#me: perpetually surrounded by college textbooks | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cornacopicimagines · 4 years

Text

after hours│t.h

pairing: professor!tom holland x reader

words: 6.9k (hehe nice)

warnings: swearing, PURE FILTH, sir kink, rough sex, masturbation (male & female), exhibition kink if you squint, spanking & sort of public sex.

summary: It's wrong, y/n tells herself. She can't help it though. She can't help fantasising about him. At the other end of the class, Tom tells himself to stop staring at her. It's creepy, he thinks. Neither one knows of the mutual pining that is until tension bubbles over.

a/n: I’m back bitches! I'm still a fucking sinner and this is such a cliche, I'm so so sorry

masterlist

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y/n sat at the desk. Her eyes never left Mr. Holland. Her attention never left the way the veins in his arms bulged when he picked up the massive textbook, never left his perfectly gelled hair and how it sat atop his head like it was crafted to from the day he was born. Perhaps I should start typing the notes that were on the board, she scowled to herself.

She feels dirty, almost ashamed of her crush on him. She hates herself for falling into a stupid cliché that had been so easy to avoid all these tireless years. y/n doesn't know why she has gone back to a love-sick teenage girl fantasising about a boy who she'll never even get to touch. A boy that so out of her league, he wouldn't even had the faintest idea that she exists. That doesn't stop them though. y/n still finger fucks herself to an orgasm that no boy has been able to give her in her 24 years of life, all the while wishing it was his cock instead of her fingers. If Mr. Holland knew what she did to herself under the influence of him and his stupidly handsome face, he would be disgusted. This she knows for a fact.

This isn't what she thought she would be doing, in all honesty. She is a semester away from graduating and she never wanted to be stuck in a perpetual state of wanting someone so unattainable it's not uneasy, it's borderline unethical. She truly believed she would have ancient married professor that sound like their legs deep in their coffin. Instead she got a literal Greek God as her Psych professor.

She knows that she's not the only one of course. y/n has met 10 other girls in her class that probably write god awful poetry about Mr. Holland's liquid bronze eyes. She can't blame them, if she could write shitty poetry about him, she 100% would. y/n not angry either, she knows out of the 120 students (110 of whom are girls), are probably all in the same predicament. She sometimes gets dirty looks from them when Mr. Holland address her by her first name.

Perhaps that's something she should consider; he calls her y/n not Miss y/l/n or just simply Miss. It's different, it's endearing and when he has a raspy voice, it's so fucking hot.

"y/n," a voice called out, she shook herself out of her haze, "are you still with us?" Mr. Holland was no standing over her. His cologne surrounding her, intoxicating her. y/n gulped softly before turning her eyes to his.

"Yes, sorry sir," y/n replied quickly, trying her hardest not to stumble over her own words or even let the blush run to her cheeks.

Mr. Holland smiled warmly, "that's good, I need at least one of you listening," the class erupting in laughter, "I would prefer it to be one of the brightest." That though got them quiet. y/n sunk into her chair in embarrassment. The blush she had been fighting rose to the surface, making her even more adamant not to look up at him but alas she couldn't.

In that small fleeting moment, she caught something in his eyes. She couldn't define exactly what it was. Whatever it truly was, y/n knew teachers should not be looking at their students in such a way. It made her even more lightheaded with admiration.

The lesson continued on as normal for another hour. Mr. Holland described the outline for the next assignment, it seemed short and sweet. Write a 2-thousand-word essay on the effects of unintentional recreational drugs during early childhood. y/n had to laugh at the way Mr. Holland phrased it. It was as if he had never touch pot in his entire life, to be fair, y/n wouldn't be too surprised if he didn't. Most of the girls in his class groaned at the mere mention of actual work and not an hour and a half session of pure toe-curling orgasm material. Now that she thinks about it, that would be a wonderful way to spend her Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons.

Of course, y/n was in another word during the last minutes of the lesson. Unable to focus on anything other than the hint of a tattoo peeking through the underlining of his shirt. She was working so hard to distinguish what it was that she had completely missed the end of the lesson and the dozens of people walking out.

"y/n, what exactly are you doing?" Mr. Holland's voice asked above her. y/n almost jumped in her seat, but she stayed completely still. "This is the second time today, should I be worried?"

This though made her jump out of her seat. "No of course not sir!" She defended as she rushed to place her things away. "I was just off in wonderland today."

"Are you sure there is nothing distracting you?" He asked.

Yes.

"No," she replied hurriedly.

"You know you can tell me if something is," he reassured her.

Yes, of course. Let me just tell you about how you are distracting me by always wearing the hottest casual suits every lesson and giving me the wonderful fantasy of tearing it off you.

"I know that, it's just been my busy schedule," y/n lied through her teeth. She's a broke college student with hardly any friends or real other assignments. "I am just working really hard, you know?"

Yeah, working really hard to imagine you pounding me into next week!

With that last thought, y/n knew she needed to leave before she exploded with embarrassment and arousal right there in front of him.

"I just wanted to let you know that you are totally allowed to change the topic of the assignment if you feel like there is something that strikes a chord with you," Mr. Holland smiled brightly.

Fuck! Did he have to look so gorgeous even when he's trying to be dorky and supportive.

Mr. Holland noticed the shocked look upon y/n's face and immediately retracted his statement, "I promise I won't fail you, if that's what your thinking." He explained. "I really enjoy your work, you're a gifted woman with a real talent and I don't want to see it go to waste with my shitty assignment."

y/n turned her attitude around. He was stumbling over his words. It was kind of cute and endearing, like everything he does. She smiled warmly at his compliment.

"Sir," she spoke softly. It came out a lot mouseyer and somehow sexual than she would have liked but she refused to back out of her statement. "I can't wait."

She didn't say another word but simply slung her back over her shoulder and made her way out of the class. Tom followed her figure in complete and utter shock. He praised whatever god watched over him for the small mercy that was having y/n's back turned to him to witness his immediate blush cover his entire freckled face.

Tom never let his eyes leave her. He just watched her waltz right out of his classroom, he bit his lip at the sight of her perfectly cupped ass in her jeans. Through-out the entire lesson, all he could think about is how her tits would bounce as his dick thrusted up into her little cunt. Just the thought made his cock spring to life.

He stared up at the clock. He had to be in another lecture in 10 minutes, he had to teach another round of student without her pretty face in it in 10 bloody minutes. Sadly, it wasn't enough time to imagine cumming over her said face. He fidgeted until his painful erection was safely hidden.

God, you are such a fucking creep, Holland. He thought to himself.

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y/n really didn't want to be doing this.

She really didn't want to have to walk to the library in a mini skirt she had when she went through her cringy hoe phase and a low-cut tank top she only really wore to bed at 8 at night. Luckily before she left, her roommate gave her a full can of pepper spray and a pocketknife. A handle tool for when you looked like a prostitute.

She had no choice. It was laundry night and she had to get her assignment out of the way, or she would never finish it in time. She wanted to kick herself for letting laundry night fall on the only night the library stayed open until midnight. It was a perk for sure but not when you had nothing to wear but pink neon rags.

y/n pushed open the library door and relieved herself of the anxiety of being abducted by the greeting of Harry. He looked familiar but she couldn't pinpoint where she had seen his face before.

"What cha doing here?" he shouted. Quite contradictory for a librarian. y/n grinned when she saw his dorky face at the counter. That is until he caught wind of her outfit, or lack thereof. "Got a late shift at the strip-club after this?" Her face fell.

"I hate you," she played along, her arms slumping on the cold desk. y/n looked around the library. It was basically empty, with the exception of the middle-aged teacher grading a stack full of papers. Poor bastard, y/n thought. "Got one for me?"

"You're going to get me fired if I do this again," Harry huffed, he banged his head against the keyboard in frustration.

"This is the last time," y/n explained, "I pinkie promise." She lifted her hand over the counter and waved her pinkie finger in Harry's face. He stared up her than move his eyeline to her finger now just touching the tip of his nose. He groaned loudly as he took her finger in his.

"There is a ton of empty booths, choose one and don't make a sound," Harry told her angrily, y/n simply clapped her hands in celebration and skipped off. She chooses the booth in range of Harry, in hopes that maybe he will distracted her and she won't have to do her work because she's too busy goofing off.

y/n dropped her stuff in a huff. Her back slumped into the curve of the chair and the desk covered her body happily. She placed her earphones in and played her favourite study music. She was in absolute heaven.

The assignment was kicking her ass, but she was determined to do it. Mr. Holland seemed genuinely excited for what she would write about if she did decide to change the topic. Now though she's regretting not letting Mr. Holland's hopes down.

She could find hardly anything online and even if she did it was by some random SJW on Tumblr. That's what lead her here tonight. In hopes that maybe some privileged white asshole with a degree would have some sources sighted to help her. Unfortunately, she was having trouble with that too.

It was now 11:30pm. She had been at this god forsaken table for two and a half hours now in an endless pursuit of bullshit. y/n had half a mind to give up and just suck his dick for the grade like other girls would in this situation. y/n had to remind herself though, she is a gifted woman with a real talent that should not be wasted on something shitty to please the masses. Did she just quote Mr. Holland?

She caught eyes with Harry in her block, who had two pencils stuck up his nose in an attempt to cheer her up. It did for the most part. y/n wanted to play along but it had seemed someone else had walked through the door at that very moment and Harry threw the pencils out. Harry's face lit up with red upon the arrival of this mystery person. y/n was interested in who this mystery person was. That is until she saw his face.

Mr. Holland walked up to the library desk in a fit of laughter. His hands smacking the counter and his face contorted in a wide smile. y/n instantly ducked under the table. She could faintly hear their conversation. It just sounded like muffled words until her name popped up.

Jesus Christ. Not now. Not tonight. Why of all night to run into his must it have to be tonight. Maybe I should make a run for it now, bust out of the wind-

"I know you're under there y/n," Mr. Holland's voice sung above her. It was too late now. Any escape plan that her mind frantically tried to rationalise was long gone by this point. Slowly, y/n retreated from her hiding spot to face him. He had his normal outfit of a tight t-shirt paired with a decorative tie and slightly lose pants. This time though he had a long burgundy coat draped over his shoulders. He looked like a painting. y/n smiled sheepishly.

"Hi," she said simply. Regaining her seat from before and fully appearing in front of him. "I had no idea you would be here this late," she tried with conversation.

"Harry's my brother, I have to drive him home before leaving myself and he just wanted to work the late shift tonight," Tom laughed to himself and he turned around and waved at Harry. His brother waved back guiltily. "You know, I could say this same to you," he smirked at her.

"I am working on your assignment, sir," y/n responded quietly. Tom's eyes lit up at that and he rushed to snatch the papers off her desk and into his hands. Much to the disapproval of y/n.

"Oh good, you've decided to change it," Tom sounded almost relieved as if he trusted her judgement more than his own. Worse of it all, he decided to sit down next to her. Even taking off his coat, making his biceps bulge through his shirt. His eyes flicked through what she currently has. His eyebrows raised in shock, "I have to say, I was not expected you to decide to do something about the female orgasm and its effect on the psyche," his voice was an octave deeper than usual. y/n could feel her arousal building.

y/n couldn't decide if he was just being friendly or if he was trying to send a deeper message. Either way, she decided to take action. "Well, with the number of women being unsatisfied I thought it was an appropriate topic," she snatched the papers out of his hands, "but you wouldn't know anything about women being unsatisfied would you sir?"

Tom sat there in astonishment. His cock stiffened against the restraints of his jeans, he has only been in her vicinity for 5 minutes and already she has him hard as a rock. It was times like these that he wished he could just leave all his determination to fuck her over this very desk at the door. Regrettably, he couldn't.

"Well, that just ruins the surprise," y/n sighed delicately. Her fingers flicking through the pages of her useless book. "Either way, the resources are complete shit," this time her sadness was real, and Tom snapped out of his lust-ridden haze.

"Did you really expect a man to know mostly everything of something that is so cardinally female?" Tom smirked as he closed the book on her and pointed to the photo of a wrinkled old man. He was the author of a stupid book and to be fair, he looked like he would write this type of book as well.

"Damn, I knew I was doing something wrong," y/n hissed. She had been spending her entire night trying to piece together information from a man who can only give her half the story.

"The book on the top shelf is one on the chemical effects of orgasming in females by a female," Tom leaned in and whispered in her ear. His hot breath wafted of her skin; it was enough to send goose bumps over her entire body. y/n turned her head to face him, their lips inches away from each other. If they didn't have Harry watching them like a hawk, they probably would be out of breath from lip-locking. Instead, y/n nodded and got up out of her seat, making sure to give him a stunning view of her tits through her tank top. He wanted to audibly gasp but kept in inside. It didn't help with his situation downstairs any more than the last few minutes have.

Slowly, she walked over to the bookcase. Her eyes scanning the endless rows and she made sure Tom had enough time to enjoy the deep red thong underneath her skirt. Finally, her fingers coiled around the book and brought it down to her. Tom couldn't believe his own eyes. He was so under her spell. The way her top hugged her curved and let his eyes completely drink in her breasts. How her skirt was pulled up to her waist, allowing the flushed skin of her ass to be visible to him. He wonders how a woman like her even exists and yet she takes a seat next to him, absolutely unaware of his throbbing manhood. Begging to be touched by her, to be taken by her, by anything to do with her.

"Thank you, sir," she almost purrs to him, Tom's struggling to keep it together. He afraid the next thing to slip out of her flawless mouth, he'll cum straight into his pants when he would rather cum into her.

"Anytime," he responds just a dark before getting up. Hiding his clearly hard cock behind his briefcase. "I'll see you in class?" He already knows the answer, but he just wants the last bit of assurance from her.

"Of course," she smiled warmly. With that Tom basically books it, he's frantically making sure he's well-hidden as he quickly bends over the counter.

"I'll come back to pick you up in 30, I forgot some paper work back in my office," it's so fast, Harry almost doesn't have time to translate it before Tom's out the door and rushing down the hall.

At one point, he basically running to get to his office. Feet tapping against the concrete as he continues to see nothing but flashing images of y/n. It blurs his vision and he's so desperate. He considers using a spare supply closet but know he will only get complete privacy in his own office.

He finally gets there, after what seems like an eternity of running. He checks the hallways before entering. He drops all of his things at the foot of the door. He even has the decency to hang his coat upon the rack. Tom slowly walks over to his chair. It's a rough leather material and usually he would refuse to do what he's about to do in here, it will be stained with the memory but at this point. He got no fucks left to give.

He crashes down. His back hitting the material he hates so much. He doesn't think he's got time, but he still does it slowly. His belt drops next to his and he undoes the zip slowly and the cold air hits his dick. He hisses at the feeling but proceeds anyways. Tom pulls the rest of his jeans and boxers down his legs and kicks them across the room. His hand takes his dick, slowly rubbing the head. Imaging y/n's fingers dancing over it, spreading the precum over. He uses his palm to envision her own stroking up and down in an even motion. He can't help but moan. He can't help but softly call out her name.

He so entranced that he doesn't recognize the following light footsteps approaching. He's so into her non-existent touch that he doesn't hear the door peacefully squeak open. He's so in love with the feeling he doesn't feel y/n walk around the room to get on her knees in front of him.

She's in glory of his movements. Watching him stroke his much bigger cock than her masturbation version has her in a hurry to get her own panties off her body and across the floor. She's sure she's dripping onto the wood below but she does have single care in the world. Tom has his head thrown back in ecstasy as his hand starts to speed up, that's when y/n decides to go for the kill. She licks a long strip up his shaft. Her hands stabilizing him by placing them atop his bare thighs.

Tom almost jumps out of his chair. He had no idea she caught him in the middle of something so vile and wrong. Better yet, she had caught him with the tip of his dick around her perfectly glossed lips. He doesn't get to say another word before y/n's hands begin massaging the bottom of his manhood. It's slow to begin with, it's almost if she's easing him into it. Her cheeks hollow out to allow his length into her warm mouth. It's incredible. Tom can't help but buck his hips up into her throat causing her to gag slightly. It's a sound he wants more of.

His hands ball her hair into his fist. With the faster her movements become, the harder he fucks into her mouth. They sync up almost instantly. One of y/n's hands leave his cock to fuck herself. Tom's mesmerised by the way her fingers act as a replacement for his dick. He's certain he's not going to last much longer.

"I should be d-doing that," he whispers through grunts. y/n lifts her head to smile at him, still letting her free hand jerk and pull bringing him closer the edge.

"I know," she responds, just as quiet. Her mouth reconnects but Tom quickly snaps his hips up into her. Her muffled moaning vibrated against his cock as he fucks her mouth. It's the hottest thing he's ever done. He tugs and pulls at her hair, y/n's edging him on. She's exquisite, it's like she's mastered this and has allowed him to chance to feel how fucking beautiful her little mouth can be.

Like it's effortless, he comes. Without any warning, he is shooting hot stream of cum into her mouth, filling it up. Tom swears he's seeing stars but can't bring him to call out her name but instead bites down on his hand so hard he's afraid he's drawn blood.

y/n releases him from her mouth and is from an actual porn Tom spent his teenage years watching, his cum leaks from her lips and falls down on the curves of her tits. It's a sight he was to remember forever. He wants to grab his phone and click so he will get to look at her covered in his cum for the rest of his life but alas, he's still regaining his bearings.

"Tastes better than I would have expected," y/n giggles as she brings the liquid back up to her lips and swallows. There is no way this woman gets better; he thinks to himself.

"Sweetheart-," he begins but she beats him to it, her gets back on her feet and plants a sweet kiss upon his lips. He can taste himself on her lips, it's addictive.

"I wanted this," it's almost as if she read his mind. He doesn't respond but he simply looks at her, his hand coming up to twirl a strand of hair that has fallen in front of her face.

y/n pulls away from him, walking over the pile of discarded clothes and bend to pick up her soaked underwear. She gives Tom a look, he's so close he can smell her juices from his seat. Her pussy look like a paradise waiting to be exploded by him, but he keeps his hands to himself. y/n paced herself over to the coat hanger, her folded panties in hand. She places them in the left pocket with a devilish smile upon her face. Tom had now place their rest of his clothes back on and had joined her.

"I'll get them back next lesson," y/n grins. Tom nods quickly, their feet fumbling under her back hits his office door. She's trapped in between him, he smells of pure sex but she's committed to her idea. He bends down to capture her lips in his with a forceful kiss. It's hungry and needy. She wants it so badly to give but she pulls away. "My roommate is waiting for me outside."

"We'll finish this," Tom whispers as he opens the door for her. It sends shivers down y/n's spine. It's not a promise, it's an order.

She grabs the rest of her things and heads off. Almost in a sick turn of events, Tom watches her bare ass strut away from him. Just like the last lesson, except this time all he can do is imagine him face fucking her. It's a beautiful sight.

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The three days leading up to class where probably the slowest 72 hours both of them had ever experienced. A constant detail of pleasure from the night before. So when the fated day arrived, both parties didn't know what to do. Tom debated just staying home, though he couldn't deny he so desperately want just another taste. He thought, if he didn't show up, all his guilty conscience of a student giving him the best head he's ever had in his life would simply disappear and he would go back to being a normal teacher. y/n, too, thought of skipping this class for a completely different reason. Perhaps she had got a surge of confidence after hearing her professor call out her name while he touched himself or it could just be the pure scandalous nature of it all. Either way, she wanted to stay cooped up with a blanket while she watched him unravelled. No matter the psyche from the both of them, they went.

y/n stood outside the classroom for a good 20 minutes, unsure of what she should do. Should she go in now and fuck him in the small window or wait and play with his emotions? She hadn't realised how fast the time had went until she saw other student's start entering. It was now or never and unfortunately it was going to be now.

The room was smaller than y/n remember when she stepped in. It seemed more wide the last time she came in here. Of course, the last time she came in her, she hadn't sucked Mr. Holland's cock.

Her eyes landed on him in a matter of seconds. His back was turned to her as he wrote on the massive blackboard in front of him. y/n could see his muscles flex as he tried to reach for the duster above the board. She bit her lip as she thought of her nails digging into his back as he fucked her. It was a fantasy she had to push to the side.

Tom could practically smell her once she walked in. It was her normal perfume that had been intensified 10 fold. He refuses to turn around, afraid that if he did all his good heart nature would go out the window. Tom could hear the faint clinking of the heels of her shoes walk up the stairs. He so desperately wanted them to come right back down.

"Okay, as you know, you're assignment is due in 2 weeks and this is going to be the only time I will answer your questions," Tom's voice boomed. He hadn't got a lot of sleep since that night and he didn't particularly want to do this but he considered himself a kind professor, so he had too.

He turned around and saw the entire class' hands go straight up in the air. Including y/n, though hers was a little lower. Her eyebrow raised and a small smirk painted on her lips. There was no way in hell he was answer whatever question came out of those pretty lips. She looked even more exquisite than when he last saw her. A tight t-shit that had a stained 50's logo on it and a pair of tight black jeans, he knew as soon as he spoke to her, he would loose all control on himself.

So he never did, constantly dodging her. Answering every single question, even if half of them were if he was married or worse if he was free Friday night. He will admit, seeing y/n get frustrated every time he passed her to talk to another young female student made him just that tad bit excited.

It was an hour and a half of pure tension. Sure, no one else in the class could feel it but they 100% could. She never felt more out of control and for some reason, she despised it. He kept ignoring her, kept refusing her, kept defying her. It was infuriating, that she wanted to take fate by the hair.

She waited, until every single soul had walked out of the door. She waited until the last gaggle of girls had finished their blabbering to Tom before she starting to strut down the stairs. Tom refused to meet her eyes even when he knew that's all she did. Glare at him as she stomped past him desk to the classroom door. He heard it lock.

"I wanted to ask you a question," she almost spat, "sir."

Tom straightened himself before swivelled around to meet her. She was so livid with him but he knew deep down that all she wanted from him was to have the white chalk from the board rubbed up her back from him pinning her down.

"Fire away," he responded exactly the same. She stared at him for a moment before strolling towards him. She made sure to swing her hips every other time. She noticed his eyes on her, finally she was getting somewhere.

y/n pressed her chest upon his heaving one. Her face lifting to meet his. They stayed like that for a good minute, just pondering. They listened to each other's heats thumping against their rib cages. They both desperately needed this.

Never taking her eyes off him, y/n snaked her hand around the side of pocket of her coat, smiling once she found what she left. Her soaked red thong, it was a sight for sore eyes.

"I wanted to ask if I was every going to get payback?" she giggled softly. Tom knew she was playing a game but he had no idea which one it was.

"I don't think I understand," he stammered, she strutted away from him until she met the edge of his stainless desk. Her fingers gliding over the wood ever so slightly. She turned her head to look at him. She had a rawness in her eyes; lustful, a sinner's stare. It would be a look Tom was never forget for the rest of his life.

y/n suddenly jumped on the desk. Her ass moving the papers to the side as she slowly started to unbutton her tight jeans. "I think you do," it was almost a hiss but he only heard the desperation in her voice. "I want you to make me feel all the things you did that night."

Tom almost fainted just with that until she dropped her jeans the floor. She had come to class without any underwear on and her wetness was dripping onto the desk. Tom was sure was in heaven but he didn't want to believe it.

He got on his knees. His hands palming at her soft thighs. Tom didn't need another incentive, he didn't need another spur-on. Tom licked a single strip up her folds, y/n bit a moan back. It was like tasting ambrosia or doing cocaine for the first time. He needed more, so he went back in again, this time it was rougher. His fingers gripping at her ass, pulling her closer to his mouth as he devoured as if he hadn't eaten in weeks. Her hands tangle themselves in his floppy curls, she tugs harshly on his scalp as he adds a finger into her warm entrance.

Tom's never felt like this before but he doesn't care. He's sure people can hear her soft but frantic moaning from outside, but he doesn't care. He'll never look at his desk the same way but like everything else, he doesn't fucking care. Tom curls his fingers in the perfect spot inside of her.

"Just like that," y/n calls out, her hair now sprawled out on the desk. "I'm going to cum sir."

Tom feels her walls contract around his fingers as he pulsing faster, her back arches and she trying so hard to force her cries back into her throat. It's a sight he wants to from above, it's a feeling he wants to feel inside of her. So, at the last minute, he retracts everything. His tongue leaves her throbbing clit and his finger, which are glistening with her slick, slid out of her.

y/n can't hold back to whine that leaves her left from the loss of his god-like tongue and fingers. "What the fuck Tom?!" she's angry with him, she wants to tell him off but before she can do it. One of his hands captures her wrist and slams them against the desk below her, pinning her to it. She whimpers at the sting of pain.

He's right above her but she can't see a single thing below her. "Look at me," he tells her sternly, she does what's she is told instantly. "You can't talk to me like that sweetness," y/n knows there is a venom behind his words even if she speaks in a melody. "I'm not your fucking boyfriend, you don't call me that."

Without any warning at all, he pounds right up into her. y/n almost spasms out of Tom's grip from the wave of pleasure. Tom doesn't move at all, he stays nuzzled inside her. It's agonising, almost painful for y/n. Having his perfect cock not jamming into her tight cunt. It's torture.

"You understand that?" he peppers kissed against the nape of her neck, she's about to cry out, she'll do anything. She nods her head frantically, hoping it's enough. It isn't. He keeps his hips locked tightly against hers. "Words, sweetness."

"Yes," she responds. She can feel him frown against her skin. He pulls right out of her and rams right back in, causing y/n to scream out in pleasure. "Y-yes sir," she corrects herself and with that, Tom starts a pace. It's slow and tantalising, he watches amazed at how her pretty folds swallow him up with every thrust. It's magnificent.

He wants to savour this moment forever. He wants to fuck her brains out for every waking moment of his existence.

"Sir, go harder," she moans below him. Her wrists bruised from his gripped, but the pain just only contributes in her overwhelming amount of pleasure. His thick cock is so much better than her fingers, no matter how many she adds.

Tom obliges and starts to really pound into her cunt. It's raw and ruthless, he's calling out her name now. "Fuck sweetness, you so bloody tight," he purrs, y/n can't respond through her chant of curses. "You're little cunt was made for me, it was made for me to stretch it out."

The dirty talk elevates her, y/n's not sure how much longer she'll last. His filling ever last inch of her. She can feel her tits bounce every time their skin collides. Her wrists are finally let free as he begins to clutch at her naked hips. It's an experience she's never felt. The sound of skin slapping and their combined gasping and cursing are the only thing she can perceive to hear. If there was a knock at the door, y/n knows she would have no idea about it.

Perhaps, it's the pure excitement and morality of this whole situation that makes them both feel like they're on cloud nine. Her arms snake around his waist, her hands move with every rough thrust into her. She's gripping onto his back through the material of his tight shirt. Her nails clasping on the contracting muscles. She would have left his back red and sore if he didn't have the damned t-shirt on to protect him.

"Fuck," she curses as he started to hit an area inside of her, she never knew existed. "Just like that sir, I am going to cum," she moans, her forehead against his. They lock eyes again, this time though there is no linger feeling of want or romance. It's just sex. Dirty, hot, intense fucking.

She's the first to come undone. The fire now transformed into a raging wildfire spreading across her entire abdomen. y/n throws her head back in ecstasy, her whole vision goes black and she has to bit down against her hand to stop and inevitable pornographic scream to jump out of her mouth. Her other hand clutches his neck, pulling him closer to her.

Tom follows shortly after, his thrusts become sloppy and erratic but never easing up. His cock twitches inside of her before he shots the hot white liquid all inside of her cunt. He pressed his lips against her as his attempt to stop his moan as well but he continues to call out her angelic name against her lips. Once, Tom pulls out of her, he watches in awe. The mixture leaks out of her hole and then pools on his desk. He's so in love with this woman it hurts.

"I have never cum that hard in my entire fucking life," she giggles, pulling her top down her flushed tits. As he too, starts to redress himself, he simply stares at her. Watches her retrieve her jeans from the floor and slip them up her bare ass. He spots her shove her panties back into his back pocket, not before she scribbles something down on a torn piece of paper.

"What are you doing?" he asked gently, wrapping his arms around her waist. She nuzzles her face in the crook of her.

"I'm giving you a reason to come make me dinner and then fuck me again," she explains, "I put my address in there, so hopefully you can't get lost."

"You sure about this," Tom asked hesitantly, y/n now swivelled around to face him. Her warm palm caressed his face.

"I wouldn't have just done that if I wasn't," she places a soft, tender kiss to his cheek. "Make it a Thursday though, my roommate will be out on those nights," she told him as he grabbed the last of her things and unlocked the door. Tom grins warmly as she makes herself presentable for the last time. "I would clean that up if I were you," y/n laughed, pointing at the obvious mess all over his desk before quickly exiting.

As she wobbled back to her dorm, she wondered what article of clothing she should leave out on their next escapade.

━━★✼☆｡

a/n: this is gonna flop, i just fuckin know it 🥴 anways i hope you enjoyed my fic that has ended my hiatus. see you (hopefully) soon 🥺

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagines #tom holland imagine #tom holland au #tom holland smut #professor!tom #professor!tom holland #professor!au #tom holland x you #peter parker #peter parker smut #peter parker x reader #peter parker angst #marvel imagines #actor #actor smut #actor imagines #actor x you

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sheirukitriesfandom · 2 years

Note

1. Gloves for the season ask!

💛 from @korvanjund

Huhu, thank you for the ask. This took way longer than I anticipated, but I hope it turned out well—despite not really fitting the seasons ask theme 😅

Actions speak louder than words—so they say.

Rashkan never cared much for old sayings and idioms; too often, they were little more than half-truths infused with superstition.

However, this particular saying most certainly rang true, and Rashkan intended to let his actions speak louder than any word.

Balancing a hot, tea towel-covered snowberry crostata on a plate, he hurried up the stairs to the archmage's quarters.

Savos Aren was the textbook example of a recluse so, it was no surprise that even at noon, perhaps the college's busiest time of day, he could be found locked in his chambers—greeting Rashkan still wearing a nightshirt no less.

"Overslept?" Rashkan asked as he stepped into the spacious rotund hosting the garden. As usual, all sorts of clutter—vials, letters, books, soulgem fragments—cluttered the tables and shelves along the walls. Through a few small windows high above their heads fell the pale grey light of a cloudy Winterhold day. Not even with the help of the magelights hovering over the garden could it drive out the perpetual gloom of the room. Savos made an expression to match.

"Hrmph, if you only knew..."

Nightmares, no doubt about it; ever since that fateful ice wraith hunt, Rashkan was keenly aware of how tightly Vermina held Savos in her clutches.

"Perhaps this will raise your spirits." Rashkan pulled off the tea towel, revealing his sweet-smelling, steaming gift. Savos' eyes grew wide, catching fire in the pale magelight; he reminded Rashkan of a magpie that had spotted the shiniest piece of jewellery.

"For me?" Savos asked, breathless as if he could not believe that anyone would bother to cook for him.

Rashkan nodded.

"You allow me to feed on you every day; it is only appropriate that I show some gratitude," He handed Savos the plate with the crostata before quickly clasping his hands behind his back. Loath as he was to admit it, the hot crostata had left its mark.

"I hope you like it."

Savos smiled broadly, causing the crow's feet around his eyes to crinkle.

Most people looked older when they smiled, but Savos?

Savos was the opposite.

Although he was by no means a handsome man—his features mirrored the cliffs surrounding Winterhold, steep ridges and narrow crevices crossing ashen rock—Rashkan could not help but find himself mesmerised. Smiling made Savos look as if life with all its troubles had not yet worn him down.

For an uncomfortably long minute, Rashkan kept staring, examining every subtle detail and every small crease until, at last, he managed to tear his eyes away. He cleared his throat.

"Do you not wish to eat? I assume you have not had breakfast yet." Motioning at a nearby table, he directed Savos to sit down while he fetched the cutlery.

Despite Savos' quarters being a chaotic void that seemed to swallow everything one needed at the moment, Rashkan had somehow managed to memorise the location of the cutlery: it was in the dresser to the left of Savos' bed along with the teacups and, for some reason, his socks.

"To pad the teacups; they were expensive." Savos had once explained, much to Rashkan's bewildered amusement. He smiled and took what he needed.

Meanwhile, Savos sat down at the table and set the plate carrying the crostata in front of him.

Judging by Savos' expression, he would gobble up the crostata face first if Rashkan were to withhold the cutlery even a moment longer. How lovely that something as simple as a dessert could delight his friend so.

"Here you are." Rashkan laid the cutlery out on the table. "Enjoy."

Savos shot him a last eager glance and jammed the fork into the snowberry filling before slicing through the dough, which crunched and cracked under the pressure of the knife.

Before Rashkan could blink twice, the first bite had already vanished in Savos' mouth.

"Oh! Oh, what—," Savos leaned back in his chair, covering his mouth with his hand to apologise for speaking with his mouth full. Only when he had swallowed did he continue.

"Oh, what a delight!" He raised his fork, pointing it at Rashkan. "Those notes of almond and cinnamon and—is that nutmeg?"

"Mace, actually."

Savos nodded.

"Mace... who would've thought. Oh, but here I am eating while you have to watch—Wait, can you even eat normal food?" He sliced into the crostata again, snowberry filling spilling onto the plate below.

Rashkan sat down opposite Savos. He vaguely remembered the taste of snowberries, their crisp fruitiness and how well it mixed with sugar, almonds and mace, creating the perfect blend of sweet and fruity.

Oh, how tempting it had been, how seductive the smell of the finished crostata.

Yet when Rashkan had snacked on the crumbs littering the little communal cooking corner, they tasted like ash.

"No, but I wish I could; the smell drove me crazy. I hope I got the taste right; I am afraid I could not try the result. I wanted to ask Phinis or perhaps Mirabelle, but well, it is the busiest time of day."

Savos nodded, retreating into his head. "If this is my reward for feeding you, you may gladly drain me dry. What's a little anaemia, after all?"

From what he had witnessed of college cuisine so far, it was a worthy sacrifice. Procuring the spices had been difficult enough, and likely, they were the only ones left in all of Winterhold until the next supply delivery.

"I bet," Rashkan chuckled, "You deserve something edible for a change."

Instead of laughing, Savos dropped the fork and his shoulders and glanced at the floor beside him. A few greying streaks of hair swayed before his eyes. "My cooking is not that bad."

It was—According to Mirabelle and Urag and Colette and Phinis and anyone unfortunate enough to try it.

Still, he had not meant to insult but to lighten the mood and make him feel like this was an act of friendship as well as one of duty.

Gently, he brushed the hair out of Savos' face.

"I jest, I jest—please, do not be upset; if I were mortal, surely I would enjoy your creation."

Savos did not seem to listen.

Before Rashkan could react, he had already grabbed the hand that had just freed his view of hair.

"Oh no! What happened?"

Rashkan grit his teeth. If Savos found out he had burned himself while making that crostata—No, Savos would blame himself and that, Rashkan could not allow.

Still, how could he explain the bloated bubble on his pointer finger?

"Nothing—Just a misfired spell."

Rashkan stared at the crostata and thought about the joy it brought Savos.

At least it was worth it.

"Really?" Savos cocked an eyebrow, frowning.

"A misfired spell?"

"Yes, a moment of inattentiveness; nothing to worry about."

Savos' frown turned into a

grandfatherly smile.

"Rashkan." Sticky sweet, each letter of his name rolled off Savos' tongue.

"You're a terrible liar, did you know that?"

A smile was a cruel way to hide disapproval. Rashkan sighed, staring at the floor, feeling as busted as an apprentice caught cheating on an exam.

"I… I did not lie about having been inattentive; I burned myself on the oven when I took out the crostata."

Gods, he felt stupid admitting that. His brother would definitely have laughed and, no doubt Savos too was laughing his ass off behind that kindly old smile. Except his smile faded, and suddenly, he seemed not amused at all.

"This needs treating," Savos mumbled into his beard and closely inspected the wound. It was little more than a bloated purple bubble on his pointer finger—nothing to worry about, right?

"Your crostata—"

"Doesn't matter," Savos got up and rushed to his potion cabinet. Clinking and clattering, he pushed them around, inspecting faded labels and corks, until he finally turned around, holding some small bottles, a set of wipes and gauzes.

"Savos, you really need not—"

It was just a burn, a benign inconvenience that would heal within a day.

"Hush, I don't want to hear any of it." He returned to the table, pushing his crostata aside to make room for his medical equipment. Before Rashkan could protest, Savos' skilled fingers had already forced Rashkan's into medical treatment.

"This needs cleaning," he mumbled as he emptied one of his vials on one of the wipes, coating it in a layer of thick mint green ointment. "And moisturising and …"

Savos continued to prattle on about the necessary procedures to heal what was—despite all his fussing—still just a minor burn. Rashkan no longer bothered to listen.

Instead, he followed Savos' hands while they coated the wound, immediately cooling it. They were so much smaller than his and so much warmer, too.

Kind, gentle hands that were more focused on his well being than the delicious crostata they so rightly deserved.

At last, Savos finished by wrapping his finger in gauze.

"There you are," he smiled and, to Rashkan's surprise, brushed his lips over the wrapped-up wound, mumbling a children's rhyme in what Rashkan vaguely understood as an unfamiliar dialect of Dunmeris.

"S—Savos?" He stammered, quickly withdrawing his hand and hiding both behind his back.

"My mother used to do this whenever I hurt myself," he shot Rashkan a cheeky smile as he packed up the rest of his utensils.

"And since you always mother me so, I thought it fair to let you taste of your own medicine."

Rashkan forced a smile. Was that it? A silly gesture to get back at him? Or was there more to it? Could there even be more to it? Savos was the archmage and older, much older, than him. He was interpreting too much into it. Yes, that had to be the case.

...But even so, whispered a treacherous part of him, would he even mind if not?

Gritting his teeth, Rashkan glanced around the room, trying to avoid Savos at any cost. He was caught up in a whirlwind of incoherent emotions, a rapid vortex messing with his feelings. All too often, they clashed, leaving behind even more confusion. He was all the more thankful when Savos spoke again.

"Now that this is over, I'd like to finish that delicious crostata."

Over.

Was it? Rashkan laid his hands on the table, twiddling his thumbs. No matter how hard he tried, he could not forget the subtle tickling of beard and the faint kiss that followed it.

-----

Rashkan's intuition proved to be correct; a day later, the wound had already healed, save for a tiny bit of scab, and Savos had not shown any signs that the kiss had been more than friendly teasing. A week later, neither Rashkan nor Savos spoke about it anymore. As such, it was all the more surprising that, a whole month later, Rashkan found a pair of purple-striped oven mittens on his bed.

#elder scrolls #skyrim #my scribbles #Savos Aren #Rashkan Atheron #the cursed otp that started it all

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hankwritten · 3 years

Text

Quodlibet

Demoman/Soldier, 2k

Request for ImSorry, College

“How do you even know this guy anyway?” Jeremy asked, leaning over Jane’s back in such a intrusive distillation of his character that this particular instant could have come from any singular moment throughout the semester, right down to the mortal threat to Jane’s class project.

“Watch it, Buster! You are dangerously close to causing the greatest second dolphin extinction event since the invention of the six-pack!”

Trying to dislodge his suitemate, Jane threw his shoulder, pushing Jeremy and his grasping arms backwards and away from the fragile, pseudo-aquatic diorama.

Jeremy slid down Jane’s spine. “Fine, jeez, I wasn’t going to squish your bath toys.” He went boneless just long enough to reach the floor, then promptly popped to his feet and began looking at the aquarium from the other side. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don't know what you mean by ‘this guy’,” Jane grumbled. “This is clearly a diorama. Not a guy.”

“The guy, man,” Scout nagged, and Jane could already feel the migraine coming on. Jeremy was actually the human embodiment of head pains, to the point where sometimes Jane wondered if he had escaped from a lab that had been trying to bio-engineer the most aggravating person in existence. “This guy that’s making you go wackadoo and put like ten times more effort into a freaking GED project than anyone ever should.”

“This has nothing to do with him.” Jane put an aggressive amount of glue on his last dolphin.

“Right, sure,” Jeremy snickered. “But as soon as I said ‘guy you have a weird rivalry with’ you immediately jumped to him.” When Jane grit his teeth, Jeremy laughed again. “So what is it with you two? You didn’t get the urge to start tearing each other’s intellectual dicks off just because of some Economics of Marine Biology class, right?”

“Applied Oceanography,” Jane corrected, pointedly not looking up.

“C’mon pally, you know what I meant-”

“Hrrn nn brrdaa”

The voice of their third and final suitemate spoke up from a nearby beanbag chair, where its owner was trying to ignite a textbook with a lighter.

Jeremy looked to them, then to Jane. “Really? He plays for the Brawlers too?”

“Yes,” Jane snarled. “Mystery solved. The new power guard is in my oceanography class, and now you will shut your trap, shortstop, so that I can proceed to kick his ass in diorama making and prove that I am the superior guard.”

“That ain’t exactly a perfect chain of events, but you do you pally.” Jeremy pulled to the far end of the couch, drawing his legs into a fold. “Ain’t like, you supposed to develop deep-seated rivalries with players from other schools? Not your own?”

“If you met him, you would understand.” Jane placed some cherry bombs at the bottom of the glass tank. “Plus, he-...” Swallowing his fury, he said, “he got me moved to small guard.”

“To- what?”

“Hurmm umma,” their third put in helpfully.

Jeremy absorbed this for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, oh man. There’s literally a position called small guard? That’s- that’s fucking hilarious you gotta admit.”

“I have to admit no such thing!” Jane rounded on him, diverting his attention from his precious project for the first time in over three hours. “I used to be power guard! Then some one-eyed, Scottish, lay-about, freshman comes in and thinks he can take my spot? This is betrayal of the highest order! A perversion of our constitution!”

“Mrra hudda.”

“I do not care if small guard is ‘technically a step up’,” Jane huffed. “Power guard is further to the front. That makes it better.”

“Basketball’s for chumps anyway,” Jeremy said, apparently having derived all the entertainment he’d wanted from the conversation, laying until he could reach his arms behind his head and dropping his legs in Jane’s lap. “You should try out for a real sport. But hey! Hope your little fish tank fills your inadequacy or whatever.”

“Oh it will.” Jane lowered his face to the glass, breath fogging and obscuring the magnum opus within. “It will.”

“And here you will see what happens when America finally colonizes the ocean!” Jane said to the drooling, glassy eyes of an 8am class.

They were significantly less slumberous when he threw a final cherry bomb into his demonstration, causing a chain reaction as dozens of ‘fireworks’ went off under the ocean, celebrating America’s eventual conquest. To really send the message home, he pulled the ripcord in the back, dropping a miniature stars and stripes behind the tank.

“Oorah!” he concluded.

“...Thank you Mister Doe,” the professor said. “Your time allotted for presenting is up.”

He turned and gave her a big thumbs up.

While some staff at Teufort U insisted you call them by their first names, this professor was not one of them, and it was rumored that the TA who had once dared to call her ‘Helen’ in front of her students was never seen again. However, no one could be that much of a hardass all the time; Jane was confident his project had just blown her out of the water (pun intended.)

She eyed his thumbs up with her perpetually sour face. “...That means return to your seat, Mister Doe.”

Jane picked up his aquarium and strolled jauntily back to his desk.

His good mood dissipated as soon as Tavish was announced as the next presenter. The usurper pulled his aquarium in on a cart, a sheet draped over to allow for a dramatic reveal. Dammit. Jane should have thought about dramatic reveals.

Tavish grinned at his audience, whisking away the blanket with a flourish.

“Behold!” he declared. “You’ve heard of desalination to deal with the oncoming global water shortages, but my proposal is this: a complete and total refinement. Salt water? Pah! Whiskey oceans are where it’s at.”

The tanked sloshed, full of something clearly scrumpy or scrumpy adjacent. Within the alcohol floated an awfully realistic looking octopus, expertly crafted and swishing with the tank’s movements. An eyepatch covered its left side.

“With the addition of boozed-based life forms of course, for an entirely new ecosystem.”

Jane curled his lip. Damn. He was good.

“...Mister DeGroot,” the professor said, “might I remind you that this is an alcohol free campus, regardless of any student’s legal status to drink? And, even without that, you are not currently twenty-one years of age?”

“Drinking age is sixteen in Scotland, Ma’am.”

“Sit, DeGroot.”

Tavish sat. He shot Jane a smug grin. Jane scowled.

“That concludes our presentations for today.” If the professor’s voice got any more disappointed, she could have been a ringer for a Badlands Brawlers fan. “As you know, the diorama that scores the highest marks will receive extra credit toward our upcoming final exam. I use the remainder of the class time to grade, and announce the winner shortly. Please return on the bell if you wish to receive those extra credits.”

The ‘bell’, unlike those rinky dinky little red bowl things they had in high school, was actually a proper bell tower, situated over the science building and able to be heard anywhere on campus. This was where Jane retreated to wait out his nerves, pacing around the semi-enclosed area and mulling over his chances. Fine, Tavish’s had been good. He was used to Tavish being good, the bastard, but Jane’s was better, and this time he was going to mop the floor with him.

“I am going to mop the floor with you!” he declared to the heavens.

“Not with that sad display you won’t.”

Jane jumped. A quiet moment of solitude foiled, besieged by his mortal enemy who’d somehow snuck up on him in order to lean cockily against the door to the stairs.

“My display was anything but sad.” Jane shook his fist. “It was joyous! Victorious! Other words that mean not sad!” When Tavish continued to smirk at him, he added, “plus, your idea is bad anyway.”

“Aye?” Tavish challenged. “How so?”

Dammit. Jane hadn’t thought this far. Replacing the oceans with whiskey really did seem foolproof...except…

“If there is no more water, then you can’t make other type of booze either!” he declared triumphantly.

Tavish jaw clenched. Ha! Good. Let him get angry for once.

He walked over and got right in Jane’s face. “Well what about you? How are you going to light off the fireworks underwater?”

“Oil, salt, and various temperature and pressure difference!” Jane didn’t like the other man in his space, and gave him a shove. They were always doing that to each other during practice, blocking and shoulder-checking harder than necessary, doing things that would certainly be penalties in an actual game.

“Who cares?” Tavish shoved him back. “No one’s going to see them anyway.”

Jane grabbed him by the front of the shirt and shouted, “the dolphins will! You would know that if YOU HAD BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.”

One, dangling, aggravating second stretched on, catching friction as they pressed noses and breathed heavy with the effort. Then they reacted simultaneously, lunging forward and attacking each other in mouth to mouth combat.

Jane growled furiously, trying to gain the upper hand, but Tavish was just as motivated not to let him get it. The pair of them sucked at each other’s faces, mastication muscles competing for this year’s WWE championship belt, crashing against the nearest half-wall surrounding the roof. A more wary observer might have worried about them careening over the edge, but Tavish and Jane had more pressing things on their minds. (And ‘more pressing’ was exactly how they were going to resolve it.) Just a whole mismatched ball of absolute frustration as they worked out several months of pent-up attraction.

Their combined rage might have carried them to hell and back, had the bell not struck 9am at that exact moment.

They both screamed, trying desperately to cover their ears as they hundred and fifty year old bell GONGED above them, rattling teeth inside skulls and causing tears to spring to their eyes.

“God! Why don’t they have a warning sign up? Bloody hell!” Tavish moaned, having found his way to the floor and using his beanie to futilely cover his head.

“What???” Jane, who already didn’t have a good ear at the best of times, worried briefly that he’d finally gone deaf.

“What?” Tavish asked. “I can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

“What?”

This went on for several minutes, the two men lying on the floor of the bell tower.

When they finally staggered down to class, it was in a terribly haggard state, and new bruises around their mouths.

“Hello professor,” Tavish, the least winded of them, declared. “It’s alright, you can tell us which one was the winner now. We’ve worked out our differences, and determined to let the best man win.”

“The best man will be me, but yeah what he said!” Jane put in.

“If you’re going for flashy, maybe, but on sheer sustainability-”

“No one’s going to eat alcohol-based sushi, cyclops-”

“Enough,” the professor cut in. “Neither of you won the extra credit points.”

“What?” Tavish gaped. “But ours were the best out of anyone’s! How could we possibly lose?”

“The assignment,” she said in a clipped voice that spoke of years of dealing with the exact idiots that Teufort tended to attract, “was to create a physical display of algae chemical reactions at different levels of light and pressure as found in the oceanic zones. Not only did you not win, you have failed this project. Now, since I have a lecture in Hale Hall in fifteen minutes, I suggest you both move out of my way, otherwise you will not have the chance to recuperate those points on the final exam. Goodbye gentleman.”

She stripped the last of the grading notes off her desk, shoved them into a manila folder, and disappeared out the door.

Tavish and Jane watched her go. The minutes ticked by on the wall mounted analog clock, which probably could have told them the time just as well as the giant bell that had nearly deafened them.

“Hey,” Tavish said, elbowing Jane in the side. “I got to take Basic Intergluteal Numismatics next semester.”

“...Yeah? And?”

“Bet I can solve systematic inflation before you can.”

“Oh, you’re on son.”

#demosolly #tf2 fanfiction

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

Text

Eccentricity [Chapter 5: I’ve Lived The Life And Paid For Every Crime]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: Some Kind Of Disaster by All Time Low.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to drugs and violence.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Tagging: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @writerxinthedark @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @loveandbeloved29

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 💜

Easy Questions, Evasive Answers

“So it was nothing,” Archer said, glancing up from where he was tinkering around beneath the hood of my 1999 Honda Accord, checking hoses and belts and dipsticks. “This is pathetic, by the way. That you can’t change your own windshield wiper fluid. Dishonor on you. Dishonor on your cow.”

“I never had my own car in Phoenix!” I objected around a mouthful of a Starbucks pumpkin muffin, my first of the season. And that was true: Renee and I couldn’t afford one. “I didn’t have to learn about car things!”

“No, it’s great, I love it, I have a customer for life.”

“It was totally nothing,” I told him. Meaning the photograph in the newspaper article from 1979. Meaning my paranoia surrounding beautiful, brooding, certifiably lethal Benjamin Lee.

Not Lee, I reminded myself. Benjamin August Hardy, born November 3rd 1893.

“Was it really?” Archer asked, skeptical.

“Uhhh, you were the one who was making fun of me for thinking he might be a time traveler. Or a bigfoot.” Or a vampire.

“Yeah, okay, true...” He let the hood of the Honda fall shut with a bang, then wiped the muddy streaks of motor oil from his hands with a stained rag. “But you were freaked out. Like super freaked out.”

“I was, yeah. But it wasn’t him in the photo. I took another look, there were freckles and, uh, like, uh, some other things that didn’t match up.”

“Huh.” Archer watched me with an expression I couldn’t read. “I didn’t notice that.”

“Ben laughed about it. Probably thinks I’m an idiot. A stalker and an idiot.”

Archer smirked slyly. “He must not have held it against you too much. I’ve never seen that guy laugh in my life.”

I took a moody bite of my muffin, rolled my eyes, feigned shallow schoolgirl angst. “Trust me, he’s not my biggest fan.”

“Ohhhh, and this bothers you?” Archer sauntered over and stole a crumbling hunk out of the pumpkin muffin. “Does someone have a little crush on the gorgeous, grouchiest Lee?”

“Definitely not.” I sipped my chai latte, contemplative, debating telling him more.

“Uh oh. There’s something else, I can see it. Spill the tea, you walking college-chick-who’s-obsessed-with-fall stereotype.”

“I’m so excited! I’m going to get to see changing leaves this year!” Cacti are majestic, ancient, intrepid, and they remind me of home; but they never change. They’re like desert earth that way, like the ocean. Like vampires, actually.

“We’ll have to do all the Instagram-worthy stuff. Pumpkin patches. Hay mazes. Apple picking...you can even bring that Ben guy if you want to. If he promises not to murder me with his mysterious time-travelling demon powers.”

Oh, kid, you have no idea. “So...I am kind of into a Lee guy. But it’s not Ben.”

Archer gasped, inhaled pumpkin muffin morsels, bent over as he hacked them out of his lungs. “Who?!” he rasped, scandalized, and then coughed again.

I couldn’t help but smile as his name spilled out: “Joe.”

“Which one is that? The Middle Eastern Men’s Vogue model one?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “No, not Rami. He has a girlfriend, by the way.” And has for the past half a century.

Archer wiggled his eyebrows. “Just because there’s a goalie doesn’t mean you can’t score.”

“Oh my god, please never say that phrase again.”

“Joe is the...” He closed his eyes as he drummed his fingers against the metal workbench, trying to remember.

“The Italian one,” I finished for him.

“Ahhh. The annoying one.”

“He is not annoying! Why do people keep saying he’s annoying?! He’s hilarious, and sweet, and lowkey wicked smart, and, and, and...”

Archer whistled, grinning, his dark eyes sparkling. “Damn, girl. You do like him. You really like him.”

I sighed in defeat. “Okay. I really, really like him.”

“Like him as in would swipe right on Tinder, or like him as in you want to get married and honeymoon in Hawaii and have twelve pasty, angular babies?”

“Oh wow.” And for the first time, I was confronted with the singular enigma that was a future with Joe. Vampires had relationships with other vampires, obviously, even marriages; but that didn’t mean the same rules applied to humans. Did he like me? Could he like me? What would that even look like? How would it end? And it would have to end, of course, eventually. Unless somehow I stopped aging too. “More than just a right swipe. We’ll see about the twelve kids.”

“Just make sure he wraps it before he taps it. I’m too young to be an uncle.”

“Stop,” I pleaded, gulping down my latte, averting my gaze across Archer’s small garage filled with customers’ vehicles, pretending not to be intrigued and yearning and petrified. I couldn’t imagine hooking up with someone as faultless and—presumably—experienced as Joe and being anything but a disappointment. I’ve never hooked up with anyone. At all. Ever.

“What?” he asked, concerned, thieving another piece of my pumpkin muffin. Powdered sugar dusted his fingers like the snow I’ve only seen two or three times in my life.

“Nothing. I just really wish you went to Calawah too.”

“And give up all this easy money from clueless suburbs people like you?” Archer beamed, wily and proud and affectionate. “Not a fucking chance.”

No More Sad Spaghetti

Joe gawked in horror, chomping noisily on his Big League Chew bubblegum, as I unwrapped the peanut butter sandwich I’d packed for lunch. It was mostly cloudy in the early September sky overhead, but he was still wearing sunglasses. He had traded in his ubiquitous U Chicago apparel for a Cubs t-shirt. Squirrels scurried through the bigleaf maple trees that dotted the campus, snatching up acorns with tiny clawed paws, wriggling whiskered noses in our direction.

“What’s your problem?” I asked, taking a bite. “It’s not sad spaghetti.”

He blew a small pink bubble, then popped it with his teeth. “Yeah, but it’s...like...mangled.”

“It got trapped between my textbooks!” I protested. Admittedly, the accordion-shaped peanut butter sandwich—my vegetarian alternative to fishstick Thursday—kind of sucked.

“You can’t eat that. Oh my god. It’s making me so sad. Give it to the squirrels.” Joe pulled out his iPhone. “What’s your preferred pizza topping?”

“I can’t tell you,” I replied, tossing my sandwich towards the nearest tree. A hoard of squirrels immediately descended upon it and proceeded to battle for dominance, emitting shrill, peanut-butter-crazed shrieks.

His brow furrowed. “Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because you might not like me anymore.”

“Why would I not like you because of pizza...?” And then he knew. “Oh no, oh god, please don’t say pineapple.”

“I’m a pineapple pizza person.”

“Baby Swan,” Joe said, deadly serious, pressing his palms together. “That is straight up sacrilegious. You can’t put tropical fruit on a pizza. You realize I’m Italian, like an actual Italian. I’m so Italian I’ve killed other Italians for being the wrong kind of Italian. That’s how Italian I am.”

“I feel like maybe I shouldn’t socialize with literal mobsters. It’s unsavory.”

“Settle down, I’m ordering the half-pineapple pizza, you freaking barbarian.”

I watched Joe as he tapped his thumbs against the screen, humming to himself, amused, perpetually buoyant. And I couldn’t picture him as a monster, as a killer: pulling triggers, slitting throats, digging blades into soft vulnerable love handles, feeling for the mortal puncture of a lung or kidney. I asked him, my voice quiet, hesitant, almost lost in the autumn wind: “Did you actually hurt people?”

“Nah. I didn’t have the stomach for it, even back then. I was on the deal-making side of things. The business side. I was a people person, a smooth talker, astronomically charming.”

I smiled, mischievous. “That’s difficult to imagine.”

“Okay, so no cheesy breadsticks for you.”

“I’m sorry, mob guy. Please order the breadsticks. You’re so charming I can’t stand it. My jeans are unzipping all by themselves.”

He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “So you’ll sacrifice your dignity for breadsticks. Good to know.” He finished typing and laid his iPhone on the grass. “Alright, next question.”

“Does your hair grow?” Joe’s hair—I couldn’t help but notice—seemed longer than it was the day I met him a week and a half ago, disorderly and auburn-tinted, ruffling in the breeze.

“It does, yeah. Hair and nails still grow. So you have to shave, but you can’t get razor burn. And any nicks close right up.”

“Very cool. How often do you need to eat? You know...actually eat.”

“It varies, but generally twice a week.”

“And what kind of animal has the tastiest blood? Besides...well...” I gestured towards myself. “The upright two-legged kind with opposable thumbs and a partiality for pineapple pizza.”

He blew another bubble, then leaned in towards me. And I realized, for the first time, that he had his own inherent, exclusive, totally Bath-And-Body-Works-worthy scent as well; Dr. Gwilym Lee was sandalwood and campfires and log cabins, Mercy was roses and vanilla...and Joe was pine trees, peppermint, cold night air, like all of that eternally youthful magic of Christmas Eve sieved into a bottle. I popped the sheer pink bubble with the cap of my blue pen. Joe asked: “Do humans like chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Coffee or tea? Baseball or something hella lame?”

“Depends on the human.”

“Exactly. Same deal for vampires. I prefer bears, especially grizzlies. Lucy and Mercy like deer, elk, moose, animals like that. Ones with hooves. Weirdly, Rami’s favorite is crocodile, I think because it was the first thing he ever tried in Egypt. He doesn’t get it very often, but has been known to buy them on the black market on occasion. Scarlett likes mountain lions. Also domestic cats, but you didn’t hear that from me. Gwil is a wolf guy, but he won’t kill the endangered kinds. Such a gentleman.”

“How about Ben?”

“Ben’s still coming around to the whole eating animals thing. I don’t think he has a favorite yet.”

Joe isn’t a killer, and he never was; I could believe that. But Ben... “Why is he so different than the rest of you?”

“That’s...kind of a long story,” Joe replied carefully.

“It wouldn’t be such a long story if people stopped talking about how it’s a long story and actually told it to me.”

He flashed a grin, revealing white canine teeth filed into points; they were subtle, yes, but they were there. Fangs. I envisioned pressing a fingerprint against them and feeling the flesh split in two, the blood dripping down onto his tongue like Washington rain. And unlike Joe’s skin, mine wouldn’t knit back together on its own. “But then I wouldn’t have the pleasure of tormenting you with the prospect of incredibly juicy yet confidential information!”

I rolled my eyes, sipped my can of Diet Coke, returned my attention to our lunch plans. “So garlic doesn’t repel you. That part of the lore is completely made up.”

“Yup. Thank god. Eternal life would be worthless without pizza.”

“Can you do drugs? Get drunk?”

“We can’t overdose, but we can get the effects of anything we consume. It’s not a good habit to get into though. If you’re nodding on heroin for like four days at a time, it’s pretty easy for some other vampire to find and murder you.”

“So a vampire can be killed by another vampire.”

“Absolutely. Next question.”

I consulted my mental list. “Do you sleep?”

“Yeah. Well, kind of. We nap for a few hours a day.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“We get bitchy. Really bitchy. We essentially turn into Ben.”

I laughed, chewing absentmindedly on the end of my pen. “So that’s his problem. He hasn’t napped in a century. Now it all makes sense.”

“Something like that,” Joe said. “You gonna come over tonight?”

“I don’t know. I’m supposed to present The Walruses And Me tomorrow and I still haven’t started the book.”

“What do you know, I can tell you all about The Walruses And Me!”

“Seriously? You’ve read it?”

“No, but I can enthusiastically narrate the Wikipedia article to you while you pet Mercy’s alpacas.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“Terrible for your grade in Marine Mammals. Good for your development as an interesting and happy human.”

“Nice try, but I’m already both of those things.”

Joe reached out suddenly, jarringly, and ran the back of his hand across my cheek. My favorite Lee, I thought, thoroughly transfixed but trying to hide it. Oh no. “Interesting, definitely. But I have this gnawing, distressing suspicion that you’re still working on the happy part.”

“I miss the desert,” I confessed. That wasn’t quite all of the problem, but it was accurate: I missed the heat, the sun, the parched prehistoric air I had always called home. Although I was beginning to find reasons to like Forks, Charlie and Archer and the promise of a Pacific Northwestern autumn; and then one big reason in particular. A very old, pale, chatty, Italian reason.

“A bit of a quandary for a future marine biologist,” he replied gently, perhaps apprehensively.

“I always figured I’d live somewhere like San Diego or Los Angeles or Galveston. Someplace on the ocean, but also sunny and hot and with palm trees. The best of both worlds. But you couldn’t go there with me, could you?”

Oh no.

Oh NO.

Oh fuck, this is definitely a crushing-on-Lee-boys zone.

Joe stared at me through his sunglasses, chomping on his Big League Chew, the corners of his mouth turned up and etching lines like parentheses into his face, pleased and nodding slowly and triumphant somehow. Then he struck out his hand again, this time with his pinky raised like a flagpole. “No more pathetic depressing lunches.”

“You got it. No more sad spaghetti. No more sad peanut butter sandwiches. You have my solemn, human vow.”

He smiled as his pinky entwined with mine. “No more sad anything.”

“So this vampire thing sounds like a pretty sweet gig. No dying, no consequences for a hellacious diet or wild condomless orgies, literal superpowers, perfect hair...why doesn’t everyone get to live that way?”

He shrugged; and there was an unfamiliar, meditative tension in his face. Almost sorrow. “It’s not all pizza and orgies and heroin. We have weaknesses too.”

“Like what?”

“Hey, look!” Joe piped cheerfully, twisting around towards the parking lot. “I think our GrubHub guy is here.”

Bad Blood

I was definitely regretting that fourth slice of pineapple pizza as I waddled into Chemistry, navigating sluggishly around the hulking frat boys and giggling sorority girls and mousy bookish types who lugged around colossal backpacks that were always threatening to knock an unsuspecting passerby off their feet at each unthinking turn. But while I was arriving in the classroom—physically, anyway; emotionally I was standing in an empty field somewhere screaming I cannot be falling in love with a hundred-year-old mobster vampire!! into the void—Ben was a countercurrent darting through the crowds and towards the hallway door.

“Where are you rushing off to, old guy?” I asked him. “Bingo? To renew your AARP membership? To walk vigorously around the inside of a mall?”

Ben responded in that deep, low, humorless voice. “They’re doing some kind of blood typing experiment today. I probably shouldn’t be around for that.”

“Oh.” I glanced over at Professor Belvin, who was indeed hunched over the table at the front of the classroom and laying out rows of Q-tips and rectangular paper cards and alcohol swabs and bottles of clear liquid, whistling what sounded like Time Of The Season.

Ben sighed irritably, rubbing his crinkled forehead. “I already used up all my absences. I’m gonna have to make up a compelling last-minute tragedy. Tell Professor Belvin my grandma died or something.”

“I mean, technically, she did at some point.”

“Ugh,” Ben replied, not consoled at all.

“Wait, I got this.”

I gripped my belly, sank into the nearest chair, and groaned dramatically. It really didn’t require all that much acting. Ben watched with huge green eyes, confounded.

“Miss Swan!” Professor Belvin cried, rushing over. He was wearing khaki pants, a white shirt, and suspenders and a matching bowtie patterned with bubbling multicolored test tubes. Belvin had been Charlie’s classmate from kindergarten through high school, and still palled around with him over Bud Lights and low-quality nachos on bowling league nights. Bowling was, evidently, the sport of choice for middle-aged Forks dads. Also for Welsh vampire pseudo-dads born in the 1400s.

I whimpered in reply.

“Are you alright, Miss Swan?” Professor Belvin asked worriedly. A few students had begun to congregate around the scene. I felt a pang of genuine nausea as perspiration beaded at my temples. You better appreciate this, Mr. Hardy.

“I’m okay,” I said, in my most pained and martyrish voice. “I don’t want to miss...today’s lesson...it looks so fascinating...but I didn’t wash my kale thoroughly last night and then I had a salad for dinner and now I might have food poisoning.”

“You poor thing!” Belvin exclaimed, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about class. You can just answer some textbook questions or something, no problem. Please go get checked out to make sure you’re alright.”

“Could someone...maybe...help me get to the campus clinic...?” My eyes listed towards Ben. “Maybe...my lab partner?”

“That’s a good idea.” Professor Belvin turned to Ben. “Mr. Lee, would you be willing to escort Miss Swan to the clinic? You can do an alternative assignment as well. If you don’t mind missing the blood typing lab.”

“I’d be delighted to help,” Ben responded, still puzzled. I offered him my hand, and Ben took it, grimacing as he led me out into the hallway. As soon as we were alone, he dropped my hand and opened up several feet of space between us.

“Thanks so much, Miss Swan, you are a lifesaver,” I said, imitating his morose, rumbling British accent. “Oh, you’re very welcome, Ben. You can repay me in basic courteous conversation and Starbucks gift cards and by maybe not killing me.”

“So you’re totally fine?” Ben asked flatly.

“Of course. Nobody with taste eats raw kale.”

Frowning, frustrated, he started puffing on his vape pen. “You need to stop doing nice things for me. It’s extremely disorienting.”

“This may be difficult for you to come to terms with, but you, Ben Hardy, are worth being the recipient of nice things.”

“No, you still don’t get it,” he snapped, grabbing my wrist, spinning me around to face him in the empty hallway. “That’s all I’ve ever done. Kill people like you.”

The Fire

“Who is the cutest little alpaca I’ve ever seen?!” I cooed in a squeaky falsetto, scratching her wooly brown chin. “Who’s going to come home and live with me and Charlie forever?!”

“That’s illegal, ma’am.” Joe was watching me, arms crossed over his Chicago Cubs t-shirt, smiling wistfully.

“It is not!”

“It actually is,” Rami added. He was lying on the grass and gazing up into the roiling, grey, late-afternoon clouds with his fingers laced behind his black hair. None of the Lees were wearing sunglasses now. “A house has to be zoned as farmland to have alpacas, which ours is. Yours, tragically, is not.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” I shot back.

Rami grinned. “I was once. And I will be again, in approximately...let me count...five years.”

“That’s what you want to do with your boundless time and energy? Be a corporate shill?”

Joe cackled. “He tried that already. It lasted about five minutes.”

“Manhattan in the 1980s,” Rami reminisced dreamily. “Hundred-hour workweeks. Cocaine everywhere. What a time to be alive. And I hardly ever left the office, so the sunlight thing wasn’t a problem.”

“Okay, so you’re not in it for the Maseratis or the drugs...”

“I’m going to be an immigration attorney,” Rami told me. “Help refugees apply for asylum to come to the United States. Arabic-speaking refugees, in particular.”

“Wow. I stand corrected. That’s wonderful, Rami. I now feel like a total tool for only aspiring to save sea turtles.” But it made sense, of course. What would any good person spend eternity doing? Making the world just a tiny bit better. I glanced at Joe, teasing him. “And you just study how to get rich, huh?”

“I’m a venture capitalist,” he said brightly. “I invest in small businesses, counsel them, encourage them, connect them with other people in the industry, help them grow. And I don’t need the money, so I take a practically microscopic equity stake. I’m basically a professional charitable donor.”

“And you get to put all of those charming mob-guy skills to use.”

Joe winked. “Exactly.”

“Doesn’t it get old?” I asked both of them. “Being college students?”

Rami shrugged. “No really. The world changes, schools of thought evolve, our own interests fluctuate. Every few decades we circle back and go for another round, fresh degrees, maybe new professions entirely. You learn something new every time.”

“And I’ve been waiting for all my old professors to die so I could go back to U Chicago for fifty years!” Joe shouted. “I’m fucking pumped!”

“But...don’t you already know everything...?”

Joe chuckled. “We’re vampires, Baby Swan, we’re not prodigies. We’re sharper than the average person, sure. But it still takes effort to learn. And we all have things we suck at.”

“Like not being obnoxious,” Rami said, nodding to Joe.

“Like not minding our own fucking business,” Joe hurled back.

“I cannot control the fact that I’m a literal mind reader—”

“You boys behave yourselves,” Mercy called in her relaxed, drawling Southern accent, swinging a basket of carrots and zucchinis and cabbages that she’d dug out of her garden, wearing a long flowing yellow dress and her hair tied up in a scarf. She plodded over in her bare feet, handed me a few carrots, then pointed to the chocolate-colored alpaca I was petting. “That lady there is Athens. And the black and white one by Joe is Augusta. Then there’s Norcross, and Alpharetta, and Savannah...and that real chubby grey one heading into the barn is Marietta.”

“I adore them,” I replied, beaming. Mercy had sheep and pigs and a couple of cows too, all ambling contently around the emerald green field as the first threads of fiery, rust-hued sunset were lighting up the horizon.

“We used to have ducks, too,” Mercy mused. “But they disappeared recently...”

Rami passed Joe a knowing smirk. Joe mouthed back menacingly: Do not.

“Hey mom,” Rami piped.

Joe jabbed an index finger at him. “No, don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare—”

“Joe ate the ducks.”

“You bitch!” Joe cried.

“Oh, Joseph,” Mercy sighed mournfully, lifting a brush out of her basket and dragging it down Athens’ fuzzy back.

“I’m sorry! It was one time! I was weak!”

“I’m not angry, sweetheart,” Mercy said. “I’m just disappointed.”

“Mom, that’s worse!”

Rami climbed to his feet and swatted grass and leaves off his cardigan sweater. “Alright folks. My work here is done. Peace out.”

“Oh no, you don’t get to do a hit and run like that, hey, Rami, hey, hey, come back here!”

Joe trotted after him, shouting a litany of insults, as Rami laughed hysterically and careened into the house. Lucy and Gwil were in the kitchen baking chocolate chip cookies; Scarlett was in the garage changing the brakes on Ben’s Vantage; Ben was noticeably absent from the Lee household and presumably out hunting. It was remarkably easy to picture his fingers closing around bloodied flesh, a wolf’s or a bear’s or an elk’s, lowering his fangs to a pulsing jugular.

“So you’re really into this whole farming thing,” I said to Mercy, looking out over the field rimmed by towering western hemlock trees. I didn’t know exactly how many acres of land the Lees owned, but it was a lot. Mercy adopted rescue animals, donated vegetables from the garden to local food pantries, and occasionally rented out the barn as a wedding venue.

“I’ve always loved it. I had a farm, you know. Before I met Gwil.”

Before she died.

“I didn’t know that,” I murmured, wanting to learn more, afraid to ask, never meaning to pry or offend. “I remember you mentioned the Civil War, and a barn...being...well...being trapped in it. When it burned down.”

Mercy nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that’s the polite version of the story, isn’t it?” She set down her basket in the tall grass, tugged distractedly at a dark strand of hair that had escaped her scarf, stared glassily out into the sunset muted with cloud cover as Athens moseyed away. “Do you want to know what happened? I’ll tell you if you do. But I don’t want to upset you, dear.”

My voice was barely a whisper. “I’d like to know.”

“We had a little farm out in the middle of nowhere,” Mercy explained. “My husband Arthur and I.”

And it felt so outlandish to hear her say those words. Husband. She had a husband before Gwil. She had a whole life before this one.

“He had a bullet in one leg and a limp from a hunting accident when he was a boy, so he was never called up to enlist. It was a rich man’s war, but it was the poor men they sent to die in it. That’s how it always goes, I expect. And how it always will. We had two daughters, twelve and fifteen. I won’t tell you their names. Don’t take that personally, dear. I haven’t spoken their names in a hundred and fifty years.”

She turned her murky eyes—like homemade bread crust or coffee or the wood walls of a log cabin—to me.

“When the Union Army came through, they were beasts. Men like that...men who have been killing and looting and burning their way across hundreds of miles...all they want to do is get blood on their hands. That’s all they remember how to do. So that’s exactly what they did. They slaughtered our cattle for meat. They burned the house down. And then they took me and my girls, and they...they...well, you know what they did. What men do when they’re monsters. And when Arthur tried to stop them, they shot him in the chest and spit mouthfuls of chewing tobacco on him as he bled out in the dirt. Called him a coward and a deserter. Told him everything they were planning to do to me and my girls. And when they were done doing all of those things, they locked the three of us in the barn and set it ablaze. I was the only one still alive when Gwilym got there. And believe me, I didn’t want to be.”

“I’m so sorry,” I breathed, my throat burning for Mercy, for her family, for this divinely kind and benign and tender woman.

She patted my cheek fondly. “It’s alright, sweetheart. It’s not your fault. I got a second chance. Gwilym gave me a second chance. That’s what he does, you know. He finds broken people, fixes them, loves them fiercely. He gave me forever. Two more daughters. And three sons.”

Three sons, I thought. Rami and Joe and Ben. She counted Ben.

“Does someone have to be dying?” I asked her softly. “You know. To become like you.”

“No, honey. That’s just how Gwil does things.”

“But...why? What’s the possible downside? Why not change anyone who wants it?” Why not change someone like me?

And Mercy peered over at me, contemplative, curious, like tiptoeing gingerly over rotted floorboards, like weaving through a minefield. Like she was trying to figure out what I’d already been told.

“Hey Baby Swan,” Joe said, startling me. I whirled to see him waiting with a patient smile and his hands buried in his pockets. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

He led me upstairs to Gwil’s 1960s-style office, where Dr. Lee had cleaned and stitched the tiny gash in my forehead after my misadventure with Ben in the woods outside Calawah University, where the wall above the sturdy oak desk was adorned with a massive painting filled with gorgeous, unfamiliar, inhuman faces. Joe took a deep breath, and then he began.

“This,” he announced, introducing the painting, “is the vampire version of the mob. They can trace their existence back to before the Roman Empire. They find people who they think have potential, have talents. They turn them. And then they offer them a hundred-year contract. You sign it, or they murder you. When your term is up, you get to decide whether to renew or leave. But almost no one ever leaves. After a century of taking orders and guarding and killing, what else do you know how to do?” He pointed to the terrifying woman with long white hair and red eyes. “That’s Liesl. She’s literally Satan, only blonder. The chick with the tattoos is Akari. She can meet a human and tell what powers they’ll have once they’re changed. Very useful, obviously. The dude who looks like Idris Elba is Cato, and he’s actually an okay guy, he’s the one currently assigned to keep tabs on Gwil’s coven...”

I soaked the names in like rain into dark, lush Washington earth as Joe relayed them to me, strange and beautiful names: Aruna, Phelan, Morana, Adair, Zora, Araminta, Honora, Victorien, Rigel, Sahel.

“Who’s that?” I asked, gesturing to the young man standing at the center of the painting, the one with black hair and eyes so light and luminous a brown they were almost gold and a sinister, unmistakable magnetism.

“Very good question,” Joe complimented. “That’s their Al Capone. That’s Larkin.”

“And what’s his vampire superpower?” He has to have one. I know he does.

“How do I even put that into words? It’s more than charisma. It’s slightly less than mind reading. He can see through people, what they want most, what they fear. And he can make them do things.”

I gazed into those omniscient glowing eyes, feeling myself getting caught there, feeling some primal dread swelling in the capillary beds of my heart and lungs and bone marrow. “Joe, I’m thoroughly enjoying this captivating backstory, really, but...why are you telling me all of this now?”

“Because you asked why Ben is so different than the rest of us. This is why.” Joe waved broadly at the painting, at the closest thing his world had to a mafia, to unrepentant killers, to actual demons. “This is where he came from.”

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seenvs3000-21 · 3 years

Text

My Journey as an Interpreter

When this course began, I was in the dark about the whole concept of nature interpretation. Unsurprisingly, I assumed it would mainly entail developing increased awareness and mindfulness when spending time outdoors. I figured this course would help me learn to share those experiences with audiences from all kinds of unique backgrounds. My role as an interpreter before ENVS*3000 focused on topics surrounding my studies as a science student. Being in university has a way of making school the primary lens through which you perceive the world; at least, that has been my experience. As a result, when I look at the world around me, it is easy to recognize the ecosystems at play and the unique interactions happening within them that are essential no matter how small. As a science student in my final year of study, the natural world's complexity is evident, and for me, this is one of the most humbling thoughts to entertain. It is crucial as an interpreter to be mindful of the natural world's sheer magnitude, something often overlooked by the anthropocentric society we are immersed in.

In nearly any situation, humanity has a way of commanding attention, but learning how the complex systems at work in nature genuinely are, makes it clear that it really is a delicate balance. It can also be an eye-opener for many to realize humans are not as pivotal to Earth's well-being and function as we are conditioned to believe. Humans have less control over the world than we would like to admit. Although the environment is plagued by the seemingly infinite number of challenges resulting from human activity, the wilderness will and always should stay out of our control. As interpreters, it should be our role to help others recognize the power and knowledge found within nature and the positivity it can bring to our lives when we do our part to care for it and maintain its integrity. When we care for the Earth, it cares for us by healing our psyche and fostering our physical well-being.

Photo by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash

My development as a nature interpreter is heavily influenced by my personal morals and the belief that good interpreters should share the knowledge and power nature offers. The things most important to me that define my personal ethics as an individual and as an interpreter are respect, integrity, and the value knowledge holds. As interpreters, our primary role is to share the knowledge we have with others so that they may achieve the same benefits we do as a result of forming a meaningful connection with nature. Additionally, I think it is our job to teach others how we know to be respectful of the environment in sustainable ways to maintain the integrity of our natural surroundings. When discussing my development as an interpreter, my mind automatically jumps to my future role as a science teacher. I am starting my Bachelor of Education this upcoming fall to teach high school science, a clear showcase of my priority to share the invaluable knowledge that exists in the field of science with others.

I have always loved sharing what I have learned with people around me, even if it's just a remarkable fact I learned in class that week with a friend or even my mom. The key here is how significant knowledge and learning is to me, and I think this goes hand in hand with honesty, integrity, and respect, morals by which I try to live my life. While these factors are those by which I guide the actions and decisions I make in my life, they are also the ones I focus on when interacting with the natural world around me. Being respectful is one of the most important things to keep in mind when getting out and experiencing nature, especially to maintain the integrity of the ecosystems and the organisms that rely on them. Connecting back to my future as an interpreter through the role of science teacher, I can share these ethics with the students who enter my classroom and show them the importance of the environment and how they can personally maintain nature's integrity.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Continuing my role as an interpreter through teaching science introduces a variety of responsibilities. First and foremost, teaching youth to respect the environment and do what they can to improve nature's conditions whenever possible. Environmental stewardship offers benefits to the domain directly, but it also provides an outlet for individuals to connect and spend time outdoors. I believe nature holds so much power, be it in terms of psychological relief from stress or anxiety or a physical escape from the hustle-bustle we are affronted by in modern society. I believe it is a gift to be shared, and that is our responsibility as teachers and as interpreters of the natural world. As mentioned in Rodenburg's article (2019), today's youth simply are not getting outside to experience nature the way many of us did as kids, even though that really was not so long ago. In a world that has been rapidly developing new technologies for even more convenience, people are beginning to forget to slow down and appreciate what is around them, and children are not exempt from this. It is so important to foster the connection between humanity and the environment to avoid "nature deficit disorder," a term coined by Richard Louv in the textbook (Beck et al. 2019) to describe the detachment between humanity and nature.

Throughout history, nature and humanity have always been intertwined; one can never exist without the other, so nature deficit disorder can introduce various challenges. Perpetuated by modern society, nature deficit disorder can manifest in countless ways that exemplify the physical, social, and cognitive deficits that result from the disconnect with nature (Beck et al., 2019). Teachers have so much power to initiate reform by educating and inspiring their students who will grow up to be the policy-makers, business owners, scientists, teachers ultimately, the future caretakers of the world. The impact teachers can have on their students is undeniable, which is a primary aspect of effective interpreters, which is a significant reason I decided to pursue a career in teaching to make a difference.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Everyone will have a unique perception of the broad privileges granted by the environment that expresses the individuality between people. As an interpreter, it is vital to focus on the various things that catch different individuals' attention, providing insight into the unique personal relationship held with nature and their relationships with others and even within themselves. There is a valuable connection between humans and the environment from the deep evolutionary history that forever links the two. Creating a strong relationship with nature and helping others to do so will aid mental wellness by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, elevating mood and reestablishing attention to the physical health benefits that include promoting cardiovascular health and reducing obesity by staying active. There are many benefits to support the power of getting involved in the environment and building a personal relationship with nature. I believe that to be one of the responsibilities of a nature interpreter and a science teacher.

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

This course provided invaluable knowledge about how to reach a variety of audiences, but more importantly, it allowed me to gain insight into my personal relationship with nature. While learning techniques to improve the way I can share my own interpretations with others has been amazing to prepare me for my time in teachers' college. The enhanced relationship with the natural world has provided me with much needed benefits and escape from symptoms of nature deficit disorder and many other aspects of nature I had never recognized before this course. I always knew the importance of the environment when it comes to science, of course, and in art based on the numerous art pieces or musical creations inspired by nature. This course expanded my appreciation for the incredible impact nature has had on humanity throughout history, but it is even more important in society today.

Thanks for a great semester everyone!!

Sierra 🌼

References:

Rodenburg, J. (2019). Why Environmental Educators Shouldn’t Give Up Hope | CLEARING: A Nonprofit Magazine for Environmental Education in the Pacific Northwest. clearingmagazine.org. https://clearingmagazine.org/archives/14300

Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2019). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage: For a better world. Urbana: Sagamore Publishing

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silvrwore-blog · 5 years

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---------- OOC.

hi im mitch : ) im a big f*king idiot, too. let me preface this by saying it is currently uhhhhhh 6 AM est and i still haven’t slept yet !!! i thunk i started this around 10 PM last night but im slow. really slow. everything about this ??? a hot mess ™ . it isn’t going to make a lick of sense !! but thanks for stopping by sdkjsadklsd. anywhomst im mitch, i’m twenty, in the est, and im ready to rock and roll buckaroo. my guy here? he’s an idiot. but he’s my idiot. therefore, i have to love him. the history is long ( i know because i started there first ) so ill make a little tl;dr with some simplified notes on him. i think that covers ??? everything ?? so far ? im always down to plot in the DMs or i have discord at oovoo javer #4855 mwuah !!

---------- APPLICATION.

( jack lowden, twenty-seven, cismale, he/him ) – have you seen bennett sharpe, the financial strategy student around oxford yet? i hear they can be conforming and convivial, but those who know them insist they’re reminded of beige turtlenecks and plaid blazers, eraser shavings on an old oak desk, and eagerly belting out the latest tunes when they’re around. rumor has it that due to stress, he had a breakdown in high school that put him a year behind his peers and his family has tried to cover it up. is it true? only time will tell… ( mitch, twenty, she/her, est )

---------- HISTORY.

THEY’D ALMOST STRUCK GOLD with bennett sharpe. smart enough not to have to buy your way into college, but not smart enough for his peers to despise him. the gusto of an entertainer and the charm of a damn good politician ------------ but they’d never been quite able to buff out that chip on his shoulder.

the sharpe’s were an interesting case. too good to slum it with the poor folk but not rich enough to always be able to sit at the BIG table. a family who paved their way in law and then literature. blood in the supreme courts and in those scandelous little novels that housewives sipped a glass of wine over. at least that had been his mother’s contribution to the family fortune ----- a wonderful dinner conversation.

--------- “ oh mother, what raunchy debauchery are you slaving away at now ? “

bennett was the oldest of three ( followed by one girl and then another boy ). he was a good son. would have been a real golden child to anyone else --- well, with a little love, care & patience. normal family things. from a young age he had a memory unmatched and a love of strategy games. a youth who loved to test his brain. which was fine and dandy, however, it wasn’t quite leading up to being a judge. he wasn’t following in his family’s footsteps. he’d gotten a little... off track. he had just been better with numbers. money crunching. equations. it had been a tough pill for his family to swallow but swallow it they would. afterall, it hadn’t been their biggest concern when it came to their oldest son.

it had always been there. carefully covered up with the occasional “ he’ll grow out of it “ or “ stop it. nothing is wrong. “ maybe that had been the real giveaway to why he’d never amount to anything big. “ he’s FRAIL. no spine. “ a good and competent doctor would have had him diagnosed and taken care of. seventeen and he’s missing classes but not for normal rich kid things. the world’s bigger and scarier than it ever was. college and a future right around the corner, parental pressure, it snowballs until it is all too much. one day of important testing and bennett sharpe never shows. he had not been on campus at all. sometimes when the panic became too much, it did him well to distract his mind ---- go outside. count the blades of grass or the birds in the sky. breathe. it’s what he had done that afternoon. left and tried to sate his mind. but nothing had done it for him that day. nothing to cure him. the world? bleak. the future? uncertain. weapy and tore down. the little devil on his shoulder named ‘ desperation ‘. he needed out. his parents phone and the message becomes crystal clear...

--------- “ i can’t do this. “

so he’d ‘” turned tail and ran “, branded some sort of listless coward. he didn’t know what was wrong with himself, nor did his parents. the only thing they were certain of was that they would not have a son coming apart at the seams. they’d grilled him. no one was going to take him seriously or he’d never find himself in any important position if he was always going to go chicken. a breakdown never looked good. it did not matter to the rich or the poor, one would still be ridiculed. but corporations wanted someone steely, confident, put-together. all the things bennett was not becoming. so they’d contacted his school - wrote it off as a vacation. save face. “ oh i got bored. decided to go to switzerland instead ! couldn’t miss it, you see a chance of a lifetime had just presented itself to me, so.... “. however, no donations or pleading on his parents part were going to make up lost time. bennett was held back a year for being unable to complete the necessary testing and exams. oh how he would have to sell that vacation. but it hadn’t quite been a vacation, had it? long days trying to put together the pieces. some days were easier than others. some time to try and buff out that chip. the chip remained.

years down the line and one enrolment to oxford and he’s a lot better than where he started. he’s found ways to cope. some good. some bad. he’s more indendent than ever which has led him to branch out and take care of himself. no watchful eye of mother and father needed. perhaps that’s why he now has therapy pamphlets tucked away inside untouched textbooks. away from prying eyes. just an idea, maybe one day he would water it and watch it grow. go see someone. anyone. now he’s cheery. lively. a staple at parties. heeds his father’s advice and brushes shoulders with the right people. finds himself in the right places. the future is looking bright. oxford may soon to be a closed chapter in his life, but the years had been good to him. until, well, they weren’t.

the riot club had been for the best. extravagant. a little bit of chasing the finer things in life. that had worked out just well for him. death had never been a thought --- or at least it was always kept at a distance. never upclose or personal. a relative here or there, miles away, he’d barely given it a thought. a funeral and they were gone. parties and death were not supposed to intermingle. maybe that was why it was so jarring. the world is a little heavier, bearing down on him once more. he tries not to pay it any mind when he has to excuse himself twice more than usual for a smoke outside. brushes off clammy hands like they’re nothing. accidents happened. he’d find solace in that word --------- accident.

---------- SPARKNOTES / TL;DR.

voted most likely to be that annoying fuck outside your dorm at 3 am who doesn’t know how to turn down the volume

dumb enough to try anything once

despite some tough times he’s just ??? full of life ??? life is a PARTY. and he’s making the most of it now, thank you very much.

“ are you not ENTERTAINED ? “

he’s not the worst,,, but he’s not the best. yknow?

nice enough to get drunk and talk to just about anyone but snobby enough that you bet he’s going to make some insensitive comments. it’s that -- not rich rich enough to be totally elite, but not hurting enough to be able to sympathize with people who aren’t bringing in a f*ck ton of money.

his family ( on his dad’s side ) has always been involved in law. typically judges, and some who have made it to be top dog in their fields. his mother is a writer who does rather well. she’s published a handful of book and his father has also published law-related books which brings in money. his dad is pretty high up in the field but bennett’s got his suspicions that some of the income might just be payoffs. i wouldn’t envision his father as being someone hard to be bought. he might want to grill his son for being spineless or weakwilled but i’d imagine that’s just a family trait inherited.

which uhh brings me to my next point. bennett can be a bit of a follower. there’s not a whole lot of “NO” in him. which may also hurt his relationships because he’s not going to stand against injustices or anything if it is going to put him in harm’s way. which may help perpetuate that rich or snobby idea surrounding him because he’s not about to stand up for the common folk if they’re being belittled for their threads or schooling.sure, he might talk to them here or there in the right occasion but he’s not going to stand for them. he’s sitting pretty. he’s not looking to ruin that.

essentially he’s not going to have your back unless it benefits him.

as far as his secret goes, i think he’s worried about the stigma around mental health and how he’d be perceived but i think a lot more has to do with his family. because he knows they won’t be happy if it gets out or if something further happens. they just ain’t supportive in that department, chief. but he doesn’t want to be cut off or anything and not just because he’d be worried about who was putting money in his pockets. he just doesn’t want to stir the pot any further, even though he should really seek help. i kind of vagued on it but i’d say he has gad ( generalized anxiety disorder ).

---------- CONNECTIONS.

am i picky?? nah. if he can fill something, slot him in. we can chit chat. mwuah

i already know this section is gonna get so neglected because im too tired to think

uhh give me an under the wing sort of relationship ?? listen if bennett can’t repair himself maybe he can touch up someone else. someone he might see something in. buds ? who knows ? not me. but it could b cute.

long time friends !!! doesn’t have to be since childhood but someone(s) he’s known for a while now and they click.

anything angsty ? is good too.

typical friends / enemies plots too !! spice things up.

i need sleep : ) good night !!!!!!!!!!

#no amount of hair gel #suits or ties #will ever cover up the fact he's a f*cking moron #mental health tw #smoking tw #drinking tw #ive been awake 17 hours #sounds like a good time to call it quits #oxfordintro #i will be back in a bit to do dms !! :')#after i snooze a lil

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writtingclass-blog · 5 years

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“There is more than one story about writing”

When crafting a textbook to be used for college writing classes, Wardle and Downs attempted to include everyone's perspective by expressing the varying different literacy sponsors through writing and a compilation of articles addressing the same topic. They address that students may have had bad, some even traumatic, experiences with writing in an educational setting. By pulling in personal memoirs such as “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X and “Only Daughter” by Cisneros, the reader experiences a deeply personal look at how gender, race and socioeconomic backgrounds are the general sponsors of literacy. Through the academic piece written by Deborah Brandt, “Sponsors of Literacy”, the reader is expressly told that it is in fact true: gender, race and socioeconomic backgrounds are the sponsors of literacy. There is one other sponsor they do not explicitly explain but it is rooted in every experience: interpersonal relations. For most of the population this holds true, it can be applied to everyone, these sponsors affected even you. Yet it is false that these are the only sponsors of literacy. Warble and Downs excluded students with learning differences (LD’s). Learning differences are both a sponsor of literacy and affect ones literacy learning. For people with learning differences, Wardle and Downs are further ostracizing them from main stream education and culture by excluding them from this “inclusive” textbook.

In chapter one of Wardle and Downs textbook “Writing about Writing” they warm the reader up by explaining that writing and reading is how the entire world operates. It is everywhere and in everything we do, they explain this by listing of daily experiences you have with writing and literacy without even realizing. They list off things like texting, road signs and the obvious school writing. They lead up to their main point “There is more than one story about writing”(pg. 3). Later in the chapter they give in depth examples as to how you may have been negatively affected by the educational system and external factors that went into it. “But if we come from an immigrant family, and our parents speak, for example, Spanish or Portuguese, and we had no books written in English at home, we likely started school without the literacy experiences that teachers expect, speaking and writing with an accent that set us apart” (pg. 9). It is clear to me that Wardle and Downs put a great deal of effort into creating an inclusive textbook. Coming from California, a place with a large immigration population particularly with San Francisco being a safe haven city, I was surrounded by kids who were coming from these atypical homes, primarily due to english not being a first language.

My friends who fit this category I am sure would be more open to this text because they felt included, someone took the time to acknowledge their experience.

Deborah Brandt re-emphasises the concept that these particular literacy sponsors are the only sponsors. She writes in her essay “Sponsorship and the Rise in Literacy Standards”, “I have been attempting to argue, literacy as a resource becomes available to ordinary people largely through the meditations of more powerful sponsors. These sponsors are engaged in ceaseless processes of positioning and repositioning, seizing and relinquishing control over meanings and materials of literacy as part of their participation in economic and political competition”(81).This quote re-emphasizes that a sponsor can be both positive or negative but in the end it all relates back to economics and politics. Earlier in Deborah Brandt’s article,“Sponsors of Literacy”, she recounts a study she did of Dora Lopez and Raymond Branch. She focuses on the different experiences they have largely based on race and economic background. These two kids live in the same town yet, Dora Lopez partially struggles with her literacies because she is bilingual and has immigrant parents.

My personal experience with literacy sponsors has been one deeply rooted with dyslexia. As a child I was made to read books at a beginner level (BOB Books) until second grade. By this point I hated reading, writing, and everything things involved in the process. I was primarily bored of being made to read books that were designed for, cognitively, a much younger audience. There was a rule that if you missed four words on one page, the book was above your reading level. As someone with dyslexia I am capable of missing a word in every sentence, however I still understand the content. As of today, as a college student, this still happens to me. I was extremely lucky because my mother had dyslexia and was able to see that I too was struggling with it. From an early age she was able to provide me the tools to be successful in school. This ranged from teaching me self advocacy, to tutors that gave me skills to work around some of the issues I experienced with dyslexia.

A lot of people are only aware of dyslexia being “the thing where you flip letters?” so I have included this to give a little bit more of an insight into what dyslexia looks like for some people.

Students with learning differences specifically dyslexia tend to be pushed to the side, the teacher needs to teach to the majority of the room. Yet public schools have integrated english as a second language literacy programs into schools. The number of students with learning differences in public education is around 6.7 million. This number excludes the kids who have not been tested or that have the privilege of attending a private school where their accommodations are better met. The number of bilingual students is only roughly 1.2 million. Wardle and Downs manage to look at the experiences of bilingual students in public education, they even chose to include Deborah Brandt’s study about Dora Lopez and her experience and disadvantages from being form a home that was atypical.

Seeing kids continued to be marginalized for things that they can not control is, as Warble and Downs have said, not fare. “There is more than one story about writing” and to create a text claiming to examine and bridge the bounds of these different literacy experience yet leave out LD’s is perpetuating the toxic learning environments of mainstream education that both authors passively rail against.

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hadarlaskey · 3 years

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Has meme culture killed the parody film?

My perpetual fear of the dark stopped me watching horror films until my late teens. At age 17 or 18, I decided that being able to enter into conversations with friends about Paranormal Activity outweighed not being able to sleep at night. I put together a highlight reel of the genre, starting with entry-level slashers like Scream before working my way through critics’ lists of contemporary horror films. One film that kept reappearing was Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods.

The film starts in a conventional fashion. A group of college students go to spend a weekend in a deserted cabin. You can probably guess how that pans out. Only it doesn’t. It transpires (spoiler alert) that a group of scientists are trying to fulfil an annual ritual sacrifice of the six slasher film archetypes: the athlete, the whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool, and the virgin; so they unleash an array of textbook horror elements on the unsuspecting archetypes.

Goddard has been hesitant to describe The Cabin in the Woods as a parody, but it’s clear from the outset that the film is building on the conceits of various genre touchstones – tropes I had come to recognise after watching just a few horror films. Admittedly, Goddard’s film is fairly tame by most parody movie standards; while it draws attention to horror’s more familiar trappings, it doesn’t explicitly spoof anything in particular, which might explain its largely positive critical reception.

If you trawl the internet for critical writing on the cultural value of parody films, you won’t find much; even the terms frequently used to describe parody films, such as ‘spoof’ and ‘lampoon’, have broadly negative and reductive connotations. While there are a few well-regarded forays into the genre – The Cabin in the Woods being a prime example – because of their dependence on other texts, parody films are rarely discussed on their own merits.

In 2007, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story took aim at the music biopic, specifically the critical and commercial hit Walk the Line. Up until the release of Straight Outta Compton in 2015, Walk the Line was the most successful music biopic to come out of Hollywood. It’s a good film, but its reputation took a knock when Walk Hard ruthlessly satirised the genre’s tendency to water down the lives of complex individuals like Johnny Cash, presenting a conventional three-act view of fame and excess. When Dewey is seen having sex with an anonymous woman, he exclaims “God damn it, this is a fucking dark period!”

In launching a fierce (and very funny) attack on the films that inspired it, Walk Hard held a mirror to film culture, clearly indicating which narrative conventions were passé and had to go. But the recent success of a film like Bohemian Rhapsody, which presents a glossy greatest hits version of the Queen story, proves that some clichés are hard to shake. The impact of parody films is often short-lived. Even Tropic Thunder, for all the controversy surrounding its use of blackface, was unappreciated in terms of its observations about the crass opportunism and tokenism of Hollywood.

The decline of the parody genre is also depriving Black artists of a vital creative space. If the likes of Walk Hard and Tropic Thunder are necessitated by an over-saturation of certain tropes, then Black parody films are necessitated by an over-saturation of films made by and for white people. In particular, the Wayan brothers’ Scary Movie, which remains one of the highest-grossing films by a Black director, felt like a remedy to the white-washed slasher films that came before it.

Scary Movie is diversely cast, with Shawn and Marlon Wayans occupying two of the lead roles; the latter’s Shorty may be an exaggerated caricature of a Black stoner, but because the film assumes a parodic form the character becomes a playful send-up of the kind of negative stereotypes that white filmmakers have long perpetuated.

Taking this idea even further, White Chicks could very well be the Wayans’ magnum opus. The film’s premise subverts the historically racist practice of blackface, with Shawn and Marlon “whiteing-up” for an undercover FBI mission. White Chicks boldly resists the dominant gaze of mainstream cinema, instead offering a critical portrayal of whiteness through a Black lens.

In 2016 Marlon Wayans made up another notable entry to the Black parody genre, Fifty Shades of Black. While the film was largely dismissed by critics, its more culturally-relevant moments went under the radar. The film ends with Hannah Steele (Kali Hawk) whipping Christian Black (Marlon Wayans) while shouting, “This is for Kerry Washington in Django Unchained!” This raises questions about how exactly the sex-slave dynamic is meant to play out in front of Black audiences.

Throughout their careers, the Wayans have strived to unlock the potential of the parody genre as an educational tool: it is one of the few arenas where Black filmmakers can create a palatable form of artistic criticism and express their grievances towards mainstream American cinema.

This article may be overdue. Compared with the saturation of the genre in the 2000s, where four instalments of the Scary Movie franchise were released between 2000 and 2004, the past few years have seen only a handful of parody films released, most notably Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga and The Spy Who Dumped Me.

Parody films don’t attract audiences like they used to: while Epic Movie grossed $18.6 million in its opening weekend back in 2007, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping grossed just $9.5 million in 2016, failing to recoup its $20 million budget. This is a reflection of wider trends; with the constant cannibalisation of contemporary film and television happening online in the form of memes, it seems there’s simply no longer a place for the parody genre.

Memes are an increasingly core component of film marketing. Though critically panned, 2018’s Bird Box was reportedly viewed 26 million times on Netflix in the US in its first week of release. Why? Possibly because after being exposed to a constant stream of Bird Box memes on social media, audiences – myself included – were intrigued to see it. There have even been claims that Netflix used bot accounts to create the memes.

Of course, the memefication of cinema is not limited to mainstream Hollywood cinema. In January of last year I went to see Uncut Gems and loved it. But due to what Mashable calls the “enduring power of Uncut Gems memes”, I interact with images from the film on a near-weekly basis. As the devastating events of 2020 unfolded, empathetic loser Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) became an unlikely conduit through which people could express their feelings.

Memes are an easy and accessible way to ascertain information and convey certain unassailable truths about the human experience. But isolating an image of Howard Ratner to produce a quick visual punchline means that audiences are side-stepping the wider emotional context of the Safdie brothers’ film.

Can memes be satirical in the same way that parody films can? A 2019 article on Digital Spy suggested that contemporary audiences “don’t need the Wayans brothers, or Mel Brooks”; by creating memes, they’re “doing it plenty fine for [themselves]”. I’m not sure I agree.

True, memes depend on irony. But as David Foster Wallace pointed out, irony does not try to construct “anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks”. In this sense, memes are blank parody. They take the skeletal form of a film or TV show and appropriate it without building upon it. Conversely, parody films are constructive. They reinterpret and reinvent their source(s) of inspiration and in doing so highlight which tropes have become overused or outdated.

We should move away from binary preconceptions of parody films and appreciate their role in the evolution of cinema. After all, parody is ultimately the recognition that we exist in a world where everything has already been seen and screened.

The post Has meme culture killed the parody film? appeared first on Little White Lies.

source https://lwlies.com/articles/meme-culture-parody-films-wayans-brothers/

#movie

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