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obsessivevoidkitten · 11 days

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Releasing The Noctwind Brothers

Yandere Twin Vampire Brothers x Gender Neutral Human Turned Vampire Reader CW: Incest between the vampire brothers, mildly dubious consent, intoxication, reader initiated sex, threesome, spit as lube, cum as lube, biting, blood sucking, forced to drink blood, forced to turn into a vampire, bullying, bully gets killed, beating, reader has temporarily broken bones, temporary injury, overprotective yanderes, general yandere behavior, twin yanderes, surprisingly whole ending, surprisingly happy ending Word Count: 3.3k (I know this kind of fic isn't for everyone between the violence the bully receives and the incest, but I hope a lot of people like it anyway. I worked very hard. Also yes, this is a repost because the original had an accidentally gendered pronoun. I apologize if anyone read that and experienced dysphoria.)

You had made a mistake. One that would, soon enough, prove to be a fatal one. Not just for you.

In your haste to start a task you had as one of the town’s carpenters you had turned a corner and ran right into the town brute himself, Jorry. Running into him, at any time, could result in a punch from his large meaty fists, but he had been carrying eggs freshly laid from his hens. This resulted in egg yolk covering an outraged Jorry.

Jorry had bullied you for as long as you could remember, he and his friends pummeling you whenever you happened upon them while he was in a bad mood. Or in any mood really. He just really liked using you as a punching bag. Most people left such behavior in childhood, but not Jorry.

You wasted no time at all in fleeing upon seeing who you had ran into. You weren’t quite in the mood to be nursing a broken nose that day. Luckily he had to wipe egg goop out of his eyes and that gave you some crucial extra seconds to make yourself scarce.

Despite making it a good way out of your village, the angered Jorry pursued you. He was nothing if not persistent. You hesitated a bit, but decided your only hope was to flee into the cave that everyone in all the nearby villages were terrified of. No one could remember the truth of the matter, but it had long been forbidden to enter. Many superstitious folks wouldn’t even travel within viewing distance of it.

You did not put much faith in superstition though, and no matter what was in there it couldn’t be worse than how badly Jorry would beat you if he caught up to you. If you had just taken your punishment in town someone would have happened by or heard your screams and he wouldn’t have been able to do nearly as much as he would all the way out here.

Again, a truly fatal miscalculation. You damn fool.

Hoping that you were safe in the cave you crouched in the shadows. But, while absurdly violent, your pursuer was not particularly dimwitted. He pretty quickly surmised that the cave was the logical place for you to have gone. You heard him scream and call for you in the distance.

The only chance to avoid the beating of your lifetime was to retreat farther into the cave. You crept back as silently as humanly possibly. When you went as far back as you could you came across an old metal door, carved into the rock surrounding it were twisting serpents. An ancient rune of unknown meaning was etched into the door itself.

Staring at it filled you with dread and you were possessed with the all consuming urge to flee the way you had come, but it was forgotten as if it was never there when you heard Jorry again, this time near the entrance of the cave. If he entered it now he would be able to see you. Light still made it this far.

With the subtle magic of the rune no longer working on you, you slowly opened the metal door and entered into what looked like an underground mausoleum. An underground tomb long forgotten by the histories of man.

You found yourself between two large rectangles of stone. A chill ran up your spine when you realized they were sarcophagi. Evidently the final resting place for two souls left to the dark and dust of this cave. They were plain and unadorned, other than some words on the top. You leaned over and tried to make out the inscription on one when you suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of stone grating against stone.

The sarcophagus opposite of you moved before the one in front of you did. You tripped backwards in fright as the lids were pushed aside and two pale emaciated corpses pulled themselves up and faced your direction. You couldn’t quite tell in the dark but it seemed like their eyes were completely black, creating a chilling contrast with their pale skin.

The thin pale figures slowly began to pull themselves out of their not so final resting places as you got over your initial shock, got up, and got the fuck out of there. You sprinted past the metal door and back into the front of the cave.

You were so engrossed with the current task of running away from the corpses of the damned risen to do any manner of unholy things to those still living that you did not see Jorry as he entered the cave. For the second time that day you careened right into him, knocking you both out of the cavern and on to the dirt outside.

Jorry growled and grabbed your leg, pulling you over to him.

“You ran like a bitch, finally decide it’s better to face your punishment?”

“No, no, no, you don’t understan-”

He pinned you and began wailing away at your smaller body with his mighty fists. Blow after blow. Your nose was surely broken. Then he got up and started stomping on you with his powerful foot. Now some ribs were certainly broken too.

Suddenly you heard Jorry yelp and the beating stopped. Your face was swollen and bloodied, your mind consumed by the pain of broken bones. You couldn’t tell what was going on. Jorry was screaming, blubbering like a girl. The dearly departed had been slowed due to their time without feeding, but with Jorry distracted by his treatment of you he was easy enough prey.

The thin pale figures had him down on the ground, pinning him with less effort than he had pinned you. They bit into his body, ravenously drinking his blood. Not enough to kill him, but enough to reinvigorate themselves and make him weak and helpless. Barely able to move.

You had managed to wipe the blood from your face and saw what was transpiring. You tried your best to drag yourself through the dirt and put distance between yourself and them, but you only managed to get about a foot away before they finally noticed you.

“Alaric look! The one who saved us… they need tending to.”

The vampire evidently named Alaric joined his companion in looking over you. As injured as you were, you struggled to plea for mercy.

“Shhh, shhh. We aren’t going to hurt you. We’d never hurt our savior.”

“I’m Anthelm Noctwind and this is my twin brother Alaric Noctwind. We're going to help.”

Anhelm positioned himself so that your head was propped up in his lap. He bit at his wrist until blood was flowing.

“Here. Drink.”

You weren't sure what lore was true and what was merely myth, but you were fairly positive that it was universally agreed upon that turning into a vampire required the consumption of one’s blood. You struggled to turn away but you were powerless to do so. Alaric held your mouth open as Anthelm held his bleeding wrist above it.

Blood dripped in and you gagged as you were forced to swallow. It tasted the same as any blood, though perhaps a little sweeter. Shortly after you consumed it you lost consciousness. Both due to the blood itself and your rather severe injuries.

They took you and Jorry back into the cave. It would take the rest of the day and a lot of the night for you to turn and heal. Alaric carried you with the utmost care and consideration for your wounds while just picking up Jorry and tossing him in unceremoniously, causing him to cry out in pain as he hit the hard rocky floor.

“I’d kill you now and decorate this place with your entrails, but we need you for something, so just keep quiet.”

Between Jorry’s incessant pleas to be freed and his attempt to run out of the cavern while they were both busy watching you resulted in his clothes being torn from him and ripped into strips that were used to bind and gag him.

Alaric, the cruelest of the brothers, watched in amusement as their hog tied victim cried and shook in fear. The hulking peasant experiencing the fear of death for the first time. The amused vampire went over to him and pet him like he was a pet, in mock sympathy.

“Don’t worry~,” Alaric cooed, “You’ll be out of your misery soon enough.”

That prompted renewed struggles from the naked man. Alaric only laughed in a maniacal fashion as he returned to your side. They had removed their coats, still pristine as the day they had been sealed away, and used them as bedding for you.

They patiently waited for hours, Alaric occasionally taunting poor Jorry, until you finally stirred. The swelling had gone, your bones had mended, and they had licked up the blood that had covered your face. The only evidence that you had ever suffered at all were the bloodstains on your clothing.

It was well past midnight, the twins had lit a fire to keep you and themselves warm. You could see them clearly now that your face was healed. They both looked exactly alike, down to the same outfits. High class, but outdated, attire. They had pale grey eyes that observed your every movement, completely different from the black voids you thought you had seen earlier. Flawless pale skin with delicate, feminine, features. Their long straight hair accentuated their looks perfectly. They could certainly pass as women if they wore the right attire. Maybe they lured in victims that way.

You were confused and more than a bit groggy, but you managed to piece together all the events that had transpired before your rest. You jumped up and made for the door but they were quicker than anything, human or animal, that you had ever encountered. One got behind you with his hand on your shoulders and the other stood in front with his hand on your cheek.

“Don’t be afraid, dove. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

You whimpered as they each took one of your hands and guided you over to Jorry.

“You consumed vampiric blood, right now it has transformed you. Temporarily.”

“Yes, to make it stick you’ll now need to kill.”

“Technically it doesn’t need to be human, any mammal will do, but since we have this lovely volunteer we figured we shouldn’t waste it. ”

“Don’t really want him talking about us. Don’t really want him to live after hurting our dove. And, well, it spares some rodent that is more deserving of life.”

You shuffled nervously.

“I… don’t want to be a… vampire…”

You looked down at your feet, trying to avoid eye contact with them or Jorry who looked up at you with tears streaking his face.

“Sorry, but we aren’t really giving you a choice.”

“We didn’t mean to make it seem that way, please forgive us.”

“You saved us, you had enough magical power to open the door and ignore the rune. You will be a strong vampire, and we can tell a lot more about you by your scent.”

“Smell things like personality, even some thoughts. We know you will be perfect for us.”

“Uh… can’t I just stay with you and remain human?”

“No.” They both said in unison.

“Humans age and die.”

“Humans have betrayed us too. That’s how we ended up here. You broke the seal so we have to show our gratitude.”

You kept staring at your feet until you worked up the courage to ask the question you were afraid to hear the answer to.

“What if I refuse?”

Anthelm smiled and Alaric laughed as if it was a funny joke. Not that you could tell them apart yet.

“Not a choice sweetie, remember?”

“If you don’t do it willingly then I block the tomb entrance so you can’t go deeper.”

“And I guard the cave exit so you can’t leave. Then we leave you alone with your friend. Your hunger will grow. You’ll crave blood. Your senses will be unbearable.”

“You’ll hear his heartbeat, he will smell delicious, then you’ll drain him dry.”

“In more normal circumstances he could survive that, and the blood consumption without a death only prolongs the transitional period, it wouldn’t make you a true vampire. Go long enough without blood, have someone tie you up for a few days, and you’d turn fully human.”

“But he is weak and beaten. He won’t survive.”

You looked at them and stated boldly that you’d resist.

“You are more than welcome to try.”

They each took their agreed upon spots to guard against you fleeing. True to their word you did steadily become more and more hungry. Thirsty for blood. Your senses became acutely aware of the food that had been tied up for you. You tried to resist. Your body shook with the effort. You had a splitting headache and panted heavily. Jorry smelled so good, and the beat of his heart beckoned you towards him. Though you resisted longer than most, the outcome was inevitable.

You descended upon him, he squealed as much as he could with his gag as you bit into his neck and sucked him dry. His futile struggles getting more feeble by the second until they stopped entirely.

Alaric and Anthelm were behind you watching with wicked smiles.

When you finished your meal of Jorry you looked on in horror. But only briefly. You had over consumed and the effects were as powerful as they were swift. You were a bit dizzy and felt as though you were light as air.

“With his death you’ll be with us forever!”

You tried to get up but stumbled and nearly fell. One of the twins caught you. You smiled and nuzzled into his neck. There was a cute man holding you, why had you been so horrified earlier? You shrugged it off, if you couldn’t remember then it probably wasn’t too terribly important.

“Careful, dove. The first times on human blood and drinking to the point of death can be intense.”

“And we definitely let you drink too much.”

You giggled and stroked Anthelm’s soft black hair, not at all paying attention to his words.

“You’re prettier than any girl I’ve ever seen.”

He blushed and Alaric cackled at the spectacle. Until you kissed Anthelm deeply. Then Alaric looked a bit jealous.

You grinded your crotch against Anthelm and giggled at the face he made.

“Everything feels so… intense.”

“Ddon’t you want to go somewhere a bit more... comfy?

“Or romantic? We could find a town. An inn.” Added Alaric.

You ignored him, proceeded to unbutton his shirt and then rubbed your hands over his lean abs. He started returning the treatment, Alaric came over and helped him undress you. It didn’t take long for all three of you to be nude. They used the clothes to make an impromptu bed. Anthelm laid down, his erect cock on full display.

He pulled you on top of him, kissing and nipping at your neck while Alaric was behind the two of you. He pressed two spit-lubed fingers into both you and his brother. Both of you writhed in pleasure, but it simply wasn’t enough.

Alaric didn’t need to stretch either of you out, vampires wouldn’t be pained by something like a cock shoving its way in, but it would feel better with more moisture. He withdrew his fingers, making you pout, and lubed up his cock with saliva before sucking on his brothers for a moment to get it wet.

Then he guided his brother's dick into you before sliding his own cock into his brother. You pressed back against it, trying to get the girthy member as deep into you as possible. Anthelm humped into you slowly, timing his thrusts with your bounces.

Alaric gasped as his cock was gripped by his brother’s tight inviting insides, he gripped Anthelm’s legs for leverage as he drove himself deeper. Anthelm, in the middle of all the action, could barely think. Simultaneously making love to you while being bred by his twin had him drooling.

“Always so tight…”

“Alaric, h-harder.”

His sibling obliged him.

You were in a worse state than Anthelm. You were new to being a vampire and the blood drunkenness combined with your recent kill made every sensation indescribable. More so when the sensations were that of a vampire at your neck and a cock humping into you while you weakly continued to bounce on it.

Anthelm’s entire body shook as he came in you, shoving his cock far into depths before unloading his seed. He took a few moments to catch his breath, an orgasm evidently enough to tire a vampire. If only for a moment. He stayed hard and began fucking into you again.

“I think you were made for us, angel.”

The stimulation was just too much for you and you screamed as you had the most intense orgasm of your entire life. Your body relaxed as you lay on Anthelm, no longer bouncing on his cock but content to let him keep using you as long as he saw fit as you nuzzled into his chest.

Alaric gripped his brother’s legs tightly as he finally slammed in hard and filled him like he had filled you. Without missing a beat he slid out of his brother, covered his cock in the cum that pooled out of him, and slid it right into you. Both of there cocks now covered in a slimy mix of both of their loads, using it as lube as they thrust into you in tandem. You whimpered at the sheer immensity of the pleasure that was filling you.

The three of you spent the rest of the entire night, and a good chunk of the morning, engaged in a rapturous sea of sex. Eventually you all fell asleep on top of them. Given their recent centuries long slumber they stayed awake and idly toyed with your hair or caressing you as you slept soundly.

They whispered to themselves about what the plan from there was.

“There’s a stream outside we can clean ourselves off in.”

“Yeah, I can smell it. After that head to a town?”

“A large one where we can blend in. Feed on livestock outside the walls. Maybe rats too if necessary. Always rats in large towns.”

“What about humans? Always rapists and thugs in cities that need to be taken care of.”

Alaric looked at Anthelm hopefully.

“True. True,” Anthelm relented, “I suppose it won’t hurt to remove a few bad ones. On occasion.”

Alaric broke into a large grin.

“Yes! I love how our new partner gets when they are drunk on human life.”

You stirred a bit in your sleep though you didn’t wake, drool under your cheek and on Alaric’s bare chest.

“Quiet, they need their rest…”

“Sorry,” Alaric murmured sheepishly.

They continued chatting about the future until you woke up. With a clearer head you were once more traumatized by what you had done, but they calmed you down and explained how he deserved it and that you were not a monster. They would guide you in your new life.

They were eager to leave behind the cave that had held them prisoner for so long. Bidding the cave farewell with a piss on Jorry’s soon to be rotting corpse, the closest thing he would get to a burial, the brothers departed with you.

You made a life for yourselves in one of the larger cities. Anytime someone tried to hurt you they went missing quite fast. It would be many years still before you had the degree of strength and power that the twins possessed. And even once you did they’d always remain overprotective.

You quickly came to accept and love your new existence with them. Anthelm took up your trade with you while Alaric became a prominent cook and eventually owner of his own restaurant. Apparently the hypersensitivity of vampiric taste buds helped him make delicacies. There was always a need for carpentry and fancy food, so you never had any money troubles, (un)life was good. And you had an eternity to spend it with them.

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the-daily-dreamer · 1 month

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The targaryen ruled 130 years without dragons. And the most capable kings were all targaryen. After them it was a decline for the throne. Robert, joffrey, tommen, cercei were all sith ruler .

I see targ stans are investing in high quality air to fill their heads lol

But anyways. “The most capable kings were all targaryens”. You know who else were targaryens? The worst rulers of Westeros. Robert, Cersei, Joffrey, and Tommen aren’t even close to the worst kings and queen to rule. And bringing them up as evidence to show that the targaryens are good is so disingenuous.

Maegor the Cruel, Aegon the Unworthy, The Mad King Aerys, Rhaenyra (yes, I know that’s controversial), and Daenerys (yes, I know that’s even more controversial) are all far FAR worse than anyone you mentioned.

Maegor killed his wife and her entire family. He was a usurper (apparently it’s good when the targs you like do it lol), a kinslayer (also a thing only good when it’s targs you like doing it), raped and tortured many people, wiped out entire houses, killed any and everyone that he saw in any way as deserving, and created a huge war with the faith of the seven.

Aegon the unworthy was corrupt and lazy and legitimized his bastards leading to the blackfyre rebellions that led to endless bloodshed for 5 generations.

Aerys was so bad he had a rebellion staged against him that ended his family dynasty. He burned fathers and sons together. He tortured people and burned them alive. He abused and raped his wife when he would burn people alive. He wanted to kill the entire city of kings landing.

Rhaenyra (who like it or not went down in history as one of the worst rulers) known as maegor with teats taxed her people to starvation. She had daily executions. She had knights inquisitors hunt down and punish people.

Daenerys burnt down kings landing, was complicit in the rape and enslavement of hundreds, ruined city economies so badly slavery was a better option, then profited from said slavery, abandoned the people she conquered (no doubt ensuring they will be enslaved much more harshly after supporting her), raped a “free” slave that she admits still acted like a slave because that’s all she knew, oh yeah and again, SHE BURNT DOWN KINGS LANDING. And this is after the people you listed.

And this isn’t including non Targaryen rulers that ruined lives like the blackfyres. Or rulers that are bad but weirdly beloved like Aegon I who basically conquered people by threatening to kill them and everyone they loved, subjugating a country for hundreds of years.

The best rulers I admit were Targaryens. But that’s because they were the only rulers save for 4 people. Of those four, two were bad and two were incompetent. Not nearly the sadistic “mad” people I described above. And funnily enough, as soon as a Targaryen came back to power…things got worse again. Funny how that is.

Oh and by the way. Going with the histories of Westeros. Guess who is among the best rulers according to small folk Aegon II and Alicent. Seethe :)

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vorthosjay · 1 month

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Hi Jay. Not wanting to sound mean, but I really think it must be commented and that there's no softer way of doing that: the company's statement of Thunder Junction being an inhabitated plane prior to MoM is not a honest way of capitalizing on a sellable trope without touching its uncomfortable issues. It's even disrespectful. They have done it in a less flagrant way with Kaladesh and both Ixalan iterations, but now they've gotten too far with Thunder Junction. Colonialism is too big an issue to simply being put under the carpet as it never existed and we could just enjoy the sunny part of the history. I really hope Hasbro as a company acknowledges this and changes its way of dealing with the theme. Thanks for letting me pointing this.

Look, you caught me on a bad day, so I'm going to be as polite as possible but let's start with the foundation that this is not a complaint to direct at me. I have no control over any of this. Mark Rosewater exists and takes feedback on Tumblr.

But, let's talk about it, because I've seen some folks take this to extremes.

First off, I've seen a lot of well meaning folks speaking up on behalf of hypothetical indigenous americans, but I'd love to get takes from folks this actually impacts. I'd love for Wizards to post something about their work with cultural consultants, for sure. But the only actual thing I've seen so far is a great story from Magic's first indigenous american author. And when you're speaking on someone else's behalf, you tend to miss things. Like, Kaladesh is not the great representation of south asian culture that you might think when you jumped to it, and it's okay if you didn't know that, but it sort of proves the point that it's very difficult to actually protest on someone else's behalf. And I just haven't heard from anyone who has also mentioned they speak from authority or are impacted by this. That doesn't mean you're wrong, necessarily.

But here's the thing. Thunder Junction isn't history. It takes cues from the American West, sure, but it's a fake world. And sometimes it's okay for a fake world to ignore the bad things that happens in real life and create something more aspirational. Magic does this all the time. Magic doesn't have homophobia, but that isn't really realistic or representative of the real world, is it?

No one, and I mean literally no one, came to me and said that people of color needed to be ostracized and not allowed to work alongside the white people in the demon mob families of New Capenna. That racism was real, it was systemic, and it was violent. But did it need to be tackled in a fantasy crime drama based on america in the 20s? Should it have been? I don't think anyone would have enjoyed it as much. Sometimes it's just fun to play gangster.

Similarly, the colonization and manifest destiny that was the reality of the American West was tragic, but does that need to be our only depiction of indigenous peoples - being colonized? If they were erased completely from the narrative, that would be awful, but can't they just have fun being cool thunder slingers? The Atiin were developed with a consultant, and if you want answers ask Wizards to talk about it.

There's a reason the Oltec were depicted as being sealed off from the Immortal Sun drama that had happened on the surface. To have an aspirational mesoamerican culture that wasn't affected by the Dusk Legion and Azor and all that.

To put it in another perspective, does every period piece featuring black americans need to feature systemic racism to be respectful? Is Bridgerton disrespectful (I mean probably but not for that reason)?

The reason I've framed a lot of this as questions is because I don't necessarily think I know the right answer, especially not for a fantasy card game. I've worked with tribal governments in my emergency management career and spent a week on the Navajo Nation, and talked a lot about perspective on things, and I would not presume to know what the right answer to all of this is.

Edit: to be clear, Could it have been handled better? Probably. I will never deny that. But also it’s a complicated and fraught topic and I’d love to hear from the people wizards contracted who actually know what they’re talking about.

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marvelettesassemblenow · 8 months

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The Fake Ring

Pairing: Jake “Hangman” Seresin x female Reader

Summary: The three times you lied about your relationship status with a ring and one time you don’t have to anymore or - It’s easier to work as a bartender with a fake ring on your finger to avoid situations. But that also means Jake thinks you’re already in a relationship

Word Count: ~2.7k

Warnings: is the beach scene a warning?, discussions about situations when you need to lie you’re in a relationship to get rid of people, me not having a clue about the navy

AN: I started this story a year ago when I bought myself a fake ring for work. I rewrote it 3 times and I wasn't so sure, if I should post it on this blog, but I love TGM and I had fun writing it, so: Hi Jake, welcome to this blog

When you needed to make sure you were off limits

The night had just started for you as you were stacking the clean glasses and had just finished counting the register. Nobody was there so far, but that would change when the naval aviators would come in and the folks that tried to talk to them or get one to sleep with them would arrive. They often arrived after them in the hopes they would see their entry.

You liked the beginning of your shift when you had the room to yourself until the regulars came in and then the aviators. They were nice and often chatted with you until it got crowded. It was how you got to know some of them, and you were especially fond of the group that was currently stationed there.

Right when you thought about it the door opened and a few of them stepped in. They stopped at the bar and waited for you to make their drinks while small talk floated through the room. They took their drinks and went to their side of the bar where the first bets for a game of pool were placed.

“You’re not playing tonight?” you asked Hangman who stayed back at the bar with you.

“I’ll let them a chance of winning before I join them,” he smirked at you and you laughed. He wasn’t wrong though; he was good at pool. And at dart. And at flirting. “I rather keep you company if you have time for me. How was your day?” he asked and took a sip of his beer. You knew that he would quit after the first beer and would switch to something non-alcoholic if the next day was a working day.

“Same old, same old. Nothing as exciting as flying for sure. I bet you don’t want to hear about me going grocery shopping and that my highlight was to pick up a new book that I got lost in until I noticed I had to leave for work,” you teased as you filled a drink for another customer.

When you came back Hangman was still there. “I like to hear about everything that makes you happy.” His eyes quickly went to the piece of jewelry on your hand. “I’ll see you later, darling,” he said and stood up before he joined the others at the pool table. You almost forgot about the ring. You started wearing it when people started hitting on you and for the most part it worked. And it was better this way, because you weren’t sure if you could tell Hangman no.

Hangman flirted all the time, so you wouldn’t be special. Even though he always asked about you and your day and coaxed you into telling more. And people did talk about him a lot and had a certain opinion of him, but he was always respectful and you knew he wouldn’t cross a line.

That’s why you were seeing him flirting a few hours later with two women who were more than willing to do so. Phoenix had slipped into a seat in front of you. “Another round?” you asked her. It was a slow night so you could give her a few minutes.

“Yes please, and a break from Hangman's terrible flirting, so don’t hurry,” she replied and it made you laugh.

“I bet he isn’t that bad,” slipped your lips and you hurried to bend down and grab some bottles, so she couldn’t see your face. But she was still staring at you when you were back on her eyelevel.

2. When you had to protect your heart

Inventory sucked! There was no other way to describe the days when you had to count how many things you still had at the bar and what you needed to order. You stepped out of the cool bar towards the bench where Penny sat outside. “Okay, I counted...” you never finished the sentence as you just spotted what was happening on the beach.

“Take a seat, enjoy the show,” Penny chuckled and patted the bench next to her.

“What is happening?” you managed to get out and stare at the people who were playing some kind of game – shirtless. “Is that Phoenix?”

“Yup and everyone else. Give me the list,” she held out her hand and you put the paper in her hand before you sat down and started watching whatever was happening there. “I bet we could get a lot of money if we would record that,” you said to your boss.

“Yeah, but do we like to share?” was her reply and you shook your head no.

“While we’re at it… what’s going on with Hangman and you?” Her tone was easy, but she looked at you with something that told you there was no escaping that conversation.

“Nothing. He likes to flirt with everyone, that’s it.” You shrugged your shoulders and let your gaze wander back to the game when a loud shout was heard, and someone lifted a guy – Bob? You weren’t so sure – into the air.

“If you would take that thing of your finger, maybe,” Penny started, but you interrupted her.

“There is a reason this is on this finger.” You wiggled your hand, and the small stone caught the sunlight and reflected it. “People won’t accept a no anymore and,” this time it was Penny who interrupted you.

“Did someone do anything you didn’t want to?”

“No! It’s just they see it as a challenge when I decline it. But once they see the ring they kind of back off. It's just easier for me this way.”

“Okay, once they do you tell me. I won’t tolerate anything of that, okay?” She waited until you agreed and patted your hand. Inventory took longer than usual because you were distracted by the game.

Penny had gone inside to place the order and you were busy collecting everything from the table when a shadow fell over the papers. “Enjoyed the show?”

“It was okay,” you replied and eyed the sandwich Hangman was eating. He held a half out towards you. After a short hesitation you took it and bit into it. He took Penny’s seat and you shared the food. You were thankful that he had put on a shirt, because otherwise you would have stared at his body.

“I think I need to have a chat with them,” he said once he finished and licked his finger. You were mesmerized and didn’t catch on immediately.

“Huh?”

“Your partner. They need to take better care of you. But I shouldn’t have to point out the obvious that you should feed your partner. You never even told me a name,” he said and looked at you expectingly.

Suddenly you went hot, caught in your own lie. Never had someone requested a name of you and you couldn’t come up with something. “Maybe because you only talk about yourself,” you said and stood up. You quickly grabbed the papers and threw a “Thank you for lunch” over your shoulder before you went inside the building.

It was a lie; he was always asking about you. But you knew when you came up with something on such a short notice you would be caught in a web of lies. You needed to think about it.

3. When you had to admit you lied

“Why don’t you just ask her out?” Bob asked when he saw Jake watching you again at the Hard Deck.

Jake didn’t even bother to look away from you, only when it was his turn at pool. “Because despite all of you thinking I’m an asshole, I’m not hitting on someone who is taken. It’s just a little flirting and as soon as she tells me to stop I will,” he said while lining up his cue and as he didn’t lower his voice the others were also pulled into the conversation.

“Who are we talking about?” Rooster asked and hoped his opponent would be too distracted to sink the next ball.

“His crush,” Coyote jumped in, he had been wanting to bring it up for a while.

“What crush?” Rooster asked confused. The others just stared at him, while Jake mumbled something about not having a crush. “Don’t look at me, he was just flirting with three different people last week,” Rooster defended himself.

“They wanted to be entertained and I just did that. It wasn’t as if I was leaving with them though.” Despite the talking he managed to sink two more balls before it was Bradley's turn again.

“Okay so... if she’s in a relationship, why is she spending her breaks with you? And I haven’t heard her talking about a relationship ever,” Bob thought loudly. “Although she also mostly talks to you and not me.”

This made Jake pause. Not once had he heard a name from you, he saw the ring and assumed and went from there. But you also didn’t deny anything when he mentioned a partner. But Jake was anything but shy that’s why he left the table without an excuse and stalked to the bar. He waited patiently for you to finish your conversation and shooed Penny away when she wanted to take his order. She gave him a knowing look, but he didn’t break her gaze. Only when he noticed you approaching, he looked in your direction. You shot him a smile and showed him you’d be with him soon.

“Want a refill?” you asked once you stopped in front of him.

“Are you in a relationship?” The question made you stop and you stared at him like a deer caught in the headlight.

“Why are you asking?” Your response told him a lot, so he just raised his eyebrow. “No, I’m not,” you admitted as you didn’t want to lie to him.

“Okay, then why this?” he pointed at your finger. Another patron showed you he wanted to order something and Penny was busy at the other end of the bar.

“I’ll join you in my break and explain then, okay? So, about the refill?”

“I’m good, see you then,” he knocked on the bar twice before he made his way to the restroom.

You took your break earlier than you would have usually. After a stop in the kitchen you walked over to the pool table with a plate full of nachos and two cokes in your hand. You pushed one in Jakes hand who was leaning against the wall watching the current game. You held out your plate too, but he just shook his head. It was quiet for a while when you watched the other aviators play.

“How often have you been hit on and the person didn’t back off when you told them you weren't interested? Or were you always interested? Wait, I just realized I asked the wrong person.” You looked around and wanted to ask Phoenix when you spotted Bob. You repeated the question again. Poor Bob looked tortured and admitted it had happened quiet often.

“Some people even see it as a challenge, especially when more people are around,” Phoenix chimed in who had come over when she spotted you with her back seater.

“If someone tells me they’re not interested, why should I humiliate myself and try harder?” Jake wondered.

“Oh Jake, if only everyone would be that way,” you patted his arm and didn’t know why you were surprised that it was quite hard under your touch. “The thing is I’m at work, a little flirting is okay, but people seem to forget that the later it gets. And the easiest way to get them to back off and not cause a scene is this one.” You held up your ring to show him. “This works way better than the I’ve got a boyfriend excuse and don’t even get me started on the girlfriend option.”

“So why not say anything to me?” Jake finally asked.

You shrugged. “How should I have known you’d be different back then? And you already noticed it. I didn’t know if you were really interested and that you started asking questions.”

“Just wanted to make sure you know if you say the word I’ll back down. Will you say the word?” His eyebrow rose while he stared at you, waiting for your answer.

“Jury is still out. My break is over, if you want to see me you must visit me at the bar,” you threw a wink at Jake before you walked back to the kitchen to return the dishes.

+ 1 time you didn't need the ring

“Hey darling, okay for me to come in?” you heard Jakes before you saw him. He was standing in the doorway with the sun behind him, so you told yourself this was the reason it was hard to look at him.

“Sure,” you nodded and he stepped inside. “You alone?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed and walked towards the bar where you were stacking glasses. “I’m actually here to tell you we’re leaving for a short while so you wouldn’t worry about,” he kind of rambled at the end it caused you to look up at him and stop your task.

“Are you nervous?” you finally asked.

“Me? Never!” He tried to sound confident, but you saw right through him.

“You know how long you’ll be gone?” The walk around the counter towards him was quick and you put your arms around him and pulled him close to you to your first actual hug. It didn’t take him long to return the gesture and his arms found their way around your middle.

“Not allowed to share,” he mumbled and you noticed how some weight dropped from his shoulder.

“Okay, well come back safe.”

He promised you that and let go after a while. It seemed like neither of you were ready for that.

“Hangman!” He stopped at your yelling just before he was about to leave the place. “Bring back everyone else home too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he saluted and left quickly.

“Keep them coming, sweets. And add whatever you want to and join us.”

“Thank you, I’m working. But I’ll bring a new round shortly,” you said and sidestepped the table and the outstretched arm to go back to the bar. So far this group wasn’t a real bother, but you had to be careful when the night progressed. And three rounds later they got kind of rowdy telling you to join them again. It was more demanding this time.

“Is there a problem here?” you suddenly heard a voice behind you and when you turned around you saw Jake behind you. Before you could think about it your arms wrapped themselves around his neck and you hugged him.

“You’re back! Are you okay, are the others?” Over his shoulder you could see Fanboy, Rooster and Coyote while you spotted a few others making their way over to the pool table.

“You haven’t answered his question. Is there a problem here?” Roosters smile that he sent your way was gone quickly when he mustered the guys at the table.

“No problem here at all,” one man said with his arms raised in defense.

“I sure hope so, we have no problem throwing you overboard,” Jake told them and took your hand and pulled you towards the bar. “Where is your ring?” he asked when he noticed the lack of jewelry.

“Don’t know. Felt kind of wrong wearing it now,” you shrugged.

“How about we make a deal?” he asked and you just realized how close the two of you were. “You don’t have to wear it when I’m around. I’ll take care of everything then. You can wear it when I’m not here and you can tell them that you have someone that already takes care of you.”

“Do I?” you asked cheekily, but you had also noticed that everything had shifted with Jake. And his lack of flirting with others.

“Always had. Let me take you out,” he said and everything else disappeared when his forehead pressed against yours and he stared into your eyes.

“Okay,” you breathed, and your lips almost touched. “But I must get back to work now. See you in my break?” you asked and he nodded which caused you to laugh as your faces were still touching. “See you later, Jake.” You finally walked away and didn’t see the clap Jake got on his back from his friends while he still looked after you with a lovesick look on his face.

#hangman x reader #jake seresin x reader #top gun fanfiction #tgm fic #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake seresin x you #hangman x you #top gun one shot #tgm fanfiction

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dailyadventureprompts · 2 months

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Adventure: Along the Road of Nameless Graves

Presiding over a series of forested foothills and mountainous valleys that divide two rival kingdoms, the mist-shrouded barony of Siirvyn has seen more than its share of war over the past generations. Betrayal, invasion, and massacre are all too common motifs in the barony's long history, leaving all sorts of scars on both the landscape and the people who dwell within it.

Adventure Hooks:

Rumours of a treasure draw the party to Siirvyn, apparently concealed in a vault beneath the ruined castle of a long dead baroness Taviaa. Surely it won't be too hard to locate a single ruin in a land frequently beset by war, right?

The party arn't the only one combing across the barony looking for something. A hardluck knight seeks her brother after he vanished on a foolish quest, and might be willing to help the party out of jam if they aid her in search.

Folk of the barony tell of Grimcackle, a great black winged beast that moorlands that's sometimes heard laughing over the desolate battlefields but is only ever seen by the lost and the desperate. To heed the old stories it plunders the old battlefields of it's choicest riches, hoarding the wealth of the dead over centuries of war.

Subquest 1:

The party's hunt for riches gets complicated after arriving in the region to find that there has been no less than eight baroness Taviaas over the past century(backwater fiefdoms do like tradition after all) with five castles between them. Most have been destroyed by disaster, neglect, or siege, leaving the party to trek across the land checking checking out each option (though a clever party might narrow their search by hitting the local archives and cross referencing historical accounts).

Potential ruins include:

The delapidated lair of the local owlbear

Huanted by the ghost of one of the baronesses Taviaa,

The Hideout of a gang of smugglers with far reaching ties

Thoroughly cursed by a battlefield savaging spriggan who deals in cursed weapons.

To make matters even more complicated, one of the castles has been restored by the current baron Arkolo who would likely not take kindly to a band of renegade sellswords pilfering riches from under his nose, forcing the party to avoid it entirely or risk getting thrown in the dungeon if caught.

Subquest 2:

Ser Riley of Breakbridge never expected to inherit the family title, her father favoured her elder brother Rhys far more, and when the old man died in the last war there was no question who his holdings would pass to. Then, a couple of years ago Rhys got it into his head that he needed to reclaim the family's ancestral sword which was lost in the same bloody battle that did their father in, crossing the mountains to scour old battlefields and not being seen since. After righting the mess Rhys caused by his chivalric absence, Riley has come to Siirvyn herself to drag him, or possibly his body back from his foolhardy quest. The party may run into her requesting aid from the Baron, seeking advice from the local shrine to Tyr, or drinking off another unsuccessful trek through the wilderness at the local tavern. She'd welcome their aid in her search, and would gladly pay them back by lending her blade to theirs in their search (or using her influence to spring them from the baron's dungeons, should they have been caught).

Rhys' trail snakes all across the barony (including leaving a journal in one of the ruins the party wanted to search), but terminates in the great barren battlefield that was his father's last stand. While searching these moorlands the party & Ser Riley will run into a band of armed scavengers apparently conducting their own body-hunt for one of their fallen comrades. They served on the opposite side of the war from Riley's family, and if that wasn't bad blood enough, they apparently came to blows with Rhys a little under a year ago and aim to settle the score with his sister.

Regardless of how the standoff plays out (talking the scavengers down and exchanging favours or beating the information out of them) the Next step is to find Grimcackle's nest. By now (especially if you're playing with my affliction system and the party is tired out from all their wandering across the countryside) the party will have realized that the only way to see the great raven is to be nearing the edge of death, whether through actively dying, being poisoned, or just being exhausted to the bone. This is because the great raven is infact a psychopomp, tasked with sorting out the dead from the region's innumerable wars. Once the party find the particular tor the dread raven uses as roost, they'll find him quite chatty in the way of most birds, happy to trade gossip or play show and tell with his many finds. Rhys did indeed come to challenge Grimcackle for the sword, an act of daring rudness that forced the psychopomp to drag the knight's soul to the purgatory it rightfully belonged.

Resigned by the love she bears her brother, Riley insists she must venture into the shadow to save him, leaving the party with the choice of convincing her to abandon her quest, leave her to her fruitless pursuit of honour, or risk it all alongside her for the sake of an idiot who thought he could convince an aspect of death to respect his pedigree.

Subquest 3:

After their harrowing adventure the party return to town to find that Baron Akolo has been assassinated and all of Siivyrn has been thrown into chaos and suspicion. Fingers point and depending who the blame lands on it might spell civil war or invasion for the backwoods barony once again.

Background: Both neighbouring powers wish to control who moves through the region's winding passes, and expend great effort in both war and peace to ensure the barony is favourable to them. While occupying armies and vassalage have been all too common in the past, the region's ostensibly independent ruler Baron Arkolo is a puppet in all but name for the winning side of the most recent war. Little more than a bandit leader during the conflict savaging battlefields and attacking supply lines on both sides, Arkolo saw the way the wind was blowing before anyone else and made himself indispensable to his current patrons before their inevitable victory.

Little more than a strongman at first, the newly elevated baron managed to ingratiate himself to his subjects by leveraging his outlaw status to cast himself as a hero fighting against the great powers rather than ruling on their behalf. All the while the canny old bandit was of course playing both sides, toadying to the victorious kingdom while helping to run the smuggling operation for their rivals.

Clues & Consequences:

The baron had a stormy relationship with his son and prospective heir Kalo, who came up raiding alongside his father. After the war however, the young man felt he'd had enough of violence renounced his possesisons and joined the secluded temple of Tyr as a means of making peace with his bloody past. Arkolo never approved of his son's taking the cloth, refused to name another heir and would frequently make pilgramage to the temple just to argue with him. Despite their years of contention however the had seemed to reconcile in recent months, becoming closer than ever. Kalo is not taking his father's murder well, and has decided to dust off his old bandit skills alongside his newfound connection to a wargod as a means of finding the killer. Like an angered bull, he's liable to charge at whoever draws his attention, a weakness the real culprit might use to direct him onto the party's trail.

Gareth Gosdown, the baron's advisor and castilian is an agent of their patron kingdom, sent to keep the former outlaw in line and the kingdom's garrisons well supplied. In the wake of Arkolo's death, he's less interested in finding the killer than he is reinforcing his masters' hold over the barony in case of a new invasion. Known for butting heads with the Baron's more slapdash ruling style he's the one the common folk are most likely to point to.

Taviaa (ninth of that name) was born to the Baron after he'd claimed the region and married one of the local nobles. Though still young, she has a cutthroat attitude and a mind for politics, which made it all the more frustrating when her father refused to give up on her pious half brother as heir and name her instead. She knows she's the obvious culprit, the case made all the more convincing by the fact that she's recently been paling around with emissaries from the other kingdom.

Art 1

Art 2

#trying a new format for this lemme know what you think #tyr #psychopomp #highlands #highland dungeon #mystery

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innuendostudios · 5 months

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youtube

New Alt-Right Playbook, regarding the minimization of power imbalances with "enh, it's not SO bad."

If you like this and my other work, do please back me on Patreon and/or watch me on Nebula.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, you and some other folks have gotten embroiled in a debate about the use of content warnings. One side has put forth the usual case: some people have trauma or anxiety disorders, and giving them a heads up about common triggers lets them make informed decisions about how to engage with a piece of media. They aren’t always looking to walk out, even, just to avoid a panic attack by having a few moments to prepare themselves. And this is often better for everyone as more people can appreciate the work itself and the discourse doesn’t derail into another discussion about whether it should’ve had a content warning.

And then someone from the other side of the debate says, in all seriousness (and I remind you this is about whether or not people should put a single sentence at the beginning of a video, the start of a game, outside the door of a theatre), “Can’t you just, like, have your panic attack? I mean, this isn’t life and death.”

The discussion quickly and predictably devolves from there into people who have panic attacks trying to explain how miserable they are, and how comparatively simple putting up a content warning is, and you realize far too late that this whole conversation is missing the point. Because the “it’s not life and death” crowd? They never claimed they are more inconvenienced than the person having panic attack! Content warnings ain’t life and death either! They made no attempt to frame this tradeoff as fair or justified. Only that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not so bad.

I call this Didoing.

(Relationship Discourse would call it The Tolerable Level of Permanent Unhappiness, which is a really powerful phrase, but I came up with Didoing and I’m keeping it.)

You see Didoing everywhere. Be as gay as you want, just don’t tell your commanding officer. Be trans if you must, but pee at home. Kink is fine, but keep it out of Pride. Drag is whatever, just not in front of children. Being a woman on the internet isn’t hard if you’re willing to block seventy thousand people and just use this service to scrub all your private information from the internet so men have a harder finding your home address. It’s eleven bucks a month! What, you can’t afford eleven bucks a month??!

And, yes, all these are minimizations, and, if you want, you can point that out. You can tell them what it’s like to get a Twitter DM threatening to murder your entire family using a quote from Mission: Impossible 3. Yeah, he’s probably not gonna do it! But it can still fuck up your day; the goal is to fuck up your day. But the “it’s not life and death” crowd won’t understand, not because they don’t care, but because they don’t care enough.

But even that is letting them control the conversation. You’re trying to stress the pain of a panic attack, the anxiety of a death threat, to emphasize a gulf of iniquity between their experience, as a person who does not deal with these things, and that of someone who does. As if, were the gulf smaller, it would be not so bad. In this, you have accepted their premise. Did you even catch what the premise was? That it’s okay for things to be unfair within a certain tolerance. That some people do and should take extra precaution just to exist in the world alongside the rest of us. That it’s okay for others to suffer for the convenience of the normals. Because it’s not so bad.

This is a bit different from how privilege usually works. The issue with content warnings - really, most things people Dido over - is that, if you are a person with triggers, it means other people can provoke a panic response in you against your will. The severity of that response is, frankly, immaterial: the point is, they have power over you, and, if you’re going to operate in this world as equals, you need their word that this power will not be invoked.

The usual move for people on the privileged end of a power imbalance is to deny the imbalance exists: “white privilege is a myth,” “there is no gender wage gap,” etc. etc. You would think, the greater the imbalance, the harder it is to deny, but it’s just the opposite: people Dido when the imbalance is small (or, at least, appears small in the eyes of the Didoer). It happens with content warnings, microaggressions; “no, I don’t get followed around Macy’s like I’m gonna steal something, but is that really so important? is this life and death? don’t you have bigger problems?” (Which is a funny thing to say, because, according to white privilege: no! The bigger problems don’t exist!)

Didoing is foundational to the privileged mindset, because it’s one scenario where they will admit to the Didoee, “yes, I do have power over you… and you should just let me have it.”

#video essay #alt right playbook

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underdark-dreams · 4 months

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Fellow Rolan lovers forgive me 👀 I have no idea where this came from. I just encountered Harper Geraldus in Act 3 again in my playthrough last night, and my brain said, that boy needs to get [redacted]

Harper Geraldus x afab!OC (unnamed, description kept vague)

Wet Behind the Ears

"What would you like, Geraldus? You can tell me." Harper Geraldus has had a very bad, terrible, absolutely no-good week. His superiors decide he needs a night at the Sharess's Caress to cure what ails him.

Tags: Size Kink, Sexual Inexperience, Face Sitting, Explicit | afab!OC

Word Count: 5.6k [Read on AO3]

No sooner had she stepped from the bathwater did the door to her chambers swing open.

“Hope you’re not headed to bed,” called a sing-song voice.

She wrapped a towel around her wet middle just as Irenya flounced brazenly past the wooden screen beside her bath. Privacy was a rare luxury in Sharess’s Caress, but her workday was well over—she’d earned the right to a bit of it.

“Do come in,” she drawled.

The elf only gave her a coy smile as she toyed with the laces of her tiny bodice. Even for a courtesan, Irenya wore as little as she could get away with. And the bar downstairs owed her half its profits for it.

“Good, you’re up. Mamzell’s got another client for you.”

“At this hour?” A bit of impatience crept into her voice; it was far past midnight. Whoever they were, they’d better be paying well. “Don’t suppose they’d prefer one of our lovely drow.”

“You know that’s not how this works,” Irenya laughed, a tinkling sound. “Mamzell handpicked you. Said you’ll be his type.”

That meant he was either quite green, or quite reserved—she knew her niche well. She busied herself with toweling off and wondered which. “Patriar?”

“Harper,” answered Irenya.

That did stir a mild curiosity. Harpers were even rarer than Guild members on the upper floors of this place, and that was saying something. Folk who dealt in secrecy and under-dealings were strongly discouraged from visiting pleasure houses—though she knew from personal experience that they didn’t always listen to orders.

And why should they? Sharess’s Caress kept secrets better than any of them put together. But unlike the Guild or the Zhent, most Harpers weren’t known to have pockets deep enough for after-hours trysts.

“If this is another favor for Entharl Danthelon,” she warned, cinching a gauze robe around her waist. “I swear, Amira turns into a giggling maid around that bloke. Don’t tell her I said that,” she added swiftly.

Thankfully, Irenya didn’t seem to hear. She took an eager step closer. “Just wait till you see, you might have fun with this one. He’s so pretty,” Irenya groaned, biting her lip in the way that earned all that coin.

Pretty or not, her body yearned only for her empty bed. But telling Irenya that would ensure it got back to Mamzell Amira, and the house mother’s patience had its limits. She put on a practiced smile instead.

“Then kindly shoo,” she told Irenya. “And send the pretty man up.”

As the door swung shut behind the elf—who was no doubt headed for a good night’s sleep, unlike herself—she heaved a sigh and moved to prepare her room for clientele. A second goblet on the tray; a pass over the covers and pillows to ensure they looked fresh and unslept in. She shook her hair down from its clasp, glancing in the mirror by the bath to smooth it. Then she perched herself on the edge of the mattress and arranged her robe to show a sliver of leg. Just enough to catch the eye.

If this Harper was openly visiting the Caress, he must have done something very impressive worth rewarding. Or else survived something awful enough to warrant a professional distraction.

Gods, let it not be the latter. She’d comforted her share of men and women who only wanted to be held while they cried, but tonight, the prospect made her groan. A tumble in the sheets would be far less work on her part, and the customer usually left just as satisfied in the end.

A soft tap at the door broke her reverie.

Her brow furrowed for a moment—knocks were rare. “Come in,” she called.

When the youth stepped slowly into her room, it was immediately apparent why he hadn’t just opened the door like any other patron would.

Irenya hadn’t lied—he was certainly pretty. But gods, he was young. Couldn’t be older than twenty or so, with an angular jaw and wide hazel eyes framed by long, dark lashes the same color as the hair curling just past his shoulders. He had the look of a fawn who’d just stumbled into the middle of civilization.

She watched his large eyes quickly take in the room. When they fell on her where she sat, the blush that traveled up his face was noticeable even in candlelight.

Her mind switched tack at once. She rose to her bare feet, wearing her friendliest and least wanton smile.

“Please,” she invited, drawing an arm out to welcome him in.

His eyes flicked down her figure once, then settled firmly up on her face. “Thank you,” he managed, and strode briskly into the room as if afraid she might rescind the offer.

It took only a few seconds to size him up. His leather jerkin was well-worn but clean, same as his boots. He was tall and fit, yet he moved with more of a cautious ranger’s gait than that of a soldier or swordsman. Perhaps that was just down to nerves. As she watched him close the door, she noticed his pale fingers fidget and shake on the latch slightly.

Few of his age and apparent rank could afford this place, particularly by special appointment. Someone must be very fond of this young man.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she told him, filling the inevitable silence before it could form. “Would you like a drink? I’ve got something excellent from Amn.”

She turned away to uncork the bottle and give him a chance to look around. In truth, this was a vintage she’d been saving for a quiet moment alone tonight—but it would taste just as fine with company. As she filled both cups, she could hear him shifting on his feet behind her.

“Thank you,” he repeated again as she turned back. His voice was a gentle tenor, and there was a nervous tremble on the first word.

“So.” She offered the wine out to him—he was careful not to touch her fingers as he accepted it. “What shall I call you?”

“Geraldus,” he blurted out. Clearly not taking up her veiled offer to give a pseudonym. When his doelike eyes finally met hers again, they were unsure. “Can—could I ask your name?”

She gave him another easy smile and replied with the usual. Not returning his honesty—but when did she ever?

“Very nice to meet you.” And young Geraldus actually dipped his head in a little bow to her. Oh, she would have this one fast asleep in half an hour.

“What a gentleman,” she laughed, finding herself harmlessly charmed by the gesture. “The pleasure’s all mine. Seat?”

She sank back down on the edge of the bed while leaving plenty of space for a gap. For a moment Geraldus froze, and she was afraid she’d broken him. Then he followed suit wordlessly, wine in hand, and took a seat on the very far corner of the mattress.

Really should bother Amira for some chairs, she noted to herself. Then again, most of the clientele didn’t mind beds as much as Geraldus apparently did.

At least he was drinking. It would help him forget his nerves, and she was pleased to see Geraldus take a long drought as his eyes roamed across the room again over the edge of his cup.

She took a savoring sip. “Good, isn’t it?”

“It’s sweet,” he agreed in surprise. “It doesn’t burn like—” He caught himself, looking sheepishly at her. “That is, it’s better than the wine back home.”

“Where’s home for you, Geraldus?” She tried and failed to imagine such a gentle soul growing up on the streets of Baldur’s Gate.

“Nowhere special,” he said, looking down to swirl the liquid in his cup. “Just a little village in the Greenfields.”

“Ah—” She half-reclined with an elbow on the mattress, and felt a grin rise to her face in spite of herself. “Yeah, that’s firmly ale country. Damn good ale, though.”

Geraldus’s face finally relaxed. “You’re from Greenfields too?”

“Just lived there for a while. Long enough to miss it after a few years in the Gate. Let me guess, was your family in barley or sheep?”

“Sheep,” he laughed, and she admired how handsome he was with a touch more confidence. “On rainy days I can still smell the wool.”

“You think sheep are bad? Try pigs.” She cocked a brow at him and took another drink.

Geraldus looked at her as though trying to tell whether she was joking. “There’s no way someone like you has mucked out a pig stall.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a lady,” he protested, as if that ended the discussion. “You drink Amnian wine, you smell like lavender—” Geraldus straightened up slightly, looking as though he'd given too much away.

She found she enjoyed his guilelessness. She had no regrets about the comforts this life afforded her, but ‘lady’ was a stretch. Still, manners were always appreciated.

“How else do you think I paid my way here?” She teased him. “Selling my best sows set me up quite nicely my first year in Wrym’s Crossing.”

The subjects of life in the country compared to life in Baldur’s Gate took them far. She refilled their wine twice, eventually just leaving the bottle within arm’s reach on the floor. Geraldus had relaxed enough to mirror her pose and lean back on his elbow; she brought her feet up on the bed to curl into a comfortable shape beside him.

Perhaps sleepiness and the wine were going to her own head…but Geraldus looked prettier by the minute. She watched the rose-petal curve under his lower lip as he spoke, not catching what he was saying. His eyes were more of a pale green than the hazel gold she’d taken them for at first. Or maybe that was just a trick of the candlelight?

As she pondered, she realized that he had grown silent and was watching her face in turn. She'd angled herself closer to him involuntarily while he spoke. They were close enough she could hear the shallow note of his breathing.

“Can I ask you something?” She requested, breaking the quiet. Geraldus nodded.

“Why exactly did you come here tonight? You’re not the usual type,” she added, and touched her fingers to his free hand in an attempt to soften the observation.

“Oh.” Geraldus fiddled with the neck of the wine glass in his hand. “It wasn’t really my idea. Not that—this is nice,” he said in a rush, and she felt his fingers twining up through hers on the bedspread. “Not like I expected.”

She cocked her head. “Did you expect me to eat you up?” Not a bad idea, she thought, glancing over the lines of his body under his jerkin.

“No!” He blurted out in surprise. “Maybe? I don’t know…it just happened so fast. Entharl pushed me out the doors before I knew where I was. Said I was too gloomy for usual company,” he added, looking down at his boots.

So that confirmed her earlier suspicions. Harpers may be discreet, but it was hard to miss things when you worked down the street from what was almost certainly one of their safehouses. Which meant poor Geraldus must have been sent here tonight for comforting as much as pleasuring.

“Have you had a bad day?” She asked gently.

His large eyes met hers with a long look. For a moment, he almost seemed close to tears. “Bad week,” he answered.

She brushed the back of his hand with her thumb. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Vehemently, he shook his head at her.

“What would you like to do then, Geraldus? You can tell me.”

“I don't know…I’m not sure.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Can I kiss you?”

In answer, she took the wine glass from his hand and set it at the foot of the bed beside her own. Then she reclined parallel to him, tilting her face up in an open offer.

Without another word, he leaned down to press his lips to hers. He trembled slightly against her, whether from nerves or from a more sober emotion she couldn’t tell. She brought a hand up to his hair regardless, smoothing and tucking the dark waves back behind one lightly pointed ear.

Their lips slid together softly like that for a long moment. Eventually she felt Geraldus relaxing against her mouth. But his frame still hovered over her, as if he wasn’t sure where to put his weight.

Without breaking the kiss, she guided his far arm to her side. Though she’d placed it there herself, the feel of his large palm pressing against her waist stirred a pleasant warmth in her belly. She clasped both hands behind his neck, encouraging him to lean down further over her while they kissed.

When he left his lips parted for a few seconds, she took the chance to gently touch her tongue to his. Geraldus made a soft, eager sound against her, returning the gesture with enthusiasm. His mouth was warm and sweet and tasted of rich Amnian wine.

While kissing him was lovely, she was increasingly curious to know how else she might take this poor boy’s mind off his apparent troubles. When she pulled away, Geraldus’s face trailed after hers as though reluctant to end the kiss.

“Would you like me to kiss you anywhere else, darling?”

Geraldus blinked down at her, perhaps thrown by the pet name. “Where else is there?”

It brought a laugh from her, and she curled her fingers through the dark locks behind his neck. “You really don’t know how this works, do you.”

His eyes widened with a nervousness that only confirmed her suspicions.

“I've been with a woman before,” he answered defensively.

“Oh?” She continued petting his hair, keeping her tone light and unteasing. “Have you been kissed other places, then? By men or women?”

From there, it was easy to suss out the exact limits of his experience. It came as no shock that no one had ever put their lips anywhere but his mouth. Not his neck, his chest, his cock—that last fact she withheld her kisses from him until he admitted, flushing profusely right up to his dark hair all the while.

She found herself speaking more plainly than usual. “Geraldus, first I’d like to help you out of these clothes. Then I’d like to suck you off before I ride you. How does that sound?”

That had most certainly broken him. He stammered and blushed somehow darker; she could practically feel the heat radiating off his face above hers.

Finally, he managed a breathless response of “yes, please.”

She drew his lips in against hers again as she went to work. She felt him reach a hand to the buckles under his side, but she was already springing them open on both right and left.

“How do you know—” He began, impressed, before quieting as the realization hit him. She slid the leather pieces up over his head and leaned in to give him a quick, enthusiastic kiss. When his linen tunic followed, she kept him held back for a moment with a hand splayed over his sternum.

Gods damn, but they grew them right back in Greenfields.

Geraldus was broad-shouldered and lean, with firm bands of muscle beneath the pale skin of his arms and chest and stomach. From the sinews in his forearms and the strong cut of his shoulders, she guessed he handled a longbow quite often.

As her eyes raked over him with open appreciation, she caught sight of a shining scar across his left side. Young he may be, but his body already bore evidence of his chosen profession. She reached to brush down the line of it with her fingers; Geraldus shivered but tilted slightly into her hand.

“Didn’t get that shepherding,” she observed.

“No,” Geraldus agreed. He licked his lips again—the gesture was much more intriguing combined with shirtlessness. She hooked her thumbs over the waist of his pants in suggestion.

“Wait,” he requested, his gentle voice trembling again. She watched his eyes moving over the curves under her thin robe. “Can I?”

She leaned back and stretched her arms up over the pillows, arching her back in invitation.

Slowly and deliberately, as if unwrapping an expensive gift, his fingers reached for the tie at her waist. She watched with satisfaction as he drew the garment open to each side to expose the bare length of her body. His lips parted in admiration as he took her in.

“Can I touch you?” Geraldus asked in a whisper.

“Anywhere you like,” she assured him.

To her delight, Geraldus fell over her and began eagerly exploring her chest with his lips. When his hot mouth closed over the hard peak of one breast, she hummed in approval and ran her nails up through his long hair. It seemed to encourage him; his calloused palm moved to cup the other.

“Tonight’s for you, darling,” she reminded him lazily, not really in a hurry to interrupt him.

He responded between hungry swirls of his tongue. “I’d kiss you here if you’d let me,” he said, and his hand actually slid from her breast to land boldly above the apex of her thighs.

“Absolutely not,” she laughed against his brow. “Gods, you’re unbelievable—how dare those Harpers keep you hidden away so long? Sure you don’t have a little sweetheart in Rivington?”

“Of course not—” There was a wet sound as he released her breast to stare up at her, wide-eyed. “I wouldn’t be here if—if I was—”

She clasped his jaw in a hand to kiss him again, drowning out whatever earnest response he was trying to make to her teasing. “If you’re very, very good tonight, I’ll sit on your pretty face. How about that?”

“Gods,” he groaned, and that pretty face landed between her breasts. “Would you?”

She looked down at him quizzically. “You honestly want to, don’t you?”

His cheeks flushed a deep pink. “Yes,” he admitted.

“As long as you’re a good boy, then,” she told him. With a firm shove, she sent him sitting back on his heels at the end of the bed. “Now take off your pants, Geraldus.”

He scrambled to obey, kicking off his boots before his fingers fumbled at the laces of his trousers. She lay back and watched him with genuine anticipation. From the size of the tent straining at his front, she already suspected that the gods had given to him with both hands.

And what a delightful bit of justice in a harsh world—for young Harper Geraldus to be blessed with such a big cock.

His impressive length stood stiff at attention, skin a lovely smooth pink—and the size of him. Not the biggest she'd had, but much closer than his blushing shyness had led her to believe.

She crooked one finger at him where he stood in a come-hither motion. He crawled up the bed eagerly, but she shifted away to the side at the last minute. “On your back,” she directed him.

Geraldus obeyed again, his tall frame collapsing into the pillows as he watched her shuck the robe all the way back off her shoulders. She curled up into his side, tracing a finger down the firm, fair planes of his chest and stomach. He shivered under her touch.

Then her fingers closed gently around his base—barely fitting a third of his length in her grip. She pumped him a few slow times from base to tip. It would require most of her creativity to take him, either with her mouth or her cunt.

But if anyone deserved both, it was the young man currently squirming and whining in her bed. She could tell Geraldus was struggling to quell the instinct to thrust up faster into her grip. No doubt trying to be good enough to earn what she’d promised, judging by the way his wide eyes were fixed in anticipation on her face. She clenched her thighs together at the thought of having his eager mouth between them.

“I can see why no one’s put lips to your cock before,” she mused, enjoying the way his dark brows screwed up just from the unhurried strokes of her hand.

“W-why?” His tenor had shot up to a strained pitch. She loosened her grasp completely—it would be too easy to finish him like that.

“You’ve got enough to choke on,” she told him, and climbed between his legs. “But don’t worry, I’m quite good at this.”

Before he could clear his expression from its jumbled mixture of shock and hope, she leaned to take his tip softly over her tongue.

His body made a sharp jackknife at the waist, and Geraldus let out a word much filthier than she expected. But she was ready for his physical reaction—the weight of her forearms on his hips kept them firmly planted into the mattress.

She slid her mouth over him, relaxing her jaw to take him all the way to the back of her throat before releasing everything but the very tip of his cock. She continued the motion several times until saliva trickled down the rest of his length. Then she returned her hand to his base, twisting her grip to meet her lips with each motion.

She took him just like that, giving attention to his full length, relishing the way his smooth tip bumped the back of her throat with each thrust. He whimpered and begged incoherently above her at the sensations of her mouth and hand taking him in tandem. Could he already be as close as he sounded?

Just as the thought occurred, she felt his legs tense on either side of her own. Almost disappointed, she instantly slid her mouth off him with a wet kiss of release.

Geraldus made a sound like a sob at the absence. When she glanced up, there were actual tears pricking at the corners of his dark eyelashes.

“Dearest,” she murmured up to him. It was far too tempting to apologize to that face; she placed nipping kisses along his thighs instead. “You deserve to feel my cunt first, don't you think?”

“Yes,” he groaned, obviously trying to master the strain in his voice. It suddenly seemed like a very good time to reward his patience.

“Be a good boy and slide down,” she urged him, already moving up around his straining erection on her knees to straddle his waist.

That brought a spark of hope to his eyes. Geraldus frantically gripped her torso for leverage, tugging her bodily up the bedcovers as he somehow nudged each of his broad shoulders through the gap in her legs. As he settled her above him, he stared up at the slick view between her thighs like a penitent.

“Smack me twice if you can’t breathe,” she told him, giving his dark locks a teasing pull to try and get his attention. The way he nodded left her unconvinced he’d heard.

Deciding he looked ready enough, she lowered herself firmly over his waiting mouth.

For all his obvious inexperience, the instant heat and enthusiasm of his tongue was a pleasant start. Her eyelashes fluttered in satisfaction as he painted firm strokes up her folds, just barely reaching her peak.

“Good,” she praised with a sigh. “Higher—”

He listened attentively despite wearing her thighs clasped around the delicate points of his ears. His hands rose to her hips as he angled his mouth higher, finally hitting the spot where she needed him most. Her toes curled where they were pressed over his biceps.

He was completely unpracticed, but he had good enough instincts to keep the pace steady as she rocked herself against his face. She imagined his hips bucking uselessly into the air behind her, desperate to wet his neglected cock in the folds his tongue was parting.

“Pretty Geraldus,” she sighed, her hand a fist in his dark hair, trying to keep her wits about her as she felt a twitching climax build at her core. “Shall I come on your tongue?”

His eyes flew wide between her legs. In answer, strong forearms gripped tighter over each of her thighs, holding her down onto the now-frantic lapping of his tongue over her slit. She closed her eyes and arched her back against him, giving way to the heat of his mouth desperately sucking and licking her closer to the edge.

With one last tug on his hair, she shuddered against him and rode out her orgasm over his tongue. She felt a gush of arousal from her center flow out over his lips. Geraldus moaned something against her flesh, but the words dissolved into a hum that ran straight to her core and reverberated as another shiver of pleasure up her spine.

With effort, she pushed herself back to sit on his chest, freeing his arms. Geraldus gasped for air slightly, but his expression was drunk with pleasure and a bit of pride. His mouth and chin were painted wet with her arousal.

“Such a good boy,” she purred in praise. “Getting me ready to take that big cock of yours—” Before he could respond, she reached to swipe her thumb along the wet line of his jaw, then nudged at the juncture of his lips.

He understood immediately, obediently sucking her finger into his mouth and cleaning her release off with his tongue. She felt his hips rocking involuntarily behind her.

With a smooth shift of her weight, she landed with her bare chest pressed to his and pushed her wet slit back against the top of his cock.

“Oh,” Geraldus whined above her, and his beautiful eyes squeezed shut at the feeling. She continued slicking her folds up and down his length to wet him, all the while watching the way his face screwed up as if pained. His fingers flew to grip around hers where they lay over his ribs.

It was difficult enough to line up her opening with his cock from this angle—let alone while having both hands held hostage under his own. Using his firm stomach as leverage, she pushed up to straddle him against her and then sank down. It seated the tip of him perfectly inside her.

Just that first stretch was delicious. Geraldus seemed to feel the same; his hands released hers, instead landing on her hips with an enthusiastic squeeze. But he panted obediently under her, eyelids still shut tight, waiting for her to take him further.

Little by little, she eased herself down onto each inch of him, her jaw falling slack as he stretched her walls to their limit. Finally her hips landed to slot against his own.

She stayed there for a moment, relishing the utter fullness of having his cock entirely buried within her. The ache at her opening was slowly tipping from a twinge of pain to a throb of pleasure.

But she wouldn’t be able to ride him from this angle. Instead, she leaned forward to grasp his strong shoulders and braced her arms straight against them. “Geraldus, look at me.”

His eyes fluttered open then, and landed on her face where it hovered above his. She took in his parted lips, the aquiline line of his nose, the youthful smoothness of his brow marred by a pleading wrinkle as he waited for her to move. And his expressive eyes, which she now decided with certainty were a pretty shade of hazel—currently traveling over her face as if trying to read her thoughts.

“You are the loveliest man,” she told him with utter sincerity. And I’m going to fuck you until you forget everything but my cunt.

With his eyes still on her, she slid her hips up and back down over his length. A guttural, breathy sound rose straight from his chest. She continued working him in and out of her tight wetness, finding a slow but steady pace that was just barely past the edge of teasing for both of them.

“Oh, Gods—” His hands spasmed against her hips, as if he wanted to bounce her faster on him but wasn’t sure whether it was permitted.

She took the cue herself. She ground her hips into his at a more brisk clip—and bit her lip hard at the sensation of his tip knocking deep inside her with each thrust. At this angle and pace, he filled her to the point of incoherence.

After being taken up to the edge of release by her mouth, she could tell Geraldus was already close again. When her fingers brushed up over his hard nipples, he let out a shuddering whine of pleasure. His hard length twitched against her walls.

At once, she slowed to grind her hips into him, relishing the pressure of his hard cock filling her so fully. He panted at yet another denial, and she felt his calloused fingertips digging into the flesh of her hips. Geraldus gazed up at her with a plea for more.

“Have you been good enough to come in me?” She studied his face unhurried, admiring the way his fair brow screwed up in anguish and pleasure at the question. “What do you think, darling?”

“Yes,” he begged, too sweet to know he was strong enough to fuck her at whatever pace he wanted, even from this angle. “Please, yes, I have—”

She splayed her fingers across his chest, rocking herself deeper atop him. “Ask me for it.”

“Please,” he whined prettily, his eyes shining with tears again. “Please, please, I’ve been good, I swear—Gods, let me come inside you, please—”

He was so earnest, so beyond desperate, it would be unthinkably cruel to deny him. She leaned both hands back on his thighs and rode him hard, using the angle to drive his cock into her center again and again. Stars swelled across her vision; each thrust sent his considerable length pounding against the limits of her insides. She closed her eyes against another rush of pleasure to her core, listening to the sweet way Geraldus whimpered her name.

Large palms pressed hard against her lower back—the angle of him shifted inside her as he leaned up to muffle his sounds into the skin of her breast. Then his arms and legs shuddered as he released inside her, spilling and twitching against her walls. She rode him out through it, as best she could with the way he clutched her to him, wanting him to feel every last scrap of pleasure.

Her own climax hit her like the snap of a bowstring. She found her arms clenching around his shoulders for balance, as if she might tumble away on the wave that rushed through her body.

Geraldus supported her firmly, sweet thing that he was, holding her tight despite the way his own limbs trembled.

After a while of him holding her straddled on his lap, the pressure between her legs turned to an ache. She stifled a wince as she shifted to slide off him. Even his softening length was a stretch for her tender and likely now bruised insides. She chided herself for riding him so enthusiastically before—she knew better than that.

As she began to pull away further, Geraldus clutched his arms tight around her back.

“We just need a towel,” she explained, turning to kiss the tip of his ear. “Did you think I was leaving?”

“No,” he lied, growing sheepish again, but his arms loosened to let her up.

She returned with a soft cloth for each of them. He reached for one, but she knelt beside the bed to neatly clean him. Even now, he was still too green to grasp exactly how this all worked.

And the mess between her own legs could wait; by now his release had already dripped out of her to generously coat her thighs.

Once they were both tidy, she rose to her feet and smoothed back a stray lock of his hair. “Would you like me to draw you a bath?”

Geraldus shook his head, looking up at her with sleepy affection.

“Would you like to go to bed, then?”

His eyes filled with innocent delight. “I can stay?”

She considered telling him that after the sum his keepers had no doubt paid, he could do a great many more things with her. But it might be nice to surprise him with that in the morning.

Instead, she raked her fingers through his hair and tilted his face up for a soft kiss. “Of course, darling.”

She moved on rather unsteady legs to snuff all the candles, then helped guide him under the covers through the dark.

When it came to sleeping, she didn’t usually care to share her bed with others. Tonight she found herself in an unusually generous mood. Geraldus was long-limbed and full of wiry muscle, yet every bit as gentle as a lamb.

As she settled herself under the blankets, he notched his face up against her shoulder and rested an arm securely across her middle. She leaned her cheek against his dark hair like a pillow. The feel of being weighed down by his body against her side was comforting in a way she didn’t expect.

“I love you,” Geraldus abruptly sighed against her neck.

She let out a sleepy breath of laughter that ruffled the locks of his hair.

“No you don’t,” she told him gently, and pressed a kiss to his brow. “You just really, really needed that.”

#nsft #bg3 geraldus #harper geraldus #bg3 smut #bg3 fanfic #bg3 spoilers #geraldus x oc #spicy

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wilbursoot-updates · 1 year

Text

Lovejoy is in this article!

Wake Up! Lovejoy are already a phenomenon

Squashed into a tour bus somewhere in Berlin are the biggest band that – unless you’re as chronically online as us, Dear Reader – you’ve maybe never heard of. With sold-out tours across the UK, Europe and North America, millions of monthly Spotify listeners and a spot in the UK Top 40 with their latest single ‘Call Me What You Like’, Lovejoy could be mistaken for veterans.

Far from it. Their first proper bit of press is, well, this very cover interview. They’re gearing up to release only their third (or maybe fourth, depending how you count their just dropped ‘From Studio 4’ collection, released under the name Anvil Cat) EP, ‘Wake Up & It’s Over’, and those sold-out tours? The first shows they’ve ever played. It’s rare this amount of hype surrounds a guitar band these days, so who the fuck are Lovejoy?

Formed during the early 2021 UK lockdown, Lovejoy consists of Will Gold as the frontman, Joe Goldsmith on lead guitar, Ash Kabosu on bass, and Mark Boardman on drums. Seemingly brought together by sheer luck, their epic ascent is the result of a lifetime of individual hard work and some serious fan devotion over the past couple of years.

It’s taken a while to pin the band down, and we catch them just after their first full UK tour as they embark on the European leg. It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind.

“I think it was our 32nd show yesterday, which is just nuts,” says Ash, who introduces himself as the one who doesn’t talk and proceeds to lead the interview. “Literally every show we’ve played, we’ve been like, ‘That was the best one!’ Then the next one, ‘Oh, that was the best one!’”

“I’ve especially been enjoying acclimating myself to not knowing where I’m going to be falling asleep every night,” says Will, “which is a very hard thing to get around. But it’s a lot of fun. I’m really enjoying it. And I love seeing everyone’s faces because we’ve been somewhat of a lockdown band. To now be able to put faces to the numbers is great; it’s lovely to see and speak to them.”

Describing their very first live shows at the end of 2022 as “teething”, Lovejoy admit they’re still getting to grips with it all. Although the size of their fanbase means they could’ve easily sold out bigger venues than the humble Electric Brixton they headed up on this tour, they didn’t want to skip steps for a good reason.

“Rock music has always been what me and Joe were the most interested in” -Will Gold

“We didn’t want to be bad,” says Ash, frankly. “It’s a completely different ballpark to just, you know, playing guitar in your bedroom, and there are so many moving parts and so many things you don’t think about that you need to learn and understand. We didn’t want to deliver a show to the fans that wasn’t good enough, so we’ve been deliberately ramping it up step by step and going through the process as naturally as possible.”

“It’s so much more personable and fun to make mistakes in front of a crowd of a couple hundred people who are along with you for the ride than when you start to get into the larger crowds,” adds Will. “Making a mistake, at least for me, really gets to me, but if I’m in a room with less people, and they’re there for the story, I feel more ready to make mistakes.”

Will and Joe cut their teeth playing with a folk punk band a few years prior to Lovejoy forming. After what Will describes as a “very dramatic first gig”, they went their separate ways, but his lust for live never went away. Finding one another at the beginning of the pandemic, Joe came to visit Will before the lockdowns kicked in and decided to sleep on the sofa rather than risking taking public transport back and forth to London.

“We wrote our entire first EP in my basement and very quickly decided we’re going to need a drummer and a bassist because all the stuff we were writing was band stuff,” Will explains. “It wasn’t our normal folk stuff that we were used to – and rock music has always been what me and Joe were the most interested in; even when we were in that folk band, we used to implore the lead singer if we could write some indie music please, and he would always be like, nah, not really into Arctic Monkeys actually.”

So they set out to find both a bassist and a drummer. Fate did its thing, and upon walking into a Smashburger in Brighton, Will met Ash, bass guitar in tow, and asked him if he’d like to be in a band.

“Ash is not one to say no to many exciting adventures,” says Will, “so he said yeah, and I gave him my address. Joe was very sceptical at first when I said I found a bassist in a burger shop.”

“I think for me personally,” adds Ash, “I’m living in Brighton – which is kind of a young, creative place – you often have conversations in pubs and places where people are like, we should do this, we should do that, and I genuinely thought that this was just another one of those conversations. Like, ‘Hey, I’m in a band, do you want to play?’ I never thought in my wildest dreams anything would even come of it. I didn’t even think we’d practice, let alone be playing shows in front of thousands of people.”

As for Mark, he was booked for the day via the freelancer hiring website Fiverr. When they couldn’t pay him the fee he was owed, they instead offered him a spot in the band.

“I said, look, you’re sick at this, do you want to just join the band?” Will explains. “Mark thought about it for a good five seconds and then said yes.”

“I was really determined, playing acoustic guitar and learning stuff from YouTube and Arctic Monkeys songbooks” -Joe Goldsmith

Echoing Ash’s sentiments, Mark recalls, “I thought it would be another band that I’d join that wouldn’t even release on Spotify. Now we’ve sold out tours in the UK, Europe, America….”

Life before Lovejoy was very different for most of the boys. Mark was at university studying editing, hoping to work in visual effects, letting drumming take the back seat. “It would have been a grind for like 40 years to get a good paying job, and Will came along and saved me. So I’m very grateful for that,” he says.

Ash was working in broadcasting as a producer for TV, a job he’d gotten into after studying film production at uni, and had taught himself animation as another means of income. “Unlike Mark, I actually enjoyed it,” he adds.

As for Joe, he was working as a tree surgeon, which is a flashier-sounding name than what the job actually entailed. “I was literally just cleaning up branches on the floor,” he says. “I wasn’t even allowed to go up the trees.”

Will isn’t such a stranger to the spotlight, as he edited for the YouTube channel SootHouse in the late 2010s, later creating his own channel as Wilbur Soot and amassing a sizeable following on the streaming platform Twitch (although the other boys say they had no idea about his following when they joined the band, Ash noting, “I just thought he was quite a tall, handsome man, we’re just here because we fancy Will”).

With the band assembled, they started recording together in Will’s bedroom. In early 2021, the UK was still firmly in lockdown, so with all studios closed, it was their only choice. When they finally made it to a studio, the group had two days to record five songs, the ones that would make up their first EP, 2021’s ‘Are You Alright?’.

“We didn’t get enough done,” says Will, “which is why the first EP actually has scratch vocals. We just used my draft vocals that are then doubled up and thickened out. And also because it would have been far too expensive to just keep going back.”

“Which is why, little easter egg,” adds Ash, “some of the lyrics are wrong. We don’t sing those anymore, so the fans get very confused when we perform some of the earlier songs.”

The whole journey has been a learning curve for all four members. With none of them coming from a proper musical background, there was no one to guide them in the process. “We kind of had to jump headfirst in and see what we can do off the back of it,” says Will.

That isn’t to say they haven’t put the work in, though. With each of the boys picking up their instruments in their childhood or teenage years, it feels like they’ve been setting up their own individual dominoes, hitting the ground running when they were knocked down in perfect formation.

“There’s a photo of me when I was a baby,” Mark begins, explaining where he got his start in music. “I couldn’t even walk, and I’m on my auntie’s lap, who originally taught me drums. I’ve been wanting to play since I could speak, basically, but we could never afford a kit. And then I got to about eight years old, my parents finally got me an electric drum kit, and my auntie started teaching me. I caught up with her quickly, which was crazy. I always wanted to be in a band, but I was thinking more realistically, it’s the same odds as becoming a famous football player or something like that. Then along came these boys, and it all changed.”

“I was really determined from when I was about 13, 14?” Joe recalls, “Playing acoustic guitar and just learning stuff from YouTube and Arctic Monkeys songbooks, working out tabs and things like that. I was pretty dead set on at least giving it a shot to try.”

Ash’s start was similar, learning to play guitar with his dad. “When I was very young, my dad found an old Spanish guitar in the attic of our family home that wasn’t ours,” he tells us. “I’ve kind of always played guitar, and I’ve always been interested in music; my dad is in a band as well, bless him, doing dad rock. It’s always been a part of me, but I never ever thought I’d do anything with it.”

“Not for me,” Will jumps in. “The minute I first started learning guitar, I was like, this is what I want. When I was a teenager, I used to follow around bands and go to all their shows, and I knew from that moment I want this as my creative outlet. This is where I want to put my creative energy. I literally remember I shut myself in my room and practised guitar for like ten hours a day in the beginning. I missed two summers doing that. To finally be in this position I’m in now, thanks to all the wonderful support we’ve gotten from people, a lot of them have come across from the YouTube space, is just absolutely humbling. I’m trying to give it back in any way I can.”

“I like to make rumours amongst the fan base; we’ve made up a bunch of nonsense” -Ash Kabosu

It’s fair to say Lovejoy have been pulled substantially further up the ladder by a deeply devoted fan base, but that’s part of what makes their trajectory so exciting. There hasn’t been a new guitar band that’s had venues bursting at the seams like this for a long time. Just two self-released (on their own label Anvil Cat via AWAL) EPs, debut ‘Are You Alright?’ and follow-up ‘Pebble Brain’ garnered enough love to have fans queuing around the block for hours on end when the live shows finally came. It’s reminiscent of what 5SOS were seeing at the start of their career ten years ago, or that other numbers band.

And the devotion goes both ways, too; Lovejoy play games with the fans, leaving puzzles on social media for the fans to solve, firing confetti with QR codes printed on every other piece out at their London headline show. Their involvement hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Oh, man, I love them,” Ash gushes. “One of the best feelings for me is when we create something, even if it’s something as simple as a little photo shoot, the response is incredible. And to inspire other people to create through our creativity is just so rewarding. My favourite part of it is seeing the writing, the poetry, the paintings, the drawings, like all the art that comes back to us is incredible.”

Joe adds, “Every single person that I’ve met after a show or before a show, they’re all so respectful and all so lovely. And they’re just so generous.”

Ash continues, “They make such an effort and go out of their way to listen to the support bands’ music and show up for them; they show up on time and fill the place out for everyone. And then they go crazy jumping around and singing to everyone’s music, and that’s just so fucking cool.”

With new EP ‘Wake Up & It’s Over’ on the horizon, it’ll be their first proper release since 2021. A break away from recording to do the touring part of being a new band has led to Lovejoy’s longest writing phase yet and has played a part in shaping the sound of their new material. This time around, being able to take more time to record and more studio options, they’ve fined tuned their sound and brought it closer to their personal ideal.

Aiming for something a little heavier this time, the boys wanted to pull in their individual influences more drastically. For Will, that’s shouty British lyrics and overdriven guitars (he calls Arctic Monkeys the most famous example), with Ash also growing up on the late 2000s indie of Foals and Bombay Bicycle Club. Mark, on the other hand, was introduced to bands like Bring Me The Horizon and Asking Alexandria by his sister at a young age, pushing him into heavier territory when it came to discovering his own tastes and allowing the band to take on the slogan of ‘the only indie band with a double kick drum’. (Joe simply adds, “In the words of Brandon Flowers, it’s indie rock and roll for me.”)

Opening track ‘Portrait of a Blank Slate’ pulls in those influences most brazenly, employing the mathy Foals-y lead guitar, ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ era Arctic Monkeys fiddly bass, and wordy vocals a la The Wombats. “I can’t wait to play that for thousands of people,” says Joe.

They’ve been road-testing some of the other tracks too, the poppier (see: jumpier) ‘Consequences’ and ‘Warsaw’, as well as the single ‘Call Me What You Like’, but the rest have been kept a secret, one track particularly well.

Initially beginning the recording of this EP late last year, the boys weren’t 100% satisfied with the tracks. Having already played some of the tracks live, fans developed a particular affinity for one called ‘It’s Golden Hour Somewhere’, and up until the EP drops, have been under the impression it isn’t going to be released.

“I like to make rumours amongst the fan base,” says Ash, “I sort of said yeah, it’s scrapped, we just don’t like it, it’s not up to scratch, it doesn’t fit the nature of the EP, blah, blah, blah. We’ve just made up a bunch of nonsense. And they’ve bought into it. And as I expected, they’re also campaigning to bring it back. We’ve seen signs at shows saying ‘PLAY GOLDEN HOUR’. It’s just a bit of fun, and I think the relief and the excitement they’ll feel on the day that it comes out to just see it in the tracklisting will be worth it. I think for the amount of time that the fans have been waiting, we want it to be as special as possible.”

Even with ‘Call Me What You Like’ landing at No.32 on the UK Top 40 – an enormous feat and a rarity for a new band these days – it’s still what the fans think that means the most to Lovejoy.

“It was very validating to see it go that far,” says Will. “I think that was our longest-ever lyric writing time; we had the tune down for about ten months before I even penned the lyrics that ended up going in the final release. To see that time pay off is amazing, but we had no idea it would get that reception. It’s more important that our fans really love what we’re putting out. We’re aiming to create music that will really connect with our fan base, and you know, we’ll give them back what they’ve given us.”

With formative years that any new band would dream of, a knockout first tour and an audience hungry for more, Lovejoy are keen to maintain the hype. Currently using soundcheck time to write new material, every spare hour is used wisely while they’re on the road, Ash hinting they’ve already got new songs saved up for when they return home. This summer, they’ll be hitting the festival circuit, playing Reading and Leeds for the first time and undoubtedly not the last. The path may not be fully paved yet, but it’s definitely leading somewhere exciting.

Will says, “We’ve felt that wave of energy from the audience singing our words back at us, and that’s really influenced my lyrical style and our music instrumentally, which took a lot longer. 2022 was a sort of foundational year; I feel like this is the launch in 2023 into this next era of Lovejoy.”

#thanks for spending actual money on this one mia lmao #lovejoy #wilbur soot #ash kabosu #mark boardman #joe goldsmith #articles #dork magazine

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 4 months

Text

Lilia, Epel: Blessing Givers, Curse Breaker

Lilia’s vignettes continue to be gold! He “humble” brags about how his voice is great, he’s sooo adorable, and such an ikemen… (Apparently he realized he was cute because people would give him free stuff and help on his travels and when he first came to NRC!) Best part was definitely when Lilia described cooking for his dorm members and they were “so touched” that they bowed their heads, covered their faces, and/or cried 💀 NOT THEM PUTTING A PICTURE OF MALEFICENT DRAGON FORM ON LILIA'S BIRTHDAY CARD… His vignettes also mention having the strength to overcome “a curse” 😭 Cruel reminders of the tragedy that unfolded in his past, and bis unfulfilled search for a cure for Silver... TWST devs, you sickos/j

A Tale as Old as Time.

Three fairies crowded around a cradle, its curtained hood up to obscure the infant within. Green, pink, blue—each was dressed in a particular color. They glanced at the baby and at each other, mouths agape to discuss their blessings.

Safeguarded within the platinum frame was a celebration of life and a future yet to be told. The fragile start of a brand new story.

Lilia wanted to protect it himself.

“Looks like some fancy shindig.” The remark came from Epel, who gazed upon the same painting. "Erm... I mean, party. That is what it is, right...?"

"They've come to bestow gifts upon a newborn princess. Royal affairs can be a bit stiff, I'm afraid. Can't even show up to one without an invitation! Some hosts are just sticklers for tradition and protocol."

"Oh, I got it!" Epel visibly perked, cheeks appling with pink. "It's a different kind of gathering. Back home in Harveston, they're a lot more informal. Family and all the neighbors coming by with plates of warm food, a makeshift band and folks dancing, catching up by the fire... It's so lively."

Lilia’s lip curled, the corners lifting into a slight smile. "It's good to know that your hometown hasn't lost its charm."

"You've visited before?"

"Once, long ago," the ancient fae chuckled, "when I was still a stubborn and stony-faced youth. The people of Harveston opened their hearts and offered hospitality. From what you've told me, it's clear that the very same spirit from then persists to this day."

"Gosh, really?" Epel puffed up at that, as though he were a peacock flaunting his feathers. "Hehe, wellll, Harveston does have a way of makin' ya feel cozy and right at home, even if yer far away from it!"

"That it does." Lilia's eyes traced the wall of artwork before him. The colors, shapes, and textures. "Twisted Wonderland is so vast and diverse. I've traveled far and wide, experienced a great deal of cultures, yet I always find myself anchored to that one special place called home. There is no comfort like it."

There’s no place like home.

A twinge pulsated in his chest. The pain, marring the nostalgic warmth he bathed in. Lilia did not let it show—not to his underclassman, not this child that stared at him with such eagerness.

He swallowed.

“How do you celebrate in Briar Valley?” Epel asked. “Can you tell me about your traditions too?”

“Kufufu. You’re keen on learning, I see.”

“I didn’t always. I’m sure if you asked Vil, he’d give you a mouthful about how ‘uppity’ and ‘full of myself’ I was at first.” Epel groaned at the thought of another lecture from his dorm leader. “… But recently, I’ve been thinkin’ it’s not too bad to hear about how others experience everything.

“Meemaw—my grandma—goes to the city to sell our farm’s produce. She has to switch up how she talks to speak to the locals. I noticed our mayor too, when he talks to tourists. So learning about new people and cultures can’t be a bad thing.”

Epel’s eyes were wide, sparkling with wanderlust. Wistful and longing for the world that awaited him.

Perhaps Lilia had worn the same expression before, at the moment of his epiphany. When had he realized it? When the elderly couple had draped a blanket over him, when they shared a meal, when they spun him the stories of their lives, or when he sat at the cradle and relived those times to a still dormant Malleus?

The warmth in him expanded, like a gulp of soup trickling down his throat, then splashing in his stomach. It had been a humble broth of vegetables, and yet it satisfied him down to the last drop.

“We’re really not so different,” Lilia explained with a grin. “Food and friends are all you need to have a good time wherever you are.

“However, if you are particularly fortunate, you just may have a guardian fairy descend and give you blessings as well.” He indicated the painting of the three fairies hovering over a cradle. “Like so. I believe this infant was gifted with song, beauty, and…”

“Song and beauty?!” Epel’s expression crinkled. “Who decided on those, the parents?”

“The guardian fairies themselves. They choose what they believe will bring the blessed child happiness.”

“They could’ve given the kid something more…” Epel vaguely waved a hand. “I don’t know, useful? Why not strength so they won’t lose any fights? I’d be happy with some more muscle of my own…”

Lilia laughed, soft and low like a midnight whisper. “Why not indeed.”

Because time steals away everything eventually, hissed a voice in his head. The truth, bare and bitter.

The edges of Lilia’s vision quivered. A memory resurfaced—blink, and he saw himself in the frame, his long shadow cast over the crib. Blink, and that was Silver nestled in the fabric. Blink, and the castle was abandoned and covered in thorns.

A fairy robbing a crib of its cursed child.

“Strength is good to have,” Lilia said slowly, “but it will not last forever. Not many things do.”

Still… If I could have one wish, it would be…

The only force able to break the spell set upon Silver. The one feeling he was certain he was incapable of. A love so pure and honest, it was known to be true.

Something he wasn’t worthy of.

True love.

Not him. Not the grimy, low-born bat of a dubious past—as his most unkind of thoughts would insist.

He was the same as them. He had condemned Silver to walking in the night, had made the decision for him. The instant his hair had turned from pale sunshine to the moonlight of his namesake, it was too late to unwind the clock.

Which had he cast—blessing or curse?

The longer he looked at the painting, the more mocking the gentle, rounded faces of the guardian fairies seemed to become. Guiltless, oblivious beings, they were.

They would never know of his plight.

Lilia scoffed. “If the fairies wanted the child to be happy, they should have granted them that strength.”

That which was impossible for him.

"The power to overcome a curse.”

"... The power to overcome a curse, huh?" Epel quietly mused. "Not even Vil-senpai has that kind of strength--and his unique magic is to cast curses! Until the conditions are fulfilled, it can't be broken."

"That's the trouble with curses," Lilia agreed. "They're finicky, depending on how they're woven. Some may even last a lifetime without ever being lifted. Others may spend their own lives seeking out cures."

The story of his life. He was always searching for something, something, something. Lost friends, how to hatch a dragon's egg, true love to dispel drowsiness.

Now, a happy ending.

Lilia released a sigh through his nose.

If only.

"Well, if magic can't make that wish come true... we'll just have to make it a reality ourselves, won't we?"

#twst #twisted wonderland #Lilia Vanrouge #twst imagines #twst scenarios #Epel Felmier #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios #spoilers #something no one asked for #Lilia birthday takeover #the title is a reference to an Equestria Girls song www

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sp4cepunisher · 1 year

Text

dress [ e. williams ]

summary ; ellie loves to see you in your dress, almost as much as she loves seeing you out of it.

warnings ; 18+ themes, minors dni ! pure smut, top!ellie x bottom!reader. very strong language, explicit depictions of sexual intercourse [ reader receiving; fingering ] + semi-public sex basically ellie can’t stop looking at you and fantasising about you because you’re just so fucking hot and you can’t help but do the same because she looks so good in her suit sooo she fucks you in the bathroom at a party!!!

author’s note ; buckle yourselves in, folks! because… *evil little smirk* this is one hell of a raunchy piece of gay, smutty smut. it’s like, a great mix of romantic and dirty and just brimful of all the good stuff! thank you so much to the anon who requested this because it’s actually my first piece of full smut since my return! so! i hope i haven’t lost my sparkle! + if i’ve forgotten to feature any warnings above which you think should be included, (as always) pleeeease let me know! also, like... half way? three quarters of the way? through writing this i became very aware of the fact that it was aaactually supposed to be more of a make love kind of narrative, buuut i got way too wrapped up in the idea of the reader’s dress, which then unfolded into pure smut whiiich then just... became a super raunchy desperate bathroom situation and.... *scratches my head* uuuh.... yeah! i hope that’s cool with you because there isn’t much i can do about it, now! *blows you all the biggest, fattest kiss ever* okay, i thiiink that’s it from me! enjoy this you sick, twisted little fucks!!! (jk i love u we’re sick + twisted together<3)

. . .

ellie wasn’t particularly fond of parties.

sure, she enjoyed a drink. to a certain extent, she liked to mingle. and yeah, she enjoyed music (that being said, it had to be good music). but ellie’s favourite part about any party was when she was able to attend with you, like tonight; adorned in a dress you had found in the back and beyond of your wardrobe; your features complimented by light makeup with a demeanour a little looser than usual, thanks to the one, two, three, four drinks which you had been sipping and cradling in your hand throughout the evening. you were shining; a golden statue amongst the other grey bodies; glowing like a household fire, and ellie was enamoured by the way in which she could practically see the happiness radiating from your every pore. making an appearance at dina’s birthday party hadn’t exactly been at the top of ellie’s to-do list, but the night actually hadn’t turned out to be as bad as she had anticipated. as far she was concerned, ellie would have been content in staying at the party all night if that meant being able to continue catching lucky glimpses of your upper thigh whenever you would sit down, or being able to admire the way your nipples would harden beneath the thin fabric of your dress whenever the cool summer breeze would make its way through the open door and kiss over your bare shoulders.

you were a little tipsy. probably more than your sober self would have cared to admit in any other circumstance, but right now you didn’t care. your veins were flooded with serotonin, head as light as air and body warm from the alcohol, which had been sliding down your throat like honeyed velvet far too easily that evening. you had actually felt happy; watching the birthday girl spinning around in admirers’ arms, but always finding her way back to jesse; content in remaining seated at one of the tables, you had been enjoying chatting to those who came and left the few seats beside you, catching up and sharing a few polite laughs. but what had made you the happiest was the feeling of a certain girl’s eyes fixed to the side of your head for what had seemed like hours, now. it had been hours. you knew that ellie preferred to remain at the sidelines at things like this— close enough to keep you in her eyeline, but far enough away to ensure that she didn’t have to mix with too many people, aside from those who would linger at the bar for a few minutes— but you could tell that the majority of her attention had been dedicated to you, and only you.

“hey, party girl!” a voice cut through your train of thought, and you knew that the person standing beside you was dina before you had even turned your head. there she was; a little sweaty from dancing but still looking as pretty as ever, chest rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath, a smile plastered to her face as you looked up at her. “y’wanna dance?”

“oh,” you shook your head insistently, eyebrows furrowing a little. “no, thanks. i’d end up on my ass if i danced, right now.”

“c’mo—n,” she reached for your hand, curling and uncurling her fingers as she silently willed you to place your hand in hers. “it’s my birthday. are you really gonna refuse me a dance?”

you sighed. it wasn’t just an excuse, although you didn’t love dancing in a room full of people. you really were too tipsy to remain content in your self-awareness. “dina. there are still like, twenty people out there who wanna dance with you.” you gestured towards the abundance of people that remained out on the floor.

“but there’s only one person who i wanna dance with, right now. buuut, she’s sitting right here, refusing me my wish, on my birthday!”

you rubbed your fingers across your forehead, eyes searching dina’s for even the tiniest glimpse of her giving up, but you weren’t sure you were going to get it. you couldn’t help but allow your gaze to drift over to the bar, eyes immediately finding ellie and lips curling up into a smile when you noticed the way in which her green eyes sparkled.

“cheers to another trip around the sun, dina! another year older and wiser, and yet, (y/n) still won’t dance with you!” dina’s gaze soon followed yours when she received no reply, her face immediately softening when she realised what— or rather, who— had grabbed your attention before she could continue guilt tripping you into making a fool out of yourself. “oooh, i see,” a smile was evident in her voice. “you’d rather sit here and stare at ellie all night, huh?”

you turned back to look at her, rolling your eyes. “actually, she’s been staring at me all night.”

dina laughed. you knew how much she loved you and ellie together. “okay, well. i guess i can’t exactly stand in the way of love-”

“oh my god, stop.”

“-but you owe me a dance next time, okay?”

not being entirely sure when “next time” would be, but realising that it was probably in your best interests to hold your tongue, since you were pretty sure you had — god knows how, because she was stubborn when she wanted to be — just managed to get out of dancing with dina, you simply nodded your head and smiled politely. “okay, dee.” you rested your chin on your fists as you propped your elbows up on the table. while you watched as she turned back around to regain her rightful position on the dancefloor, you hadn’t been aware of the sound of wooden chair legs raking across the oak flooring as the seat beside was pulled out.

“hey, you.”

the voice didn’t make you jump exactly, but it did take you by surprise to assume that someone else may actually want to be in your company. that was, of course, until your turned your head to put a name to the body in the chair and came to realise that it was ellie; dressed in the white button-down shirt that she had borrowed from jesse, (which was technically too big for her but which she made do with by tucking it into her trousers) and complimented by the contrasting black tie which you had secured around her neck a few hours earlier, after she had complained that she had “no fucking idea how to tie a stupid tie”. you knew that dina’s choice of dress code hadn’t thrilled ellie— she was the most comfortable in one of her old sweatshirts and a pair of her battered black jeans— but my god, did she look good in her make-shift suit. with half of her hair tied up into a messy bun at the back of her head and the other half barely brushing her shoulders, you couldn’t quite believe that she was all yours.

“hey,” you breathed, smile stretching over your features as soon as you were aware of a steady hand coming to rest on the small of your back, and you felt your girlfriend’s lips press a gentle kiss to your exposed shoulder.

“having a good night?” she whispered into your skin, the loose ends of her hair tickling your pores which caused goosebumps to rise up over the back of your neck.

“yeah, actually. it’s been fun. s’nice seeing dina so happy,” you nodded. “are you?”

ellie shrugged her shoulders gently, eyes making their way around the room momentarily but finding their way back to you with no problem. “yeah, i mean... i thought it was gonna be worse.”

you let your eyes drift over ellie’s features; having free rein over the sandy shore of her freckles and the glint in her tidal eyes, her auburn wisps framing them as if an art exhibition; she belonged in a museum. you were well aware of how much she regarded these kinds of events with disfavour, and knew how much she would have preferred spending the evening inside, alone, with you. “always the optimist, babe,” you teased her, lifting a hand from beneath your chin and using it to give her cotton-clad knee a squeeze; subtle in nature but obvious to your girlfriend in both reassurance and affection. “but, i am glad we came. i mean, look at her,” you reverted your attention back to dina, gaze softening as you watched her being swayed in jesse’s arms, still a magnet beneath every onlookers’ cobalt eyes. “she’s glowing.”

but ellie had no real desire to look at dina. not when she could look at you. her eyes were glued to you; wandering over the slope of your back, the dent of your spine nestled between your shoulder blades as if sculpted by god himself, and which she honestly believed she could litter with kisses until the sun came up. how the definition of your breastbone shone in the light, taunting her; almost beseeching her to drag her callused fingertips over the skin to bring about the inevitable goosebumps which would come decorate you like sequins. the way your delicate fingers wrapped themselves around your glass, lifting it from the table and bringing it to your lips, which appeared like two pristine rose petals; how your throat twitched as the alcohol disappeared and you swallowed it down so easily. “you’re even brighter,” she whispered, her words making themselves known to you before she had even really processed them; brisk in the way they launched themselves from her lips but weightless in the way they drifted down before your face. it was too late to stop them now. actually, she didn’t really want to stop them. “you look beautiful, tonight. have i told you that?”

you turned your head back to look at the girl beside you, your action soothed by the feeling of her hand travelling up the expanse of your back, tracing your spine with her thumb and allowing her fingers to follow closely behind. “only like, twenty times,” your comment evoked a certain glint in ellie’s eyes. “but, so do you.” you batted the compliment back, almost without missing a beat.

she scoffed. “please, i feel ridiculous.”

you shook your head insistently, dutch courage guiding your hand like a puppeteer and sliding it further up ellie’s thigh. you loved the feeling of the fabric against your fingertips, the roughness of the fibres contrasted with the sleekness of her skin hidden beneath them; the rise and fall of her muscle which felt like heaven to you, in that moment. “you shouldn’t,” your voice was lower now, just loud enough to still be heard by only ellie above the music. “you look so good.”

the solidity evident your words peaked ellie’s interest. sure, you had told her how well you thought she pulled the look off before you had arrived at the party together, but the most self-conscious parts of ellie had all rallied round to persuade the girl that you were simply just being nice. however, although she knew that you were a little more tipsy than usual, the look in your eyes seemed to ignite something in her; the need to argue her opinion until she was blue in the face evaporated when she noticed the earnest in your face and felt the way in which your thumb was rubbing gentle circles against her inner thigh. “well,” she leaned forward, tucking your hair behind your ear with her nimble fingers, but not before the side of her knuckle grazed against your neck. “that makes two of us, then.”

“oh, stop.”

“been looking at you all night.”

“mm, i know. felt your eyes on me.”

“can you blame me?”

“well, i could look at you in this suit forever,” you whispered, feeling yourself becoming bolder with every breath. “it’s like, made for you.”

“except it’s fuckin’ huge.” ellie grinned. “but, your dress? so perfect. you look so gorgeous,” her fingers slid over your collarbone and to the right, where they caressed the strap of your dress, skimming your skin in their wake. “don’t know which i’d rather see; you in the dress, or…” her eyes flicked back up to find yours, and you noticed that they were considerably darker than before. “you out of it.”

silk words, woven right before your eyes pulled on your brows and caused them to rise, top teeth tugging your bottom between them as an automatic response to the way her sultry words made you feel. the butterflies in your stomach were awoken, swarming in a pack and reaching your throat where you were at a loss for words for a good few seconds. the confidence in your previous comments had been snuffed out just by ellie’s eyes finding yours and the words she had uttered, for your ears only. it had always been easy for the girl to make you feel so small; so shy and yet so bold in your willingness to do anything for her if she asked.

“cat got your tongue?” she whispered, noticing the way in which she had silenced you and revelling in it while the pad of her index finger ran over your jaw. she observed the way the corners of your lips twitched with a shadow of a smile before you leaned a little closer to her, and she couldn’t help but let her gaze fall to the way in which the edge of your dress pulled away from your chest. the valley of supple skin between your breasts was almost calling for her; begging to be kissed and licked and sucked between her teeth, reddened and bruised and marked for a couple of days.

“no,” you bluffed, shrugging your shoulders as nonchalantly as you could manage to pass off. “i was just waiting for you to tell me which one you’d prefer.“

“how about i show you?”

. . .

a cacophony of sound; feet shuffling, the door locking, deep breaths and heavy sighs, filled the intimate space of the room which yourself and ellie soon found yourselves in. her provocative comment had caused you both to make quick work of rising from your seats at the table, your hand slotting into hers like second nature, and your underwear already becoming bedewed from beneath your skirt as she tugged you towards the washroom.

your head was spinning in the best way possible, partly thanks to the alcohol, but otherwise due to the adrenaline which was pulsing through your body like heroin. everything was a blur; everything except the features belonging to your girlfriend which rested just a mere few centimetres from your own face. kisses that were being pressed to your lips took a couple of seconds to be reciprocated, but which were soon accompanied by arms which snaked around your waist and pulled you from the wood of the door, flush against her body as the kisses deepened and soon became one messy, passionate, wordless conversation of shared i love you’s, i missed you’s, i want you’s. your body seemed to become utterly malleable in that moment, moulding into ellie’s like sand as her hips pushed into yours and her hands smoothed over the rise of your ass while yours slid over her shoulders and enjoyed the softness of her cotton shirt against your fingertips.

“mm,” she pulled away from the kiss, lips pink and pupils already blown out so much that her eyes— always so pretty in their viridescence— now seemed deeply sable. “been wanting to touch you all night,” her words were hot against the side of your face as she leaned in and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to your jaw, taking them down to your neck where she tasted your perfume on her tongue. you felt her fingers teasing the edge of your skirt, the pads of each digit gliding over the silky fabric and barely skimming the skin of your upper thighs.

“you’ve got me now,” you reassured her, head taking full advantage of the solidness of the door that it rested against. “all to yourself,”

your words caused the girl to smile. “oh, i know. i’m so lucky,” her lips spoke against your collarbone when she finally reached it, teeth grazing the prominent bone menacingly while her fingers toyed with the elastic hem on your underwear. “y’gonna let me touch you, baby?” ellie whispered again, lifting her head to catch your eyes in her darkened stare.

“yes, ellie,”

“mm? you want me to?”

her index fingers hooked around the waistband.

“god, yes,”

“say please,”

her thumb brushed over your veiled folds.

“please, ellie. please,”

your pristine manners, the breathiness of your voice, and the way in which she could almost feel how your cunt was throbbing beneath her touch caused any light that was still evident in ellie’s eyes to be blown out; totally snuffed in a mere couple of seconds. agile fingers pushed the thin piece of material aside while the open palm of her free hand trailed over your breasts, and you felt the cool pads of her digits begin rubbing circles on your clit; firm enough to make your body go stiff, but slow enough to ensure that she could gather all of your wetness.

“fuck, baby,” ellie sighed, eyes threatening to roll back just from the feel of you beneath her digits. “you’ve been wet for a while, huh?”

you nodded, head feeling weightless atop your shoulders as your girlfriend continued her exploration of your arousal.

“is that right? been wet for me all night?” her voice seemed quieter now as she leaned in closer to you, lips pressing against your shoulder in open-mouthed kisses.

you nodded your head again, eyelids heavy and chest beginning to rise and fall a little faster the moment you felt her fingers pick up beneath your skirt. “yes, oh my god,”

“mm, does that feel good?” ellie’s words were hot against your skin; almost scorching against your pulse as her lips began climbing the lustrous slope of your neck.

“feels so good,” you made sure to keep your voice down, the feeling of intense pleasure swarming your body not being quite enough to swipe your conscience completely clean of the fact that yourself and ellie were separated from the other residents of jackson only by a wooden barrier. “need you…”

“yeah? what do y’need me to do, sweet girl?”

the way in which ellie’s fingers were encircling your clit was beginning to make your knees wobble; you needed more, she knew you did. your body was trembling against hers like a newborn calf, your fingers gripping onto her shirt. “need you to fuck me,” you weren’t embarrassed to say it, nor were you too stubborn, which would certainly have been the case if the shoe had happened to be on the other foot. plus, you knew how much ellie enjoyed hearing you tell her what you wanted; how much it satisfied her every need alone, just to simply hear the words come out of your mouth. “please…”

the girl hummed, her middle and third finger parting to slide over your folds, which were both so deliciously slick with the wetness she had been enjoying only a few seconds earlier. she lifted her head from your shoulder, catching your gaze as best she could from behind your blissful expression and heavy eyes to soak up the desperation and ardour which resided in your irises. “i love you,” she whispered, leaning close enough to whisper against your lips. you remained quiet, the sound of your deep inhales and exhales being the only shadow of an answer that she received. that was when she decided to dip the very tip of her middle finger into your luscious hole, which she could already tell was flooded with your arousal in an attempt to prompt a real response from you. “do you love me, baby?”

you released a shaky breath, lips parting a little wider when you felt ellie ease her finger into you a little further, but still not enough to be fully satisfied. “yes,” you nodded, voice heavy but still quiet enough to remain undetected.

“yeah?” she was mocking you now, her finger dipping in and out of your hole at a snail’s pace; still not enough to relieve you. “say it,” your walls were in desperate need of something to tighten around, your wetness beginning to dampen your inner thighs as your girlfriend taunted you, her free hand coming to slide one strap of your dress down your arm, then another. pulling the material from over your breasts, her eyes trailed over the way your pebbled nipples protruded from the silken skin, and the prepossessing fullness of your tits. “c’mon. tell me you fucking love me, pretty girl.”

“i love you,” you breathed, and that seemed to be music to ellie’s ears; the music she had been yearning to hear all night, and enough to finally make her sink her finger into you completely. you instinctively gripped onto her shoulder at the sensation, eyes turning to the ceiling and lips parting to let out a breathy moan as you felt the callused pad of her digit skim over your walls. she was easing you open, just like she always loved to do, while her thumb took its time in smoothing over your nipples with ease. you could already feel your feet threatening to slip out from under, and therefore you kept one hand clamped on ellie’s shoulder in a vice-like grasp, while the other remained tucked behind your back; palm open and desperate in its search for a solid grip on the wood.

your girlfriend teased the outer edge of your hole with a second finger. "mmm,” ellie’s voice vibrated over the expanse of your chest as she littered the rise of your breasts with sloppy kisses, tongue wetting the skin unapologetically. “you feel so fucking good, baby,” the warmth of her breath blew over your hardened nipples, and you felt your back begin to arch from each of the simultaneous sensations which were now ricocheting throughout your body like bullets; one, after the other, after the other. it was then that you felt your nipple become swathed by the flick of ellie’s tongue; then, the sheathing of her lips, and with a subtle curl of her finger, your back started arching off of the door when you felt her push a second digit inside you.

“oh, fuck,” you gasped, arm coming across to drape itself around both of ellie’s shoulder and your nails digging into her bicep through her shirt. she wasn’t going easy on you now, either; both fingers crescent moons, and already pushing against the sponginess of your g-spot like it was nothing. finally finishing her gentle assault on your breasts, she lifted her head and admired the way in which your eyes had fallen closed, jaw having falling slack and your eyebrows furrowed in pleasure.

“you like that? like it when you can feel me nice ‘nd deep, sweet girl?”

“ye–es, fuck... ellie,”

“sound so pretty when you say my name,” oh, she was getting comfortable, now. “always love hearing it, baby...” ellie knew you were teetering on the edge of an orgasm; clinging onto the last sliver of sanity which barely remained, and so she was tactical in the bending of her thumb and its newfound position on your clit. the obscene squelching which could be heard from beneath your skirt made you bite down on your lip in your best attempt to hold back your moans, and made ellie grin against your jaw as she came to rest her face in the crook of your neck. “oh, fuck yeah,”

the noticeable tightness of your cunt, on top of the incessant pleasure she was supplying to your every nerve through the rhythmic movements of her fingers was threatening to let you down; lungs swelling with the need to cry out from how close you were getting to reaching orgasm. ellie could sense it. she had noticed the way in which your knees had began to buckle and how your spine had curved, body slumped against the door as if you were fully prepared to give it all up. with her gentle words of encouragement being pressed into your neck as if she intended to make them stain, the brunette made quick work of snaking her arm around your waist to hold you up, her grip firm, yet somehow, so gentle, as you reached the great peak of your entirely euphoric, entirely secret, little meeting.

“ellie,” you panted, her name almost totally lost on your lips from beneath the breathy moans that followed. “oh my god. p–please don’t stop, please don’t fucking stop, baby,”

you felt ellie moan into the side of your neck, her thumb brushing over your swollen clit where it began to rub small, firm circles again. “yeah? are you gonna cum?”

“fuck, fuck, fuck, yes,”

her fingers sped up, plunging in and out of your soaking cunt, desperate to earn her prize. “cum for me, pretty girl. i’ve got you, c’mon. i’ve got you,” the way in which the girl coaxed you through the pleasure— disregarding the gibberish which followed your previous coherence, yet making sure to savour every syllable— only made your orgasm more intense. your walls spasmed around ellie’s fingers, eyes rolling back into your head and lips pressed tightly together to muffle the moans which rose up in your throat and threatened to crash straight through them, like a tsunami past a floodgate. your orgasm washed over you; intense and merciless, rendering you stone-cold sober yet disorienting you like a concussion, and with no room for anything other than a ripple in your abdomen, and the absolute soaking of ellie’s hand.

your girlfriend could feel your pulse through your neck, thumping against her face, her skin practically burning from the warmth that was radiating from your body as it remained flush against hers; rendered totally rigid only a few minutes ago, but now falling limp and docile. she couldn’t help but moan into your neck when she slowed her movements enough to feel the stickiness that coated her fingers, her palm, her fucking wrist at this point. she made sure to slide her fingers out of you with conscious and noticeable care, her other hand soon reaching down to slip your underwear back into its original position over the top of your heat. once your grip had loosened from around ellie’s shoulder, and she was content in the sturdiness of your stance upon letting go of your waist, the two of you shared a smile; ellie’s accompanied by eyes which were evidently florescent, and yours through heavy lids.

“good?”

“mm,” you nodded. “always so good,”

your girlfriend leaned in and smiled, capturing your lips in a kiss which was rich in love and reassurance, and which you were quick to return. “good,” she whispered once the two of you had pulled away. “i don’t know how the hell you stayed so quiet, though.”

you grinned, cheeks turning a gentle shade of pink as ellie pushed your hair back from your face. “well, i mean... i’d rather dina remember tonight for reasons other than what we got up to in the bathroom, y’know.”

ellie nodded her head, watching as you slipped the straps of your dress back over your shoulders and smoothed down your skirt. her eyes were full of adoration, pupils still twinkling in the dim light of the room as she took a moment to just look at you. somehow, you looked more beautiful in that moment than you had looked all night, if that was even possible; your eyelids still weighty, skin abundant with that particular kind of glow and your lips slightly reddened. “i love you,” she reminded you, lifting your chin between her thumb and index finger. “a lot.”

“and i love you,”

“even in this stupid suit?”

“oh,” you nodded, biting back a smirk. “especially in that stupid suit.”

#ellie williams x reader #ellie williams x you #ellie williams x female reader #ellie williams fanfiction #ellie williams smut #ellie williams the last of us #ellie the last of us #ellie williams #ellie williams fanfic #tlou 2 fanfic #the last of us fanfic #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us 2 fanfiction #tlou 2

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vyl3tpwny · 8 months

Text

Music Genres

When I was kid, you would have probably heard me say something like “I don’t believe in genre labels”. To a degree, there is still something about that sentiment that I agree with; I don’t think you can really put music and styles of music in neat little boxes. But otherwise, I was pretty much wrong about everything else.

Let’s go over that.

pictured: Mala, one of the godfathers of roots Dubstep

—

To be blunt, “genre” isn’t just about approximating what a song sounds like. If you say “I love pop music”, that honestly doesn’t mean much. The more specific you get, the more you will approach something someone can imagine like “I like experimental progressive noise pop music”. Ok, I can start to imagine things that likely approach what you're talking about, but even then it will usually not help someone fully understand what something truly is. In categorizing and approximating music styles, genres only go so far. So what makes them important then?

Well, not to say that approximating a style when describing an artist to someone is a bad thing or that doing so isn’t meant to be valued, but it’s hardly the only reason these labels exist. Importantly, “genre” helps establish culture, history, and a musical identity. So when you're trying to tell someone you're listening to a "progressive rock” project, you’re not just imagining odd time-signatures and complex riffs, you’re also meant to understand and consider that whatever is being described as to you has some sort of relevance or importance with regards to the history behind progressive rock; the culture of college bands in the UK, the sound that the punk movement revolted against, the progression of musical storytelling in rock music since the late 60’s and early 70’s, stuff like that. There’s a distinct culture and history you can pinpoint and understand when you describe something as being progressive rock and you can’t just go around calling any complex electric guitar oriented music "progressive rock" unless it has those specific ties as well as understanding and iteration of the roots.

pictured: Genesis, because progressive rock mention

—

Genre labels help to clarify what kind of culture and histories a music project is being associated itself with and where a lot of its inspiration comes from. This is much more compelling reason for underlining the importance of genre labels and why they should be used correctly.

So, there is something I need to get off my chest then. There are a lot of misuses of genre labels all over the place, especially online. And I’m not talking about saying something is “Alternative Rock” when it’s clearly some kind of “Folk Rock” record instead. What I’m talking about is something like “Dubstep”.

Even as recent as a few years ago, I started personally reclaiming the term “Dubstep” as a genre label to describe any bass-adjacent music. At the time I did this, I thought it was cool, because the term Dubstep had been dubbed (pun intended) to be cringeworthy lexicon to some people. And while I feel that’s a noble reason to reclaim something like that, because some weirdos think it's cringe, in this case I actually think it’s wrong.

The term “Brostep” has been used to describe any non-roots bass-oriented music that originates from the proper roots Dubstep. It’s a term I didn’t like FOREVER, especially because the phrase was derived as a generalization of the kind of people who tend to listen to it. However, I actually think that Brostep is a title that people should be more comfortable and confident with labeling things as.

The original Dubstep came as a result of Jamaican immigrants bringing Dub music to the UK, which then fused with the remnants of 2-Step Garage which was prominent in the 90’s just years prior. Timbah.On.Toast made a great video called All My Homies Hate Skrillex and it is a really good breakdown of what separates roots Dubstep from the Americanized Brostep, which came after it. I think everyone knows by now that I have a deep, deep love for EDM based Broste and I am the biggest Skrillex fangirl alive. So being both a Brostep and Skrillex superfan, please understand that I think the video is one of the most important things you can watch as an EDM enjoyer.

Conflating the term Dubstep with things that aren’t actually Dubstep is honestly a slap in the face to all of the pioneers of Dub and Dubstep, which famously were both pretty much ENTIRELY invented by black people. I think it’s fair to say that incorrectly labeling music in this way has racist implications. It dishonours and twists the legacy of the music. You can find og Dubstep to listen to on the RYM Ultimate Box Set > Dubstep page. Check some of that out, then listen to some 2010, 2011 Skrillex and see how different things really went.

It confused me at first when I was a teenager, I didn't understand why so many people hated Skrillex back in the day. I came to realize so much of the hate wasn’t even really with regards music itself, but the total lack of understanding or care for the roots of the genre, which all of his work was founded upon and he then subsequently bastardized without caring at all. It was pure disrespect, it was practically cultural erasure and so many people will now only know of Dubstep as “that Skrillex transformer screech music”. Yeah. It actually fucking sucks.

But there is a LONG history of black music being erased from history and being undermined, whether entirely intentional or due to systemic unawareness.

I saw a post the other day talking about how it sucks that so much music is just lumped into being “video game music” when so much of this stuff has deep roots and cultural significance. The first example pointed how a lot of acid jazz music is just described as “Persona music” by the layperson now. Meanwhile, Acid Jazz as a genre is a huge development on things like roots jazz, disco, funk, and hip hop music. You know. All genres that were invented by black people. Fascinating, right?

Jungle music was also mentioned. And this one is very particular for me. Jungle music, when not being generalized as "PS1 Music", is often just called drum & bass or breakcore (also please Google the difference between breakbeat and breakcore, thanks) which are all fundamentally misunderstanding what Jungle music even is. Much of Jungle music, AS MANY THINGS DO, finds VERY prominent roots in Reggae, Dub, and sound system culture in Jamaica as well as countless other prominently black communities in the UK.

But it doesn’t stop there.

If you’re unfamiliar, there is a genre called “IDM”, otherwise known as Intelligent Dance Music. When I was a kid, and I first heard that word, I immediately was like “that is the most pretentious, stupid thing I’ve ever heard”. Eventually as I grew up, I just stopped thinking about that and started referring to more music as IDM. This style of music is generally characterized with “complexity” and being “not much danceable”. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the music that is called IDM, I do think there’s everything wrong with the term IDM, intelligent dance music.

When asked how he feels about being labeled as an IDM artist, Aphex Twin responded:

"I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's [basically] saying 'this is intelligent and everything else is STUPID.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music."

pictured: Aphex Twin, the funnyman himself

—

I think most people would agree with this sentiment. It’s so strange to call one kind of music “intelligent”, out of the hundreds of thousands of genres out there. But let’s bring this back to Jungle music. The reality is that IDM started to become a term around the same time that Jungle music became prominent, in the 90's. Both styles of music are complex, introspective, skittery, and chaotic (but refined and often disciplined) genres. Except, of these two, Jungle music was the one pioneered primarily by black artists. IDM was a sort in competition with Jungle. To therefore call IDM “intelligent” in comparison to Jungle music ... well. I don’t feel like I really have to explain why that’s fucked up.

A lot of people have proposed different names for IDM. A quick look on reddit yields things like “Experimental Electronic” and “Brain Dance” (which was coined by Aphex Twin's label). Me personally, the term “Electro-Prog” comes to mind. Sounds cool.

Similar conversations are presently being had about the term “Riddim”. This brings us back to the dubstep side of this discussion again. Riddim, as an EDM genre, is an offshoot of Brostep music that focuses a lot on repetition over the downbeat, maintaining an insanely distorted sound design, a lot more than the average Brostep song. However, the term “riddim” originates — yet again — from the Jamaican Patois for “rhythm”. And Riddim as a musical style in Jamaica is actually more associated with things like dancehall and reggae, rather than the commercialized "Riddim" that is several hundred times removed from its own roots.

Last year, musician INFEKT proposed that what most EDM listeners call “riddim” should be referred to instead as “Trench” in an article on their website. This proposed name is derived from Getter’s use of the term on his 2014 record “Trenchlords Vol. 1”. I don’t personally know how much I resonate with the term, but whatever the consensus is, I don’t think we should be conflating a westernized, commercialized, and EDM-centric genre like this to Jamaican roots music. Over and over again, it seems that black music is constantly overwritten by developments like this, so I think more care needs to be taken in not allowing that to happen.

As a side note, a lot of people online seem very keen on appropriating Jamaican Patois quite often? There are so many examples of this. When the term “Bomboclaat” started making the rounds on Twitter a few years ago, so many white people were quick to either talk wildly about the term and trend or otherwise start saying it as well. There was a fucking article that sought to answer “The Bomboclaat >> Meme << Meaning Explained”, like they’re not dissecting an element of Jamaican slang lol. Then there was a period of time where people were constantly saying things like “On Jah?” as a stand-in for “On God?” even though this, again, is Jamaican Patois. And even now, you have tons and tons of non-black people going everywhere being like “what is blud waffling about?”, the phrase “blud” ONCE AGAIN also being Jamaican in origin.

I shouldn’t even have to explain what makes these kinds of appropriations weird and messed up. But black people lose jobs and are denied basic things in life over their hair styles, their expressions and slang, and so many other things that a white person can just appropriate and face zero consequences whatsoever for.

That aside, aside. Understanding and labeling genres correctly is such a big part of music history and highlighting and preserving cultures worldwide. When efforts are made to undermine the meaning of a genre label or otherwise use it incorrectly, so much damage is done to the communities and people groups that innovate and pioneer this art to begin with.

For these reasons, I will gladly use the term Brostep. I will happily call things Electro-Prog. And when you talk about genres like Jungle and Dubstep, say it with your whole chest. Be proud of the human race, show respect and love for the people who have forged the greatest parts of music with their bare hands. We will always stand on the shoulders of giants as musicians, so instead of pretending you yourself are the giant, build monuments and maintain the history of these people. You as an artist are nothing without them.

pictured: Augustus Pablo, one of the most important innovators of Dub. Without him, and without many of his contemporaries, I would reckon that half or more of all modern music would simply not exist.

CONTENT WARNING FOR THIS FINAL SECTION, THERE ARE LIKE LOTS OF STRANGE SLURS AND RACIST VIBES.

—

One last thing I wanna mention, this is slightly tangential but I think it's relevant to this conversation. It's always weird how lots of websites categorize things like this:

From Big Fish Audio... "G**sy*? "World/Ethnic Loops & Samples"? What the fuck are you talking about. Seems like racism to me.

On Loopmasters they have a "World" section. Any Americanized genre gets its own category, but the entire continents of Africa and Asia as well as the country of India and region of the Middle East (which are part of Asia, hope this helps btw) and lastly South America are stuffed into the nebulous "World Label". Seems like racism to me. Are you telling me you weirdos can't figure out a better way to represent these things?

But then Psy Trance gets its whole entire own category? Aren't there only like five people who listen to Psy Trance? /hj . But like come on.

Shoutout to WA Productions for categorizing a universe of suspiciously mostly black music as """Urban"""". And this company is a dime a dozen, hundreds of corpos do this shit.

East fucking West, what is this dude. There is a racism happening, I just know it. Please give me a count of how many poc are on payroll at your company, I am so curious.

And while we're at it, East West, what is this. Tell me. Fucking tell me.

Thanks for reading.

#vyop

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precious-little-scoundrel · 2 months

Text

Dear John || Tell me you didn’t

Dear John || Masters of the Air fanfiction

Series Summary: Major John Egan wasn’t the pen-pal sort but a couple of hours into a dark night full of writing condolence letters he finds himself wondering why he never tried his hand at the nicer forms of correspondence. Who better to reanimate his numb inspiration than the glamorous Miss Lana Tierney? -the army’s girl next door, the pinup so prolific she was practically a wall paper print and Bucky’s long-standing cinematic crush. It’s not like she’ll read it anyways, tucked up in luxury in Beverly Hills with carts of tedious fanmail burned in her back yard each day, his letter will get lost in the mix. It’s harmless. That thought -and the booze- may loosen his pen a little too much but it’s alright, it’s not like she’ll read it. Right? Right.

Circa: August 1943

Plot: Gale Cleven learns that not only did his best friend send dubious fanmail while blind drunk, he seems to have singled out with his indomitable luck the one starlet of the silver screen capable of matching his depravity

Warnings: 18+ for suggestive and crass content, it’s pretty much two boys acting like a couple of girls at a sleepover deciphering a dirty text from one’s crush

My thanks to my baby Bri for literally being the brains behind the plot and for Christi for assuring me this ain’t trash. We shall if y’all share those sentiments…

The referenced letter link 💌

“Tell me you didn’t.” Gale managed to keep his tone calm but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit his fingertips had gone a little chilly.

“I-“ Egan threw his arms out as if a better truth might form with a little more gesticulation but nothing came, “I did, Buck.” he admitted.

“You wrote it blind drunk.” Gale reminded him with urgency, as if the reminder of its ill calculated circumstances could snatch back his letter from out of Lana Tierney’s posh mailbox.

“I did!” He agreed, “-And I sent it blind drunk. And I never thought she’d read it.”

“I saw you eat it!” Cleven’s voice was growing angry, “I made you-“

“That may have been a botched first draft to Donny’s folks instead.” Egan winced.

Both of them lapsed again into silence, staring warily at the unopened and daintily addressed envelope in Egan’s hand like it might explode at any moment.

“You sonuvabitch.” Gale breathed, two frantic pink splotches appearing on his cherub cheeked face, judgment and disbelief making a whirlpool of his eyes. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute. What all did you even say?”

“I didn’t tell her about ACORN!” John vowed like a child swearing to their sibling regarding secrets kept from mother, “I mean, i called her that but I didn’t explai-“

“-John!”

“-and I said a lotta nice things too, I think, but, I also-“ Egan scrunched his eyes up as if to either better recall or maybe banish entirely all memory of his sentiments, “-I may have mentioned wanting to give her children.”

“JOHN!”

“It can’t have been that bad, she wrote back!” Egan defended with wounded hope, holding up his still sealed prize. “Buck, swear to God, I never thought she’d read it.”

Gale slumped down next to him on the bed as if the ordeal in voyeuristic stupidity had taken something out of him. “Maybe she didn’t.” he suggested grimly. “Maybe it’s from her attorney tellin’ you to never contact her again.”

He was enjoying ruining this moment a little too much, and now Egan was growing angry he had waited to open it until confiding in his friend. Not a little anxious, and not a little smug, Egan flipped the envelope over, ready to tear its flap. That’s when he saw the kiss print. “Ha!” he barked, flipping it back up and shoving it directly in front of Gale’s crossing eyes, “Do lawyers leave lip prints?” he questioned cockily and when Gale pulled far enough away to ascertain for himself, he gave a conceding nod.

“Huh.”

“Yeah, huh.” John goaded but his heart beat a crazy and skittish rhythm as he slipped his finger inside the fold and tore at the slip.

Lovely, scented, gold embossed stationery came into view, it made Egan question how well he had washed his hands the paper was so white and pristine.

“Well?” Gale kept to a respectful distance of half a foot away from his friend on the bed, and being a good sort of man, he was not snooping or side eyeing private correspondence.

“Uh, yeah, right.” Bucky rallied himself and unfolded the missive fully, forcing his eyes to focus on deciphering charming, school girl cursive. “Get over here, Buck.” he griped at last as it was hopeless to make headway between his own nerves and Cleven’s hovering presence.

Gale didn’t move and Bucky didn’t expect him to so he scooted over herself, smashing him on the edge and held the letter out as they both leaned in.

“Dear John, -I’m sorry Major Egan, I just had to.”

“Oh shit.” Bucky swore in realization.

“She’s funny.” Gale’s tone was ever so mild.

“Nah she’s, Buck, she’s quoting me back to me I told her -nevermind, let’s see-“

They peered back at the letter together, Cleven more invested that he’d ever admit and Bucky’s heart doing the oddest little flips at the realization that someone gave enough of a damn to write this sorta thing back to him.

“Heartfelt.” Gale murmured her choice of words for Bucky’s letter aloud with something close to relief, only to be then followed by a groan- “you did not write the word ‘knockers’ in a letter to a woman!”

“You're right, you’re right,” Egan ducked his head, repentant, he wouldn’t have been the least surprised if he got a wallop from Cleven for it, “awful of me. I admitted it even then. She admits it. Let’s move on.”

“RACK!” Cleven growled moments later in growing disbelief. “Jesus, John.”

“Oh don’t act better than all of it, you know she’s got the best melons out there-“

“-you’re the one who felt compelled to write a nice young lady and tell her as much.” Buck stabbed an accusatory finger dangerously close to Egan’s nose, “And used vulgarities while at it.”

Egan gave a defensive shrug and began his reading anew. “She said she’s fizzing…over making babies.” he whispered, “With me.” John was awed and this time Cleven had no rebuttal, just ever growing wonderment on his ever reddening face. “And she says here, look! she says you’re a bad boy for breaking us up that night! HA!”

“She’s being polite Bucky,” Gale cautioned, worried at where this surge of confidence might lead, “she didn’t admit to remembering a bit of it. They send girls to school to let fellas like you down easy.”

“Aww, now she says to give ya a kiss.” Egan cooed, saccharine and wicked, “See, she’s so nice and you’re the one who’s awful, doubting her like that. She says to give ya one if you’re the sort to take it well, are ya Buck, huh? Are you? Huh?”

“No, no! Jesus, get off me!” Cleven exerted every bit of his wiry strength to lug off the sudden onslaught of Egan’s heavy embrace as they folded together back onto the bed, John’s mouth making sickening smooching noises against Cleven’s baby smooth cheek, mustache a foreign and terrifying tickle on his jaw. “Get the hell off me, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m riled, just like her, that’s what’s wrong.” Egan replied vehemently, pulling his face away but keeping a perturbed Buck beneath his greater weight. “And maybe one day you’ll know what that feels like, Goldilocks. See, says right here: *I can feel my pulse somewhere besides my wrists* Do you hear that?” He demanded, still holding the letter aloft as Gale looked up at him with the sort of patience people reserve for lunatics liable to murder them at the least hint of movement. “I’ve made her horny.” he spelled it out and Gale’s face somehow flushed an even deeper shade of scarlet. “She wants to know what acorn means.”

“Don’t you ever tell her.” Gale warned.

“Why not?”

“It’s not even a good acronym, it’s misspelled and missing a whole word.”

“She wants it to be ‘salacious’ -says so herself.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.” Bucky flipped the letter over for Gale to see and judging by the panic in his eyes he caught more lines than that one alone.

“Jesus.” he repeated, it was starting to sound like a genuine beg for divine intervention. “Get off me.”

That itching physical impulse to roughhouse remained but Egan obligingly rolled to the side, aware Buck didn’t have what would cure his own riled self. “She says she enclosed something for the morale, said to keep it safe. But there’s not anything else. You see anything else?”

“I don’t.” Buck sounded worn down but he made an effort to look around amongst the sheets.

“Julia Jean.” Egan pondered, “Says that’s her real name.”

“Yeah, well, maybe now you can stop calling her acorn every damn time she comes on screen.”

“Don’t count on it.” Egan grinned back.

“Maybe it’s still in the envelope.” Gale suggested, tentatively picking up the air mail slip and handing it to Bucky.

Egan sat up and shook the paper between them, wondering if it was really something worth hiding from the censors like some OSS spy shit. A couple of shakes and sure enough, some slippery little card shaped thing fluttered out of a crease and wafted to the ground, settling between Buck’s boots. John’s stoic young friend bent over and retrieved it, but not without his entire spine stiffening like he’d been hit as soon as he’d caught it.

“Jesus.” it was more of a wheeze this time. Gale’s slow hand raised it and passed it over.

There wasn’t anything to say, not when confronted with such perfection. Not even a shielding arm to cheat him of the whole display, nothin’ at all but a carefully cropped photograph of the ripest pair of-

“Goddamn.” John’s tongue finally materialized a sentiment and he heard Gale’s appreciative sharp intake of breath beside him as if he’d forgotten to breathe here lately. “They’re wonderful.”

“Yeah.” Gale’s own throat sounded dry as dust, “W-we should probably stop starin’.”

“Whadda ya think she sent ‘em for?” John laughed, a rough, victorious laugh, never once dragging his admiring eyes away from them or ceasing to thumb over the shiny print. He could almost feel her warm, giving flesh under the pad of his finger, could almost imagine the pebble of a rosy nipple responding to his swipes.

“Yeah, they’re alright-“

“Alright? Alright!?” Egan repeated, incensed for his beloved’s reputation, “THESE ARE THE BEST TITS IN THE NATION!”

Gale actually looked mildly chastened, especially as his eyes strayed guiltily back to the photograph like twin marbles gravitating to the corner of a box when tipped.

“I know you haven’t seen many, Buck,” Egan goaded him further, “but take it from me -they don’t get better than this. And you better enjoy this look, it’s your last, she told me to keep them safe. So see this? These? This pair? S’why we fight, Buck.”

“Don’t be crass, John,” Gale stood up abruptly, less angry at his friend than at himself for his momentary lapse of discipline, “we fight for the people we love.”

“Course we do,” John grinned, “but I also happen to love these, told her so myself.”

“You didn’t-“

“I did.” Bucky was pretty chuffed, bouncing on the edge of the bed like he had her seated in his lap right now, “Everybody’s got to have a goal, Buck, you wanna marry Marj and I wanna aggressively come on ripe knock-“

“-A.C.O.R.N. yeah, yeah.”

“Acorn.” Bucky grinned in agreement.

“You gonna admit to her you didn’t know knockers was spelled with a k?”

“I did, too! Just couldn’t make it work.”

“Still doesn't work.” Buck informed, but his smile was returning, he’d not been this close with Bucky for this long not to learn to roll with the differences and appreciate that what made his best friend tick was a very different sort of morale than his own. “I’m happy for ya, John.” he conceded, as he turned to leave, “But when you write her back -and you gotta, she’s been too kind -promise me you’ll be a gentleman about it. Apologize, like the man I know you are. Drink got the better of you, just, explain it that way.”

“Uhuh.” John gave him a sober nod, still a little dazed this wasn’t some fever dream. “Kinda already did. In the one I sent.”

“She wasn’t deterred.” Gale mused, “Either you were shit at it or she’s-“

“Zesty.” Egan deduced, sucking his teeth with a manic gleam in his eye.

“Yeah, as an orange peel.” Gale snarked and walked away, past the rows of empty beds and outside into the rain, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Bucky fell back against his mattress, sudden peace and aloneness giving him a chance to soak it in a second time, carefully reading over it all again, savoring each quip, each earnest prayer and naughty subtext. Which naturally led him back to admiring her little picture, groaning in unrestrained appreciation for her assets. She’d hinted about him taking it to his bunk -well wasn’t he fast to obey! Something possessed him to flip it over and there in the corner of the photograph, written in tiny little script, were doodles of music notes along with the ever so familiar lyrics:

“Beat me daddy, eight to the bar.”

John threw back his head and let out a roar of appreciation for finding a mirrored soul. “Oh Julie Jean, honey baby, don’t you worry, I’ll beat out somethin’ for ya, that’s for sure.”

💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌💌

Thank y’all for reading, hope you enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, please scream at me, I thrive off it. 💋

Taglist (Lemme know in a comment below if you’d like to be added or subtracted for MOTA fics)

@stylespresleyhearted

@ab4eva

@earth-to-lottie

@suraemoon

@blurredcolour

@steph-speaks

@crazymadpassionatelove

@rubyfruitjungle

@taestrwbrry

@storysimp

@javden

@sexualparkour

@jointherebellion215

@sunny747

@ask-you-what-sir

@xxanaduwrites

@pretty4u

@yorkshirekiwi

@waitedforlove743

#mota fanfic #masters of the air #john egan x oc #dear John #john egan #bucky egan #bucky egan x oc #callum turner

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dreamwatch · 22 days

Text

I tell you folks, it's harder than it looks

Written for the @corrodedcoffinfest April warm-up round.

(So... I forgot to get something written before today, so this is a bit of a speed write and I hope I got as many typos and redundancies as possible. For anyone interested, the idea came from another fic I wrote a while ago, where you can see Wayne's POV.)

****

Kangaroos. That was the reason Steve had picked Australia to join the tour. Eddie called from every continent, trying to tempt him with far-flung locations, but in the end it was the kangaroos that got him. And thank god, because if he’d got the call that Eddie had collapsed on stage, or worse, saw it on the news, he’d be losing his mind right about now. So yeah, thank fuck for kangaroos.

They’re holed up in a hospital in Sydney, trying to keep the press away from Eddie. Jeff and Ben hover near Eddie’s bed, Gareth standing as close to the door as he can, arms crossed and eyes firmly fixed on the floor. The atmosphere is uncomfortably tense.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s okay then. I mean, as long as you’re sorry—”

“Gareth,” Jeff interrupts. Always the peacemaker.

“Don’t ‘Gareth’ me, man. I’ve been saying for months, for fucking years, we need to slow down before one of us gets hurt. And here we are. But hey, I’m just the drummer, no one fucking listens to me. Or any of us for that matter. Just him.” He gesticulates at Eddie.

Steve feels like an interloper and it’s a little uncomfortable; he’s got no desire to be the Yoko Ono in this situation but he’s not leaving until Eddie tells him to. His eyes drift back to Eddie who’s staring out into the Sydney skyline. The fierce bruise on the left side of his face has come out in anger now, gauze and tape covering stitches. It makes his heart fucking ache.

Steve had been there at the edge of the stage watching the show when Eddie wobbled and went loose-limbed, watched him just drop, the sickening snap back of his head as he hit the drum riser. Ben had got to him first, Jeff signalling for help, while Gareth stood behind the drums, frozen. He had looked terrified. Steve stood there watching helplessly, heart in his throat the whole time.

Eddie’s eyes go wide with panic. “Shit. Wayne.”

“Taken care of,” Steve tells him. “Called him a few hours ago. He’s fine. Getting your room ready as we speak.”

“Press too,” Jeff chips in. “You don’t need to worry about anything, it’s all taken care of man.”

“Shouldn’t need to be,” mutters Gareth.

Jeff sighs, “Jesus Christ, man, will you quit it?”

Gareth finally looks up, first at Jeff, and finally at Eddie. But there’s no anger there. Steve can see the worry in his eyes and he gets it. He’s spent years of his life worrying about bad things happening to his friends and being powerless to do anything about it. It fucking sucks.

Ben puts his arm around Gareth, leading him outside. “Let’s go rustle up snacks, dude, I’m fucking starving.”

Eddie picks at the edge of the tape holding the IV in the back of his hand. “Well, that went well.”

“Hey,” says Jeff, shaking Eddie’s ankle to get his attention. “He’s not angry, okay? He’s just scared. We all were, but… you know what he’s like. He’s our sensitive little flower.”

A little ghost of a smile settles on Eddie’s lips and it unlocks something in Steve, eases the worry just a tiny bit.

“Yeah, I know. I am sorry, you know? I didn’t want this to happen, man. I just… I just thought it was the right thing to do for us. The tour. All of it.”

Jeff sighs. “Listen, when we get back, a few things need to change. Firstly, we’re taking a fucking break. A long one. We’re all burned out.”

Eddie nods softly. “Of course.”

“And we are never doing a tour this long again. Non-negotiable. Strict date limits going forward.”

“Absolutely.”

“And one last thing.” Jeff shifts uncomfortably. “He didn’t say it the right way but… Gareth wasn’t wrong. About no one listening to us. To Phil, specifically, not listening to us.”

Steve knows Eddie has a near-pathological fear of losing everything, but he’s since learned that their manager, Phil, has preyed upon it, tapping into the fear, pushing for more albums, more interviews and appearances, and longer tours. And Eddie just can’t say no. “You never know when it will stop,” he told him once.

Steve would love to get his fucking hands on Phil right about now.

“He’s got to go.”

And Eddie agrees, just like that, because it’s Jeff. To the public, it’s Eddie’s band, but to everyone who truly knows them, it’s Jeff who keeps them together. It makes Steve smile to think about the nerdy kid from high school, comparing him to this man who stands at Eddie’s side in front of thousands, night after night, confidence oozing from him.

The door clicks open, and Ben wanders in with a Coke, Gareth slinking in behind him. Gareth shuffles forward and Eddie reaches up with his free hand, and Steve finds himself letting out a huge breath when Gareth takes it.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Gareth says, softly.

“I know. I know man. I was an idiot.”

“Yeah.”

Steve is expecting a snappy comeback, but Eddie’s starting to wilt, and he’s struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I think we should let Eddie get some rest,” he says. “Long flight tomorrow.”

The boys say their goodbyes, and Steve pulls his chair as close to the side of the bed as he can manage. Eddie smiles at him, their fingers entwined.

“Close enough there?” Eddie says, smiling fondly.

“No,” he replies, smiling back. He never wants to let Eddie out of his sight again. “How you doing?”

Eddie drops his head back onto his pillow. “I feel like shit.”

“Maybe I’ll need to move to LA to keep an eye on you.”

A soft blush blooms across Eddie’s cheeks. “Maybe you do,” he says shyly.

“Go to sleep then. I’ll be here when you wake up.”