#my internal monologue sounds like it's on party drugs like..

[heffrondriving]

۪͙۪˚┊❛ ride on, ride on now to the other side of yesterday ❜ : ̗̀❥ james × jett ┊˚ ̥۪͙۪◌

: ̗̀❥ RATING: T+ // WORD COUNT: 3,910 // CHARACTERS: jett stetson, james diamond, kendall knight, jo taylor, logan mitchell, carlos garcia // TAGS: one shot, angst, mild hurt/comfort, pov second person, songfic, nightclub, alcohol, partying, drunken shenanigans, references to drugs, mature language & themes, internal monologue, love at first sight or tripped-out delirium, mildly dubious consent?, alternate universe: different first meeting // AO3

: ̗̀❥ Song inspiration + lyrics from: Boy by Reol (translation)

: ̗̀❥ [Part 4 of Cupid Got Us F♡cked Up]

Hey boy, it stings My heart just can’t get used to this Strange feeling of you not being around But I know I have to go

The way the boy’s hips sway under the burning glow of the cramped room, extraordinarily gossamer and mesmerising against the hundreds of other sweat-infused bodies strobing and gyrating and writhing to the strident beat, it’s almost enough to make you forget the week-stale perfume and cosmopolitan rejection permeating every inch of your arctic-slippery skin.

The screaming is unbearable. You choke down the last drops of your Whiskey Manhattan without biting on the cherry and invite him to dance. He laughs and pulls you in to take a clumsy seat by the bar instead.

I messed up so many times But I’ll redo it however many times And everything you denied I’ll prove however many times

In the middle of wry introductions and exchanging double-edged banter about who’s better-looking (it’s obviously you, but you modestly pass up an occasional cheapshot or two as not to turn him off to pompous egotism; the truth isn’t really welcome in these hotspots anyway) and a rather passionate dad joke about his cheesy boyband career that you’re endlessly hair-riffling and fake-laughing in dangerous schoolgirl levels to, someone comes up to slap the boy in the shoulder—some lanky unattractive blond with enough eyebrows to knit ten sweaters and is definitely a thousand hitchhiking miles away from the both of your supreme leagues (though you reign more supreme, no big duh).

We’re on top of a scale, seesawing And what’s being measured is our amount of good luck I hear the sound of the end approaching

You figure the boy will easily shrug the poor opportunistic fool away, but then suddenly he’s grinning and woolly odd-face is sticking his tongue out derisively and they’re laughing together to the tune of decades-long familiarity and you feel a burst of something like inexplicable jealous rage—how dare he—and your fists clench but before you can gear them back to take a smash hit, a froofy pink drink with fancy sliced fruits in it (exactly your guilty pleasure type but you pretend to be all huffy and insulted anyway) slides between your tetchy hands and the boy’s hooded gaze slyly flits back to you.

“On me,” he says, and smiles that perfect smile, but it’s the assuring squeeze on your skinny-jeaned thigh that makes your chest explode with something like curious obsessive desire. You won’t dare.

“Having fun, my man? is this the hottest club ‘round this side of the Hollywood hills or what?!” Far from it, babe—this isn’t even an anthill worthy enough to stomp my Balenciaga Slides on, you’d retort, but you pop a complimentary peanut or two to keep your rain from their pathetic parades. You’re roasting here too, and hypocrites can’t be choosers. “Oh, and B-T-dubs, you so owe me for actually convincing the huge scary Freight Train-looking bouncer dude to squeeze us up a good couple spots on the list, even after all that bullshit chaos you just had to cause with mister line cutter outside.”

The pounding of my heart is a teasing reminder Of what’s long overdue, let’s dance In front of this intersection of our different paths Yeah, I came here just because I thought to!

“Hey, not as much as you owe me for throwing hands with the big G-man and Kellsters to let us get off band rehearsals early for the night—I swear, I’ll be digging out gnashed teeth shrapnel outta my eardrums for weeks to come!”

“Yeah, at least that’ll give you some excuse to actually clean them, huh?”

“Fuck off.”

“Love you too, buddy.”

“I know you do, idiot...hey, wait a sec. You never even introduced me to your pop-collared buddy there, ya sly dog! Ah—‘scuse me—sorry about that—how’s it going, man? I’m Ken...wait, you uh, you look kinda familiar...have I seen you somewhere before?”

For you, I always wanted to be just right for you If I just thought about how you could do anything I didn’t need any aspirations

No shit Sherlock, you’re capital Fab Fit Fucking Famous, but you’re gonna let fugly (for fuzzy-ugly) duckling figure that kiddie brain-buster out for himself. You simply turn up your chin to an elegant degree and take a snide-coded sip while he tries to make a glib comeback, but he’s thankfully cut short and dragged back by another gormless giggling blondzo, though she’s certainly a significantly prettier sight than her companion...wait, a prettier sight you’ve seen and kissed before...and once relentlessly chased for the sake of the candid cameras and paparazzi posers, even when the game was already over and she respectfully cut the first-place ribbon from your neck. This is genuinely the last place you’d expect to see a vanilla-blue valley girlie like her, and recognising her down to the bouncing Mary Sue curls and the sweet sixteen smirk sends a painful surge of Chambord up your spluttering nose.

So much for being the white swan.

And if it made you happy, I would’ve done anything I even would’ve wanted to be a clown

But she thankfully doesn’t notice you, and you don’t care enough outside of the momentary culture shock to chase her down and catch up with her, either. Not when you’ve already been spared having to put up with awkward pleasantries with some passé costar. Not when she never really liked you much anyway. And especially not when you finally have your darling nightingale boy all to yourself.

Ah, has my time come already? Tomorrow is calling me I smile and wave my hand goodbye

Though, not quite; never quite yet. More flirty no-names and unfriendly faces stay in the woozy rotation, vices and vultures, drawn to the boy’s centripetal gravity just as much as you are. Pretty boy, popular boy, perfect boy like that, even with your blinding bravado and obnoxiously bedazzled confidence, you can’t help but wonder how in the wasted world you’re still managing to keep close attention to him and when his slipping inching fleeting touch is gonna drift away into a parallel reality (please, not sooner, not later), and why you’re suddenly burning up so much.

It’s the bright lights. It’s the copious alcohol. It’s the spinning too much and too close to the sun.

Top speed in the direction of love Ride on, ride on now, to the other side of yesterday Towards the direction of love

“Can we go home now?” someone puppy-whines from behind you and the boy, a klaxon siren intensity that makes you cover your top-hits tinnitused ears and wonder if the cops are closing in to bust in and declare the party as over (as if it wasn’t dead on arrival already when killjoy over here cried wolf). “I think I’m starting to get a serious breakout of hives from this abrasive glowstick plastic. Or it might be the toxic fluorescent dye leaking out and I’m about to have a major anaphylactic shock and seize out and die on the dancefloor to friggin’ Ke$ha telling me to lose my mind and lose my clothes in the crowd and I’m sure as Begly’s bike toast am not gonna take it off!”

“Oooh yeah nah, I wouldn’t recommend that, dude.” Tsk, tsk. You totally would, though. Might liven things up a little better, and you’ve honestly seen worse. Way, waaaay worse. Maybe even done worse if you remember right—but that’s not a fun scandal scoop saved for tonight if everyone’s out here making new one for tomorrow’s headlines. “Not the stripping part, and deffo not the dying part, either—most bigwig party animals are worse revivers than they are kissers.”

“Oh, ‘cause you’d know, huh?”

“Hey, I’m just saying. Take my advice—or don’t, whatever, it’s your body glitter-glazed funeral and we’re not gonna drag your rotting naked ass back home unless Los finds a nice dumpster to bury you in—if you think the overuse of spit and sheer sloppiness is unbearable on the second one, well...”

The saliva I’ve spit out The fallen leaves won’t return to their branches I’ve cut off any way to back down from this Farewell, my beloved days

This lukewarm quip is enough to make mister hypochondriac barker run with his tail between his hobble-hocked legs, knocking some preppy Erewhon-Organic-looking Crosby (who’s clearly trespassing on a group of Daisy Duke girls’ private plush lounge territory) over and ass-up—serves the hedge fund creepo motherfucker right!—as the perp takes his frantic tarantella to the graffitied graveyard they generously call a bathroom. Probably to seek out a steel wool pad and some hospital-grade antibacterial soap (in some depraver’s shady hovel in downtown LA, yeah, as friggin’ if—he’s more likely to find another rigor mortised body slumped a-la avant-garde exhibit in one of the stalls).

A ne’er-do-well who would Make all the noise in the world And never be satisfied

Cute as the nervous dimples and unmatched rabid geek energy were, your jaded eyes don’t follow him for very long. The boy’s stark enraptured face, thrown back to the suffocated skylights and shimmering with pure glee, wouldn’t let you. Slowing down into an astonishing descent with the taste of margarita salt on his sweetsoft lips sipping away the straight chlorine on yours—and you’re stuck waiting, watching forever, a bystander feeling smaller and smaller under the sinking settling shrieking realisation that the sky is bigger than they ever dreamed to cosmically imagine and one daring yesterday it’s all going to go dark, empty space and darkening vision.

This is the afterlife A masochist hurting themselves in longing And in the end, I lost it all without a trace What was “for you” was really always for me As soon as I made sure of it, the fading sky grew cold

This shooting star moment doesn’t last you very long, either.

“And how’s our wonder loverboy doi—woaaaaah nelly. What the hell happened to you? Jeez, I trust you to behave and leave you alone for five minutes...”

“I was just talking to this really cool-looking girl over there—she was with her kinda-scary friends but she’s got all these crazy piercings and rainbow hair and she said she liked Helmetie and thought I was kinda cute and I said I thought so too! And she asked if I thought I was cute, but then I said I meant I thought she was cute, not me. And Helmetie also thought she supertastic-cute, and she laughed and it was seriously the cutest thing ever! So we were like, really starting off on the right foot—and I swear, she was gonna be the one, dude!—but then I asked her what size her finger is and she wouldn’t even let me get to the buying a wedding ring part before, well. This whole mess.”

A pint-sized Latino soaked in what smells like Strawberry Sangria and stale hotdog water steadily trudges towards you and the boy, mopey mouth running a mile a minute with no room to spare for a shut the fuck up. You’d honestly sneer at his sorry sloshed-up sight if he didn’t just embrace the sticky spilled drink all over the both of you without a second boundary’s worth of thought nor hesitation.

Oh, broken mirror Is there anything you can salvage of me? I don’t know, sorry

His caramel cheeks are flushed Cosmo-pinker and his face is a miserable smear of nosebleeds and sobriety, but being teetotal wouldn’t explain why he’s wearing that godawful vomit-brown paisley top and a clunky sports helmet in the middle of a goddamned nightclub. Although, thinking back on all the times you almost got concussed in between getting stampeded by staggering strangers and oversensual half-lovers and snorting bullheads spoiling for a fight, he may just have the right idea. Especially if he’s gonna keep up that honest-to-badness garish haunted sofa ‘fit and trashy pick-up line streak. No matter how adorably, hopelessly, idiotically innocent it was clearly intended to be.

Hollywood don’t do subtle, and this kid was anything and everything under god’s wilted green earth and piss-yellow sunshine but.

And if it made you happy, I would’ve done anything I just wanted to match everything you did

Strawberry shortcake wedges himself in between you two (practically plopped right on the boy’s lap and that venomous rage resurges but you’re all out of froofy drinks and you’re honestly feeling a bit sick and sluggish from the syrupy sweetness and that unfading acrid taste from three free shots and an accidental alcoholic waterboarding ago, so down, bitch!) and laments some more to his apparent wingman over a glucose-elevating order of Virgin Mudslide about his voodooed lacklustre lady luck.

Halfway through the hurricane glass, he gets so impossibly giddy over the thought of never finding true love tonight that his splayed limbs start to have a life of their own and his whirling seat’s rivets fly off like teeny artillery, prompting a serrated scowl from the shaved-head bartender and a rub on the back from the sympathetically exasperated boy as he mumbles something about “first Hortense, now this—why can’t we just have a nice boys out for once without it getting all screwed-up and messy, I swear to god...” and even you actually start to feel a bit sorry for him and his little project reject.

It’s so frustrating But I can’t even bring myself to cry I can’t even shed a tear

With this, boybestie’s promptly encouraged with a crumpled wadful of cocktail napkins, one Helmetie less, and a mollifying bro pat on the back to take it easy and breathe it out, loosen...er, tighten up and get himself back out there on the raucous runaway, and try again (and again and again and again by the looks of it, you’d willingly bet your overcharged tab). They’re the Hollywood super party kings of Hollywood, for crying out loud (whatever the hell that even meant—and Hollywood twice cancels the whole equation out...okay, you really need to lay down on the chasers before you become the next new-age enlightener. And also just lay down, in general), so he better stop the pervy twenty questions game and the shady cool cat act and just try to be himself this time. But maybe just not too much himself.

Hey, so I gave you the notice But the after-effects are getting to me I can’t just be calm and collected about this all And so now we’re both getting a taste of this irony

Nerve-twisting numbers or not, the boy makes a really good point. You’re never really yourself when you’re hanging out in these kinda jank joints, of infamous druggies and has-been thuggies and mostly junkied now-next-to-nobodies—when you’re there overdressed to unimpress for the free drinks and the easy-A lust and the wishy-washy escapism of being no one or everyone or anyone else at all, there isn’t any need to be yourself, after all. That’s the last thing any try-hard outsider would ever want in this silver-lined city, to be known for being yourself since there’s no riches in radical reality...but despite that, the boy himself strangely seems to feel right at home here, no fragile façade nor pity-love fable to peddle save that salvaged heart bleeding bubblegum songs and unsaid stories all over his hundred-dollar sleeve.

Well, don’t say you didn’t want to know I’m feeling on edge, give me something to spur me on

You can see lost scars peeking shyly from behind his apropos Tom Ford bomber jacket that does nothing to hide the soiled clothes of a wayward child stumbling skinning his knees in dirty wonderland, you can see the branching scars that cross his tempered face like fortune lines and coat his sweetest words with an aftertaste of berry-baby-bitter that makes him swallow his guilt a lot harder just so his perfect smile could be a little softer, if you step back and look closer to dim down the glaring migraine lights reflecting rainbows and district red lights all over his flawless skin, you can see he’s really built of nothing else but smouldering diamond bones and vicious tooth and nail ambitions and the prettiest little scars. He hides it well; but there’s no place left to hide in this cramped hellhole but upfront.

Pretty boy, popular boy, perfect boy, who hurt you?

Give me more of that conviction Give me more reasons to stand up again Give me however many and however many times

You don’t ask anymore. It might just be from one-too-many slips and slurries and shots of flaming sambuca, but choosers can’t be hypocrites and you hardly even recall if you exchanged names. Saying hi all the time and staying high all the time, some nitty-gritty details are bound to drop off into asterisks—like how long ago did you meet, and why can’t your hands stop blurring in front of you when the boy’s holding them so tightly it’s cutting off the blood circulation and keeping you numb to every sinking gripping aching touch, and why do you need to care about all these pointless questions? What was your name again...?

Well, whatever. It doesn’t really matter at all. You don’t need names to dance. You don’t need names to fuck. You don’t need names to remember for longer than a nascent after-hours, turning blood-red against yellowed eyes and evergreen veins. But you’re not so sure you want to forget, either.

If you can love someone More than the number of your regrets Then that love is something you should sing out loud Forget about what I promised you on that day

The silence speaks volumes. He spills half his vodka tonic on the jacket while grimacing from the lime and invites you to dance. You laugh and clumsily pull him into the floor, and that terrible twist of time leaves a lot of space for bad intentions as it slows the both of you into a phantasmic non-apropos waltz.

Wishing you well as I send you off Just one last thing to bother you with— I’m sorry. Well, then...see you again

Tired forehead to piercing clavicle. Phantom hands anchored and tracing gently-swaying hips, arching closer, grinding teeth. Broad blustered chests exploding in hazardous friction, challenging each other to thump a little faster, a little louder, a lot more painful, catching breaths catching up to the reverberating electrified drop before the raving crowd goes wild and they all fall down and you would too—god, why does everything burn so fucking much?—if only the boy isn’t holding every part of you together. You and the boy and you’re his boy but is he your boy? You’re not sure you’re not sure of anything anymore and you’re almost afraid to feel afraid to ask and it’s stupid and you’re stupid—stop acting so stupid, where’s your heavy hurting head, up there, up where, where did all your clever lies go off to, to throw up the poison and feel okay again or to curl up and die all alone in some other hypothetical hellhole where it wouldn’t be caught dead—as if you haven’t done this before.

For you, I always wanted to be just right for you If I just thought about how you could do anything I didn’t need any aspirations And if it made you happy, I would’ve done anything I even would’ve wanted to be a clown

You’ve been here before, danced a million ankle-breaking steps before, fucked a hundred wasted no-names before, remembered a thousand hangover ways to wake up on the wrong side of Viva La Holy Hollywood before, but you’re one-hundred percent sure plus one that you’ve never ever done this before. Never felt anything like this before. What is this, you may ask? Why ask at all? Maybe you shouldn’t. The boy’s not looking for answers he knows he couldn’t give back. But you’re still going to ask. God, you have to ask. Even if it’s just this time. Damn whatever the hell your dizzy dirty deadly cocksure fucking ego is screaming at you in every available profane language but right now, but there’s no other time to waste than now.

Ah, I’m out of time now Turn around, turn it all around, for me now

“Are you still gonna want me tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, but I like the idea of you. And I want you, right here, right now.”

What’s for what and what’s for who? I guess I’ll know when it’s all over, huh?

No promises. Nothing different. You’ve seen this shit before, a bajillion times over. He’s good at this. He’s done this before. You’ve believed it before. But you believe in him anyway.

You don’t know what else to do. You don’t know how else to think. You can’t feel anything but the boy.

Pretty boy, popular boy, perfect boy, why do you hurt?

I love this good-for-nothing lifeform with all my heart And even if this isn’t the best solution I just want to be myself...ah, it’s time now

Now you’re dancing, you’re dancing, and the cramped room crashes down around you and the lasting memory of the boy falters and the stringent beat has fallen away into a senseless static rush and you’re still somehow strobing and gyrating and writhing fucking mechanical as you hold onto him for dear life and delight and dear lies and the constellated kisses on your broken neck are stinging and numbed fingers bruising hips and grinding teeth breaking hollows and everyone and their chemical friends are watching, are watching but the glitter in your bleached-blue eyes shine like salty stars reflected against ocean indigo and something slips inside your tongue sinking the unsinkable and it’s not a pastel pill or a blotter or the sun but you gag once and get swallowed whole as everything melts down into a bad trip and he’s desperately asking for your name—what was it again, tell me tell me tell me—and you’re screaming something maybe like his name beneath his slippery scarred skin spreading with cracks and heady perfume and you’re hot and cold all over and over it’s over and going under underwater and all that’s left to think about is the all-consuming idea of him, and him, and him, and maybe, and maybe you—don’t know don’t know don’t want—you want it. Right here, right now. Maybe just enough to forget nothing, everything, anything at all. Maybe you like the idea of us.

No matter how it turns out, I’m going to go now To the starting line, top speed in the direction of love

Maybe you even love the boy, in some other dying cosmic yesterday you never dreamed to imagine before and never will again, even if you escape this pretty greenyellowredblack hole and fucking crawl out of that infinite stampede and make it out alive, alive, are you alive somehow. But you’re feeling smaller and smaller and your headspace is empty and your bloodshot vision is darkening and you’re not gonna ruin it like that. You’re not gonna ruin him like that. Not tonight.

I T ’  S    O   N      Y      O        U         N        O           W        —

Ride on, ride on now, to the other side of yesterday And I’ll overtake even longing itself.

#irdk why i'm posting this here but aye here's a dumb unreality-ish jamett fic i wrote last november and posted some weeks ago #i don't even know what the purpose of this either it's just. oops my brain slipped and i woke up with this and drool all over my keyboard #have some y/n!jett and vaguely dark!james??? ft. 21+ btr gang inexplicably raving it out idk how nightclubs and drinking work tbh #also i just like the way this gif edit turned out so i wanna plaster it elsewhere (<- is bad at making gifs and has abysmal expectations) #btr #big time rush #fanfic #one shot #fanfiction #james diamond #jett stetson #jamett #angst #hurt/comfort #songfic #nightclub #second person pov #not in my mirror #james diamond x jett stetson #the line that starts the whole story #nickelodeon #writeblr #stop it forever #this is just for posterity really. maybe i shouldn't be posting my fics here but i kinda want an archive of them on my blog too so sorry #no one's gonna read this anyway so it's fine by me bc i liked writing it too much :'> and i'm gonna keep writing them bc they're fun #and at this point my lack of writing skills could just shut the hell up #also p.s. i fucking hate tumblr's editing system it's so painful to use on desktop especially with all the different formatting. obehaglig #this took too long for me not to throw it out and also i don't want it clogging up my drafts anymore so blep blip bluppp

[murdertoothpick]

Okay here’s an idea that’s been bouncing around my head for a while:

You know Hunter’s sensory overload thing? Well imagine that you’re dancing around each other with feelings but you don’t really know how to confess. And you have a party that is scheduled at 79s and Hunter wants to go so bad to support you bc it’s a celebration of something. But 79s is flashy and loud and everything that would make him super uncomfortable and not have a good time. So he asks Tech for help. Cue Hunter showing up to your party with sunglasses, earplugs, and a little(more than a little) drugged up because Tech read that it would help him to relax during the party. Cue shenanigans.

hands meet

Pairing: Hunter x gn!Reader

Warnings: hunter has taken drugs, not explicit but illicit (im a comedian)

Word count: 1361

A/N: okay damn i wanted this to be like...funnier and more goofy (yanno shenanigans) but it did not turn out that way, its just feel good lovey fluff...whatever IM SORRY

'You gave him what?' you yell over the music, eyes flitting between Tech and the entrance of 79's, where a certain Clone Sergeant had just made his appearance.

'Not much,' he begins repeating himself, voice rising to meet yours, 'Just the sunglasses, earplugs—'

'No!,' you interrupt him, 'What did you say about the,' your eyes dart around the room before resuming eye contact with Tech, mouthing the last word, 'Drugs?'

'Oh that! I simply gave him some depressants to slow down the cognitive function of his brain,' he states matter-of-factly, 'So his senses don't go into...overdrive.' He tilts his head up in thought before settling on the last word.

'Is that safe?'

'Mostly. The worst that can happen is that he temporarily blacks out.'

'What?' your eyes blow wide, 'And you did this without him knowing?'

'Maker, of course not!,' he sounds almost offended, 'I warned him of the possible side effects before he agreed. I'm not a madman!,' he laughs, but you raise your brow at him.

'Sure...' you purse your lips, giving him a pat on the shoulder, 'I'm gonna go speak to him.'

Tech points his fingers at you in a poor attempt to make finger guns. It's accompanied by an uncharacteristic wink, and then a salute before he disappears to the same crowd of people you had lost Wrecker to not too long ago.

Your eyes travel to the lone clone standing by the entrance, his eyes slowly making their way across the room as he looks for you. He stands out—not as the sergeant of an elite, and unique, squad of clone troopers, but while everyone in the club seems to be donning solid colours and fitted clothes, he shows up in...a hawaiian shirt?

Why does he even have a shirt like that?

You shake the thought from your mind, deciding that you'll tease and probe him about it when he's sober. For now, you stalk over to him.

He can hear you coming, your footsteps are a familiar sound despite the earplugs that work to muffle the noises of 79's. He can also smell you, though tonight your scent is mixed with one that reminds him of his first field operation, on a planet that was relatively peaceful, but exposed him to the galaxy's finest sights and smells. That is, until he met you.

Next, he sees you from the corner of his eye but doesn't turn to greet you. Be cool, Hunter tells himself, be cool. He internally cringes, you would probably laugh at the monologue.

You wave a hand in front of his face, smiling warmly at him, 'HEY,' you yell, hoping the noise makes its way over the music and the muffling of his earplugs. 'I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE COMING.'

He smiles back at you, eyes darting up and down to consider your outfit. You don't see it though, his eyes are obscured by the sunglasses that you could almost swear are just opaque frames.

'I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO WEAR,' Hunter finally shouts back, and your smile turns into a huge grin. It's not a complete lie, he reasons with himself. He didn't know the first thing about dressing for occasion, but thankfully Crosshair helped him out, assuring Hunter that you would not be able to take your eyes off him in this outfit. (The sniper was definitely messing with him).

Tech had also told him it was ideal to wait until the drug had settled in his system, in case the sensation was too much and he'd rather stay at home. For all he thinks you know, he is completely sober.

'WELL,' you bite your tongue, 'IT'S A GOOD LOOK.'

He inhales sharply, unsure of whether to be flattered or take it as a taunt. He lets it slide. 'YOULOOKGOOD,' he manages in one breath, quickly following with, 'CONGRATS ON YOUR PROMOTION.'

You huff, not being given the time to fawn over the compliment, though your reply is genuine. 'I really appreciate you being here,' your voice is lowered now as if you silently hope he doesn't catch your words. They just needed to be said, but he reads your lips. You turn to stand beside him, taking in the view of the 79's crowd from the sidelines.

He gives you a brief nod, preferring to keep his response behind sealed lips. Variations of 'Anything for you,' or 'The pleasure is mine' getting caught on his tongue. In fear he'll say something stupid, he settles for the silence between the two of you, drowned out by the music of the club. He can feel the effect of the drugs taking shape.

You glance at Hunter. 'SO...' you begin cautiously, your volume suggesting otherwise, 'PLAN ON STANDING HERE ALL NIGHT?'

He hums, though he doesn't register the noise leaving his throat. 'ACTUALLY,' he turns his head towards you, 'I WAS HOPING FOR A DANCE.'

Your lips curl upwards, eyes glinting with wonder, 'I HAVE A BETTER IDEA,' you shout back, holding a hand out to him.

His gaze flickers between your face and your outstretched hand before he allows his fingers to intertwine with yours, 'LEAD THE WAY,' he accepts.

He stumbles as you pull on his arm, weaving your bodies through the crowd of strangers. You move fast, but make sure to turn your head every few paces to check that he's still with you. He squeezes your hand to ensure you he is. Hunter's attention is solely focused on your movement through 79's, he can't tell whether it's the drugs or you that has him almost indifferent to his surroundings.

There's something about this movement that makes him uncharacteristically giddy—as if he's enacting a stupid, teenage holo-drama with you. The warmth of your hand is reassuring...familiar.

He watches the colours around him blur, eventually fading away. The flashing lights of the club are replaced with the dim lighting of a vacant hallway, the music of the club faintly sounding from the walls you've passed with intent.

He doesn't even know where you're going. But he trusts you, utterly and completely. And the fact that he has some toxin in his body? Doesn't change a thing.

You stop in a small room where you can still hear the sound and ambience of the 79's night goers. You turn to Hunter, motioning for him to take off his ear buds. The sounds become clearer when he does, though the music and people are muffled behind dirty walls.

And he hears your unfiltered voice for the first time since you had left for 79's.

'I want to see your eyes.'

Now he knows his hearing is working again; he can hear his heart beat out of its chest.

Tentatively, his hands go up to the rim of his sunglasses, pulling them off his face. It takes a moment for his eyes to readjust to the brighter atmosphere, but when they do, his eyes connect with yours.

You smile softly at him, murmuring an 'Are you okay?.' There's no need to exhaust your vocal cords in this empty room.

'Yeah,' he breathes, allowing his ears to take in the volume of his surroundings. The music is loud but much more bearable, he doesn't have to strain his ears to focus on the sound of your voice.

Your hands rub against each other nervously, a telltale of the feelings you've harboured for the sergeant threatening to come into fruition.

He notices your anxiety, the spike in your heartbeat, and doesn't know exactly what to do. He reflects on the night so far, from first seeing you approach him with pretty eyes and a nice smile, to where you two are now, staring aimlessly at each other.

'Can I have that dance now?' he finally asks, a strange confidence surging through him.

Your eyes momentarily—and subtly—widen at him, but Hunter's thoughts manage to travel the entire universe in that second.

Is that a no? Did I make this weird? Is dancing the way to go? Should I just leave?

But your eyes are just as quick to light up, the corner of your mouth quirking upwards as you speak.

'I'd like that.'

taglist: @baroclinicinstability @kybacrystal @perpetual-fangirl900 @teletraan-meets-jarvis @foodandbooksplease @proadhog @sageislostinspring @dwarfplanet69 @ahsokatano-thetogruta @loth-wolffe @dinbeskarbaby @the-dreamy-mermaid

#mtoothfics #star wars fic #star wars x reader #clone wars fic #clone wars x reader #bad batch fic #bad batch x reader #bad batch x you #hunter x you #hunter x reader #sergeant hunter x reader #sergeant hunter x you #tbb hunter #tbb hunter x reader #hunter tbb #clone force 99 x reader #clone force 99

[envysparkler]

I posted 256 times in 2021

234 posts created (91%)

22 posts reblogged (9%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.1 posts.

I added 444 tags in 2021

#envy answers - 231 posts

#whumptober2021 - 68 posts

#compliment - 32 posts

#ask game - 27 posts

#my snippets - 23 posts

#my fic - 18 posts

#faqs - 18 posts

#greenie - 11 posts

#headcanon - 9 posts

#fic finder - 7 posts

Longest Tag: 104 characters

#kinda difficult to run a gang when batman is hovering over your shoulder and telling you you're grounded

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

I was juuuust reading Batcellanea chp138 - was in the middle of the part where Bruce's internal monologue was telling him he should keep Jason and he can take care of Jason, when it hits me : the voice in Bruce's head reminds me of Venom and lmao what if its like Venom but instead of killing people it just maliciously whispers at Bruce to keep adopting kids.

Thats it. That's the comment that I got on tumblr at 12.30am for. Cheers.

Oh my god. Yes. Some villain infects Batman with a parasite to turn him against the rest of Gotham but all it does is make him adopt kids.

Venom: Bruce. Broose. Come on. You know you want to. Bruuuuce. Bruce: he has parents. Venom: we can take care of that.

Venom: BRUCE Bruce: NO Venom: BRUCE Bruce: NO Venom: BRUCE I WANT-- Bruce: he is older than me I said no

Venom, cackling: our little brood goes bigger and brighter, all the little birds roosting in the nest, safe and warm and toasty-- Bruce: you're making it sound like you want to eat them

52 notes • Posted 2021-11-05 11:40:05 GMT

#4

Jason eyeing the league members popping in on his cases just to see he’s still alive: “I am never going to be able to do anything illegal again”

It is very difficult to be a crime lord when the Justice League keeps showing up to coddle you.

This reminds me of one of my ideas of Batman deciding to dismantle the Red Hood's operations by just showing up and acting like a disappointed parent.

54 notes • Posted 2021-09-18 13:52:09 GMT

#3

In response to the Jason being Bruce's biological son: I think there could be some cool and interesting new twists in this. But I still would cling to the Red Hood path. Because the whole idea of Red Hood is just so great. Coming back from the dead and waking up in his grave. Thrown into the Lazarus pit und realizing that his murderer never faced adequate justice is simply genius. Red Hood is an interesting character.

Red Hood is a fascinating character, but giving Jason a chance to live is also good, and seeing who he would've grown up into without the Lazarus Pit. And I can hear Ise shrieking distantly about killing her precious baby Jay.

77 notes • Posted 2021-07-03 19:02:10 GMT

#2

idk but when jay is put in the lazarus pit, it heals his injuries but what it doesn't do is make him tall and muscular. so like he's still the tiny, skinny 15/16 year old he was because of the years of malnourishment. so he goes to gotham at like 17-19 years old, a formidable warrior, but TINY, smaller than dick himself and does the whole drug-lord business + it makes it easier for bruce + dick to work out who he is of course. this probably doesnt make any sense- anyway i love your work!! 💖

Oh my god, I am dying, this is a hilarious idea and I love it to pieces. The fearsome Red Hood being this snarky twerp. Tim is taller than him which is the real reason Jason is determined to end him.

Bruce, seeing a criminal in a red hoodie take on guys twice as big as him: why does this feel familiar?

117 notes • Posted 2021-11-09 13:19:46 GMT

#1

ik you said it’s buried in your idea pile but i am very excited about the possibility of seeing a red hood vs the justice league face off !!!

For context, this is the table of contents of my idea doc.

Definitely not getting around to it any time soon, but here's a snippet:

“You’re Batman’s son?” Superman sounded especially pissed, and Wonder Woman’s eyes were narrowed slits. “Since when?”

“Forgotten the adoption party already, Uncle Clark?” Jason spat back, hurt and rage churning inside of him. It led to an easy rejoinder—a reminder that Jason had died in Ethiopia, and all of him didn’t come back, the best parts of him didn’t come back, that Bruce was clinging to a delusion and Jason wasn’t really his son, not anymore—

But Superman was frowning, eyes distant like he was looking through Jason—his eyes focused again, and he inhaled sharply.

Before Nightwing could move, Jason was upright and out of the chair, cold air blasting onto his helmet-less face.

“Jason,” Superman said in a voice of broken glass. Jason blinked—his restraints were gone and he was being squeezed to death by a sobbing alien.

“What—Uncle Clark?” Jason shot a bewildered look at Nightwing as Clark released him—what was happening—but didn’t manage to get out any more words before he was being swept into a another hug, courtesy of an Amazonian. “Ribs—Auntie—still human—”

“My brave bird,” Diana whispered, voice cracking, “You came back to us.”

134 notes • Posted 2021-09-13 11:27:48 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[a-froger-epic]

NASTALLY'S ❇️Q U E E N❇️ FIC

📝 = (semi-)regular updates

❓= will update eventually

🧊 = on ice

✅ = complete

Freddie Mercury/Roger Taylor

Froger - Love & Sex (18+):

Dawn of Aquarius [the epic] ✅ - Roger and Freddie meet in 1969 and change each other's lives. (romance, sexual awakening, coming of age, YA drama, period-typical homophobia, family drama, realism)

Good Company ✅ - collab with @quirkysubject The Queen boys accidentally on purpose watch porn together. (friends to... still friends but with interesting wanking habits, internalised homophobia, pining, humour)

Dreams of Tomorrow 📝- collab with @tikiniki A mad, medieval fantasy adventure with the Queen boys. (troubadour AU, adventure, fantasy, friendship, magic, origin stories, vikings, battles, a donkey called Tootsie)

Dawn of the Living Dead ❓ - It's the zombie apocalypse in 1971. (horror, dark comedy, blood & gore, insanity, friendship)

The Miracle ❓ - A slightly different take on the A/B/O trope. (mpreg, friends to lovers, kid!fic, parenthood, emotional realism, discrimination)

the eye of the beholder ✅ - Roger buys a video camera. (established relationship, script format, humour, light-hearted)

Time Waits for No One ✅ - collab with @bisexualroger Freddie and Roger's relationship through the years. (Christmas themed, sad, life has no happy endings, grief, acceptance, breakup, lovers to friends, death)

Sehnsucht 🧊 - Roger visits Freddie in Munich. They have a past. (Inspired by Dawn of Aquarius, pining, friendship, life has no happy endings, hurt/comfort, but mostly hurt)

Froger - Love:

A Kind of Magical Adventure (and the Spider from Mars) ❓ - collab with @plainxte​ The Doctor Who/Queen crossover nobody asked for! (friends to lovers, there was only one bed, fluffy Christmas space adventure)

The Only Exception ✅ - On a night out, something is rekindled between Roger and Freddie. (drug use, pining, past relationship, the one that got away, some humour)

Foxey ✅ - Freddie gives Roger an impromptu lapdance. (Dawn of Aquarius missing scene, fluff, humour, established relationship)

Secret ✅ - Brian is a good secret keeper. (Inspired by Dawn of Aquarius, handholding, angst and fluff, mostly fluff)

I put a spell on you (because you’re mine) ✅ - A Halloween special. (Dawn of Aquarius missing scene, breakup, angst, humour)

Incidentally Homosexual  ✅ - Roger wants to talk to Freddie about the Kinsey scale and sexuality.  (Dawn of Aquarius missing scene, internalised homophobia, pure fluff, soft boyfriends)

It’s Grim Up North (But There’s Light Up Ahead) ✅ - collab with @pumpkinlilyao3​ One time Roger saves Freddie, and one time Freddie saves Roger. (Friends to lovers, violence, slurs, angst, happy ending)

Promise ✅ - Roger and Freddie prepare for a special event in 2015. (Inspired by Dawn of Aquarius, Freddie lives, growing old together, pure fluff)

Tootsie’s Story ✅ - How Roger rescued a donkey. (Dreams of Tomorrow prequel, fantasy, adventure, troubadour AU, established relationship)

Ooh Love, ooh Loverboy… ✅ - Freddie through Roger's eyes. (established relationship, internal monologue, tooth-rotting fluff)

Romantic Drabbles ❓ - A mixed bag of Froger romance.

Froger - Porn Without Plot (18+):

A is for Amsterdam ✅ - Roger and Freddie walk into a sex shop. (Established relationship, bdsm, sex toys, dom!Roger, sub! Freddie, a bit of fluff and humour too)

B is for Bound ✅ - There's something Freddie would like to do. (Established relationship, bdsm, non-con play, dom!Roger, sub!Freddie)

C is for Control ✅ - There's something Roger would like to do. (Established relationship, mild bdsm dynamics, switching, top!Freddie, fluff)

D is for Discipline ✅ - Freddie turns a game into something a little more serious. (Spanking, bdsm, power dynamics, subspace, referenced cheating, guilt, dom drop)

Right until the ends of the Earth ✅ - Romantic piano sex. (Inspired by Dawn of Aquarius, mild bdsm dynamics, romance)

Tight Squeeze  ✅ - collab with @bambirexwrites fem!Queen; Regina and Freddie go shopping for shorts. Regina has some trouble fitting into them. Freddie helps her feel better. (Established relationship, body worship, semi-public sex)

One Fine Morning  ✅ - Freddie is trapped between two primal urges. (Established relationship, mild omorashi, morning sex)

Smutty Drabbles ❓- A mixed bag of Froger sexytimes.

Froger - Gen/shippy Gen:

Good Times (Better Times) ✅ - How Freddie met Roger, a Dawn of Aquarius prequel. (internal monologue, the Kensington pub, art student Freddie)

that special brew ✅ - That time Freddie accidentally drank marrijuana tea. (humour, Roger being a very sweet friend, light-hearted)

a joke nobody tells ✅ - Newly formed Queen dynamics or: not even Roger knows what is going on in Freddie's head. (group dynamics, insecurities, fear of failure, hurt/comfort)

Ghosts ✅ - Freddie’s arrival in Australia awakens some memories he would rather forget. (angst, referenced past sexual assault, friendship, hurt/comfort)

Including Love ✅ - Freddie and Roger love each other. But perhaps, not in that way. Or do they? (Roger-centric, character study, period-typical attitudes, male friendship, bromance)

Freddie Mercury

that which is good ❓ - Freddie meets Kenny. Two gay men struggling to find themselves, find comfort in each other’s friendship. (Angst, internalised homophobia, male friendship, hurt/comfort) 

Moments ❓ - A collection of moments in Freddie’s life. (Vignettes, angst, fluff, death, life, everything)

with my trust like a child ❓ - collab with @aboutnothingness A look at several of Freddie’s birthdays throughout his life (Hurt/no comfort, hurt/comfort, internal monologue, implied underage, heavy angst)

The God Abandons Antony [Freddie Mercury/Joe Fanelli] 🧊 - collab with @freddieofhearts​ On tour in the US, Freddie meets somebody new. (Internal monologue, angst, euphoria, new love, romance, cheating)

Rapture and Solace ✅ - 1991. (Internal monologue, fear of death, terminal illness, acceptance, background Jimercury)

to the bone (18+) ✅ - A police officer lets Freddie off the hook, in exchange for a favour. (Period-typical homophobia, abuse of power, sexual assault, hurt/no comfort)

Ménage à Deux  ✅ - An exploration of Freddie’s friendship with Barbara Valentin. (Dubcon, recreational drug use)

Naughty ✅ - Freddie's mind wanders while he poses nude for a life drawing class. (Internal monologue, some humour, internalised homophobia)

Don’t You (Walk Away) [Freddie Mercury/Winnie Kirchberger] ✅ - After a fight with Winnie, Freddie contemplates his life in Munich. (Hurt/No Comfort, toxic relationships, angst)

Freddie Love ❓ - Freddie-centric drabble collection.

Freddie Mercury/Brian May

As it Began ✅ - Freddie goes to write his dissertation at Brian's house. (Smile Era, boys with a crush, friendship, first kiss, angst, hurt/comfort)

Blacklight in Zero Gravity (18+)  ❓ - It's 2029, Freddie Mercury is working as a stripper and one night, the mysterious Brian May walks into his life. (Modern AU, sex & drugs, pining, humour, angst, fluff, romance, morally grey characters, smut)

Click! ✅ - Freddie meets a guy he just can’t get off his mind at work. (Modern AU, photographer!Freddie, model!Brian, social media, humour, meet cute)

the sun and moon and stars are you ✅ - Freddie and Brian are expecting, and getting ready for a Halloween party. (trans!Freddie AU, pregnancy, humour, fluff)

The Sound of Your Fear ✅ - Brian and Freddie stay in a very creepy hotel. (Ghost story, terror, haunted house, platonic/pre-slash Maycury)

Dreams of Tomorrow (18+) [Maycury, Froger, Joger] 📝 - collab with @tikiniki​ A mad, medieval fantasy adventure with the Queen boys. (troubadour AU, adventure, fantasy, friendship, magic, origin stories, vikings, battles, a donkey called Tootsie)

Freddie Mercury/Jim Hutton

Maybe I’m Amazed ✅ - Freddie is upset about an argument with Jim, who surprises him. (Angst, hurt/comfort, romance and fluff)

Interlude ✅ - Freddie has a great time at his 39th birthday party - for the most part. (Angst, non-consentual drug use, hopeful ending)

Sticks and Stones ✅ - Freddie reads a headline she wishes she hadn’t seen. (Fem!Jimercury, body image, fluff, happy ending)

Other Ships

Dawn of the Living Dead (18+) [Poly!Queen & Froger] ❓ - It's the zombie apocalypse in 1971. (horror, dark comedy, blood & gore, insanity, friendship, smut)

Kneel Down by Your Side and Pray [Maylor & Johnica] 🧊 - collab with @quirkysubject @tikiniki and @plainxte In a dystopian world where slavery is the norm, four young men struggle with their circumstances. (Dystopian AU, violence, blood & gore, sexual abuse, angst, friendship, hurt/no comfort, pining)

Sacrifice (18+) [Maylor] ✅ - Roger is being sacrificed to the God of Fertility. (Fantasy AU, humour, Monty Python-esque, technically non-con but not angsty, satire)

Colour Me Surprised [Joger] ✅ - Roger helps John with his make-up. (Yearning, gay panic)

a bona cackle [OMC/OMC, background Froger] ✅ - Dawn of Aquarius spin-off ficlet. A phone conversation in Polari. (Period-typical attitudes, queer history)

Gen

and the rest is history ✅ - The day John Deacon auditioned for Queen. 

lazing on a sunny afternoon  ✅ - A short, sweet fem!Queen ficlet.

The Sound and the Fury ✅ - collab with @quirkysubject​ Roger is struggling when the past catches up with him. Brian is a good friend. (hurt/comfort, friendship, angst)

Not Like Other Groups ✅ - Queen escape from an angry gang of skinheads by means of a car chase. (humour, friendship, action)

Maple Leaves ✅ - John struggles with Freddie’s illness. (heavy angst, death, grief)

Non-Fiction

Interview With A Queen “Groupie” - I interviewed a lady who knew the Queen boys back when she was at Ealing Art School. Yes, really.

#masterlist #Queen fanfic

[not-safeforsanders]

Be My Baby / Devil Like You

This fic is based on Bea Miller’s Be My Baby, and Gareth Dunlop’s Devil Like You. Yeah I know, that’s a bit of a whiplash between two songs.

Fic Synopsis: Roman knows how to dance, Patton knows how to pray, Remus knows how to use his mouth and Logan knows how to shut it. Meanwhile, Virgil and Janus think they’re all idiots and are begging for some healthy communication. (University!AU)

Warnings: It’s not really unsympathetic Patton, because he’s not a villain, he is dealing with internalised homophobia, however, so some homophobia in this fic, alcohol is drank in this fic, mention of past drug use for recreational use, not specified which drugs though and is mentioned as a flippant thing rather than drug addiction. There’s mention of more serious homophobia in a discussion of Remus/Roman’s home town, but it’s one sentance.

Ships: Intrulogical, Royality, Anxceit.

Word Count: 4859

Chapter One/?

Week One: Logan has never fit in anywhere and now he can fit perfectly in Remus’ hands.

The first week of university is always rather hectic for anyone, hectic except for Logan who is lying on his own bed pushing granola around a bowl. The nervousness of a new chapter of his life has the brunet struggling to digest his food; ‘which is ridiculous,’ he notes to himself, because he needs the energy of food to accomplish the tasks in which he is nervous about in the first place. 

Still, his stomach wasn’t having it, hence the half-empty bowl of granola in yoghurt that hasn’t been touched for twenty minutes. Logan is not really used to feeling this nervous, he knows for sure that feeling uneasy is a definite response to uprooting your entire life a state over, yet he’s so used to feeling emotions like this on a small scale, one that he finds it easy to reason with. 

His internal monologue is suspended by a knock on his door, he sits up in his bed as he calls for whoever may be on the other side to enter, one hand steadying the bowl with his movements. A man his own age stands on the other side, his blackened hair mussed and falling into and around his bright green eyes. He glances at the bowl in Logan’s lap and raises his eyebrows. “That is one sad-looking bowl of granola,” the tone of his voice is humorous and the brunet can’t help but smile sheepishly as he places the bowl on his bedside table. “We’re having a little bit of a quiet get together right now, just as a way to get to know each other, we were wondering if you’ll be joining us; there’s snacks, alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic beverages, and an alarming amount of fruit because my brother has just decided he wants to be more healthy, whatever the fuck that means,” 

Logan hesitates a little, drinking with strangers is always a bad idea, but he gets a distinct feeling that normal students would jump at the opportunity. “Do I need to get changed or is this a pyjama party?” 

“Pyjama party, I’m Remus by the way,” 

The living room doubles as a kitchen, there’s a table and a couch which is cramming three bodies whilst a fourth sits on the floor with a coffee cup full of a glittery pink liquid, his dark purple hair not quite matching the beverage. “He’s alive!” One of the bodies on the couch cheers, he has the same face as Remus but his hair is an in-ignorable bright red, and he doesn’t seem to have the same capacity for facial hair as his lookalike. The others look up at him too, a blonde curled up in the corner of the couch like he’s desperate to be as far away from everyone else as possible on one side of the redhead; whilst on the other side there’s a man with close-cropped curls and wide-rimmed glasses. 

Logan waves awkwardly and Remus snorts beside him, patting him on the back before taking his seat on the floor, leaving the newcomer to trail after him and sit at the remaining spot beside the coffee table. “Alright, so we’re starting with never have I ever because we’re all literal children,” the blonde comments, his voice dry but with a tinge of amusement as he reaches for the bottle of the pink liquid on the desk “I’m Janus by the way, the loudmouth ginger is Roman, next to him is Patton, and that…” He gestures to the purple-haired man who looks unimpressed to be pointed at “...is Virgil.” 

“Logan,” he offers a nervous smile before his eyes go back to the bottle that is looking more and more inviting the more he looks at it. He picks up a cup and pours a little bit of it into a cup, after understanding that is in fact, gin, he looks up as he reaches for the lemonade. 

“I’ll go first,” Roman grins, “Never have I ever got into a fight.” Remus makes a small noise of protest beside Logan, squinting up at (who Logan assumes is) his brother. 

“Targeting is illegal,” the dark-haired man groans before taking a mouthful out of his drink “no more targeting or I’ll lose the game in seconds.” Laughter runs through the group, except for Patton, the curly-haired one who sits with his knees drawn to his chest and a cup of what looks like warm tea balancing between the palms of his hands. He just looks uncomfortable, unnerved by the whole situation. Logan catches his eyes and offers him a sympathetic smile, he’s also a little bit out of his depth in social gatherings. “Patton, your turn!”

“Oh, uh, how does the game work again? I say something I haven’t done?” There are various mumbles of agreements, and Roman offers him an encouraging grin. The small man takes a deep breath in “Never have I ever...drank alcohol?” There’s a few blinks of confusion as everyone but Patton drinks. 

“Never?” The blonde asks, ‘Janus’ Logan’s mind provides helpfully, after a few seconds of trying to recover the little detail. 

“No, I think the Church wine is non-alcoholic, which would make sense for people who don’t drink for religious reasons and also the fact that children drink the wine.” Remus snorts a little beside Logan, and Patton’s cheeks heat as he looks down at his hands. “Sorry, I don’t think I should play this game, isn’t it sort of cheating if you’ve never done anything?” 

“I’ve not had that much of an interesting life either,” The brunet can’t help but interject, he feels a slow and pitiful sort of sympathy for the way the already very small man is drawing in on himself. “Honestly I’ve only drank alcohol maybe four times in my life and I’ve never been drunk, and every time was with my parents.” He shrugs “I suppose it just means we’ve got a lot to experience in the future, not everyone can have the fast-paced teenage years full of drinking and parties.” 

“I’ll drink to that,” Janus mutters, taking a mouthful “Logan, your turn before Patton runs away from all the scrutiny on him.” 

“Never have I ever…” What is something common for teenagers to have experienced that he hasn’t? “...done any sort of drugs, bar say, aspirin.” Remus takes a mouthful out of his drink again, clearly in a hurry to drink as much as possible, Roman also drinks and Janus takes a reasonable sip from his own. Virgil squints at the ceiling for a second like he’s trying to remember, before he shrugs and drinks. 

“Took you a minute,” Janus snorts, looking over at his friend. “Remus?”

“Never have I ever had sex for money.” 

“You didn’t even think about that,” Roman mutters, “I thought we agreed no targeted attacks?” He throws back a mouthful of his drink, Patton is staring at him with something between nervousness and reserved horror. The look is impressive, Logan notes to himself, mainly because Patton’s general horror is amusing. 

“Payback,” Remus shrugs simply “Now no targeted attacks...Virgil?” 

“Never have I ever found these games remotely fun,” the violet-haired man grumbles, staring at the surface of his pink drink “It’s just an excuse to expose the worst of your friends to strangers in attempt of humiliating them.” Logan does not drink, it’s the first time he’s played this game in a long, long time and honestly he hasn’t exactly missed it. But mostly he keeps side-eying how uncomfortable Patton looks amongst all of this. 

“Plus sex, drugs and prostitution may be funny, don’t get me wrong, so glad I learned that about you, Roman...Logan and Patton look like they’ve just stepped into alien territory and everyone is speaking a different language, no offence guys.” Janus gestures loosely in the direction of the people he discusses as he agrees with Virgil. “I think we should just talk like human beings and see which of us hates the other by the end of the night.” 

“I like that idea,” Logan adds because he does. Patton nods with a small smile, sipping his tea. 

So they drink and talk, and Patton tells them about his life and ends up being the only “straight” present, which he looks uncomfortable about to some degree. Logan admits he’s never given his sexuality much thought, he’s been too buried under books to really pay much attention to things like sex or romance or both. The other’s are very open about their sexuality, Virgil even has a little rainbow tattoo behind his ear, which he has to pull his hair back to show. 

Patton goes to bed first, after everyone started to dawn on the fact that he’s uncomfortable just by being there around people that he doesn’t really know, and a group that he is unfamiliar with. “Well that was tense,” Virgil muttered, “trust a bible basher to get stuck with a fuck ton of queers and whatever Logan is.” Logan, a little drunk, laughs quietly in response, leaning his head on the table and staring at the mostly empty glitter-gin as the edible glitter swirls around the pink liquid. If he stares for too long he thinks it looks like it’s glowing. “At least now he knows what being drunk is like lads.” 

“It’s very dizzy,” The brunet replies, gaze not living the bottle, “The whole room is dizzy.” 

“Spinning,” Janus supplies helpfully, but all he gets in response is a quiet hum of agreement. “Next step is getting him stoned, you totally don’t look like you need it or anything, Logan.” Again, there’s only a low sound of agreement as the man stares, hypnotised by the way the glitter swirls in the glass bottle. Remus chuckles beside him. “Well, I’m off to sleep, Virgil are you in my room or your own tonight?” 

“I’ll pile in yours tonight if that’s alright?” The blond smiles and Logan finally looks up as Janus helps his friend (partner?) up from the ground, their fingertips almost automatically intertwining. It’s sweet, but the glass bottle, once again, takes much more interest for Logan. Roman makes a gagging noise, accompanied by some rather vulgar hand gestures, before standing himself. 

“I need some sleep, will you two be okay?” Logan doesn’t really know if he’s the one actually being asked until he looks up and finds the redhead staring right at him. He stiffens a little, before looking around the room and nodding, unsure why he was being given such an intense gaze. “All right, well, if he tries anything, just shout.” The blue-eyed man does not know what that means, but Roman is gone before he can ask. 

“He’s joking,” Remus uttered from beside him, stirring gin around his cup with what looks like a straw (’where did that come from?’ he thinks silently to himself). “Well, mostly, I think, I’ve never actually hurt someone like that, I think he’s just used to me being aggressive.” It’s an honest admittance, not the sort of honesty from a  game, but a genuine vulnerability that shows on the ebony-haired man’s face, he looks somewhat upset in one way or another. “I used to get in a lot of fights in high school, Roman says it’s because I’m not mature enough to handle bullshit but I just don’t like it when people call my brother a fag.” Logan sits up a little straighter then, eyes wide. “I mean, we’re from that sort of place so...shit happens you know? And if a lad turns up in a ditch and he was gay that was just how things worked in our town, and I wanted it to be very clear there was no way anyone was hurting him.”

“What about you? Did no-one…”

“I’m not Roman,” Remus shrugs, “People think I’m weird, they think I’m crazy or delusional and at some point that became a protective cover for me, I’d get into fights and I wouldn’t stop until their faces were just...fucked,” He shrugs “I didn’t care, I was protecting myself and my family, but Roman doesn’t see it like that...he’s like woefully pacifistic and thinks I’m like...an animal or something.” 

“It sounds like you took necessary measures to protect your family,” Logan glances at Remus’ knuckles, there is a slight discolouration to them, like healed scars. “But you’re safer here and can learn how to control your anger, especially now,” He glances back out the closed door to the hallway “I get the feeling you and Patton may find yourself in a verbal altercation at some point, he seems to lack any sort of education on the matter of sexuality, and his ignorance may cause friction.” 

“You talk like you swallowed a textbook even when you’re drunk,” Logan smiles in response and nods slightly. “You are pretty though, I’ll give you that,” the smile slips at the seemingly sudden confession and his cheeks heat as he looks away from Remus. “Shit, sorry, did I misread a situation again, Roman says I’m too forward.”

“No,” Logan replies tersely, looking back up at Remus. Perhaps it’s the alcohol but a sharp realisation simply overwhelms him, and now there’s a lump in his throat “I just don’t think anyone has ever said I’m aesthetically pleasing in any fashion before, and the alcohol is making me far more emotional than I’m used to digesting at any one time.” The other man stares at him, first with confusion and then with empathy. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think anyone has ever had a nice thing to say about me, I’m used to being told I’m hot or fuckable and shit, but pretty? No that’s just not me.”

“You are pretty,” it slips out before he can really stop it, and he surprises himself, which displays all over his face as Remus chuckles at the torn horror as the words fall from his lips. “I mean, I think you are, I-I haven’t had much experience in such things, but aesthetically you are...nice?” His voice gets higher the more he panics and Remus shakes his head with a small smile. 

“Logan, you’re very clever, I’m sure, but terrible at backtracking.” 

There’s a second where the man smiles weakly at the words, staring into Remus’ green eyes before a warm sense creeps up his neck. He’s seen that sort of look in movies before, but he’s never experienced it; after all, he’s never really had a group of friends or, for that matter, anyone who has ever been interested in him. Which is what he thought was supposed to happen, but he’s known this wild-eyed man a few hours and for the first time in his life, he understands the meaning of romance movies and sexual attraction. 

So he kisses Remus, he doesn’t even think about it, one second he’s in one place and the next his lips are pressing to the taller’s. He parts his lips, because he’s sure that’s how that goes, but Remus sets the pace from there, his hands cupping Logan’s cheeks; he can feel the cool metal of the other man’s rings on his skin, and it’s strangely reassuring. He takes a deep breath between kisses because for a long few minutes he doesn’t want this feeling, heart hammering in his chest and the rushing of his blood making him feel hot all over, to ever end. 

“You know as much as I’d love to just, fuck around whilst we’re both drunk.” Remus pulled away “I’m just not that person anymore, and you’re way drunker than I am,” Even though Remus had definitely drunk so much more. “I’d rather not have any more disappointed looks in my life,” Logan nods, breathing much deeper than he probably should be. “But we can totally keep making out if we move to the couch, 'cause my ass has gone numb as fuck.” 

He’s a little dazed as he follows Remus, his hand warm in the other’s, it takes him a moment to even realise what’s happening if he’s honest, but it’s not a bad feeling. There’s a sheer euphoria in the knowledge he just had his first kiss, and it feels so much better than it looks on TV. So he lies on the couch with Remus and presses their lips together again. 

--

He wakes up the next morning lying on top of Remus like he was terrified of falling off in his sleep. His eyes are a little bleary and his glasses were on the floor, his head on Remus’ chest. The flat is warm, at least, but his back is in six different types of pain (and he’d hate to be the man lying underneath him), and cracks as he sits up slowly. The ebony-haired man stays asleep, and Logan feels a little bad for leaving him but the growl of his stomach dictates he should probably eat, so he stands.

“He’s only cute when he’s asleep, but when he’s awake he’s a menace.” Logan curses under his breath as he jumps in surprise, head whipping up to face the kitchen. Roman is sat on (not at, on) the breakfast bar with a bowl of cereal and a mischievous grin. “Sorry, didn’t mean to disturb you sleeping with...on my brother.” The brunet sighs and grabs his glasses off the floor, sliding them onto his face and moving towards the kitchen area to make his own breakfast. “So, I didn’t hear any obnoxious sex noises last night, so I’m under the assumption he did not ruin your virtue?” 

“No, he did not.” 

“But by the way you were clinging to him, I’d say you’d like that?” Logan glares at the redhead, whose grin only widens “Oh this is gold, he’s been here a day and he’s already dragging people into his bed.” He snorts and shakes his head, spooning cereal into his mouth as the other opens the cupboard. “Alright, you’re already blushing like a tomato, I’ll cease the bullying.” 

The brunet quirks something of a smile though, he can’t help it; he hadn’t expected to feel so excited over his first kiss; he’s always looked to sex and romance as objective things, things he’d never experienced. Things he hadn’t entirely expected to experience if he’s honest. But he can still remember the taste of alcohol on Remus’ lips and the scratch of his beard and the way his hands felt on his cheeks and hips and...he flushes a little red, trying to divert his train of thought away from the way his body had felt like fire from the smallest of touches. “It’s not something I think about often enough to tell you whether or not I’d like that,” Logan lies through his teeth, Roman makes an ‘uh-huh’ noise, followed by the crunch of cereal. The blue-eyed boy realises he’s been stood in front of the open cabinet for a minute, lost in his train of thought. 

The quiet is interrupted by the low thud of Remus rolling off the couch, which has his brother grinning again as he peers over. “Good morning, brother dearest, couldn’t keep your mouth to yourself for one night?” The darker-haired twin sits up from the floor with a confused expression, then his gaze drifts to Logan, who gives something of a small wave and a tight smile.

“Go away Roman,” The younger twin grumbles, dragging himself to his feet and rubbing his forehead to try and restrain the headache “go, shoo, away heathen,” he gestures with his hands until the other jumps down off the counter, throwing Logan a wink before the door shuts behind him. “Was he being embarrassing? I keep telling him to keep his nose to himself but I suppose his romantic life is just enough of a train wreck to start meddling in mine.” 

“A little,” Logan admits “But nothing quite too intense, it felt weird though, like he was your dad or something.” 

“Practically,” Remus hums, “Mind if I have a small repeat of last night?” Logan’s cheeks heat again, he’s getting very tired of blushing, but he nods anyway, looking up at the other and accepting a small, slow kiss from him. 

It was supposed to be a small, slow kiss anyway, until he finds himself sat on the kitchen counter with Remus’ hands on his thighs. He gasps lightly into the kiss as the other’s fingertips squeeze at his thighs, finding the way they tighten around the other man’s waist almost fascinating. He wasn’t even thinking really, his body just seems to know what he wants. But again, Remus pulls back. He looks at Logan, whose shoulders are shaking from his deep breaths like he’s on the edge of a panic attack but instead of panic it’s an incessant need to have those hands move upwards a little. He appears to just look straight into him for a moment, before he smiles impishly and kisses him again, so hard that Logan can feel their teeth clash for a second, but for whatever reason he doesn’t really feel the pain. He shuffles closer to the edge, Remus pressing against him, one hand on Logan’s thigh and the other on his hip; the other man doesn’t know what to do with his hands so he cups Remus’ cheeks with slightly shaky hands. 

He can feel a pressure running from his abdomen right to his crotch, which is not a feeling he’s unfamiliar with, but the circumstances are certainly not typical for him. He loses himself in the feeling of Remus’ lips, and hands, and tongue and occasionally a little teeth; and he isn’t really sure when he started rocking his hips against the other’s body until he feels a sudden jolt of pleasure that has him moaning into the other’s mouth. The taller man chuckles a little, his lips leaving Logan’s, the other makes a small noise of complaint but then there are lips on his neck and he can’t really restrain the soft noise of surprise that accompanies the ticklish sensation of lips, then tongue on his neck. He definitely jolts a little when Remus starts sucking a bruise into his skin. 

There’s a second where he can’t even identify how overwhelmed with the sensation he feels, and then Remus presses the palm of his hand to Logan’s aching cock through his sweatpants. The feeling is strange, having anyone else touch him at all is, but not foreign in any measure; it does, however, surprise him enough that he grinds into the pressure without really contemplating it, and then he can’t really stop. He just rocks his hips into the touch whilst one hand supports his weight and the other grips the back of Remus’ head. He can feel the heat build more and more, his head going foggy.

Until the kitchen door opens and his eyes dart open. He almost feels little sorry for Patton, whose eyes go very wide and his skin very pale upon entering the kitchen to this. Remus leans up and turns his head back enough to see the intrusion, offering an almost sorry smile. The newcomer makes some sort of squeak of apology, and then he’s leaving the kitchen in a quick hurry. Logan bites his lip, looking down at Remus, for a moment neither of them knows what to do until the taller man snorts, burying his face in Logan’s neck to stifle the giggles pouring out of his lips. The other laughs too, he can’t help it, just the breathy sound of the other’s laughter setting him straight off. He covers his mouth to try and stop the sound bubbling out too loudly. 

“He’s probably going to go and pray over that,” Remus mutters when he finally stops laughing, before pressing soft kisses to the others’ neck. “It probably got him a little hot and bothered, let’s be honest, especially with you all flushed and pretty.” Logan chokes on his laughter then, smiling as he leans his head to the side. “I suppose we’re not learning from mistakes today?” He asks, his hand squeezing Logan’s thigh. 

“Maybe we should move from the kitchen.” The brunet suggests quietly, not really wanting to move at all. Still, he would really like to not have an audience more than of that that is required, at least it was just Patton, he’d have been mortified if it had been Roman. 

Yet, on the list of people he’d like to have walk-in on him getting a hand job from another man, perhaps one that wears a crucifix everywhere would not have been in the top five, or ten, or hundred. 

He shuffles off the counter, wincing a little as he adjusts himself in his boxers before Remus is dragging him along to his room. His skin feels flushed and his body feels a little weak, not in an alarming way, just in a very relaxed sort, he knows he’s shaking a little and that might be a lot to do with the fact he hadn’t eaten in a while and now he has so much adrenaline coursing through him he doesn’t really know what to do with. 

Logan might remember lying down on Remus’ bed for the rest of his life, might remember the way the other leans over him and kisses him hard and fast, or his hand slipping into his pants and wrapping around his hard cock. He might remember the noises that he hadn’t learned how to restrain coming from his mouth or the look that’s just short of arousal-induced adoration on his partner’s face. He’ll definitely remember the first time he had an orgasm that intense though. His whole body seemed to tense up with anticipation, and he gasps out Remus’ name, loud and clear and it amuses the other as he spills over his hand. It felt like it lasted for whole minutes, the way the seconds of pleasure dragged until he’s wincing from overstimulation; then he had to lie very still because the whole room was spinning and his body feels like jelly. 

“Good?” Remus asked, a tint of amusement in his tone as he licks cum off his hand like it’s nothing. 

“I can’t see straight.” Logan admits, followed by a short laugh of disbelief “Holy shit, Remus,” The bearded man laughs again, and flops down beside the other man “Do you want me to…?”

“Na, the look on your face will serve me for a good few months.” And once again, Logan blushes. 

--

The rest of the week goes by without much hassle, except of course the various teases pertaining to Logan’s inability to keep his mouth shut, and some vaguely embarrassing replications of said sounds from Janus and Roman, who are equally amused by the whole ordeal. Logan wonders if Roman finds it uncomfortable but he just shrugs when asked “I lived with Remus my entire life, I’m far too used to this, besides it’s just another thing I can bully him about, and by proxy, you,” the redhead grins at the other man “I used to find it awkward, ‘cause like, he’s my brother, you know? But I’m so desensitised to worst shit than sex noises I feel like this isn’t even something worth complaining about anymore.” 

Patton still refuses to look either of them in the eye, and he seems to tense anytime anyone comes near him like he’s afraid of being touched by any of them. Logan isn’t used to that sort of feeling, he’s hardly used to being gay, if that’s what he is, so at first the clear rejection had him feeling sort of...angry, and upset. But then Remus would squeeze his shoulder or Roman would attempt to do something ridiculous, or Janus would bluntly ask if everything’s okay and the feeling would slip.

Is this what having friends feels like? He asks himself, feeling protected? He’s not known them more than a week but, they are pretty much all he’s seen and heard from in a week so it feels like longer, somehow. It’s a nice feeling, he decides, and he isn’t sure why he never tried this before. Yes, he’s never had the time, but he also never had the want or need for it, either. Perhaps because he already knew somewhere, deep down, that he was different from the rich kids at his school, flirting with girls and spending all of their parent’s money. Perhaps he just wasn’t in a situation he could accept that. 

He remembers the first night, them all drinking, a sense of relief that accompanied their open expressions of their sexuality. Logan had, for the first time in his life, felt comfortable in a room of strangers and by the end of the week, they were the only friends that he had.

Then, he supposes, that’s just what university is like.

#not safe for sanders #bmbdly

[herecomesnaya]

Oh here I am, I think I'll take a bottle of: Roman’s abusive tactics have worn down Jason 2020, if you don't mind, thank you very much 🤲

yes indeedy! let’s see what I got here...

so, in the beginning, Jason was a lot different than he is now in terms of attitude. snarkier. more willing to fight back. his internal monologue less doubtful and uncertain of himself. able to spit Roman’s cum into his wine glass and walk away without a second thought. says no out loud more often, implies Roman is the crazy one.

but then, slowly, it changes around. it’s (I hope) subtle at first. Roman’s first tactic to start breaking Jason down isn’t to tear him down, but to build him up. he calls him a good boy. praises him for taking it so well. shows the barest modicum of care at some points, which feels like a hell of a lot to Jason, considering 1) it’s Black Mask and 2) Jason doesn’t ever particularly feel like he’s worthy of praise, so it leaves more of an impact when it happens.

starting in chapter 4, Roman begins to change Jason’s line of thinking from what he wants to what Roman wants. it starts off most evidently during sex, so Jason doesn’t realize what’s happening, just thinks of it in the context of it being a play scene. but the reason Roman broke him down until Jason told him to do whatever he wanted to him is because he was trying to prime Jason to carry that belief with him outside of the bedroom.

by chapter 5, he’s managed to convince Jason slowly over the course of the fic that what Roman wants, though, is actually what Jason wants. Jason may not entirely believe it yet, but Roman consistently reinforces this narrative:

“I-I— I'm sorry, okay?” he says, hoping that'll be the end of it. “I was wrong. You were right. Could you stop being weird now?”

“Oh, but I'm only giving you what you want,” Roman says, his voice like silk over ice. “Let's try things your way. What do you say, boys? Hm? Should we give Red Hood's methods a chance?”

the purpose is to make Jason doubt himself. to gaslight him into thinking that he practically asked to be treated like shit. because he comes when they have sex, and Roman treats him like shit while they fuck, so clearly that means Jason’s desires = being treated like shit, right?

chapter 6 is probably Jason’s last big defiant action before he gets, well, not completely complacent, but pretty damn close. fucking Chain is something he’d never have done at the beginning of the fic, but by this point, his psyche has already been re-shaped a bit by Roman’s tactics. sex is at the forefront of his mind where it wouldn’t have been before. sex is a tactic to get what you want from someone: he learned that from Roman.

by the end of the chapter, he’s gone through subspace (not for the first time in the fic, but more on that in my subspace meta), and while he’s still in that state, Roman does one of his little tactics to get Jason to trust him more: he takes off his mask while they’re in bed together, although he doesn’t let Jason see.

in chapter 7, we get more of Roman undermining Jason’s intelligence:

“Oh, Red,” Roman says with a shake of his head. “Still tragically incompetent with words, as always. You're lucky I know you well enough to realize you've got more going in there than you let on.” He accompanies this with a tap to his temple, and Jason at least has the good sense to feel offended.

he constantly reinforces the narrative that Jason has more brawns than brain, and needs someone like Roman to get him to “think clearly.” this is meant to make Jason doubt himself, wonder if he’s really thinking straight when Roman isn’t in his head.

in chapter 7, Jason also asks for one of the things he’s consistently been denied: boundaries. and Roman’s response?

“I admit I was a bit overzealous. I apologize,” Roman says, not sounding very contrite. “But that's exactly what I'm talking about. You need to trust that whatever I do to you, it'll work out in your favor. Do you think you can do that for me?”

Roman asks for obedience, not thought. trust, not mutual understanding. it’s about what he wants, and Jason, more and more, is starting to go along with it.

and what happens when Jason trusts Roman? well, he gets one of the best fucks of his life...

but also, a bunch of people die. whoops?

Jason’s guilt over this incident is so strong, and Dick comes into the story at exactly the perfect time to exacerbate that. in chapter 8, here’s where things really take a turn for the worse.

Jason is put in a position where he has to justify his attraction to Roman, and defend himself against actions that he feels personally responsible for. and what happens when he does that? it reinforces the until now unspoken belief that he really does want Roman to do whatever he wants to him.

because now there’s another party involved. now Dick knows he didn’t fight back like he “could” have, like he “should” have. now Jason, in his mind, has outside confirmation that he’s a willing party in this, and even goes so far as to wish he’s being raped to avoid having any culpability in it.

(the irony here being that Jason is being raped, because Roman consistently pushes past his boundaries when he says a clear “no.” he just doesn’t realize that it still counts as rape even if you come. he’d realize this if it were someone else in his position, but because it’s him, because he’s Jason Todd, because he’s stupid, because he doesn’t know how to admit what he wants, it can’t be rape. it can’t be. right?)

so he ends up leaving the confrontation with Dick feeling more isolated from his family, his only possible support system. feeling on edge, terrified that Dick will tell Bruce, and that he’ll be ousted from the family again, the black sheep that no one likes.

it’s this guilt and doubt and pain and terror that brings him into Roman’s arms, where he does arguably the most extreme session of the fic to that point. and that’s exactly where Roman wants him.

the next day, Roman really ramps things up. he sets up a fake situation where it appears that he’s been worriedly tending to Jason’s wounds all night. author’s note: he hasn’t. he’s full of fucking shit.

this line right here?

“I knew it,” he says a moment later, shoulders sagging under the tailored sleeves of his suit. “I knew you'd wake up as soon as I left.”

this is a little writer’s trick we in the biz like to call “a lie.” Roman can say that line literally whenever he comes into Jason’s room, and it’s like, oops, he only just stepped out for a minute! teehee! when in reality, he’s left Jason alone the entire night. Jason never receives proper aftercare, this is intentional.

but it still works. Roman manages to convince Jason, in his despair, to part with the knowledge that he used to be Robin. Jason is so alone at this point, he just wants someone to know that he’s in pain. and Roman has gotten him into subspace and “taken away the pain” often enough that Jason relies on him for it now. it’s like a drug to him.

and then comes the present. a simple gesture, and an easy one when you’re as rich as Roman Sionis. just a couple books. but to Jason, they mean so much more. they’re a “confirmation” that Roman listened to him speak about more than just business and sex. a “confirmation” that he does care, at least a little bit.

spoilers: he doesn’t. he doesn’t at all. it’s just a cheap way to endear Jason to him further, and Jason is in such an emotionally wrecked state that it actually works.

and then what does Roman do right when Jason has that realization?

he buys a bunch of hookers and spends all night paying attention to one.

give Jason attention, take it away. make him jealous. make it so that Jason is the one who wants Roman’s attention, not the other way around. and it works.

and when Jason gets upset and expresses that to Roman, his feelings are again downplayed and minimized.

“...I already told you what this means. Did you see a collar on her?”

It takes a second for Jason to realize Roman’s let up on his throat enough for him to speak. When he does, it’s hesitant and raspy.

“...No.” Roman lifts him by the neck, smacks his head pointedly back against the concrete. Jason corrects himself. “No, sir.”

Again, his airway gets cut off. “That’s right. Just because I’ve got some bimbo hanging off my arm doesn’t mean I give a damn about her one way or the other. This was supposed to boost morale, after everything that’s happened.”

Jason winces. He wonders if “everything” means his illness, or if it stretches all the way back to the former lieutenants now headless and chained to the bottom of Gotham Harbor. Either way, it’s his fault. That much is clear.

so now, once again, Jason feels responsible for his own anguish, even when it’s Roman’s fault, specifically building him up and tearing him down again. gaslighting him more to make him feel crazy. like he can’t trust his own emotions. like he needs Roman to make sense of them for him.

so Jason gets drunk to deal with the pain. and Roman eventually relents and gives him the attention he wants.

how does Jason respond?

a drunken love confession. Jason is now so broken down that he mistakes Roman’s token affection for love. he wants it to be love. he needs it to be, because that would make everything make sense. the way he feels. the way Roman is acting. everything.

and then, once Jason confesses, we get another sharp slap to the face by Roman: his “punishment” for being driven to drink, being cuckolded by Ms. Li. Roman knows at this point that Jason loves him. he’s using that against him by forcing Jason to watch him with someone else.

but he also throws him a bone: the knowledge that there’s a shipment coming in. he knows Jason wants to know about it. knows why he’s there. he needs to keep Jason tethered to him, keep him feeling like he’s getting what he wants when he’s actually doing exactly what Roman wants.

we can also see Roman continuing to subtly tear down Jason’s confidence in himself:

“Son, please,” Roman sighs, lifting a hand to cut him off. “Quite the contrary. It wasn’t an accident that I let you overhear that last night. That was your reward for complying so well, if anything.”

Immediately, Jason feels like his outburst was overblown. He shrinks back into his seat, looking down at the scraps of food on his plate.

Jason isn’t allowed to question Roman. if he does, it’s only because he’s an overdramatic brat. his feelings are constantly minimized, replaced by whatever feelings Roman deems it appropriate for him to have.

and then we get to the most recent chapter, with Roman manipulating Jason into having a conversation with Batman. Jason is given a week to prepare what he wants to say. and what does Roman do?

he doesn’t give Jason a second alone to think. constantly on him, fucking him, hurting him, giving him pleasure, distracting him. he doesn’t want Jason to be prepared. he wants him to be caught off-guard and thinking only of what Roman wants. then, only then, will he be the perfect little soldier to stand in front of Batman and pledge his allegience to Black Mask properly.

and that’s where we left off! there’s going to be even more delicious, horrible manipulation in the newest chapter, so I hope you guys are excited! can’t wait to publish it!

#ask #fic chatter #Blurry #daddy tag #tw rape #tw abuse #elidebrey

[cadomoisspokenfor]

Legion Rewatch Notes,

Chapter 4:

Frizzytop

I theorized in episode 2 that David could see through the 4th wall, or at least into a different universe. At the start of this episode Oliver outright breaks the 4th wall. Perhaps powerful reality benders just have that capability. If David knows, and Oliver knows, then Farouk definitely knows.

“A great philosopher once wrote, ‘In times of peace, the war like man attacks himself.’ This is the route of all our problems.”

“We are the route of all our problems. Our confusion, our anger, our fear of things we don’t understand.”

If we carry those 2 quotes throughout the rest of the show, then no doubt the tragedies that happen later on are caused by a collective misunderstanding of each other. And a collective lashing out at that misunderstanding of each other.

“Violence, in other words, is ignorance.”

The most central theme of the show is empathy vs fear. I s’pose whenever there’s a conflict in the show we’re supposed to be asking whether the characters should answer with empathy or fear. Certain characters lives have revolved heavily around fear. And that informs their decision making quite a bit. This will all come up again at multiple points throughout the show.

Syd... probably can’t break the 4th wall. So maybe it’s most logical to interpret this as her inner monologue. Very Jessica Jones esque.

The same voice lines from when Syd was searching for David in episode 1 are played. I guess there go to whenever Davids lost (whether in the world or in his mind) is to transmit Syds voice calling his name in hopes he’ll hear it and come back.

Kerry can pick locks.

The concept of “bad mutants” is well established amongst the veteran summerland crew. Ptonomy’s caution about David is probably because he feels he has a selfish vibe, and that’s a well known red flag of “bad mutants.”

It should also be noted he’s partly afraid of him because he has so much trouble understanding him. His powers, which when used affectively are essentially the ability to understand where someone’s coming from, keep getting overrided by Davids.

It’s now to the point where Ptonomy is doubting his own ability to tell what’s real and what’s not real. He was pretty confident he’d always know somehow in episode 2. Now, not so much.

Ptonomy very early on is open to the idea that David both has powers and psychological issues. “He’s unstable. You try hearing voices for 10-15 years, self medicate with hard drugs and then get dumped in a looney bin.”

Ptonomy also determines that because of his instability combined with the fact he has powers, David is a bomb waiting to go off.

I suppose if we’re trying to figure out their logic with the whole “the combination of being mentally ill and having powers makes him dangerous”, and considering that their right now going over an incident where David robbed his therapist for drug money and then bashed the doctors head in when he came back, the direct concern is that David makes bad decisions and/or selfish decisions (at least), and if he were to make a bad decision regarding his powers a lot of innocent people could get very badly hurt. Or killed. Along with the worry that the voices in his head don’t exactly give him the most angelic of advice at times, and because of his powers he’s very capable of fulfilling their wills, so to speak.

Based on Olivers speech at the beginning of the episode though, it might be safe to say the overall message is instead of acting on fear they should act on empathy and help David overcome his problems instead of vilifying him for his mental illness.

Syd suggest Davids hiding his real memories behind a fake ones and Ptonomy says she going through a lot of effort just to convince herself Davids a good guy. I never really got what he meant, but I guess what he meant is that Syd’s trying to find a justifiable reason for why David would attack Dr Poole like he did when the obvious answer is just “He’s got violent tendencies.” I always just thought she was genuinely hypothesizing, ya know, trying to solve the case. Maybe she was and Ptonomy’s just mean.

“I was looking for the man I loved. Or did I just love the idea of him? The face he showed me?” Doubt springs up early. Why can none of the characters reconcile that a person can have both good and evil in them at the same time? That’s... all people, in fact.

When Kissinger ask if Amy knew David had powers Amy says, “I think so.” Amy potentially acted on fear as well, in regards to her and Davids childhood that is.

Kerry mostly only thinks of herself in relation to Cary.

Cary misses Kerry when she’s gone. Even besides the roles they fill for each other, they generally enjoy each others company. They’re quite literally as close as 2 people can be. Each one living for the sake of the other.

Davids once again surrounded by a crowd of people all yelling in his face. After they disappear though he recovers pretty fast. I guess he’s used to it.

Clockworks Podcast pointed out that the music Davids wincing at is sax heavy Jazz, which is (abstractly) the sound The Devil With Yellow Eyes makes whenever he appears. If my theory about David seeing through the 4th wall is correct, then maybe he’s actually hearing that sound whenever TDWYE is around. Alternatively, Farouk blast that in his head everytime to mess with him.

“Sorry... I forgot about your um... I had a similar- proclivity? Malady? I forget the word- what’s the word? I’ve been here a long time.”

If the previous paragraphs are right, Oliver’s probably implying he was also affected by a mental parasite at some point. It might’ve even been what stranded him in the astral plane.

From Davids perspective he skipped over the entire second half of Chapter 3.

Oliver is essentially explaining the plot of the show to David and the audience before it’s even been unfurled.

“You have an unquiet mind, so you war with yourself, like a dog trying to chew off its own tail.”

David’s still in a very pessimistic guilt ridden place at this point in the story. That’s probably the internal war Oliver’s talking about.

... why can’t Oliver leave the astral plane again? If he did have his own mental parasite, it seems long gone by now. If he just can’t find his way back, then how does he do it in Chapter 7?

Syd calls non-mutants “normals.”

“We were the ghost in a haunted house.” ~Syd, Chapter 4

“You think ghost like living in a haunted house?” ~Syd, Chapter 12

Why does Syd keep hallucinating The Angriest Boy? Or is that just visual metaphor?

Ptonomy’s a very, “Get the job done and look classy while doing it” sorta guy.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” ~Sun Tzu, Ptonomy

Is the above quote perhaps relevant to the shows message during other conflicts throughout the series? Could it be subtly implying all the characters should always look for non-violent ways to defeat their enemies? I.e. not just a classy line from Ptonomy, but a statement of themes within the show.

The food David, Philly, and Dr Poole are having in Philly’s memories is cherry pie.

In Philly’s memory David says, “I don’t keep a lot of stuff.” And Philly comments that there’s no evidence David had a past. At least among the things David owns at that point. I know Farouk edited a lot of Davids memories, but why did David himself get rid of so much physical stuff? Syd said the reason he broke into Dr Pooles that day was to destroy their taped conversations. What’s compelling him to erase himself from existence? Is it as simple as “Farouk”? It seems like on a deeper level David doesn’t want anyone to know too much about him. Everyone’s only allowed to know what he tells them. His way of feeling in control I guess.

Philly did the classic “I can fix him” when she started dating David.

Philly implies David going off his medication and keeping bad company is what caused the downfall of their relationship. And subsequently his life, probably.

Despite everything, Philly still feels sympathetic towards David.

“Whoever altered Davids memory-“ Ptonomy very early on humors the idea that Davids being acted on by a 3rd party.

The longer Kerry is away from Cary, the more antsy she is for a fight. She’s not supposed to have to sit through all this “boring stuff.”

Ptonomy left after he got the info on Pooles location from Philly. He probably wanted to get the rest of the information from the source. Ironically, they probably woulda gotten closer to the real answer if he’d just looked a bit longer.

Sys proudly says “Yes” when “Dr Poole” ask if she’s in love with David.

It never really comes up again, but Kerry and Cary are physically linked. Maybe even psychologically. When one of them gets hurt, or even exerts their body a lot, the other can feel it, even if their own body doesn’t take on the actual damage. This is still true even if they’re miles apart.

Syds definitely portrayed as the hero at the end of this scene.

“All those years of practice-“ A part of David always knew he had powers. I wonder, did he practice a little in secret? Or is he saying he was at Summerland for years? That doesn’t really add up. But then... what does he mean by years?

Lenny encourages David to get angry so that his powers will strengthen enough for them to overpower the astral plane. Sort of... cheating his way out. David will later achieve more feats of strength through honing his emotions. Like many heroes, his level of power is intrinsically linked to his emotional state.

Very directly here, Davids violence is caused by ignorance. He doesn’t know Syd switched bodies with Walter and is trying to escape.

#legion fx

[graduationemmasep]

'I like the way MDMA gives you a deep sense of connection to your friends'

I'm no fiend. Most nights I'd rather share a bottle of wine with some friends than stay up till 6am getting sweaty and boggle-eyed on a bender. But while I associate alcohol with talking about past experiences, I associate drugs with making new ones. Party drugs can often make a stranger feel like a confidant; a simple trip to a town centre feel like an Enid Blyton escapade.

I probably take class-A party drugs such as MDMA or cocaine once a fortnight, and have done since I was 16 (I'm 27 now). I like the way cocaine gives you a new lease of life, like a mushroom in Super Mario, to carry on with a night out. I like the way MDMA softens the edges of reality and gives you a deep sense of connection to your friends that you can never get when you meet them for dinner and they moan about their jobs. I like how when you're coming down from a pill another person's touch has a comforting, almost electric capacity. If you're suffering from exhaustion, anxiety or stress, recreational drugs can give you a bit of a leg-up.

Drugs can also be a total pain. Ecstasy can make you feel like you're floating in a cloud, but just as often it's an admin nightmare: you come up at different times from your friends; only half the people in a group remembered to get sorted and there's endless hassle at a party trying to get more. Even when you're having a great time, there's a self-doubting internal monologue running through the whole process: Have I done enough? Am I coming up? Do I look like a prick?

I would just like to have that conversation about drugs being sometimes brilliant and occasionally annoying. Yet I feel like there is no one who is willing to talk about drugs in those terms.

When children ask their parents where babies come from, they get a white lie – a stork delivers them, you find them in a cabbage patch, you order them from Ocado. That's the closest thing I can think of to explain the difference between the perception and the reality of drug use by young people in the UK. There is a societal stork myth that is propagated by the media and popular culture to hide a basic reality. Even users themselves are entirely unwilling to talk about drug-taking honestly. Everything in the drugs world tries to stifle this conversation. Take nightclubs. It doesn't take a genius to work out that staying up till 6am listening to dance music at an ear-splitting volume would not only be unenjoyable without some kind of mind-altering stimulant, but a painful test of endurance. Most people in big nightclubs are on drugs. The clubs know that: that's why they charge so much for entry and, often, for bottles of water. They know that not many people will be buying drinks. Most of them have in-house dealers too, so they can sort out their DJs. Bigger DJs put requests for drugs on their rider. "We just put it on expenses as 'fruit and flowers'," a promoter at a major nightclub told me this year. But there's still a stork charade, with the venue covered in posters promising to eject drug users and bouncers searching punters – but not too thoroughly. The pretence is that this could all be above board.

I suppose the reason for this false picture of drug-taking is that most people don't take drugs. The statistics show that only a small fraction of the UK population are regular drugs users, and a smaller fraction still do anything harder than weed. But drug use is not spread evenly across the country, nor across age groups. In my demographic – under 30, living in London, job in the creative industries, disposable income – almost everyone is a recreational drugs user.

Where I grew up in south London, it was pretty uncommon to find someone who didn't at least smoke weed. The children of more middle-class parents were taking cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine and mephedrone almost every weekend. These were not reprobates ruining their lives: they were intelligent, bright people who got three As at A-level and went to good universities.

We would go to raves in places such as Camberwell and Hackney Wick, to warehouse venues where almost no one was over 18. White powders flowed as freely as the Fanta Fruit Twist and Malibu we were drinking. Festivals played a big part, too. Parents, even quite strict ones who wouldn't dream of letting their kids out past midnight, were happy to send their kids to music festivals, perhaps because of the reverent music-focused coverage in the media.

If you go to somewhere like Reading or Benicàssim, almost everyone is under 20. Half of them barely leave the campsite. Festivals are drugs playgrounds where teenagers experiment with copious amounts of uppers in presumably quite dangerous combinations. Some of the best moments of my life took place going to festivals as a teenager. I remember one muddy year at Glastonbury, racing down the hill arm-in-arm with a bunch of people, all off our faces on MDMA, feeling happier than I had ever felt. Another year, I remember taking mephedrone with a girl I fancied during Blur's headline set, both weeping with joy at a band we'd grown up with our whole lives.

Again, everyone knows this; no one thinks the thousands who watch the sunrise at the stone circle in Glastonbury every year are just on a high from seeing Mumford and Sons. But the festivals keep up the pretence that they are drug-free zones. Even a recent BBC3 show, Festivals, Sex and Suspicious Parents, which was supposed to show parents what their kids really got up to at festivals, ignored the fact that as the cameras panned around the festival, many revellers were plainly as high as a kite, their jaws swinging back and forth like pendulums, a side-effect of taking ecstasy. The voiceover just kept talking about people being "drunk".

I am also part of the first generation of people whose parents are likely to have been drug users. Of course, some adults would be outraged, like the parents on BBC3, to see what their kids got up to. But many more knew only too well – plenty of people I know would smoke weed or share dealers with their parents. In some families drug use had less stigma than smoking.

I thought all this was normal, but at university I met, for the first time, young people who totally abstained from drugs. They mostly came from outside major cities, or outside the UK, and many shivered in horror when they saw the rest of us dabbing our gums with mysterious white powders. I thought there would be a rift in social lives, an us-and-them situation, but it was around that time that mephedrone happened. Known by literally no young person ever as "meow meow", mephedrone was a legal high that changed attitudes towards drug-taking. Polite do-right kids who would never dream of taking illegal drugs were happy to chow down on bombs (self-made wontons of mephedrone powder wrapped in Rizla) like they were no more risqué than chocolate liqueurs.

Mephedrone was incredibly cheap – about a tenner a gram – and incredibly available. You could order it with next-day delivery to your university PO box. Mephedrone was a drugs phenomenon of which I have never seen the likes before or since. Everyone started doing it. I remember visiting a friend at Leeds University during this period. We went to a club and the queue for the men's bogs was at least 70 people long. When I finally got inside the place stunk of mephedrone, you could hear everyone loudly sniffing.

On nights out during this time, everyone would be raging – making out with one another, dancing with total abandon. But the comedowns were immediate and severe, far worse than ecstasy. By 4am people would be lying on the floor sharing the most intimate and personal shames and secrets, as if the drug was somehow compelling them to be honest. Some people called it a truth serum. Friendships were forged in the hot irons of that emotional exposition, as were the most horrendous hangovers.

Mephedrone was banned within two years of it taking off. People talk a lot about one legal high being banned only for another to take its place, but the real legacy of mephedrone was to numb the stigma of harder drugs. By the time I left university, many of the drug abstainers who had tried mephedrone became relaxed about most illegal drugs, too.

Ecstasy and mephedrone make it pretty hard to get much done in the days after taking them. You can't regularly use them and be a successful, functioning adult, so they become a rarer treat once you leave student life. In their 20s most people are overworked: they have second jobs and work incredibly long hours. If they're going to go out on a Friday night they need a pick-me-up. And that is why cocaine remains the young professional's drug of choice.

I see cocaine usage almost every weekend wherever I go: clubs, pubs, people's houses, dinner parties. At fancy celebrity parties, the sort you see on Mail Online, cocaine is so prevalent that it's almost boring. Everyone does it – butter-wouldn't-melt TV presenters, wholesome pop stars adored by your mum, people who would immediately lose their job if anyone found out. Those tabloid stings where they catch someone doing cocaine are kind of hilarious in that respect. If you followed any celebrity around with a secret camera on a Friday night you'd be almost guaranteed to find them doing coke. But cocaine users are like hipsters in the way they will vehemently deny they are one, and cast aspersions on others. "It was just full of self-aggrandising wankers doing coke and talking about themselves," someone will say about a party where they did cocaine and talked about themselves. Most of my friends are cocaine users, but I've never heard them say one nice thing about cocaine.

No doubt some people will have read this piece and think that I am just a monstrous twat, that this has all been little more than infantile boasting in a vain attempt to try to sound cool. But that, too, is part of the cover-up, that any open discussion of using drugs or enjoying them is necessarily a boast. We can talk about great food, great films, great sex, but if we talk about great drugs we immediately sound like we're engaging in some teenage bravado. That's why the biggest taboo surrounding drugs today isn't taking drugs, but saying that they're fun.

I'm not saying that people are lying about the negative effects. I have, of course, seen lives ruined by drugs. Rarely has this been because of an overdose or because someone has ruined themselves financially because of addiction (although I am only 27 – that may yet come). Far more often I have just seen people become dulled through regular drug use: their youthful spark extinguished by a never-ceasing quest to get on it; brains frazzled by overheated synapses. There are friends I want to slap every time I see them doing another line, but I can't because that would be hypocritical.

I also appreciate that's it's easy to be blasé about drug use when you're a well-adjusted middle-class white guy who has never been stopped by the police and has a distant non-social relationship with their drug dealer. For many people, drugs aren't something they can dip in and out of and separate from their lives. People entangled in the economic and legal realities of drugs – dealers, those convicted of possession, addicts – don't have the luxury of my relaxed attitude.

But until we stop pretending that getting high is inherently bad – that drugs can never be brilliant, can never enhance human experience for the better – how can we properly deal with people whose lives have been made worse by drugs? At some point, kids grow up and learn the facts of life. I think it's time we all had the talk.

#research

[themagiciansreccenter]

Five @ Five @thursdayeuclid

As a part of our author spotlight, we’ve asked each writer to highlight 5 fics and tell us a little about their experience writing (or reading) them.

Modified Aspect Ratio by @sabrinachill

Quentin flinches when party hats suddenly appear on all three of their heads - the pointy, cardboard kind, with elastic straps that bite into the soft underside of their chins. Crepe paper streamers float in the air and balloons drop from where a ceiling should be, drifting down to scatter across the white expanse that serves as a floor. Tiny multicolored fireworks explode into shapes like smiley-faces and stars, and a three-tiered cake coated in yellow and red icing pops into existence in a puff of flour, hovering to the monster’s right.

But the biggest decoration - and weirdest, by far - is the enormous blue neon sign with the words “Welcome to Hollywood!” strobing insistently against the white blankness.

The monster is now wearing a wizard costume, for some unknown reason, and bouncing up and down while clapping its hands and performing a horribly off-key rendition of “Party in the USA.”

“This is officially the worst party I’ve ever attended, including the one where we murdered a couple of gods,” Eliot mutters.

Quentin’s answering sigh is epic and professional-grade, containing all the exasperated resignation in the galaxy. “Why is it that everything that happens to us is always equal parts absurd and terrifying? I mean, I could accept regular old fear and tragedy, sure, whatever, everybody gets those. But it’s like the universe gets off on dicking us around.”

He wants to slump, all dramatic and defeated, but he’s still pinned in place by the monster’s powerful will, like a butterfly in a display case.

This has to be my favorite Queliot AU. It's patently ridiculous but just believable enough to really touch your heart. Which, honestly, is most of the show too. I laughed and cried reading this. It's amazing and unpredictable and goes places I would never have imagined.

to be unbroken or be brave again by @milominderbindered

After the fourth time it happens, Josh decides to go for it, and as they’re bathing in the sweaty afterglow, he asks Margo if she wants to go on a date.

Margo looks at him, up and down, and says, “No offence, Hoberman, but no.”

“Oh.”  Josh’s stomach sinks a bit.  He pulls up his pants and takes a joint out of his pocket.  “Okay, that’s chill too. Wanna smoke?”

“Oh, don’t look all sorry for yourself,” Margo says, rolling her eyes as she picks herself up from the bathroom floor and inspects her hair in the mirror.  “It’s nothing personal. You’re nice, the sex is good, whatever. But, listen. Eliot is my best friend, and he’s going through this incredibly shitty time right now.  Specifically to do with love.  It’s been a couple months since that Mike shit went down, but he’s still seriously messed up, and he’s my first priority, capiche?  I’m not gonna start dating someone and just leave him by himself half the time, or shove a bunch of lovey-dovey crap in his face.  No way. I’m not gonna date anyone until Eliot’s dating again, too.”

“Right,” says Josh, slowly, as he lights his joint and thinks about it.  “Not until he’s dating someone too. Got it.”

He thinks about the party raging downstairs, and about what he knows about Eliot.  Eliot’s had no problem hooking with guys recently, everyone knows that, but he’s not kept anyone around for more than a night.  He’s heard Margo calling it Eliot’s attachment freak-outs when he drops the guys as soon as they suggest sucking his dick more than once , which makes sense.  Except. Well, there’s that one first year, with the floppy hair and the Lord of the Rings t-shirt.  Eliot and the first year with the weird name haven’t hooked up, according to Josh’s well-informed rumour mill, but he certainly seems to be the only person other than Margo who Eliot’s remotely interested in spending time with when he’s not drunk.

There aren’t a lot of things in life Josh Hoberman has an excess of.  But he’s not hard up for money. He’s got a trust fund and a drug hustle.  And he’d spotted Eliot’s first year at the school noticeboard taking the number for a three-headed-dog walking ad, the other day.

So, just like that.  The threads tangle together.

So this is a 10 Things I Hate About You AU (which was itself a reimagining of Taming of the Shrew), and I'm living for it, just right off the bat. I love Hoberman wanting Margo so badly he goes to all this trouble. I love Quentin being morally compromised but just wanting to spend all his time with Eliot... I love it. This story deserved more attention. It made me laugh and 'aww' and have feelings, plus it's on the shorter side so you have no excuse not to read it.

we can kiss like real people do by VeryImportantDemon

“No offense,” Quentin began, squinting at the stranger, “but I don’t know you, um… Janet.”

“None taken,” the man said. “And my name’s not Janet, it’s Eliot. None of the names on these things are right, we just grab a nametag.”

“Oh,” Quentin said. He supposed that made sense. “But I still don’t know you.”

Eliot shrugged again, taking a sip of his coffee and licking his lips afterwards. Q tried to pretend like he wasn’t staring, but he and Eliot both knew that he was. “In that case, it can’t hurt to tell me, then,” he added.

“Why are you even here?” Quentin asked, stalling for time. Maybe the ridiculously attractive barista was on break and if Quentin talked long enough, that break would be up and he wouldn’t have to confess his embarrassing predicament.

“You’re sad and cute and I was bored,” Eliot said. “Now, spill.”

He was not to be deterred so Quentin didn’t have very long to dwell on the fact that he’d just been called cute. “I, um… I kind of lied to my dad,” he said.

“Ooo,” Eliot said, leaning forward. “Exciting. About what?”

“It’s not that exciting,” Quentin said. “I just… He’s worried I’m lonely and he keeps asking if I’ve met someone. I just told him I had a boyfriend once to get him to stop asking and now he wants to see a picture of us.”

“Mmhm,” Eliot said. “I think I’m following. Why didn’t you get that snack that was here earlier to take a pic with you?”

“I can’t,” Quentin said, wondering how his life had gotten to the point that he was having an impromptu therapy session with a barista. “That’s Penny. He’s my… Sort of friend? And he’s kind of an asshole.”

“Pity,” Eliot said. “This your phone?” he added, gesturing to the phone on the table.

“Yeah,” Quentin said. Before he said anything further, Eliot scooped it up, unlocked it with Quentin’s face, and then set about doing something Quentin couldn’t see. “Hey!” he protested. “That’s my phone!”

“I know,” Eliot said. He rose from his chair, crouched down beside Quentin, and flashed a mesmerizing smile. Quentin was sure he looked a little startled and confused in the selfie because he really was confused. Eliot moved fast. He tapped on Quentin’s phone for a few more seconds as he crossed the table and sat down in the chair he had previously occupied before tapping a few more times and sliding the phone back to Quentin. “There,” he said. “Problem solved.”

I am a complete sucker for fake dating, and this story has a delightful array of truly ridiculous fake dating tropes. Also, it has transgender Penny dating Margo, and as a trans man, I can only aspire to such absolute game. Well done, trans Penny. Godspeed you, good man. There's a scene where I was freaking out and very upset and the author had to reassure me in comments it would be okay, so I kept reading, and everything was lovely in the end.

The Honor of Your Presence by Page161of180

One of the first years-- Elliott (oh no, that is too confusing, even in his own internal monologue), ah, Todd doesn’t remember her name, not because he doesn’t care, but because there are two Emilies and an Emilia in the new class and he hasn’t quite sorted them out yet. Maybe he should ask them about their middle names?-- makes it halfway down the stairs, before coming to a dead stop at the sight of the PKC’s friendly neighborhood post-grad locked in a silent stare-off with a six-foot-something R-rated Disney prince in head-to-toe-- Todd’s pretty sure it’s brocade? It’s very shiny and kind of between mint and seafoam. Definitely a nice color, against pale skin and dark hair. Which Todd knows from dressing himself , not because he spends that much of his time thinking about-- Not that there’s anything wrong with--

Ha. Ha ha. What? Not the point.

Todd shakes his head frantically at Emily, Emily, or Emilia, and she gets the message, turning back up the stairs and retreating to the safety of her room. Todd wishes he could go with her. Not, like, with her , specifically; he’s more into Emily (other Emily? Or maybe she’s Emilia?), honestly. But, you know, away . Would be good. 

Neither Eliot nor Quentin seem to notice she was ever there.

Eliot has been staring at Quentin for one minute and forty-five seconds, Todd’s face going more ashen with each moment that slips away, when the former (still?) king finally says, “I’m sorry. What ?”

And if it were Todd facing down Eliot like that (not that it would be; why would he be dating Eliot? Crazy.), he would have basically just, become one with the carpet, because that only sounds like a question. It is very clearly, obviously a trap. But Quentin-- man . Quentin has always been, just, super brave. Way braver than you would probably expect from someone who’s all, sort of, pocket-sized and, um, no judgment but, not really all that good? At magic? Like, not bad-- definitely not bad! Just. Kind of normal and-- soft? If that makes sense? He just sort of always looks like he needs a hug. Which is maybe why Eliot basically always has at least one arm wrapped around him.

Not now, though. Now, Eliot has both arms down at his sides, hands dangerously still, while Quentin crosses his own over his chest and sets his jaw.

This is just one of the greatest fics I've ever read in any fandom, for any pairing, and it's hilarious and feelsy and I had to keep pausing when I was reading it just to sit with my emotions for a minute. I recommend it to absolutely anyone who likes Queliot at all.

Ask Me, I Won't Say No by @veganshailseitan

None of them linger too long in their booth after they collect the gift certificate that will almost cover their drinks for next week-

Wednesday Night Trivia Rule 2: Only Penny and Alice are allowed to handle the gift certificates because they are the only ones who won’t lose them.

-exchanging hugs and kisses on cheeks. He’s walking out of the bar while texting —a grave mistake he should have learned from by now, but he just has to let the sitter know he’s going to be late real quick— when he suddenly smacks into something solid, sending his phone clattering to the floor.

Something solid which oh, fuck happens to be a person.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” the stranger says, despite the fact that Quentin should clearly be taking the blame here. 

He’s ducking to pick up his hopefully-not-shattered phone before he can even spare a glance at the person, “You’re fine, I wasn’t paying attention to-” he loses the sentence as he stands back up, looking up to a face he’s only seen from across the room “-you?”

His brief interaction with the enemy-

”I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Eliot. Waugh.”

“Um, yeah, I’ve seen you here before, hi. Quentin Coldwater.”

“Quentin Coldwater?” -sticks in Quentin’s mind for the next week. He’s excited for trivia. More excited than the usual eagerness for his night out of the house with grown-ups, and nervous for the first time since he could remember. Which is so dumb and shows Quentin how painfully out of practice he is at interacting with other human beings.

He and the guy —Eliot— had barely exchanged two sentences and he’s pretty sure one of them had just been Eliot making fun of his name. But then again, his type has always been the ones that pulled his pigtails on the playground —which, yeah super healthy there Quentin, way to go— except for Arielle.

And there it was: the surefire way to kill whatever ill-advised excitement he’d been holding onto for the night.

He’s early this week, for reasons he’s already overthinking, so he goes ahead and grabs their usual table. It’s his week to pick-

Wednesday Night Trivia Rule 1: The person in charge of choosing the team name will rotate on a weekly basis in alphabetical order. That week’s decider can only be overruled by a unanimous vote from the rest of the team (per the March 2018 addendum).

-so he lets the group chat know he’s there, checks them in with the Quizmaster as To Be Perfectly Queer, (because he’s at least self-aware at this point in his life) and heads to the bar, trying to focus on whether or not he wants to try the new local craft brew they were pushing this month-

And immediately runs into Eliot.

Thankfully not literally this time.

“Well, hello, Quentin.” Eliot looks as surprised to run into him as Q is, which is stupid on both their parts.

“Uh, Eliot. Hello. How are you?” just talk like a normal human, Quentin, Jesus.

Eliot smiles, sultry and so over the top that Quentin almost laughs, “Fraternizing with the enemy, are we? I’m sworn to hold our knowledge in secrecy, so don’t you dare try to seduce it out of me.”

Quentin does laugh at that, somehow put at ease by Eliot’s carefree flirtation, “I’ll try to restrain my charms. Scout’s honor.”

I actually -just- got around to reading this one and I liked it so much it made me squee out loud on a couple of occasions. It's hot, it's kidfic, it's sweet, and there's feelings and fluff and smut. Basically a ridiculous AU where Eliot and Quentin are on opposing pub trivia teams. However, that premise accounts for only a fraction of this story's considerable charms. I didn't expect to love it like I did--I did, in fact, expect to love it in a totally different way--and then it hooked me and dragged me panting and squirming through a smorgasbord of emotion. 

#the magicians rec center #five @ five #author spotlight #author spotlight: thursdayeuclid

[writsgrimmyblog]

Rec List #1 Theme: 2018 Favourites

One of my fandom resolutions is to rec more in 2019. I’m going to post rec lists for some of my favourite Nick fics divided up by theme/content/ship or whatever I fancy throughout the year. It seems fitting that my first rec post of 2019 should be my favourite Nick Fics of 2018. If you’re interested in my Harry Potter themed recs, you can find them over on my other blog @writcraft under the tag #writ recs where I’m undertaking the same initiative.

This is by no means an exhaustive list - I’m limiting myself to ten recs per list and it is very difficult, I could have recced many more. I’ve read and enjoyed a whole raft of terrific stories and this rec list is simply based on my personal tastes which may not be everybody else’s cuppa. Please heed the content warnings the author has flagged on AO3 in each case, none of my recs include the content tags.

#1. Ten Track Sophomore Album by @junkshop-disco​ 

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 4,228

Nick has always lived in noise, been the cause of a lot of it, but one day a boy writes him into a pop song and the whole world dissolves into static.

It doesn’t happen like that, not that easy, not that linear, but that’s the heart of it, the soul, if these things have such a thing.

My Rec: The Nick fic of 2018 is undoubtedly the final installment of junkshop-disco’s incredible Doodle of a Surface Life but that has quite rightly garnered so many recs by now if any Gryles reader hasn’t yet indulged, run, quick, what are you waiting for? I love DOASL with all of my heart, but I’m also a sucker for angst and I wanted to highlight this equally terrific fic in my rec list. The structure of this story, in which Nick loses his ability to hear music, is so cleverly done. It’s a very skilled writer that can create an entire fic around sound and make it come alive, and junkshop-disco manages it brilliantly. The fic reads like music, even as it describes the absence of it and it’s a stunning piece of writing. If you like your Gryles contemplative and angsty with confident, lyrical prose, this is the one for you. Junkshop-disco has such a terrific way with words I highly recommend reading all the works by this author. Every single one. But when you do make sure you take a moment to stop by this beautiful story and leave it all the love it deserves.

#2. Tell Me It’s The Strongest Shape by @louandhazaf

Nick Grimshaw/Elgar Johnson/Louis Tomlinson | 73,224

Nick and Elgar have it all. They’re famous, successful, and engaged to be married—and sometimes they play with others.

When uni student Louis gets street cast by Elgar for a GQ photoshoot, he's drawn into Nick and Elgar’s complicated relationship.

They've always invited mates into their bed. It doesn’t ever mean anything. Until… it does.

My Rec: This is such a great exploration of polyamory and the complexities of open relationships, and the author took a great deal of time developing the relationships between the characters and really working on highlighting some of those difficulties. I tend to gravitate towards fanfic where I care deeply about the characters, and although Elgar seems terrific I don’t have the same fannish relationship to him as I do to Nick and Louis so I was curious to know how I would respond to this fic. Basically, the author killed it. I felt such a deep investment in Elgar, Nick and Louis throughout and everything just flew by as I was reading. It’s also really fucking hot. Like, REALLY. Brilliantly done. I loved it. 

#3. Let The Boys All Sing And The Boys All Shout For Tomorrow by @lunarrua​

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 18,429

It's February 1988. Thatcher is in power. There's a new drug sweeping through the clubbing scene. In Manchester, it's the eve of a major protest and a new musical movement. And when Nick finds Harry looking lost outside his favourite chip shop, it's the start of a weekend that will leave an indelible mark on both their lives.

My Rec: I saw the summary for this fic and actually yelled at my screen when it popped into my inbox. Gryles, set in Manchester in the 80s? Hell yes. The fic itself certainly didn’t disappoint, it’s absolutely beautiful. The author writes a well-researched, confident piece and the result is stunning. The atmosphere of the whole story is captivating and you can feel yourself transported to the heady days before the Manchester music scene shifted, the anxieties of the AIDS crisis and the fragility of the relationships formed during that period. The Harry of this fic has a transient quality which evokes the nostalgic reflection on a different time in our not so distant past. A real triumph. I loved this story with my whole heart. 

#4. Séjour by @silveredsound

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 6,288

It is so quiet, which should be conducive to concentration, but Nick is bored and listless and lonely. He’s been there for two days and wants to know where the helpful lady is who’ll deliver him a gamine but takes-no-shit housekeeper who he can fall in love with without words. Words are not his friend.

“Where is my Love Actually moment?” he asks the ceramic kitchen sink as he pokes holes in the cover of one of the M&S ready meals he brought over with him.

«≠»

Nick’s got writer's block. Louis is a master of distraction.

My Rec: I’ve loved a number of stories by Silv this year and I was swinging back and forth between this and others, but there’s something about this little fic that has wormed its way into my heart and has taken hold so this is the one I’m choosing. As I said in my earlier reblog rec, this has such lush, evocative prose it perfectly captures the sense of a fleeting summer. There’s a seductive quietness to it, and a lovely unfolding of the story through snippets of tasting notes left by Louis on bottles of wine and Nick feeling a little bit lost and searching for words as he struggles with writer’s block. Two boys find one another in the warmth of a sleepy French town and it’s beautiful. Really wonderfully done.

#5. Fists & Flowers ‘Verse by @jiksax

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 1,613 (Make It Worse) and 2,322 (I’ll Do What You Like (If You Stay The Night)

He’s looking at Nick with that soft, terrible look in his eyes, the look that tells Nick the two of them are probably something.

My Rec: If anyone other than Jiksa had told me they were planning an angsty fisting fic series I would have been like umm really? But of course, it’s Jiksa, so naturally I found myself sobbing at the raw, devastating intensity of the story. Jiksa deftly weaves the intensity of the physical act itself into the emotional tumult of Harry and Nick’s relationship in a way that’s incredibly beautiful. A bold, brave, superb piece of hot, confident writing, rich with emotional complexity. Gorgeous.

#6. Constantly on the Cusp by @shiftylinguini

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 6169

It’s 5 in the morning, and Nick’s got an alarm going off, an unexpected bed full of pop star, and a nation to wake up.

It’s far too fucking early for this.

My Rec: UNFFFFF. I love Shifty’s writing. Like, an obsessive amount. I was so thrilled when Shifty started writing Tomlinshaw I didn’t know quite what to do with myself. It’s actually hard to believe this was Shifty’s first Tomlinshaw, because everything about the fic felt like they have been writing them for years. Louis is sleepy, horny and pissed off, Nick is awake, horny and wondering what it all means, and together they have this scorching hot, sexy moment. Nick’s internal monologue  gives us so much insight into their relationship and the fic offers a lovely, warm, hopeful moment at the end. Fantastically written and a sexy delight from start to finish. Loved it!

#7. this cookie’s baking by @disgruntledkittenface 

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles (Genderswap Femslash) | 8,148

Harry’s eyes flicker between Nick’s eyes and lips. “I just want to be your–”

“Baby,” Nick says softly, cupping Harry’s jaw, “you already are.”

Nick and Harry have a long-overdue conversation.

My Rec: This was the first genderswap Gryles fic I have read and I absolutely loved it. The relationship between Nick and Harry feels so perfectly them and there’s a lovely warmth to the whole story. It’s light and funny but also contains moments of real emotional depth and those first time explorations and the hesitancy of admitting to being something more than friends is handled in such a terrific way. It’s a gorgeous story with wonderful writing and I loved every minute of reading it.

#8. let’s make some new rules by @camiii 

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 12,743

A coffee shop, a Christmas party & a fake date to make sure no one gets laid at the end of the night.

My Rec: This was such an enjoyable read. I love camiii’s Tomlinshaw, and seeing this pop up was a wonderful surprise. Barista Louis agrees to be Nick’s fake boyfriend as he pines over an ex that definitely isn’t worth his time, and they become closer in the process. The pace of the story is wonderful, the flirting is brilliant and despite some misunderstandings and Nick’s no good ex trying to fuck things up, the ending is warm and hopeful. A lovely story, full of festive cheer. Thoroughly enjoyable.

#9. I’ll be seeing you by @daretomarvel​ / renlyne

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 11,481

It’s 2028, and Nick’s bought a house.

My Rec: I love Ren’s writing and this Notebook inspired Gryles is a beautiful treat of a story, in which Nick starts buying little bits for his dream house. It’s hard to believe this story is just over 11,000 words because the world the author creates is so rich, detailed, layered and complex. The relationship between Nick and Harry has all of these gorgeous details and nuggets of history as it grows and develops, seedling-like, into something that might just be everything they’ve both been searching for. It’s a warm, hopeful, beautiful story but as it’s Ren, it manages to still tug at the heartstrings in the best kind of way. I read this again as I was putting my rec list together and did so with a lump in my throat, full of feels for the Nick and Harry of Ren’s universe. Gorgeous writing with bags of emotional intensity. I loved it.

#10. All I’ve ever had are love songs by @candybarrnerd / icarusinflight

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 21,688

Things are finally coming together for Nick.

Nick is the DJ of his uni's radio stations, and he passively aggressively dedicates a song to Louis.

My Rec: Icarusinflight is another author who was already on my periphery from Harry Potter fandom who wrote their first Tomlinshaw fic this year and I was so thrilled to see them writing in this fandom and I’m very excited about their upcoming 2019 projects which also includes fics featuring the 1D boys in various ship combos. I love uni AUs and I hadn't read one for a while, so this was such a treat. I loved how Louis is sharp, sassy and confident but with niggling insecurities. Harry was so affectionately humorous in this story and Nick’s voice is wonderful. This is a really well-paced, enjoyable story with a hot af first kiss that deserves a mention all of its own. The music references, the tea and the cameos from various 1D members are all terrific and the writing is brilliant. Can’t wait for more from this author this year.

Bonus Rec: I was meant to limit this to just 10 recs but I also wanted to give a quick shout out to @nightwideopen. I’ve said this in previous rec lists before, but I am constantly impressed by the quality of @nightwideopen‘s writing and the way they explore things such as asexuality and gender dysphoria which can be harder to find in a relatively small fandom. I’d particularly rec so far (it’s alright) and i’ve been thinking lots about your mouth from this year, both Tomlinshaw.

#recs #writ recs #gryles #tomlinshaw #rec list 1

[momestuck]

Let’s read Hiveswap Friendsim... volume 18!

Imagine I edited the final shot of End of Evangelion here to put trolls on it. That’s more effort than I’m actually willing to put in. Imagining it is probably almost as good.

This chapter is fittingly called “Of Endings, Many”.

The opening narration is kind of pointed and sarcastic. It jokes about saying trite things like ‘the circle is complete’... and then goes elsewhere.

“You’ve got enough friends, now you need answers-” - and then it interrupts itself, realising it’s just the intro screen.

I wonder who writes the intro screens?

This time we have... another jadeblood, and also a final pair of purplebloods, the second troll pair.

Lanque

Lanque is written by the mysterious “V”, who previously managed to get us to lick a clown’s armpit and then wrote some interesting things about intertextuality. I have high hopes!

Content warning: Lanque’s story deals explicitly with sex with a man, in a situation of dubious consent on the player character’s part.

Lanque’s theme I’m sure I recognise from Homestuck proper, though I’d have to do some digging to see what it’s reprising. It’s called “yall know i just do the music right” - another James Roach piece.

It begins with us getting a call from Lynera. The narration somewhat uncharitably says “that nutty bitch is exactly the sort of destabilizing influence your life needs right now”. In a positive, not sarcastic way at least.

She wants to start making friends herself...

The narration is really in a hurry this time around. We reprise the party background from the last episode.

I appreciate the kind of breezy enthusiastic chaos in V’s writing.

We’re in a cape, bra and fishnets. A perfect outfit for the final chapter.

Wow the narration just isn’t giving a shit anymore. Final chapter striking hard.

We try to figure out whose hive we’re going to... and oh shit, it’s Ardata’s. First troll we ever met, as well. The party is described as a “frathouse rager” - which, Lynera acknowledges, is not her scene at all.

Is the narrator already drunk? Or is Ardata fucking with our head again?

Ardata declares that it’s a ‘kiiickback’ for all the ‘world’s fiiinest iiinfluencers’... and neither me nor Lynera is invited. Apparently she heard about it from someone called Lanque, who’s also not invited.

What is up with this narration? It’s coming across like a standup performance.

At that point, Ardata drops a... nsfw warning on us.

I didn’t actually realise this volume had an ‘accompanying mature content description’. I think what I’m gonna do is... obviously I’m gonna play the chapter, but I will put specific content warnings before sections of the post that have potentially triggering content, and if there are explicit images, I will pixellise out any explicit bits before I embed them in the post. spoiler alert: this ain’t exactly Ladykiller in a Bind there.

That’s a hell of a warning, huh. Especially given the previous armpit-licking chapter by ‘V’ was about at the absolute limit of sfw horny anyway. Fuck knows what they’re about to inflict on us now.

Also: James Roach’s track name is starting to make sense. Apparently he wants to distance himself from this episode, semi-ironically at any rate? God, what are we in for.

So, presumably the ‘oof, you’re too scared’ link takes us to an abrupt end to the chapter, we’ll check it later. Let’s go on in.

Quick soapbox: as much as I hate the kind of shallow analysis that throws around ‘problematic’ as a summary judgement of a work - nah actually, you can’t just disclaim shit under ‘challenging or controversial material’. By the same token that you can write whatever shit you want in a Homestuck computer game, critics - and random nerds on the internet, which is to say, the entire audience of this game - can discuss it however we find appropriate.

Nevertheless, you haven’t actually done anything worse than make me lick a clown’s armpit so far, and we can approach challenging themes in a way that says something meaningful and important, so let’s see what you have for us, V. To be honest I’m expecting some kind of portrayal of sexual violence given all the disclaimers, but who knows.

The party sounds like hell.

To Lynera, who remains glued to our arm, it’s ‘more than she was expecting’. But before we can leave, Lanque arrives.

I was wrong about what I thought was Lanque’s theme. Lanque’s theme is a slow, mournful saxophone piece. Maybe the music before was Lynera’s theme, and I just forgot how it went?

The narration mentions a ‘curious red stain’ on Lanque’s shirt. They’re obviously going for a whole ‘sexy vampire’ type thing with him. Maybe a Twilight parody, with Lynera in the Bella role? That would be a little dated, though.

I vaguely recall that it was said at some point that the jadebloods were all women. Which makes me suspect that Lanque is a trans guy, and this story is gonna touch on themes of transness and such. That could be something I completely confabulated, though. I’d check the wiki but no doubt it’s been updated by now, and I don’t want to spoil myself on this arc.

He seems to be in a flirty mood. Not sure how old either of these two are supposed to be.

Oh yeah. The knifemeter actually hasn’t shown up in this episode so far. He expresses surprise that Lynera has friends. Or at least, friend.

Eesh, this guy gonna be another Zebruh?

Lanque asks about us and we blather about being an alien, and also general disaster.

It’s really hard to get the sense that this is a loud party where we can barely hear each other over the noise, given both the narration and the soft jazz background.

He says something about not biting unless asked. So if it’s not already obvious... either a genuine rainbow drinker (hey, if Kanaya could do it at age 6 sweeps/13 years, no doubt he could at age... whatever age he is!), or someone who likes pretending to be one.

Anyway, our protag is apparently not overcome by friendship lust at this point, and tries to play wingman and put Lanque’s attention back onto Lynera. This... doesn’t go as well as expected.

(2.43 sweeps, that is - about 5.3 years)

Hmm, why would that be? This could be like, a transphobia thing? Do trolls have that? I’d say of course they fucking do, but apparently they don’t have homophobia, and their gender system... well who the hell knows how troll gender works, having all the signifiers of gender in the real world but none of the material consequences.

Anyway, Lanque calls Lynera a ‘nasty little bitch’. But then immediately says he’s not one to criticise.

So... maybe it’s not a trans thing? We’ll see. Lanque continues being a huge dick, suggesting that Lynera is interested in him because the ordeals are coming, and she wants to take the chance to fuck before they roll around.

Lynera is kind of... not surprisingly pretty hurt.

The narrator challenges Lanque on his rudeness without a choice.

Ah, the classic ‘she deserved it’ defence. Second only to the ‘it didn’t happen, but if it had, they would have deserved it anyway’ defence.

The protag demands to know why Lanque even invited Lynera if it was just to have such a huge go at her like that. Lanque’s explanation is... kind of unclear.

It’s not like she got much of a chance to defend herself there. So far my impression of Lanque is: this guy’s a huge cock. Or possibly a huge nook. Idk what the troll equivalent is.

The narrator decides to ‘Switzerland out of’ this conversation. They say this out loud, of course. Who needs an internal monologue, these days?

Lanque invites us to stay - we’re ‘much more interesting’ anyway. Eesh. I’m inclined to look for a ‘fuck right off where’s my pepper spray’ button, but that’s just me being a lesbian I guess. (Pepper spray is also illegal in the UK. I’m pretty sure.)

Yeah, you said it. He says he’s got ‘less time to waste than most’.

Bryn sees a meta joke about the narrative structure, Bryn clicks the screenshot button.

(Speak of the screenshot button, I had to rebind it to make it easier to paste the screenshots, you see in Ubuntu-- oh, you’re asleep?)

Anyway I kind of expected a choice around about now, but no, we barrel forwards, and end up dancing with Lanque. He takes our hand and leads us to another part of the house.

At that point, Elwurd shows up! I wonder how much of the cast is set to make an appearance in this chapter. If it’s all 35 trolls we’ve encountered so far, this is gonna be a long chapter!

Elwurd seems to be Lanque’s dealer. Not sure what drug she’s selling exactly. Apparently ‘you a drone?’ is the Alternian equivalent of ‘you a cop?’...

Anyway, Lanque buys the drug, and peer pressures us to take it. We’re like, nuh-uh.

We did not, we tell him, ask him to buy drugs for us.

I’m proud of you, protagonist. At the beginning of this story you’d have done anything to get a friend.

At that point, Diemen makes his reappearance. We really are going through the entire cast here, huh.

Yeah. That one’s just too obvious.

Anyway, undrugged, we get to dancing.

God, V, we get it, you want to fuck trolls. The narrator goes with it, though.

I find it kind of interesting how, like... our protagonist in the beginning and ending sketches is pretty much like, a marshmallow, indicating that they represent some kind of AFGNCAAP. But over time, little assumptions leak in. For example, we’re some kind of American nerd - our education system included a ‘high school’, and we had the option to learn Spanish there. We are relatively physically unfit. The wordplay suggests we know English.

Sometimes it’s deliberate - clearly someone made a choice to make it so that our protagonist has opinions about rap and knows a bit about professional wrestling, to suit the themes of the chapters. Those aren’t like, presumed traits assumed of the Homestuck audience, but things that kind of carve out a specific identity

So yeah... we’ve already had the whole ‘cheese person’ thing in Fozzer’s route, and here they’re straight up declaring the protag has pale skin. (Which doesn’t mean they’re white, necessarily, but they are apparently not Black, say.) I think that’s kind of a shame - a wasted opportunity.

Homestuck has already traded a lot on the ambiguity of its characters, which the fandom tends to read as implicitly white, except for like, a relatively small corner. This came to a head at points - most infamously the ‘CAUCASIAN’ controversy during the trickster mode phase, when Hussie ‘jokingly’ declared that his previously ambiguous characters (shaded pure #FFFFFF white, implying a ‘blank slate’) were ‘CAUCASIAN’ in bright flashing letters - at least while in trickster mode. After backlash, the panels were left as-is, but ‘CAUCASIAN’ was replaced with ‘PEACHY’.

Friendsim could have been an opportunity to improve the record a bit, especially as its narrative explicitly addresses many questions of societal oppression and occasionally makes explicit analogues to racism. But... they didn’t do that. Alas.

Anyway, moving on.

Apparently I’m very predictable because the very next panel addresses this exact line of thought.

I feel like this and the ‘not racist’ joke in the previous arc by ‘V’ are kind of... well I don’t know anything about ‘V’, and what they might be intending by these jokes. Here, it’s kind of parodying the whole thing in Homestuck rather explicitly... but whether it’s like, challenging it? There’s definitely a reading that’s like... pointed sarcasm, challenging the source material’s noncommital laziness.

Hey art interpretation is hard lol.

V’s writing is unusually striking, in a way I’m not quite sure how I feel about. I will think more about that once we’ve fully explored this chapter.

Things are getting pretty meta. He comments how we’re paper thin and he can see our blood. We’re like, ok, so you’re a vampire then?

This is the kind of thing! Writing that’s like... on the edge of like, telling a story and just directly talking to the reader, pushing us to engage with ambiguity and metaphor.

To release the tension a bit, the narrator does a ‘sexy dance’.

Anyway, we don’t get to find out what Lanque really thinks of our sexy dancing. Because at that point, Bronya shows up. Lanque decides it’s time to go.

...to a respiteblock, where else. So much for this being a friendsim and pointedly not a dating sim.

We are, it seems, safe. Lanque politely asks if we’d like to kiss. There’s another reminder that this is a very nsfw not for kids scene about to go down in this room right now.

So that’s apparently going to be our decision here. FUCK THE BOY/DO NOT FUCK THE BOY

...no, that’s not our choice. We’re kissing the boy no matter what. This is also portrayed in first person view, because consistency is important!

Apparently our blood tastes ‘sharp and dangerous - like a weapon’.

I feel like this is about to answer a whole fucking lot of fandom questions. At least as far as Hiveswap canon is concerned - arguably a separate entity to Homestuck canon, though obviously, like an expanded universe, designed to be read almost exclusively with intertextuality in mind. An elaboration, I guess.

There’s more like... hey check it out we’re going NSFW. Still nothing like a choice button yet.

One thing I find interesting is like... while this game is packed with lesbians of various stripes, and evidently many of the writers are gay or bi women, all the trolls who get really horny scenes have been boys. (Two of them written by ‘V’, admittedly). Mallek first with his shirtless scene, then much more recently Marvus, and now Lanque.

Also look at these guys. Pretty sure V has a type.

Anyway, the narrator makes the mistake of saying something vaguely derogatory about buckets.

Not sure like... what he finds derogatory there. Mentioning ‘buckets’ vs ‘pails’ (might be a distinction between reproductive and non-reproductive sex?), or saying that he doesn’t seem to have one? He says it’d be his first time.

With an alien, huh. *xenofucker fist bump*

Instead of a sex scene, we get a lore drop.

Once he gets shipped offworld, there will be no more ‘sneaking out of the caverns’. To Lanque, this effectively means his life will be over. This is his last chance to fuck!

A little overdramatic, dude!

Before we can get to it, Bronya interrupts.

So we get interrupted by Bronya. This is finally our choice point. Do we dob Lanque in, or do we fuck?

Regarding ‘problematic’, the main thing I’m seeing is like... Lanque is, at best, barely of age. Since he’s talking about getting shipped offworld soon, I’m guessing he’s close to troll adulthood. In terms of real-world narratives, this is taking on the general tone of ‘college story’ - complete with allusion to a frat party.

I think like... I’m going to read this whole visual novel, and write what I think about it. However, I can also totally understand why you would not want to read this kind of ‘first time’ story. So I’m going to leave that branch to a readmore at the end of the post. Above the cut, to give you all some kind of ending, and we’ll go down the ‘call his mum’ branch. Lol it’s not nearly as nsfw as they make it sound, there’s nothing that really need readmores, nevermind this lol.

Bronya busts the door open and tells him to get dressed immediately.

Lanque gets his mean streak back on, and goes in on Bronya now.

He does love the word ‘bitch’, does Lanque. He tells her she’s not actually his lusus (oh yeah, lusii... it’s been a while since we’ve seen one honestly. The last one was the goat.) She slaps him. He pretends like it was a sex thing.

This is not pretty. Bronya launches into a lecture on Lanque: sneaking out, being an ass to Lynera, and...

Yeah, maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t get further involved.

Apparently he’s not deterred by the fact that we literally called Bronya up to get out of fucking him, and adds us on Chittr before he leaves.

So that’s an ending. Sweet look, protagonist.

But it’s not the ending ending. We get a final screen.

Sure, I want to understand. Is this going to be some kind of direct artist-to-reader commentary on what they were trying to accomplish with that chapter?

The text box turns white, and the font changes. I bet this is Doc Scratch. So no, probably not that. In fact, this segues straight into the epilogue. I think there are different versions of the epilogue depending how you approach the final chapter, or else we were supposed to play the other branch before Lanque, so for the sake of putting the epilogue at the end, I’ll save it for a future post. (I’ve already written it up.)

Now, the other Lanque branches. First of all, refusing at the NSFW notice.

So they poke fun at the reader for like, not accepting the NSFW notice. Uh-huh. You know that Steam doesn’t automatically give a mature content warning if you’ve set up your account that way right? Which I guess is my own fault lol.

Anyway, doing this leads to like... a totally different arc, and a totally different canon. Huh, I genuinely expected they’d like just end the story there.

It’s a cozy party now, apparently.

This version of Lanque is... different.

For one thing, he’s got a flower crown. And instead of soft sexy jazz, we have a pretty piano piece. He says hi to Lynera and me.

Hmm. Not entirely un-hornified, then.

Lynera gushes wildly about us, recapping a whole bunch of plot.

It turns out, rather than taking drugs and having sex and other such risqué things, this party is a chill poetry reading.

So I realise this entire branch is just like, an extended joke at the reader. Look how un-edgy this is. We’re going to support our friends and read poetry.

In this one, instead of asking to kiss us, he asks to hold hands before we read poetry. And he says this is a poem about a past relationship, and it might be a bit raw.

We get Lanque’s poem, in full.

I was going to copy-paste the whole thing in, but it’s quite long, so let’s be uncool and respect copyright or whatever because my fingers were getting tired. It is quite good... addressing loss, and memory, and the lingering influence of a past relationship. It makes me wish I had ever developed the ability to appreciate and comment on poetry, because I feel like I just don’t have the vocabulary to comment on it, or what it might connect to, or anything else. The narration agrees: raw, emotional.

I imagine, though perhaps this is presumptuous, it is reflecting something quite real in the real life of ‘V’.

Lynera also gets the chance to read out a poem. She happens to have one on hand. It’s about Bronya, sure enough, and her loneliness and alienation.

Afterwards, she is self-deprecating.

This version of Lanque is kind and reassuring - the complete opposite of his persona in the sexy branch.

We leave with Lynera after hugging it out. Reading her poem, and being with other trolls in this way, seems to have really helped Lynera. There’s another pointed bit of defensiveness at potential critics.

Soapbox: This is the state of discourse, where the complex feelings we have in relation to fictional works must get flattened out into strict ‘rules’. A character can easily support lesbian and bi interpretations; it can be a relief to bi people and upsetting for lesbians when one of those possibilities is ruled out by having her express interest in a man (not that this, ultimately, rules out lesbian interpretations, since a person can of course be mistaken about their feelings).

To lesbians, it is perhaps likely more salient that many characters they identify with end up expressing attraction to men, and this can seem like yet another instance. To bi women, narratives about picking a ‘side’ are perhaps more likely to be salient, and it can be relief to have an explicitly bi character.

The only conclusion we can draw is that gender is a hellish system of punishment and exploitation, and we should seek to be kind to each other and also abolish it forthwith, write our own stories, and abolish the stranglehold that capital holds on all aspects of our lives including the symbolic media we use to understand the world.

All that said, this repetitive defensiveness about ‘problematic’ writing does kind of annoy me a bit, even if I can understand where it comes from. Let your work speak for itself.

Anyway, that’s enough huge essays (I say, falsely). Let’s finish out the branch.

“...right?”

This branch finishes out with a poke at the whole structure of the game so far - the good endings, bad endings, and so on. We’ve not made a friend, but we have made a stronger connecting with an existing one.

I’m not sure how seriously we should take that given the way ‘valid’ has become pretty much a joke word, if this is still an extended dig at the audience, but there we are.

That was a surprisingly long and rich branch for a first choice, which is kind of nice, actually.

If we click ‘no’ on ‘do you want to understand’...

We just get a game over screen with us sitting in our watchtower looking sad.

So now... it’s time for the nsfw section discussed above. Except... it’s a total fakeout.

First of all, we get an implication that it’s not his first time at all. Anyway, then we get to it. Which is to say, we get a fade to silly anime joke. God, this is like those old 4chan stories where they’d set you up for a sex scene and then rickroll you or something.

We get a ‘dorito faced anime boy’ joke I guess?

Afterwards...

Lol.

Anyway, in this branch, he doesn’t add us on chittr. Lol.

So yeah we die of shame. Welp.

God I can’t believe I thought this would actually go there. Of course it would be a joke at the audience.

Looking back, well, you know, reading the metaphors: he’s a predatory guy and lied through his teeth to get into our pants. Obviously it’s not his first time; obviously he’s not about to bugger off to space and never have sex again T_T, obviously the shit he said was just to get us to fuck; this isn’t just cheesy narrative tropes but within the fiction him playing the protagonist in order to get us to fuck. Complete with the whole attempt to drug us, and make it very unambiguously rape. (Which no doubt Elwurd knew). He got us to explicitly consent before we did anything, but also did enough shady shit so as to make that ‘consent’ kind of questionable when viewed later.

Viewed in that light... what I originally thought was just someone writing a horny fantasy about a hot dominating guy who’s totally into you~ is actually like... a pretty sharp piece of writing about shit pulled by men. There were plenty of warning signs - the ‘objectifying’ way he looks at you, the way he attempts to drug you, etc. I would like to imagine that IRL, rather than taking it as a piece of fiction, I wouldn’t be vulnerable to the same tactics. (Well, obviously I wouldn’t from a guy, at any rate). But it’s kind of a nicely written piece to make you feel stupid and taken advantage of afterwards like... why the fuck did you go along with this.

Though given that this kind of thing is something that people like... actually go through, I feel like they could have warned for it better than ‘challenging and controversial material’. Yes, that might have robbed it of some of its power; but it would also mean that it wouldn’t trigger people who have trauma over this exact kind of thing.

So.

“V”.

Honestly, my strongest feeling about “V” is one of respect. Both their stories have been a weird blend of cheeky, challenging and playful, with some very astute elements and an enormous amount of energy and intensity. They’re prepared to fuck with the reader in ways both silly (lick the troll’s armpit!) and rather more serious (this whole arc), they fuck around with canonicity and narrative structure in creative ways... I wonder what else they’ve written?

There remains only these two clown twins, and the epilogue.

Barzum and Baizli

To finish out the set, we have another pair. The Alternian text says ‘The Soleil Twins’, so I guess that’s their surname. The twins are written by Kieran Miranda, who previously wrote Azdaja, Stelsa and Charun.

The story begins with day nearing, and the protagonist friendless. They get the idea to like... head over to relax with Skylla, but before they can, they run into a house.

A very haunted looking house.

An easy choice for us to begin. ‘No fucking way’ naturally skips this arc, right?

Nope, back at the house. We get another choice: leave left or right. I picked left. I doubt it matters.

Yep, that kind of house. We can’t escape.

After a struggle, we reach the door.

Inside, we immediately pass out with a sense of nausea. Lovely. This can only go well. We hear something like bugs skittering away.

The mansion does at least seem to be explorable. Unfortunately, the door leads to a portrait gallery full of clowns, which is not the most welcome place to end up.

Someone tunes one of the portraits. It turns out to be a TV. Dramatic piano chords come in.

Oh hey it’s some friends.

Their shtick is that the one on the right finishes the one on the left’s sentences, the one on the left speaks in all lower case, and the one on the right speaks in all caps.

They want us to find them. They’re very bored you see, and want to play a game. This is, I understand, an allusion to the Saw series of horror movies, in which I gather a person places people in buildings full of sadistic traps, monitored by various cameras and a small puppet with spiral cheeks. So I guess that’s us now.

We get our first real choice.

I think the door is too obvious. If there’s not another exit, we’ll have to take the door anyway - though that’s likely a different branch, realistically speaking.

We discover a hidden door. Behind it is... a hole in the ground.

I guess we have instant-death options later than usual in this chapter. Our final thought is about the terrible loss of our Chittr profile.

Well, that’s fine. Let’s see what happens if we go straight into the house instead of wandering around.

Approaching the house immediately just skips the wandering around; the text is the same. It was a fake choice. Skipping forward, let’s see what happens if we take the obvious door, not the hidden one.

As we move down the hallway, the lights come on and the walls start bleeding. Lovely. Glorious sense of interior decoration. Tip top.

Beyond the door, we end up in another dark room. Maybe this one will be more of a true CYOA, with death options in every room.

But no. Not immediately, anyway. Ropes come out of the ground and tie us up. The two trolls who were watching us make themselves known.

Carnivalish music kicks in. We finally get a clear view of our captors.

Baizli right (allcaps), Barzum left (lowercase). I’ll try to remember that.

The twins say some predictably sinister stuff about removing our intestines (acid tubes, in trollspeak). The narrator grumbles about once again being reduced to the status of ‘torture muppet’.

When we express a desire to leave, Barzum and Baizli swap both demeanour and capitalisation rule. Now Baizli looks sad, and speaks in lowercase, while Barzum is pissed and speaks in caps.

These two twins, in the tradition of creepy twins, seem to share one mind. Which means they can hardly prank each other! They need someone else.

They rev up a chainsaw and suddenly... we’re back in the same room we started.

Looks like we’ve had another bit of time fuckery from The Powers That Be. Compare Fozzer. The loops kick in, faster and faster. Glued. Buried alive.

Having read the epilogue, all I’ll say is that it seems like someone is trying very hard to push us onto a timeline that ‘works’.

There’s a joke about time loop movies which I don’t get because I haven’t seen very many time loop movies.

After ‘20 or so’ loops, we decide we’ve had enough. But we get a choice of what to do about it.

Let’s try ‘Fuck this.’ first.

This turns out to mean attempting to intimidate the twins instead of begging them to release us.

While they’re baffled by this display, we make a break for an air vent. Surprisingly, we make good our escape. There’s a mention of all our jogging training with Stelsa, which happened in a non-canonical timeline - there was a whole thing about it! - but fair enough. Guess that’s another thing that persists between timelines. Or maybe the protag just thinks they went jogging with Stelsa in this timeline.

We find we’ve missed a bunch of texts from Skylla while we were out, and plan to head over there. But alas... the space loop is still in effect.

We end up back at the house. Unable to escape from the pocket dimension, the branch ends...

So let’s try the other option: ‘remember who you are’.

Come, try to remember...

And that is, of course... FRIENDSHIP. This time, we have something to say to the clowns (after ensuring we haven’t pissed ourselves).

Not killing us is apparently a novel idea for the twins. Or rather, they didn’t plan to kill us - just cut us up a bit, unaware that we wouldn’t heal right back up. The protag corrects the misconception.

So now we’re teaching the creepy clown kids the meaning of friendship. Novel!

The lights come up and they put on a little circus show for us. Apparently this building is not their hive.

They show us various other dangerous-looking circus tricks with the torture/circus equipment. Ah, says the narrator, so risking their lives is these kids’ hobby.

It turns out these kids hatched from the same egg. They tell us they do in fact share a mind entirely - one mind, two bodies.

And at last we end up chilling out and sharing stories.

With this friendship established, we sense a shift of some kind. We take this as a sign that the door might have finally opened.

Not only is the door open, but the ‘pocket dimension’ has dissipated too. The power of friendship! ...or fulfilling some secret design of whoever created the pocket dimension. Mmm.

How touching.

There’s a fakeout victory jingle, which turns out to have been a prank. They explain that... the creepy blood seeping walls and so on were their ‘chucklevoodoos’, but as for the time loop... Not them at all.

“Do you want to understand?” asks the prompt again. Time... for the epilogue.

#momestuck #lets read hiveswap friendsim #sex cw

[gasmaskaesthetic]

Is it actually getting easier to identify fluctuations in my emotional/mental health baseline, or am I just kidding myself? 

This isn’t a bout of insecurity; this is me really wondering if my perception of things like “oh I seem to be more stressed than usual, ah yes I didn’t get much sleep last night” is accurate or not.  Like, don’t get me wrong, my overall baseline is way better and I have actual output to show for it.  But the only things I track are my substance intake and intermittent mental health inventories, and I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible to notice subtle effects, subjectively.  

That being said...until I started doing more things that required actual body-awareness, I would go hours not noticing I had a headache, and people who said things like “oh I ate dairy, I don’t feel so good now” always sounded like they were lying.  Now that I’ve practiced things like “noticing my limbs” and “tracking what I eat,” I’m pretty sure that noticing acute, dramatic effects from small inputs is not actually fake, but I still wouldn’t say I’m highly self-aware when it comes to my body.    

I wish quantified-self stuff wasn’t so time-consuming or I would track everything.  

What I would like is to have a routine for data collection that is minimally invasive.  Right now I have a spreadsheet for drugs, supplements, and anxiety/depression symptoms.  I am not too rigorous with it because my motivation is “keeping an eye on bad habits and anxiety” rather than “have a perfect log.”  I prioritize knowing whether the general trend of, say, alcohol consumption is higher than my liking, and I track accordingly, without worrying too much about small gaps in the data.  But current!me is always wishing she had a detailed log of past!me’s information, and I am fairly confident that future!me would be super grateful if I could start doing that.

I have a stream-of-consciousness section in the journal page I keep open during the day, which is nice for review but it definitely doesn’t capture everything, especially anything I notice while I’m working on something else.  I’d love one of those microphones I saw linked here recently, that is supposed to be fairly accurate at picking up subvocal speech (can’t seem to find it).  I would wear it all day, and develop the habit of muttering quietly to myself while working.  Until I get a brain implant that just emails me my internal monologue every hour, a text dump of subvocal commentary throughout my day would be the next best thing.  

Someday I want all of the following: 

1. An app that is a lot like myfitnesspal, but you can enter literally anything that you might put in your body, with custom fields you can add for things like ROA. Every entry is timestamped by default at the time of entry, or you can adjust the time you want recorded.  Private, no data stored with a third party, easily exportable data.  Could I make this?  I’d want it to be a phone app, since that’s the device that’s always tethered to me.  How hard would it be to make this. 

I’ve looked at drug trackers but there isn’t anything comprehensive like this, or there wasn’t last time I checked, or I didn’t check hard enough.   

2. Something like (1) but for moods, sleep, health, and menstrual cycle.  Also on my phone, no data stored with a third party.  A feature for symptom tracking that works basically like issue tracking, where you can leave comments and updates on it.  A “journal” feature.  

3. A functioning phone application for MonicaHQ (like a CRM but for personal relationships, that I like very much for tracking social things).  There’s a very early stage mobile app, but I don’t know how good it is yet and I don’t know how I could contribute to it or if it would be worth my time.  

Basically, I just want my spreadsheets and issue tracking to come in the form of very nice mobile applications without handing over all of my mental health and drug use data to a third party.  :P  

[ao3porcelainstorm]

poison ivy & stinging nettles 21

On Ao3

Pairing: Sherlock/OFC

Rated: M

Warnings: eventual violence, torture, swears, adult themes (no explicit smut)

Chapter 20 - Chapter 22

Chapter 21- Undercurrent

December 24th

“…what are you-?” Amelia started, but she was cut off by a swift punch to the stomach.

Reeling over and dropping her phone, she tried to fight back when hands went to grab her from behind. To her detriment, however, someone caught her by the scarf in the scuffle, pulling her against an unseen second assailant. Somewhere, she registered someone crushing her phone with a single stomp.

Throwing elbows and yelling, the second person held her tight until the first approached with a needle in hand. Arms pinned down, he yanked the scarf free and dug a needle into her neck.

Her world was hazy, the world spinning into a whirlpool of blackness.

Tires screeching. Her body tossed not too gently into something hard.

Darkness.

She awoke on the floor of an enclosed room. Metal paneling concealing any doorways or windows, a single blinking camera in one corner, a small chair in the center. Head still swimming, there wasn’t much she could reason out aside from basic descriptions. A single panel of fluorescent lights.

She was alone.

“Good morning sleepyhead,” a male voice projected over an unseen PA system.

Or rather, she was alone.

“You’re quite the little pit viper, aren’t you?” the voice continued. “Nearly broke one of my guys’ arms.”

Amelia smirked to herself. Too bad she hadn’t broken it.

“We’re going to be playing a little holiday game,” he continued. One of the metal panels in front of her turned around, playing a livestream of Sherlock and John finding her scarf on the ground. “You see, I don’t think the great detective will be able to focus on a few itty bitty cases while you’re out of the picture and in potential duress.”

“You clearly don’t know him,” she sassed back.

“But I do,” there was an opening across from her, the paneling sliding open to reveal James Moriarty himself, holding a microphone. “And I’m afraid he’s slipped up and is getting sentimental on me.”

Shorter than Amelia thought. Smaller too.

She took a few steps toward him, barely listening to his monologuing. Cliche. Lame.

To her credit, Amelia was pretty sure he didn’t see her fighting back as a possible option. She charged for the doorway, throwing all her strength into slamming his head into the door frame and leaping into the hallway.

He came alone. Underestimated her.

Mistake, she thought to herself, picking a direction and sprinting down the long hall.

She made it through two doors before something violent shocked her system.

Dropping to the ground with a thud and a yelp, an armed guard jabbed her in the neck again.

This time, however, she remained conscious. Instead, she lost the use of her limbs, pathetically hitting the ground when she was tossed back in the room.

Moriarty held a gauge to the side of his head, laughing as he approached her, kicking her with all his strength into her ribs.

“Feisty! Keep it up and I might just steal you from him permanently.”

Another kick.

“And here I was going to let you relax until my little game was over,” he continued, pulling up the chair and sitting in it.

The drug was beginning to wear off, giving Amelia an opportunity to try and scramble to her elbows.

“Fuck you,” she snarled, hand moving to cradle her tender side. “You’re gonna lose.”

“Not the nicest thing to say to someone who has your life in their hands,” he tsk’d. “Now what are we gonna do with you?”

“Let me go?” she asked sarcastically, pressing on her rib and wincing.

“Uh, no,” he rolled his eyes.

“Worth a shot,” she huffed, crawling to a wall and propping her back against it.

“You know, I’ve been looking at your research,” he mused, eyes glued to her in amusement. “Clever stuff. Not as clever as mine, but certainly a bit inspiring, so to speak.”

“Gonna get me high?” she mocked, inwardly slapping herself for taunting the beast. Sherlock had warned her about taunting the bad guys after the first time she'd asked the gunman in her shop if he was going to shoot her. Is this how Sherlock ended up in so many life-threatening situations? Panic sarcasm?  

She was about to find out.

“I’m going to destroy the very essence of who you are,” he snapped, standing up and kicking the chair near her. “I’m going to twist your mind to such levels of madness that I’ll be sane in comparison, and then I’m going to drop you into your boyfriend’s lap and let you stew.”

He grabbed her jaw tightly.

“I’m going to break you.”

Heaving a long sigh, she held eye contact with him.

“That sounds way less fun,” she grunted.

Moriarty paused, narrowing his eyes at her. It seemed like he was deciding something.

Maybe where he intended to dispose of her body?

“Goodnight, Mia,” he smirked before exiting the room.

Swathed in silence, Amelia dropped her head back against the cool metal paneling. Surely, Sherlock and John were already up in arms looking for her. It wouldn’t be long before they were busting down that door.

They always beat the bad guys, right?

Amelia was close to passing out from sheer exhaustion when a familiar melody began playing through the PA system, just loud enough to pull her from her tired trance.

“Sweet dreams,” came Moriarty’s voice.

“Take me home.. to the place… I belong… West Virginia…”

And it played on loop almost continuously through the night and what Amelia imagined was the majority of the next day. If his goal was to prevent sleep, he succeeded. Each time she nodded off, it would shoot up in volume, lowering once Amelia was stirred awake.

Bastard.

~~~

December 26th

This was when the videos started. Vicious clips of some of the most depraved things humanity’s monsters could conjure.

It ranged from murder, torture, violent pornography… on and on, over and over, on loop.

And Amelia decided he wasn’t willing that easily- screeching out the song from the day before, slamming her hands on the metal paneling for hours at end.

She ignored her meals out of protest, kicking the food across the room when it was slipped through a crack in the door.

She shouted the lyrics until her voice was hoarse, and after that, continued banging on the walls until she tired herself out. Only two nights without sleep, and Amelia decided she could push it another night, the videos continuing.

~~~

December 27th

She’d fallen asleep.

Damned be all, she’d fallen asleep and dreamt of abuse and mutilation.

He wasn’t winning this easily.

Breakfast was on the ground next to her, and despite her growling stomach, she held it toward the camera and threw it aside.

Today, the screen was empty. The room was silent.

Her stomach hurt from neglect. She was so damned hungry.

Another meal wasn’t dropped off that day, or so it seemed. Time was losing relevance and she’d initially measured her time by meal drop-offs.

He must have seen this little protest coming. Predicting that she’d be too weak and delirious to keep calculating things.

The room stayed quiet, though Amelia was on edge the entire time, waiting to be shown some horrific thing or ready herself for another round of sleeplessness.

~~~

December 28th

A small bottle of water had been placed next to her head while she’d slept. She guzzled it down without a second thought.

No food was dropped off.

No television or music.

She began to wonder if he was just waiting for her to die of starvation instead.

~~~

December 29th?

The music started up again. A different song thing time, and after a few hours, he started intermingling it with videos of graphic torture.

This was the first night a tube was shoved down her throat and she was force-fed a blend of mush. Also the first night of the rope.

Nutrients, she’d been told while she kicked and screeched, three of Moriarty’s men pinning her down and tying her in place.

She vomited it all over herself, earning a fresh beating from the men holding her in place.

Even if it resulted in another tube being forced into her, she considered it a small victory.

~~~

December 30-something-th

This was when the drugs started.

She woke up, ready for another force-feeding, but was instead met with a large syringe and two meaty guards.

They’d made a mistake in not leaving her tied down. It wouldn’t happen again.

She was paid back with a split lip and another needle jabbed less than tenderly into her jugular. She was thrown back onto the chair, the effects taking over quickly.

Music and the videos started. She was certain that she’d soiled herself.

~~~

January?

Someone mentioned a New Year’s party when the door opened briefly.

Had it been a week? Felt like longer.

Someone had thrown a bed into the room. Well, not really a bed; a cot.

People spoke quickly. The drugs were wearing off, someone muttered, hauling Amelia to her feet.

The room smelled rancid, a guard complained.

She vaguely recognized the hallway she’d attempted to escape in. Lots of doors.

Did she hear muffled screaming?  

Someone threw her into a small room, stripping off her clothes and shutting the door.

The water was freezing, but it at least woke her enough to give her brain some clarity.

Soap. She found a bar and started scrubbing away the filth and grease. Her hair was less than manageable, but she still did her best to work the suds into her scalp. It’d have to do.

Clothes were thrown in when she finished. T-shirt and sweatpants. No undergarments.

At least she wouldn’t be naked.

She’d come up with a plan to try and escape when they came to take her back, but the guard was faster than her, jabbing another syringe into her veins. They set her back up in the chair, arms and ankles tied down.

Instead of violence, it was a CCTV of Sherlock and John talking to Greg Lestrade. Scotland Yard, her mind hazily registered. Moriarty had access to internal cameras.

Of course, he did.

At least they were safe. Scrambling, but safe.

“They aren’t looking for you,” Moriarty’s voice commented, almost soothingly.

“Game-,” she choked out. Her throat was dry, but it was probably the first time she’d spoken in days. “You’re fucking with them.”

He didn’t say anything, the video shifting to abstract images and ominous music.

She didn’t understand until the hallucinations began to kick in. Every creature from her nightmares, beast, and monster tormented her. At some point, her screams just gave out, her vocal cords broken from prolonged use.

Amelia only barely noticed the blood around her wrists from struggling against the binding.

~~~

Probably January

This continued nonstop for days. Or what felt like days. Time didn’t feel real anymore. What seemed like hours to her might have only been five minutes.

She was given a little time to rest and clean at some point. She smelled terrible and actually looked forward to the freezing shower.

When she was back, more drugs, but someone had been nice enough to sanitize the room and layout a cot.

How sweet.

Amelia wasn’t sure what was a dream or reality after she crashed on the cot. There were bits and pieces of Baker Street, mixed with cold metal and burning ropes.

She was losing her mind. Moriarty was winning and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what to do.

“You need to focus on sensations you know are real,” Sherlock was sitting on the floor in front of her, cross-legged, eyes watching her intensely.

“Floor,” she slurred, fingers dropping to touch the cold metal floor.

“Good,” he nodded. “What does the cot feel like?”

“Scratchy,” she mumbled, rubbing her cheek against it.

“Do you feel pain?” he asked and Amelia burst into tears.

“You’re still coming, aren’t you?” she whispered to her hallucination through a hiccup.

“Have you really started to doubt me?” he smirked and stood up. “We both know he’s keeping me busy to make it difficult to find you.”

“But you will?” her voice cracked.

“Amelia, you ridiculous woman,” he knelt down next to her face. “You’re not dumb or blind to what happens around you. Moriarty is hurting me by hurting you. He knows I lo- care- for you very much.”

“Do you?” she blinked. “John said you did... I didn’t... I think I accidentally fell in love with you, Sherlock Holmes.”

He smiled, and when Amelia blinked again, he was gone.

~~~

Probably fucking March or something.  

Sherlock Holmes, the hallucination, was an unusual perk to whatever the hell was pumping through her body.

Amelia didn’t know if he was real. If she’d been more rational, she would have known otherwise. However, whatever her subconscious was manifesting to keep her grounded, she would take it.

John made appearances from time to time, particularly after a nasty beating. He’d comment on a potential break, maybe point out extra cloth she could tear off of something to make a bandage or sling.

He disappeared when the abuse stopped, all at once and abruptly.

Sherlock remained, pointing out that eating the meals was better than having them shoved down her throat. Resisting would result in deeper wounds on her wrists, and that could lead to infection...

The psychological abuse ramped up in the last days.

More violent videos. More hallucinations of monsters and demons. Moriarty would talk to her over it. Repeating phrases and words she didn’t understand, over and over.

Sherlock disappeared after that. No matter when she tried calling his name or trying to force her brain to bring him forward, all she found was terror.

“Emancipation day,” Moriarty sang when Amelia was lifted pathetically from her cot. “Let’s see...” he lifted the corner of her shirt, examining the healing injuries.

 “Didn’t lose too much weight. No permanent physical damage.” He chuckled to himself. “Let’s get you cleaned up, darling.”

The rest was a daze.

Amelia remembered warm water, a middle-aged woman carefully scrubbing and cleaning her.

When she was dressed, another woman detangled and trimmed her hair, straightening out the curls and pulling it back in a neat braid.

She was given a delectable lunch, which she picked at tentatively, waiting for the trick.

After eating, Amelia felt sleepy. Those around her seemed to understand when she began stumbling around the room.

So that was it, she realized bitterly, someone laying her on a freshly made down bed. A sedative or a poison. Would she wake up? Or was Moriarty setting her friends up to find her dead?

There was a small shuffle in the room, with all the strength Amelia had to muster, she forced her eyes open to see Moriarty sitting on the edge of her bed.

“Sleep tight,” he whispered, reaching forward and pulling down her eyelids.

An obnoxious pounding noise woke her.

Were the neighbors hitting the wall? Who was being so rude?

Door, her brain supplied.

Right. Door. Someone was knocking on the door.

Chapter 22

#sherlock #sherlock holmes #sherlock bbc #sherlock/ofc #sherlock/oc #sherlock/reader #sherlock original female character #OFC #OC #reader #john watson #Watson #fanfiction #fanfic #sherlock fanfiction #sherlock fanfic #writing #sherlock writing

[kb9-ships-mistercriky]

Linkin Park, Kerrang! January 23, 2008

[You have to read all this. I’m crying. Chester, Mike and the guys are so amazing!]

PHOENIX, ARIZONA, 1992. A thin, wiry kid – 115 pounds of sinew and bone – sits in a friend’s house, “the place where we used to crash,” he says now. Around him is the detritus of a normal day: wraps of speed, opium, booze and weed.

Suddenly the door bursts open, members of the “Mexican Mafia” swagger into the room, guns at their side. Someone starts to say something; the butt of a gun to the side of his head the reply. Someone else gets pistol-whipped for good measure, the better to keep order.

They want money, these gangsters, and they get it. Pointing guns, they sweep through the house taking cash, what meagre valuables there are, and the bike parked out front. The bike belonging to one Chester Bennington, sitting cowering inside. His internal monologue: “This isn’t cool. I’ve got to change my ways, I’ve got to stop the drugs. I’ve got to change my life.”

The story that led him to that life had been just as ugly.

“I STARTED getting molested when I was about seven or eight,” says Bennington, now. “It was by a friend who was a few years older than me. It escalated from a touchy, curious, ‘what does this thing do’ into full-on, crazy violations. I was getting beaten up and being forced to do things I didn’t want to do. It destroyed my self-confidence.

“Like most people, I was too afraid to say anything. I didn’t want people to think I was gay or that I was lying. It was a horrible experience. The sexual assaults continued until I was 13.”

Thoughts whirring around his head, he would sit alone in his room, his parents having divorced when he was 11 years’ old. His older brother and one sister had left home, his other sister was never around. Left in his father’s custody – a police detective pulling endless double shifts – he was virtually ignored, no-one to confide to.

“It was an awful time. I hated everybody in my family: I felt abandoned by my mom, my dad was not very emotionally stable then, and there was no-one I could turn to – at least that’s how my young mind felt. The only thing I wanted to do was kill everybody and run away.”

Instead, he drew pictures and wrote poetry – reams and reams of the stuff, all in the form of songs, all with verses, with choruses and all with the intention of making sense of his feelings. On the stereo in the background would be Depeche Mode and the Stone Temple Pilots; in the future would be Grey Daze, Bennington’s first band, and then would come the music that would save his life.

“The relationship I had with that band was the first time I felt I had a connection with anybody. I knew those guys would back me up. From then on, I started getting some confidence back. The problem was, I also found a good way to escape the abuse of my past. Getting high, drinking a lot and having sex with a lot of great girls is a pretty good escape.”

And so, what started out as a way to fit in, a way to block out his childhood, soon became a raging habit.

“I took everything. I got really, really bad. Until I was 16, I was doing a ton of LSD and a lot of drinking. Then, when we couldn’t find acid, we turned to speed because it was cheap and it worked really, really well. I got really bad, really quickly. On a normal day, my friends and I would go through an eight-ball. We were smoking it in bongs – I was doing bong-hits of meth. It was ridiculous. Then we’d smoke opium to come down, or we’d take pills, or I’d drink so much that I’d shit my pants. It was not pretty.”

GANGSTERS OR not, Bennington’s wake-up call was inevitable. Aged 17, he moved back in with his mother who was so shocked by his emaciated, drugged-out appearance that she banned him from leaving the house. He took to drinking heavily and smoking weed to ward off the cravings from his speed-ravaged body. Soon he was, he admits, “a full-blown, raging alcoholic. In later years, the drinking would come to take over my life.”

Yet despite all this, Grey Daze would continue to gather momentum. They would open for any national act coming through Phoenix, they could sell out 2,000 seater venues on their own, they could, as Bennington remembers, “Sign autographs from the minute we finished playing until they closed the venue”.

They released two albums to huge local acclaim – but, crucially, to very little national interest. “We had a grungey sound and, though I’m proud of the songs, there wasn’t anything super original about most of them,” says Bennington. It was a lack of interest that led to arguments, the gradual dissolution of the band inevitable.

So it was that, aged 22, Chester Bennington found himself married, working at a digital services firm, and with a future that pointed anywhere but towards music. He didn’t know it, but his 23rd birthday would change his life.

HUNDREDS OF miles away, in Los Angeles, were five musicians who could not have cared less who Chester Bennington was. Ensconced in a practice studio, all they wanted to do was to work out how to blend hip-hop and rock, and to have fun while they were doing it.

Centred on the childhood friends Mike Shinoda and Mark Wakefield, they had met when Wakefield introduced Shinoda to members of his High-School hardcore band – drummer Rob Bourdon and guitarist Brad Delson. Soon Delson’s college roommate, guitarist and bassist Dave ‘Phoenix’ Farrell, was hanging out with them too, before a college friend of Shinoda’s – Joe Hahn – also joined in. Their name: Xero.

“We would write a lot more than we played,” says Shinoda now. “A lot of bands rush their songs, and go out and play a ton of shows; we spent weeks and weeks on the music, and probably only played one or two shows a month.”

“We definitely weren’t polished but we had a lot of potential,” adds Farrell. “We only really played shows as an excuse to get our friends together for a party afterwards. In the early stages, it wasn’t about getting a record deal. But the more we played, the more we realised we might have a chance.”

Their demo began doing the rounds of LA’s A+R men, most of whom passed on Xero quickly. One though, Zomba’s Jeff Blue, heard enough to persuade him to keep in touch with the band. But despite this, Wakefield began to drift away. Now working in management with the likes of Deftones, his amicable departure left Shinoda in something of a predicament.

“I never pretended I could carry the vocals on my own,” he admits. “I had these great melodies in my head, and I couldn’t get them across. I wanted to find someone who could do them justice.”

They handed their demo to Blue, among others, and asked him to send it out. Then sat back and hoped for a bite.

CHESTER BENNINGTON picked up the phone, on 20 March, 1999 – his 23rd birthday – and found Jeff Blue on the line. “I'm going to give you your big break. I have a great band for you,” he said. “I’m going to mail you a demo.”

“He told me he they had a hip-hop meets rock thing going on,” says Bennington. “I wasn’t really into the hip-hop thing but I told him to send it anyway. The music was really cool and the band were very talented but I knew I could do it better. I went into a studio and cut my vocals over their demo the very next day. That was a Saturday and on Sunday I called Jeff Blue back and said: ‘I’m done, when should I come out?’ He laughed and said: ‘No, we need you to record some vocals before sending it to us.’

“I was really cocky, so I put the tape in my stereo, pushed the phone to the speaker, played him 15 seconds of the song and went, ‘Is that good enough for you?’ He went, ‘When can you be here?’ The next day, I was on the steps of Zomba Music at 9am, waiting for the doors to open.”

But though Blue thought Bennington was the man for the job, the band had other ideas. Having already lined up a set of auditions with other singers, they were reluctant to just hand Bennington the mic.

“It was really awkward because, as I met them, they were auditioning people,” says Bennington. “In between the auditions, I would sing with them but then we’d have to stop because another guy would turn up. I just had to sit there and watch them audition someone else. I was thinking, ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’

“They seemed very indecisive, as though they were always looking for something a little better. Personally, I thought I was the best thing they were going to find. I had been in a band for along time and we had been quite well known, so I thought I was a big deal. I thought I was doing them a favour and they were looking at me like as just some other guy they might consider. I thought they were crazy, I seriously contemplated telling them to fuck off.”

His bemusement can only have deepened on seeing his competition.

“There was one guy who never wore shoes, and he told us he wanted to do stand-up comedy during our show,” laughs Shinoda. “When I met Chester, my first impression was that he seemed smaller that I thought. He was really skinny, with glasses, and he was wearing this awful butterfly collar shirt that hung all over him. It made him look like a cheesy guy from an Arizona nightclub bar. But his vocals on our demo were incredible. He sang like a fucking beast, the same way he sings now.”

The job was his.

FROM THEN on, they worked feverishly on their music. Now known as Hybrid Theory, they rehearsed intensively. Shinoda would first work with Delson on the music before he and Bennington would write lyrics – often dredging up painful memories from Bennington’s childhood.

“There really wasn’t any room for bashfulness,” says Shinoda. “Some of his lyrics addressed that stuff [the sexual abuse], so when he and I were talking about the songs, he told me about it. It was a weird way to get to know each other, but that’s how it happened.”

Bennington, meanwhile, was homeless in LA. Despite owning a house in Phoenix, he was forced to sleep on his new bandmates’ sofas, in his car and then at a rehearsal studio.

“It was tough,” says Bennington. “I was fucking miserable. The only thing that was keeping me going was knowing we had something special going on. I knew this was the one.”

He, Shinoda and the rest of the band would go online when not working on their music, posting mp3 files and generating interest from fans on internet message boards. But, despite favourable responses there, Hybrid Theory still couldn’t get a record company interested.

“We played over 50 showcases for label guys,” says Bennington. “We got turned by everybody multiple times. We were thinking: ‘You guys have to be out of your minds, we’re awesome!’”

And then they got their break – old friend Jeff Blue was hired by the Warner Brothers A+R department and made Hybrid Theory his first signing. Their luck was about to change… or so they thought.

TO DATE, Linkin Park’s debut album has sold over 24 million copies worldwide. Last year it was certified Diamond (10 million copies) in the US alone. But when they signed to Warner Brothers in 2000, the record company weren’t even sure they wanted them on their books.

“[Some people there] hated us,” says Bennington. “I don’t mean that lightly. Literally fucking <i>hated</i> us.”

The first problem was the name Hybrid Theory. Another recent signing to Warners, a band called Hybrid, were considered the next big thing, forcing Hybrid Theory to change their name to Linkin Park. The next problem was their music. As they started pre-production work with Don Gilmore, the producer told them he didn’t like any of their songs.

“Well, actually he liked two – Points Of Authority and With You,” says Bennington. “We basically had to write a new record in two months. We stayed at Mike’s house around the clock and wrote that album.”

But there were further – and far more serious – problems ahead. Bennington claims he was told he "the star" and that Linkin Park should be his band. Shinoda would be relegated to just being the keyboard player or, worse, jettisoned. Bennington resisted immediately: “I said, ‘Fuck you guys. Are you serious? I’ve only just got into the band, and you’re telling me to start a coup against the guy who writes all the music? It’s <i>his</i> band. If he could sing, I wouldn’t have a job. You fucking idiots, what’s wrong with you?’

“Then they wanted to bring in this other rapper, a reggae guy called Matt Lyons. After that, they told Mike to try and rap like Fred Durst. It was like, are we on the same fucking planet here? Suck our dicks!”

“We cut off all communications with the label unless absolutely necessary,” adds Shinoda. “At the end of it all, we stood our ground and essentially told everybody, ‘We’re going to do this all on our own, our way. If you don’t like it, you can drop us, we’ll take that risk’. When we finished that record, I felt like we had run a marathon. I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe we did that.’ It was exhaustion and pride.”

FOUR MONTHS later, on 23 October 2000, the band found themselves in Washington State just outside Seattle. Their debut album would be released the next day and, thanks to the support of the Warner Bros radio pluggers, its songs had been riding high on the airwaves. Bassist Phoenix Farrell, who had missed the recording process after temporarily leaving the band to fulfil a commitment to his old band Tasty Snax, had rejoined.

Parked outside a 24hr record store, waiting to go in on the stroke of midnight to buy the first copy of their new album, they started dreaming about what Hybrid Theory might sell in its first week of release.

“I thought it would be awesome if it sold 3,000 copies,” says Farrell. “I thought that was something to build on. But Chester said he thought it would sell 8,000 copies. My gut reaction to that was panic. You’ve got to set your expectations high but you don’t want to be stupid.”

In fact, by the end of that first week, Hybrid Theory had sold 47,000 copies, “and we all just went, ‘Holy shit!’” says Bennington.

For the next 12 months, if you wanted to get in touch with members of Linkin Park, you would have to have scoured the globe for them. In the 365 days following the release of Hybrid Theory, Farrell estimates that the band played a shade over 300 gigs. “We were averaging about five or six shows a week and then travelling too. I think I only spent about 30 nights in my own bed that year.”

And everywhere they went, they were hailed as a success story, as the leaders of the nu-metal movement. It was not a tag that sat comfortably on their shoulders.

“We never liked it.  People lazily slapped that label on bands like us, but we never shared much in common with most of the bands we were grouped with,” says Shinoda. “We didn’t have the same interests, goals, musical influences, or sound.  I felt like we weren’t from the same scene.”

Elsewhere, including in this magazine, there was other criticism – that Linkin Park hadn’t earned their success, that they were a flash in the pan, that they were a boy-band put together by their label.

“Certain people hated us,” remembers Bennington. “They said, ‘Who’s this fucking Backstreet Boys rock band? Look at these white kids singing and rapping about how hard life is!’ I felt I had to defend myself against that stuff, we had to fight from that point on.”

“Those rumours were totally untrue, but it’s what happens when a band finds success; this was our first taste of it,” says Shinoda. “We tried to tell ourselves that it was complimentary, that they were just saying, ‘it’s too good to be true,’ but to be honest, we were a little bitter that magazines like Kerrang! would have our backs one minute and then would turn on us quickly without doing their proper research on a bullshit rumour.”

BUT THERE were deeper problems than just that. As their tour rumbled on across Europe and then the rest of the world, they hit morale-snapping lows.

“We followed winter around the globe for almost a year, it was raining or snowing everywhere we went, and we were getting exhausted,” say Shinoda.

“To be touring in front of larger and larger crowds across the world was incredible,” adds Farrell. “The experience was simultaneously rewarding but absolutely draining too. I’m glad I did it, but I never want to have to do it again.”

More worryingly, Bennington was beginning to feel ever more estranged from his new bandmates.

“I was drinking a lot then,” he admits. “I was smoking pot and that segregated me from the rest of the band because they didn’t smoke. I didn’t feel like I was connected with the guys, we didn’t feel like close friends. Also, my then wife and I were at each other’s throats constantly. It was a pretty miserable experience.”

So fragile and notorious were Bennington’s moods that the rest of Linkin Park would actively avoid speaking to him about anything inflammatory, further forcing him to the sidelines.

“I felt like I was doomed to be this lonely person,” says Bennington. “I thought I would never have a fulfilling relationship with anyone. I thought the only friends I had were Jack Daniels and Mary Jane. At that time, I never performed a show completely sober, I was always smoking weed right up until the moment we went onstage. Immediately after we finished the show, I’d go and get hammered.”

AS 2001 became 2002, Linkin Park’s schedule became ever more relentless. Remarkably, in the precious downtime they had, Mike Shinoda managed to remix most of Hybrid Theory for the Reanimation project – pulling in contributions from the likes of Black Thought, Jonathan Davis and Aaron Lewis while he was at it. And, while the project was occasionally criticised by rock fans as a cash-in, the album met with critical acclaim in hip-hop circles.

“I thought I was just going to do a remix or two, and other people were going to do all the work,” remembers Shinoda. “I ended up overseeing the whole thing and juggling over 30 artists’ work and schedule. I vowed never to do it again!”

Barely pausing for breath, the band went straight back into the studio with Don Gilmore, this time to record their second album Meteora – with the success of their first album a weight hanging around their necks.

“There was pressure on us,” admits Farrell. “No matter what we did, we knew it would probably be considered a disappointment. Clearly, there was no way we could repeat the insanity of Hybrid Theory.”

Its release, on 25 March 2003, was greeted with both commercial and critical success – though there were those who claimed that rather than develop their sound, Linkin Park had found a successful modus operandi and stuck to it. It’s something, retrospectively, that Bennington admits too.

“Within the band, we call Hybrid Theory and Meteora Volumes I and II,” he says. “They’re very similar in a lot of ways. There’s almost a formula to them, you can tell what each song is going to do next.”

“But, on the other hand,” counters Shinoda, “we wanted to further define and evolve our sound as well. A song like Breaking The Habit, for example, could never have existed on Hybrid Theory; it was a more mature song, lyrically and sonically. When I listen to that album now, I think it has its strengths and weaknesses. There are things that sound really stiff to me now but I love it for the period in time it represents for us.”

Then, once again, Linkin Park hit the road, without stopping for another two years.

“FOR FOUR or five years, we went at a hundred miles an hour,” says Farrell. “At the end of that, we needed a break. By the end of 2004, we were about to burn out.”

While Mike Shinoda found time to both oversee the band’s mash-up collaboration with rapper Jay-Z and to release his own solo record, Fort Minor, the rest of Linkin Park found themselves worn out as they finished the Meteora touring cycle.

It was perhaps Chester Bennington who was in the worst position. Trapped in a marriage that was no longer working, and drinking more and more heavily, he was in a bad way.

“I wasn’t leaving my house. I’d shack up in my closet in the dark and shake all day. I’d wake up and have a pint of Jack Daniels to calm down, then I’d pop a bunch of pills and go back in my closet and fucking freak out for the rest of the day. I was a mess. I was falling through windows, having seizures and going to hospital the whole time. It was fucking ridiculous. I was a total wreck.

“Eventually I just gave in. I had to give up and ask for help. If I had tried to do it on my own, I wouldn’t have made it. But everybody came to my rescue.”

He sobered up, divorced, and remarried, opening himself up to the rest of his band during emotional counselling sessions in the meantime. Forced to examine his behaviour over the past few years, he crumpled in front of his bandmates.

“I had no idea I had been such a nightmare,” he says. “I didn’t realise how much my drinking and drug use was affecting the people around me. It was a shock and I’ve done everything possible to stay sober since. That’s made a huge difference to my relationship with the band. We all hang out now because they actually want to be around me. That’s a huge deal for me.”

THE NEW atmosphere in the Linkin Park camp led to a renewed creativity. Though the writing process for third album Minutes To Midnight was both lengthy and complicated, what emerged on the other side was a new band, “a band free to do what we like,” as Bennington puts it.

While Shinoda admits there was an obvious temptation to repeat the formula – and thus the success – of their first two albums, he says Linkin Park are in a far healthier place for redefining their sound along side new producer Rick Rubin.

“We sold 35 million records of that old sound,” he says. “Saying that we wanted to leave it behind and make something new and equally good was horrifying but thrilling. We were prepared for complete backlash. ‘Where’s Hybrid Theory?  Where’s Meteora?’ and we got some of that but, finishing that album, was the first time since Hybrid Theory that I had that particular mixed feeling of exhaustion and pride.”

It’s an album that went to Number 1 in 23 of the countries in which it was released, whose singles have gone Top Ten in virtually every territory and whose sales have taken Linkin Park’s total album sales past the 45 million mark.

As they once again stride out across the globe, from continent to continent, enormodome to enormodome, Chester Bennington stops for a minute to look back.

“After everything we’ve been through to get here, we’re in the best place we could possibly be.” He stops for just one more second. “We couldn’t be enjoying ourselves more.”

[Source]

#Linkin Park #Mike Shinoda #Chester Bennington #bennoda

[highlineheartbeats]

Every Song on Taylor Swift’s reputation

As analyzed by Time Magazine

1. “…Ready For It?”: Starting things off with a thumping bass line and rallying cry, “…Ready For It?” also offers one of Swift’s prettiest melodies. “In the middle of the night, in my dreams, you should see the things we do,” she sings sweetly before switching into her new-era rap-singing. “He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor,” she insists, name-checking a famous — and drama-filled — pairing, and setting the scene for the rest of the album’s investigation of the perils of stardom.

2. “End Game” (featuring Ed Sheeran and Future): Swift tapped her good friend Sheeran for this slow-jam-style track, a self-reflective — and self-aware — plea to both the listener and a lover. “I wanna be your end game,” Swift sings off the top, allowing in a little vulnerability — before jumping into a rap-sung chorus. “Big reputation, you and me we got big reputations,” she chants, recognizing the baggage that her stardom brings (and name-checking the album’s title, of course). Of-the-moment rapper Future of “Mask Off” success adds in a slick verse, sticking to the love-against-the-odds theme. Swift goes on to sing she doesn’t want to be an “ex-love” and that she isn’t into the drama; it’s just her burden to bear. This is peak Swift: emotionally open, but ready and willing to have some fun with the hype around her own persona. Sheeran’s contribution comes in the form of another rap-sung verse in the same vein, seeming to reference his own relationship and the pitfalls that fame has placed in his path to love. His advice? Ignore the rumors.

3. “I Did Something Bad”: Swift knows that her critics have strong opinions about her; after all, the album is called Reputation. And in the bombastic “I Did Something Bad,” she appears to address some of the narratives that have surrounded her. “I never trust a narcissist, but they love me / So I play them like a violin, and I make it look oh so easy,” she opens this one over a sharp string pluck. “If a man talks s–t then I owe him nothing.” Here is new-era Swift: holding her head high, unapologetic and fiercely protective of her own success. Then, a funky dubstep drop brings shades of her mega-hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” into the mix. Heavily electronically manipulated, and punctuated with a strong beat, it’s a banger of a track — and her defiant response to her detractors. “I never trust a playboy, but they love me,” she insists, stating matter of-factly that it’s best to “leave before you get left,” and hinting that maybe her splashy former relationships weren’t all they might have seemed. And then there’s the kicker: “They’re burning all the witches, even if you aren’t one,” she croons on an auto-tuned bridge. “Go ahead and light me up.” Of all the quotable lines in Swift’s oeuvre, this one is right up there at the top for its blazing imagery.

4. “Don’t Blame Me”: If you’re a fan of Avicii or Kygo’s brand of un-rushed atmospheric electro-pop, you might like the rich, vibey notes Swift brings together in “Don’t Blame Me,” a moody, dark song that starts out swinging and pretty, and builds into a gospel-backed EDM anthem. “Don’t blame me, love made me crazy / if it doesn’t you ain’t doin’ it right,” she sings emphatically. “Lord save me, my drug is my baby, I be using for the rest of my life.” Swift has endured criticism for her relationships: the fact that she’s in them, the fact that she sings about them. “Don’t Blame Me” could be a clapback to that criticism, reminding listeners that the heart simply wants what it wants, as her friend Selena Gomez once said.

5. “Delicate”: Swift is, appropriately enough, at her most fragile on “Delicate.” Refreshingly honest, it’s a melodic electro-ballad with a resonant refrain. “My reputation’s never been worse so, you must like me for me,” she muses, her voice a light wisp, in a wry nod to her year in the spotlight before breaking down her insecurities: “Is it cool that I said all that? Is it too soon to do this yet?” Like pretty much anyone dealing with a new crush, Swift sings of moments of doubt. Perhaps even superstars have their sore spots. She couches this sweetly uncertain song in snippets of dates — at a dive bar, in her apartment — but keeps it about her circular internal monologue, always questioning just how much her feelings are being reciprocated.

6. “Look What You Made Me Do”: Swift’s lead single — and immediate chart-topper following its release — “LWYMMD” was a shocking reintroduction to the Swift of Reputation: hard, unapologetic, focused on retribution. Step aside, “Bad Blood,” this song is much more cutting. “I’ve got a list of names, and yours is in red, underlined,” she reminded her haters over a Right Said Fred sample. The propulsive beat and insistence that the old Taylor was “dead” only sharpened her point.

7. “So It Goes…”: Here, she switches things back to romance, reflecting on just how a new love interest might help her out of her fixations: “you make everyone disappear,” she explains in the moody, murky opening segment, which opens into a trap-lite chorus about getting caught up in the moment (and, of course, leaving some signature lipstick “on your face”). But for life with Swift, that’s just how it goes. “I’m yours to keep, and yours to lose. You know I’m not a bad girl, but I’ll do bad things with you,” she adds with a wink; this version of Swift has made a marked departure from her squeaky-clean roots as America’s Nashville sweetheart.

8. “Gorgeous”: Yes, that’s Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’s baby daughter James opening up “Gorgeous” with a gurgle. But the rest of the song deals with adult topics. Over a bubbling, chime-like beat, Swift sings about the irresistible power of attraction — even when it’s not the best idea. “You’re so gorgeous, it actually hurts,” she sings with frustration. “There’s nothing I hate more than what I can’t have.” Despondent, she talks of heading home to hang out with her cats — and then, with a wink, invites her object of attention to join her.

9. “Getaway Car”: Told as a dramatic story of a heist and an ill-fated love adventure over shimmering 80s-style production, “Getaway Car” is one of Swift’s most metaphor-driven tracks on the album. “We never had a shotgun shot in the dark,” she sings with a rebellious twang. “Nothing good starts in a getaway car.” Swift’s has often had its fair share of melodrama; remember “Into the Woods”? In “Getaway Car,” though, she calls herself a “traitor” who turns in her erstwhile partner in crime. Looks like Swift might be willing to flirt with the dark side, but she’s no good at following through with crimes — of the legal kind, or of the heart. Instead, she says, she takes the keys and leaves the guy stranded at a motel. It’s no happy ending, but it’s a reminder that Swift isn’t afraid to assert her independence.

10. “King of My Heart”: Taylor Swift has always been good at love songs. In “King of My Heart” she hits her sweet spot, over a synth-heavy track and strategic auto-tune assist. “I’m perfectly fine, I live on my own, I made up my mind I’m better off bein’ alone,” she starts off. But it doesn’t stay that way for long; after meeting a (evidently non-American) paramour who pursues her, the story (and the song) go straight into the romance. “You’re the one I have been waiting for,” she gushes, dissing some other guys with “their fancy cars” who didn’t quite measure up to this new interest. And yes, the character in the title is indeed the king of her heart — and body, and soul.

11. “Dancing With Our Hands Tied”: Although it starts off as a down-tempo, melancholy kind of tune, “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” adds in Swift’s now-rote trap-lite drop to amp up the drama on this will-we-won’t-we tale of star-crossed lovers separated by an unkind fate. “I had a bad feeling,” she suggests about the romantic interest, but she goes on to dance with him anyway; some chemistry just can’t be denied.

12. “Dress”: “I only bought this dress so you could take it off,” Swift sings slyly on “Dress,” her most overtly sexual work yet. She wants her lover to carve his name into her bedpost; her hands shake in anticipation. A breathy, synth-y track with lots of whispery vocals, Swift is unequivocal about her interest in this person as much more than a friend. “Made your mark on me; a golden tattoo,” she sings cryptically. It’s a departure from her usually PG approach to love songs, emblematic of a Swift who’s claiming her maturity more than ever.

13. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”: Kicking things off with a siren sound, Swift strips it back to a stomping call-out of the haters, a giddy sister of sorts to dark lead single “Look What You Made Me Do.” “Why’d you have to rain on my parade?” she asks, her voice petulant, sneering with humor and attitude. “This is why we can’t have nice things, darling: because you break them, I have to take them away.” When she tries to go diplomatic — “forgiveness is a nice thing to do” goes one line, sung in an angelic lilt — she breaks the fourth wall with a burst of sharp laughter. Swift is no longer willing to “Shake It Off,” as she once tried to do.

14. “Call It What You Want”: Maybe the most by-the-book Swift song on Reputation, “Call It What You Want” is a slow-burning meditation on the transformative power of relationships, filled with lyrical puns: “All the liars are calling me one,” she sighs at one point. “All my flowers grew back as thorns.” But this is still a love letter, and a reminder that Swift has moved on from the fray around her so-called “reputation.” “My baby’s fly like a jetstream, high above the whole scene,” she sings proudly, making it clear that the baby in question has taken her along for the ride.

15. “New Year’s Day”: Her one acoustic piano ballad on the album, “New Year’s Day” is a tender and intimate love song. The snapshots are sweet and evocative: glitter on the floor after a party, candle wax and polaroids on the hardwood floor, holding hands in the backseat of a taxi. “Hold on to the memories,” she repeats in the chorus, “and I will hold on to you.” Nostalgic for the moment even as it’s happening, it’s a lovely, effecting closer, letting Swift’s voice and earnest message shine without the complications of over-production. She may get her kicks with big pop anthems, but vulnerable ballads like this one are just as much a part of her musical DNA.

Lifted from Time Magazine

#time magazine #time #reputation #taylor swift #reputation review #review #ts

[samanthasroberts]

The Fourth of July: how to celebrate in your 20s and 30s

With age comes political awareness, higher alcohol tolerance, and an earlier bedtime. But its possible to be an adult and still enjoy yourself this weekend

The Fourth of July used to be one of my favorite holidays, but the significance of the day has changed since the halcyon days of slipnslides and flat soda pop. When I was a kid, it was all fireworks and good cheer, plus the kind of pure, unadulterated patriotism that only the young and blissfully unaware of our countrys international foreign policy can tap into.

As an irresponsible 20-year-old, I made the Fourth a bit of a blue-collar bacchanal of cheap hot dogs, lukewarm beer, and far more illicit fireworks purchased from Mexico. Now, all I can think about is how to keep my dog from freaking out over the constant popping sounds in our neighborhood, whether or not the people at my barbecue can see my bald spot, and how soon I can go home. My point is that getting old is awful.

With age comes political awareness, higher alcohol tolerance, and an earlier bedtime. But its possible to be a responsible, perpetually harried adult and still enjoy yourself this weekend. Heres how.

Age 10: Indulging at an early age

Ah, the ignorant bliss of youth. Photograph: Alamy

Fun: As a kid, the Fourth means indulging in carbonated beverages in unlimited quantities. I could drink an entire two-liter bottle of Pepsi by myself if I really applied myself. The rest of my Fourth of July barbecue experience was running around, avoiding pools (I couldnt swim, as you might know) and appreciating the rare opportunity to go sans-shoes without my mother worrying Id step on a nail and get tetanus.

Patriotism: Its easy to be a patriot when youre a kid, especially in my case as my father was in the Air Force. He was sent to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf war, which meant we were even more patriotic than usual during that whole period. I was the proud owner of numerous Gulf war trading cards and at least one plastic Army tank toy. In short, I thought of Americas role in the world being similar to a game of Missile Command.

Fireworks: My dad was really particular about safety with fireworks. Wed have to stay at least 15ft away from the explosion, and he always kept a bucket of water handy in case things got out of control. Every year hed get those snakes that all kids hate. You light a black disc on fire and it expands into something that resembles rat excrement. If you get to hold the sparkler, youre really doing well for yourself.

Age 20: Heavy on the drinks

In your 20s, the Fourth means getting blackout drunk and usually throwing up on someones backyard. Photograph: image net

Fun: In your 20s, the Fourth means getting blackout drunk and usually throwing up on someones backyard. The question isnt so much what to drink, but how early to start? My evenings always ended the same way: eating leftover potato salad and watching Fight Club on DVD or bootleg torrents of Family Guy. I had horrible taste.

The biggest difference in Fourth of July festivities in your 20s is that you dont have a backyard any more. You probably have some crappy apartment or dorm that may or may not have a hardly luxurious patch of astroturf. Maybe you can dupe your one friend who has a rooftop to throw a party, but is it really the same? Youre older now, but not old enough to appreciate that you arent dead.

Patriotism: Americas a bummer, man. My 20s took place during the Bush years, so I was especially angsty about the United States. The Fourth became an ironic occasion for me and my filthy leftist friends. Who could wear the tackiest flag-themed outfit? Who could recite the entire monologue from Independence Day? Look at us, drinking Budweiser and smoking Marlboros. America, LOL! It was insufferable.

Fireworks: Fireworks in your 20s are usually influenced by the amount of alcohol youve had beforehand. In my mid-20s, I would routinely go to a party hosted by my friend Josh. Hed get really drunk and try to light a sparkler with his cigarette. Illegal fireworks became a bit like scoring drugs back then. You knew a guy who knew a guy who could get you a crate full of shit that could set your entire block on fire.

Age 30: All about the grub

Food becomes far more important when youre a proper adult. Photograph: Morgan Lane Photography / Alamy/Alamy

Fun: Heres the same conversation I anticipate having at every party I attend: Do you have any IPAs? My wife loves IPAs. I brought ros. Its such a hot day. Doesnt that sound refreshing? Wheres your bathroom? Whens your wedding again? October. Oh, the ros? I just finished it. Well, good to see you again. Give your parents my best. Im just going to wait outside for my Uber. Can I bum a cigarette? Ill give you a dollar.

Food becomes far more important when youre a proper adult. There will be vegans at your party. There will be guests who are gluten-free. There might even be some pregnant women who demand pickles dipped in ranch dressing.

Its polite to bring something to any party, but especially a Fourth of July barbecue. These are communal affairs, and you need to chip in. But what do you bring? Bearing in mind the unique restrictions that govern your fellow partygoers, you must bring something thats edible for everyone: healthy, but not too healthy; vegetarian-friendly, but not veggie dogs or veggie burgers. Invariably, veggie dogs get eaten by non-vegetarians, who then feel put upon by carnivores who steal their food. Best to not create that clear division.

I suggest apple pie.

The point is not to make yourself happy, its to satisfy a social obligation, so just purchase a thing that has a patriotic significance and can be consumed by just about everyone. Pro tip: get a gluten-free one and only tell the people who are gluten-free. That way, no one turns their nose up at it.

Patriotism: By the time you hit 30, your country has let you down numerous times. No matter what side of the ideological spectrum youre on, you will probably end up finding something to complain about: taxes being too high, taxes being too low, the damn Democrats, the shifty Republicans, the cost of medical care, the proliferation of guns, the lack of guns, the crummy US soccer team, and of course, whomever the president is. The United States to a person past the age of 30 is nothing more than a stuffy debt collector that also happens to be a huge prude.

Fireworks: Fireworks? What fireworks? Who wants to put their kids in harms way like that? At most, maybe you can light them at least 15ft away from your house and keep a bucket of water on hand just in case things get out of control.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/11/the-fourth-of-july-how-to-celebrate-in-your-20s-and-30s-2/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/the-fourth-of-july-how-to-celebrate-in-your-20s-and-30s/