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#source: overheard everywhere
sp0o0kylights · 7 months
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You know what I want to see, I want to see more of Steve, Eddie, and Robin being 1980s small town kids from Indiana, by which I mean;
Robin is The Source of Gay Knowledge purely because her parents host Hippie Christmas and she managed to sneak away to find a neat bookstore in Indiana once. 
Her knowledge is not in depth. It's patchy, woven together through rumors, stories she heard or things she picked up from her parents' old pictures. She's got a handful of zines, one book, and some movies she managed to order for Family Video behind Keith's back.
She acts like she's Queen of the Queers because in Hawkins she pretty much is.
(Max and El ask her what a lavender marriage is once, something they overheard snooping around. 
Robin confidentially answers that it's code for when one woman dresses up as a man, fooling officials into wedding two woman.
She does not live this down two years later when they find out what it actually means.) 
Eddie doesn't spend every weekend in Indianapolis. 
Gas is expensive, his busiest days of his "job" is Friday and Saturday, and he has no fucking clue what the hanky code is. 
He's wearing that bandana because Metallica front singer James Hetfield has one on all their tour posters. 
Eddie does make it down to a gay bar though, by accident. Rick needed some back up for a shady deal. Promised Eddie a boatload of free drugs to sell if he agreed to just stand there and look mean. 
He was warned the bar they were meeting in was 'weird' and to not 'freak out' --which Eddie thought was hilarious given his nickname and general appearance, but whatever.
He doesn't understand when they get there, because it's just a bunch of hot men with hanky's in their back pockets everywhere.
Then he sees two women kissing and it clicks. 
He can't out himself in front of Rick, but one of the bartenders playfully dresses him down for his own hanky, letting him know all about the code and teasing him through his embarrassment. 
He's got an offer to come back and learn what color and which pocket his hanky should actually be in, a prospect Eddie was salivating at until Chrissy Cunningham up and died on his ceiling.
(He still wore the hanky, because the feeling of that bartender tugging it out and stuffing it back in might be the closest thing he's ever had to sex and he absolutely wants a repeat. 
He's young and horny, sue him.) 
Steve Harrington may not be academically smart but he's not dumb. 
He figured out a while back that the basketball team as a unit probably crossed the queer line more than once--or at least it did before Hargrove came in. 
( Brad Handly for example, went around slamming kids into lockers and screaming slurs like a fucking movie villain one Monday because the varsity team got dead drunk at Laura's party on Sunday and hey, look, there weren't that many girls there, okay?
They all had fucking hands and mouths. Everybody but Tommy was single and hot to trot. Nothing gay about it.
Its not even like they were kissing or treating each other like chicks. It was just Brad's first time and they got to tease him later for overthinking it. 
Dude graduated soon enough after and given Steve was on the team as a sophomore, he hadn't thought about the guy and why he might be freaking out so bad in years.) 
Robin's entire panic attack at Starcourt, and a few more after had Steve replaying that whole incident. Reframed it a bit, and, yeah.
In retrospect that had been extremely gay, actually. 
It sat with him a lot easier than he'd thought it would. Partially because of Robin, but mostly because that's just who he was.
Stranger things had happened to Steve and this one didn't want to kill, maim or otherwise eat him, so it got filed under 'interesting facts he should never tell his parents if he wanted to keep his trust fund' and then he went about his day. 
(Or he tried too, anyways.
It caught up to him when Eddie and Robin somehow figured out the other was queer and dragged him along to some bar Eddie had a standing invitation at, with demands for Steve to do what he did best.
Babysit.
Their magical trip was utterly destroyed when Brad Handly happened to be the very same bartender who had given Eddie the invite.
 Considering Brad's immediate bark of laughter followed by a hug and introducing himself as "Steve's gay awakening", Steve ended up having to speedrun through Eddie and Robin both having a crisis for him.
It didn't help that Steve had politely, and laughingly, corrected Brad with a casual; 
"Pretty sure that was Tommy man, but if it helps I think that tongue of yours gave Matt Burdon a crisis."
--which ended up with him answering a lot more gay sex questions with Brad than he cared too. 
At least he, through Brad, was able to help Robin connect to some local lesbians and--after a second crisis from Eddie regarding how Steve managed to have more sex than "the resident town freak and guy who actually knew he was gay, Steve!"-- even helped Eddie out by catching the metalheads tongue with his mouth later that evening.
The last one landed him a boyfriend, trust fund be damned.) 
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isa-solasun · 1 year
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IT'S OKAY, I'M HERE FT. SATAN
. summary: you don't feel very good mentally, and the avatar of wrath notices.
. content warnings: hurt/comfort, more comfort than anything, self indulgent, self-inflicted hair pulling out of stress, worried satan
. characters: satan [om!] & gn!reader
. taglist: @reshi-galaxy comment here to be added...
. note: sorry for ghosting you guys :'< i've been losing motivation lately and the burnout is finally catching up. but I decided, you know what? i'm gonna make a use of it!
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"No, no, no, no!"
Satan lifted his head from the book he was engrossed in to the source of his disturbance, you. To be frank, you weren't exactly loud, given the current location you were in, a library. And yet, in Satan's mind, any thoughts related to you would always be the most present.
His eyebrow twitches as you let out another panicked and rushed mutter, observing from his peripherals the way your fingers gripped strands of your hair in frustration.
He looked down at the desk you're seated at, full of open books, stationery, and pieces of paper scattered everywhere. How messy, Satan commented in his head. It wasn't unlikely for you to not be the most organized person around, but he sensed that this time was different.
You don't seem like you're having a great time; other than your obvious uncomfortable gestures, Satan can also see the dark circles under your eyes and the lack of life in them.
Midterms were coming up, and Satan had overheard your conversation with Simeon the other day about how stressed and burned out you had been the past week, so he guessed that might be the reason why, but he stopped and told himself not to assume anything about them anymore, let alone projecting into their concerns.
He sighed and pushed himself off of his chair, then proceeded to make his way towards you. By the time he's merely a step away from your robe, you were scribbling rather aggressively onto your notebook, and your gaze goes everywhere in a frantic manner as you failed to notice his presence in front of you.
"Hey," you almost flew out of your seat when he tapped your shoulders, turning your head so fast it made Satan worry you might break your neck. "You good?" he asked, a rush of relief grazing his heart at seeing you visibly relaxed at the sight of him, unprepared for you to launch yourself on him.
Blood rushed to his face as he fell to the floor with you hugging him on top. Even if you weren't shy, it's not like you to be this bold either. yet all his embarrassment faded out almost as fast as it came. He realized that his blazer was becoming wet. You were crying.
Why? He wished to ask the question. What's wrong? Who hurt you? And his concern only grew when your grip around his waist tightened. Satan is ready to attack anything that could possibly be the reason you're upset, but at the moment, he knew you needed his comfort the most. and thus he hugged you back, rubbing circles on your shaking, tense shoulder, rocking you back and forth in his arms, doing his best to provide every ounce of warmth he could ever provide as a demon.
He does hope that you'll open up and talk to him about anything. and he'll wait for you to be ready, no matter how long it might take; he just wanted you to know that Satan is always there for you.
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Main Masterlist
⊙isa-solasun please do not steal
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nexusnyx · 2 years
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Dirty Dancing
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#NightSkyChallenge: Prompt 1 — The night we first met. “Who the hell are you?” Steve Harrington x Biker!Reader; [4.1k]
SUMMARY: When Steve went to the address for investigating purposes, the last thing on his mind was stumbling upon one of the most beautiful sights he's ever seen. It happens, though, and he convinces himself that meeting you was only a thing of the moment, until he encounters you outside the cinema a week later, crying. He does something about it.
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No matter how much Steve would like to argue against it, Henderson was often right. Before, he would give an honest attempt—ask a question, maybe, try to come up with some sort of plan, or try to understand better what’s going on. Now? Steve just does what he's asked to if he sees it’s a matter that won’t be dropped otherwise.
The year is '87, Steve works at the new cinema downtown, there are a lot of people moving out and into Hawkins for a town that not too many months ago had an “earthquake” splitting miles of damage everywhere, and after months in relative silence and peace since Eleven killed Henry (this time once and for all), Henderson and the boys said there was a disturbance in the outskirts of town. “Certainly supernatural. I’ve run the dada and overheard Hopper’s talks with Powell. We gotta check it.”
If Henderson said Steve had to go to this place to investigate a clue… well. Steve just obeyed.
He had no expectations but was stacked in preparation. Back-up (Eddie), means of communication (walkie-talkie), a plan (meet said clue), and a name. In case all of that went downhill, there were always baseball bats in his trunk. With experience comes knowledge, and all that.
Then, Steve meets is you, and no amount of preparation and planning covered that.
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According to Lucas, Henderson, and Max, their theory is that this disturbance has to be some form of Skinwalker due to the patterns in the open case, and the name is something Steve has no idea what is supposed to be until now, and frankly, is unsure if he wants to.
He stops listening and only focuses again on the part where they start talking about killing it.
Because they’re unsure of whether this walker thing takes a human form or not, they decided to keep an eye for any “suspicious” activity, and, one week after the problem made itself supernaturally evident, Eddie heard from someone in the band about a person named Bird who, according to their sources, had beat up three grown men outside of a club they frequented last Friday in a fight that left everyone with their mouths gaping.
“Sounds like someone who might be walking in the skin of someone else?” asked Eddie to the group.
Dustin nodded along with the vehemence and glint in his eyes of someone who had sniffed something new. “That’s a lot of strength for one person. No one has that type of skill—I mean, some do, but it’s very hard. What are the odds?” He scoffed. “Did your bandmate say anything else? Where we could find them? What’s their name, again?”
“Bird,” said Eddie. “Only thing else Cooper said was that they should visit Bird at the Broken Wings club and give them congrats. They’re there a lot, apparently.”
“Broken Wings club?” asked Lucas. “Is that the new bar that opened on the Highway? The one Hopper always goes to?”
“It is,” said Eleven. “The name is familiar.”
“Well, it sounds like you have some spying to do, Eddie, the Brave.” Dustin clapped his hands together, rubbing them on one another. Steve felt bad for Eddie because he knew that was the look of no backing away from. “You too,” added Dustin, and—oh.
He was looking at Steve.
“Me?”
Dustin rolled his eyes. “Yes, you. Eddie can’t go alone. What if this Bird person is the skinwalker, Steve?” He asked with his ‘I am speaking to a child’ tone.
Steve sighed.
“Condescending tone, dude,” Eddie warned him.
“Sorry! I’m sorry. I’m on edge, and he has to be told everything—”
When Steve parks outside Broken Wings Club, his eyes widen at the amount of cars and movement there is at this new bar.
He whistles under his breath and as he gets out of the passenger seat, Eddie takes a look around him just like Steve. “Yeah,” nods Eddie. “Fuck—I’ve been wanting to come here for so long,” his voice gets excited and squeaky, and he slams the door behind him. In quick skips, he makes his way around the car and then throws the other jacket he carried on his lap the whole ride here in Steve’s face. “Put this one.”
Steve removes the piece from his face to get a better look. “Really?” A leather jacket. “Why do I have to put this on?”
Eddie gives him a blank look, then looks around him again, obliging Steve’s eyes to do the same.
Point made.
It’s a biker’s club.
“I didn’t know we were coming to a—biking gathering,” Steve mumbles under his breath. He shrugs the jacket on top of his shirt and hears Eddie scoffing.
“Right. ‘Cause if you did, then you’d have dressed for the occasion.” It’s obviously meant as a teasing remark, but Steve raises his eyebrows at him.
“You don’t think I can blend here?”
Eddie — the bastard — laughs out loud at him as he makes his way in direction of the entry, slapping Steve’s arm in a playful manner. “Oh, you’re funny, Steve. I like that.”
Part of him wants to take a lot of offense at that, but Steve’s mouth dries up the closer he gets to the entry. The people around all turn to look as they pass, and he feels it—the eyes on him. No one spares Eddie a second glance, but more than once person gives him a side-eye as Steve walks inside.
The bouncer, too.
She checks Eddie’s ID, gives him a paper bracelet and tells him to pass. When it’s Steve’s turn, her smoky black eyes switch between Steve’s driver’s license and his face a couple of times before she says, “Welcome to Broken Wings,” and secures the same grey paper bracelet on his arm.
Part of him wants to go back there and tell her—his ID is fake, you know. He’s only 20, but Steve’s grown past that level of pettiness.
He just keeps the comment to himself.
“Alright—this place’s pretty cool and we can’t just start asking stuff the minute we go in, so we’re gonna have to have a couple of beers and maybe listen to some music before we start mingling,” Eddie says only for his ears.
Steve nods. That was the plan, yes. “You get the first round, I get the second?”
“Sure.”
They stick to the plan.
Eddie tells Steve what he’s heard of this bar and its owner from Cooper, they try to talk in hushed tones about who around them looks good enough to spark a conversation with and, when he finds out that Eddie has no idea how to play pool, Steve laughs in delight, teasing him for a good few minutes.
“Wanna split?” asks Eddie when they finish their second beer. “I’m gonna head to the bathroom.”
“I’m gonna go smoke outside,” says Steve.
“Cool. I’ll order us a couple more beers, see if I talk to anyone, and I’ll meet you there.”
With a nod, they part their ways.
Steve’s trying to be discreet here.
After getting into so much of the supernatural shit against his wheel, the only way for him to get involved and be okay with the fact that the teens are involved without losing his mind is to be prepared. There are less chances of clocks striking, of a need for a grand plan, of things getting out of control that way.
There is a plan.
Steve opens the wood doors leading to the back and appreciates the forest view from the porch. He pulls out a smoke, sees there are a handful of people outside with him in groups, and ahead of them, there’s the structure for a bonfire. He pictures that thing lit late at night with various people surrounding it, smoking in their real leather jackets, with their cool tattoos and intimidating looks, and lights his own cigarette. He walks until he’s standing on one of the corners of the porch, and leans against the wood structure, blowing out smoke quietly.
What a fucking weird town.
“Is that a polo underneath your jacket?”
The question catches him off guard because one, that was definitely directed at him, and two, the voice is  coming straight from behind him where he thought there was only darkness. When Steve whips around, his plan is thrown out of a window.
Blown to pieces.
That’s—fucking hell.
“Hi.” Steve’s mouth is dry. That is… a very attractive person. Very—oh, god, he’s staring. “Uhm. Who are you?”
Those beautiful lips spread in a grin. “Who the hell are you?” It’s asked with a soft smile, and despite the blunt words, there’s no malice in that voice. “Because you’re not a regular. And I’ve never seen you around. I would’ve remembered.”
Steve scratches the back of his neck, and tries to gather himself with a deep breath. “I’m Steve.”
He extends a hand, and there’s a second before you take it.
“Hello, Steve,” you shake his hand, stepping away from the wall and stepping up on the porch too, your eyes going down his body and leaving a trail of heat where they pass. “That’s... definitely a polo.”
Right. Steve looks down at himself and hates to admit that Eddie’s point was a bullseye. Weren’t for his leather jacket, Steve would look very stupid right now. “It is,” he confirms. “I like ‘em,” he shrugs, looking back at you. “Did you ask because you hate polos or was it just the shock, miss…?”
The grin settles in a side-smile, and you pull out a rolled tobacco from behind your ear. “The later.” You light the tobacco up, and Steve waits for it, hoping it’ll come. When you blow out the smoke, you lean on the wood structure as well. “Y/n,” you offer. “People just call me Bird.”
Steve feels like a cartoon getting stuck on the same frame.
Fuck. Fuck, fuckfuck—okay. He takes a drag of his cigarette and tries to calm his quickening heartbeat. He’s got this. “Why?” He asks.
You lift one eyebrow. “Because… it’s my name?”
“Your name is bird?”
“Last name,” you correct, then offer, softer. “Like—Hugh Bird Brown?”
That name rings a bell.
Eddie’s voice a few minutes ago, his finger pointing at the plaque behind the bartender as he goes, “He was one of the people who moved here to help re-construct the town back then, look, his name is—fuck, I can barely read from this distance—uh—Hugh. Hugh B. Brown; Mr. Brown. He came with that new investor who wants to build a mall again, but apparently, they hate each other ‘cause they basically represent polar opposites. I mean—Hugh’s biker’s gang is apparently famous for beating up racists and child molesters—don’t know how true it is, but. Welcome to town, if you ask me!”
“Hugh B. Brown. You’re—” Steve’s eyes focus again on the here, and you’re staring up at him with calculating eyes. Steve looks at you, truly looks this time, and his mouth dries even further. You have a leather vest on top of a white sleeveless top, and it should not be as hot as it is. Fishnet gloves on your hands. Black jeans, combat boots. Yeah… nice look. Very nice.“You’re the owner’s daughter?”
That smile has gotta be a devious weapon. Holy shit. “That’s what the same last name means for us, yeah," you reply with a laugh.
Steve feels his neckline heating at that—you’re teasing him. At first he thinks he minds it very little, but then as takes a drag he remembers why the Bird was so important in the first place and fuck.
What if that smile is a killer smile?
His stomach twists a little.
“Are you liking Hawkins?” asks Steve. Please don’t be a skin walking murderer. Please.
Your upper lip quivers, and you give a weak little groan. “Dunno. It’s small.”
“Smaller than where you lived before?”
“I’ve lived in three different cities these past few years,” very open and honest, he thinks. Is that because you have nothing to hide or because you don’t care about what you say to a human? His heart feels like a rabid animal inside a cage. “They were all bigger than here, but—same old shit, I guess.”
“And what shit is that?”
“Hateful people,” your eyes are right ahead. Steve catches a spot of red between your knuckles underneath your glove, and his mind starts working harder.
It could be her. Could be her father.
“There’s definitely lots of that around.” He's silently praying you're not one of them. Fights happen for many reasons, and maybe you did have a way of beating up three people. He needs to find out.
“Are you from here?” you ask before he can form another thought.
Steve takes another drag, nodding. “Born and raised.” Unfortunately. Stuck, he thinks.
“Oh.” The sound has its own hidden words. It says 'oh, so you were here for all the tragedy' and 'damn, I'm kinda sorry for that', and Steve expects any of the questions that came from new people who arrived at Hawkins and had the opportunity to speak to someone who's from here, but then— “D’you like it?”
“Uhm—” that's... none of the questions he expected. He thinks about it for a moment, and the answer comes to him. “It’s my hometown. I hate it. I love it. I think I’ll never get out of it, even though it’s all I think about sometimes.” He’d miss it. “I’d probably end up missing it if I left.”
About the last part, he's not so sure, but you listen to all of it and then nod.
Something in your eyes says you understand him, and Steve feels terrified for a moment. Not in his instincts, but inside his ribcages. Where his heart is misbehaving. “I feel that, but…” you lean in closer for a second. “There is a lot out there to see, y'know?” With another drag, you're turning around to gaze at the forest. “A whole fucking lot,” you add with a yearning tone.
That forms a question in his head. “Are you part of the biking crew?”
You look up at him, then turn your back so that he’s faced with it—the sewn patch of Broken Wings Crew. When you turn back, Steve is nodding to himself. “Right. He’s your dad, it’d make sense. D’you like it? Being on the road?”
“I fucking love it.” The earnestness makes Steve want to get on a bike and drive away. “The road’s amazing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It reminds me that there’s an almost endless amount of stuff out there. That we’re very tiny, after all.” For someone who looks so intimidating in her cool clothes and black-painted eyes, your voice is soft even when you're offering sad philosophical thoughts.
He laughs at it. “Wow. I’m feeling very humbled. You’d like to meet a friend of mine—he likes talking about our size compared to the ‘general grand aspect of everything’.” Dustin would like to meet her, that's true, for more reasons than one, Steve thinks.
Focus on the mission, Harrington, his voice says.
His words pull laughter out of you, and Steve has trouble focusing on anything other than that. “That sounds a bit too big for me. I’d just end up in an existential crisis and I don’t think I need another one of those.”
“Not a fan of remembering how very tiny you are when compared to the grand aspect of everything?” He teases you.
When did he get it back? His ability to sound aloof and playful with a cigarette in hand when talking to someone he feels is so damn out of his league?
He had thought he lost it.
“Not really,” you smile, and he thinks, yeah, I haven't lost it. Steve knows that smile. “We’re not going anywhere, anyway. Why would I bother dreaming about stars I’m never gonna see, Steve? That’s just depressing.”
“Fair enough.” If you two are flirting, Steve can ask. He's not sure if you're flirting back, but he's definitely been leaning too close and looking a bit too hard for you not to notice he is, and you're letting it happen. He can prod a little. Now or never. “Can I ask you something?”
Through a cloud of smokes, you say. “Sure.”
“I have a friend in Corroded Coffin, and… he says,” he pauses, just for dramatics. Sound cool about this. It’s gonna be fine. “Apparently,” he takes a drag of his cigarette. “A certain ‘Bird’ gave a lesson to some people at a bar this Friday. He was gushing about it, actually. ‘s that you or did the wrong people find your pops?”
This time, your laughter is boisterous, and Steve wonders what did he miss. It's not the usual 'that was funny' laugh—more of a 'this sparks an incredible amount of joy due to something you missed here' kind of laugh.
As expected, you start with, “‘m sorry, ‘m sorry,” you say as you stop laughing and take a deep breath. “I was just—imagining my dad at Dorothy & Toto. Man, that was funny,” you giggle. “Nah. It was me. Only my dad's closest friends call him Bird. Around here, that's me.”
In one movement, you pull up the glove for a second to show your red and bruised knuckles.
Steve swallows around a tight knot. So it was you. “Damn,” he whistles, not bothering to hide his surprise. Supernatural kick-ass or just the most interesting person alive?
He's terrified of prodding any further even though he must and will have to.
“Yeah. My dad’s pissed that I ended up at the police station not even a year after moving, but he heard what happened, so we’re good.”
Steve narrows his eyes at that and, with curiosity traveling through his bone, he leans in. “What did happen?”
You narrow yours back. “I thought your friend at Corroded Coffin had already told you,” you whisper theatrically.
“I mean—he did. But it was just a ‘this happened’ kind of talk. And, no offense at all, but how exactly was it you versus… three?”
Your smile at him this time is a little daunting. Steve feels a shiver starting at his neck. “Steve. My dad’s an ex-military guy who retired and started a motorbike gang. Trust me—I know how to knock out a few assholes who never did more than throw punches every now and then at a bar.”
He lets out a startled laugh. Relief. “You fight?”
“Hmhm.” You lean back against the wood, and Steve feels lighter. Feels like he can ask you a thousand more questions—and he wants to. “Krav maga. Muai thay.”
His eyes widen more. “So… you really did kick their asses, huh?”
“Sure did.” And what a proud smile you have over it.
“Do I have any—” his question is interrupted by a loud:
“There you are, Harrington!”
It’s Eddie. He walks until you two with inquisitive eyes, and Steve feels caught doing something wrong before he remembers that this is the person they came here to find out about, and he was doing something right by talking to you.
He introduces the two of you, ignoring with difficulty the yelling voice in his brain telling Eddie to get lost.
Just another minute with her, he thinks, that's all Steve needs. Just a few more minutes to talk. Instead, not a minute later after Eddie arrives, someone who has the bar uniform calls your name from the inside.
You’re gone before Steve can think of a reason to make you stay, and when Eddie goes, "Dude, why were you flirting in the middle of our recon mission?" with a giggle, Steve wants to say I wasn't!
All that comes out with, "So. That was Bird," and there's that,
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Once the information is cleared with the group, they cross out your name from the board of informations, deem the accident as not part of their ‘unofficial investigation’ and go back to what’s important.
Steve, not so much.
See—Steve wants to be paying attention to his surroundings, and he would love to be thinking about plans, or traps, or anything else, really, but his mind is stuck. It’s on a loop, and every time he tries to escape it, he’s back at it: 
You.
For a week, the short encounter and conversation is all he thinks about.
Steve plays the whole thing from start to finish over and over again, wondering and beating himself up over what could’ve gone differently, and all the other things he should’ve.
When Robin and Eddie invite him to go to Broken Wings on Saturday, Steve escapes from them with a feeble excuse of it not being his scene and him not knowing if he’ll enjoy a whole night there, praying they don’t see in his eyes just how much of a coward he truly is.
He runs away from the thought of it—just picturing running into you again sends his heart into a frenzy, so Steve does something he hadn’t in a long time: he walks away.
It lasts until it blows.
You two live in the same town, after all, and it isn’t a metropolis.
Steve runs into you at the carnival, and his whole body responds to seeing you across from him, meters away.
There’s a second where he freezes on the spot—genuinely stops dead on his tracks, but then Eddie and Nancy nudge him along and he keeps walking before you can stop him, too.
He thinks about the red open tank-top you were wearing all night long, and goes home wanting to bite at his fist.
Never before in his life had Steve been entranced by someone he felt shy in their presence, but every time he considered looking for you and putting on his winning smile, all he saw was the YOU RULE | YOU SUCK board behind the scene.
Not because Robin killed his self-confidence or anything like that, but because Steve meant what he said in the car.
Everything felt superficial.
The mere idea of talking to you again when none of that conversation felt useless is kind of... terrifying.
So he leaves it alone.
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Three days later after his comical decision of 'leaving the thoughts of Bird alone', Steve's stood up by Robin.
It's a nice night—the sky is clear, leaving room for countless dots of shining light, it's chill, but not cold, and Steve thought he would get to watch a movie with his best friend after so much talking about it.
Instead, Nancy decided it was now the time to gather the courage to ask Robin out for a date, which means that all he gets is a rushed phone call — to their working place's phone, no less, what on Earth does Robin smoke — where Robin tells him, "Please don't be mad at me," then unloads a full afternoon of information on him before ending with, "so now—we're going on a date? I think? I mean, we are. I'm calling to let you know that I can't come. And asking you pretty please do not be mad at me? You're not, right, babe?"
"Go to your date, Robin," Steve chuckles. He sends an apologetic look to Luke who's side-eyeing him to hang up the damn phone. "I'll be fine."
"You're the best bestie, Steve. Love you! Bye!"
Line dead, Steve puts down the phone and takes a look around him.
Is the night over, or should he stay?
Being alone is something he grew up used to, but avoided at all costs—whether it was surrounding himself with just anybody, throwing parties, or throwing himself into things, Steve preferred company to solitude.
Now, he embraces it.
He buys himself a pack of Skittles, walks around the cinema thinking about the irony that he’s now one of those people who have to seek leisure in the place he works, and how much he’s changed since he was in High School.
Steve gets out of the cinema through the back to bum a smoke before he walks… somewhere he isn’t sure yet, but the minute the door starts sliding to close, he hears the sniffle.
Shitshitshitshit—the door closes with a thud, and Steve winces. Too late.
There’s someone crying out here and now they’re stuck together with that knowledge.
Steve lifts his gaze slowly, hoping and praying the person is above lashing out on him for catching them in their alone time, but he stops mid-motion when his eyes catch on who it is.
Once more, stunned in his spot by the sight of you. This time it’s because—tears.
There are tears staining your cheeks, ruining the pretty black make-up you have around your eyes.
Steve suddenly wants to be able to fight feelings.
You two share a look, then your hand lifts to your lips and you take a drag off the cigarette with eyes still on him, and Steve wills his body to stand up straight.
He clears his throat and walks to you, grabbing the smoke out of his back pocket.
Once he’s lit it, Steve extends the packet of Skittles to you. “Asking if you’re okay would be kinda stupid, so. You want one?”
Those gorgeous eyes go from his face to the pack of Skittles, and there’s another sniffle before you nod. “Thanks.” You use your free hand to rub a forearm against both your cheeks, then you turn the paln up so he can drop some candy on your hand. In one motion, you shove all of them inside your mouth, and talk just like that. “Most people would ask.”
“Eh. Most people are kinda stupid,” he learned that the hard way.
It makes you laugh, and Steve holds back his grin. Good. “Can’t argue with that.”
“It’s concerning, isn’t it?” he asks in a theatrical tone. “The level of stupidity we’re working under as a society.”
With another laugh, you do the thing where you narrow your eyes at him while you smoke. Then, you ask, “Why are you always trying to send me into an existential crisis when we talk?”
It’s his turn to laugh. “I’m sorry. Really—my bad. I walk with too many smartasses.” Way too many. At least four or five too many.
“Ah. I have that problem, too. Mine are smartasses and condescending hags, so I think I win.”
“What?” He asks with a confused laugh.
“My dad’s friends. The biker gang. They’re all ‘older and wiser’ and all that shit.”
Steve nods. “Okay, yeah. You win this round.” There’s a moment of silence where you two just smoke, and he feels his heart starting the first steps of its little wild dance. His eyes get caught in the smeared make-up, and Steve feels his wicked side awaken at the sight. “You want us to go throw eggs at their car? Whoever it was that stood you up,” he clarifies. “There’s a convenience store right in this street. We could buy eggs and a six pack. Can’t guarantee it’ll make them less of a dick, but it would probably make you feel better.”
As he offers, your mouth slowly opens and your eyes widen, but with mirth. You laugh happily when he finishes it. “Your solution is to egg people’s cars? That sounds so mature, Steve.”
Just because he knows you’re teasing, Steve shrugs his shoulders. “My smartasses are a bunch of teenagers I somehow ended up friends with. ‘m not above being petty. It works.”
“It sure does. I’d know.”
The next smile is more of a shared connection.
Steve’s heart does the thing where it checks how tightly it’s located inside his chest. It wants to get out every time you smile, but he’s too entranced by your overall presence to care. “We can even throw flour on top of it,” he smirks around the filter. “Makes a goey fucking mess. Horrible to clean.”
Loud laughter comes, and Steve kind of wants to start baking a whole recipe on top of this hypothetical car just to see if he can make you smile a bit longer.
“You’re a child, oh my god.”
“Incorrect. Would a child be able to buy us a six pack? Hm?”
Still giggling, you shake your head at him and turn your body away from his, smoking with your gaze fixed on the wall ahead of you. “Would love to do that, but—wouldn’t work.”
“No?”
“No. I’d have to know where their car is, wouldn’t I?” Your whole face falls again, and Steve wants to know who was it that had the audacity of leaving you waiting. Of making someone as genuine and open as you cry on a Thursday night—he feels jittery with the need to get that look off your face, but then you follow with, “No one stood me up.”
It was barely a whisper.
“I mean—she did stand me up. Just not the way you think, probably.” You turn to him again, smoke covering your face. “I was waitin’ for my mom.”
Inside his mind, the whole picture shifts from white to black in the blink of an eye, and the pain on your face gains new light under the confession. Steve’s breathless, spechless for a moment, most of all because he knows how much this hurts, he knows the taste of the pain created by that specific person in your life, and it doesn’t hurt—it burns.
“I thought it’d be different,” you continue despite his silence. You scoff, turning away from him again. “I genuinely thought it’d be fucking different because—’cause I’m an idiot. I’m—” your voice cracks, and Steve finds his voice again.
“Hey.” He waits for your eyes to be on his so you know where his heart is when he speaks. “I know you’re not an idiot. I’m aware this is the second time we’ve ever spoken, but I’m a hundred per cent confident on that fact. And also, I know she’s the loser in this little situation here. I don’t know your mom, but your mom sounds a bit like mine and if she is, no offense, but your mother’s a dick. And you shouldn’t cry over someone who’s a dick.”
It’s crazy to see the flash of recognition in someone’s eyes.
Steve says ‘your mom sounds a bit like mine’ and it may not be physical or visible, but a wall lifts between you two. He feels it.
“It’s hard,” you say with a sad nod.
Steve takes a drag off his cigarette because right now, the taste in his mouth is worse than nicotine, and just shrugs. “It is. But they’re not worth it.” No one who treats you like shit is. “I mean—it’s why I stopped expecting things from people in the first place. They’re the ones that disappoint us the most.”
“I’d love to do that but I could swear it was impossible.”
“It’s continuous work,” says Steve. I still care sometimes. It hurts like hell, and then I convince myself to let it go. “I heard something from a friend once that kinda changed my whole life, and I cling to that, I guess.”
“What did they say?”
“They said ‘everyone’s living their lives for the first time here, so stop expecting anyone to know for sure what they’re doing at all times’ and… it made me think of stuff.”
Silence covers the air as your eyes unfocus from him, and he imagines the words dancing around your brain the same way it did for him.
Your cigarettes are almost over, and you nod before stubbing yours under your boot. “Smart,” you offer. “Is that you’re so chill about being stood up?”
Steve laughs, albeit awkwardly. “Uh—yes, and no? I was stood up, but also ‘not like that’. Robin didn’t come ‘cause she has a date so here I am.”
This time your face contors in confusion. “Short haired girl? Talks a thousand miles an hour? That Robin?”
“You know her!” he exclaims happily.
“Your girlfriend stood you up ‘cause she has a date?”
“What?! No. Robin’s not my girlfriend,” he frowns.
“No? The one who walks with her arms linked in yours and calls you ‘babe’ is not your girlfriend?” you ask with a knowing smile.
“Nope. We’re just—” he stops, actually taking in your words, then smiles to the side. “Wait. How d’you know what she calls me?”
You look away from him with a roll of your eyes, but Steve’s paying attention to how the top of your cheeks are a little peachy now. “The hair and the loud laughing make you two kinda hard to miss.”
“Oh.” Steve knows that to be true, but his past self is cackling inside of him because he’s been a player, once in his life. He knows how to recognize someone checking to see if who they’re talking to has a partner or not just fine. “Well—that’s just Robin for you. Loud laughs and many words. And also, very much not my girlfriend. On a date, remember? We’re best friends. No girlfriends for Steve,” but one for Robin, he adds mentally with a grin.
You smile back. “Hope her date goes great.”
“Oh, I know it will.” It’s fated. Steve stubs his cigarette too, then gets the tickets out of his other back pocket. “Me, on the other hand, need another person to watch Dirty Dancing with me. You’d happen to know someone who’s around the cinema and wouldn’t mind keeping me company for the next couple of hours?”
Your eyes go to the ticket, and Steve is sure he’s not making up the change in posture. You rub one hand on your bicep, then say, “Dirty Dancing? Really?”
“It’s supposed to be great,” he wiggles the tickets in front of you.
“Would lil’ old me suffice?” you offer slowly, smiling shyly.
Steve widens his smile as a response. “Wanna go to the restroom first? I’ll go buys us a Coke.”
“I’ll get us more Skittles, too,” you add.
“Perfect.”
When he opens he opens the door to let you in and goes to buy the drinks, Steve can’t help but muse and smile at how his evening went from stood on to watching Dirty Dancing with Bird. It’s kind of… perfect
Then you come back from the restroom and joins him at the candy counter, and Steve sees you’ve fixed your make-up. You tease him with an, “If the movie sucks you owe me a couple of hours, Steve,” and he can only laugh as a response. That’s also perfect.
During the first five minutes of the movie, Steve feels the familiar, yet unfamiliar anxiety of being next to someone your body and mind are aware of. He sits next to you, but lets the armrest free so you can use, then starts off by offering you the candy and asking if you’ve heard anything about it.
Talking to you is easy.
Looking away from your lips as he does so, not that much. Paying attention to the words and trying to figure out what’s that smell he gets from your leather jacket are incompatible tasks, so Steve wills his mind to focus on the words. It’s okay that he likes your tasty, flowery scent underneath the smell of smoke.
It’s okay that he keeps stealing glances to the side as the movie progresses, because Steve feels when you do it, as well.
The air is slowly permeated with that tingle under your skin that hums all the time. This is a date. This is a date, it says.
Steve feels how hot his cheek is during the scene where the actors start getting so close they share the same breath, and his lips and mouth dry up. It’s unnerving to sit next to someone whose body heat you can feel, and know it’s only a mirror of what’s happening to you.
He’d forgotten what this feels like.
Scratch that—Steve’s had it similar, but it had never been this… electrifying.
At one point, he leans in to whisper, “Isn’t he too old for her?”
To which you answer with. “I’m… pretty sure he’s supposed to be, like, three years older or something?” you shrug, shoulder inching closer to his.
And that’s where you both stay.
Biceps touching one another, sharing Skittles and talking in hushed whispers when something funny comes up.
Time flies by as it does when things are good, and sooner than he’d like, Steve’s walking you out.
In slow, deliberate steps. Taking his time with each movement, because fuck it, he wants to stay here. Sharing time with you, even if it’ll make the minutes feel like a blink or an exchange of looks feel like minutes.
He relaxes when he sees you gathering their trash, item by item. Smiles.
“Do you like these type of movies or was this your best friend’s idea before she ditched you for that hot date?” you ask him.
Shoving both hands inside his pocket so he doesn’t do something dumb like putting an arm around your shoulder, Steve answers. “Nah. I like them. I’ll deny it if you tell anyone, but—my idea,” he shrugs.
You start walking after him in measured steps. “Secrets go with me to my grave. Don’t worry.”
“Really? You’re a good secret keeper?”
“Excellent.” You’ve been smiling since the middle of the movie, and Steve wonders if your cheeks hurt like his do. “Even when people cross me over—what they’ve told me dies with me.”
“That’s pretty awesome. What if… they weren’t shitty to you, but you just discovered that they’re shitty?” he muses.
You think about it for only a second. The scoff is vicious, “Fuck them, then. Hi, news anchor?” You pretend your free hand is a celphone and bring it to your ear. “Can I expose a bitch?”
Steve bursts out laughing while you make a score with all the trash, and you two keep walking out of the theater. “Fair, fair.” He makes sure he’s walking right by your side. The glances he steals are better now—he catches your eyes on him already most of the time. “I’m a good secret keeper, too. Now, at least. Not so sure about before.”
“Hmm. Were you bad before, Harrington?”
Ignore how hot you feel. No one’s made him blush this easy, but your tone—he forces a laugh. “I was a bit of a douchebag.”
“Outch. Really?”
He smiles at your disbelief. “Really. ‘m happy you sound surprised.”
“Oh, I’m very surprised. You seem like a really nice guy.”
“‘m flattered,” he puts a hand over his heart, then runs it through his hair. “Took a few hits to the head, but. Got there, I think,” he laughs at himself.
“It’s what it seems.” You two step outside the cinema, and Steve watches you stop. “I think no one can be really judged for who they are before they’re eighteen—not seriously. We’re all literally beginning to learn who we are. Feels silly to think someone would figure out how to be decent at every aspect by the time they’re fifteen, right?”
He thinks about it, and—yes. You’re right. “Very right.” He’s nodding along when he sees you pulling out your pack.
“D’you mind?” you ask, to which he shakes his head.
“No, not at all.” He gets his own, loving the opportunity for another couple of minutes. He looks around the parking lot then, in search for what he imagines is your ride. “Where’s the bike?” He asks. “I’m trying to picture what you drive—dunno if I wanna go for red tinted or black. How big it is.” Placing the cigarette between his lips he turns back to you. “You drive a bike, right?”
You blow out the smoke to the side and smiles at him. “Yup.” Then, there’s a shake of your head. “It’s not here, though.”
“You walked?” he frowns.
Another shake. “Dad dropped me off. My younger brother’s borrowed Pegasus to go to a conversation in the middle of fucking nowhere. He’s back only on Sunday.”
Steve tries not to smile too hard at the new information. “What a nice older sister. You let him borrow stuff,” he coos. “Literally every sibling I know lives off of banter and blackmails.”
Good god, Steve fucking adores the way you laugh. “Oh—there’re plenty of that. Trust me. I borrowed my bike because he’s been less of a little shit lately and I was feeling generous. It’s gonna come back to bite him in the ass,” you finish with a devious smile.
Steve pretends to be disappointed, tsk tsk. “Not a single good heart out there anymore.”
“Single child, I assume,” you point at him. He winces, and you laugh again, turning his frown into a smile. “You wouldn’t get it. It’s our love language.”
“Siblings’ love language is i’ll blackmail you at every chance I have?”
“That, and I wouldnt get you a glass of water even if I was literally in the kitchen, but I’ll kill anyone who even looks at you funny.”
“That’s—” he laughs. “Okay. You’re right—I don’t get it. I’ve seen it happen, and it just baffles me.” He takes a drag, then lets his eyes stay on you. “Now—I’m contradicting myself here by offering this ‘cause I just said there are no good hearts out there anymore, but I can’t let you walk or take a bus home, so—can I drive you home?”
Steve watches as you blow the smoke away from his face again, looking at him like you’re reading his mind. “I’d just call my dad,” you say in a soft-spoken tone. “Perks of being the boss is that you get to leave work whenever you want.”
Being coy with you—inneficient, Steve notes. He breathes in through his nose, and tries again. “You could. Lemme rephrase it, though—I’d like to drive you home.” 
He bites on his tongue to not add ‘feel free to say no’. Gentleman words and true to his heart, but Steve doesn’t want you to say no.
Your smile falters, but the happiness only travels north to your look. “I’d like that.”
He hears violins, and his smile is back. “Cool. Good.” His cheeks hurt. “So,” Steve takes a drag so the nicotine will do something at keeping his body at bay. “That scene where he lifts her up. What did you think?”
When you giggle, Steve wants to sigh. His body may be kept behaved, but his heart is its own thing in your presence. “Okay, I know it was cheesy, and I knew we knew it was gonna happen, but…” your shoulders come up as if you’re trying to hide yourself. “It was kind of iconic. Don’t you think?”
Steve has to agree.
He talks about the bits he liked — and he remembers — while you two finish your cigarettes, and you tell him the bits you thought were unnecessary.
It’s been a while since his fun had been ‘discussing entertainment’ and it feels so normal and easy.
Steve loves every second of it.
He guides you to his car when you two are done and the conversation’s shifted between Dirty Dancing to favorite movies of all times, and Steve will have that tingle in his cheek muscles tomorrow because he almost dies laughing at discovering your list of must watch.
“You are so weird!” He teases you, slapping his wheel. “What the hell.”
“They’re fun!” you argue.
“Those are extremely creepy movies, Bird. They are. And I only know that ‘cause I worked at a video store—I have no clue how you can watch that stuff.”
“You’re scared of them, Steve?” you tease back.
“I am!” He admits. “I’m terrified. What the hell goes on inside your mind—holy shit.”
“A lot,” you laugh darkly. “Oh, darling.”
“Okay, that was an evil witch laugh, and should I just leave you here on the road?” He is not turned on by your mean cackle, or the way you said ‘darling’. Steve feels his face betraying his delusional thoughts.
“You’re funny. Let me say this,” you start, then go on a rant about horror pictures and psychological thrillers that… actually give him something to think about.
Double fuck.
Is Steve ever gonna stop wanting to hear the things that come out of your mouth?
He’s led by your directions all the way until your house, and finds out it’s a few blocks away from his. He keeps that information to himself, for now.
When he parks outside, there are no lights on and he feels the sweat clamming his palms. “Well. You’ve given me something to think about,” he tells you. “Something disturbing, but… interesting.” He takes a deep breath, thinking do it, do it, just do it, and, “Thanks for the company, Bird.”
He opens his own door right after that, walks (skips) to the passanger side, and opens your door, feeling the heat crawl all the way up to his ears.
You exit the car with a similar look on your face—eyes blinking in surprise, and swalloing visibly.
Steve thinks to himself: she can fight off three people with those two hands.
He closes the door behind you, and keeps his body in front of yours, blocking your way.
By logic, you could remove him from your path in—Steve can only imagine how many ways. Many. He trembles, and sees your eyes fixed on his neck and ears.
“Do I owe you those two hours?”
His tone is almost private.
You lean your back against his car, and Steve can only exhale. Your eyes finally focus on his. “Nah.” You lick your lips. “Movie was good.”
“Just the movie?” He dares.
Winning smile. Steve wants to smile, too, but fuck, he wants to kiss you a lot more. “Company was quite good, too.”
“Quite good,” he echoes, inching closer. “Damn. I’ve really lost my touch, huh?”
You tilt your head at him, and take a second to reply. “Haven’t taken many people to see sexy movies with hot people dancing in a while?”
Steve shakes his head, laughing. He’s only inches away now, and he stops there. “Nope. Stopped trying after a while.”
“Hmm. Were you trying tonight?”
“Not well enough, apparently.” I’ll try harder next time. Steve’s eyes fall on your lips, and he can see your chest expanding with the breath you take. “Do I get a second chance?”
“Depends,” you answer in the same heartbeat.
“On what?”
“On how you kiss me.”
Steve’s stunned—on how you kiss me.
He’s never been challenged to perform with greatness before, but he takes that as one. He measures every movement. The way his hand goes up to your neck, slowly enveloping it until he has a good grip. He licks his lip at the sight of yours, a move you mimic subconsciously. He’s so close that his eyes close, and when Steve presses his mouth on yours, he feels your hands going around his waist until they’re holding his back and pulling him close.
When your lips move, he thinks—that’s why. No one who kisses like you do would want a second chance unless they could keep it up.
Steve gives as good as he gets, and is rewarded by your nails clawing at his back.
He likes the way you gasp when he swirls his tongue on yours, and it gets even better when he starts guiding the speed of the kiss with his hand on your nape and the other on your face. You like it—enjoy being guided, and pressed firmly against the car.
The little noises you make that Steve keeps guarded under seven keys somewhere in his mind tell him so.
He kisses you until you’ve sucked all the oxygen left in his lungs, then he pulls back to get a look.
Steve sighs when he opens his eyes.
You look better than he imagined.
He swallows thickly, and runs his nose against your cheek. “Okay,” you whisper. “Uhm—second chance. Granted.”
Steve laughs.
He’s gonna take you on the best damn date you’ve ever had. He has no idea how, but he will. Or he’s gonna crash trying.
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kaportka · 1 year
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6 Signs Your Manifestation Is Close
Before we receive what we desire, the Universe will test our readiness to receive what we have requested.
Your life is a chaos.
People fall out of your life. Your source of income is dripping away. Suddenly, everything goes in a different direction.
But think about it. You asked for a change. You asked for a healthier relationship or better job prospects.
The Universe has to give your life a makeover to grant your wishes. 
2. Random clues.
Suddenly, you hear people talking about the thing you want. You see others driving the car you want. You receive a message through lyrics.
The Universe will communicate with you through people, overheard conversations, random passages from books, quotes, rainbows, feathers and repeating numbers.
3. Creativity is flowing.
People falsely assume that manifesting is a passive process.
Positive thinking is one piece of the puzzle to change your life. It is an excellent starting point, but without action, it is futile.
When you feel inspired to act, it is a sign you are aligning with your desires.
4. Old life irritates you.
The old crowd doesn’t do it for you anymore. You find it difficult to have a conversation with your old friends. It seems like you have nothing in common.
If you used to go out a lot, you may find yourself enjoying the comfort and peacefulness of staying in.
It is okay for old habits and preferences to die. Think about it as a cleanse. 
5. Going against all odds.
People won’t support your vision.
People will feel intimidated by your dreams. It is a sign you are heading somewhere big.
If you face criticism and lack of understanding, ask yourself, what is important to you? Your happiness or satisfying the needs of others?
6. You stop needing it.
The secret of attraction is not being desperate about it. You are eager for what is coming and yet content with where you are.
Over-attachment to your manifestation blocks it from coming. When you want something too much, you repel it.
It is the most tricky concept about manifesting - believing before you can see it.
You don’t need another person to be in love with life.
You don’t need a job to validate your worth.
You know you deserve your manifestation, but you don’t need it to be happy.
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southernmermaidsgrotto · 10 months
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Do you think love and light spirituality is toxic?
Definitely yes.
Now some of you will run away just from reading those two words, let me elaborate: It's not just toxic, it's actively harmful and racist, ableist, it's white cis hetero male supremacist in every way. Completely rooted in naz1 ideas from the very beginning of it. You just gotta look at the history of the whole movement and there's flaming red flags everywhere.
But even if you don't know the history and social context of how it came to be and popularized (which you should, do your research), just by looking at these people and how they move through life you can still clearly see the issues with it.
I have 3 main problems with the whole "love and light" thing that a lot of new age people spread, the first and biggest for me is spiritual bypassing. New Age "love & light" culture is not only completely incorrect (the dark is just as important, real and necessary for balance as the light, really, I'm saying it as someone with 10+ years of experience and a whole family background in ancestral traditions. The dark shit is Important and necessary, to understand all aspects of life, spiritual and not, to grow as a person and as a practitioner, to protect yourself and yours from both material and spiritual things and to fight either if needed.) but the whole "good vibes only" ends up being delusional at best and straight out abusive at worst, many times gaslighting people and denying racism, colonialism, oppression of all kinds, spiritual and physical illness, mental illness, basic history and science, all things that can have very real, physical consequences on people's mental health, overall health, and safety in general, not to mention the wider effects on society as a whole (having people running around with the emotional inteligence of a clam shell, scratch that, even clams are better than that lmao and spreading misinformation and harm like wildfire). The Second big mess is how much it promotes the complete lack of literacy and rational critical thinking. People will learn a new fancy thing and just run with it without knowing the full history and correct use of things and words, without questioning the source and context of the whole situation. Misinterpreting the little knowledge they have, either because it's something they overheard, or read in 1 book and never bothered to dive deeper into it's roots and history and true meaning, having the most shallow and incorrect "knowledge" of things, etc. It goes hand in hand with the 1st problem to create the 3rd issue: straight out willful malicious ignorance. They don't know any better and they can't be bothered to learn any better either. It's not just laziness or disinterest, it's straight out conscious denial of truth, repression of their own feelings and thoughts and identity even in some cases, to just be able to keep this facade of "love & light" that's killing them from the inside, hurting themselves and hurting anyone they come into contact with aswell, all to serve their selfish purposes and their own agendas.
All these three things feed off and enhance each other in an endless loop, that gets even worse in the kinds of conspiracy theory echo chambers these people move in. The ignorance and immaturity combined with someone who doesn't do any introspection at all and is straight out lying to themselves and others, either from a place of delusion, or in the case of most white people, priviledge. It's a huge system that only feeds white supremacy and keeps people of color disconnected from their true feelings and health, personal identity, culture and community, taking people away from any and every possible source of real power. It's keeping the priviledged in power and the disenfranchised in misery while denying the whole situation, spreading misinfo to confuse, divide and put the blame on the victims instead of the actual victimizer.
Priviledged people spread misinformation and lies because they don't know and don't care + actively benefit from keeping you in the dark, all while screaming from the top of their lungs that they have your best interests at heart and will "shine light on truths" while their actions are the complete opposite of that, then hide from the results of anything harmful they do under the "love & light positive thoughts only" thing to avoid conflict and consequences. It's bullshit. Call them out on their bullshit everytime.
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evanwritesgames · 5 months
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Species of Starjourn: Heraclites
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Yeah, they're in honor of Heracross (the best Pokemon). But also, get this, I learned about the "read more" function! Ohhhhh yeah. No more giant walls of text on your feed! BEHOLD! (yes, I'm excited, I suck at this stuff)
Heraclites are the smallest large fauna on their home planet, called Heracles by the TENOR explorers that first discovered it. The Heraclites use scent for differentiation and identification within their semi-verbal languages and never developed the practice of naming things representationally the way human languages do. 
First contact occurred in 2428, relatively recently, and the Heraclites are one of the newest members of ALTO. The story of that first meeting is now famous across ALTO: the first thing the Heraclites did when they saw humans was try and toss them into the atmosphere of the low-gravity moon where first contact occurred. One human remarked that they were like “a whole species of Hercules bugs” which prompted an impromptu debate about the Romanization of “Heracles” and the use of the word “bug” that the Heraclites overheard. Admiring the way humans compete for dominance by talking, a new idea for them, the Heraclites went with the perceived winner and thus, Heracles and Heraclites. While names and remembering them can still pose a challenge for your average Heraclite, they’ve quickly adopted human and other ALTO species’ vocabulary whenever translators fail
Heraclites are very, very strong. Akin to some species of insect on Earth, their physical strength is disproportionate to their bodies. Females are larger than males but their physiology means that strength does not differ by sex, but by individual. Compared to humans, it doesn’t vary much but among the Heraclites, even slight variations are critical. Their primary way of resolving disputes, sealing pacts, and entertaining themselves have always revolved around their strength.
This is because the very successful evolutionary strategy their species developed was to simply pick things up and hurl them. This worked on predators, on unwanted pests, and on materials they needed to do things like industrialize. A  great deal of secondary and tertiary industry is unnecessary for Heraclites as each one is pretty much strong enough to move things without technological aid. They can also throw objects, such as trade goods, for miles on their home planet. For a long time, being hit by flying goods was a common cause of injury and death which necessitated the regulation of “tossing path” where teams of dedicated logistics personnel will launch packages from one designated area to another.
The Heraclites have invented many sports that revolve around feats of strength. They domesticated a species of armadillo-like creatures that became their standard ball. After abolishing the practice of using living things, the creature is still a sports mascot and some traditionalist Heraclites secretly raise the creatures for underground hurling leagues across Heraclite, and later, ALTO space.
Heraclite society is highly decentralized due to their approach to socialization. Heraclites evolved to be individualistic and territorial, with each in charge of a personal cultivation territory. Their primary source of nutrition is also the most successful weed on their planet -- it grows everywhere and it’s always been very easy, especially with low industrial impact on ecology, for Heraclites to feed themselves. In times where food was scarcer, Heraclites would take to roaming and challenging each other for territorial rights. This was the equivalent of their heroic era and has taken on a lot of the same glamor, mythologization, and nostalgia as, for example, the ancient Greek heroes and mythology have on Earth. 
Heraclites tend to live apart most of the time, on separate estates similar to farms on Earth. Their “cities” are really places where individuals are tolerant of others enough to live a little closer together in the same region. To this day, Heraclites only tend to meet in large numbers when they have to and their history could be charted with frequency of large meetings as a metric. Heraclite government tends to be localized and temporary because governing is barely necessary outside large projects and Heraclites tend not to seek or enjoy having power over others. To them, proving you’re stronger is pretty much good enough on its own and they derive most of their life satisfaction from highly personal goals and activities. Most Heraclite social activities are seasonal and they’ve maintained the practice of trading, reproducing, and congregating at specific times only. Now that they are a member of ALTO, Heraclites are receiving a crash course in choosing representatives among themselves to interact with other species. It turns out they have little problem being around any number of individuals from other species but they still tend to avoid each other when possible.
Economics among Heraclites are similarly loose and unregulated. They don’t really have merchants or mercantilism, though some think of economic competition as an entertaining novelty. They feel the same way about debates, staring contests, and other forms of competition humans take for granted. They are, however, very interested in our martial arts, wrestling, and thumb wars. Their only disappointment is that they can’t participate in physical contests against most other species without injuring or killing them.
Heraclites, having enjoyed a relatively peaceful evolutionary journey and rise to civilization, have never committed genocide, farmed or hunted a species to extinction, etc. They are remarkably innocent of the kinds of atrocities most intelligent species eventually commit whether against their own kind or others. Heraclites do not kill unless they absolutely must and consider causing accidental deaths to be a grievous stain on their personal moral countenance. The comfort with which others kill is a source of abiding discomfort for the Heraclites who, though they can intellectually understand different situations, usually defer back to their natural prohibition against the behavior. When a Heraclite gives an intellectual argument for their attitude, it usually revolves around the finality of it. They also have a hard time with change as a result, since they acknowledge that it’s difficult to know if a change is permanent. Individual Heraclites can differ about these attitudes but for most, killing is a bone of contention.
Though they understand fear rationally, Heraclites do not feel much threat from physical sources and have to be convinced to take seriously some dangers obvious to others. They are considered, by and large, to be agreeable and friendly but they also have a confidence so deep and so complete that it can seem arrogant. Fear of loss, death, and change are as deeply felt by Heraclites as any emotional and intelligent species. When a Heraclite doesn’t feel confident, they are reluctant to act, make decisions, or take sides.
Heraclites like stories about single heroes achieving great feats of strength, courage, and wit. They tend to see their species as one “tribe” and apply the same reasoning to other species, even ones with a much larger spectrum of difference. Heraclites, for example, wouldn’t feel much need to differentiate between humans born in this colony vs. that one, where these differences are fairly important in human culture.
Hierarchies and complex command structures like TENOR’s do not come naturally to Heraclites. Their own organizations and ships are free collectives by comparison with cooperation only ever being a matter of free choice and never obligation. Slavery, to a Heraclite, is almost unimaginably evil and is one of the fundamental standards of judgment they use with other species. Any organizing principle or practice too close to slavery and the Heraclites would rather throw you off a moon than talk to you. Ones who have read human history, for example, can become more skeptical of humans and their institutions due to the presence of slavery and slavery-derived institutions. For example, 20th and 21st century capitalism is considered to be a later stage of a centuries-long tolerance for slavery so deeply ingrained that humans are confused about it to this day. This confusion confuses the Heraclites who claim that it is obvious and a good thing humans figured out how to do it different, even if our hierarchies and complex webs and rules of obligation can seem unnecessarily limiting to them. 
As a result of their unique traits and culture, Heraclites rarely if ever actually join TENOR and the few that have are somewhat burdened with the distinction of being, essentially, ambassadors from their species to the others that comprise ALTO.
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Forrests of Manisa
Description: Mustafa x Taşlicali fic, with an explicit sex scene.
Since he has been told about his disgraceful reassignment to Amasya, and though he and Yahya rarely talked about it, there was no need to. Yahya himself wasn’t too happy about it. After all, besides the obvious injustice and weakening of his possition as heir at a time where having his inheritance challanged was the last thing Mustafa needed, there were other, more personal – some would even say pettier reasons to be unhappy. Şehzade and his mother had been in Manisa for about seven years (not counting his regency in Istanbul during the campaign to Persia) and had created a network of friends and loyal attendants there, of which some they could take with them as part of their retinue (including Yahya himself, thank the Almighty), but many they could not. General populace too loved the prince more in Manisa than in anywhere else, if things Yahya overheard on his walks around town were any indication – though even in Istanbul, people were at worst indifferent towards him. Though truth be told, unless they were one of those types who amused themselves with the most outlandish rumors about the exploits of „the Ruthenian witch“, common people cared little for which şehzade will ascend the throne. In fact, the general consensus gleamed from his least priviledged aquitances was that sultan Süleyman has brought the land such peace and prosperity than once he passes away, things can only go downhill.   Yahya, of course, never talked about it so openly, at least not front of Mustafa himself. Instead, when asked about public opinion, he comforted his şehzade with half-truths; his father sultan Süleyman is quite popular and so is Mustafa. Indeed, some common people (well, one person – Yahya himself) say that sultan Süleyman is merely Philip of Macedon to Mustafa’s Alexander... No, of course his transfer to Amasya won’t make people think any less of him, on the contrary, everyone can see what great injustice is being done to him, which if anything could make people support him more... At any rate, his final verdict on the matter of transfer to Amasya was thus: „After all, people are much the same in Amasya as in Manisa. People, and woods...“ „Indeed, Yahya, woods are much the same everywhere, but I have no idea why it should be of any comfort to me.“ replied Mustafa gloomily. Words „it used to be a source of much comfort to you after Ibrahim pasha died“ almost found their way onto Yahya’s tongue, but luckily he managed to bite it before then.   Because sometimes, woods are in fact just a collection of trees, but these past few years certainly not to them.   That spring and summer was filled to the brim with all kinds of unpleasantness for şehzade. He was still reeling from losing his son and having an attempt on his life remain unpunished when Ibrahim pasha unexpectedly fell out of favour and was executed for an offence sultan refused to disclose. Noone, not even pasha’s own wife, seemed to have understood this decision, except as a favor from the sultan to Hürrem sultan – yet another victory for the scheming consort whose lust for power and revenge seemed to know no bounds. Taşlicali’s aquitance with pasha was brief, but fond; either way, he was much more angry for Mustafa’s sake, as şehzade obviously adored the deceased pasha and was devastated by his death like noone except pasha‘s wife and children. Taşlicali has never seen Mustafa cry, but the morning after the news reached Manisa he could not help but notice his master’s red eyes and pale face. Taşlicali did not tell anyone, though perheps he could’ve; there was no shame in it, after all. Everyone knew of pasha’s closeness to şehzade, some even said that’s why Hürrem orchestrated Ibrahim’s unjust execution in the first place. Mustafa himself suspected so, as he openly discussed with his most trusted people – a group which, to his surprise, included Taşlicali.   Mayhaps it was that he has lost the appetite for women after Helena’s departure and his own mother could not provide him with a silent, unjudgemental ear that he needed. Mayhaps separation from his brothers fed his craving for a brotherly... Or, well, close male presence, anyway. Mayhaps the discovery of a spy in his private chambers made him desperate for someone, anyone he could not possibly suspect of anything bad, and Taşlicali fit that description for some reason he could not fathom (was it really just their past as comrades-in-arms from so many years ago?). Either way, as guarded as Mustafa was, he had quickly become less so in Taşlicali’s company. From the begining, it was an odd frienship; Mustafa sometimes pretended to be interested in his poetry as a mere polite conversation starter, but he clearly never wanted to actually hear or read it – and Taşlicali soon realized şehzade, not an artistic soul, but cultured enough to appreciate a good verse from time to time, simply doesn’t like Taşlicali’s works. Instead, he was much more interested in Taşlicali’s military career and thoughts on warfare and imperium, neither of which Taşlicali talked about with great enthusiasm, but he at least listened to Mustafa’s thoughts on these matters with enough polite interest that it must’ve satisfied the prince nonetheless. Soon, he invited Taşlicali to a small sparring session with swords, then another longer one, and in the end they spent many summer mornings in passionate embrace of their weapons... Indeed, prince was never as radiant as when he tired his deceptively lean body in vicious pretend combat, his cheeks flushed behind a long, beautiful beard and dark eyes rivaling the night sky with their sparkle...   Then Hatice sultan arrived, and one of his concubines started to near childbirth – small annoyances that nonetheless made Mustafa less and less keen to spend time in the harem. He stayed in the palace only to prepare for the campaign, and when his father arranged the matters otherwise, Mustafa simply couldn’t bear it any longer. His departure must’ve worried Mahidevran sultan a lot, being sudden and in the company of but a few attendants, but Mustafa didn’t seem to mind. It seemed a temporarily decreased safety was worth saving his sanity from the many frustrations, big and small, bothering him in those months. The hunt only lasted about a day, and it left şehzade with a considerably better disposition, so while Taşlicali understood his mother’s worries, he nonetheless considered it a wise decision on şehzade’s part.   The poet himself was charmed by the beauty of the woods surrounding Manisa and impressed with Mustafa’s skill as a hunter, even if he himself did not share it, to şehzade’s amusement. Mustafa’s gentle ribbing did not hurt Taşlicali in the slightest – on the contrary, he joined in on şehzade’s affectionate laughter, his heart warmed by finally seeing him happy. When they settled in for the night, Taşlicali found himself Mustafa’s closest companion by the fire and the one with whom şehzade shared tales of his past and future, memories of childhood in the palace he now lived in and dreams of glorious conquest that was surely to come, should he escape Hürrem’s clutches and become his father’s successor. In turn, Taşlicali shared the mundanities of his own life, from a lonely childhood in the house of his bad-tempered unmarried uncle, trough his youth, when he first took both a sword and a pen in the hand, to the current, perhaps happiest period in his life. When he told Mustafa his presence has brought him more joy than he has ever felt before, şehzade clearly considered it merely a figure of speech, part of an overly polite manner in which courtiers talked to the members of the dynasty. Doubtless he had heard such talk many times before and had learned since an early age to disregard it – which saddened Taşlicali somewhat, since for once, a courtier in question was completely sincere. On the other hand, he was honored by şehzade’s keen interest in his past despite the fact that he himself assessed it as at once bleak and mundane. Mustafa even seemed to express some sympathy towads him, a soldier of little renown whose primary claim to fame – his poetry – şehzade wasn’t even that impressed by.   Taşlicali spent the entire evening gazing into Mustafa’s face, and the more he looked, the more impressed he was by the symetry of his features and his lively, intelligent eyes. That morning, he woke up before şehzade, and couldn’t help but visit his tent under the guise of Mustafa’s safety, only to spend several minutes studying what little he could see of his beauty in the dark room. He did come to his senses soon and left with neither Mustafa nor his guards the wiser, but the glimpse of şehzade’s peaceful visage and rose-tinged cheeks and lips kept coming back to him at the most inopportune moments.   Regardless, the hunt didn’t seem to mean much to Mustafa at first, and even its soul-rejuvenating effects didn’t last long. In but a week, he was suddenly of even worse disposition than before, and when Taşlicali suggested another small hunt, his face lighted up with something sinister. „Why, of course, Yahya! A day and a night almost alone, solely in the company of my dear friend, must indeed lift my spirits. Go tell captain of the guard to pick four of his best men; we’re leaving tomorrow.“   This time, Mustafa suggested they sneak away from the guards to pursue a roe deer. He did not seem in mood for a lark, but Yahya thought it is perhaps just that the tension his regular existence in the palace was arousing in şehzade hasn’t quite left him yet. Surely, being alone (with Yahya, apparently) should let him enjoy the beauty of nature in peace and relieve this tension, no...? As they were sneaking behind the bushes, watching the roe deer intently, Mustafa suddenly said. „If I remember correctly, we have both been wearing a scarf on our last adventure together.“ „Indeed.“ Taşlicali suddenly winced. „Oh, heavens! I remember now taking one that looked similar, but now that I think about it, not quite like mine. It must’ve been yours, Your Majesty, was it not...? Allah, this is horrible, I swear I did not...“ Mustafa shut him up with a stern glare. „No matter. You’re not to blame for this, I’ve taken yours by mistake first.“ „Oh. Well then... I suppose you wouldn’t want me to disturb our entertainment? I will keep in mind that when we return to the palace...“ „Actually, I wanted to return said scarf to you first.“ said Mustafa, loudly and pointedly, which made the roe flee – but şehzade payed no mind to it anymore. „So I snuck to your room when you weren’t there, hoping to avoid any awkwardness for both of ours sake. You have hidden my scarf very well, Taşlicali, and in searching for it I went trough many an interesting corner of that small space. Including the one bellow your coal basket.“ Yahya furrowed brow in confusion. „Did you find something there, Your Majesty?“ „Very interesting things, Taşlicali.“ He reached behind his belt and revealed a piece of paper he has apparently been hiding there. Mustafa then turned the text on the paper towards Taşlicali. Oh, how I wish I had some of your way with words, my dear soldier! Then perhaps I could’ve written you with the same delightful mastery about my feelings for you; truth be told, I am growing quite bored of repeating „I love you“ endlessly. Alas, this letter of mine will be short, as I have little news and even less thoughts worth sharing, but I know you will be happy to simply remember me, or at least I hope so. It probably would’ve been for me had it not been for your silver tongue and golden quill... Taşlicali went pale. During his relationship with Mihrimah, he doubted many times whether to continue risking his head for a mere courtly romance, and in one such fit of pessimism, he decided to end their flirtation and keep what he planned to be her second-to-last letter – so that it would later not seem like a mere dream that he, soldier and mediocre poet Taşlicali Yahya, was truly loved by sultan’s sun and moon. Next morning, he came to his senses and tried to find the letter with the intention to burn it after all, but could not find it even after hours of searching. Every day since, he alotted at least some time to searching for it, untill he consoled himself with the thought that if he could not find the damn thing in his own room, noone else could even by accident. This seemed to be an unforgivable error in judgement...   Yahya tried to ignore the tremors of his hands and icy river replacing blood in his veins, reign in his panic and consider the options in front of him. He could not deny the authorship of the letter, not to Mihrimah’s own brother, and to beg for mercy would no doubt only compound Mustafa’s disgust with him. No, if there was any chance at all to come out of this alive, he needed to face the truth like a soldier. Mustafa’s eyes were two dark arrows, hitting the hard shell of his heart, cracking it open and letting the rot inside spill out of it. „Do you have a death wish, Yahya?“ Taşlicali bowed his head in shame. „Your Majesty... What I’ve done cannot be forgiven, and I would not dare ask you such a thing. However...“ „However what?!“ „...before my sinful soul leaves my body, I wish you’d hear me out, so that you know what exactly I am guilty of. I am not trying to make excuses, şehzade; on the contrary, I’d like to confess...“ Mustafa raised eyebrows, now as impatient as he was angry. „So have you, or have you not disgraced my sister?!“ He tucked the letter back into the belt and picked up bow and arrows. „You have nothing to gain by lying; just for throwing her honor into question, you have signed your death sentence, which I will execute here and now, as soon as you finally stop talking.“ And with these words, he took a few steps back and posed as if he was to about to raise his bow at any moment.   Taşlicali was suddenly gripped with a strange feeling – some fear, yes, but mostly shame and infinite sadness. Mustafa has given him so much over the past few months, treated him with such genuine affection and interest, and yet here it was, the proof that Taşlicali Yahya never deserved any of it. His sudden coming death was hard to come to terms with, and yet, it was the least Mustafa should’ve punished him with for his foolishness. It wasn’t even a bad death, he thought before opening his mouth for what he was sure were his last words. For how bad could any moment, even one’s last, be if he is graced with the look of Mustafa’s beautiful eyes? „I had reached for her heart with my tongue and quill many, many times, but my body had not touched even a tip of her little finger.“ Mustafa’s anger seemed to discipate somewhat. „You had not even kissed her?“ „No, my şehzade.“ „Why? You must’ve known it would not have made a difference.“ „It might’ve, had her handmaidens told Hürrem sultan. And I had not felt the urge anyway.“ „But you felt the urge to send her love letters?! What kind of a fool you are, Yahya?!“ Yahya lifted his head and shyly looked into Mustafa’s eyes, hoping şehzade won’t take his need to see şehzade‘s beautiful face at the moment of his death for any kind of boldness. „I am a poet, Your Majesty. Forbidden love of an artist to a sultana is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever beheld – the kind of event that the greatest epics were written about and most esteemed masters of our craft have used as inspiration. So what of it if I see nary a thing about Mihrimah that would’ve made me interested in her as woman, if her inner life remains as unknown to me as it is uninteresting and if I find her, from our admittedly brief and shallow aquitance, not that different from many other women I’ve known in my life? She is a sultana and I a poet. When a chance encounter brought us together and she was interest in continuing our meetings, I could not pass the opportunity should it kill me, regardless of what I might’ve felt or not. Let this be my final words, my şehzade: I did it for the craft.“ Mustafa seemed stunned at first, then burst out laughing. „Oh, and the poems you read me, for those Mihrimah was an inspiration, you say?“ Yahya slowly bowed his head, still in shock. Was he by any chance forgiven now? Mustafa started wiping away tears of laughter. „Then, my friend, I am sorry to say you are not, in fact, dying for the craft, since what I’ve heard from you can scarcely be called that.“ He then put the arrow back into the quiver and bow on his shoulder. „Oh.“ said Yahya, staring at şehzade. He never had the honor to see şehzade laughing, and that, together with seeing Azrael’s veiled face move further away from his and dissapear into the mists of unknown future, suddenly made him smile as well, regardless of the mockery he received. „I am not dying for anything at all, then?“ Mustafa’s laughter slowly discipated, leaving but a smile on his face. „For now... If you left nothing out of your confession and only told the truth, as all good muslims should before meeting our maker.“ He came to Taşlicali and gave him a pat on the back. „I shouldn’t have doubted you. I shouldn’t have...“ His gaze suddenly trailed off into the distance. And Taşlicali, overwhelmed by the prince’s beauty, simply had to say something. „I shouldn’t have given you a reason to doubt me in the first place, my şehzade. I wish I would’ve gotten to know you sooner, so that my esteem of you would’ve prevented what my feeble mind could not.“ „Would it, truly?“ said Mustafa, surprised. „I earnestly think so, my prince, though of course only the allmighty Allah knows for certain. In any case, throughout this spring and summer, my adoration for you has risen a thousandfold and hopefully my ability to resist romantic tomfoolery with it.“ Mustafa was back to his usual, somewhat humorless self, as if his previous fit of mad laughter never happened. „Why? Am I some kind of good influence on you? If you must know, I have done my share of mistakes in this regard...“ „I ended my relationship with Mihrimah sultan out of love for you, my prince.“ said Taşlicali somewhat more impassionately than he perhaps intended. „How come?“ „The matter became known to people outside of us two, and I couldn’t risk getting entangled in some sort of dirty game because of it. So I told her farewell and we neither spoke nor wrote to each other no more.“ Mustafa seemed thoughtful, and somewhat softer than a few moments earlier. „I might’ve been touched, Yahya, had you not admitted earlier that it was all just a lark to you.“ He suddenly turned away from Taşlicali and started walking back to the tent, with Taşlicali in tow. A few seconds later, he added, seemingly deep in thought. „Of course it was. You poets wouldn’t know love from... Ah. Have you ever even been in love, Taşlicali?“ „It’s hard to tell, my prince. Comrades in arms can develop bonds as deep as any marriage, but I don’t think the character of these can be described as akin to romance. It certainly lacks certain... Aspects, but then so does courtly love, if I am not mistaken. Other than my fellow soldiers, I have never loved anybody – maybe my parents, but both died too young for me remember if I did, or anything about them, really...“ Mustafa bared a soulful gaze into Yahya’s eyes. „It is a sad life you led indeed. But somehow I don’t think you missed much, with romance in particullar. I have been in love before and did not find the sweet worth the bitter, though it might well be that I had simply gotten unlucky. Though, mayhaps if I had gotten too lucky, I would’ve ended up like my father, and that also wouldn’t have been good.“ „Well... It seems to make His Majesty happy, at least.“ Mustafa let out a chuckle. „I wish, but even then, I am not sure whether she is worth the trouble she causes to everyone, including our sultan.“   They looked at each other and saw in each other’s eyes such profound understanding that Mustafa, seemingly unable to help himself, pulled Taşlicali into his arms, head leaning against the poet‘s shoulder. Taşlicali, first stiff and frozen in surprise, eventually relaxed and realized how pleasant the feeling is. Even disregarding the peculiar, but undoubtedly precious honor of being hugged by the member of the dynasty, Mustafa held him so tight and yet so gently it made Taşlicali at once fully comprehend the very concept of tenderness – something which he so far have experienced very little of. „I appologize for scaring you like that, Yahya, but you must understand... There was no other way to make you tell the truth. God, I am so sorry. You did not deserve this. You did not deserve my doubt.“ His words made Yahya want to kiss him, somewhere, anywhere, everywhere... But once again his feelings did not get the better of him, and when they went back to the tent, they were able to pretend nothing happened a little longer.   The bubble burst that night. Mustafa invited Yahya over to sleep in his tent, in a cot right next to his. That alone made Taşlicali giddy with happiness – what better music to fall asleep to than prince’s breath? But as soon as they lied down and the tent fell into darkness, Yahya heard a collection of sounds alltogether different from what he expected: first, the shuffle of blankets, then quiet knocks of legs falling onto the floor, another shuffle, then something nigh imperceptible (which, in hindsight, were probably steps of bare feet on the floor of the tent) and finally the same collection of sounds backwards. Before Taşlicali realized what was happening, Mustafa was lying down right next to him, touching him, then embracing. Yahya froze in shock, which seemed to give Mustafa pause. „Yahya?“ he whispered. „Should... Should I move away?“ If anything sinful happens later, Taşlicali thought then, and I say yes to what he’s doing right now, I am going to be complicit. It was a short thought, and very weak – it was easy for it to be suffocated by another, much more prominent one, a rebuttal his conscience had no answer for. He didn’t want to say yes. He wanted to shout it. „Of course not.“   Mustafa breathed out a warm, heavy sigh, burrowing his nose into the nape of Yahya’s neck. Yahya in turn touched Mustafa’s hand, which landed on his belly when he wrapped his arms around Yahya’s waist, and caressed it, so that Mustafa knows he can and should move forward. It truly seemed to have emboldened him, as Mustafa soon planted a first shy kiss onto the bared part of Yahya’s clavicle. He continued up his neck, slightly higher and deeper each time, untill Yahya couldn’t handle it anymore and turned in his arms to kiss him on the lips, deeply and passionately, holding Mustafa’s face with one hand. After a while, all of that kissing, touching and grinding against each other grew from a series of gentle, loving gestures to something darker, as Yahya felt in both his and his new lover’s trousers something truly heinous and unbearable, yet sweet – a rotten fruit of a tactile sensation, truly. For a moment, a little cloud ran trough this unnaturaly bright heaven – to put it simply, fear of being sodomized, but thankfully no such thing occured even at the height of their passion. Instead, Mustafa’s hand slithered down Yahya’s trousers, baring his penis, then touching it so softly and lovingly it made Yahya burrow his head in Mustafa’s embrace and sigh into his chest. Then sighs turned into moans, which then became louder and louder, so much so Mustafa had to turn Yahya on his back like a woman, then cover his mouth (which he did not do with women, hopefully). With the one way trough which it could be even slightly eased blocked, the pressure inside of Yahya rose incredibly quickly, and a few minutes later, only Mustafa’s coarse breath and his own quiet „ah, ah, ah“ underscored the deep, sinful extasy he let flow trough his entire body.   He then suddenly rose, firmly turned Mustafa on his back and did the same his lover did to him, devoid of all the residual shame that might’ve stung him beforehand. They did not talk during (there was no need – as soon as they were established to be in a mutual agreement, there was nothing to add), and afterwards they fell asleep soon after Yahya gave back the pleasure Mustafa had given him. That morning, facing the bright light of day and sanity that came back with it, Yahya felt so ashamed of the previous night that he simply couldn‘t talk about it, and Mustafa seemed satisfied with silence as well. Slowly, it was as if an unspoken understanding was built between them – of what they did, what they felt for each other and their need not to tell a living soul.   From then on, they only ever made love in the woods. Their encounters sometimes differed in the position they found themselves in and the time of day; they actually seemed to do it during the day more often than in the night, sneaking away from the guards into some isolated corner that even wild boar never roamed into. Otherwise, however, each of these cases resembled one another to an unusual degree: few stolen kisses, quick movements of hand, a moment of pleasure and back to reality you go, boys, the reality where you are but a prince and his favourite companion, without any trace of euphemism in Yahya’s aforementioned title whatsoever. Mustafa still visited his harem – infrequently and seemingly with some distaste, but after his second child turned out to be a girl, he needed a son more than ever. He came back to Nergisşah’s mother more often than the others, and for a while seemed charmed by one Rumeysa hatun, but he never liked any of them enough to be called a favourite. After a few years, he stopped spending nights with Ayşe altogether, and Rumeysa ended up dying of smallpox, with Mustafa strangely giving that name to another woman, a girl of low status that had the fortune to get pregnant from only a night or two spent with him. Taşlicali never thought of these women as his competition – Mustafa needed an heir from them and companionship from him, and for a while he thought they could not gave him the latter any more than Taşlicali could’ve given him the former.   But it was a foolish thought. Obviously, a woman need not share a man’s interests in manly pursuits to be a good companion whom he loves and respects – but also, just to prove Yahya wrong further, there was indeed a lady just around the corner that was, in fact, eager and capable in manly pursuits. And that’s when things got interesting.
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slightlystupidhun · 10 months
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If The Shoe Fits…Bear It!
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,
Part 7
Summary: Prince Vincent Solaire, of Wonder Land, spends a wonderful night with a stranger, but what happens when the shoe left behind fits someone else.
TW: Violence, Mentions of Intimate relations, Sexual Assault
Vincent felt i’ll, he appeared pale as if he had seen a ghost.
“What are you doing here?” he asked tone sharp and eyes uninterested.
“Worry not, your highness, I merely came here dance and enjoy the festivities.” They said as they glazed over their shoulder at something. “But… I also came as a warning.” They smiled as if to disguise the conversation being held. “Prince please listen carefully. I was walking to the ball tonight and I overheard voices coming from the shadows. They were briefly speaking of Quinn and his plan to infiltrate the ball tonight.” They looked firmly into Vincent's eyes, forcing themself to smile. He gave them a soft smile as the song came to an early end as Vincent gave a signal to King William.
All participants of the ball went back to what they were doing and Vincent quickly made his way to Lovely, the stranger he was talking with in tow. Voices filled with happiness and laughter began to fade out and become one. The white and gold ballroom became blinding and all to bright. The orchestra that was playing was now all muffled and muted. Everything was closing in on him and he began to feel short of breath. Once he finally made his way back to his partner he took their hand which felt like a grounding source for him.
��Oh! Hello your highness.” They smiled at him and winked, setting down their finished wine glass and turning away from the young King of Lupinia who bowed at the princes arrival. Lovely squeezed his hand and rubbed their gloved thumb along his, and he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Upon seeing his face they realized that something was wrong. They felt something deep in their stomach turn. “Vincent, whats going on?”
“Please excuse us your highness. Vincent bowed his head and turned away walking over to William. He hooked his arm with Lovely and placed his hand over the one draped across his arm.
Once they made it over to the throne Vincent dropped whatever facade he had on and spoke quickly and firmly. “Tell the king what you told me.”
The stranger who had been following Vincent stepped forward, bowing before finally speaking. “Tonight on my way over to the ball I overheard some voices in the shadows of an alley.” They were choosing their words very carefully, and from what lovely could tell they refused to make eye contact with anyone. “They spoke of a plan which involved the exiled Prince Quinn and a plan he concocted to infiltrate the ball tonight. They spoke of plans to harm the soon to be royal. I…” They paused, shaking a little. “ I understand what repercussions will await me if nothing comes to validate these claims but… I just needed you to know this, your highness.”
William stepped forward and placed a hand on their shoulder. “I appreciate your honesty and your bravery. I will ensure that security is doubled, let me call to that.” William turned and left, everyone assumed he left to go speak to the Guard Captain. Vincent turned to the stranger, and nodded to them, letting them know they were dismissed.
“Your Highness, how can I help you.” They gave him a comforting smile and lifted their hand to caress his cheek. Vincent leaned into their touch, the lace of their glove catching a little on his scruff. He kissed their hand, his dark eyes meeting their bright ones. He felt much calmer now, and was able to give them a smile.
Suddenly, the large glass windows of the ballrooms shattered and around twenty of Quinn’s soldiers, whom he had given the title of shades, flooded into the room. In the panic people began running everywhere trying to get out pushing past Vincent and Lovely, effectively separating the pair.
They were surrounded by screams, panic, and the sound of shattered glass being stepped on and further shattered on the floor. People tried to open the large white and gold doors but they were sealed shut and unable to be opened. As if they were blocked off.
Lovely stumbled onto the floor when a passerby hit them from behind while trying to pass them. Thats when the crowd all silenced and separated making a direct path from lovely, to whomever was standing by King Williams throne. They picked themself up and dusted off their pants.
“Well, Well, Well.” A sickeningly smooth voice spoke forward. They felt like a mouse caught in a snaked grasp, as they met the gaze of the exiled prince Quinn. “A truly lovely ball wasn’t it? Ah but why wasn't I invited? Oh right, because I was exiled. Do you know why I was exiled? All because I killed a few worthless commoners.” He chuckled to himself low and filled with venom. “Now, our precious prince Vincent has found himself a lowly commoner to wed, how incredibly disgusting.”
With each word he stepped forward. That was when Lovely saw Sam and Tank push through the crowd. They both rushed to block them from Quinn’s view. That's when they felt a pair of hands on their shoulder, turning to meet Vincent's gaze. The prince had his hand resting on his sword, ready to draw it if needed.
“Ah whats this? A protection squad for the nobody.” His gaze was sharp and lingered a little too long on Tank.
“You are not welcome here Quinn. Your words alone are treasonous. You stepping one foot within the kingdom's territory is subject enough to get you killed. Back away and maybe you’ll keep your life. But take one more step forward and I will end it myself.” Tank said, grasping at their sword, not quite drawing it yet. Quinn’s footsteps halted and the sound of crunching glass finally ceased.
“You would love that, wouldn't you, precious. Why don’t you tell everyone here, how much you longed for me before I was exiled.” He smiled his eyes connecting with Sams, “How… intimately we spent our nights together. How you loved to hate me but couldn't stop your physical attraction to me.”
Sam stepped forward, glass crunching sharply beneath his boots as he drew his sword. He pointed it directly toward Quinn and glared at the thinner man. “I do not care if you leave here dead. One more word from you and I will make it my personal mission.”
“Oh well, I suppose I will take my leave now. After all the damage has already been done.” He spoke as he stepped toward the door behind the throne. Lovely felt something tight in their throat and they began to cough, and lose air. “Oh, Vincent, why don’t you ask your lovely partner, how their wine wa-”
Before he could finish the door behind him opened and a sword was thrust into his abdomen and pulled back out. His blood dripped on the white tile of the ballroom floor staining it probably permanently. Ollie cleaned off his sword using quins clothing to get the blood off of his blade. He writhed in pain as guards quickly flooded the room and captured his soldiers.
“Lovely, whats wrong?” Vincent cradled lovely in his arms and rocked them back and forth. Their lips were beginning to turn purple and their veins were popping out. “Poison… You’ve been poisoned… Please Lovely stay with me. Stay with me!” He yelled as he picked them up. “I’ll take you to the infirmary. Sam… Sam please can you help them.” He pleaded beginning the run to the infirmary.
“It seems to be a slower acting poison, get them to my lab, its to the left and I can access the medicine faster.” He pointed to the left and they both ran in the room.
“Vincent… I love you…” Lovely spoke softly, gasping for air, and beginning to shake. “I’ll be….o…kay…” Their sentence broke off as their world began to spin. Everything became one big blob. Everything went black.
“Sam please!” Vincent yelled. Sam ran over taking a swab of their mouth and tossing it in some liquid. The small vial then turned a pink color and Sam went to the cabinet and grabbed a large needle, filling it with some clear liquid. And walked over and gave them the injection.
Almost immediately Lovelys lips began to turn the right color and the pigment of their veins calmed down. However, they were still unconscious and unresponsive. “Vincent… There is no telling what kind of damage has been done… No telling… if- When… When they will wake up. All we can do now is wait.” Sam spoke softly and Vincent took them to their room, taking the liberty to change them into something more comfortable. He would wait for them. Forever if thats what it would take.
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Wrote this chaotic little piece for @cherrycokeisnice, basically everyone gets snowed in together. Cleo/Jake, all the friendships, and Moxie/Ellington if you choose to read it that way. Huge thanks to @asouefanworkevent for organising the exchange
The first day went off without a hitch. Moxie and Kellar were of course the first to arrive, Moxie bright and eager as always as she stepped out of the Bellerophon taxi, typewriter for once not in her hand.
Instead she was helping Pip and Squeak carry in all the admittedly rather surprising stuff Cleo had sent them out to find over the previous week, blankets and houseplants and cooking utensils and lamps and absolutely anything colourful, to match with Cleo’s rebellious addition of more and more bright clothes to her wardrobe. Kellar had somehow obtained an enormous antique metal umbrella stand which he was trying, without much luck, to haul up the front steps. Ornette Lost and Lizzie Haines arrived last together, Ornette dragging a sledge loaded with wallpaper and paint through the quickly falling snow and Lizzie staggering under the weight of a heap of curtains and canopies in a rainbow of colours and fabrics.
“Is that everyone?” asked a slightly exasperated Jake, his clothes covered in flour from a mishap involving Moxie, an overfilled storage cupboard and an enormous high-tech blender they were trying to carry.
“Not quite,” replied Cleo calmly once the entirely responsible journalist was out of sight, reaching up a slender hand to brush some additional flour from Jake’s cheek. “I have an associate coming to live with us for a while. In fact, I need to go and meet her in the library now.” And with that she grabbed her coat and bolted out the door, leaving her sweetheart bewildered and suspicious in her wake. Jake shrugged, and went to help Moxie out in the kitchen.
The morning was a blur of constant activity and almost as constant accidents, and by the time everyone settled down to lunch (stuffed mushrooms involving more herbs and spices that anyone in the group apart from Jake could even name) they were all regretting not arriving in more casual clothes. The source of all the chaos was not incompetence on the part of any of them, indeed the living room was looking far more beautiful than it ever had from the work of endless interior designers hired by Ignatius Knight. Instead the problem was, bizarrely, that the place was overrun with stray cats. Yes, you read that correctly: glassware was crashing to the ground everywhere, wallpaper had been scratched down as soon as put up, and a particularly large ginger moggy seemed to have decided Moxie’s typewriter was a bed. This was the last straw. Moxie had her suspicions about who was behind this, and fortunately one of the troublemakers had left a convenient trail of painted paw prints for her to follow. She grinned to herself as she trailed them up the stairs and along the corridor to the study door; mysteries were almost never this easy to solve.
The door to the study was slightly ajar, and it the creak it let out as she pushed it open was loud enough to make her jump back before tentatively making her way in. All four walls were lined with huge and heavy-looking books, and at the back of the room a leather-cushioned chair faced a massive desk carved from a disturbingly familiar dark wood. Slowly, the chair begun to swivel round, and Moxie’s heart threw itself against her chest as she saw who was sitting there. Hair so dark it made the blackest of ink look grey, eyes almost luminescently green. She wore a long, luxurious black silk dress Moxie was pretty sure was Cleo’s, and her long fingers were resting on the head of a white Persian cat with electric blue eyes, which bared its teeth at Moxie as she tentatively approached.
“Hello, Moxie,” Ellington greeted in a slow, honeyed voice, smiling a smile that might have meant anything.
Out of all the people Cleo could have been inviting over? (She had overheard, of course). Ellington?
Moxie did her best to disguise a grimace as she looked the older girl in the eyes. She cut straight to the chase.
“What are you planning this time?” Ellington’s smile faded and her brows furrowed as she began to slowly steer the chair away from Moxie. “I don’t know what you mean. I needed a place to hide from the police, that’s all.”
“You’ve completely flooded the house with every stray cat in town, Ellington.”
She grimaced at the interruption, but carried on speaking.
“I was looking after all of them when I was living in Black Cat Coffee and I don’t know where else they could go. Cleo invited all of them here with me, she told me we’d be safe.”
“After everything that happened? She still trusts you?”
“Listen, Moxie. I’m not another story to be told or case to be unravelled. I’m not here to hurt anyone or sabotage anything. I’m just trying to live, like we all are. The only difference is that I don’t want to simply forget it all.” To Moxie’s horror, there were tears welling up in Ellington’s eyes.
“Wait!” Moxie called out, but she simply pushed past her and ran out of the room, feline draped round her shoulders like a living, breathing fur collar. Moxie wanted to be here, she really did, but she was still uncertain of Ellington and whether she really did mean well. She drifted towards the window and watched the snow that had begun to fall outside, concealing all of Stain’d-by-the-sea’s secrets and dangers beneath an unassuming canopy of white. Part of her imagined that once the snow melted away the town would be rewritten, all of its dark history washed away as it emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. She knew that made no sense, but what was it that Lemony had once said? ‘There’s nothing wrong with occasionally staring out of a window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.” Something like that, at least.
She was startled out of her meditation by Cleo’s voice calling her up to the guest bedrooms, sounding more than a little exasperated. She found Cleo sitting just outside a huge, empty room, furniture cluttering the hallway around her.
“I’m sorry if I worried you, I just need someone strong to help me get all this stuff in here. “
Moxie nodded, ready for the task. She was used to carrying things, and any opportunity to spend more time with Cleo was an opportunity she was willing to take. They were in reality very distant cousins, but Cleo seemed like a sister to her nonetheless. They got to work, Moxie carrying or pushing the furniture to the right place and Cleo stringing up fairy lights and heaping blankets and pillows onto the bed, chatting all the while about their universally agreed favourite subject, literature.
“You need to read Fahrenheit 451 if you haven’t, it’s a masterpiece of dystopian fiction,” Cleo was saying as she attached a hanging basket of ferns to a hook at the top of the wardrobe.
“I have,” Moxie replied, bending down to tighten a loose screw on the desk. “I know it’s unfair to compare two completely different writers but when it comes to classic dystopia I’ll always prefer 1984.”
“Much as I love 1984 as well, Fahrenheit 451 feels so much more real to me, like that’s slowly becoming our world.“
A good natured argument does indeed firm up a friendship, and this particular one became so engaging that Moxie completely forgot to ask who the room was being prepared for until dinner that evening. Crab linguine, to be precise. Moxie spent a long while thanking Jake for preparing the food, as well as helping to lay the table, so by the time she could sit down there was only one remaining seat between Kellar and Ellington. She reluctantly took it, avoiding the older girl’s gaze until she felt a tap on the shoulder.
“Thank you for helping with my room,” Ellington whispered, twirling the pasta absentmindedly round her fork.
“That was yours?” Moxie asked, a little too loud for her liking. She wasn’t too keen on the fact that she’d unwittingly done a large favour for Ellington, but thought that perhaps at least appearing to trust her would be the best way of finding out what she was planning. So she lowered her voice, leaned in and said, “Look. I’m sorry about accusing you of doing something bad earlier, I just find it hard not to question everything after all that business with— with your father.”
Ellington shivered; actually trembled despite the warm fire burning in the hearth, and for a moment Moxie was afraid she’d said the wrong thing entirely. But then Ellington turned to her and their eyes locked together as she replied.
“I know exactly how you feel. I spend most of my time afraid I’ll never be able to trust anyone ever again. If even the kindest man I knew was capable of such treacherous things…,” She didn’t finish her sentence, but the second clause hung in the air between them like an echo. …then there is no telling what anyone will do.
They ate the rest of the meal in an amiable silence, trying to keep track of the others’ conversations but finding that they faded in and out, the mingling voices unable to compete with the endless questions and contradictions swimming through their minds. The plan was for everyone to stay the night, and they did, but for reasons unique to each person nobody went upstairs to bed. Instead those who managed to sleep at all did so on couches and chairs in the lounge, books still open on chests that rose and fell like an untroubled sea.
“It’s… 5 o’clock in the morning…” Jake blearily checked his watch then turned to face Pecuchet ‘Squeak’ Bellerophon, who had been vigorously shaking his shoulders for the past three minutes.
“It’s the snow!” Squeak exclaimed without so much as an apology or a ‘good morning’. “It’s too thick and the doors won’t open. We’re snowed in!”
Jake grimaced as he pulled himself up to look; he was hoping to tend to the garden that day, but it seemed like that would be impossible. Sure enough, the snow outside was several feet deep, and so dense it was impossible to even open the door to shovel a path. He tried the other doors and found it exactly the same. They were well and truly trapped. He sighed and went to get the others up from the numerous pieces of furniture they were draped over, with the exception of Cleo who hadn’t slept a wink that night and was now standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in one hand, slathering concealer over the dark circles beneath her eyes. She headed for the door the moment she saw him, not even giving him the chance to say good morning before she disappeared up the stairs. No doubt she was extremely busy with something, he thought; he’d get her a bit of breakfast, something to keep her going during the day. He brought the omelette up to the study and poked his head round the door; she was writing furiously in a black notebook and seemingly didn’t even see him as he placed the food on the desk and a kiss on her cheek. Cleo worked so unbelievably hard; he acknowledged that fact with that rare, perfectly balanced mix of admiration and dread.
“105…106…107…” Cleo wasn’t the only one already going stir-crazy from being stuck inside. Ornette had seen potential in the endless scraps of wastepaper left behind from the previous day’s activities and was now attempting the age-old tradition of folding a thousand origami cranes. Once they were done, she decided, she would string them together into a huge canopy of folded paper birds, her most ambitious project yet and a symbol of all the hopes and wishes she had for her re-emerging town. Already there were birds made from every possible type of paper in every nook and cranny of the house, and Kellar Haines, who had been watching with eager curiosity and gathering the creations together for her, could see that she wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon.
And Moxie was sitting at her desk in the guest room that had been specially set up for her, just writing and writing and writing. Getting everything from the day before down in great detail before typing out an impulsive opinion piece on Lemony Snicket, which had very few good things to say. She was right in the middle of a particularly scathing paragraph when she heard a knock on the door connecting her room to Ellington’s. Ellington herself breezed in without waiting for Moxie to answer, brushing a stack of books carelessly aside as she perched herself on the end of the desk. Moxie wished she could be annoyed at the way Ellington treated the world like she owned it, but the truth was that everything in her vicinity did seem to suddenly revolve around her like the Earth’s gravity pulling meteors into orbit.
“Sorry to intrude,” Ellington said after an awkwardly long period of Moxie looking up at her in silence. “But window in my bedroom is tiny and I needed somewhere well-lit to read without going downstairs and waking anyone up.”
Despite it being seven in the morning, everyone was already awake, although Ellington had no way of knowing that.
“What are you reading?” Moxie asked, eager to strengthen the bond that was growing between them. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But was she an enemy? Whatever she was reading, it was obviously good, as she didn’t seem to hear what Moxie had said. So she moved her typewriter onto the bed, keen not to disturb her for some reason she couldn’t possibly understand.
The Associates were quieter than they had ever been in one another’s company, as if the snow had buried all their memories, their shared aspirations and dreams. But one thing that couldn’t be buried was how safe they felt around each other, the knowledge that they could make mistakes without everything they had built together falling apart. Which was why Jake hadn’t bothered Cleo in her study at all that day, however much he yearned for her company. He understood her need to always be working hard, always striving to compensate for everything her parents did. But sometimes she forgot that she too was worth something, and when 4 o’clock in the afternoon struck and she still hadn’t come out or said a word to anyone, he decided to finally knock on the door. She opened it and her hands were deathly pale and trembling, exhaustion in her icy blue eyes which she had been trying to fight with the five or six now empty coffee cups scattered around the room. She pulled him inside and kissed him almost desperately, and he leaned into her, keen to give her the support and affection she clearly needed so much. Cleo was on one side of him and the study wall was on the other, and in the moment the whole world seemed that small, that perfect. She pulled away, a rare sheepish smile creeping up her face. “Sorry, sorry, I just— I really needed that,” she whispered breathlessly, running a hand through Jake’s hair as she pulled him down onto an ottoman in the corner of the room.
“Don’t worry,” he replied equally breathlessly. “You don’t have to apologise for anything with me, I’m here when you need me, here because you need me here.” Cleo was chaotic sometimes, troubled and secretive, but Jake knew he could never love anyone else as much as he loved her.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he murmured, resting his head on Cleo’s shoulder as she picked up a book from a nearby table, taking the break she needed at last.
While the two of them sat together in silence and Kellar was still trying to gather the folded paper birds scattered all over the building, something rather exciting had been unearthed in a suitcase upstairs.
“You have what?” Ornette shouted, gazing at Ellington bug-eyed. “You could sell that for enough money to get you safely out of the country for the rest of your life!”
“Well, maybe I love these songs too much to do that. It’s nice to have music almost nobody else has heard, something I’ll only share with the right people.”
“She’s right,” Lizzie chimed in. “If everything can be bought or sold or invested then it loses its original purpose entirely. Auction that CD off and it’ll never be played again, just sold off to richer and richer people at higher and higher prices.”
Ellington reached out a long fingernail to press the button on the CD player, and placed the iridescent disc in its slot, and Ornette was overcome with a rush of endorphins as she heard a familiar voice sing new melodies, new words.
“Hold on, I know someone else who might want to hear this,” Ornette interrupted, moving towards the telephone, picking it up and dialling a number.
“Moxie, come up here! You won’t believe what Ellington has! No, not a weapon, not anything even remotely sinister. Illegal, yes, but purely noble in its intentions. Yep, a pirated CD containing Melanie Martinez songs that were never officially released and might not be found anywhere else in the world. Yes, I’m serious.” Ornette hung up the phone and spun to face Ellington and Lizzie with a thrilled expression.
“She’s coming!”
“So his name actually was Lemony?”
“I couldn’t believe it either until his sister told me. It always sounded made-up, like the kind of name you’d tell a company to avoid getting newsletters.”
She was always going to mess this up, Moxie thought to herself. The plan was to keep a close eye on Ellington and prevent her from getting into any mischief, and it wasn’t supposed to involve sitting cross-legged on Ellington’s bed with her hands temporarily incapacitated by the black varnish drying on her nails, courtesy of Ellington. It definitely wasn’t supposed to involve Moxie having the time of her life hanging out with her. Maybe it was just the excitement of her first proper sleepover, but she was finding Ellington surprisingly fun to be around when they weren’t directly in the midst of intrigue. The evening so far had been a blur of music and games and conversation, over the course of which they had all ended up with completely new hairstyles. Ellington’s hair had been plaited and wound into a spiral at the back of her head, Moxie’s straightened into a chin-length bob, Lizzie had a new fringe which cast her eyes in shadow and Ornette’s was let down from its usual yellow scrunchie and pulled into row upon row of tight braids decorated with colourful beads. Moxie thought they all looked transformed, shifting rapidly from the uncertain girls they were six months ago to the wilder, freer ones they were becoming. The connection she felt to them was new, unfamiliar and exciting, and even though she still had her doubts about Ellington her bed was so comfy and she was tired…
The rays of the sunrise shone through the curtains over the East Window, waking her up the next morning to see Ellington bringing over a tray on which were two steaming cups of coffee. Really, Moxie? Falling asleep in Ellington’s bed?
“Sorry I didn’t wake you up,” she said gently, brushing a lock of hair out of Moxie’s face. “You just looked so cosy there and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Don’t worry, I think the couch in here is even more comfortable than the bed!”
Moxie reluctantly took a sip of the coffee Ellington had handed her, and discovered with reluctant gratitude that she had prepared it with milk, sugar and cinnamon, adding a delightful mild sweetness to a normally bitter drink. The coffee reminded her somewhat of Ellington herself that morning, everything dark and sinister had somehow melted away and she seemed kinder and less villainous than she ever had before.
Meanwhile, Cleo awoke to the smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, something that would be comforting to most people but made Cleo’s heartbeat quicken and her breathing stop. Here she was, in her bedroom in the family home, the familiar smell of cinnamon rolls that were never for her wafting up at her from the kitchen. Had she only dreamed all the friendships she had made over the past six months, or that she was free from her parents at last? Without stopping to get slippers or a dressing gown, she bolted down the stairs to the kitchen where she was greeted by a rather bemused Jake.
“Are you ok, sweetheart?” he enquired with a nervous smile. “I made you breakfast.” Cleo managed an equally nervous smile back as she hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter and pulled Jake closer to her, kissing him softly on the forehead.
“Everything’s alright, Jake,” her voice tapered off ever so slightly. “It’s just that I’ve never actually had a cinnamon roll before. Zada and Zora always made them, but my parents had me on this ridiculous diet. I wasn’t even allowed a slice of cake on my birthday.”
“That’s dreadful, Cleo! We need to fix that, right now.” With mock solemnity, he fetched the tray from the other end of the room and handed her one of the warm pastries, oozing with cinnamon and cream cheese frosting. She bit in, and in that moment she could have sworn she had never tasted anything quite as heavenly.
“I can make them for you more often if you’d like,” Jake told her, grabbing one for himself from the tray. And this, she always said, was the moment the full extent of her newfound freedom hit her. It was also the moment she ran to the window and discovered the snow had melted just enough for them to go outside again.
Back upstairs, Moxie and Ellington had almost finished their coffee.
“You know,” Ellington declared suddenly, “I might actually try and sneak out today given the snow’s melted.”
“It has?”
“Not completely, but enough for us to leave the building.”
Ellington pulled on a black trench coat that was draped over a chair in the corner, and half-ran, half-leaped down the main stairs in the centre of the building, landing in the hallway with cat-like precision and gliding towards the door.
She knew that this was a rather silly idea, but she was never the kind of girl to allow herself to be contained for long. The world, or at least Stain’d-by-the-sea, was beckoning. As she turned the handle on the door she felt Moxie come up behind her.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked, and Ellington smiled deviously to herself.
“Of course you can, a walk is almost never any fun when you’re alone,” Ellington replied, doing her best to sound casual. “But I’m not carrying that typewriter.”
Moxie laughed, flinging open the door with her typical enthusiasm and taking off running down the path towards the town while Ellington lingered behind, bunching up snow in her gloved hands.
The snowball hit Moxie on the back of the head, almost knocking her hat off. She rapidly turned around.
“What was that for?” she shouted.
“What was what for?” Ellington replied innocently, hurling another snowball in Moxie’s direction. To Ellington’s utter astonishment she caught it and threw it right back, hitting Ellington before she had time to recover from the surprise and dodge it. Of course, there was now no way of deescalating the situation, and of course, like with most snowball fights, others began to join in. Namely, Pip and Squeak, who had observed the action from a window and had jumped at the opportunity to cause mischief. Much to Ellington’s chagrin they were fighting firmly on Moxie’s side, and she didn’t stand a chance until Ornette dashed in front of her out of nowhere, carrying a small arsenal of snowballs she had been surreptitiously preparing in the yard. Soon everyone was involved; Jake and Kellar joining Moxie’s side and Cleo and Lizzie teaming up with Ellington. It was the first snowball fight any of them had had in years, and it was wonderful just to play like the children who they’d never been allowed to be, all system of teams and sides quickly forgotten as they ran shouting and laughing down the slightly less empty streets, much further than Ellington was technically supposed to go from her hiding place in Cleo’s home. Many years later, Moxie and Ellington would always say this was the moment that any trace of a rivalry between them disappeared, and they were just two girls on a winter morning, holding hands as they ran to catch up with the others by the sea.
Cleo drew her coat around her as she sat down on the pier overlooking the restored sea, the dams holding it back from the town’s edge having been long since destroyed. She shook the remaining snow from her hair, accidentally elbowing Jake who had come to sit down next to her. He rested his head on her shoulder and took her hand in his. “You’ve done so much more for the world this year than most people do in their lifetimes, and you’re still just sixteen. Look around at what you’ve made, Cleo,” She turned and saw Ellington smiling shyly, drenched through from the still-raging snowball fight, and Moxie draping a coat over her shoulders, their faces illuminated by the golden dawn. She saw the cobbled road cutting through the houses to the town square, and the empty pedestal awaiting the planned memorial to a great sub-librarian they once knew. And she saw the pen-shaped building she once looked upon with shame rising high above the town, no longer looking like it intended to cross it out, but instead poised ready to write a new beginning. “We’ve got whole lives ahead of us. Let’s go live them.”
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incarnateirony · 1 year
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Wait can you share more on the Gayle thing and what M&G was? If you've already discussed can you share the post please.
Is that why she didn't post the Misha panel?
The TLDR is Gayle is part of a stream of people connected to 2po. First of all, even when there WERE NDAs, Gayle was breaking them (along with suzanne/miamigirl) to feed him pre-butchered M&G info.
During Vancon, suzanne showed up drunk, threatened hellers for daring to ask heller questions in the M&G (threatened to cut them up), and then got busted with an open bottle on premise and given a warning she tried to laugh off with a closed-bottle op later, because that's how grown ups act.
Anyway, shortly after that, a user in my server was doxxed. 2po was trying very hard to find out who my sources were (while publicly claiming I had none), and went on a search for, essentially, Someone That Looked Like They Might Be A Misha Assistant, because they simultaneously think he's telling me everything BTS but isn't involved at all.
Anyway their target was someone that Gayle overheard having a personal conversation with Misha that they then searched for, targeted, found that she worked in publishing, decided "that's adjacent" and started spamming her old (thankfully disconnected) phonenumber in random inboxes.
Now, Gayle magically isn't covering some panels and is whining about having an Incident(TM) in a M&G vaguely in a way to pretend she's a victim, but realistically, what happened is Gayle is now known as being part of a revenge doxxing campaign directly associated to a personal threat incident and open bottle incident at a con in a related clique that was terminally violating NDAs while they were active.
*That's* what the fuck happened. She knows she's on a tightrope.
But hey, thanks for the doxxing. The lass managed it so well we became real friends figuring it out as these assholes fucked up and left their fingerprints everywhere live time, and we became besties, and then i became a simp, so thanks i guess.
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but what's happening is they realized their M&Gs aren't safe for their games. I just didn't care about it until they gave me a triggerpull when they fucked up, because this whole mess blew open the contents and proved in public with other members agreeing, he was deadass lying about and warping the contents.
Now, they know my crows are everywhere, even if I usually considered the cons beneath me, and now they're stuck watching their steps real close-like while pretending they're still in charge as the new kids prepare to roll into town.
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peridotglimmer · 8 months
Note
Hiya Belle! Let's do 4 and 7 for the asks!
Thank you so much for asking! 💕
4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?
Literally everywhere. It can be an advertisement at a bus stop, a snippet of overheard conversation, or even just a single line or look from the source material that sends my muse flying through my brain. More often than not though, it's a song.
7. How do you choose which POV to write from?
I write third person limited (99% of the time, very rarely I will write third person omniscient or second person) POV, which means I have to make a choice right?
Nah, those assholes choose for me.
In all seriousness, it comes down to a gut feeling. I start writing, and someone's thoughts just show up, and I'm like: Ah, I see, you're the one today.
get to know your fic writer
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ear-worthy · 1 year
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NatGeo’s “Secrets Of The Elephants” Podcast Premieres
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If any animal has undergone a reputational upgrade in the last few years, it is the elephant. Once viewed as a dumb circus animal doing tricks inside a three-ring circus and suffering horrible treatment, elephants have recently been the source of several TV documentaries. In fact, The Elephant Whisperers' won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. The Indian-American short film follows a couple caring for an orphaned baby elephant. 
A 2018 Apple TV Plus film, The Elephant Queen, is a journey of family, courage, and coming home; joining Athena, the majestic matriarch, as she leads her elephant herd across an unforgiving African landscape filled with vibrant wildlife.
More evidence of the resurgence of interest in elephants is the upcoming Overheard at National Geographic three-part podcast series,SECRETS OF THE ELEPHANTS, which focuses on elephant communities in Asia and Africa through the lens of women Nat Geo Explorers and the scientists who study them.
Dropping April 11, the first episode will see Elephant Researcher and Co-Founder of Elephant Voices Joyce Poole share her experience on decoding elephant sounds, smells, and body language in order to figure out what the world’s largest land animal, and one of the most beloved by people everywhere, is talking about. 
Like so many animals, the elephant is endangered. Nearly 35,000 African elephants are poached for their tusks each year for traditional Chinese medicine. While Asian elephants are still poached for their tusks, all species are at risk for poaching due to demand for their skin, which is fashioned into jewelry. Conservation organizations estimate nearly 100 elephants are poached each day. Most tuskers are male, with the largest tusks being targeted for the most ivory. However, most recently tuskers have been found with smaller tusks either as a protective evolutionary trait or because larger males have been poached out of the gene pool.
The memory of elephants is legendary, and for good reason. Of all land mammals, elephants possess the largest brains.2 They have the ability to recall distant watering holes, other elephants, and humans they have encountered, even after the passage of many years.
Elephants transmit their wealth of knowledge from generation to generation through the matriarchs, and this sharing of information has been beneficial to the creatures’ survival. They are also able to recall the path to sources of food and water across great distances, and how to reach alternative areas should the need arise. Even more impressive, they adjust their schedule to arrive just in time for the fruit they are seeking to be ripe.
The abundant sensitivity of elephants is well documented, but their sentient nature is particularly notable in the interest they express toward the dead. Even among unrelated animals, elephants show interest, examining, touching, and smelling the deceased animal. Researchers have observedelephants making repeated visits, attempting to assist expired animals, and calling out for help.
 The podcast is tied to the upcoming four-part Secrets of the Elephants series premiering April 21 on National Geographic (and April 22 on Disney+ and Hulu), as well as the May issue of National Geographic's flagship magazine, which will be published online and on the app at natgeo.com/elephants on April 13.
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spoke-n-languish · 1 year
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Astra inclinant, sed non obligant. Discendo discimus.
I really have no way of knowing what anyone thinks of me or what they want from me… because not one person will speak honestly with me. I appreciate all of the work developing storylines and the myriad paths forward that you have presented for me to “Leap of Faith” down, but despite it all… it strikes me that still (despite all my mad rankings to the walls of this shithole prison that saddens and crushes me just for being present within it. But has it occurred to any of you “viewers” that I can’t (repeat for emphasis: CANNOT) do what you want me to and what I desperately desire to within the circumstances that you have put me in. It is not a preference choice like, “I have an allergy to cooked carrots… no, raw is fine - I’m only allergic to the cooked ones.” Clearly, made-up bullshit that we abide because we understand that (for whatever reason) they simply do not care for that option. What I have been trying to tell anyone but no one has heard, is that I cannot “take the plunge”, without some, any, maybe even just one tiny element of truth. This may sound petulant, or whiny to some, others I have heard say, “just look it up…everything is online if you would just try to look for yourself instead of having it spoon-fed to you like a baby.” This is not my issue… Because, as stated before, early on I detected that elements of data I perceived and currently try to filter through (with no other option) have been doctored, altered or just flat out fabricated, I have not been able to find any medium that was true. To add further clarification to the depth of illusion detected by the manipulations i toil under, let me list some of the mediums I am considering to be within this Decepti-Confidence Scam Set of things I currently hold to be untrustworthy (note: for me untrustworthy = not true, not real):
* Anything found online (including from social media sites, wiki or encyclopedia pages, medical journals, digital communication of any kind such as text or email)
* Anything heard or seen on the television (as this is another digital medium it also has proven to be quite malleable as a source of information)
* Phone conversations from unfamiliar voices (as without familiarity it is more difficult for me to qualify truths vs. falsehoods).
* Conversations overheard (typically intentionally) in passing.
* Conversations from familiar voices (sadly, every person I have spoken with has also been detected as being dishonest with me).
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Nimium ne crede colori.
*I feel this requires some more insight into my meaning. Yes, everyone, everywhere, lies all the time… that is inherent in the nature of communication as we all filter input through our belief systems so that any and all output is skewed from the Greater Truth which exists without perception only and in such fashion cannot exist. Also, I am not talking about all of the “little white lies” that exist to prevent shame, guilt, fear or pain - for others as well as ourselves. I am not referring to any stretching of truths about activities or events outside of those which are intended to influence my personal information (and therefore choices and actions). Yes, I have noted it in every single person I have talked to, sometimes subtle otherwise very brash and direct attempts to perpetuate this miasma of gas-lighting that permeates fully into every aspect of my life. It is intentional or at least cooperative psychological manipulation with the intention to control via filtration, alteration and inception the information that I receive as well as what I am able to send forth out into the community at large (such as it is). It is this factor I believe which has so deeply wounded my mental state as well as the very constitution of my sanity. What’s more I have also noticed the effective feedback derived from an assumption that I have been successfully misled whenever I delve at any level into exploring any of these presented misdirections… the ripples of which, increase in amplitude with each exploration with a palpable fervor of glee or excitement at “he’s falling for it”, or “we got him again”. What some may not realize is that in my dogmatic pursuit to unravel this knitted cocoon of deceits, imperfect truths and outright lies, that has snared me and binds me into the clichéd tangled web where I still struggle trying to free myself before I feel the dooming venom piercing into me. The toxic regret of living less than what could have been… should have been mine, if I’d only looked deeper, probed more fervently, or just blindly stumbled onto by happenstance. But as has been clearly understood by me ever since realization of the extent of influence being exerted upon me, as you control all data I receive, if you want it found it will be found… if you don’t, it won’t. So I will continue to struggle, I know not how to give up, but I do so with the knowledge of the futility of my actions as the results are not dependent on the measure of effort exerted so much as your assessment of whether or not I am ready for or worthy of receiving it.
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* Also to be included, all sights seen, sounds heard, scents smelled (and hence flavors tasted), sensations felt and all other physical perceptions have been (some more constantly than others) proven fallible under your machinations.
Claudus pedibus et iniquitatem bibens qui mittit verba per nuntium stultu.
The culminating magnitude of this doubt upon my already battle-worn and weary psyche, coupled with the riddle of Y intersects at an unfortunate exact point where my craZy honor rebels against tyrannical injustice or oppression (or even well-intended misunderstanding without shared communal eXpression) to where I predict the results to be worse for all, or at least all the worst for one in particular. Whether your intentions are to be my Mjolnir, or if you sit silently on high as an overlord surveying his vassals, I constantly hope that your scales of qualification are Balanced and Just… else I expect from here on naught but doom and ruin to oblivion.
Condemnant quo non intellegunt. Ingredior in meus calceus quod cos mos agnosco. Pars magna bonitatis est velle fieri bonum. Si vis amari, ama. Semper ubi, sub ubi.
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cybermoonmoon · 2 months
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“...the math holds up”
On the Home front have a cough this after the easing of all those symptoms. This from that all winter long flu. A pal here commented that Flu was likely the COVID-19 itself, and I made it through.  Perhaps.  I've read of cases exactly like this where 2020 winter "Flu" patients after recovery had COVID antibodies.  This with them never knowing they had it.
Still this cough. An old radio comrade said she has the same, and its likely stress.  Makes sense what with seeing the shutdown of the world capital I live in. Also being on the cusp of witnessing hundreds of thousands to more than a Million die. I've been reading as much as I can from both sane, and profoundly insane sources. They both come up with the same numbers. 
However, for extremely different reasons.  The nutters say deliberate population culling. The sane say it's just a straight up Pandemic being badly managed. Either way this is deep shit. The math holds up...it's happening as we watch.
So here we are in rather extreme historic circumstances.  The unemployed are entering Great Depression numbers.  Societal stability in hot spots is still intact, but stressed...so far. 
'Seeing satellite images of mass graves in China, and North Korea,...lately Iran as well. These are not honest about their loses.  Btw some still say it's just a cold.  Amazing. Not even #45 sez that anymore. Both some acquaintances, and overheard conversations say it's nothing. 
Add to that people's favorite hates. It only kills black people Chinese poor people liberals Queers old people sinners all that. Human Beings are such shit.
On the upside with industry shut, and people not stinking up the planet as much. Nature is making fitful returns. The skies are clearing for the first time since the industrial revolution. Animals are wandering city streets, and the seas seem to be cleaning themselves faster that ecologists thought possible. The Earth Abides.
If we had actually disappeared from the planet. It would be near totally healed in just a few years at the current rate. As I've written I assumed it would take millions of years.  Weeks it turns out for a first stage healing.  Just a few years less than a decade likely for near total healing. This is hopeful...perhaps we'll learn from this. That, and stop shitting as much all over the damned planet.
I'm doing my part by shutting down my useless unread blogs that are taking up digital space everywhere. For now, just this slightly noticed Tumblr page stays.  I'd let my Facebook page go for now. But there's no way to actually turn the damned thing off. 
I already miss my friends there...which is most of them in these elder days. Also many of my deceased friends still have ghost pages up years after their passing. Me the same it looks like.  So I guess I have the option of going back. ...we’ll see.
Speaking of which the COVID total is now officially at One Million.  Actually, that's what's been tested or who died.  The actual number is 10x to 20x's that number. Think 15,000,000+ to over 25,000,000+ infected if you want truthful numbers. By 2022 could be a million deaths...this is now science fiction.
Btw the suppression of case #'s was and is an economic ploy. This from early in the Pandemic to keep business open. That or as #45 attempted to use as a strategy for an early re-opening.
40,000+ tested cases in NYS, and the Emerald City region where I’m posting from.  The true number is 800,000 untested cases.  A nearby hospital is stacking the dead in refrigeration trucks.
As for business as usual. This goes along with our owners' public attitude that the poor, and elderly were more than expendable for the good of the economy. They'll be "...glad to die for the economy" it was said. Hopefully current gerontocracy, rule by a small number of very wealthy mean old white guys. If we're lucky these persons that want us dead will themselves leave via COVID for the unknown country...goodbye, and blessed journey.
'Of course the Millennials won't be much better. However at least it'll be a different bunch of jerks in our faces with different, but just as destructive obsession's.
So you see it's going to work out swell. Otherwise, I'm fine.
(From my 2020 Covid Journals.)
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the-monkey-ruler · 8 months
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Seven Fights with Nine Tail Fox (1964) 孙悟空七打九尾狐
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Director: Huang Hesheng / Xiao Sheng 
Screenwriter: Huang Hesheng / Xiao Sheng 
Starring: Yu Suqiu / Xiao Fangfang / Chen Baozhu / Guan Haishan / Yuen Siu-fai / Mei Xin / Zhou Ji / Watermelon Shaker / Yuan Xiaotian
Country/Region of Production: Hong Kong, China 
Language: Cantonese 
Date: 1964-11-03 
Also known as: Seven Fights with Nine Tail Fox
Type: Retelling
Summary:
Nine-tailed Fox Spirit (Yu Suqiu) and Jade Rabbit Spirit (Xiao Fangfang) heard that absorbing the essence of Tang Sanzang (Guan Haishan) can instantly become immortals, so they pretended to be ordinary people and approached Tang Sanzang, but Sun Wukong (Ruan Zhaohui) saw it through. Tang Sanzang mistakenly believed in the provocation of the fox spirit and chanted the mantra, that drove Sun Wukong away. Nine-tailed Fox is willing to repay the life-saving grace with her body, but Tang Sanzang refuses. 
Seeing that the situation is not good, Sha Wujing ( Xīguā Páo) hurried to Flower Fruit Mountain to find his brother. Sun Wukong turned into Tang Sanzang to deceive the fox spirit, but Tang Sanzang was still kidnapped and hid in the ancient well of the Fox Fairy Cave. The master's whereabouts could not be found everywhere, Sun Wukong and Sha Wujing accidentally overheard the monster's conversation, and they disguised themselves as a father and daughter and sneaked into the Fox Fairy Cave. In order to deal with Monkey King, the Green Snake Spirit (Chen Baozhu) went to the Frog King Cave to borrow the Fire God Orb from the Frog King (Yuan Xiaotian). No matter how powerful Sun Wukong is, there is nothing he can do and Zhu Bajie and Sand Monk missed and were captured again. Sun Wukong had no choice but to go to the heavenly court to ask Li Tianwang (Ma Shiju) and the Four Heavenly Kings to help him get rid of the demons. Finally, the three demons were enlightened by Master Gaunyin, and they went back to Purple Bamboo Forest to practice together. Tang Sanzang's master and apprentice continued to set off for the Western Regions to learn Buddhist scriptures.
Source: http://chinesemov.com/1964/Seven-Fights-with-Nine-Tail-Fox.html
Link: N/A
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incorrectmcustuff · 5 years
Conversation
Stephen: so if your boyfriend kisses another guy, is that counted as cheating?
Pepper: uhhhhh what
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