his eyes open he'll put his back into it to make you orgasm.

Vacations are always romantic trips to one of his beach houses. He'll feed you chocolate-covered strawberries and expensive wines, then lay you down on the beach and eat you out until your toes curl in the sand.

He's going to put a baby in you. Period. The two of you have already discussed expanding the family and the moment you were on board he made sure to empty his balls every time the two of you had sex. He made sure not a drop of his cum spilled out, sometimes plugging it in with one of those toys you would play with in the livestreams.

You're his priority, in and out of bed. He treats aftercare like his biggest responsibility. He'll run a warm bath, carry you to it, wash you, dry you, comb and brush your hair- the list goes on and on. He'll order your favorite food and feed it to you, then soothe you until you fall asleep in his arms. He likes your body, but he loves you.

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#Wink writes 💗 #jujutsu kaisen nanami #jujutsu nanami #nanami smut #nanami kento #kento nanami #nanami #jjk nanami #nanami x reader #nanami headcanons #nanami hcs #nanami fluff #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk headcanons #nanami x you

[f1goat]

more than friends + lando norris x part seven

In which your best friend wants to help you so you get more sexual experience, but he discovers quickly that he never wants to share you and your new sexual experience with others.

masterlist - playlist

warnings: smut with a plot or a plot with smut? :) minors dni! i never proofread so probably grammar or spelling errors

requested: yes, based on: something with a driver sister that’s still a virgin & lando (her bestfriend) suggests to teach her things

part one / part two / part three / part four / part five / part six

“Lando come on mate,” Oscar sighs, “You really have to get into this taxi.”

Oscar then takes a look at his teammate. He already knew that Lando was drunk, but now that he looks at him he realizes that it’s way worse then he already thought. Lando is firmly shaking his head. Oscar curses Daniel and Max for making Lando take this many shots. He mostly curses Pierre for not stopping with talking about you this night. Now he is left with his drunk friend. Max and Daniel went home earlier, something in the lines of having to catch an early flight. Pierre didn’t want to wait for Lando to get into the previous cab. So now Oscar is alone with Lando, the boy who doesn’t want to get in any cab right now.

“You don’t understand, I want Y/N to come pick me up,” Lando states drunkly for the tenth time that evening. 

“I can’t call her awake for this,” Oscar tells him tiredly. 

“Yes you can, she’ll come,” Lando argues.

“Mates, are you getting in or what?” The taxi driver asks them annoyed. Oscar sighs again, “No, sorry,” he answers then, “I’ll pay you the expenses of coming here. Sorry again.”

“Are you going to call Y/N?” Lando asks hopefully.

The taxi drives off in the mean time. Oscar looks at his phone, is he really going to call you awake for this? Fucking hell. He curses Pierre again, this is all his fault. And maybe a bit of Daniels and Maxs because of those fucking shots. Oscar thinks back at the awkward conversations from earlier. He sighs because of his friend and his cluelessness. Why isn’t he already dating you? It can be so simple. He tries to remember which remark from Pierre started this, but he is quick to realize it again. Of course it was about that stupid date. 

///

“So is your friend still single?” Pierre asks Lando with a cheesy grin. Oscar is quick to notice the way Lando’s face falls flat. 

“Which one?” Lando asks like he doesn’t know it’s about you. 

“The one who is with you every race, what’s her name again?” Pierre continues. 

“You mean Y/N,” Daniel interrupts their conversation. 

“Yes! She! Is she still single?” Pierre asks Lando a bit hopeful. 

Oscar stares at Lando. How is his teammate going to react to this? This can’t be good. It doesn’t surprise him when Lando takes a big gulp of the cocktail standing in front of him before looking at Pierre again. Oscar lets out a small sigh, this really can’t be good. 

“Yes she is,” Lando eventually answers Pierre.

“Great!” Pierre reacts happily, “I’m thinking about asking her on a date soon.”

“You want to date Y/N?” Max asks confused, “Do you even know her?” 

Oscar is happy that Max is talking right now. Lando is looking at Pierre like he wants to kill him. Oscar wonders what’s going on in Lando his head right now, but he’s pretty sure that it’s the same thing as when he told him about Logan wanting to date Y/N. 

“Not yet,” Pierre reacts to Max with a smirk. 

“I don’t think you’re a match with her,” Lando states. Before Pierre or anyone else can question him, Lando is already continuing talking. “You don’t seem like her type. And I don’t think she’s yours if I look at your exes. She doesn’t like going out all the time and wants someone who’s ready to settle with her instead of another meaningless relation.”

“I’m changing,” Pierre states dramatically, “and she’s really good looking.”

Maybe Lando thought that nobody heard his next remark. He’s talking softly. But Oscar is paying too much attention to his friend, causing him to hear Lando carefully. “Fucking hell, why does everyone want her,” his friend sighs. 

///

“Are you going to call her?” Lando asks. It causes Oscar to snap back into reality. He looks at the hopeful eyes of his drunk friend. Eventually he nods at him, he lets out another big sigh before searching for your contact on his phone. When he presses the call button he doesn’t really expect for you to pick up. Maybe it’s smarter to call with Lando his phone? But before he can say something about it to Lando, you’re already picking up the phone.

“Hi Oscar, what’s up?” You ask him surprised. 

“Hey, sorry for calling you this late. I hope I didn’t awake you,” Oscar says with a guilty feeling.

“Oh no,” you quickly reassure him, “I was still up, I’m waiting for Lando to get back. I can’t really sleep peacefully when he’s still out.”

Fucking hell, why aren’t the two of you already dating? Oscar is getting tired of the obliviousness between you two. 

“Oh great,” he reacts, “Listen, Lando is drunk and I can’t get him in a cab. He wants you to pick us up. I already tried to get him into multiple cabs, but without succes.” 

He hears some vague sounds on your side of the phone call. Oscar wonders what you’re doing. It can’t be that you’re already getting ready to pick them up, right? He can’t imagine it. It would be more logical for you to tell him to try again with another taxi or to ask for Lando so you can talk some sense into him. 

“Can you text me your location? I’m already walking towards the car,” you tell him after a bit of weird sounds around you. 

Oscar looks confused. He doesn’t know what to think. Are you this quick to drop everything to come pick up Lando? He now knows for sure that Lando doesn’t need to question himself, the two of you really should be dating already. This is just stupid. 

“Uh yeah of course, thank you so much!” He tells you happily. Even with all of his wonderment right now, he’s really glad that you’re already getting to the car. You’re making his evening a lot easier. 

“I will see you in a bit!” You tell him before ending the call. Oscar is quick to send you his location and sits down next to Lando onto the pavement. Lando looks at him with a hopeful face. 

“She’s insane,” Oscar mutters to his friend, he is still confused by it. “You really need to ask her on a date soon mate, because why on earth would she come pick us up at this time without feeling anything for you?”

“That’s our friendship,” Lando answers, “don’t look into this too much.”

“You’re stupid,” Oscar sighs annoyed.

“But she’s coming?” Lando asks confused. His drunk brain isn’t clear enough to realize that you are coming to pick him up right now.

“Yes,” Oscar answers.

It doesn’t take you longer then ten minutes to get to Lando and Oscar. When you park the rental car in front of them, Oscar is quick to help his friend into the passengers seat next to you. He takes a place on the backseat himself while thanking you multiple times for getting here this fast. 

“Oh it’s nothing,” you brush off the thank you’s without thinking about it. “Why is he this drunk?” You ask Oscar. You could ask it to Lando, but he hasn’t said a word since he’s sitting next to you. He is however extremely touchy. Lando his hand has found his way onto your thighs. 

Oscar doubts about his answer, but eventually tells you it’s because of the shots Lando took with Max and Daniel. He doesn’t mention the earlier conversations with Pierre in which Lando drank away multiple strong drinks. You let out a soft laugh while hearing Oscar his explanation. 

“He really can’t handle shots,” you joke.

“I noticed,” Oscar sighs, “He kept asking for you though. Is that normal when he’s drunk?” Oscar hopes you get the hint. Since Lando isn’t going to do anything about his crush, he can better help his teammate by dropping some hints.

“Oh I normally pick him up after he drinks, so it’s probably just out of habit,” you tell Oscar without hesitation. Oscar realizes that you didn’t get the hint. You’re just as clueless as Lando himself. “But I don’t get why he isn’t talking,” you continue, “normally Lando is rather talkative when he’s drunk.”

Oscar doesn’t think about his next words. “I think he’s a bit too busy staring at you.” You let out another soft laugh. You quickly take away your hand from the steering wheel to give Lando his hand a soft squeeze. Only for a second before you focus on steering again. 

When you get back to the hotel you truly notice how drunk Lando is. He is barely getting out off the car by himself and he can’t even walk normally. You and Oscar both take side of Lando and support him a bit while walking towards the elevator. 

“Do you need help to get him back to his room?” Oscar asks you.

“Oh we’re sharing a room, I’ll be fine,” you quickly answer, “you already did enough!”

Oscar looks confused at you. He didn’t realize that Lando and you share a room on race weekends. 

“You’re sure that you aren’t dating each other?” He asks confused. 

“To be honest, sometimes I think we’re already dating as well,” you answer honestly, “but to answer your question, we’re not.”

Oscar decides to push his luck with his next question. He needs to know for sure. “Do you want to date him?” He asks you. 

You take a good look at Lando before answering. It seems like he is in his own world right now. He isn’t paying attention to your soft conversation with Oscar. 

“Yes,” you confess, “why would I otherwise drop everything to come with him to every race he wants me to? And why would I drive at night in an unknown city for me to come pick him up, while he would be fine with taking a cab.”

“Maybe you should tell him that,” Oscar says softly, “because I’m pretty sure that he feels the same.”

The lift makes a soft sound to tell you that you’re on your floor. “Oh I need to get out here!” You tell Oscar, “see you later Oscar!”

Oscar sighs softly. “Yeah,” he says, “Thanks for picking us up again.”

When you finally got Lando into your bed, you are quick to take place next to him. Lando reaches out to your body and pulls you closely onto himself. He plays with your hair. You notice the smell of alcohol every time he breaths, but you don’t say anything about it. 

“Babygirl,” he eventually says with a soft voice. Lando doesn’t continue to speak, so you get up a bit to properly look at him. “Yeah?” You ask him. 

“Would you date Pierre?” Lando asks you without thinking about it. He is annoyed with his own bluntness right now. Why did he ask you that? You wonder about Lando his weird question. 

“No,” you state, “Pierre isn’t my type.” 

“Thank god,” Lando whispers.

Before you can say anything else, Lando continues to question you. 

“What about Logan, would you date him?” Lando asks further.

“No,” you answer again, “He’s a bit young and I don’t think that I’m made to be an American,” you joke.

When Lando asks another question you barely hear him. You even wonder if you’re imaging it. 

“Would you date me?” Lando asks you as soft as he can manage. This time he really curses himself. Why did he ask that? He doesn’t even want to hear your answer. “Just joking,” he quickly says, “I’m going to sleep. Goodnight baby.”

You’re confused by him, but nonetheless you wish him a goodnight as well. You even press a soft kiss against his cheek. A bit later, when you’re sure that Lando is asleep, you still answer his question. While laying with your head on top of his chest and listening to his restful heartbeat and deep breaths you answer it.

“I’d date you Lando,” you softly whisper. “You only have to ask.”

+++

The following morning Lando awakes with a massive headache. He is quick to remember most parts of the night before. He feels ashamed while thinking about his whining about you picking him up, but he can’t help to feel loved when he thinks about you actually picking him up. He knows you hate driving in the night, certainly in cities you don’t know. He starts to feel more ashamed of himself when he realizes that he asked that from you and that you actually did it. But in some way it also feels good that you did that for him. 

When he remembers about his questions before falling asleep next to you, he starts to feel even more ashamed. But on the other hand, he also feels kinda happy now he knows for sure that you won’t want to date Pierre or Logan. But still.. there are many other boys with interest in you. 

He reaches out to his phone and reads the texts he got.

Pierre: Can you send me y/n her number?

Lando doesn’t react to that one. Of course he isn’t going to send Pierre your number. He reads the other texts. 

Oscar: you better remember what Y/N did for you last night

Oscar: and you better thank her for it with something!!!!

Lando is quick to reply to this text.

Lando: like what? I have no idea how to thank her

Oscar: take her out or something, or get her flowers, girls love that

When Lando feels you moving next to him, he realizes that you’re getting awake as well. He looks at you when you slowly open your eyes and adjust them to the bright morning light in the hotel room. 

“Hey Lan,” you softly greet him with a small smile, “How are you feeling?”

“The worst,” Lando answers, “Sorry for last night princess.”

“It’s okay,” you tell him, “you always pick me up when I’m drunk so I could finally do something back.”

“But I could have gotten into the cab,” Lando sighs while feeling annoyed with himself, “I know you hate driving in the night and certainly in a city you don’t know.”

“Lan,” you softly say, you grab his hand and draw small circles on it, “It’s fine, really. I don’t mind it.”

Lando shows you a boyish grin. You wonder what he’s going to say. But his following movements can make you already guess it. Lando slowly drapes himself on top of you, he presses a few soft kisses to your face before lowering himself. He toys a bit with the waistband of your string, eventually he is quick to pull if off your body. 

“Maybe I can thank you like this?” Lando mutters. After saying those words he is pressing small kisses on your slit. He notice the way you are already getting a bit wet by his movements. He makes sure to ignore your clit for now, teasing you a bit by doing so. 

“Lan,” you softly whine when he slides his finger through your slit and still doesn’t touch you where you want him to. Lando shows you another boyish grin. “Teasing me isn’t thanking me,” you say after a bit when he still doesn’t change his movements. 

“Patience babygirl,” Lando tells you. You let out a soft moan when he finally presses his lips onto your clit and softly sucks it inside his mouth. In the mean time he adds one of his fingers into your pussy. You can’t withhold another moan while he does. Lando is quick to increase his pace with his fingers. He harshly sucks onto your clit. He’s more aggressive then you used to, but in a strange way you only like this more. 

It doesn’t take long before Lando notices your pussy clenching around his finger. He is quick to respond to it by adding another finger inside of you. He increases his pace once again. You can say for sure that he’s finger fucking you right now. Your stomach is tightening because of his movements. You can already feel your orgasm coming close. When the waves of pleasure start to hit over you, Lando removes his fingers and mouth from your private parts. 

“Fuck,” you say without thinking about it. 

Lando looks up at you. He positions himself next to you onto the bed. 

“Come sit on my thigh babygirl,” Lando says. You’re quick to do what he says, although you have no idea why he wants you to sit on his thigh. “Ride on it,” Lando instructs you. You show him a confused look, when you want to ask him what he means Lando is already explaining himself. “Grind on it,” he explains, “just move your body and you will notice what feels right for you.”

While you try to act out Lando his instructions, he lets his hands wander to your tits. Softly he starts to knead them. Even more soft he pinches your nipple. You let out a surprised squeak. Lando smirks. You start to ride his thigh a bit faster.

“Feels good, doesn’t it princess?” Lando asks you. You can only nod at him while increasing your movements. Lando grabs your hips and helps you with your movements. You let out a hard moan. Fuck, this feels way too good. It doesn’t take you long to get close to your orgasm again. Lando notices directly. He feels the way your wetness is spreading on his thigh. Maybe he should let every boy who wants to date you smell his thigh, so they will understand that your his. He is quick to shake off those thoughts, but he still thinks about how beautiful you look while riding yourself on his thigh.

He really needs to make you his. 

When you let out a loud moan Lando realizes that you have came. He is quick to pull you into his arms and lets you crash down onto his body. 

“Fuck Lan,” you mutter softly, “It’s insane how you can make me feel.”

He really needs to tell you about his feelings. Maybe now is the perfect timing? You grab your phone and look at it with a surprised face. 

“Any idea why Pierre Gasly is texting me?” You ask Lando confused.

Fuck. Lando lets out an annoyed sigh. Fucking hell. Lando shakes his head at you. You open the message and read it aloud to Lando.

“Hey, I got your number from Daniel,” you start to read. Lando curses his friend. “And I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date with me so we can get to know each other.”

“What are you going to say?” Lando asks you quickly, “I mean you know Pierre is a player right?” He realizes that his jealousy is showing, but Lando can’t help himself anymore. He needs to know for sure that you’re not going on a date with Pierre.

“I told you yesterday I wouldn’t date Pierre,” you tell Lando, “so that’s still the answer.”

Lando doesn’t react verbally. He just pulls you closer to him and presses a kiss against your lips. Thank god. He realizes that the universe is sending him all the hints that he can get. He really needs to tell you about his feelings. But how?

part eight

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#lando norris #lando norris x reader #lando norris x y/n #lando norris fanfiction #lando norris imagine #ln4 #formula one #f1 #lando norris imagines #lando norris smut

[elodieunderglass]

Hi! I was wondering if you could help me out with a word I've forgotten? I'm trying to remember the name for a concept that (I think) talks about how people better understand or process Things once they have vocabulary to describe it - I've heard it talked about in regards to the colour orange, or coercive control, etc.

long story short i've just read a paper saying ancient Greeks and Romans weren't racist bc they had no word for racism and am trying to form an argument against!

(no worries if this is unanswerable, i'm aware its a bit of a long shot but you struck me as a person who Knows Things)

That’s extremely kind and funny of you. i don’t know much but i am ok at synthesis.

I think you might be thinking of the concepts loosely called the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, which describes something called “linguistic determinism.” This idea has been “disproven”, as it is just too reductionist as a concept - people are clearly perfectly capable of having experiences that are tough to describe with words. There will be plenty of papers showing how this reasoning is applied.

but it is still commonly thrown around and still considered a useful teaching framework. That’s why you’ll see it referenced online as if it is fresh, new, and applicable - people learn about it every year in college. Also, elements of the framework are probably perfectly sound. It definitely seems to be the case that language shapes brains; it just doesn’t seem to be the case that humans who don’t have specific words for them can’t experience orange, or the future.

(Many things in college are taught using teaching frameworks that may not be, technically, true; the framework is intended to give a critical structure for interpreting information. Then, when we later find evidence that disproves the hypothesis, that single piece of information doesn’t destroy our expensive college education; what we paid for is the framework. This is mostly frustrating in the sciences, when fresh crops of undergraduate students crash around on social media, grappling with their first exposure to (complex concept) and how it’s DIFFERENT to what they learned BEFORE and their teachers LIED TO EVERYBODY and they’re going to save the world from POP SCIENCE by telling the TRUTH. You’ll notice that these TOTALLY NEW INFORMATION reveals map along the semester schedule. The thing here is that getting new information, or information being different from what you were previously told, does not cancel out the fact that you are getting what you pay for - an education. Learning new facts that change our relationships to hypotheses isn’t a ✨huge betrayal ✨ , but the expected process of academia. Anyway.)

You have an interesting response here, and can start by looking at the ways that Sapir-Whorf has been disproved. There will be loads of literature on that.

However, it would be interesting to look at the argument as an unpicking of the other side’s rather weird, ritualistic superstitious belief that a behavior doesn’t exist if the creatures doing it can’t describe it. It is not on the ancient Greeks and Romans to categorise and interpret their behavior for a modern educated audience. They do not have the wherewithal to do so. They are also fucking dead. We can name the behaviors we see, and describe their impacts, however the hell we like.

Sure, the ancient Greeks used “cancer” to refer to lumpy veiny tumors. We can infer that they still had blood cancer, because their medical texts describe leukaemia and their corpses have evidence of it - they just didn’t know it was cancer. But we do, so we can call it cancer. Just because Homer said “the wine-dark sea” in a flight of girlish whimsy doesn’t mean he was unable to distinguish grape juice from saltwater, which we know, because we can observe that he was an intelligent wordsmith perfectly capable of talking about wine and oceans in other contexts. We are the people who get to stand at our point of history with our words, and name things like “this person probably died of leukaemia” and “poets say things that aren’t necessarily literal” and “this behaviour was racist” and “that’s gay” and “togas kinda slay tho” despite Ancient Greeks having different concepts of cancer, wittiness, prejudice, homosexuality, and slaying than we do today.

Now just to caveat that people do get muddled about the concept of racism. Our understanding of racism from here - this point of history, with these words, probably from the West - is heavily influenced by how we see racism around us today: white supremacy and the construct of “whiteness,” European colonial expansion, transatlantic chattel slavery, orientalism, evangelism, 20th century racial science, and so on. This is the picture of racism that really dominates our current discourse, so people often mistake it for the definition of racism. (Perhaps in a linguistic-deterministic sort of way after all.) As a result, muddled-up people often say things like “I can’t be racist because I’m not a white American who throws slurs at black American people,” while being an Indian person in the UK who votes for vile anti-immigration practices, or a Polish person with a horrible attitude about the Roma. Many people genuinely hold this very kindergarten idea of racism; if your opponent does as well, they’re probably thinking something like “Ancient Greek and Roman people didn’t have a concept of white supremacy, because whiteness hadn’t been invented yet, so how could they be racist?” And that’s unsound reasoning in a separate sense.

Racism as the practice of prejudice against an ethnicity, particularly one that is a minority, is a power differential that is perfectly observable in ancient cultures. The beliefs and behaviors will be preserved in written plays, recorded slurs, beauty standards, reactions to foreign marriages, and travel writing. The impacts will be documented in political records, trade agreements, the layouts of historical districts of ancient towns.

You don’t need permission to point out behaviours and impacts. You can point them out in any words you like. You can make up entirely new words to bully the ancient romans with. You are the one at this point of history and your words are the ones that get used.

Pretending that “words” are some kind of an intellect-obscuring magical cloud in the face of actual evidence is just a piece of sophistry (derogatory) on the part of your opponent here. It’s meant to be a distraction. You can dismiss this very flimsy shield pretty quickly and get them in the soft meat of them never reading anything about the actual material topic, while they’re still looking up dictionary definitions or whatever.

[babyleostuff]

let me take care of you | XU MINGHAO

summary | taking care of Minghao after a long day of schedules

pairing | minghao x gn!reader

genre | fluff & comfort

word count | 1.3k

author’s note | honestly, I just want to take care of this man after seeing him having like 4 flights in a week

Soft tunes of "I Don't Understand But I Luv U '' were coming from the speaker in your living room, while you were finishing cooking a very late dinner for your boyfriend, who should land in Korea any minute now. With this being his fourth flight of the week, even he couldn't hide the exhaustion from you, no matter how hard he tried. Minghao did everything he could not to worry anyone about his well-being, as he was a very independent person and could take very good care of himself. It's great, you really admired that in him, but sometimes, you wish he’d lean a little bit more on you and let you take care of him.

"Just landed. Can't wait to see you."

You read the message with a huge grin on your face, while your heart skipped a bit - it has been so long since you got to have some time together for longer than an hour before sleep.

You never complained though, you knew what you were getting yourself into and even while being separated from your precious boyfriend for so long you wouldn't change it for a second.

Putting the ramen and other food on the heat to get ready, you went to your shared bedroom to put out some comfortable clothes for Minghao, so he could change into something more comfortable than his airport outfit, which you knew would be very fashionable, as per usual.

Speaking of, you quickly typed in your boyfriend's name in the Twitter search bar and to no surprise, he looked as dashing as usual.

Even seeing this short video of him, confidently walking in his long black coat, brought butterflies to your stomach.

You were so grateful that the landing in Korea was so much more peaceful than the one in China, feeling so bad for him as you saw so many people basically suffocating him during his previous flights.

Looking at all the girls surrounding him, you couldn't suppress a smile knowing that the only person who would hold him tonight is you. Not to be possessive, but he was yours, and only yours.

Being so busy with getting things ready for Minghao's arrival, you didn't even hear him entering your house.

“Hello? Anyone here?" he called out the second he noticed that there was no one there to greet him.

"Darling?" he tried again.

"Hao, is that you?" he heard your voice coming from the kitchen. Not a second after he saw your head appear from behind the kitchen island.

"What are you even doing dummy?" he asked in a jokingly offended tone, giving you one of his famous side eyes. Not caring about responding to him, you threw yourself in his embrace making him take a couple steps back, as he didn't expect the force.

"I swear, if they're going to make you fly one more time this week, I'm going to sue them," you said, nuzzling your head further into Mingaho's neck.

You could feel a slight chuckle vibrate through his body, as he lightly patted the back of your head, in a loving manner.

"I think you'll have to, darling. I'm going back after we finish filming on Monday," he gently untangled the two of you and took your face lightly in his hands, almost as if he was afraid to hurt you.

His gaze told you everything you needed to know without him actually saying it - how much he loved you and was happy to see you, how guilty at the same time he felt for leaving you so often, but also how exhausted he was. Even in spite of his tired state, he still looked at you like you were his entire world.

Being so close to him, feeling the smell of his expensive cologne, brought you so much peace and comfort. In no time, Minghao closed the space between you, capturing your lips in a delicate kiss, you both yearned for. In that single moment you felt as if nothing else existed in the world, but for the two of you, simply the feeling of her soft, perfect lips.

It is when you truly realized that he is yours and you are his. His hands stayed at the sides of your face, stroking your cheeks lightly.

"Come, I made you something to eat," you dragged your lovestruck boyfriend to the living room, making him sit on the sofa comfortably.

"You didn't have to do it, I mean it. In fact, you should be long asleep by now."

"Of course mum, whatever you say."

"I really can take care of myself, you know. This is unnecessary," he said as you put plates with food on the table. Not going to lie, you felt a little bit hurt by his statement - the only thing you wanted to do was to take care of him.

Almost as he could hear the thoughts running through your mind, he grabbed your slightly shaking hand.

"Hey, look at me," you didn't, feeling way too hurt to look him in the eye. "Darling, please. I didn't mean it like this. I'm just tired, this wasn't supposed to come out like this."

"But that's the thing Hao!" you exclaimed.

"You're tired, you just had a long flight for the hundredth time this week, and not once did you let me take care of you. I know that you like to be independent and think that you can do everything by yourself, I get it. I really do. But once, just once let me take care of you," you explained.

"I'm so sorry," the guilt in his eyes was even more noticeable now. "I just don't want to be a burden to anyone-" not letting him finish what he was about to say to you pressed a soft kiss to his silky lips. It was quick and innocent, but told Mingaho everything.

"You're not a burden to anyone Hao, and especially not to me. I'm your girlfriend, I love taking care of you, I really do," you smiled at him, caressing his cheek.

Pouting slightly, he nuzzled his cheek further into your hand, kissing it lightly.

"I love you. I'm sorry for being a pain in the ass sometimes."

"You're a pain in the ass everyday Xu Minghao," you laughed at his offended reaction. "But you're mine-" he didn't let you finish.

"Stop being so sappy, please. It's disgusting, bleh," now the both of you were laughing loudly, cuddling into each other.

After finishing your meal, you quickly did the dishes and turned off all the lights in the kitchen and living room, settling in the bedroom for the rest of the night.

While Minghao was taking a shower, you caught up with some emails and did some reading. A couple of minutes later he came out wearing the clothes you left for him.

"Ready for sleep?" you asked, putting all of the unnecessary stuff aside.

"Definitely. And please, no one disturb us till the evening tomorrow," he hummed as he got under the duvets on his side of the bed.

"Oh, I can guarantee you that," you said softly, as he laid his head in the crook of your head and put his strong arm over your waist.

Your hand automatically found its way to your boyfriend’s hair, stroking it gently. It made him sigh in relief, as he finally got to properly relax.

"I love you very much. Thank you for taking care of me."

"I love you too Hao. And thank you for letting me do so."

This was easily the best night of his week, soundly falling asleep in the arms of his one and only love.

You.

#seventeen fluff #seventeen imagines #seventeen x you #seventeen carat #seventeen x reader #seventeen kpop #seventeen #minghao #xu minghao #fanfic #svt imagines #svt fluff #svt scenarios #seventeen reactions #minghao imagines #minghao x you #minghao x reader #kpop au #minghao fluff #svt reactions #minghao fanfic #xu minghao fluff #minghao x y/n #the8 imagines #the8 scenarios #the8 seventeen #seventeen the8 #the8 x you #svt the8 #the8 fluff

[trickphotography2]

D-Day by TrickPhotography | Chapter 1

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x female!reader

Word count: 3k

Synopsis: After finding out his girlfriend is pregnant, Jake is ready to move in and get married. The last thing he expected was to be hit with a six-month deployment at sea and missing the birth of his first child.

Master List | Ao3

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

Chapter 1

The heat of the flight line radiated up through your flats as you raised your hand to shield your eyes, tracking the contrails of the incoming jets - the newest batch of F-35 Lightnings. The DoD had recently increased the number of planes they had ordered from your company, and as one of the contract writers based on the West Coast, you had the pleasure of being on the flight line when they were delivered. After inspecting the merchandise, the Navy pilots jumped into the cockpits to take their new jets for a joy ride. You smiled, watching one tip the wings before climbing steeply. To this day, feeling the roar of an engine in your chest and seeing the beauty of the afterburner made you think of your dad. Snapping a quick picture to send him later, you turned to join your coworkers in the shady hangar. 

The small crowd had grown, circling and ducking under the planes to get a closer look. When you lifted your phone again to take a picture of the tail code, you heard someone behind you. “Want me to get one with you in it?” 

“I’m good, thanks,” you said before turning to face him. His green eyes snapped up to your face - he’d clearly been checking you out. Forcing yourself to take a deep breath, you plastered on your customer service expression. “Are you one of the Lightning crew?” 

“No, just coming to check out the new toys. I fly a Super Hornet.” 

“Nice,” you replied, eyes drifting down to read his name badge - Seresin. When you met his gaze again, he smirked, crossing his arms over his chest and drawing attention to his biceps - you’d seen that move used too many times - and nodded to the plane.  

“You one of the engineers?”

“No,” you replied, feeling a slight twinge of regret. “Just a paper pusher.” 

“That right?” 

“Yup.” 

“Any idea what the top speed for one of those is?” he asked, tipping his chin towards the F-35. 

“A little less than the Super Hornet - Mach 1.6 with a full weapons load. Better stealth capabilities, though.”

“More expensive, from what I’ve heard.”

“Well, upgrading old tech comes with a price tag. And they’ll be less expensive to maintain than the F-18.”

“The Super Hornet isn’t old tech,” he replied, the corner of his mouth tipping down. 

“Of course not. For a fourth-gen fighter, it’s holding up well, but times are changing and so is air warfare. For example, the F-18 would have difficulty doing an ISR mission whereas our F-35 would be well up to mission parameters.” 

“If they’re sending in the F-18, the time for intel and surveillance is over and it’s time to get down to business.” 

“Of course…for air-to-air combat. Or the F-35 can continue the mission with its wide weapons array and ability to do air-to-air and air-to-ground combat.” 

“Not certified for a nuke, though.”

“Not yet, but we’re working on that certification,” you shot back. “The ability to take off and land vertically is a nice trade-off, though. How long of a runway does the F-18 need again?”

“Less than a thousand on a carrier.” Behind you, you heard someone call ‘Hangman!’ and Seresin lifted his head in acknowledgment. 

“Exactly.” 

“You sure you’re not an engineer?” 

“Just a good saleswoman. Give it a few years, and you’ll also be in one of our jets. You’ll have to tell me how it compares to the Super Hornet.” Glancing at his collar and clocking the double bars, you smiled and tilted your head. “It was lovely chatting with you, Lieutenant Seresin. I’ll let you get to your friends now.” With that, you turned and walked to join your colleagues. 

“Nice chatting with you, Ma’am,” he called out. You felt his eyes on your back but, as a woman in the male-dominated defense contracting industry, it wasn’t uncommon. This was exactly why you dressed in slacks and loose blouses more often than not - no need to draw more attention than necessary. That hadn’t stopped you from updating your resume more than once after a rough day at work, ignoring one too many comments from old men who thought you were a secretary instead of someone in charge of multimillion-dollar negotiations. At least the pilot had called you an engineer. 

“Happy hour?” your boss asked, throwing an unwelcome arm over your shoulder and pulling you into his side. You pasted on an uncomfortable smile and nodded, wanting nothing more than to go home and open a bottle of wine on your own.

Growing up, you’d never imagined being a defense contractor. While other little girls dreamed of being a teacher or president, you dreamed of being in the Air Force. Your dad had been a jet engine mechanic for the Air Force and loved nothing more than bringing you to the test cells to see what the squadron was working on. When your family moved to Japan, he would sit on the back patio overlooking the flight line at sunset, pointing out each plane landing to you. He quizzed you on the tail codes until you could identify where most planes were based. Back stateside, you went to every airshow nearby, watching the beauty of physics and engineering lifting the plane from the ground, the acrobatic twists of the jets, and the majestic thrumming of the C-130’s turboprops. Once you got your license, there was no greater thrill than driving your dad’s Mustang with the top down on the base and seeing the jets descending on the flight line next to you. 

For a long time, everyone in your family thought you would follow in his footsteps. You’d taken the ASVAB and SAT’s to keep your options open. When you qualified to go into mechanics, recruiters from every branch called and pressed you to come to sign papers to enlist. You kept pushing them off, wanting to keep your options open as long as possible as you waited for the responses from your college applications. And besides, it was blue or bust - there was no way you would go into any branch other than the Air Force. In the meantime, Dad worked with you to prepare for basic training. Running, push-ups, and pull-ups became your after-school workout. He took you on base to talk to some of the women in his squadron. They were frank with you about the benefits and downsides of the military - the pay was okay and the travel was great, but you had to put up with a lot of shit. Being away from family was hard, and there was no control over where you moved. Too many of them had stories about sexual harassment. But if you were going to join a branch, the Air Force was the way to go. 

After that talk, you went to lunch with your dad. He wanted you to know what you would be getting into if you joined. While he loved his time in the service and what it had given your family, it would be different for you. You would face things he couldn’t imagine being a woman in the military. He assured you that he didn’t want you to decide based on his feelings but only what you wanted. 

You enrolled in college two hours from home that fall and decided to pursue engineering. If you weren’t in the Air Force, you could at least be near planes. Sure, the math was hard, but it wasn’t impossible. There were lots of nights spent huddled in the library, working through your physics and thermodynamics homework instead of hitting up the bars with your roommates. The hardest part of school was dealing with your classmates. Most of the time, you were the only woman in the class. Sexist jokes came from classmates and professors. 

“If you’re just trying to get an MRS degree, I’d be happy to make that sacrifice for you,” one guy said, winking over the top of his laptop. 

You made sure to study extra hard for the next test and smirked in his direction when you set the exam curve.  

College wasn’t all work, though. You found time to date, trying to avoid STEM boys in favor of social sciences and humanities (finance and business guys were too arrogent). You lost your virginity after a night at the club where your boyfriend used his fake ID to get banded, chasing shots with horrible gin and tonic. It was okay - the touch was nice but you hadn’t gotten off. When recapping with your friends the next morning, they assured you that sex got better. It didn’t with that particular guy and you broke it off before the end of the semester. 

After twenty-six years in the military, your dad announced his retirement. You traveled home for the ceremony, crying with your mom when he thanked you both for going on the adventure of a lifetime with him.

Less than a year later, he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Angry that something like this could happen to him, you dove into researching what could have caused it. And, buried in a journal online, you found a study linking jet fuel to colon cancer. 

Your parents were confused when you changed your major. Your advisor tried to talk you out of it - your grades were decent, and you were halfway through the program. Desperate to graduate on time and avoid STEM, you switch to English and turned your analytical brain to rhetoric and editing. 

Dad breezed through chemo, walking miles around the hospital during his sessions. You picked up an extra shift at the grocery store when he asked you to see an airshow with him. When you came home for Thanksgiving, he tossed you the keys to the Mustang and said it was time for a cruise on the beach. You put the top down while your dad collected the list of things to pick up from the base commissary on the way home. 

The breeze off the Gulf was cold but you didn’t care - Dad cranked the heater and music, grinning at you as you easily navigated the slower traffic. When you first got your license, he’d nicknamed you his fighter pilot with how you forced your way into spots between vehicles. You were never sure if it was a compliment or not. But today… today he was happy, and you could ignore the chemo port on his chest that tented his shirt and try to forget why he was bald.

You switched in a parking lot, and he drove you onto the base. But rather than go straight to the commissary, he followed the road to his old squad headquarters. When you asked what you were doing there, he shrugged while putting the top up, said he needed to drop something off and motioned for you to come inside. You refused. But when he was inside for over half an hour, and the car started to swelter, you got out and followed him. When you tentatively knocked on the door he’d gone through, it swung open and an airman smiled before handing you a pair of ear protectors and motioning you in.

Dad stood at the observation deck, watching the engine cycle through the start-up and cool down, the glow of the afterburn reflecting in his eyes. You could smell the jet fuel and felt bile rise in your throat. When the engine stopped screaming, you grabbed your dad’s hand and asked to leave. After waving goodbye to his friends, he led you outside. Rather than going to the car, however, he pulled you into the hanger. Grinning, he walked towards the F-35 and raised his hand to run it along the wing.

“I miss this,” he said, turning back to smile at you. “Where’s this one from?” 

“Cannon, New Mexico,” you replied after glancing at the tail code, the fuel smell choking you. “Can we get out of here?” 

“Come on, kiddo, let your old man have a moment to relive his glory days.”

“Your glory days are what’s trying to kill you,” you snapped without thinking. Dad’s arm dropped, and he turned to face you, raising an eyebrow. His calm expression was so frustrating that you couldn’t hold it in any longer - it didn’t matter that two men were sitting on top of the plane next to you. “This is what’s trying to kill you, Dad! The fucking jet fuel you breathed in every day had carcinogens, and you want to stay here longer to breathe more of it in?” 

A few tears escaped your tight control as you turned on your heel and stormed out of the hanger. Your nails dug into your palms as you collapsed back into the car passenger seat. It was a few minutes later that he joined you. Rather than turning the ignition, he stared out the windshield. “Is this why you dropped out of engineering?” You stayed silent. “Honey, talk to me. Your mom and I are worried.” Slowly, you nodded, feeling his eyes on you. When he reached for your hand, you let him take it. “Look at me, please. I need you to hear me when I say this to you, young lady.”

“What?”

“We’re never gonna know what caused this cancer, okay? Yeah, it might have been the fuel or a million other things. But you don’t get to give up your dream because of this, alright? You don’t get to give up something you love because of something that happened to me.” 

“It’s not just happening to you, Dad,” you whispered. 

“I know, sweetheart. But I’m okay, and I want you to be, too. And if that means you never get near another plane again, I’ll be sad to lose my co-pilot, but I’ll support you. I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to, but don’t lose your passion because of me.” 

True to his word, Dad hadn’t asked you to attend any airshows with him but would mention them in passing when you called to check-in. When he got his clean bill of health, they threw a party and some of his airmen dropped by the house to celebrate, bringing him a model of the F-15s he’d worked on as a gift. He returned to work as a defense contractor and was back on the flight line doing quality assurance checks after repairs were finished. And he stayed in remission. With each clean bill of health his oncologist gave him, the more you found yourself looking at his memorabilia around the house - pictures of the planes he’d worked on, model airplanes, and squadron plaques. It was too late to return to engineering, but you found yourself wandering to the university career center to see their suggestions to combine your love of aircraft with writing. They helped you draft your resume, and when you graduated with your degree in english with a minor in engineering, you’d secured a job with one of the largest defense contracting companies in the US in their contract writing division. 

“To another successful delivery!” Dutifully, you and your coworkers raised your glasses to toast the latest success. While they tossed back their drinks to make the most of the happy hour special, you nursed your beer while picking at the pretzel bites you’d ordered. They’d chosen a bar not far from the base, but on the opposite side of town from your apartment. Your eyes drifted across the other patrons, not really taking anyone. 

When your beer was almost gone, you excused yourself and walked to the restroom to wash the pretzel salt and oil from your hands, ready to escape for the evening. But when you walked back into the bar, one of the servers stopped you. “A guy over there wanted me to give this to you,” she said, handing you a fresh beer. Glancing at it, you frowned, wondering if one of your coworkers was playing a joke on you. 

“Who?” you asked. Turning, she pointed to a man in khaki leaning against the bar and talking to someone. As if feeling your gaze, he turned and smirked, lifting his drink and nodding. 

Seresin. 

Taking a deep breath and steeling your shoulders, you thanked her and took the beer. Glancing at your coworkers to ensure they weren’t watching, you walked toward the bar, feeling his eyes on you the whole time. You would return the beer, thank him, and then head home to relax. As you neared, he pushed off the bar with a smile and wink before retreating towards the dartboard where a group of Navy guys were congregated. Debating the merits of confronting him in front of a group or sucking it up, you swallowed your pride. You took a sip of the beer, and resigned yourself to at least another half an hour there, listening to some truly atrocious stories about dating and time in the military from your coworkers. 

When the second beer was finished, you quickly said goodnight to your coworkers and went to the bar to close out your tab. “Looks like it’s already covered,” the bartender said when you flagged him down.

“What do you mean? I didn’t leave my card with you.”

“Looks like someone picked it up and left this,” he shrugged, passing you a napkin. Nothing sexier than a woman who knows her way around a jet. Dinner? You looked at the phone number and took a deep breath. 

“I’d like to close out that gentleman’s tab,” you said, handing over your credit card. While he rang you out, you grabbed one of your business cards from your wallet, crossed out your office phone number, and underscored your job title. On the back you wrote 1) Thank you 2) Not a tag chaser 3) I don’t date boys in bags 4) CONFLICT OF INTEREST

When he handed you the receipt to sign, you asked him to give the card to Seresin. Then, leaving the napkin on the bar, you turned and saw him frowning in your direction. Smiling, you waved before making your way outside. 

Your pajamas were calling.

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

Author's note: The connection between jet fuel and cancer is my dad's story. He's thankfully fine. Tag chasers are people who actively try to date military members (usually for the benefits), and boys in bags is a reference to men in flight suits.

Read Chapter 2

#hangman seresin x reader #jake seresin x reader #top gun fic #top gun maverick

[lives-in-midgard]

Birthday Surprise

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader

Summary: You and Wanda have to go to a mission on your birthday and Wanda has a surprise for you.

Word Count: 1.250

A/N: Hey everyone! 💞Thanks for sending in that request! I really enjoyed writing it and hope you enjoy it too!

Masterlist

Your birthday was the next day, but you were sitting in a plane flying to Italy because Fury sent you and Wanda on a one-week mission. When Fury told you about the mission you got upset because you were very excited to celebrate your birthday with Wanda. Wanda told you that you will make the best out of it even if you are on a mission.

You were looking out of the window in the plane when Wanda grabbed your hand and pressed a soft kiss on the back of it.

“I know this is not how you thought your birthday would be, but I promise you are still going to have an amazing day, detka.” Wanda said.

“But how Wands? We must be successful on this mission and bring Fury the information he wants.”

“Oh, detka, trust me. We’ll have a good time in Italy. “she said and you started to wonder how she wants to do the mission and make something special for your birthday. You laid your head on Wanda’s shoulder and enjoyed the rest of your flight to Italy.

When the plane landed you and Wanda took your suitcase and went outside and called a taxi to take you to your hotel. The taxi brought you two to a big hotel near the beach that looked expensive. You opened the door and Wanda took your suitcase. When you walked into the hotel you looked around and couldn’t believe how beautiful it looked.

“Are you sure this is the right hotel?” You asked Wanda and she nodded.

“Hmm okay.” Why would Fury book that hotel? Something had to be wrong you thought. But the lady at the reception said that a suit for you two is booked so you must be at the right hotel, right? You and Wanda walked over to the elevator and Wanda pressed the button to the floor that your room is at. You opened the door to your room.

“Wow.” You and Wanda almost said at the same time which made her chuckle. Your room had a big window where you could see the ocean. You walked around and found a jacuzzi in the bathroom. You looked back at Wanda.

“I don’t understand” you said confused.

“What detka?”

“Why did Fury book this hotel for us? We never get such hotels sometimes we don’t even get hotels when we have to go on missions.”

“Don’t think too much about it detka, let’s just be happy that we have it and enjoy our time here.”

“Okay, sure but we should not forget about the mission.” You said and could hear a small laugh from Wanda.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” Wanda wanted to say more but then her phone rang. She took the call and walked into the bathroom. You thought it would be a good idea to unpack the suitcase. You were surprised because when you opened it, you could not see any assassin uniforms only dresses, shorts and t-shirts and even swimsuits. You looked up because you heard Wanda open the door. She looked at you with a smile but when she saw that you opened the suitcase her expression changed.

“Why aren’t there any things for the mission?” You asked her while Wanda walked over to you.

“I can’t lie to you, can I?” She said and took your hand in hers.

“There is no mission. I planned this so we could celebrate your birthday. I wanted to make something special and now the surprise is ruined.” Wanda said and looked away. You cupped her cheeks with your hands and began to talk.

“Hey, it isn’t ruined babe. I can’t believe you made all this effort for me.”

“Of course, I did. I knew that you never really celebrated your birthday, so I wanted to make it something special.” You began to smile and gave her a soft kiss.

“Wait if there is no mission does this mean there is also no hidden hydra labor we have to find?” You asked and Wanda began to laugh.

“No, there isn’t. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to get Fury to tell us that we have to do that mission so we could have a vacation.” She said and you began to laugh.

“So, do you want to go to the beach?” Wanda asked with a smile, and you nodded. You packed a bag with towels and everything you needed and made your way out of the hotel. When you saw the beach, you were stunned.

“It’s so beautiful.” You spoke.

“It is.” You placed your things somewhere and walked over to the ocean with Wanda’s hand in yours. You were standing in the sand when the first wave hit you. With a big smile you looked over to Wanda who looked as happy as you did. You enjoyed the rest of the day at the beach. At some point you got tired, and you and Wanda went back to your hotel room. You laid down at the big bed with Wanda by your side. After a while Wanda gave you a kiss on your cheek.

“We should stand up and make us ready for dinner.” You nodded and decided to wear a beautiful dress Wanda has packed in. After dinner you were so tired that you immediately felt asleep when you laid down beside Wanda.

On the next morning, which was also your birthday, you were woken up by Wanda pressing kisses all over you. You blinked and saw the sun coming through the curtains.

“Happy birthday, detka.” Wanda said and pressed another kiss on your face.

“Thank you, my love.” You said with the biggest smile. A knock on the door interrupted you.

“Oh, this must be our breakfast.” Wanda said and stood up to open the door. She came back with a big variety and placed the breakfast on the bed.

“Breakfast in bed?”

“Of course, everything for my birthday girl.” Wanda said and you had to give her a kiss. After breakfast you and Wanda made yourself ready to go outside and explore the city. You walked around and saw some beautiful places. Throughout the day you got some birthday messages from the other avengers. It looked like they all knew that you were not on a mission because they also wished you a beautiful vacation. For lunch you bought a pizza, and you had a beautiful view while eating it. When the sun was going down you found your way back to the beach. Wanda led you to a place, when you got near there you saw a picknick with so much different things and candlelit.

“A candlelit picnic on the beach? Have I swallowed a romance novel? Wait, have you?” You said and made Wanda chuckle.

“Sorry, if it’s a bit to cheesy.” Wanda started to blush.

“No no, it’s beautiful. I love it.” You said and kissed her. When you sat down on the blanket. You could see that Wanda had something behind her back.

“I have one more gift for you.” She pulled out a small box from behind and when you opened it you saw a beautiful necklace in it.

“It’s beautiful, can you put it on me please?” You asked and Wanda smiled at you.

“Of course.” Wanda said and you gave her the necklace so she could put it on you. After Wanda put the necklace on you, you looked at the ocean and enjoyed each other’s company.

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x reader fluff #wanda maximoff x y/n #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff #wanda mcu #wanda x reader #wanda x you #wanda maximoff fluff #wanda maximoff comfort #wanda fluff #wanda maximoff fanfiction #wanda maximoff oneshot #scarlet witch #scarlet witch x reader #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel one shot #elizabeth olsen

[call-sign-shark]

Shark in the UK 🦈

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

Hi everyone,

As you might have noticed I was pretty silent since my arrival in the UK. I must admit that I have been through a lot of stress and changes in a very short amount of time and it's only now that I'm finally getting used to this new situation. Below you'll find a detailed post of my adventures so far, so if you are not interested you can simply ignore this and just keep in mind that I'll be returning to my posting schedule and fan-fictions very soon. For those who are curious, fasten your motherfucking seat-belts.

While I'm not an organized person I become one when I have something important planned so I was so well prepared for this journey that I was convinced I was safe from any misadventures... How wrong I was. I was barely done with the security controls at the airport when I realized they literally broke my phone's screen. I don't know if they bumped it or not but they broke it. The same phone in which I had my boarding pass. It obviously happened the only time I didn't print my plane tickets as I usually do. :) Fortunately, my best friend had lent me his old iPhone minutes before "just in case". I managed to airdrop my boarding pass on the second phone and took the plane without trouble despite the flight being delayed by one hour.

Upon my arrival in UK, I took a taxi to the hotel and had a nice time alone. I brought myself to the restaurant and peacefully slept, getting psychologically ready to meet my host family, and oh boy. This is... Something.

When I heard the word "host family" I imagined it to be an actual family, and a bit like when you're an au pair. Retrospectively, it's completely stupid because it was never written but idk my mind went full "ok I'll live with a local family". What a surprise it was when I knocked at the door and was welcomed by one lonely man and the very acrid smell of cigarettes that jumped at my face! While my host dad (@rysko @red-riding-wood @kittenonpluto pimp nickname they said) was extremely nice and welcoming, the more he showed me around the more my face dropped. I wasn't going to spend months in a local family but in an old house more or less laid out like a hostel. A hostel with a strong cigarette smell almost everywhere, five other girls, one dude, and dirt. The differences between my expectations and reality were huge and, as you can imagine, the pill was difficult to swallow. I swear when he opened the door I was this close to run away lmao.

Between my accommodations and the new rhythm of the international school I'm studying in, my mind went completely foggy for a few days. I didn't know what to think or what to feel anymore. Worse, I didn't know if my money was well-spent or if I just got scammed. Now, read what follows before you call me "ungrateful" or "princess-like".

It’s not what I got that made me feel bad, but rather the stupid and nonsensical expectations I had in mind. Then, I slowly realized that it wasn't because I hadn't expected it and that it couldn't be fun. Maybe it had a lot to do with how nice the five other girls and the people at my school are, but I started // I am starting to really enjoy it. The house might be old and not "that clean" (or at least not as clean as I'm used to), but the host dad is lovely, cooks for us every day, we have fast wifi, are close to the school, we have a key and are free to come and go as much as we want without a curfew, and the bedrooms, as well as the toilets, are clean. To be honest, some students have it really worse. I mean, I'm talking about students having to sleep in a room crowded with 7 people, or having to sleep on a mattress on the ground, the host family asking them to buy and cook their own food to the extent of some even locked the kitchen's door at night to avoid the student snacking/stealing food at night. Or students who are on 1 hour of bus-trip long from the school — those conditions I find absolutely disgusting for the extremely expensive price the students have to pay for this language exchange. With everything said, I consider myself lucky despite the cigarette smell and the "clean but not really clean" house.

As I'm writing this, it's Saturday 10 am and I can finally say it: I'm happy to be here, it's a one-life experience and I'm incredibly lucky my parents offered it to me. Unfortunately, I've caught a very bad cold and I've been sick since Wednesday: I think the combination of my emotional rollercoaster, the crazy British weather, my fatigue and half of my classroom being sick have finished me off. Now I can't wait to get better to start attending to a shitton of activities, planning trips around, and going to the pub. Also, I've got my nails done! Look at my freakin' sharp claws teehee.

Congratulations if you're still there by the way, lmao! Thank you for reading my nonsense. I'll be back very soon, both for writing and commenting, just wait for my cold to get better!

Love,

Shark.

tagging some moots: @zablife @brummiereader @emotionalcadaver @justrainandcoffee @peakyswritings @peakyltd

#Shark attacks in the UK #Shark talks

[aleatory-eyes]

Duo

Yandere erasermic x fem reader

Tw : yandere , kidnapping ,Stockholm syndrome and reader has anxiety.

I DON'T CONDONE THIS BEHAVIOR. THIS IS FICTIONAL! PURE FICTION!

This is a part 1

Eyes are slowly opening at the sight of the early morning sun rays. You try to cuddle in the soft bed and quickly close your eyes but is too late ,you're already up.

There's no returning to the joyful land of dreams. what would you do to go back? to stay there and escape your current situation ? But before you start to wonder how to become the new Alice in wonderland you start to hear steady steps approaching your his bedroom door. You make out some sort of clicking noice (was the door locked?) And entering the room Aizawa appears, the one that had deprived you of freedom, your kidnapper.

You two make eye contact. However, you are to scared to look away. Luckily for you he quickly looks down, to the cuff in your left ankle to be exact. "Let's get this off, shall we?" he says with a low grumble.

You nod even though he probably won't see it. After a few seconds you heard the mechanism popping open and you're free... well as free as you could be in your situation. Slowly you say goodbye to the warm of the bed and get up following the tall man to the kitchen.

You have to admit that the apartment is beautiful, and definitely expensive, everything seems mathematically put together to give the impression of a cozy / warm home. Is quite ironic that you can only see this place as cold and cynical.

Either way, you sit on one of the kitchen chairs waiting patiently as the hero cooks what it seems to be scrambled eggs with some vegetables. Is not your favorite, it reminds you of the morning after your abduction. At that time you've tried to reason with him , asking lots of questions : why I'm here ? Why me? WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?! the last one wasn't as composed as the other ones but considering the circumstances you were in you think he would let it pass and in a way he did .

He calmly explained that now you were safe and taking care of, like it always should have been. That he is a hero (you almost jump out of your seat at that revelation) and that in order to protect you from any harm you have been "relocated" in your new home.

With that QaA session it was an obvious understatement that you were left speechless. Your mind racing with thoughts. You have never felt an anxiety like this, not even that time in your old job when you spilled hot coffee on your boss suit, the anxiety quickly change to full panic leaving your judgment in the hand of your flight or fight instinct.

But neither of those activated, instead you freezed not being able to get up of the damm chair while you trembled. Seems like Aizawa noticed your change of behavior opting for slowly approaching you, resting one hand in your shoulder watching what's left of your strong facade dissapears as you start sobbing. He left out a sight and started rubbing your back, with a low tone he began comforting you "look babe I know you are scared, this is all so new and unexpected. But I can guarantee you this is the right thing just ... try to relax..."

Out of desperation you ended up crying in the black headed's shoulder trying to recompose yourself as the man continues to rub your back and whisper reassuring words trying to diminish your anxiety.

You still cringe at that memory. That's why now you try your best to keep your mind occupied by not focusing in the deep hole your trapped into but rather your escape, is better for your sanity that way.

Also he appears to be happy about your early "acceptance" to the new home. However deep down you know he sees right through your mask.

Still for the time being you will... behave.

Speaking of the devil, "Breakfast is ready.Eat it." You hear while being served a beautiful plastic plate full of nutrients, accompanied by a spoon (looks like some time will pass before he trust you with other utensils).You thanked the food and started eating, not paying your kidnapper much attention.

He clears his throat and breaks the silence "my husband is coming home soon."

Suddenly your eyes are wide open but he's not done talking, "you've probably hear of him....Present Mic... I guess he is pretty famous"

Part 2

If you like it don't forget to give me a heart / reblogs are also welcome 🥰

And if you want more, check my masterlist.

#yandere aizawa #yandere #yandere male #yandere present mic #yandere erasermic #yandere bnha #yandere mha #dark content #eraserhead #eraserhead x reader #erasermic x reader

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Dad’s Worst Nightmare: Party Night

Summary: The reader gets a bad feeling while at a college party one night and tries to head home early. A face from the past reappears but a new one makes the night not so terrible...

Masterlist

Pairing: Jensen x daughter!reader

Word Count: 2,800ish

Warnings: language, angst, fluff

A/N: Please enjoy! This part takes place ~2 years after the Bad Dreams timestamp!

_____

“Y/N,” said your dad through your headphones as you walked down the sidewalk of campus. You rolled your eyes and he huffed. “Don’t roll your eyes at me.”

“How do you know I rolled-”

“Because I do, smartass. Now why exactly do you need an expensive dress?”

“Uh, it’s cute.”

“Y/N.”

“It’s really cute and mom said I could wear it to one of your like, Hollywood parties,” you said. “You know I need a dress.”

“Fine. How much is it?”

“A hundred dollars?” you said. He chuckled and you smiled as you walked. “Is that a yes?”

“We can handle a hundred. I thought you were gonna say it was a few thousand.”

“Are you nuts? I’m not you after all,” you said.

“Keep it up sassy. I look good in a fancy dress,” he said. You rolled your eyes, walking past a group of high schoolers on a campus tour. “How was class today?”

“Alright. I might go to a party tonight. It’s at Sara’s sorority,” you said. He was quiet on the other end and you swallowed. “Is that cool?”

“You’re twenty one sweetheart. You don’t need to ask permission let alone tell me.”

“I know,” you said. “Just don’t want you to worry if I don’t come home tonight.”

“Thanks,” he said softly. “Just do your homework before you get drunk with your friends.”

“I know dad. I’m headed to my car now. Gonna stop home quick to drop off my backpack and change.”

“Be safe. I gotta run and catch my flight,” he said.

“Can we get brunch tomorrow?”

“Yeah we can go get something. Have fun tonight.”

“I will. I’ll see you in the morning dad.”

It was close to midnight, the party still going strong when a shiver ran down your spine. You spun around the crowded living room, Sara catching your face from across the room. 

“What’s wrong?” she said in your ear, pulling you into the kitchen where it was a bit quieter. “You have that look.”

“I don’t know. Just a weird feeling.”

“Did you drink?” she asked and you shook your head, holding up your bottle of water. “Eat anything?”

“No. Everybody ate the pizza. S’just a weird feeling,” you said, Sara forcing a smile. “I think I’m gonna head home.”

“Okay,” she said, giving you a quick hug. “Want me to walk with you to your car?”

“No I’m literally four houses down. I’m fine. Have fun okay? That tall blonde guy has been watching you all night. Have some fun with him for me?” you said. She rolled her eyes and you giggled. “Is he library guy?”

“Yeah. Parties aren’t really his thing,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

“Yeah but he came,” you said, flashing her a wink before you were headed back to the living room, going up to the guy. “Hey you’re Kyle right?”

“Uh yeah. Sara’s friend?” he asked. You smiled and looked back at her.

“Yeah. So I think you should ask her out and go to lunch with her tomorrow. There’s this hole in the wall mexican place on the west side, Memi’s. It’s her favorite since we were kids. I highly suggest it,” you said, Sara hiding her face when you both looked back at her.

“I don’t know. Sara’s...she’s kinda...out of my league. Sorority girl and all.”

“Yeah. But you’re library guy and she really likes library guy. She’s less sorority girl than you think,” you said. “Just a thought.”

You gave Sara a wave before heading out and jogging down the front steps. You felt the shiver return and quickly pulled your keys from your pocket, skirting down to the sidewalk. It was fairly empty, a few people straggling and going past up to the party. You were a house away from your car when you heard a pair of footsteps behind you. You glanced over your shoulder, freezing when you caught the face in the street lamp.

He narrowed his eyes and started to move. You took off and unlocked your car but he was too close for you to get inside without him catching up. Instead you booked it across the street and ran up the sidewalk until you were near one of the frat houses, a guy walking up it with his back to you.

He glanced over his shoulder when he heard feet pounding pavement. He moved aside for you before turning and slamming into Jimmy, knocking him back to the ground. You tried to catch your breath, the guy pinning Jimmy to the ground, a few frat guys by the front of the house walking over.

“No. You’re not going anywhere,” said the guy as Jimmy tried to squirm free. “Ben! Call campus security! Tell ‘em some douchebag was trying to attack some girl.”

“Are you okay?” asked one of the guys, walking towards you. You stepped back, the guy pining Jimmy down, looking up and at you.

“Eric hang back. She’s scared,” he said. “You’re okay?”

You nodded, staring over at the group of guys. You rubbed your bare arms on the cool fall night, the guy kneeling down on Jimmy looking up at the frat house.

“Here,” he said, sitting up when another one came over to help hold Jimmy. He peeled off his flannel and held it out, a soft smile on his face. “It’s alright.”

You forced yourself to step closer to grab it, quickly backing up again and putting your arms through the sleeves. You wrapped it around yourself, flinching when Jimmy tried to break free again.

“Try that again and see what happens,” said the guy. You swallowed and heard a siren in the distance, the guy still smiling at you. “You’re safe. I promise.”

“Thank you,” you said half an hour later as Taylor walked you back to your car. “I really, really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, stopping at your door.

“Y/N.”

“Well Y/N I’m sure if you were my size you’d have done the same thing for me,” he said, glancing at your car. “Sure you’re okay to drive home? I’ll wait with you if you want to call a friend to take you.”

“I’m about to have a very long night. Somebody else driving me home won’t make it any easier,” you said. He blinked and you looked down. “That wasn’t just a random guy. He um, he’s bothered me before. This isn’t over for me.”

“That’s why you were so scared of me and my friends.”

“It was really bad when he was in my life before. Really bad,” you said, wiping off your face with the sleeve of his flannel you still wore. You started to take it off and he shook his head with a smile.

“Keep it. My lucky flannel actually. Bad stuff doesn’t happen when you got that shirt on,” he said.

“I need several thousand of these then,” you said, sniffling some. He cocked his head, almost moving his hand but keeping it by his side. “I got to go home.”

“Our party is winding down. Do you want to hang out for a minute until you’re not so upset to drive?” he asked.

“I don’t think I should. I don’t have good luck with parties,” you said. He chuckled and nodded. 

“Drive safe, Y/N,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

You opened the door and paused, Taylor waiting on the other side for you to get in.

“You good?” 

“This is the last good night of sleep my parents are going to have because of me. Again,” you said. You stared at him and swallowed. “I can’t go home.”

“I got a safe place you can crash if you want,” he said. He held out a hand and you carefully took it, shutting your car door and locking it up. You crossed the street, walking back up the sidewalk with him. “There’s an empty bedroom at the top of the stairs. Kinda a um…”

“The fuck room?” you asked and he laughed, shaking his head.

“No, no. I mean I’m sure people have fucked in there but it’s more of a...guest room for those who need it. It’s safe I promise.”

“You’re sure?” you asked, turning up the path to the frat house with him.

“I’ll sleep outside on the floor if you want,” he said. You shook your head, heading inside, not too many people in there, a few guys throwing some trash into bags. “You want to go to bed or stay up a bit?”

“I don’t know,” you said, squeezing your eyes shut. “Sorry.”

“Hey,” he said softly. “Don’t be sorry. We can sit out on the back porch for a bit. I can bore you to sleep with how fascinating a person I am.”

You smiled, Taylor taking you back and outside, a few guys sitting around a bonfire in the backyard.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” you said, Taylor smiling as he grabbed a few lawn chairs and pulled them away from the fire and over towards the backdoor.

“Neither do I,” he said. “We got that in common already.”

You rolled your eyes but smiled, sitting down in a chair, Taylor ducking inside and returning with a thick wool blanket, handing it to you. He had a beer in his hand too and a bottle of water, holding them both out before you took the water.

“Any particular reason you wanted to share that fact?” he asked with a smirk.

“My last boyfriend was great but he was in Canada and I moved back here for school and I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea here. Like I’m absolutely not looking for a boyfriend. At all.”

“Well I’m not looking for a girlfriend,” he said, cracking open his beer with another smile.

“Don’t have that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“That cocky frat guy look.”

“Y/N the only thing I want is for you to feel safe tonight, not get in your pants. I’m totally a virgin by the way. Never even had a girlfriend.”

“That by choice?” you asked. 

“Oh no. I want sex,” he laughed.

“You live in a frat house.”

“Yeah and call me old fashioned but I want to love the woman that I have sex and do that stuff with. I’m not saving myself or waiting for marriage but I want it to be with someone I care about, you know?” he said.

“You’re a horrible excuse for the frat guy stereotype you know.”

“Part of my charm,” he said. He glanced down, a little shy like and you burrowed into the blanket.

“That’s a good thing,” you said. 

“Still single.”

“Still saved my ass,” you said. He nodded and smiled, looking up at the dark sky above. “I’m a virgin too you know. I have a similar philosophy when it comes to dating and sex.”

“You’re too pretty to never have found a guy you loved,” he said.

“Didn’t love him enough to want to have sex with him. I kinda come with a lot of this hidden baggage Taylor.”

“He didn’t like that?”

“I was nineteen. I wasn’t ready. The baggage kind of…”

“That guy tonight?” he asked. You nodded, Taylor taking a sip from his can. “He’s not so scary.”

“You don’t know what he’s capable of. If you knew him like I did, you’d be scared.”

“Maybe he’s scary. But baggage from him? That’s not so scary,” he said.

“How would you know?”

“Baggage is just crap you gotta carry. But it’s not you. So maybe you got baggage but that’s just extra crap. At the end of the day it’s just you and you don’t seem so scary,” he said.

“You’ve never seen me at six in the morning,” you said with a quiet chuckle.

“I’m sure she’s just fine,” he said. You turned your head and caught Taylor looking back, dark brown eyes staring into yours.

“I was drugged at a party in high school. It was an attempted kidnapping for ransom. Jimmy and his brothers and dad were all involved. Eventually they did take me and my dad, had us on the run when we escaped. They went to prison but Jimmy went to juvie because he was underage and didn’t have as active of a role in the more severe stuff. Apparently he’s still pissed and looking for revenge. How’s that for baggage?” you said, sitting back in your seat. 

“Sounds like you’re kinda badass,” he said. You snapped your head in his direction, a smile on his lips. “That doesn’t scare me. Like I said, that’s just baggage, it’s not you.”

“It should. Jimmy is just going to come back again.”

“Well let him,” he said, giving you a hard look. “I’m bigger than he is last I checked. He pulls any shit he’ll be tried as an adult. I’m sure he’ll get some time for what he pulled tonight. So relax. I said you’re safe.”

“I-”

“You’re safe. Relax Y/N. He’s not going to bother you tonight and tomorrow you can talk to your parents and figure everything else out but tonight you’re good. So stop spinning your wheels and let me distract you alright?” he said. You sunk down in your seat, pulling the blanket up under your chin. 

“Okay,” you said quietly. “Just for a little while until I get tired.”

“Whatever you want Y/N.”

“Thank you,” said your dad to the lawyer the next afternoon after you were walking out of the court house. He was barely out of the building before his fists were clenched. “I could strangle the little shit. I could and get away with it. Parents snap all the time in court.”

“Honey,” said your mom with a sigh as you walked down the steps ahead of them. “He broke his restraining order. He’s going away for at least-”

“Taylor?” you said, spotting him on a bench, looking through his phone. He stood up and smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Your lawyer called me and asked me to come down in case they needed me to say anything but they didn’t need me,” he said, your parents walking over. 

“You the frat guy?” asked your dad. He nodded, your dad returning it. “Thank you.”

“It was no big deal. Not a fan of douchebags,” he said.

“Still. Thank you,” said your dad. You waved them to go ahead, Taylor smiling when they were out of hearing distance.

“He doesn’t seem as overprotective as you said.”

“You didn’t have the joy of watching him freak out this morning,” you said. “Thanks for coming down. I really appreciate it.”

“I’m happy to help, really,” he said. 

“I gotta run. We have to talk with the lawyer again,” you said, taking a step backwards. “You um, you want to hang out later?”

“I don’t have your number,” he said, taking out his phone. You put in your contact and handed it back, giving him a smile. “Tonight?”

“Text me,” you said, nearly tripping in your heels. He smirked and you rolled your eyes. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything. I’ll try in a little bit when you’re done with that lawyer stuff,” he said.

“Thanks. I’ll uh, see you later,” you said, quickly spinning around. You caught up with your parents at the car, getting a pair of smirks from them both as you buckled up. “What?”

“Is his dad a cop?” asked your dad.

“Taylor!” you shouted, opening the back door as he started heading down the sidewalk. He spun around fast and you leaned out of the seat. “What’s your dad do?”

“Huh?”

“What’s your dad’s job?” you shouted.

“He’s a postman?” he said.

“He’s good,” chuckled your dad.

“You’re good!” you said, giving him a thumbs up.

“You are so weird you know that right?” he called.

“Yeah...but you like that,” you said. He smiled and you gave him a quick wave before you were back in the car and your dad pulled out. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said with a smile. “I like your friend is all.”

“Why?” you asked.

“You are so not as shook up as you should be and he’s probably a good reason for it,” said your mom. “So we like him.”

“Well he’s...I don’t know...he’s just my friend,” you said, catching them share a look. 

“Okay. He’s just a friend,” said your dad, your mom reaching over and taking hold of his hand. “Alright. Long day is almost over. A few more papers and then you can invite your friend over for dinner if you want.”

“Thanks,” you said quietly. “For not you know, going crazy protective.”

“Oh I will be. He’s kinda got a good track record of doing that himself so far is all,” he said. “Just one teensy favor.”

“No parties for a while?” 

“That’s my girl.”

_______

#spn #supernatural #jensen x daughter!reader #jensen ackles au #jensen ackles #spn fanfic #rpf #au #daughter!reader #jensen fanfic #supernatural fanfic

[yunhsuanhuang]

LOVE SONGS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE | YH HUANG

With apologies to A.L.

When I'm seventeen, I put a picture of Loretta Lynn in the back of my clear phone case. With the same care my best friends take in decorating trading cards of Jungkook and Jisoo, I get a pair of tweezers and my most expensive stickers, and make an afternoon out of sticking little daisies all over a glossy black-and-white printout of Loretta in the 70's. In the picture she's leaning against a tree, her dark hair long and thick, smiling at the viewer with the same unshakable confidence she's always had.

The next day, I slap my phone face-down on the cafeteria table. My friends go oh-my-god and you-actually-did-it and wait-that's-kinda-cute. We propose swapping some of our cards–I get Minho, she gets Randy– until the conversation derails to exams and teachers and the presentation that's due on Wednesday but none of us have started.

Then it's two weeks later, and when I wake up, thirteen hours after Kentucky does, I read that Loretta Lynn has passed away. A clickbait news site uses the same picture for her obituary.

Sometimes I feel like everything I love is already gone and I just don't know it yet.

-

so why do you like country music, my friend Alex asks me once.

Alex is American, but the South is as alien a place to him as it is to me– he grew up in suburban New Hampshire, after all, in an impossibly huge house bursting with beach-themed paraphernalia. America, to him, is Dunkin' Donuts and perfectly manicured lawns and the pale foam of the Atlantic cutting itself open over and over again against the sharpness of the rocks.

I squint at my phone. It's late, and I'm probably supposed to be asleep by now, but I'm fifteen and the year is 2020 and time stopped mattering somewhere in the middle of March. It's not like I have school tomorrow, anyway.

I type and retype my message for a while. Then, because it sounds about as good a reason as any, I say, idk i just like the fiddles

It's true. I do like the fiddles, and the steel guitar and the autoharp and the banjos too– the joyful clatter of it, the melody so much like flight. During quarantine, I spend a lot of time lying on the bedroom floor with my headphones on, blaring bluegrass at ear-destroying volumes. Maybe if I play it loud enough, if I squeeze my eyes shut hard enough, I can transport myself into the real thing: a honky-tonk with wood-panelled walls, heat and whiskey in the air, some familiar rhythm reverberating through the floorboards. Sometimes I even imagine myself there in the crowd, singing along.

–

In 1957, a song called Geisha Girl by Hank Locklin topped the country and western charts. It's about this American guy who arrives in Japan, falls in love with the titular Japanese geisha, and leaves his American wife for her. Well-trodden ground, both in art and in reality– after World War 2 ended, tens of thousands of Japanese women married American men for love, for money or for everything in between. Locklin's Geisha Girl became so popular that a song was released in reply to it–Skeeter Davis' Lost to a Geisha Girl, in which Davis takes on the persona of the man’s lover back home, scorning her fickle-hearted husband. As is common in reply songs, lyrics from the original are changed to fit the new perspective:

Locklin sings, Have you ever heard a love song that you didn't understand / when you met her in a teahouse on the island of Japan?

Davis sings: Why a love song with no meaning makes you happy, I don't know / I've lost you to a geisha girl where the ocean breezes blow.

A song you don't understand.  A song with no meaning. A song in a language you don't speak. What's the difference, anyway?

In post-war Japan, a whole plethora of country music bands sprung up around the country, playing American hits for homesick soldiers: Tennessee Waltz, Lovesick Blues, Your Cheatin’ Heart.. The closer they were to the originals, the better. They'd bill themselves as the Japanese Hank Williams or John Denver or Patsy Cline. The catch? Some of these singers barely spoke English. painstakingly memorising each lyric until their L's and R's sounded just right. Yet, every Friday night they'd get up on that stage and sing songs they didn't understand about a country they'd never been to. 

Just a few years ago, America had been Japan's worst enemy. But here their sons and daughters were, singing American songs, working in American jobs, marrying American men. In the present day, you could almost argue that the tables’ve turned: middle-schoolers debate anime at the cafeteria table; red-blooded blue-collar workers drive Toyotas and ride Kawasakis.

One thing that's stayed the same, though– American boys, Japanese girls. Love songs in a foreign language. Kind of a funny thing.

–

For hundreds of years, the West has been fascinated by the geisha. In Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, fifteen-year-old Butterfly is making her living as one when she’s bought by an American soldier named Pinkerton. He marries her, knocks her up, then ditches her in Japan while he marries an American woman. The whole time, Butterfly’s left to pine for him, and when Pinkerton returns to Japan with his wife, Butterfly stabs herself so that her son will be able to live in America with his father. 

(Pinkerton, as you can probably tell, is kind of an ass.)

I keep thinking about Butterfly in that lonely, empty house in Japan, waiting for someone who didn’t love her back. I keep thinking about Alex: Alex and his horrible stupid round glasses and his old embarrassing love of Panic! at the Disco and his stupid cringe emojis, Alex who’s still the smartest person I know, Alex who was the first guy to ever pay attention to me. When I’m sixteen, I think about him almost constantly, a constant hum of obsession in the back of my head. I know I’m in love with him because that’s how all the songs go: Randy Travis declares that it’s deeper than the holler / stronger than the river; Deana Carter says it’s bittersweet / green on the vine; Keith Whitley confesses that it’s what I hear when you don’t say a thing.

Alex asks me, so what do you like about country music? And I don't know what to say to him, so I say nothing at all.

–

They read it in the tea leaves and it's written in the sand

I found love by the heart-full in a foreign distant land

–

Alex likes Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, the outlaws and the jailhouses and the pistols at the hip.  My classmates like the feminist murder ballads, where they think she did it but they just can't prove it, where afterwards the girls sell Tennessee ham and strawberry jam / and they don't lose any sleep at night. I personally have a fondness for the silly and unserious: Alan Jackson extolling the virtues of grape snow cones, George Strait selling me the Golden Gate.

In the end, though, what I end up listening to most are the old songs– the really old ones, all the way back to the dawn of recording, the Golden Age of the radio.  These songs, collected in the 1920s and 30s, are impressively varied in lyrical content: you’ve got the ones that are basically a soap opera stuffed into three minutes flat (Lorena, My Heart’s Tonight In Texas); the religious ones (Anchored in Love, Will the Circle Be Unbroken); the relatable ones (Give Me Your Love); the unrelatable ones (The Dying Soldier, No Depression In Heaven). What I like about them, I guess, is the familiar hiss of the vinyl, the way the lyrics are both specific and universal at once, their ability to make a time and a place that you’ve never been to before feel, inexplicably, like home.

Alex and I aren't anywhere near poor– his parents are both surgeons, and I spend my evenings trying not to fall asleep in increasingly expensive private lessons. But then again, neither were the Japanese country singers of the fifties and sixties, mainly college kids from elite families who could afford custom-made cowboy hats and genuine guitars. Hell, even the prince of Japan was said to be a country music fan in his youth. None of us have worked in the fields or in the mines, none of our parents have had to tell us here's your one chance, Fancy, don't let me down. We're the people Garth was referring to when he sang about that black-tie affair, those social graces, the ivory tower.

What does it mean to understand a song? How do you sing something and really, truly mean it?

–

When I'm sixteen, my fun fact on the first day of school is that I listen to country music. When I go out with my friends, I wear ankle-length denim skirts and lacy blouses and tie my hair in twin ponytails. I beg and beg them to listen to Loretta, to Dolly, to Patsy. In response, they buy me a Cowboy of the Month calendar and save me in their phones as "the horse girl".  In one inexplicable picture that we've since lost, I've got my face in my hands, trying to hide my laughter, as my friends gleefully blast a Fox News clip about Randy Travis' drunken escapades.

So maybe my taste in music is the most interesting thing about me. What else is there? I'm not very pretty, only sometimes funny, and, to my eternal embarrassment, not good at all at being Asian. If I was smarter– fine, if I was Alex, Alex with his books and essays and critical theory– I might say that I do everything I do because I don't want to be the whitest girl in a room full of Asians (lame, boring, suck-up) but the most interesting thing in a room full of white people (exotic, rare, unique). A geisha girl, dressed in Oriental style. 

Even so, I don't like to think that that's all there is to it. You can shrink the world down to words on a page, map out the complicated intersections of nations and culture and war that make up the popular imagination of America, call it pentatonic scales, the mixolydian mode. Of course there's value in that, I know– but all that stuff's a foreign language to me. You can try to explain why music sounds the way it does, but in the end you just have to hear it for yourself.

–

For a genre obsessed with authenticity, modern country music's chock-full of performers: Toby Keith singing We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way, Hardy singing My small town is smaller than yours, Jason Aldean singing, I sit back and think about them good ol' days / The way we were raised and our southern ways.

A geisha's a performer, too, in a way. She trains her whole life to sing, to dance, to entertain. In yet another adaptation of Madama Butterfly, David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, a Communist actor seduces a French man by pretending to be a woman for years. When the actor's finally caught, he's asked how he got away with it. He responds: Because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that she was, in fact, a woman.

Don't tell this to anyone else, but when I curl my hair and put on lip-gloss and toddle around in heels, wondering if Alex would like what he sees, I feel like I'm a walking caricature in the shape of a girl. When I’m online with him I simper, I preen, I ask stupid questions just to keep him talking to me– and he likes it, or at least I really hope he does. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wonder what'll happen if I stop performing. I wonder if there’s anything left of me below the performance.

I used to worry that I fell in love with something that doesn't exist: the myth of America, the barbeques and the cornfields and the porches, the honky-tonk and the church social and the choir all singing, the cowboys on their vast, empty ranches. A place that's already gone, or else never existed at all– but what does that matter? An unreal place for an unreal girl. If everyone's performing, then no one is.

–

How much of this is true, then?

It's true as backroads and cold beer and pickup trucks. True as private jets and cowboy hats and exaggerated drawls. True as Nashville and Wallen and the CMAs. Which is to say, it's as true a story as you want it to be.

–

Tell the home folks that I'm happy, with someone that's true I know

I love a pretty geisha girl where the ocean breezes blow

–

In the months around my eighteenth birthday, my parents start screaming at each other. Suffice to say, they never really stop. I take up temporary residence in the school library instead, and spend my afternoons staring at maths textbooks while regretting every decision I’ve ever made. My exams are drawing closer. I’m sure I’ll fail them. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing does. I can’t bring myself to look at my future, I can’t, and yet like the long black train / coming down the line I know what’s going to happen when it hits me, and I know, I know– it’s not gonna be good. I start learning how to fall asleep to the background noise of things getting thrown. When my friends come over to study, they call the house beautiful. I guess it is.

On the way back from school, pressed into a corner of a sardine-packed bus, I put one earphone in and watch the sunset fall over the expressway, the heat turning the sky a gorgeous, deadly pink. Loretta Lynn sings: Well, I look out the window and what do I see? / The breeze is a-blowing the leaves from the trees / Everything is free, everything but me. The Chicks sing: She needs wide open spaces / Room to make her big mistakes. John Prine sings: Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery / make me a poster of an old rodeo / Just give me one thing that I can hold on to / To believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go.

Meanwhile, in my headphones, a thousand different stories unfold, familiar missives from some far-off place:  a son buries his parents. A wife kills her husband. Two childhood friends fall in love. A girl convinces her father to let her marry her boyfriend. A woman pins a runaway to a motel wall. Somebody calls his ex, even though he shouldn’t. A mother sells her daughter to an older man. A traveller gets on a train. The unfamiliar place names rush past. Amarillo, Charleston, Jackson, Cheyenne, Chattahoochee: evidence of an existence outside of calculus and grammar and pushing my desk against my door to block it. In my head I picture as if through a window some wide, sprawling prairie, some open starry sky, and think of Mary Oliver – so this is the world. I’m not in it. It’s beautiful.

–

(Meanwhile, online: it’s a different story.)

–

If it was a breakup, would it have been better? There's no shortage of breakup songs in country music, after all. Like, What right does she have to take you away / when for so long, you were mine? Like, I'm crazy for loving you / Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you Like, Nothing much for us to say / One last goodbye and you drove away.

Instead, it’s the stupidest, most mundane of reasons: we just stop talking. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. For me, I’m wrapped up in exams, family stuff, a clown car full of childhood friends crashing their way back into my life without warning; for him, he’s busy at Harvard, busy with his new friends and new projects and new– 

Okay. Fine. His new girlfriend.

I can’t blame him. I don’t have any right to. I still don’t know whether I actually loved him or I was just sixteen, lonely and looking to write myself into a song. Still, after I learn that he’s dating her, I fall into a haze of social-media stalking: I scroll through their Instagrams, their Twitters, anything that’ll tell me more about who he was, who they are. She’s cute, I’ll give her that, and they’re cute together, the kind of forever and ever, amen couple whose profiles are full of heart-shaped chocolates, of candid kisses and in-jokes I’ll never get to hear.

(A love song with no meaning. A language you don't speak.)

For weeks and weeks on end I dream of him, but the really funny thing is that even in these dreams he’s nothing but a spectre: texting me, calling me, writing long-winded letters in the mail.  The closest I ever get is this dream where I’m walking through his hometown, the one I looked up in Google Earth in a fit of desperation. It’s just like I thought it would be, every house gorgeous and stately and ancient, the trees barren but still grand. My hometown’s always been warm. It’s the one thing I have in common with the people in the songs, that overwhelmingly oppressive heat, the kind that sucks all the energy out of your bones. Even though Alex lives at the edge of America, Stephen King and sweaters country, in the dream it’s not cold at all– Georgia hot, hometown hot. As I run from house to house, ringing every doorbell, the roads seem to stretch out beneath my feet until the next door seems oceans and continents away. Nobody’s home. Nobody’s there. In the dream, I’m not surprised.

Sometimes I worry that everything I love is already gone, but I guess I knew that already. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love it. 

–

When I'm eighteen, my parents spend a small fortune on a family holiday to America, some last-ditch effort at holding the household together. I miss most of it, however, because the moment I step off the plane I come down with the worst cold I've ever had in my life. Thankfully, during the last couple of days I begin to feel a little bit more like a human being and not just a collection of symptoms, so I manage to go down with my family to the shore.

Maybe it's the ghost of the fever coming back to haunt me, or maybe it's just December, but the beach is bitingly cold, the evening light only just poking through the clouds. Standing there, I find myself thinking– predictably– of Alex. We haven't talked in months, at this point: the last thing I texted him was im in the us lol to which he responded Haha enjoy, and that's about it.

On some other shore, so far away we might still be in different countries, Alex is at Harvard writing essays about America– learning how to understand it, how to shape it, how to make it somewhere he can love without reservation. But I'm not him. I know, now, that I know nothing at all about America: not the blue and far-off one in my songs. but the real place, full of contradictions, land of guns and welfare and Walmart and the Free.

I keep going back to what Alex asked me when I was fifteen, when we barely knew each other: so why do you like country music? And it's only here, now, freezing in a down jacket on the California coast, that I finally have an answer for him.

I think: because every good country song is a love song in its own way.

I think: because country music is the only thing I've ever known how to love.

I think: I have stood and watched the sun rise from the waters of the sea / and I've wondered how much beauty in this cruel world can there be / My dreams are all worth dreaming and it makes my life worthwhile / to see my pretty geisha girl dressed in oriental style.

I think: does there really need to be a reason, A?

From somewhere behind me, I hear someone call my name. I turn. It's my mother yelling: “Come back to the car! It's getting cold!”

“Coming!” I yell back, and run to her.

–

Before I have to go back home, I manage to get my hands on a Shania Twain t-shirt, which honestly makes the entire trip worth it.

#just posting for archive purposes #hi william if youre reading this #writing

[jeysbvck]

freedom (is standing next to you) part 2.

a/n: i said this part would hopefully be longer but it turned out shorter, oops! header & divider credit to my fave @rishlurh, thank you so much bestie!🥰 hope you enjoy, please let me know what you think! likes are nice but please reblog.

taglist: @aprilfire18 @mallgothmunson @tinalbion @myguiltypleasures21 @valeriiecameron @mercurial-make-em-ups @oeuryale @talespinner230 <3

word count: 2.9k

summary: during your first day on the ship, you meet the rest of the crew & get caught in a storm.

Robin led you through a door, down a short flight of stairs, and into a fairly large room. There were two wooden beds, one slightly larger than the other -but not by much- a couple of wardrobes, and a dressing table with a small mirror resting against the ships' wooden walls. Robin had books and expensive-looking trinkets on bookcases and cabinets, and lanterns were dangling from the roof, making the ambiance of the room welcoming and homely. Honestly, if it wasn't for the slight swaying of the ship as it crossed the ocean, you'd have forgotten you weren't ashore.

Robin must've taken your silence and expression for one of judgment, because she said, "It's not much, I know, but Eddie was kind enough to give me my own space. Everyone else -besides Steve and Eddie of course- share the sleeping quarters, they sleep on hammocks in there! I think it's because I'm the only woman on the ship!"

Robin spoke awfully fast, it was almost hard to keep up with what she was saying. She seemed keen on making a good first impression, and you could understand that; you were feeling the same way. You could only imagine how difficult it would be, being the only woman on a pirate ship; you'd heard all the horror stories of how pirates treated people, women in particular, and how some pirates even considered having women aboard their ship bad luck, and how they worried they'd anger the sea Gods.

"Robin, this is great, really." You replied, flashing her a reassuring smile. "It's so lovely!"

Robin reciprocated the smile and bounced over to the beds. "You can both take the beds, I can sleep on the floor, or bunk in the quarters with-"

"Absolutely not!" You interrupted, with a firm shake of your head. "We can share one of the beds, we are not kicking you out of your room."

You turned to Nancy, who nodded in agreement, and Robin chuckled, the smile still plastered on her face. "In that case, it makes more sense for you to have the bigger bed!"

As Robin darted around the room, opening drawers and pulling sheets and pillows out, you nudged Nancy with your elbow, who had been uncharacteristically quiet. "Are you okay?" You asked in a hushed tone. "You've barely said a word. If this is too much, we can leave at the next-"

"No. I'm fine, I promise." Nancy said. She turned to Robin, and you were sure, even in the low glow of the lanterns, that you saw a faint blush on Nancy's cheeks. "Thank you, Robin. For, um- you know, sharing your space with us."

Robin beamed at Nancy as her own freckled cheeks blushed red, before she quickly turned around and opened one of the wardrobes. "Eddie didn't think about it because he's a man, but we all seem to be about the same size? Please, wear whatever you want, what's mine is yours now! I'll, um, give you some space."

Once Robin had closed the door, Nancy exhaled, and turned to you. "How are you feeling?"

You sighed and dropped to the bed you would be sharing with your best friend. "I don't know, it's been a long day, and it's a lot to take in."

Nancy hummed in agreement as she sat next to you. "Robin seems great." You mused.

"What about the Captain?" Nancy asked, almost immediately and you frowned, noticing the not-so-subtle change of subject, but you kept quiet.

"He's...something, isn't he?" You replied, and Nancy raised her eyebrow.

"Something?" She teased. "Are you crushing on the mysterious Captain Munson?"

"What? No! Don't be stupid!" You scoffed, suddenly feeling flustered. "I just- ugh- I mean, do you think we made a mistake?"

"What? What do you mean?"

"Did you see the way he was with us? With you? He thinks we're idiots! What's stopping him from taking us straight to the Prince to get some sort of reward?" You panicked, as you picked at the skin around your fingers.

"Steve wouldn't let him." Nancy replied, to which you scoffed and rolled your eyes.

"Nance, come on! If it came down to it, do you really think he'd side with us over his Captain?"

"Didn't you see him before? He listens to Steve. Trust me, it's going to be fine. Anyway, you're worrying about what might happen instead of celebrating the fact that we managed to get out town without a hitch!" Nancy patted your leg before she stood up and walked over to the wardrobe that Robin had left open. She flicked through the clothes before pulling some of them out. She threw a pair of black breeches at you, followed by a white puffy sleeved shirt and a red coat. "Now let's become pirates!"

Swapping out your corset and dress for Robin's trousers and shirt felt cathartic in a way, and you were reminded of a quote that Nancy had said to you just hours before; Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.

You were shocked by how quickly things could change. Before today you had never left your small town, and now, if you could just make it through this chapter in your life, you would be able to experience the world you had only heard about in the books you and Nancy had read, and the stories that people who passed through town told.

"What do you think?" Nancy asked and when you turned around, you couldn't help but smile. "Think I could pass as a pirate?"

"Nance, you look amazing! I'm starting to think you were born to be a pirate!" You replied, laughing as she picked up her revolver and pointed it at you, holding your hands up in mock surrender. Nancy laughed with you before dropping the revolver on the bed, then she took your hand and pulled you to the dressing table mirror. "God, never in a million years did I think this is where we'd end up." You sighed, and Nancy squeezed your hand, looking at you in the mirror.

"Me neither, but at least we're together." Nancy said, her chin on your shoulder. You tilted your head so it was resting on hers and you smiled, nodding in agreement.

The door to the bunk burst open, revealing Robin at the top of the stairs, covering her eyes with her hand. "Are you guys decent?" She shouted. You confirmed you were and she moved her hand and made her way down the stairs. When Robin saw Nancy, her eyes widened and you hid your smirk behind your hand. "You guys look great!" She said, and her cheeks turned pink when she made eye contact with Nancy, whose eyes darted away. "Anyway, um, I was just checking on you. Oh! You must be starving! I'll be back with some food!"

After some surprisingly delicious stew, you and Nancy got into bed and huddled together under the thin blanket. The noise from above was loud, with the crew shouting loudly and stomping around as they drank, making it impossible to fall asleep, although you weren't sure there was much chance of that, even without the noise. Images of your father realising you were gone, the royal guards being deployed to find you, by any means necessary were running through your mind. On any other day, you'd be safe with the knowledge your father wouldn't notice if you were a million miles away, but with money on the line, you could only assume he'd realise sooner rather than later.

"You get used to the noise, you know?" Robin said from the other bed. "It's not always like this, though."

"Do you ever join them?" Nancy asked.

"Yeah, sometimes." Robin replied. "But I've never had a sleepover with other women before."

"Never?" You repeated, shocked. You couldn't imagine growing up without the sleepovers you and Nancy shared.

"Never." She confirmed, and a wave of sadness washed over you and you made a silent pact to make sure she had enough memories of a sleepover to get her through once you'd left.

You spent the rest of the night listening to Robins stories about her time on the crew. She was a storyteller, making the adventures sound like something straight out of a book. She talked about how Eddie made the crew follow a treasure map he'd found, only to find an empty chest. About how, for a while, they had a ship mascot, a stray cat that Eddie had found in the trash in one of the town's they stopped in. About how Eddie had decided to stop off on an island one day, and had the crew spend the day relaxing. The way she painted the picture, described every place they'd been, every adventure they had, she made it sound magical. Not to mention, the way she spoke about Eddie didn't match up with who you'd seen that day. When you finally fell asleep during one of Robins' stories, you dreamed of the adventures, with Captain Eddie Munson at the forefront.

-

You stared at yourself in the mirror, trying to get used to not just your new clothes, but your new life. Your nerves were shot, this was your first full day on the ship and you had absolutely no idea how today would go, all you knew was that it was going to be interesting. Not to mention, you had woken up in a sweat after dreaming of a near kiss with the Captain, so you weren't exactly excited to see him and the prospect of making a fool of yourself.

You, Nancy and Robin made your way up to the top, where it was unsurprisingly quiet; the rest of the crew still sleeping off the inevitable hangover they had. While Robin went about her morning duties, you and Nancy leaned against the side of the ship and took in the view. There was nothing but sunny, blue skies and ocean and the sounds of the waves crashing against the bottom of the ships, the sails billowing in the wind and seagulls squawking as they flew overhead.

"It's beautiful." You commented.

"It really is, I'm beginning to see the appeal of this lifestyle." Nancy replied.

Someone chuckled behind you, before they said, "You might wanna wait until you've experienced a storm before you say that."

When you turned around, you were met by a tall, brunette crew member. His hair wasn't as long as Eddie's, or as styled as Steve's, it covered his ears and his fringe almost masked his eyes. He was holding a mop, and he smiled apologetically at you both. "Sorry for eavesdropping."

"No, it's alright." Nancy replied before introducing you both. He told you his name was Jonathan, and he offered an awkward wave.

"Where are you headed?" He asked, and when you and Nancy shared a look, he grimaced. "Sorry, am I overstepping? I didn't mean to."

"No, no, it's not that, we're just- uh- not sure." You confessed, rubbing the back of your neck, hoping he wouldn't press for more information. Luckily he didn't, he just nodded.

"That's how most of us ended up on the crew." Jonathan said with a shrug. "We just needed to get out of whatever situation we were in, and with no plan past getting out, we just stayed on the ship and found a family. Maybe it'll be the same for you."

"Oh, I don't know about that." Nancy said, resulting in a laugh from Jonathan.

"Yeah? I said the same thing!" He replied before walking off, leaving Nancy to stare at you with wide, worried eyes.

The rest of the morning and into the afternoon was quiet, you hadn't seen Eddie or Steve at all, and you and Nancy had spent your time getting to know the rest of the crew and helping Robin with her duties. Now, you were in the kitchen with Nancy, preparing the veg and a small amount of meat for dinner, while Nancy helped Jonathan with cleaning the weapons.

"So, how are you finding your first day on the ship? " Robin asked.

"It's been a lot quieter than I expected." You replied. "I was expecting a gun fight and some bloodshed!"

Robin laughed. "Maybe you'll be in luck, we are due one!" She said, before quickly adding, "I'm joking. Sorta."

"So how did you end up joining The Freaks?" You asked, chopping up the vegetables and sweeping them into the large metal pot. "They always struck me as the type of crew to adhere to the "No women allowed" rule!"

"Some of them did." Robin told you. "It was hard at first, they'd try all sorts to get rid of me. They even tried to attack me one night."

You stopped cutting the vegetables and stared at Robin, your eyes as wide as your mouth. "Shit, seriously?"

"Yeah, it was crazy. Luckily Jonathan warned Steve, so he and Eddie were waiting. Steve spent a lot of time in my quarters after that, hence the second bed."

"Robin, I am so sorry that happened to you." You replied. You didn't know what else to say, or what to do, but you squeezed her arm gently, in an attempt to be comforting. You knew all too well how it was hard to talk about trauma. You knew how it felt, knowing your life would be forever changed, or worse, if it wasn't for the kindness of someone else, although your situations were slightly different. Robin's guardian angel was a stranger, yours was your best friend. "What happened to the crew members who tried to...you know?"

"Eddie dealt with them." Robin said. "The two masterminds were on the ship one minute, but not the next. The other three? Well, Eddie locked them in the hold- I think they were down there for five days- then when we got to the next town, he left to fend for themselves. Chances are they died almost instantly, guards were swarming that town looking for pirates to bring in."

"Serves them right." You muttered as you turned your attentions back to the food prep. The more you learned about Robin, and the Captain, the more intrigued you became.

"So, what about you?" Robin asked.

"What about me?"

"How did you and Nancy find yourselves aboard our ship?"

You figured you should open up to her about your own trauma, especially after she trusted you with hers. You knew it was a risk, but you knew this was how you built relationships and trust. Besides, you didn't need to divulge all the details.

"My father sold me into marriage, so me and Nancy ran." You said. It was hard, you hadn't said the words out loud before, even with Nancy, she'd been around it enough to know from the look on your face what had happened.

"Whoa, really? Where was your mother for all this?"

"She died when I was fifteen." You said, quietly. "She always used to promise me this wouldn't happen, that I'd never have to deal with it, and it took my father six years to break that promise."

"That's fucked up." Robin replied, which made you scoff slightly.

"Yeah, you got that right."

Robin grabbed your hand and squeezed it, just like Nancy did to comfort you, and you smiled. "Well, I'm glad you're both here. We'll protect you, you know?"

"Thanks Robin, I-"

The ship lurched, and you and Robin tumbled to the floor. Shouts and loud banging came from the top deck, and you glanced at Robin with scared eyes. "What was that?" You asked.

Robin shrugged. "I'm not sure." She replied, standing up. She grabbed one of the daggers off the table before heading towards the door. "Stay here, stay quiet. I'll go check it out."

-

You weren't sure how long you were sitting there, listening to the noise coming from all around you, gripping the dagger handle so tight, your knuckles were turning white, but it felt like hours. Your eyes were glued to the wooden door, waiting for someone, anyone, to come through it, forcing you to defend yourself. You could only hope that if a fight had broke out, that with Nancy's knowledge of guns, she was more than equipped to handle herself. Not like you.

The doorhandle began to rattle, indicating someone was trying to get inside, and you scrambled to your feet, holding the dagger out in front of you, mentally preparing yourself to use it. As the person on the side of the door began to slam against it, you held your breath. The door crashed open, and you sighed with relief when you saw who it was.

"You're going to poke someone's eye out with that!" Eddie laughed. You dropped it and tried to peer around him.

"What's going on? Is Nancy okay? Where's Robin?" You fired off questions at Eddie, who just stared at you with his eyebrow raised, the metal in his eyebrow glinting in the low light of the lanterns.

"Okay, relax." Eddie said, his voice gentle. He stepped towards you slowly as he spoke, his eyes locked onto yours. "We're in the middle of a storm, it's not the worst one we've seen, but it's not great. Nancy's fine, okay? She's with Jonathan, and Robin is assisting Steve with making sure we get through this safely and in one piece."

"Right, that makes sense." You said, feeling ridiculous for panicking. The ship lurched again, this time tossing you right into Eddie's arms.

"Hey there." Eddie grinned. "I could get used to this."

Your cheeks started to burn under Eddie's intense gaze. The ship swayed again and the wooden door slammed shut and you jumped backwards, away from Eddie. He tried to pull the door open, but it was stuck, and he turned to you, smirking and shrugging.

"Looks like we're going to be stuck in here for a while."

#eddie munson fic #stranger things fic #stranger things #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #pirate!eddie munson #my writing*

[sunshinereddie]

22. reunion hug!!

Eddie stood nervously at the door to the restaurant, wondering whether or not he would be able to catch a flight back to New York that night if he left right now. Sure, the plane ticket would be expensive as hell, and he'd go home to a million questions from Myra, along with having to explain to his boss why he had suddenly left the state in the middle of the work day, but compared to spending one more second back in Derry... Eddie was becoming more convinced by the second.

He knew he had to be back in Derry. The scar on his hand palm that hadn't stopped burning since he had received Mike's call was telling him so. The memory of their promise was telling him so. He knew he had to be back, to finally put an end to all of this... but a part of him also couldn't help but think, Why does it have to be me?

Eddie might have remained standing there all night long, his mind going back and forth over what to do, until footsteps approached from behind him, and a voice spoke up- a teasing, but strangely familiar voice.

"Hey, man- you know this isn't a club or something, right? You can go right in, you don't need to wait get your ID checked and block the doorway."

Eddie frowned, and quickly turned on his heel to tell this guy that a simple 'excuse me' would have been perfectly fine and that he didn't need to be a jackass about it... when his eyes landed on a familiar face. A face that Eddie hadn't seen in thirty years, but one he could never forget.

"...Richie?"

Richie Tozier's eyes widened as he realized the person he had just made fun of wasn't just some guy, but Eddie Kaspbrak. His smug grin melted into a soft smile, and suddenly all the negative things that Eddie had been feeling about being back in Derry vanished, replaced with a brighter feeling as his memories of Richie came flooding in.

Richie's mouth hung open, as though he was lost for words, and for a moment Eddie was surprised that Richie Tozier, of all people, had been brought to silence- when he spoke just one simple word: "Eds."

It was a nickname Eddie hadn't heard in a long time, and with it brought a feeling Eddie hadn't felt in a long time- the tight feeling in his chest, a flash of heat through his body, the pace of his heartbeat accelerating. Eddie had always told Richie when they were kids that he hated the nickname, but... he had always been quite fond of it, and hadn't realized how much he missed it until now.

Richie's smile widened as he approached, but before Eddie could say anything else in reply, Richie was throwing his arms around Eddie in a hug that seemed to knock all the air out of Eddie's lungs. It took a second for Eddie to regain his balance and catch his breath, but when he did, he wasted no more time in tightly wrapping his arms around Richie in return. His hands curled into fists, grabbing hold of the fabric of Richie's shirt, as he buried his face in Richie's shoulder. Eddie could feel Richie's hands on his back- large, warm, and trembling.

Eddie could have stayed like that all night.

It was a long while before either of them spoke again, but when Richie finally broke the silence, he didn't break their hug. "It's... it's good to see you again, Eds," he said softly.

There were so many things Eddie wanted to say back. It's good to see you, as well, was the proper thing to say, Eddie knew that, but it wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Richie how much he missed him. He wanted to say that he was so scared of being back in Derry, but he felt a little less scared in Richie's arms. He wanted to ask if Richie wanted to run away with him. He wanted to tell Richie that he loved him.

But, Eddie knew he couldn't say that. He couldn't say any of that.

"Don't call me Eds," was what he finally replied with.

Richie laughed, and Eddie found it rather amusing that Richie's laugh hadn't changed after all this time. "Sorry," he said. "Want ‘Eddie Spaghetti’ instead?.”

“God, no. That one was even worse.”

“Well, you’re not leaving me with many options.”

“How about my real name, ever think of that, genius?”

“Nah, that’s boring.”

Despite their conversation, they still hadn’t separated from their hug. They spoke into each other’s shoulders, and though they couldn’t see it, they could both feel the curve of the others’ smile against them.

Eddie tightened his arms around Richie. He never wanted to let go. He didn’t want to lose Richie again.

#THANK U FOR REQUESTING MOLLY MWUAH ILY ILY <3 #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #reddie #reddie ficlet #reddie fic #reddie hc #reddie headcanon #it 2017 #it 2019 #it

[bihansthot]

Can you write a story of how your OC first met Bi Han? I’m curious & most stories I’ve read about him always had a relationship already but not how it started. Thank you! Also your work is great!

Thank you so much for the request and the compliment lovely! I’ve danced around the story of how Bi-Han and I met and alluded to it here and there over the years but I suppose I’ve never really told the full story. It all started 15 years ago when I graduated college, obviously, this is a fictional story but it’s based on my actual background. There’s no warning for this story it’s purely an innocent first meeting, there’s a bit of fluff maybe. 🥰

The year is 2008 and I had just graduated from the University of Michigan with my dual bachelor’s of Arts in Asian Studies and Japanese. I was excited but scared at the same time, I had spent the last four years living out my dreams in a safe and happy environment away from my very emotionally abusive, narcissistic, alcohol-dependent mother and now I had to face her again. I wasn’t fortunate enough to find a job right out of college so I had to move to Florida, somewhere completely foreign to me as my parents had retired and moved during my Senior year. I was motivated and determined not to stay any longer than I had to so I began hunting for jobs right away. My Japanese teacher had always encouraged me to be an English teacher in Japan and after spending my Junior year abroad at Nagoya Gakuin University I was very eager to go back to Japan. I wanted to see my friends, to see my crush to maybe finally have the courage to confess my feelings to him which I had been too shy to do when I was there at school. As fate would have it though I would keep getting turned down over and over for teaching English in Japan ironically because I spoke Japanese too well and companies were worried I wouldn’t be a good enough English teacher when I could communicate with the students in their native language.

Months went by and things between my Mother and I got worse and worse, my eating disorder from high school resurfaced in a desperate attempt to gain my mother’s approval. Through very unhealthy eating habits and excessive working out, I dropped almost 110 pounds in the year I was stuck at home with my parents. I was working at a local grocery store while I kept applying to companies to live abroad, finally after months and months of waiting one got back to me. I was elated, but there was only one catch, they wanted me to teach English in a tiny rural village in China, Fengjian was the name, which meant nothing to me because I had certainly never heard of it. In a move that shocked even me I jumped at it, terrified of change or anything unknown little Sol emphatically agreed to the teaching position in a heartbeat. The company would cover my living expenses, school expenses, and food expenses plus pay me a stipend on top of all that just to teach adorable little Chinese middle schoolers English. It felt like the answer to my prayers, the only problem was leaving my Dad. As bad as things were with my Mother, I loved my Father dearly and the idea of being so far from him indefinitely scared me, especially since just a few years prior he had a heart attack. I gathered my courage though and decided for my sake I had to put myself first for once and get away from my awful home life.

My parents were of course surprised with my decision, they weren’t surprised I was moving abroad to teach English, but they were surprised I was going to China and not Japan. They tried to talk me out of it but my mind was made up and I couldn’t be swayed. The next few weeks were kind of a blur as I got rid of things and sold things and packed everything important to me into two big suitcases. My parents took me to the airport and I bid my mother a farewell and sobbed as I hugged my father and told him goodbye. The flight was insane and had so many different transfers, first I flew to my home away from home Detroit then Detroit to Narita, Narita to Guangzhou and then I had to take the bus through the picturesque countryside for what seemed like an eternity until I finally arrived in Fengjian. I had traveled well over 24 hours and was completely exhausted when I arrived but I couldn’t rest yet. I arrived in a beautiful little village made of picturesque wooden houses that looked like they hadn't been touched since the Ming dynasty. My heart lurches at the beauty as I’m reminded of watching Fushigi Yuugi countless times with my best friend when we were in high school. “Oh how proud my little Miaka would be of me,” I whisper to myself taking in the beautiful surroundings, breathing the fresh mountain air. I am suddenly unsure what to do, I have the school’s contact information and my landlady’s number but my phone doesn’t work here. Just as I’m about to panic though an individual introduces themselves to me in slightly broken English indicating they are from the company I work for. They actually sent a local to pick me up from the bus station and get me settled in. I was elated and followed them dragging my heavy suitcases behind me as we quietly wound our way through the lovely little village. We climbed up the bank of the beautiful riverfront to a quaint dwelling, I was immensely grateful for their help with my lovely landlady Mrs. Fong who spoke very little English but did have an adorable Pekingese. Once I was finally in my little apartment on the hillside, overlooking the beautiful, slow-moving river that ran through the little village I passed out despite my stomach’s angry protests.

The first few months were lonely and exhausting, everything seemed so overwhelming. I was in the middle of nowhere, in a village where no one had met a foreigner before, and was unable to speak the language. It made everything complicated, it was my day off and I decided to go to the marketplace and try and find my favorite snack for lunch. I had managed to pick up a few very basic phrases thanks to my fellow teachers and with the help of Mrs. Fong, I did feel a little guilty about not seeing Madame Bo but I promised I would visit her for dinner. She was always so kind to me and was one of the few people in town who could speak a fair amount of English. If it weren’t for Mrs. Fong and Madame Bo I probably would have given up and gone back to America but I persisted, even with the complexities of the long hours my job required of me and the language barrier it was still so much better than life in America. “Alright, Mrs. Fong told me there was an uncle in the market who sold the best char siu bao, and today’s the day I’m going to find him!” I give myself a pep talk before grabbing my keys and mini backpack and heading out the door.

I follow the beautiful river until I’m in the heart of the village and make my way toward the market, I have been there a handful of times but I usually only visited the butcher and the noodle lady, finding the prepared food was a new adventure. I weave in and out of the crowded streets and stalls, all too familiar with the shock and awe a tall, busty, platinum blonde causes in China. I look around everywhere for the food stalls before clumsily asking one of my fellow patrons, “char siu bao,” I ask and mime the action of eating one. The old man looks me up and down and just grins lecherously, thankfully for me though a kindly old woman had overheard my query and steers me away from him and points me in the right direction. I look around at the stall before I spy the one I’m looking for, I may not be able to speak Chinese but that doesn’t mean I can read a fair deal of it since Japanese borrows much of their written language from Chinese. I make my way over to the cart and hold two fingers up as I repeat my simplistic phrase before adding “qing” to it. The middle-aged man smiles and asks for 6 yuan and I open my purse to start to count out the coins

It’s not long before I hear what sounds like cursing and angry Chinese coming from the man behind me. Worried I was taking too long to count my change I turned around to mumble “duibuqi duibuqi,” to him what I was not expecting was to face to chest with this man. I’m startled, to say the least as I was around the same height as most men in the village, I look up and I’m certain my jaw hangs slack as I’m looking at the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life. His jet black hair wound back into a tight bun, his ethereal ice blue eyes staring down at me as he slams two yuan down on the stall and grabs my bao plus another two. He hastily forces mine into my hands as he stuffs one in his mouth and drags me away from the stall. “I, I wha? What’s happening?!” I exclaim struggling in his freezing cold grasp as he pulls me to the little plastic stools by the roadway.

“That asshole was charging you six times over just because you’re a clueless foreigner,” his gruff, deep voice all but snarls, as he bites off a large mouthful of the fluffy, sweet bao.

“I, what? For-for real? What a creep! Th-thank you,” I reply softly and I can feel my cheeks flushing with color as talk with this handsome stranger who shockingly spoke perfect English.

“You’re new around here, aren’t you? Name’s Sub-Zero, you must be the English teacher my brothers were talking about seeing at Madame Bo’s,” he deduces in the two minutes of talking to me.

“That obvious huh? Yup, that’s me. I’m Sol, I teach English at the middle school up the road. I go to Madame Bo’s pretty often but I think I would have remembered someone like you there before,” I mumble enjoying another bite of my bao, trying not to embarrass myself too much.

“Unfortunately I, mm work more than my brothers do and have little time for fraternizing at Madame Bo’s,” he chooses his words carefully as he answers, his eyes shifting slightly as he speaks.

“Oh? What do you do? Anything fun?” I ask innocently enough, enjoying having my first conversation since moving to China.

He just laughs, “that unfortunately is classified, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.” He smiles at me, his beautiful white teeth are dazzling.

I give him an odd look and turn my attention back to my bao not realizing I had managed to smear some of the delicious BBQ pork filling on my cheek.

Sub-Zero cocks his head to the side and gives me a very confident smirk before leaning in to press his bizarrely cold lips to mine. His cold tongue worked its way across my cheek, cleaning away the leftover bao before pulling away mischievously.

My eyes fly open wide and I blink rapidly before bringing my hand up to my lips. My heart feels like it’s pounding out of my chest as my breath comes out in condensed little puffs and I’m left shocked by my first kiss.

Sub-Zero shoots me a wink, “you’re a messy eater. See you around, Sol.”

Before I even have time to process what was happening I’m left completely alone. I look around frantically and see no signs of Sub-Zero and my heart drops. I munch slowly and quietly on my second bao in silence, already missing his deep voice and pleasant company, hoping this won’t be the last time I meet Sub-Zero.

#mortal kombat #bi han #sub zero #sub zero x me #solarbear #bi han x sol #self shipping #self ship #f/o x s/i #f/o imagines #first kiss #romantic f/o

[mrsvelez]

Just a Dream

(This is my first time doing this, I apologize for any grammar mistakes as English is my second language!)

You really didn’t know how this happened. It was beyond your comprehension how your real life seemed like a dream. You hold on to your suitcase as if it’s the one grounding you, a sacred link to confirm reality, that this was in fact your life. The feeling of an out of body experience was interrupted by the nice SAT agent saying,

- hope you have a fun time at Miami, girl!

- Gracias… thank you!

The truth is, you hope this isn’t JUST fun. You hope it is heavenly, magnificent, life changing, incredible, painfully amazing weekend. After all, this is the first and last time you plan to travel to meet a “stranger” to have a weekend away. The dream really started weeks ago when you got a notification on Instagram. Probably one of your besties tagging you in another almost too inappropriate meme. But it was actually a message. HOLY SHIT. It was a message from him, Christopher Vélez. WHAT!!? You had almost completely forgot how a few weeks maybe even months ago you sent a drunken racy message to him, saying all the things you want to do to him… and he read it? And answered it? A few polite and funny DMs happened here and there, but then the more you texted the more you wanted from him. One day, you asked about a call but both of your schedules were off, so naturally you thought this wasn’t real, you were a victim of catfishing! Christopher had no option but sending you a video of him laughing at your less than classy written outburst, accusing him of not being THE Christopher Velez. After you received the short video, you lost your mind, screaming and jumping in your bed. Once you were able to recover your breathing, a twisted but delicious idea came to your mind. I would like to come and meet you at Miami, if that’s ok with you. Your whole body was shaking once you pressed sent. The three dots showed up almost immediately. How about next weekend? You heard your jaw hit the floor, and started making all kinds of planning. As an independent woman, you wanted to pay for all your expenses, but he insisted on covering the hotel room for 2 nights. Hotel room? As in 1? must be for me, of course you thought. But your subconscious was already playing some kinky scenarios in your sleep. Repeated images of endless possibilities of limbs, mouths and skin intertwined were abruptly interrupted by an alarm reminding passengers to keep track of their belongings and not to trust strangers. You took one look at your suitcase and laugh about its content - it would be pretty embarrassing if a stranger stole it and look at the skimpy content. Well, maybe not all strangers but, you know…

Looking around, seems like nobody noticed you squirming on your seat trying to alíviate the expectation building between your legs. You licked your lips one more time and grabbed your phone to play some music, maybe some Taylor Swift? On shuffle? First song - I Knew You Were Trouble. Skip. Why is my playlist already playing mind games on you? Then, Dress. Skip again. This feels personal. Next song, Death By A Thousand Cuts - ok, at least a humbling melody, preparing you for this experience to be over. It’s going to be a long flight…

The minute the plane touched ground, your heart moved from your chest to your mouth. There were no brain cells left, just pure unhinged lust. Your libido guided you to the closest restroom to get out of your comfy traveling black outfit into a silky slip on red dress, that you bought at the mall the next day after your decision to “visit” Miami. Your hair was looking somehow bouncy man’s voluminous but you were sure the city heat will be merciless, so you arranged it in the best possible way. Some make up on and you took one last breath as a respectable, decent woman. This weekend, I’m a hoe. Christopher Velez’s hoe.

It’s was almost like a checklist going on in your head so you could feel remotely like a functioning adult: get an Uber. Are you breathing? Open the door and take a sit. Yes, yes, thank God for good weather. No, I’m not from Miami. This is the hotel, thank you. Elevadores? Gracias. One foot in front of the other. Take a deep breath. Knock on the door. Checked the number. Are your feet still on the ground? Yes, no floating away. Check down at your boobs, yes they still look great. No need to check your heart beat, you can feel it pounding in your chest, in your ears, in your…

Feeling completely exposed, looking for security cameras around the hallway as if you were about to commit a hideous crime. An eternity went by until you heard the door unlock. Your knuckles white from your hand being in a tight fist. Seeing Christopher there, right in front of you and within reach at the door made your knees weak, and God knows what kind of grin was on your face, but you could feel the heat crawling up your cheeks.

- hola mami - he said as he gestures to come inside the room. You can feel your heartbeat skip a beat.

- Hola - you’re not sure if it was a word, a sigh, or a prayer.

- como estas? How was your flight?

How could he be so casual about this? His arms go around you to give you a hug, right arm above you shoulder and left arm around your waist. You do the same, feeling the tightness of his chest and taking in his intoxicating scent. Musky and almost sweet. You feel your underwear getting moist down there. Christopher pulls back a little and smirks at you, probably your already have a the horniest facial expresión known to human kind. You let go of the hug after staying in his arms for a second too long.

- quieres algo de tomar? Agua?

You place your suitcase by the closet and walk into the room. Remembering to be fully present in this adventure you choose, you gather all self control you have left to turn on your toes, give the biggest smile matching his, and say as innocently as possible, yes please, thanks! You’re so proud of yourself being able to articulate more than two words. Your breathing is almost too loud, as if you just climb the stairs to get to the 15th floor.

Christopher hands you a water bottle from the mini bar, and when you reach out to it you intentionally touch his fingers. You’re shaking. Sparks fly. Whoa. You forgot what water was for, and put it back on the table next to you, making you both bursting into laughter for the silliness of the situation. Christopher takes a step closer to you and says:

- está bien si no quieres agua, guapa, yo no me enojo.

He’s close enough to touch your forearm, sending electric waves EVERYWHERE. Your mind plays dirty on you and you say with a wink:

- pero no estamos aquí para tomar agua!

Christopher smiles back with his thousand dollar smile, looking up and down on you and says:

- Con ese vestido, se me ocurren muchas cosas mas que podemos tomar.

#christopher velez #christopher velez imagine #christopher velez fluf #cnco #cnco chris

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

It's felt like a vaguely depressing week in comedy, so here are a couple of happy things.

I haven't done one of my Chortle headlines roundup posts in a while, but here's one particularly excellent headline. I've thought for a while that it's odd John Kearns doesn't have any full stand-up specials released, not even in some smaller audio form or anything, as far as I can tell. This one that he's filming is The Varnishing Days, that got all those wildly good reviews last year and got nominated for that award in Melbourne this year, which is great, I can't wait to see it.

Stewart Lee filming Basic Lee is less big news just because I took it for granted that it would happen at some point, but I'm still pleased to have it confirmed. That show I have heard before but a version that'll be about two years old by the time this comes out, and I thought it was very very good, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it turned into.

Also, I will watch the Lucy Beaumont special, as that's another person whom you'd think would have had a full-length stand-up special released at some point already, but as far as I can tell, she hasn't. I've seen clips of her stand-up on YouTube, but Lucy Beaumont seems like an odd enough act so you probably need to see her stuff in context to understand what's going on (similar, in that specific way, to John Kearns again).

And secondly, I had a rare look at Twitter this week, and I'm glad I did because I am always disproportionately delighted at any modern content that calls back the Chocolate Milk Gang days. Like this picture that David O'Doherty posted the other day (from Australia, where all the comedians are now) of him in April 2024 shaking hands with Jermaine Clement over a mural featuring John Oliver.

Calling back, of course, to DO'D playing with Flight of the Conchords in Edinburgh in the early 00s, leading to him opening for them on some major tours in the later 00s, here he is backing them up on keyboards in Edinburgh in 2004:

And here he is passing half a cow to the Edinburgh crowd with John Oliver in 2003, with what I'm almost sure is Jermaine Clement backing them up on percussion just out of shot:

This screenshot also features Adam Hills, and I have to admit I briefly considered this week that part of me wants to put Adam Hills on my list of people to see in Edinburgh this year entirely so I can say I'm taking the opportunity to see anyone who was part of Cowgate and is still going to Edinburgh in 2024 (I already have DO'D tickets, I will of course scramble to pick up Kitson tickets the moment he announces anything in Edinburgh no matter what it is, and John Oliver/Demetri Martin/Flight of the Conchords have moved on with their lives, though there's still time to change your minds before Edinburgh 2024 starts, guys). And then I remembered there are good reasons why I've gone off Adam Hills and I can't dedicate a timeslot (and the cost of a ticket that's more expensive than most) to a guy I've gone off just for the sake of a 2003-based point (I mean, I still very much like a lot of things about Adam Hills in general, but I don't love some major aspects of the 2024 incarnation of him, and the 2024 incarnation is who will be showing up to Edinburgh 2024).

Anyway, this is a post about good things, and David O'Doherty shaking hands with Jermaine Clement in front of a mural of John Oliver 21 years after those men were all involved in late-night ritual cow sacrifice is a pretty good thing. It's probably the only good reason to keep Twitter around.