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homomenhommes · 3 months

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My Sexy Trip - Part 1

The first day, I flew out of Powell River to Vancouver, and took a motel near the airport.

I had met a young man on line 4 or 5 years ago and we had continued to chat but had

never been able to meet in person. I'll call him Alex(andro) for the purposes of this

tale. He is a 35 year old Latino immigrant, with a good, but exacting job in the city.

Today was our first time to meet in person. We had planned to spend all afternoon and

evening together. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed 3 hours, so it was dinner time

by the time Alex arrived, so we had a nice dinner together, getting to know each other a bit,

before we went back to my motel. It then took us only moments to get naked, because we

both knew that we anted each other by this time.

His cock was huge. You can see for yourself in the picture. Mine is about 3 inches.

Figure it out for yourself. I estimate his was about 10 inches hard, and quite thick.

Like me, he is a touchy-feely person, so we spent a lot of time hugging, kissing, and

rubbing together. He was also very much into sucking cock, and although I could get

much of his cock in my mouth, he could get all of mine in his mouth and worked on it

until the rim started to get sore, probably the most my cock has been sucked at one

time ever!

Eventually, I asked him to fuck me, which he proceeded to do, very carefully. It hurt

quite a bit going in, but he gradually fed it into me and I relaxed to take it. Little by

little he inched it in until he was fully inside me, and we started a long, slow fuck.

It seemed to go on forever, until I eventually asked him to take it out of me. My hole was

sore for several days afterwards.

Our sexual encounter had lasted about three hours! The picture I have included was taken

afterwards.I have blacked out his face to protect his anonymity, but believe me, he

is very handsome!

We had planned to meet again on my return to Vancouver, but as you know, I got very

sick, and had to cancel. I hope we will meet again someday soon!

My Sexy Trip - Part 2

Twenty-four years ago, when I first got onto the internet, I went looking for other gay men, on all the available sites, using all the available chat groups.

I eventually connected with a man named Joe, a 35 year old American Serviceman in New York State. We started private chatting using some very basic video chat programme. I think it was called icu2 or something like that. It provided us with a very small image of each other and reasonable sound. It had its flaws, but at the time we thought it was amazing. We could see each other, and we could talk to each other. We also used Skype when it became available, for video calls and phone calls.

Unlike so many of the "I'm in the American Armed forces" phonies you meet on line, Joe was for real. He really was a serviceman wanting to hook up with Mr. Right, and for me he was Mr. Right. Our chats soon led to online masturbation together, which we would do almost ever night, but that eventually led to us just staring into each other's eyes, wishing we were together. Let's face it. We fell in love. But it was a hopeless situation. I was a retired 60 year old schoolteacher in a small town in Canada, and he was a 35 year old career serviceman, still being transferred all over the states. Sadly we both knew there was no future for us. Joe made the choice for us. He stopped answering my calls. I was not angry about it. I knew he had to do it. He had a life to live.

Time passed. It was probably five years later. I got a message on Apple iMessage. It was headed with a telephone number. I recognized it. It was Joe's. All he said at first was "Hi", but when I recognized the number I was so glad to hear from him. We started chatting again. I learned that he had been transferred to San Francisco area, and had met an older man. They had been together for a couple of years. He was happy, but had never forgotten me.

Over the next fifteen years, Joe and I chatted at rare intervals, maybe once a year, just to keep in touch. Joe married his partner, and they retired to Palm Springs. His partner owned a home in Denver also, so they spend winters in Palm Springs and summers in Denver.

Once Brad, my travel companion for the Mexican cruise, said that he wanted to have a couple of days in Palm Springs, I tested the waters to see if Joe wanted to meet in person after all these years. He very much wanted to, and talked it over with his partner, Bill, who is 89, and after a harrowing bout with prostate cancer is no longer much interested in sex. Bill has been encouraging Joe to look for sexual release with other men. I even talked with the two of them by phone and Bill gave his approval to Joe and I spending an afternoon together.

So, the day after we landed in Palm Springs, my travel companion, Brad, took off to spend the day at a gay dude ranch, and left me to spend the afternoon with my dream lover of twenty years before.

I was waiting for Joe in the motel parking lot when he arrived, and suggested we start the afternoon by the motel pool, rather than meeting in a dreary, dark motel room. So that's what we did. Joe was much like I had seen on those tiny screens — older, yes, and heavier than 20 years before. But what I had never realized before because of the black and white screens, and later poor color quality, was that Joe was a redhead – or had been, because now he was more dirty blonde rather than grey, But his eyebrows were still quite ginger — I later found so were his pubes. And his eyes! They we the same pale blue I had gazed into for hours years before. He was all I had hoped for.

And as he told me, I was still all that he he had wanted and hoped for. We both saw each other as the Mr. Right we had been looking for.

We still had only to try whether we would mesh together sexually. We went to my motel room. In moments we were kissing and stripping simultaneously. It was rather awkward because Joe is 6'2" and I am only 5'4", but we were hot and horny. We had waited 24 years for this. I injected my dick, hoping to get a decent hard-on, but Joe didn't care anyway. He wanted me just as I was.

We flopped onto the bed, and for the next two hours hugged, and fondled, and kissed and sucked and stared into each other's eyes just as we had longed to do 24 years before. I fondled and sucked his 7 inch, thick, rigid shaft with a hammer head while he did the same to my tiny flaccid one, which was not responding to the tri-mix today.

Eventually we decided it was time for him to fuck me, to bring 24 years to a climax. As I have said, his dick was very thick, and shaped like the head of a hammer. My ass was still sore from Alexandro's massive dick three days before, and Joe's cock was just as thick as Alexandro's but 7" instead of 10". Joe was very gentle and as we lay spooned together fed his mighty tool into my waiting ass. It was a long, slow, beautiful fuck for both of us, a taste of what might have been. When he eventually shot his cum into me, we lay locked together for quite a while.

Both of us were grateful for this chance to get together, if only for one time. We don't regret the past. We just relish the single opportunity that we had. Nor do our companions resent or regret the meeting. All four of us went for dinner together the next night, all of us knowing that Joe and I had finally fucked, and everyone was happy for us!--

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gnashingwailing · 2 months

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Kept notes on a reread I was doing of The Art of Love and War because I am so obsessed with the gay little borrower darkfic... sharing with u @fireflywritesgt

it falls apart at ch12 because that is where i consistently turn into a puddle under my covers kicking my legs and making sounds only audible to shrimps.

I HOPE THIS IS A SMALL TOKEN OF APPRECIATION FOR HOW GUD THIS FIC IS, SINCERELY... LIKE I SAID PUTTING THIS IN SOMEBODY'S INBOX IS PROBABLY A WAR CRIME. SO.

There is soooo muuuuch I want to saaaay. I did a reread and excuse my being verbose but.

Ch10 where Harry reads about how tinies don’t ask for things and prefer to do favors for them — how extra insulting that makes his message in Ch1!! “Just ask” no wonder Joe was so pissed!!

ALSO him feeling “dirty, somehow” about accepting chocolate that didn’t kill him… was he having a little bit of feelings for “the kind man” and it got transmuted into self-loathing… 😭 oh internalized homophobia tag we’re really in it now…

Re: ch2 I would kill for Joe’s pov of this… I’m also so fascinated to pick up the detail that Joe apparently talked to himself regularly, for Harry to hear him through the radiator pipes… one assumes Joe doesn’t have guests. Poor guy! He’s really smart! He likes talking! The assistant job is perfect for himmmm.

Re: ch3, i wonder how much Captain Calloway’s “if you die it’s your own damn fault” has influenced Joe’s life ethos of fucking around and finding out (btw… Harry would be sooo horrified to know Joe had been poisoned 3 times and still tried that chocolate 😭 yet another fun! anecdote of his) … im also kinda curious about Gutters. What’s that guy’s deal. And OF. COURSE. How Captain got all his injuries. It’s also so very sad he feels this tension with the guys, what they’d do to him if they knew more about who he really was. I love this as a metaphor for homophobia…

Ch5 I’m still fixated on the giants who are guarding the place. Hundreds of tinies going there every day… you’d think there’d be snatchers all over the place 👀 and the other great worldbuilding… lab tinies… “they were corralling everyone everywhere and the women and kids went one way…” GOD. also them building tiny capitalism plus tiny race science is just 😭😭😭 noooo… the way Harry reinforces their shared dignity and humanity by showing genuine interest in Joe’s art.. ouuuugh it hits every time.

ALSO I WAS SO SUSPICIOUS OF HILL WHEN I FIRST READ CH6 BUT NOW THST I KNOW HE IS A BONA FIDE WIFEGUY ALL IS REDEEMED. I AM so curious as to why he keeps tiny town schematics in his office if he dislikes it…

Ch7 profoundly funny to me how Hill is like “miniature is the academic term” and Joe is like what. Tinies.

I really appreciate how Harry started off having some uh. Idk. Colonizer savior complex stuff + noble savage ideas about Joe? Like “oh it’s in mother nature’s hands whether he survives then… I see…” as if the tinies social constructs about Pets are some immutable fact of nature instead of. A social construct !! It’s really well-done, how you show him gradually understanding that he needs to listen to Joe, not assume he knows what’s best for him just because he read a 50yr old anthropology book!! It makes me love Harry all the more that he managed to grow through it out of fondness for Joe 🥺

AND OF COURSE. THE G/T GOODNESS. My god. I loooooove that Joe is so creeped out by giants that he has to keep his eyes closed to stomach it… just feels. Hmm. Realistic?? It would be so overwhelming. I love that his trust gets rewarded with the doctor not hurting him…

The rapport they establish being based on talking to one another… it’s just suuuuch a perfect central theme for this story… Joe being able to tame Harry’s anger by reminding him of Joe’s own humanity. “Please don’t do that, doc. This is mean. You’re being mean.” And “you’re treating me like I’m not even… not even…” UGH. RENT FREE IN MY HEAD, WARREN. “Maybe he could do it; maybe he could sit in the same room as a giant for five minutes. He would only have to do it once, and then he would never have to do it again, he reasoned.” Bitch u thought… get loved and cared for idiot…

Joe asking him “why not”, echoing Harry’s words that stuck with him…

And then him being sooo pissed at the phone it’s just absolutely amazing stuff. Wagging his finger at it/Dr Hill lmaooo. I was hootin and hollerin when I realized this foreshadows him being the assistant!!! He can talk on the phone just fine!!!!

His legs threatening to give way from the prospect of Harry seeing him at ground level after he escapes using the phone receiver… ouuugh. It’s SO GOOD. He’s come such a long way…

“Touching every wooden beam he passed for good luck” is INCREDIBLY cute mental imagery.., he’s happy… poor guy has awful luck tho so Harry is just pissed 😭 HIM NEARLY DESTROYING THE PLATES BECSUSE HARRY SCARED HIM SO BAD HAD ME FEELING.. SOME KIND OF WAY…

Ch8 also has the first mention of Joe’s books… I’m sooo curious where he got these.. did he perhaps make them…? 👀 YEAH HARRY SHOULD FEEL LIKE A MONSTER THO. YOU TERRORIZED A LIL MOVIE STAR!!! HE ONLY BROKE A FEW THINGS… Making him hide under his covers like he saw a monster… 😭

I love their first god awful handshake lmao. Incredible subversion of the usual g/t first meetings… Joe’s just like OK 👋 NOW GET THAT THANG OUTTA HERE

And then Joe going “I know about that!” Joe protested, his voice growing stronger. “It’s up to me, doc. If it happens, it happens and it’ll be my own damn fault.” … something tells me when Harry finally comes to understand Joe’s recklessness with his own life and what feelings about its worth may be underpinning that, he will be so sad 😔

Joe losing his toes to frostbite… realizing that could very likely be from when he was kidnapped and enslaved with O’Grady… uuuugh he’s so brave to want to connect with anybody at all let alone with Harry!!

Ch9 professor wifeguy moments… yesss… I love that he wants to hang out with another tiny too 😭 Joe is making friends!! I can’t wait to find out about Lorraine and what “other place” she knows about!!! Lmfao I can tell she’s going to be incredible just from the little bit Joe hears of her. I wonder too if she’s been marked… aahhh I’m so excited to learn more about these two. How interesting of a parallel, too, that Harry noted Dr Hill might also be a former soldier… something-something folks unable to fully integrate into society finding and building community with each other…

Also PROFOUNDLY interested to note on a reread that the tiny town on his wall says “a SAFE place to be” and the one in Riverdale said “a CIVILIZED place to be” 😬 a damn prison indeed… I also really wonder just HOW the tinies are paying their rent(?) to stay there, if they’re all as disdainful of “borrowing” as a career as O’Grady seems to be…

MAY I JUST NOTE that Joe stimming around is sooo charming to me. He’s kickin’ his legs. He’s pacing back and forth. He’s doing something like that in the walls when Harry was first listening to him. I LOVE HIM.. aND I love how this chapter we see him going from “that tall bastard (derogatory)” to “that tall bastard (amused)”

AND POOR JOE ON THE MOST CURSED FIELD TRIP IMAGINABLE. There is much to love here but I absolutely adore this imagery: “Joe buried himself in the curtain as the doctor, dressed to the nines in his work clothes and vaguely resembling a horse in a brown suit, sidled over to him and towered there and seethed.” HE’S TERRIFIED 😭 and Joe learns that other people value his wellbeing more than he does… wow Joe no need to ponder that any further until Ch15!!!

There’s SO much incredible prose in this chapter… the haaaaands oh my god the hands. The tinies are on the order of 2-3 inches tall, right? You really get a vivid sense of how big and dangerous everything is to them… absolutely A+ stuff.

This part also slays me everytime I think about it: “Joe was hidden inside [the pocket], and the thought of how unhinged his dear neighbour must look to his fellow giants as he walked and talked gave him no small amount of delight.” HE WOUUUULD.

The mystery of just what Joe created as a boy… what he can’t find it in himself to articulate… why he can hardly fathom talking about himself and his inner world to anyone …

PART 10… the difference in the way Joe confronts Harry here vs with the assistant in part 16 is somehow heartbreaking to me. I think the anger must just be displacement for how he’s really feeling (worried, uncomfortable…) and he’s more able to show his feelings to Harry with the assistants than he is now… but Joeeeee. I don’t ever want him to feel hopeless with Harry, like he just has to accept whatever he wants 😭 I love him in this chapter… Arms crossed, eyes narrowed… red faced… clawing at the air as he ranted Jdhdhdj GOD HE’S SO ICONIC: ““Nope. Not gonna happen! Veto!” Joe leapt up from the box, strode all the way to the edge of the table, and jabbed a finger at him. “I don’t know what kind of sick, twisted doctor things you intend to do to people but whatever it is, it’s not happening in my house!”” I guess I want him to still be comfortable with yelling veto at Harry lmao!!

And then Joe being like WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOU SAVING ME THE OTHER DAY. THAT MEANS NOTHING TO ME, A WILD AND INDEPENDENT TINY WHO HAD IT ALL UNDER CONTROL, AT ALL.

ALSO: the way he words this, I have a strong suspicion he does not know the word “patients”?! “”Let’s make a deal in exchange for patients. Give me something in exchange for patients.” Joe stammered. “You do that and I won’t make any trouble.””

Harry thinking of Joe as “the little bastard” in counterpoint to Joe’s “the tall bastard” really makes me smile too, hahahah.

AND THE FURTHER G/T TROPE INVERSION… just because he was willing to get in the giant’s hands one time doesn’t mean he’s suddenly fine with it!! I love how pissed they are at each other over this misunderstanding lmfao. He’s 👏 a 👏 wild 👏 tiny 👏 ‼️

And it’s so meaningful to me that the two of them bond more over sharing art with one another… Harry wants to introduce Joe to an amazing piano player… and Joe is so happy!!! The idea for a Charlie Chaplin bit with a rich miniature woman is SO inspired btw, I was as delighted as Joe was 😭 Harry being like “oh shit wait is this offensive” and then Joe just being like “THIS FUCKS SO HARD LMAO IT REALLY DO BE LIKE THAT”

And then the tragic aftermath… Harry NOTICING that he didn’t even know that he was doing anything wrong by bringing Joe there, it just FELT so dreadfully taboo (enough that Hill, who is MARRIED TO A TINY, also seems like he’s been caught doing something wrong when Harry first meets him)…. and then of course society reinforces that fear in a terrible way. Only a shared humanity regarding love of art saves poor Joe.. how lucky he’s gotten enough exposure to be able to speak in the presence of giants. You have to ponder how many tinies just as wonderfully complex as him have died for not having that skill. It’s so very sad!!! THE IMAGERY OF HIM ON THE LAMP LIKE IT’S A STREETCORNER JUST TWISTED THE KNIFE. Your writing really is so excellent, the way you can carry us through so many different emotions… Joe my belovedddd. I’m simply obsessed with the implications of him NAMING HARRY. WHAT IS /THAT/?? And the way that the narration in the story from this point on swaps to using Harry as his name… it speaks VOLUMES without you needing to elaborate on it at all. Joe has changed him! He’s becoming someone he likes better than Herman! A day we had good luck… Harry is good luck… Luck as a concept very different from what giants think of… I am absolutely enamored with how clearly he has a whole other world, another culture, that Harry can only guess at and be grateful to be included in.

JOE GETTING A NICE BATH AND A COMFORTABLE BED IN THIS CHAPTER IS JUST SO WHOLESOME (even if it will torment his Calvinist sensibilities later…) I am also so charmed to imagine how Joe must have woken up and been like “what the FUCK did I do last night. Where the HELL am I 🤨”

And then in Ch11 he’s like I WILL PROCEED NOT TO THINK OF THAT AT ALL. <- clueless

Ch11 is one of my favorites I think… we really get a good glimpse into how much heavy-duty rationalizing Joe is doing LMAO. “Taking food is fine, because I’m just using this tall bastard.” “It’s fine if I have leisure time.” “It’s fine if I like Harry and his company and I miss him when he’s gone and I want to give him a name.” “AS LONG AS I DON’T GET COMFORTABLE ALL OF THIS IS FINE.” This line is such a banger lol: “Joe Piccoli was many things as he went to sleep that night, but he was not a pet, and he was not comfortable.” And then the mouse!!! That Joe decides to draw rather than kill!!! Look at his needs being met!!!!!

IT ALSO ABSOLUTELY FUCKIN KILLED ME WHEN I REALIZED IN THIS CHAPTER THAT THE BOYS HAVE JUST. FULLY LEFT THAT FLOORBOARD OFF LMFAO??? THAT’S HIS SKYLIGHT NOW…

And then. Good god. The arm scene… it’s just. Soooo. 👌👌👌👌 I’m so … 😵‍💫💖❤️‍🔥…

“I’m a wild tiny!” “You’re going to be a dead tiny if that gets infected.” Their dynamic is so fucking funny. AND THE TENDERNESS OF HARRY TOUCHING JOE… Joe being so overwhelmed not exactly with fear but HMMM I WONDER WHAT EMOTION AND WHY HE MIGHT FEEL SO OVERWHELMED HE STILL NEEDS TO CLOSE HIS EYES AND PRETEND HE’S HIDDEN UNDER THE FLOOR AGAIN… 🤔🤔🤔 whyever would the touch of this kind giant make his hair stand on end and make him contemplate the reverence he’s being touched with and leave his cheeks burning… it is a mystery

And then Joe being so afraid the mouse would be hurt because in contrast to the kindness he’s been shown, he still has this long history of awful experiences with giants.. this part in particular made my heart hurt:

“Don’t kill the mouse, Harry, please don’t kill it. It’s just like me. It hasn’t done anything to you.” Joe begged.

Followed by him remembering that this is /Harry, his friend, who he knows/:

“The words hit Joe like the breaking of a spell, and he stood in the kitchen windowsill feeling downright foolish. Of course Harry wouldn’t kill the mouse, Joe realized - of course he wouldn’t do that.”

OUGH. This story is SO delicious I’m beyond obsessed…

The two of them having a much less Charged encounter after Joe has resolved some of his internal conflicts, at least for the moment… chatting away like they’re two normal friends while Harry touches him… 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 I LOVE THESE TWO SO MUCH‼️

Their motorcycle shenanigans… Harry showing Joe his precious Contraption and Joe absolutely hating it omg it was so peak 😭 PLAYING “WHO’S-MORE-BORING CHICKEN”… the way Joe is like “I would rather Die than have to listen to this guy talk about how he’s more exciting than me. Absolutely not.”

I also very much appreciate the foreshadowing of the street car on this re-read…

AND may I say I really love that they went on a little nature trip together!!! I have thought often of the potential of a g/t story set outdoors, where the normal sized person and the tiny are both made small by how all-encompassing the wilderness is. Something to do with camping or backpacking! Maybe something I want to write one day! This gave me a delightful taste of that.

AND ANYWAY THE ACCEPTING OF COMFORT EVEN AS IT FLIES IN THE FACE OF EVERYTHING HE’S BEEN TAUGHT TO ROMANTICIZE AND VALUE… ouuuughhh GET LOVED IDIOT!! GET SEEN AND KNOWN AND TAKEN CARE OF!!!

And then ch12… Harry’s realization that Joe won’t ever bring up anything if it’s just for his own benefit. Which by the way, on a re-read I can appreciate how cleverly you’ve set this up, if I didn’t write that clearly enough before! There’s something cultural there but also, I think, something uniquely Joe that Harry maybe can’t fully see yet. Harry’s watch from his parents breaking down at the same moment he’s trying to change his relationship with Joe, the new most important person in his life (at least I presume! He doesn’t seem to have other close friends/family) … very very good. This sentence is so evocative. Simultaneously funny and sad: “With the way Joe’s eyes shifted from side to side one would think the doctor had suggested they go rob a bank.” It’s very good angst realizing how much Harry is asking of Joe without him even knowing it…

BTW this part is so delightful. They’re so interested in each other!!! “When his footsteps announced his arrival, he could see the tiny’s movements through the missing floorboards as his neighbour crossed the floor and climbed back up to the windowsill above the counter.” <- guy who absolutely has NOT been gotten

“Joe smiling. A rare sight indeed.” JUST…. My heaaaart ‼️‼️

Also hilarious how Joe and now Harry have both had “mmm I do NOT like the way this guy is smiling right now” moments 🤣

GOD tho, Joe’s opening up about getting snatched… much like Harry, it made me feel absolutely beside myself.

^^^ AS YOU CAN SEE. I'VE FULLY FALLEN APART.

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luigra · 1 year

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So I& frequently mention in my& discussions that I& think if you were to put Joe Hills in DSMP, he would an absolutely horrible time.

But now my& friend mentioned theoretically putting him in QSMP, thinking it would be similar.

Oh my& prime. I& truly believe Joe would love QSMP. Or at the very least he would be REALLY good at it.

Like, I& think the general idea behind the server would definitely sound cool for him, and he'd respect the production quality of it too. And then Joe's very famous for being an excellent father, so he would take really good care of the eggs. And Joe's really not bad at all with the whole "yes, and" thing either!

In fact, I& think he would be a menace to others. Because the whole SMP is based around communication, and Joe LOVES misinterpreting what people say the most. He'd have POWER there. He'd confuse everyone so much and they'd leave thinking something went wrong with the translation software even if they just talked to him in English.

Joe would be GREAT as a QSMP addition. I& want to see this now. Please. Ready to submit a 3 hour long presentation to Quackity himself on why they should put that guy into a gay little nuclear family.

#hc x qsmp #<- a tag that needs more use actually #qsmp #hermitcraft #joe hills

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crime-wives · 6 months

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your turn. tell me about your wips 👀

oh lord... where do we begin. let's start with me meddison/grey's anatomy wips.

so you were never a saint, and i loved in shades of wrong. this wip is currently in progress, two chapters on ao3 so far. basically my take on an angsty s2 meddison. they run into each other constantly at joe's bar and are very sad.

hollywood au. my meddison hollywood au in which meredith is unwillingly dragged into the spotlight after finding out her boyfriend is a. married, and b. famous. she gets a guest role on the same tv show as him and his wife. things spiral from there.

dead derek s4 au. basically what the title implies. a 'what if' scenario in which derek died in s4, and meredith and addison connect over shared grief.

tedstina fic. this wip is if after owen cheats on her, cristina shows up, drenched, at teddy's apartment all 'i didn't know where else to go.' there is lots of sad, gay, pining.

now... we move on to my swan queen wips. there are a lot, be prepared.

sad regina mills fic #1. a very angsty wip about regina's relationship with food, set during s1 of ouat. she's not dealing very well with henry hating her, and she turns to one of her coping mechanisms, which may or may not land her in the hospital.

sad regina mills fic #2. set after cora's death, little snippets of regina reflecting on her mother, and childhood. some hurt/comfort, also hurt/no comfort so.

say don't go song fic. regina reflecting on herself and emma in the middle of the night, with the dagger, after emma's sacrifice post s4 finale. (also regina really misses emma and doesn't know what to do with herself.

s6 regina is sad about emma getting married fic. has this been done before, yes. but i want to do it. anyway, buckle up, this one is very sad. our favorite lovable idiots fight, and make up, there are 'i miss you' texts, and lots of lesbian pining.

camelot hurt/comfort au. a little ficlet, (which could spiral into something bigger if i'm not careful,) in which emma seeks comfort from regina on a day when the voices are really loud. there's bed sharing and cuddles, and also hook is thrown into a tree.

the hanahaki au. um well... this is exactly as it sounds. set like 4b-ish. regina starts coughing up flowers one day, and it slowly gets worse until she's almost dead.

there's bed-sharing in this one. after a fight with her parents, emma shows up at regina's place. there are feelings, angst, and surprisingly maybe fluff.

the road-trip fic. uber driver x runaway bride. that's all i'll say.

neverland rewrite. except swanqueen, and mentions of torture. two hurt women heal together and find their son.

there are more... but i'll stop there.

here are some ideas i've had, but haven't written yet:

regina on henry's birthday during the missing year

my hc that regina taught herself how to draw/paint during the first 18 years, and the people she paints as vignettes.

supercorp: lena knows kara is supergirl au, but angsty

my meddison fic after meredith grey almost drowns

oh, my star wars fusion swan queen fic

anyway... i'll end this here before i get too carried away lol (this took forever to type.)

#my wips #swan queen #meddison #supercorp #regina mills #lena luthor #addison montgomery #meredith grey #emma swan #kara danvers #not them being all angst #ouat #grey's anatomy #supergirl #tedstina #cristna yang #teddy altman

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lovertaylorforever · 7 months

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As a swiftie, I love being able to connect with other swifties over Taylor's music and other common interests.

But a lot of y'all in the fandom NEED TO GET A LIFE!

Y'all obsess over her private life and personal relationships and sound like creepy, abusive, obsessive stalker assholes that think of Taylor as their property or something.

Like, y'all know we don't really know her?

We know a lot about her, and we know her pretty well AS FANS. That's still different from a relationship between too irl best friends

Y'all go on and on about her different "boyfriends" (and often the "boyfriend" part is assumed) and how they're "not good looking enough" or "not someone she should be with."

She'll break up with a boyfriend and y'all will immediately start denouncing him as if he personally hit you or something!!

And I don't mean just those like Mayer.

But ALL OF THEM! OBSESSIVELY!!

Like with Joe Alwyn

YOU ARE NOT PART OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP AND DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!!

You get to hear bits and pieces from her music, but 1, those are very small pieces of the puzzle, and 2, not all of that is *fact". A lot is emotion and emotions aren't about facts or logic.

Supporting her, wanting her to be happy, that's one thing.

But so many of y'all go WAY TOO FAR!

You realize that is part of the reason she so is so desperate to stay out of the public eye?

Yeah, the paparazzi invade her life, BECAUSE Y'ALL ARE GRASPING FOR THEIR CONTENT!!!

And you're just as bad!!

Obviously, this isn't true of all swifties, but it is A LOT of them.

And that's not to mention, "gaylors" who try and decide Taylor's sexuality when she has very much already told you what it is.

She is straight, and an ally.

That's not any better as saying someone gay is straight. Your erasing her identity for fun.

Maybe y'all should listen a little closer to "The Lucky One" which is literally about all this and the price of fame.

#toxic swifties #get a life #the hard part of being a swiftie #toxic fandom #taylor swift #swiftie #swifties #obsessive stalker tendencies

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static-symphony-fm · 23 days

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flora's live ttpd reactions!

(putting this in one post so you don't get spammed)

fortnight

IT SOUNDS LIKE SLUT OH MY GOD

not enough post malone

less poppy that I thought but I LOVE it?

Taylor I'm concerned why do you wanna kill her

ttpd

I'm so excited for this one

ok so I was wrong that it wasn't gonna say the name of the song

it also kinda sounds like slut?

who are these people?

Charlie puth?

it's ok ig

I was excited for this but it's about Matty healy🙄

LUCY DACUS MENTION?

idk if that's how you spell her name

bridge is kinda clunky tbh

overall a little disappointing

my boy only breaks his favourite toys

OH THIS IS ABOUT JOE

I feel so b ad for all the hate he's gonna get

I like this one actually

Still not hating joe but this is BRUTAL

something about the melody feels familiar

down bad

Idk why it's purple

OH THIS IS ALSO ABOUT JOE?

sounds like midnights

this is a sad bop omg

NEW ROMANTICS REFERENCE? I'M GOING INSANE

she is MESSY and I'm here for it

so long London

am I gonna cry? maybe

I have to pee

ANGELIC CHOIR??!

yeah I'm gonna cry

oh my god...

such a track five fr

no I'm crying

amazing

but daddy I love him

this is apparently from the little mermaid

I think this about Matty

I like it!

not much to say

reminds me of suburban legends

SHE IS MESSY

fresh out the slammer

if this is about joe I'm losing it.

WAIT DID SHE CHEAT

WHO IS THIS ABOUT

confusion is an understatement

Florida

I love florence so I hope this is good

SO SHE DID CHEAT?

omg florence gets a verse?

Florida is one hell of a drug?

never been so I'll take your word for it

what the fuck is this about

guilty as sin

omg so much at once

I feel like she might have cheated?

omg this is dirty!!

Jesus reference?

whos afraid of little old me

omg she's angry!!

poor joe

reputation vibes fr

SO JOE CHEATED? huh?

SHE'S SCARY

ok I might be a Joe hater

SO JOE CHEATED?

THE ASYLUM?

WHAT IS THIS BRIDGE?

so this is about fans?

I can fix him (no really I can)

ok not loving loving it so far, but it might get better

did she steal the verse melody from need?

loml

WHAT DOES LOML STAND FOR?

it's so sad whattt

who is this about?

joe? probably

loss of my life??

I can do it with a broken heart

JOE CHEATED?

omg what?

this is so sad

but the melody is so happy

and I think that s the point?

so this is about tour?

the smallest man who ever lived

idk who this is about but it's BRUTAL

the alchemy

is this a love song?

yes

I actually love this one

PURE HEROINE REF?

Clara bow

So excited for this

IS THIS GAY?

or about her lol

is this the lucky one mixed with yoyok

STEVIE NICKS?

OH THIS IS THE ECLI PSE LYRIC

SHE SAIS TAYLOR SWIFT

OH IS THIA ABOUT HER REPLACEMENT

WTF

FAVORITE SOFAR

#d.j. flora's corner! 💐🎧🎙📻#taylor swift #the tortured poets department

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winter-tospring · 23 days

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first impressions from last night, for my records lol written as i went. warning, it's not great tortured poets department: wtf is with all that synth it sounds so bad so high so not on theme wtf is this her voice doesnt sound like it's trying at all it's strolling and so boring; she's just giving us nothing

my boy: this is like if out of the woods production was less good and also didn't fit the theme and lyrics and it just is bAD so bad, like why, it's like a bad imitation that doesn't make sense!!!!!! the drum and synth was nice once and then i'm sorry you actually have to make it coherent not just re-use the same things and patch them together because you have no new fucking ideas !!~!!!!!!!

down bad- she will say she's an alcoholic and she learned how to say fuck so she overuses it like a teenager now, great. matty breaking up with her?? sounds like he did but feels like lies tbh

so long, london- wow finally getting to hear about joe. better match between lyrics and music. better gradation, better buildup, some pretty good lyrics, overall, decent

but daddy i love him- something i would actually support and be hyping if she had come out as bi, or gay, or had stuck with matty, had defended any part about him, had continued dating him longer than she did, had actually dissassociated from her dad, had actually done sonmething rebellious truly. but she reverted back to a fucking footballer her dad picked for her so how fucking bold to release this now when all this energy is gone. the nerve. she should've kept this to herself or release it last summer it's actually UPSETTING that she would release this now when she is in such a picture perfect daddy approved relationship.

fresh out the slammer- uh….okay…undewhelming "taylor, please. do a drug. any drug. and report back. 😞😩"

florida!!!- definitly the best!! florence has the best moments of the album. actually intersting vocals, attitude, style, bocal beauty, and interesting music overall. just want her to sing only, feels like taylor is impeding on florence and i want florence to come back everytime she stops singing. florence actually adds flavor to this, whereas taylor is just...flat and uninteresting??? yikes

guilty as sin?- actually like it!! guitar and drum yes baby. though oh pooor little baby you desire someone else. you are now linking yourself to jesus, you're so guilty but you havent done anything. okay okay but the sound is actually good and i would listen again. the grandiose religious comparisons are a plenty on this album man

i can fix him- taylor you are not grimes. you were not married to elon musk. stop religion, stop it. my god how embarassing this one should not have been public. actually burst out laughing at that last heavy "can't"

loml- thank you for actually telling us something. that was the easiest to get through without interrupting. joe song. good words, good simple ballad.

i can do this with a broken heart- this is funny genuinely, funny, i would hype that, wow

the smallest man who ever lived- the karlie song? want to look more into the lyrics.

the alchemy- ew ew ewterrible badddddddddddd you can't write a good song about football, please stop trying. this is so bad i'm actually so mad please delete this clara bow- so disapointed! i expected more from this one, but it's another ''the lucky one'' or "last american dynasty" etc...nothing new, so it doesn' really compel attention... i listened to who's afraid of little old me last:

who's afraid of little old me?- oh god girl. make this make sense. this is embarrassing, why dont you tell us why you were raised in an asylum and what they did and that instead of throwing oh boohoo me i have it so bad.

this is just her style now, i guess. :|

#we recorded the whole listeneing experience and its like two hours long so that'll be funny to revisit someday x)#ah well #i thought it would be equal to a little better than midnights...........oh boy #this is definitely the worst album for me #main words about this are: embarrassing - boring - unimaginative #i can't really believe but also i can all the signs have been here #it's just that we KNOW she can make good music. but where is the music here??? where #really sad #ttpd #ttpd criticism #tsmtaylor swift #i have so many thoughts

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pretensesoup · 11 months

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Queer books, day 12/30

I've been trying to mentally reconstruct my history with this play. Back in 2001 or 2002, Jesse (my Ask a Medievalist co-host) told me I should read it. Why? I don't remember. But I did everything Jesse told me to do back in those days, so I dutifully went out to a bookstore (it might actually have been Canterbury Books, which still existed back in those days, but it might also have been Paul's?). I was only able to find one part, so I bought it and read it and decided it was brilliant. Then in 2003, the TV version was announced (that's why there is a photo of Emma Thompson on the cover of this version) and I was able to buy them both combined.

Back in let's call it 2002, I was 19, knew some LGBT people and thought they were fine and cool, but that was about where my thinking began and ended. This play...I mean, as a work of art, it blows my mind to this day. As a record of a particular historical time period, it's amazing. It's magical realism, it's Jewish in a way that I understand Judaism (not just in opposition to other people's religions, but in contrast to more orthodox elements within Judaism), it's gay, it's about death, it's about life... I don't know, it's brilliant. And of course, a few years later I got to see Mr. Kushner interviewed on stage and enjoy this conversation between the hapless student who had been selected to interview him and the man himself:

Student: So Belize has this speech where he says... "Big ideas are all you love. "America" is what Louis loves. Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It's just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me." So why do you hate America?

Tony Kushner: (with the patience of a goddamn saint) I think everyone who has taken an entry-level English class can identify that the characters are not the author.

SO.

The play centers on Prior, who is dying of AIDS and his ex-boyfriend Louis, who is having a really hard time with Prior dying. Prior is not exactly thrilled about it either. Then there's Roy Cohn (the evil, evil lawyer who was a historical figure and also died of AIDS) and his clerk, Joe, a repressed gay Mormon. And then Joe's drugged-out wife Harper, his mother Hannah, and an angel.

Look, I don't know how to describe the plot very well. Prior is ill, and Louis abandons him, and then sleeps with Joe. Roy Cohn is in the AZT clinical trial (the first generation of HIV/AIDS drugs) and is trying to blackmail someone (unnamed) into making sure he doesn't get the placebo. Harper suspects something is up with her marriage. Prior is visited by the angel, called a prophet, and asked to help fix things in heaven. Then Hannah, Joe's mother shows up and meets Prior.

The thing about this play is that all of the characters are really, really human. Louis does something terrible in running out on Prior, and he KNOWS it's terrible, and he can't not do it. And at the end, Prior forgives him. Joe walks out on Harper, who is sick and needs him, and in the end she realizes that maybe she needs him less than she thought, and she lets him go. And everyone does terrible things, really, and they feel bad and they get forgiven. Excluding Roy Cohn, who is evil. But in the end, the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg says kaddish for him. So maybe the message is that you, too, can be forgiven. A little bit, anyway.

One time I went running in Central Park and I went to the Bethesda fountain, which is referenced in here, and it was awesome.

Key quote:

I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.

Now I haven't even gotten to how much I learned from this about how characters have give and take in dialog, and this and that, but I've written a very long post already, so I'll stop here. 50/10, go read it.

#thirty days of books #lgbtq books #pride #gay fiction #angels in america #tony kushner #being weirdly feral about a play

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punkass-diogenes · 10 months

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What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?

“Our boyfriends, our significant others, and our husbands are supposed to be No. 1. Our worlds are backward.”

By Rhaina Cohen

October 20, 2020

Kami West had been dating her current boyfriend for a few weeks when she told him that he was outranked by her best friend. West knew her boyfriend had caught snatches of her daily calls with Kate Tillotson, which she often placed on speaker mode. But she figured that he, like the men she’d dated before, didn’t quite grasp the nature of their friendship. West explained to him, “I need you to know that she’s not going anywhere. She is my No. 1.” Tillotson was there before him, and, West told him, “she will be there after you. And if you think at any point that this isn’t going to be my No. 1, you’re wrong.”

If West’s comments sound blunt, it’s because she was determined not to repeat a distressing experience from her mid-20s. Her boyfriend at that time had sensed that he wasn’t her top priority. In what West saw as an attempt to keep her away from her friend, he disparaged Tillotson, calling her a slut and a bad influence. After the relationship ended, West, 31, vowed to never let another man strain her friendship. She decided that any future romantic partners would have to adapt to her friendship with Tillotson, rather than the other way around.

West and Tillotson know what convention dictates. “Our boyfriends, our significant others, and our husbands are supposed to be No. 1,” West told me. “Our worlds are backward.”

In the past few decades, Americans have broadened their image of what constitutes a legitimate romantic relationship: Courthouses now issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Americans are getting married later in life than ever before, and more and more young adults are opting to share a home rather than a marriage license with a partner. Despite these transformations, what hasn’t shifted much is the expectation that a monogamous romantic relationship is the planet around which all other relationships should orbit.

By placing a friendship at the center of their lives, people such as West and Tillotson unsettle this norm. Friends of their kind sweep into territory typically reserved for romantic partners: They live in houses they purchased together, raise each other’s children, use joint credit cards, and hold medical and legal powers of attorney for each other. These friendships have many of the trappings of romantic relationships, minus the sex.

Despite these friendships’ intense devotion, there’s no clear category for them. The seemingly obvious one, “best friend,” strikes many of these committed pairs as a diminishment. Adrift in this conceptual gulf, people reach for analogies. Some liken themselves to siblings, others to romantic partners, “in the soul-inspiring way that someone being thoughtful about loving you and showing up for you is romantic,” as the Rutgers University professor Brittney Cooper describes some of her friendships in her book Eloquent Rage.

Some alternate between the two comparisons. From the night Joe Rivera and John Carroll met at a gay bar in Austin, Texas—Rivera was the emcee for a strip competition, and Carroll won the $250 cash prize—they felt like brothers. “Brothers that really want to hang out and be around each other,” Carroll clarified. Yet when Carroll considered their shared domestic life, he told me that “we have a little married-couple thing going on even though we’re not married.” These mixed analogies suggest that neither wedlock nor siblinghood adequately captures what these friendships feel like.Many of those who place a friendship at the center of their life find that their most significant relationship is incomprehensible to others.

Intimate friendships don’t come with shared social scripts that lay out what they should look like or how they should progress. These partnerships are custom-designed by their members. Mia Pulido, a 20-year-old student at Drew University, says that she and her “soul mate,” Sylvia Sochacki, 20, have cobbled together role models in what has felt like a “Frankenstein” process: Through reading about intimate female friendships from centuries ago, the pair discovered a framework for a relationship that doesn’t neatly fit the contemporary labels of romantic or platonic. They found their complementary personalities reflected in the characters Sherlock and Watson, and they embraced the casual affection (and the terms of endearment “Bubble” and “Spoo”) that they came across in a note between a wife and husband; it was tucked into a used book they found at a garage sale. Pulido has found it freeing to build a relationship around the needs and desires of Sochacki and herself, rather than “having to work through this mire of what society has told you this relationship consists of.”

Many of those who place a friendship at the center of their life find that their most significant relationship is incomprehensible to others. But these friendships can be models for how we as a society might expand our conceptions of intimacy and care.

When Tillotson and West met as 18-year-olds, they didn’t set out to transgress relationship norms. They were on a mission to conform, aye ma’am-ing their way through Marine Corps boot camp in South Carolina, and referring to each other by their last name preceded by the title “Recruit.” Most evenings, Recruit Tillotson and Recruit West spent their hour of free time chatting in front of their shared bunk bed.

During these conversations, they discovered that West’s mom had just moved to a city that was a 20-minute ride away from Tillotson’s hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. West and Tillotson spent boot camp’s month-long break together, winding through the Tulsa suburbs in West’s mother’s black sedan, late-aughts rap pulsing through the rolled-down windows. For most of the next four years, they were stationed thousands of miles apart, including when Tillotson eventually deployed to Iraq. From afar, they coached each other through injuries, work woes, and relationship problems. Their friendship really blossomed once they both ended up in the Tulsa area for college, and they started to spend nearly every day together. By then, Tillotson was waiting for her divorce paperwork to be notarized, and West was a single mother caring for her 3-year-old, Kody.

With no lexicon to default to, people with friendships like West and Tillotson’s have assembled a collage of relationship language. They use terms such as best soul friend, platonic life partner, my person, ride or die, queerplatonic partner, Big Friendship. For some, these names serve a similar purpose as matching friendship necklaces—they’re tokens mainly meant for the two people within the friendship. Others, such as West and Tillotson, search for language that can make their relationship lucid to outsiders. West and Tillotson realized that people understand boot camp to be an intense setting, the kind of environment that could breed an equally intense friendship. When the friends began to refer to each other as “boot-camp besties,” people’s confusion finally faded.

For more than a decade, Nicole Sonderman didn’t mind if the only people who understood her friendship with Rachel Hebner were the two women who were part of it. Sonderman sums up their relationship as “having a life partner, and you just don’t want to kiss them.”

In the years when they both lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, the friends were fluent in the language of each other’s moods and physical changes. Before Hebner suspected that she might be pregnant, Sonderman made her buy a pregnancy test, steered her into the bathroom, and sat in the adjacent stall as Hebner took it. Four years later, the roles reversed: Hebner had the same accurate premonition about Sonderman. “We paid more attention to each other than we did to ourselves,” Sonderman, 37, told me.

Read: What you lose when you gain a spouse

They occasionally navigated around other people’s confusion about or combativeness toward their friendship. Their preferred term of endearment for each other, wife, wasn’t a problem for Sonderman’s then-husband. But once Hebner divorced her husband and started dating, her romantic partners got jealous, especially the women she dated. Sonderman grudgingly placated them by calling Hebner “wiffles” instead of wife.

After those years in Alaska, the pair spent a few years several time zones apart, as Sonderman and her then-husband moved around for his work. Eventually Sonderman moved back to Alaska, but Hebner had relocated to Indiana. Phone calls and occasional visits became their friendship’s support beams. Sonderman said that Hebner reached out less and less as she grappled with a cascade of difficulties: She was in an abusive romantic relationship and she lost her job because she had no one else to take care of her daughter while she worked. She was depressed. In October 2018, Hebner died by suicide.

For Sonderman, Hebner’s death was devastating. The women had envisioned one day living near each other in Alaska, where the two of them had met, and where Hebner longed to return. Now Sonderman had none of that to look forward to. For six months after Hebner’s death, she kept earphones in when she went to the grocery store. She couldn’t bear small talk.

Sonderman found it hard to translate her grief to others. “Most people don’t understand. They’ll just be like, ‘Oh yeah, I had a friend from high school who died’ or something and try to relate. But it doesn’t really resonate with me.” In other cases, people would impose a salacious and inaccurate story line onto their relationship to try to make sense of it. Because Hebner was bisexual, Sonderman said, some people believed that they were secretly lovers, and that Sonderman was closeted.

To Elizabeth Brake, a philosophy professor at Rice University whose research focuses on marriage, love, and sex, Sonderman’s experience is not just tragic but unjust. Because friendship is outside the realm of legal protection, the law perpetuates the norm that friendships are less valuable than romantic relationships. This norm, in turn, undermines any argument that committed friendships deserve legal recognition. But if, for example, the law extended bereavement or family leave to friends, Brake believes we’d have different social expectations around mourning. People might have understood that, for Sonderman, losing Hebner was tantamount to losing a spouse.

With no legal benefits or social norms working in her favor, Sonderman has felt most understood by other people who’ve had an intimate friendship. Sonderman described one such friend who was an especially attentive listener. For two hours, he and Sonderman sat in a car, engine off, in a grocery-store parking lot. She talked with him about Hebner, cried about Hebner. Her friend said, “It sounds like she broke your heart.” Sonderman told me, “That was the first time that anybody really got it.”

Intimate friendships have not always generated confusion and judgment. The period spanning the 18th to early 20th centuries was the heyday of passionate, devoted same-sex friendships, called “romantic friendships.” Without self-consciousness, American and European women addressed effusive letters to “my love” or “my queen.” Women circulated friendship albums and filled their pages with affectionate verse. In Amy Matilda Cassey’s friendship album, the abolitionist Margaretta Forten inscribed an excerpt of a poem that concludes with the lines “Fair friendship binds the whole celestial frame / For love in Heaven and Friendship are the same.” Authors devised literary plot lines around the adventures and trials of romantic friends. In the 1897 novel Diana Victrix, the character Enid rejects a man’s proposal because her female friend already occupies the space in her life that her suitor covets. In words prefiguring Kami West’s, Enid tells the man that if they married, “you would have to come first. And you could not, for she is first.”

Two well-known women who put each other, rather than a husband, first were the social reformer Jane Addams and the philanthropist Mary Rozet Smith. In Addams’s bedroom, now an exhibit at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, in Chicago, an enormous portrait of Smith hangs above the mantle. After meeting in 1890 at the pioneering settlement house that Addams co-founded, the women spent the next 40 years entwined, trudging through moments they spent apart. During one separation, Addams wrote to Smith, “You must know, dear, how I long for you all the time, and especially during the last three weeks. There is reason in the habit of married folks keeping together.” When Addams traveled without Smith, she would sometimes haul the painting with her. When the two women journeyed together, Addams wired ahead to request a double bed. No scandal erupted in the newspaper. These women weren’t pressed, directly or implicitly, about their sex lives, nor did they feel compelled to invent a label to make sense of their relationship to onlookers, as West and Tillotson would about a century later. Same-sex intimacy like theirs was condoned.

These friendships weren’t the exclusive province of women. Daniel Webster, who would go on to become secretary of state in the mid-1800s, described his closest friend as “the friend of my heart, the partner of my joys, griefs, and affections, the only participator of my most secret thoughts.” When the two men left Dartmouth College to practice law in different towns, Webster had trouble adjusting to the distance. He wrote that he felt like “the dove that has lost its mate.” Frederick Douglass, the eminent abolitionist and intellectual, details his deep love for his friends in his autobiography. Douglass writes that when he contemplated his escape from slavery, “the thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else.”

One question these friendships raise for people today is: Did they have sex? Writings from this time, even those about romantic relationships, typically lack descriptions of sexual encounters. Perhaps some people used romantic friendship as a cover for an erotic bond. Some scholars in fact suspect that certain pairs had sex, but in most cases, historians—whose research on the topic is largely confined to white, middle-class friends—can’t make definitive claims about what transpired in these friends’ bedrooms. Though we will never know the exact nature of every relationship, it’s clear that this period’s considerably different norms around intimacy allowed for possibilities in friendship that are unusual today.

A blend of social and economic conditions made these committed same-sex friendships acceptable. Men and women of the 19th century operated in distinct social spheres, so it’s hardly shocking that people would form deep attachments to friends of their own gender. In fact, women contemplating marriage often fretted about forging a life with a member of what many deemed the “grosser sex.”“You would have to come first. And you could not, for she is first.”

Beliefs about sexual behavior also played a role. The historian Richard Godbeer notes that Americans at the time did not assume—as they do now—that “people who are in love with one another must want to have sex.” Many scholars argue that the now-familiar categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, which consider sexual attraction to be part of a person’s identity, didn’t exist before the turn of the 20th century. While sexual acts between people of the same gender were condemned, passion and affection between people of the same gender were not. The author E. Anthony Rotundo argues that, in some ways, attitudes about love and sex, left men “freer to express their feelings than they would have been in the 20th century.” Men’s liberty to be physically demonstrative surfaces in photos of friends and in their writings. Describing one apparently ordinary night with his dear friend, the young engineer James Blake wrote, “We retired early and in each others arms,” and fell “peacefully to sleep.”

Physical intimacy among women also didn’t tend to be read as erotic. Even men wrote approvingly of women’s affectionate relationships, in part because they believed that these friendships served as training grounds for wifehood. In his 1849 novel, Kavanagh, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow casts a friendship between two female characters as “a rehearsal in girlhood of the great drama of a woman’s life”—the great drama, naturally, being marriage to a man.

Men could feel unthreatened by these friendships because few women were in the financial position to eschew the economic support of a husband in favor of a female companion. By the late 1800s, exceptions to this rule started to sprout. Colleges and professions were opening up to middle-class (and, almost exclusively, white) women, enabling these graduates to support themselves, no husband required. At this point, the historian Lillian Faderman told me, women’s intimate friendships “no longer had to be a rehearsal in girlhood.” Educated women could instead live together in what were called Boston marriages. These committed relationships allowed women to pursue careers and evade heterosexual marriage.

From the late 1800s to the 1920s, each one of these components—gender-segregated society, women’s economic dependency, the distinction between sexual behavior and identity—was pulled like a Jenga brick from the tower of romantic friendship. Men and women’s divergent social spheres began to look more like a Venn diagram, enabling emotional intimacy between the genders. With far more women in the workforce and potentially independent, men weren’t so enchanted by women’s intimate relationships. Sexologists declared same-sex desire—not merely same-sex sexual acts—perverse. Americans came to fear that kissing or sharing a bed with a friend of the same gender was a mark of “sexual inversion.” Romantic friendships had lost their innocence.

A few decades after the erosion of romantic friendship began, Americans’ conception of marriage shifted. The Northwestern University psychologist Eli Finkel identifies three distinct eras in American marriages. The first, running from the colonial period until about 1850, had a pragmatic focus on fulfilling spouses’ economic and survival needs; the second, lasting until about 1965, emphasized love. Finkel makes the case that starting around 1965, the “self-expressive marriage” became the ideal; spouses expected their partnership to be the site of self-discovery and personal growth. (Excluded from these structures for most of the nation’s existence were the tremendous number of Americans who were denied access to legal marriage, namely enslaved Black Americans, interracial couples, and same-sex couples.) Throughout this evolution, Americans started relying more and more on their spouses for social and emotional support, with friendships consigned to a secondary role.

John Carroll, who met his platonic partner, Joe Rivera, at a gay bar, describes this type of romantic relationship as “one-stop shopping.” People expect to pile emotional support, sexual satisfaction, shared hobbies, intellectual stimulation, and harmonious co-parenting all into the same cart. Carroll, 52, thinks this is an impossible ask; experts share his concern. “When we channel all our intimate needs into one person,” the psychotherapist Esther Perel writes, “we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable.” Such totalizing expectations for romantic relationships leave us with no shock absorber if a partner falls short in even one area. These expectations also stifle our imagination for how other people might fill essential roles such as cohabitant, caregiver, or confidant.

Carroll and Rivera, 59, escaped this confined thinking. They built their lives around their friendship—at times deliberately, at times improvising in the face of unanticipated events. In 2007, Carroll discovered that the house next door to his was up for sale. He called Rivera with an entreaty: “Bitch, buy that house, and you can just walk home from dinner!” Rivera would no longer have to drive across Austin several times a week to have dinner at Carroll’s house. Carroll, who’s a real-estate agent, had already filled out the contract for the house for his friend. Rivera just needed to sign.

After buying the house, Rivera did in fact log fewer miles in traffic, but that was a trivial benefit compared with the life-altering ones that came later. When Rivera became concerned that Carroll’s drug and alcohol use had gotten out of hand, he took photos of partiers entering and leaving Carroll’s house at 3 or 4 a.m. Rivera staged an intervention with Carroll’s other friends, and Carroll agreed to get help before Rivera could even begin reading aloud the two-page letter he’d written. The next day, Rivera drove Carroll to a recovery center, and cried as he filled out the paperwork. Rivera asked the man who ran the center, “What if [Carroll] goes through recovery and when he comes out, he hates me for doing this to him?”

Their friendship did change after Carroll finished the program, but not as Rivera had feared. While Carroll was in recovery, he and his friends came up with a plan to turn his house into a sober home for gay men—a solution to Carroll’s shaky finances that also served a meaningful purpose. Once Carroll finished his own stint in a sober home, Rivera suggested that Carroll move in with him. By the time Carroll unloaded his bags, Rivera was already months into his own sobriety, a commitment he made even though he never had an alcohol problem. Rivera said, “I didn’t want to be drinking a glass of wine in front of John when he couldn’t have one.” “Who does that?” Carroll asked, his voice blending incredulity and gratitude. They’ve both been sober for a decade.Companionate romantic relationships and committed friendships appear to be varieties of the same crop, rather than altogether different species.

A friendship like theirs, which has spanned nearly their entire adulthood and functioned as the nucleus of their support system, raises a fundamental question about how we recognize relationships: On what basis do we decide that a partnership is “real”? It’s a question the journalist Rebecca Traister poses in her book All the Single Ladies, when she examines the central role that friends often play in single women’s lives. “Do two people have to have regular sexual contact and be driven by physical desire in order to rate as a couple? Must they bring each other regular mutual sexual satisfaction? Are they faithful to each other?” she writes. “By those measures, many heterosexual marriages wouldn’t qualify.” At the same time, people who have intimate friendships are eager to declare their devotion. The social theorist bell hooks writes that women who have such close friendships “want these bonds to be honored cherished commitments, to bind us as deeply as marriage vows.” Companionate romantic relationships and committed friendships appear to be varieties of the same crop, rather than altogether different species.

Brake, the philosopher, takes issue not just with cultural norms that elevate romantic relationships above platonic ones, but also with the special status that governments confer on romantic relationships. Whereas access to marriage currently hinges on (assumed) sexual activity, Brake argues that caregiving, which she says is “absolutely crucial to our survival,” is a more sensible basis for legal recognition. She proposes that states limit the rights of marriage to only the benefits that support caregiving, such as special immigration eligibility and hospital visitation rights. Because sexual attraction is irrelevant to Brake’s marriage model, friends would be eligible.

In LGBTQ circles, placing a high value on friendship has long been common. Carroll, Rivera, and several other people I interviewed for this story, absorbed the idea of “chosen family”—that those besides blood can decide to become kin—from this community. Though he and Rivera never considered dating, Carroll had already learned to be at ease with nonsexual intimate relationships with men. In other words, he had come to appreciate something that was once widely understood—as Godbeer, the historian, puts it, that “we can love without lusting.”

In many ways, Americans are already redefining what loving and living can look like. Just in the past several months, experts and public intellectuals from disparate ideological persuasions have encouraged heterosexual couples to look to the queer and immigrant communities for healthy models of marriage and family. The coronavirus pandemic, by underscoring human vulnerability and interdependence, has inspired people to imagine networks of care beyond the nuclear family. Polyamory and asexuality, both of which push back against the notion that a monogamous sexual relationship is the key to a fulfilling adult life, are rapidly gaining visibility. Expanding the possible roles that friends can play in one another’s lives could be the next frontier.

Other changes in American households may be opening up space for alternative forms of committed relationships. Fewer and fewer Americans can count on having a spouse as a lifelong co-star. By the time they’ve gotten married—if they’ve done so at all—most Americans have spent a considerable part of their adulthood single. The tally of Americans’ unpartnered years grows once you tabulate the marriages that end because of divorce or a spouse’s death (about one-third of older women are widowed). According to a 2017 Pew Research Center report, 42 percent of American adults don’t live with a spouse or partner.

We’re also in the midst of what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called a growing public-health crisis in the United States: loneliness. In a 2018 survey, one-fifth of Americans reported always or often feeling lonely. Being alone does not portend loneliness—nor does being partnered necessarily prevent loneliness—but these data suggest that plenty of people would appreciate a confidant and a regular dose of physical affection, needs only amplified by the pandemic. Americans, who’ve long been encouraged to put all their eggs in the marriage basket, may come to rely upon a wider array of social relationships out of necessity.

A platonic partnership may not feel right for everyone, and as is true with dating, even those who want a mate might not be able to find a suitable one. But these relationships have spillover benefits for those in close proximity to them. Tillotson told me that she thinks all her relationships have been brightened by her closeness with West. Their romantic partners appreciate that the friendship lessens their emotional load; their mutual friends treat Tillotson and West as a reliable unit to turn to when they’re in need; their veteran community has been strengthened by the volunteering they’ve done together. Their platonic partnership fits Godbeer’s description of how Americans viewed friendship centuries ago, that it “not only conferred personal happiness but also nurtured qualities that would radiate outward and transform society as a whole.” Though Tillotson and West’s relationship serves these broader purposes, they choose to be bound to each other primarily for the joy and support they personally receive. Tillotson thinks of her romantic partner as “the cherry on the cake.” She and West, she explained, “we’re the cake.”

#friendship #platonic relationships #aromantic #asexual #aroace #aromantism #amatonormativity #suicide cw

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tiny-steve · 4 months

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i was tagged by @lalalaugenbrot

1. Are you named after anyone?

my dad still insists i was named after my mom's wedding dress (by laura ashley). my mom denies it.

2. When was the last time you cried?

last time i remember was the other day watching ronja räubertochter, but i'm sure there must've been a silly little cry for no particular reason between then and now

3. Do you have kids?

4. What sports do you play/ have you played?

i think back fondly to when i jogged regularly last summer and i still want to get back into it, but it's so cold and dark outside :(

5. Do you use sarcasm?

fluently enough to confuse the professionals during my autism assessment :^)

6. What is the first thing you notice about people?

sounds vague, but: vibes? which probably boils down to a snap judgement based on style, physical features and demeanor (and a bunch of subconscious biases, i'm sure)

7. What's your eye color?

brown

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

i love a good happy ending. joe wright permanently altered my brain chemistry with that quote in atonement about how happy endings are brave. that being said, i'm a sucker for a happy ending that's not a perfectly glossed over romantic happy-ever-after, but grounded in what the characters truly need (and that might not be the kiss and "i love you" the audience is expecting)

9. Any talents?

i sure hope i'm a reasonably talented writer, although a lot of what i do professionally really boils down to communication, analytic skills and understanding how to build a compelling narrative, and that has nothing to do with innate talent.

10. Where were you born?

small town

11. What are your hobbies?

doing stuff with my hands (other than typing), in essence: practicing the Gay Audacity of giving myself projects in areas i have zero expertise or experience in (currently painting flowers on my bathroom wall)

12. Do you have any pets?

leopold, my boy leopold

13. How tall are you?

1,72

14. Favorite subject in school?

oh i was and still am a Deutsch LK bitch. i loved that class. i regularly fantasize about going back to school and being an even bigger know-it-all about Schiller

15. Dream job?

screenwriter. honest to god, i love that job. like, i'm enjoying my downtime right now, and i need it, and i'm grateful for it, and i WILL be straight back to complaining once i have to labor under capitalism again, but really i'm itching for the next project.

tagging @darkmistandodddreams @spatort @apaethy @focusfixated @the-thorster

#asky thing #more on this story as it develops

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knoepfchen · 4 months

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okay so ONE:

I think about the goddamn calender fic every day of my life

Two:

What is hope you're having a gay old time (TOG) 👀

the goddamn calendar fic is 15k of madness that i'm stuck at because i've noticed a plot hole in the insurance fraud scheme i've cooked up that, let's be honest, probably no one would care about, BUT I DO 😩

and second. i think i started this one as a gift fic for you and it has since sprawled - it's based on this post

‘Two can play this game. Or three, or four,’ Joe continues, still sounding a little like a sixteen year old trying out for a role in a Shakespeare play for the first time. It’s not unusual for him. ‘I’m asking again. Who here dared to put a suggestion on my desk that reads, and I quote, “copy: well waddle ya kno - it's your birthday! artwork: duck or penguin with party hat.”’ First: nothing. Then: a badly disguised snort to Joe’s left, from a man with mousy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses resting upon an impressive nose. Joe stalks over to him and holds up the piece of paper with the offending words in front of him. ‘Did you write this?’ The man blinks up at him with faultless innocence. ‘If I did - it is a good pun, no?’ His lovely Italian accent means the word pun is about three times as long as it needs to be, but Joe isn’t distracted by that. He crunches up the piece of paper in his fist, drops it in the bin, and stalks out of the writers’ room. 30 minutes earlier Nile is already at her desk when Joe shuffles into the office, his head buried deep in his red scarf.

it's the pun one! my WIP doc actually features that pic you shared of that swimsuit you bought last year with the flowers on it. yes, the "you're my solmate" one. actually the whole doc is filled with awful puns from cards, this one is my favourite:

(WIP Game)

#tag game #raedear #my fic

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bisluthq · 3 months

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I get how the “secret relationship” stuff in reputation is going to appeal to queer people, because straight people outside of the spotlight don’t have to hide their relationships (unless you’re in a Romeo and Juliet situation I guess). But we know Taylor was dating Joe and we know exactly why she was hiding.

I get relating to a lot of the themes of the album as a queer person, but I don’t get why people need that interpretation to be the “correct” or “real” one. You can relate to the album even if Taylor wrote it about a man, your interpretation can be different from Taylor’s

This is exactly what I said dude. There is no such thing as a correct interpretation of art. There is what Taylor was thinking about (usually autobiographical although she does fantasize and make stuff up because again, she is not a dick powered jukebox). There is what you think about. Things we think about when listening to her songs can change over time (as I said, this applies to what Taylor thinks about them too because it is HER CREATIVE WORK). I guarantee you End Game is giving her a little thrill now that she’s with a professional athlete but she didn’t write it with him in mind.

An interpretation is just that - one way to read something. It’s not limited to sexuality btw like people read things differently all the time. I’ve shared this before: CLM is like the most romantic song I’ve ever heard FOR ME. My current situation actually fits that really perfectly. I played it for my bf a few months into us dating expecting him to love it and he found it depressing and tragic. He didn’t get the romance at all. He didn’t hate the song as like… a song lol like he thinks it’s pretty but he fails to see how it’s romantic. That same day - we were sharing like what our most romantic song is about the other person because it was early days and we were vom cute ew 🤢 - he chose Patience by Guns ‘N Roses and I had the same reaction. Like, cool song ngl but I don’t get how it’s like a grand statement on romance. Idk what the fuck Axl was thinking when he wrote Patience (I suspect very little because he would’ve been high as shit but ok) but for my bf that’s like the grandest statement on love and fits us and for me it’s a little confusing and tbh it sounds like they’ve broken up when he’s singing it??? And that’s his same point on CLM lol. So like yeah people interpret things differently guys. This is what I’ve been trying to say.

Saying “I pick up queer themes in Dress” is fair play. Saying “Taylor didn’t write Dress about Joe, she’s a big fat liar who lies, it’s about supermodel Karlie Kloss- no wait it’s about supermodel Lily Donaldson because there’s a picture of them at a party in a bathtub with like 50 other people and she mentions that public moment in her song and ergo this song is about Lily/Karlie/the homophobic violinist from her first band and who cares what it means to me because I never go outside but Taylor is gay and this is the proof” is just unhinged.

Also there are a host of other reasons to want to be secretive in mf relationships other than Romeo and Juliet or super famous vibes just btw. Hookups within friend groups or intermixed friend groups often have to be kept on the DL. Hookups at work - unless it’s proven to be serious - should be kept on the DL. Dating while in the midst of a divorce or serious longterm breakup has to be kept on the DL. If you’ve got kids, dating has to be kept on the DL unless you’re a messy bitch who lives for drama or until you know it’s serious. Reconnecting with exes has to mostly be kept on the DL until you know it’s serious. I can go on. Being gay or being in a truly forbidden situation aren’t the only two valid reasons to want to know places you won’t be found.

Any of those situations could have you relating to Dress. The best friend stuff makes it sound a bit gay to me (someone who has hooked up with a number of her female friends) but that’s not the only interpretation nor is it factual. It’s also not invalid.

My last thought is like… as fun as muse analysis is, I like Taylor Swift because she articulates thoughts about MY LIFE better than I can. I don’t imagine Taylor and Joe or Taylor and Jake or Taylor and Harry or Hiddleswift or whatever when I listen to my favorite songs. I imagine my own life. That’s what I love about her. It feels like she’s articulating feelings and experiences I’ve felt better than I ever could yk?

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ptrckjcne · 11 months

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Idk if you’re still doing it but…I’ll put every book I can find here for you. Your McDanno ideas give me oxygen. (Plus I would love to know what RDR2 ideas you may have.) you’ve made me wish for a crossover now of RDR2 and H50.

📕📗📘📙📔📚📖

ohhhh am i glad you asked!! first of all, thank you?? that makes me so happy to hear – and moving on, yes i've got some more rdr2/mcdanno ideas cooking away.

i've been playing rdr2 nonstop now since i handed in my exam, and let's just say it's taken it's toll on my creativity–

(i may have titled the ideas i've actually started writing and if you think that sound familiar because it's a mission from red dead redemption, both games, then weeeeell you're quite right)

ideas below the cut, let's rumbleeee

📕 – we loved once and true

steve and danny are teenagers, confused and on the run, set somewhere during the 1870s. think the town of valentine, just earlier, and think a storyline that resembles that of dutch and hosea finding john and arthur.

they first meet in a saloon, seeking shelter from the rain. steve's the son of an outlaw and a bounty hunter, a tale that's tragic on its own, and danny's the son of a wealthy family with ideals he considers to be wrong. they spend an afternoon and a night together, dodging drunken fools while waiting for the rain to let up.

finding out they have quite a bit in common, they spend some days together, getting to know one another and falling in love – though this is what terrifies them, because what's a future for two gay teenagers in the wild west?

one morning, about the same time as the sun rises, they part ways, steve heading for the forest where he left his horse, secure and sheltered, while danny heads for the plains, a train, and a future somewhere else.

(the next bit technically works as a we loved once and true II)

five years later they meet again, under another set of unfortunate circumstances. danny's new and better life was in a gang, led by joe white. steve's a man on the run, scarred (physically and mentally) and hardened by a life as a lone wolf. there's a bounty on his head, and he's skittish, his trusted horse the only one he truly trusts.

the gang needs money, and danny's set to lead a little group that does bounty hunting. however, when he sees a poster with steve's name on it, he sets out alone. ain't no way some other fools are gonna put a bullet in steve and earn money from it.

and then yadda yadda, you know how it goes. danny gets steve to trust him, and instead of turning him in, he shows steve the value of a family and introduces him to the gang – though it's not always easy – and so on, and so forth.

writing down this i came to realise i have far too many ideas for this, so oops watch me make an attempt at actually writing this and possibly turning this into a series? god help me

📗 – stranger in a strange land

amnesia!fic but make it the wild west (can you tell i'm a sucker for wounded!steve ending up at danny's ranch one way or another?)

steve's taken a beating. a bad beating. he's got on his horse, and he's got his horse moving, but he passes out long before they get anywhere, and is woken to someone desperately trying to calm down his horse. enter danny, who nearly shot steve's mustang instead of the pronghorn he was hunting, and now heads home with a horse and a wounded man.

he quickly establishes that this stranger's got a bad case of amnesia, that he's taken a beating, and that someone's probably coming for him – to save him or kill him, danny doesn't know.

he keeps him around, let's him heal, helps him through nightmares that show glimpses of what he's been through, and let's the powerhouse of a mustang rest up in the field with his horses.

when the time comes, and someone does come for steve, it's not to kill him (but danny's got his rifle at his side, because he's grown fond of this dumbass stranger who's stuck in what he keeps calling a "strange land"), but to bring him home, but as it turns out, steve returns after only a few days – because he kind of like really enjoyed the quiet and peace of ranching with danny.

📘 – honor, amongst thieves

thief!danny & lawman!steve

danny likes to think of himself as a robin hood type of guy. ever since he got the sole custody of grace, it was what he needed to do – no job was interested in keeping him, no ranch was interested in a farmhand with family ties that could take him away from work, and he wasn't about to risk his life to become a bounty hunter, regardless of how well it would pay him.

so, he steals. he steals, and he gets a criminal record, and he moves them around more often than not.

however, as he comes across a new town, a rustling city more than a dusty town, really, he figures they can stay a while. crime spikes, and his petty little thefts will be overlooked as yet another wanted outlaw is hanged for his crimes. there's a lawman set to work danny's case, though.

steve's the "runt" of the force. he didn't want to become a lawman, yet had no choice, his father forcing him to be a police officer. he gets set to work the lamest cases, and when people start reporting stolen purses, wallets and money clips (among other things), he's set to figure it out. he just didn't expect the thief to be ... well, danny.

📙 – blood feuds, ancient and modern

rival gangs rival gangs rival gangs

romeo and juliet, but make them gay cowboys in rival gangs. shooting at each other at noon, bandaging each other's wounds and kissing at six pm. that's really all there is to this idea at this point.

📚 – lost, and not quite found

freddie and steve had to split up, their best chances of survival being that if they split. steve makes it out alive, freddie doesn't, and steve then decides he's going to make it back to where freddie died, bringing him to a place of peace to bury him.

on the way, one late night, he stumbles across the small camp of a nature photographer, who offers him shelter for the night. steve reluctantly stays (he's just survived being betrayed by a man who once gave him shelter, naturally he's going to be unsure about the offer), and as things would have it, the two really hit it off.

steve leaves, however, in the morning, continuing his mission to give freddie peace, and danny continues his work, gathering photos for an upcoming exhibition. they're not expecting to see each other again – not until danny's been chased around by wolves, and in a desperate attempt to calm his horse down, returns to his old camp, only to find steve there.

he's given freddie peace, he's honoured him, but he can never go back to the life he lived before. danny tells him about the wolves, unsure of why – but when steve offers to help him out, claiming he "knows his way around the wildlife and the woods," it makes sense to danny. and suddenly he had an extra name to credit on the exhibition

and nooow for the two ideas that aren't rdr2 inspired!

📔 – fever pitch

soccer dad!danny and talent scout!steve

charlie's this massive talent on the football (soccer) pitch, and it's no secret to anyone that there are big clubs from all over the world looking to sign him to their academies. steve is the big shot talent scout for one of said big clubs (manchester united), but he's had a bit of a drought on the recruitment side. however, he flies to the us to sit down with charlie (and danny and grace), and gets them to move to england.

at first, danny's negative to the idea, because it's england, and it's away from their family, and moving there means his son is really growing up. however, he's not too happy about this fancy-clad talent scout that came to uproot their lives, and intends on complaining about it to him.

however, steve's traveling a lot, and offers the williams' to stay in his house until they get settled in the city, and when he returns after a business trip late one night – to find danny in his kitchen, tea towel over his shoulder as he's cooking something italian, he's finding it real nice to have company again. and, danny finds it very nice to see that this guy, the fancy talent scout with a shit-ton of money – well, he's not so bad (and he looks really good in cargo pants, not that danny'd ever tell him).

📖 – down by the river avon

because mcdanno au's in england >

danny's a professor. this big shot, amazing professor, that's being headhunted to teach at universities all around the world. for a while he was interested, but when grace was born, it was a no from him, and he stayed put. however, as the university of bath looks to recruit a new professor, they reach out for him – first for a trial year.

he doesn't want to, but grace convinces him he should ("it's a good idea, danno, and i can come visit you when i visit grandma and grandpa in london,"). due to delays in getting his apartment ready, he ends up staying at a nearby hotel, and the pub down by the river becomes his go-to watering hole.

it's a good thing the barkeep is kind of really attractive.

steve's up and left his life in hawaii, after the death of his parents and years as a navy seal that's given him more grief and pain than anything else. now he owns the scuttlebutt, a cosy pub down by the river avon. his customers are mostly regulars, those who come time and time again, regardless of season and weather, but when there's a new guy stumbling in, his interest peaks.

and, as the year progresses, his interest never once dips.

#writing asks!#give me a book and i'll tell you about a fanfic #h50 #h50 aus #mcdanno #steve mcgarrett #danny williams

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