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doodle-pops · 7 days

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Finrod NSFW Alphabet

Request: Hello 👉👈 I really love your writing and since your requests are open if you're up for it could I ask for some NSFW headcanons for Finrod? I deeply enjoy this blonde blorbo 💜 thanks and be healthy - Anon

A/N: It’s always a pleasure to write one of these alphabets for the elves, especially for our golden boy. I hope you’re staying well also. Enjoy!

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

The air is quiet, however, he’s still energetic after having sex and would cuddle you like an overly ecstatic puppy while touching some part of your body. It’s usually him pulling your sweaty body halfway on top of his while his hand wander and touching your back, butt and thighs. Finrod doesn’t mean for it to be an initiator for another round, he simply enjoys the proximity of the bodily contact you two are sharing in the moment and doesn’t want for it to end or be limited to simply lying beside each other. At the same time, when you manage to catch your breath and haven’t fallen asleep, likewise him, he would inquire about your next move. His voice is tender, yet, deep as he asks if you would like to have a bath run, something to eat and drink or lie in bed and talk? Once he receives his answer and is aware of your body status, he returns to being the cuddly bean that he is.

B = Body part (their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

It’s your eyes. Those gorgeous eyes of yours he loves endlessly. He wants every act to involve you looking into his eyes because the eyes never lie; they are the windows into one’s soul and he wants to know how lost in the pleasure or in love are you. All those whimpers and pleads are usually followed by your eyes softening or becoming puddles as they roll or cross when the pleasure is just right. He loses his mind when he knows how close you are and you’re struggling to keep your eyes open, which drives him wild. It allows him to calculate his next move with accuracy and precision to make you lose your mind.

On him, it’s between his mouth and fingers because he’s exceptionally skilled at bringing you great forms of pleasure using those two. He simply loves when you beg him to use his mouth, guiding him to where you want him most or how he whispers sinfully into your ear as he holds you down to finger you. His ability to drive you crazy with his body parts makes his ego run wild and he uses them to his advantage.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Not a messy person to begin with and prefers releasing inside you, on your thighs or in your mouth if you provide him with a blowjob. While his desire to impregnate doesn’t run explicitly as the rest of the members of his family, he enjoys the sensation of your walls milking every ounce of his cum out of his cock. It’s a feeling he experienced and became hard to ignore anytime you two are intimate. The rare occasion when he doesn’t desire to finish inside you is when you’re rewarding him with an earth-shattering blowjob, which he can’t refuse.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

As regal and majestic Finrod appears, he enjoys the days when you take the weight of dominance off his shoulders and take the lead in bed. Yup, he’s a switch and revels in the dynamic. Not all the time he want to be giving the pleasure even he receives; he wants to see what tricks you have up your sleeves and how well you can take the lead and return satisfactory pleasure to your King. The sub side of him tends to appear when he’s down on energy or when he’s in that roleplaying headspace. However, he tends to lean on the dominant side more often than the sub.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He read lots of books and heard discussions from his lawless family members about the basic do’s and don’ts when it comes to intimacy. Finrod isn’t a skittish person when it comes to daring acts when it’s new to him. This is something he faces with passion and determination; it’s both your pleasure on the playing field and he isn’t wanting to take it as a joke. His first time with you would be full of confidence, leading you to believe that he’s done this before—he’s a natural. Anything outside of the basics would require experimenting and your input should you have intel, and he isn’t one to shy away from learning new intimate activities.

F = Favourite position (this goes without saying)

Finrod is a simple person and would go for missionary as his most used position because he wants to get lost all up in your eyes—you have gorgeous eyes he wants to see, okay. It’s such a raw and intimate position in his eyes that allows him to grant you the world of pleasure, plus, he can manoeuvre your legs anywhere he enjoys while choosing the pace he wanta to deive hismelf into you with. Furthermore, in this position, he gets to have access to your body to utilise his mouth, meaning his pretty lips are whispering sweet praises in your ear or attached to your lips, neck and chest.

Riding him is another favourite position because he gets to watch you riding him like a stallion. Those hands on his chest leaving behind moon crescents, or the up and down motion of your body causing your breasts to jiggle spurs him on. His own hands can’t help but reach out to ‘assist’ as you ride him like there’s no tomorrow. It’s an easy-to-access position when you slip into his study or throne—should he be up for a quickie—or when he wants to lead you under the false impression that you’re in control of the session. So easy it is for him to buck into you, pinning your arms behind your back and take over. All you can do is hang on for the ride.

On mornings after your night together, when his energy might be too low for him or you to get on top, he’ll opt for spooning. In this position, it feels like he doesn’t have to rush, and you don’t have anywhere to go as the world unravels around you two as the morning awakens. Your leg resting in the crook of his elbow as he spreads you wide enough for his cock to sink smoothly into your heat, while he presses soft kisses to your shoulder as he takes his time carrying you off to your climax.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

He’s capable of being both goofy and serious during sex, it all depends on the reason. If he’s jealous or the moment calls for a touch of sentiment, Finrod would hope that you would understand his reasoning and respect the atmosphere. Laughing during times like that would lead him to believe that you didn’t care. Anything outside of those moments, Finrod wouldn’t mind revelling in a burst of hearty laughter if he or you made a mistake, or the moment requires great joy to be expressed. You two probably knocked heads or slipped, leading to you laughing at each other’s eagerness.

H = Hair (how well-groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Sadly, elves don’t have body hair and Finrod is remarkably famed for the hair he had on his head compared to what he has below. So if you peeked, it is clean.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Finrod has his own way of making every sentimental moment romantic and full of love. I’m sure there were times when you two slept and it was simply pure fucking for the sake of pleasure and relief, but there are times when he wants to romance you. This is when you get introduced to body-worshipping Finrod who doesn’t stop until you know your worth and you are incapacitated, in a good way. His mouth is attached to every inch of your skin, whispering sweet words as he kisses and bites while having extreme body contact—like he’ll rest half his weight atop you to pin, but also want to let you feel him.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

I can see him masturbating if it’s done under mutual masturbating and voyeurism. Other than that, it’s hard to see him touching himself when he’s alone. Don’t get me wrong, he would touch himself to thoughts of you, but he would rather you watch as he comes undone to the thoughts of you that consume him, putting his cravings at the back and waiting for the right moment to gift you that sight. So if he was thinking of you, he’ll wait when you’re alone in your chambers and gift you the magnificent sight of witnessing how crazy you drive him.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

One of Finrod’s weaknesses stems from his titles being used to get him either on his knees or feral. He adores when you address him as ‘My King’ or ‘Your Majesty’ which already announces his position, however, he likes to take it up a notch and introduce roleplaying. He has admitted to enjoying the use of domineering titles being used on him, so he opts for roles that grant him access to hearing names like, ‘Sir’ or ‘Master’. The cheeky devil finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of pleasure when you’re playing a servant or a merchant, desperate for your King to grant you favour.

Whether it is a kink or not, he has the strangest fascination watching you squirt. It brings out a childlike wonder in him, especially the first time it happened, and he inquired about it. That was all Finrod needed to get to work using every technique in the book, and like I said, he’s skilled with his mouth and fingers, so it will be achieved with ease. Just seeing you gush a waterfall which is derived from the satisfaction of the insurmountable pleasure he’s giving you makes him content. He doesn’t always make you squirt every session, since the time and place prevent that, but when he’s in the mood to, count your blessings because one is not enough.

Believe it or not, sensory play is also a favourite of Finrod. He’ll introduce blindfolds and elven ropes to leave you on the edge as he strips away your sense of sight and touch, even going as far as to remove hearing as he becomes a ghost on his feet. One minute you’ll be feeling the feathery touches of his fingers, and the next, you’re experiencing his cock pounding into you. When you’re incapacitated like this, his teasing tends to go up a notch, denying you any and all chances to feel his body against yours except his cock, fingers or mouth.

A massive body-worshipper which grants him access to quite a few other kinks up his sleeves like bondage. Nothing extravagant or elaborate, just a few simple bonds to your/his wrists and ankles, and he’s good with that. All that’s left to do is to relax and enjoy the oncoming pleasure either of you would grant the other. The only difference between you two is that Finrod is a massive tease and revels in teasing you as he worships your body; making you beg or confess how beautiful you find yourself if you desire his touch. However, he doesn’t appreciate the favour being returned excessively; tease him, but not too much. He’ll tug against the restraints, easily breaking out of them, before pinning you to the bed and asking, ‘What was so funny about teasing me so much?’

L = Location (favourite places to do the do)

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Mostly in his chambers, study, the courtroom and his home (in Valinor). You can get him to participate in a session in the forest if you two are camping, at a spring or a waterfall and the area if safe. It wouldn’t be wise if his guards were standing outside while he was taking you because it meant that he couldn’t hear your sweet moans and cries of his name. So, he would ensure that his guards weren’t around before he indulged.

Whispering ‘My King’ or ‘Your Majesty’ in his ear late at night or in private easily gets his blood pumping. He’s doing his best to restrain himself as he grips his quill with every effort not to snap it. The desire to pounce on you is strong yet hangs by a thin thread and grows more dangerous each second you wander about his space, taunting him. Finrod is also quite proud of his accomplishments and himself, so praising him also goes a long way in getting him to conform to your wishes to of having him in bed. Run your hands across his muscles, his clothes and through his hair giving small tugs, tell him how good of a King he is to his subjects and that you wish to pay respect to his kindness. He’ll easily allow you to have your way.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Nothing that would involve infliction of pain, blood or violence. Extreme BDSM would be out of the question to Finrod as well as any use of weapons. Furthermore, he isn’t going to be pleased with sharing or having others watching.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Like his older cousin, it’s no joke that he has an oral fixation as well and his mouth has to be on some part of your body. Finrod is a pleaser and he’ll eat you for both his pleasure and yours. Spending hours between your legs while it’s wrapped around his head suffocating him helps to relieve his stressful days as King. All he has to do is bat his pretty lashes at you and you’ve succumbed to his desires. There are times when he keeps his crown on and informs you to come sit on your throne while flashing you a lopsided grin because he knows what he’s doing. This is the one time where he doesn’t let up because he can’t get enough of your taste. Your legs could be shaking, you could attempt to push his head away and he’ll continue; this is after all for both you and him.

When receiving, he doesn’t shy away from accepting the act, however, he has a preference for you pleasuring him in other ways, so you’ll have to push him down. Or you can sneak into his study and suck him off from under the table while he struggles to keep a straight face and focus. During those moments, his hands would gently cradle your head as he leaves you to do your thing at your own pace…until you decide to go extra slow and tease him. That’s when he’ll grumble before guiding your head along his length or if he’s standing, thrusting into your mouth. It’s the one time when he’s rough while receiving oral.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Finrod leans towards slow and sensual whenever he’s intimate. This means that he’s a slow and passionate lover, enjoying deep, long, and slow strokes that are almost too much for you to handle before speeding up slightly, leaving you breathless or begging him to ease up—he doesn’t because he enjoys how flustered you become with his thrusts. This isn’t to say that he can’t get rough from time to time. For him, being rough only comes when you make him jealous, he’s heavily stressed or being a damn tease. This is when his thrusts are swift and rougher than usual, perhaps a slight bit of manhandling might happen in the moment. But to say the least, his rough side is enjoyable when he’s pinning you against some surface.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Quickies are a thing you would depend on due to both your hectic schedule as leaders, and he would follow along. Most of the time, it’s him helping you out when you require relief since he isn’t as horny as you unless you purposefully rile him up by calling him one of his titles or wearing a tight or low-cut neckline. Otherwise, he genuinely goes along because he doesn’t have an issue when you desire him to please you. And here is where he gets to use his mouth and fingers most to get you off. It is on the rare occasion that he undresses and fully takes you, leaving you to take charge in the form of riding him.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

I believe that the biggest risk Finrod is willing to take is allowing you to crawl on your knees to him in your submissive role. The act to him is debauched because you shouldn’t ever be on your knees in that manner, but there’s something sexy about watching you crawl over to him dressed in your finest lingerie or naked, to greet him. It’s different compared to when you’re on your knees sucking him off. Either the predatory or innocent look in your eyes as you look up at him makes his brain shut down for a split second before he gets serious. It’s the only lowly act he considers taking a chance to participate in.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Should the moment surround love and sentiment, Finrod is willing to have two to three rounds for the night, stretching each out to over thirty minutes. He’s worshipping you from head to toe every round because he is a passionate lover who leaves his touch quaking in your bones when he’s finished. However, if he’s jealous, everything is rougher and longer, as in five rounds until you understand that it’s he you should focus on and belong to. Of course, he gauges your responses to know if you can go for more.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Since toys, like what we have, don’t exist in Middle Earth, there aren’t many options to choose from if he were to indulge. To him, the idea of including toys would be great on your behalf since it would allow you to pleasure yourself when he couldn’t. The most he would request is to be present when you use them, so he can enjoy the performance while sipping on a glass of wine. Blindfold and elven ropes, something they have, would be included frequently in your activities since you mentioned that you enjoyed the heightened pleasure they added.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Yes, Finrod is a massive tease who hates to be on the receiving end when the tables are turned. He wants to drive you mad and have you moan, cry and beg for his touches; it fuels his ego to learn how much you crave him. Just listening to your whimpers as his lips ghost the shell of your ear as he tells you how much he desires you, knowing that you’re unable to do anything because you’re in public. The wicked, innocent, grin he throws at you before he saunters away, leaving you in a mess. But if you return the favour, he’ll take it for a while before growing impatient and pouncing.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

I have to say, his moans are heavenly. Quite angelic, especially when he tosses his head backwards to allow his golden curls to fall while releasing sweet notes, emphasising how good you make him feel. Either that, or he’s in your ear moaning like crazy, knowing how his voice makes you wetter and come undone faster. He isn’t excessively loud, but rather soft whimpers and moans like his goal is to seduce you with them, and he succeeds.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Finrod has a mirror kink which is a category under his love for body-worshipping. It goes both ways because he wants you to witness how you come undone with every touch, stroke and whisper he delivers so diabolically while you also desire the same with him. If you have an issue with your confidence, you can bet yourself that mirror sex is going to be a frequent occurrence until you can get it into your head that you’re beautiful. He’ll force you to watch as he takes you, the only time he’ll have you from behind, and force you to repeat after him, ‘I am beautiful.’

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Hmm, for someone considered one of the many beautiful elves to exist, he sure does have a pretty package. Well endowed, not too thick or thin, just the right length and girth to smoothly enter without any discomfort and carries a gentle weight, so he feels just right. He’s a shower that has a few veins running along the surface with a pink tip that stands out. Finrod is incredibly proud of his appendage as it matches his good looks, allowing him to have both a pretty and well-endowed cock.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

His sex drive is quite low. He doesn’t crave sexual intimacy as much as you probably would, hence why he would invest in toys of all sorts for you, once he can access them. In the early days of your relationship as a newlywed, he would experience the same need to be as close to you as much as possible and spend more time behind closed doors, wanting to understand your body and bask in the joys of being newlyweds. But as time rolled on and the newlywed phase disappeared, so did his urge. Being dutiful to his people and with the ongoing war, his focus lies elsewhere. Perhaps twice to thrice a month, you two indulge to keep the flame burning.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

It takes him a while to fall asleep due to his boundless energy. Leaving you after having a moment isn’t an act he enjoys since in his eyes, it makes him believe that he's using you, so he always stays. Most of the time, he’ll be the one awake while you’re curled up in his arms, fast asleep. Should you manage to have the energy to stay awake, some pillow talk would help to sedate him. Once he does drift into slumber, Finrod becomes a cuddler and a sleep talker. Softly murmuring your name as he snoozes and clings to you like a bear cub, he refuses to let you go the entire night.

Masterlist

Taglist: @lilmelily @ranhanabi777 @mysticmoomin @rain-on-my-umbrella @asianbutnotjapanese @batsyforyou @involuntaryspasms @aconstructofamind @addaigio

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melodygatesauthor · 1 year

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Since I know my baby loves Kylo Ren, let’s do smut prompt 33 “Oh, can you feel this?”

Inappropriate Use of the Force

Kylo Ren X Reader

Yes bb I DO love Kylo teehee. Just look at him! The hair, the eyebrows, all of it. Can't get enough haha. Thank you for the prompt <3 This also means that I've now officially written one prompt for each blorbo! Yay!

Tags/Warnings: NSFW, smut, p in v creampie, literal inappropriate use of the Force

Word Count: 486

“Yes, just like that.” Kylo groaned, fucking into your mouth.

You gagged over his large cock, feeling the girth stretching your lips. You held on to his hips for stability, gripping tightly. He was guiding you, hand on the side of your head. He brushed your cheek with his thumb softly. No matter how cruel he could be, he had a way of making you feel like you were the only thing that mattered in the whole galaxy.

You reached down between your legs, feeling your own arousal becoming unbearable. You plunged your fingers deep into your slick cunt, sliding them over your walls. Kylo looked down at you and smirked.

“What a desperate, needy little thing you are.” He cooed, never stopping his churning into your throat.

You saw his free hand start moving very slightly. You suddenly felt your hands, against their will, pinned behind your back firmly. You groaned over his length.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get what you need.” He was still carrying an air of amusement in his tone, “can you feel this?”

He continued shifting his fingers, and very quickly you felt something invisible and phallic filling your soaking wet channel. You pulled your mouth off his cock, expelling a loud moan into the room before he forced you back over it.

“Oh yes, it looks like you can.”

You were making a slew of primal sounds while you continued pleasing him. He continued moving the unseen cock deep inside of you, sliding it over your walls. You felt something else, another invisible Force snaking up your inner thigh and circling around your clit.

You squealed around his shaft, forcing a barely audible moan from his lips. Of course this would drive him crazy, seeing you, a completely muffled and moaning mess by his hand. It was an odd, but indescribably wonderful sensation to have your hole filled and clitoris flicked over while sucking Kylo Ren’s thick cock.

“Are you satisfied now?” He asked, exhaling sharply while you continued gagging over him.

All you could do was make an incoherent noise of approval while he kept going. At this rate, you weren’t going to last much longer, and by the way his cock was getting harder, you could tell he was close too. Within just moments, he was coming down your throat in thick, hot spurts.

He released your head, and you fell back to the ground, a moaning, wet mess while the invisible cock continued fucking you through your own orgasm. You had to scream, begging him to release you as you squirmed from oversensitivity until finally he let you go, collapsing into a heap on the floor.

He walked over and stood next to you, towering.

“Go clean yourself up, unless you want to meet with the Supreme Council looking like that?” One of his eyebrows quirked upward at the thought.

You smirked, “maybe I do.”

Melody's Birthday Celebration - Submissions Closed

Celebration Masterlist

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lurkingshan · 3 months

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I've had all the different Love for Love's Sake interpretations rotating in my brain and kind of picking and choosing what I want to take from each of them, which is a very cool thing we can do with this show because it supports many different reads. I think for me I have landed on a few core ideas that I am stewing on the most:

Is Myungha in control of the game?

One thing I'm feeling pretty solid about is that my preferred interpretation is one where Myungha's consciousness is in control of the game. @jemmo and @biochemjess and @wen-kexing-apologist all offered up some thoughts about this that resonated with me and give me a framework that helps me make sense of the game glitches and server errors as manifestations of Myungha's emotional overwhelm and inability to accept love, rather than a creator forcing cruel choices and punishments on him. I like that idea a lot.

The initial assumption the show invites us to make is that the game world was created by the author based on his own novel, but I don't think that idea holds up as the show goes along. Because if this world we're in was truly based on the novel, I would expect we'd have seen some of it. Instead, we get a world that is populated by Myungha's own significant people--those he loved, those he lost, those he regretted--and no real hints about the novel world we're supposedly in. We never met the novel leads, for instance, or learned that Myungha had pre-existing knowledge of any other characters besides Yeowoon. So that tracks better with Myungha simply pulling his blorbo, the character he identified with most, into this afterlife world he created for himself.

Are Yeowoon and the romance "real" within this world of the show?

Which leads me to the next thing I'm stewing on. Is Yeowoon "real" in any meaningful sense within this universe? Is their relationship? Because functionally, Yeowoon is a mirror of Myungha and a stand in for his own self within the game world. Making Yeowoon happy becomes making Myungha happy. Loving Yeowoon is a form of self love for Myungha. One could argue that because the afterlife feels real to Myungha, it becomes real, and therefore everything that happens counts. But @troubled-mind mentioned in her post that she can't really latch onto the love story in this show because the reality is that Myungha has died and this afterlife is "wishful thinking." As an atheist, that resonates with me, and I think it's perhaps why I was not quite as emotionally moved by the romance ending as some of y'all seem to have been. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was beautiful. But I did not experience this as a happy ending to a love story in the way that some did. More than anything, I think I take it as a final bit of closure, that Myungha was able leave in peace having found some measure of love for himself in his final moments. I don't know that I am sold on the idea this means he is living a whole second life with Yeowoon.

So then, who is the author?

I have also been thinking a lot about who exactly this author is and how he's involved in this game world. @bengiyo suggested that he was someone who loved Myungha in life and created this world out of his own grief, and @twig-tea had suggested to me even before the show ended that the author was trying to help Myungha through the game. I see a logic to these reads, but I can't say either particularly resonated for me, in part because of what I mentioned above re: the cruelty of the game world if the errors are not self-inflicted by Myungha. @crapyouknowme suggested that the author is in fact a manifestation of the star Myungha wished upon, a loving presence that came to him because he yearned for it. I kind of like that idea personally, that this is another form of self-love Myungha willed into existence for himself. @dropthedemiurge wrote that in the end it seems all the text messages of love and yearning were from the author, and I do tend to agree. So under this interpretation, the author appears to Myungha and sends messages of love and guides him back into this game world with Yeowoon because Myungha wills these things for himself. I like that idea that Myungha is ultimately still the one in control of how he chooses to leave the world.

I think ultimately for me, I am arriving at seeing this story as less of a romance and more of a journey to self love and closure at the end of life. I do think there is a hopeful tone to the ending despite how dark the realities of Myungha's story are, and for me that hope is primarily based in his ability to love himself on his way out of this life.

#yes i am still thinking about this and no i do not intend to stop #love for love's sake #korean bl #kdrama #shan shouts into the void

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steddieunderdogfics · 1 month

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This week’s writer spotlight feature is: Pricklywhicket/@messessentialist ! Prickleywhicket has four fics published to AO3 -- All in the Steddie tag!

Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by pricklywhicket:

so let's sneak in from the cheap seats, honey

it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)

start by pulling him out of the fire

"Sadie is so super talented in the way she describes literally everything. She is so good at writing and it's a shame that she's flown under the radar because she's not the quickest at putting things out there." -- Anonymous

Below the cut, Pricklywhicket answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

Why do any of us write anything? Because we want the story to exist in the world, and it doesn’t yet, so we gotta hike up our pants and do it ourselves!

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

Hurt/Comfort. I’m always a sucker for the blorbos taking care of one another, in whatever form that takes. This has always been true, across a truly astronomical number of fandoms I’ve found myself dabbling in over the years.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

…actually, probably hurt/comfort! I just need to get those little dudes some validation and unconditional positive regard, okay?

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

I’m sure I won’t be the first one to say this, but: I HAVE TO PICK ONE????? Okay, alright. I can do this. I’m gonna say…Sanctuary by SpicedSage.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I’ve only written canon or canon-adjacent fic so far, so I’m eager to work on something that’s completely AU. I think there’s a unique challenge to keeping characters recognizable as themselves in a world that might not have all the same contexts that made them into that person.

What is your writing process like?

I would love to say it’s super organized and well-planned, but the truth is it’s mostly about routine and responsibility. I set aside time to do it every day, even if I can only tap out a few sentences. I’m not very strict about writing in a straight line - I can stop a scene if it’s giving me trouble, write a note about what I think happens in some [brackets], and move on to something that I have more fully fleshed-out ideas for. Sometimes writing the next scene helps you know more about what needs to happen in the current one.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I'm sure my betas would say yes 🙃 I tend to write a lot of dialogue - a lot of my revision process is going back through and realizing I have two pages of a conversation with no indication of what’s physically happening in the world around the speakers.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Definitely when I’m finished. Prior to my ‘23 bang fic, I had never written anything chaptered. I knew going in that I could NOT start posting if it wasn’t finished, because I’ve been burned too many times by abandoned works. I didn’t want to do that to people reading my fic, and the best way to avoid it is to finish before you post.

Which fic are you most proud of?

Easily start by pulling him out of the fire. The biggest, most ambitious thing I’ve ever attempted - I still kind of can’t believe I wrote 85k.

How did you get the idea for start by pulling him out of the fire?

Like most terrible ideas, it was spawned in a fandom discord chat. We were discussing the tendency of Steddie fics to centralize the party at Steve’s house, because his parents are never there anyway. And then someone mentioned what if the parents came home and found their house occupied, and someone else mentioned Wayne being there, and it just sort of…spiraled out from there.

When writing start by pulling him out of the fire, what was something you didn’t expect?

I had no idea, going in, that I was going to write a comprehensive history of the Wayne and Eddie Munson relationship. I started writing it where I did to give some background on Wayne’s existing distaste for the elder Harrington, and then I just…kept writing. Over the course of a month or two I wrote 20k of WayneAndEddie that I had no idea was in me - it just kept coming.

What inspired it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)?

@wynnyfryd. It was a gift for her birthday. We were talking about our mutual love of Letterkenny, and she mentioned that the episode was her favorite and wouldn’t it be funny if someone wrote… and the rest is history.

What was your favorite part to write from it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)?

I had an unreasonable amount of fun with that one in general. But I think my favorite part was Eddie polling the party about what Steve means to them all. It was fun to sort of put myself in each character’s shoes and think about how they would answer. Plus y’know, any excuse to unironically love on Steve Harrington.

How do/did you feel writing so let's sneak in from the cheap seats, honey?

I believe my exact words upon deciding to write it were “jingles miserably to a blank google doc.” This was a classic case of saying “god I wish there was a fic where—” and having friends tell me that it was now my responsibility to write it. I’m glad I did, though. I love that story, and it proved to me that I could write sex and publish it and not burst into flames. I also just really, really love summer storms. And Wayne’s use of the singular ‘herpe.’

What was the most difficult part of writing so let's sneak in from the cheap seats honey?

Getting over the fear of publishing something E-rated. It was just something I hadn’t done, and I had a lot of anxiety that people were not going to respond well to it. I made three people individually review the sex scenes before I even asked anyone to beta the full fic. Of course I was worried for nothing, the reception for that fic was super lovely and gave me the confidence boost I needed to attempt start by pulling him out of the fire!

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

This is like asking me to pick a favorite child. I’ll say this: most of my favorite lines in start by pulling him out of the fire were taken directly from conversations @wormdebut and I had about the fic. She’s my number one cheerleader and sounding board, and sometimes she’s so goddamn funny that I just have to include it. You have her to thank, for instance, for Steve quite literally dropping his croissant when he first sees Eddie in glasses.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I have a couple of irons in the fire, but nothing I’m ready to share just yet! I’ve been taking a breather from writing (blame baldur’s gate 3, okay) but my WIPs are still very much IP. Stay tuned!

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Not that I can think of!

Thank you to our author, Pricklywhicket, and our anonymous nominator! See more of pricklywhicket's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

#writer's wednesday #writers on tumblr #steddie writers #steddie #steddie fic recs #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie #stranger things

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madd-nix · 3 months

Text

Battling on the Train to Reunion

Ingo and Emmet finally reunite after Ingo has come home from Hisui. But before Ingo reveals himself to his brother, he decides that it would be more fun to challenge him to a battle first. My first time writing out pokemon battling!

Also, I didn't intend to post this on the 2nd anniversary of Legends Arceus' release, but hey! It worked out well! I just wanna say again how much I love this game cuz it brought back my love for Pokemon and it gave me more blorbos to love and get attached to. Amazing game, and I hope we get to see more games like it in the future!

Words: 3,592

Rating: PG (maybe like one or two swear words)

The battle continued for a while. Emmet's opponent had thrown out an Alakazam, which hit Garbodor pretty hard with Psychic. Luckily, she stayed standing, but the man's Magnezone finally managed to take out Archeops with Thunder. Emmet then sent out Galvantula, who made sure to quickly take out the Alakazam. The man sent out a Tangrowth, but he soon had to recall Magnezone when Garbodor took it out with a Focus Blast. He sent out a Probopass, then together with Tangrowth, they took out Garbodor after a few good hits. Emmet finally sent out Eelektross, his trusty partner. Now he had two pokemon out on the field and just one still waiting to be released.

Ingo healed up his pokemon one last time after defeating the last 20 depot agents. He knew the next car was the last one, where the lone Subway Boss was waiting for him.

Emmet, his twin brother. He was a little anxious about seeing him again, feeling a mix of nerves and excitement after having been gone for over five years. But now, here he was, back in modern Unova after being stuck in Hisui for so long.

With a sigh, he pocketed his pokeballs and adjusted the face mask he was wearing. He hadn't wanted to get recognized just yet, so he decided on wearing a mask to conceal the lower half of his face, a plain black squirtleneck shirt, black pants, brown boots, and a light gray trench coat. Meanwhile, his Subway Boss hat and coat were packed away safely, waiting to be worn again and probably repaired later. But for now, he just wanted to challenge the Doubles Line on the Battle Subway to surprise his brother.

After taking another moment to compose himself, Ingo stepped through the doorway to the final car. Emmet stood there, waiting patiently for him. His brother studied his appearance, but there was no sense of recognition in his eyes. Instead, he simply stood tall with a smile on his face and tipped his hat politely.

"I am Emmet. I am the Subway Boss. I like double battles. I like combinations of two pokemon. I like a challenge. You have come here verrry quickly. I am eager to see whether you will leave victorious or defeated. But I will not go easy on you. I like winning more than anything else. So, let's start a great battle in which every pokemon uses various moves."

Ingo nodded slowly, recognizing his brother's usual script. He had added in a few details, since apparently Ingo's battling proficiency had impressed Emmet enough to comment on it.

With that, Emmet threw out Archeops and Klinklang. Ingo took note, then took two pokeballs out of his pocket. He threw them and released Machamp and Magnezone. As soon as he caught and pocketed the now empty pokeballs, he positioned himself, ready to move.

"Archeops, use Aerial Ace on Machamp! Klinklang, Giga Impact on Magnezone!" Emmet called out.

"Both of you, dodge!" Ingo exclaimed.

Archeops flew up and then dove down towards Machamp, who luckily dodged the attack. Klinklang's Giga Impact was much harder to avoid, resulting in Magnezone taking the hit and forcing Ingo to dodge and roll out of the way.

"Sir, I must advise you to stay behind the yellow line," Emmet said as he watched Ingo.

"Ah, my apologies! I must have just grown used to battling more closely with my pokemon," Ingo replied. "I promise I am following the proper safety procedures." Emmet looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. Ingo had initially wondered if his voice would give him away, but his volume and vocal control had certainly changed while in Hisui. He could now keep better control of how loud he was, a skill that became necessary when needing to be quiet and hide from wild pokemon. This change must be what was preventing Emmet or any of the depot agents from recognizing him. That, and his change of appearance.

Finally, with a nod from Emmet, the former warden took his opportunity to attack.

"Machamp, Fire Punch agile style on Klinklang, followed by Close Combat! Magnezone, Flash Cannon on Archeops!" Ingo commanded.

Emmet opened his mouth, presumably to question what agile style was, or maybe to ask why he was giving Machamp two moves to use in one turn, but before he could, Machamp was already moving. Machamp swiftly punched Klinklang with a flaming fist, then immediately started using Close Combat and rapidly punched her opponent. Klinklang floated back, its gears rotating irritably.

As Machamp pulled back, Magnezone finally released the power it had been building up on Archeops. The poor fossil pokemon squawked as it took the hit, not fast enough to dodge.

"Verrrry interesting battle technique. I would like to know more about that later. But first," Emmet smirked as he pointed at his opponent, "Archeops, Rock Slide on Magnezone! Klinklang, Gear Grind on Machamp!"

Before Ingo could say anything, Emmet's pokemon flew in to attack. Archeops sent an avalanche of rocks at Magnezone, coming close enough to force Ingo to again dodge out of the way, and Klinklang sent two gears out to hit and grind against Machamp. Both of his pokemon took the hits, but they weren't down yet.

"Magnezone, Tri Attack strong style on Archeops!" Ingo exclaimed. "Machamp, another Fire Punch on Klinklang, strong style!"

Both pokemon prepared their attacks. Magnezone sent out three blasts of energy at Archeops while Machamp sent out another Fire Punch, now stronger than the last attack. Archeops managed to survive the hit, but unfortunately for Emmet, Klinklang fainted. He recalled his pokemon.

"Verrry good job, Klinklang. You did well," he said to the steel type in the pokeball. Emmet then pocketed Klinklang's pokeball and took out a new one. He released Garbodor, which Ingo recognized after a moment.

Garbodor had been one of his pokemon. She was incredibly sweet and could be shy at times, but she always gave it her all in battle. It was good to see that his brother was taking good care of his pokemon in his absence.

As much as he wanted to hug his old pokemon, Ingo had a battle to finish. And with his pokemon still recovering their energy from the last two strong style moves, Emmet was able to take his turn again.

"Archeops, use Protect! Garbodor, use Psychic on Machamp!"

Archeops put up an invisible barrier to protect himself, while Garbodor focused her energy on blasting Machamp. Machamp took the hit even as Ingo called out to dodge the attack. This ended up causing Machamp to faint. Ingo recalled her to her pokeball.

"Bravo, Machamp! You did wonderfully," he told her. He then pocketed the pokeball and got ready to toss out his next pokemon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the battle went on, Emmet couldn't help but study his opponent. His actions, his pokemon, even his voice and appearance. He was using some strange battle technique involving "strong" and "agile" style moves. From what Emmet could see, that meant that his pokemon either attacked with all their strength, forcing them to take a turn to regain their energy, or they were able to attack quickly with little strength to allow them to attack again right after. It was an interesting strategy, and Emmet hoped to ask him more about it after the battle.

He had also noticed that while the man appeared to be older - only based on his slouch, the bags under his eyes, and the receding hairline since he couldn't see the rest of his face - he was quite fit and agile. He kept close to his pokemon, which was something Emmet got tired of reminding him not to do, but every time an attack came his way, he was able to dodge it. It was pretty impressive and fascinating to watch.

However, even though he was incredibly different and a complete stranger, Emmet couldn't help but feel something familiar about the man. His voice wasn't terribly loud, except to call out attacks for his pokemon. But even then, he wasn't a booming loud like someone Emmet knew. His eyes were a bright gray, reminding Emmet of his own gray eyes, and even though the man's hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, the gray color was also familiar. Little details about the man's vocabulary and way of speaking also tipped Emmet off, but he had to remind himself that these could all be coincidences. He wouldn't get his hopes up now, especially after nothing had been found for over five years.

Eventually, Eelektross managed to take down Tangrowth, leaving the man to release his final pokemon. He tossed out his last pokeball - which Emmet had already noticed that all of his pokeballs looked old and handmade - releasing a Gliscor. A ground and flying dual type. Emmet nodded as he waited for the man to attack.

"Alright, that Galvantula should only take a few more hits," the man thought aloud. "Probopass, use Power Gem, and Gliscor, use Aerial Ace!"

Probopass powered up a sparkling blast, then shot it at Galvantula. Gliscor then followed by dive bombing the bug type from the air, hitting her and sending her flying back. Emmet turned as his pokemon hit the wall behind him. Galvantula was out. He recalled her to her pokeball.

"You did verrrry well, Galvantula. Get some rest," he told her. He pocketed her pokeball and took out the last pokemon he had.

"I see we are both down to our final two pokemon," Emmet said to his opponent. "You are putting up a verrrrry good fight. But like I said, I like winning more than anything else. We are not done yet."

He tossed out the pokeball and released Chandelure. She trilled excitedly, then looked at the man across the train car. She froze, her flames flared, and then she immediately moved to fly over to him. Emmet reached out to try and stop her, but she was too quick. She flew right into the man's chest, nuzzling her face against him. Now, normally, most people would be surprised or shocked or even startled by this. But once the man had seen what she was doing, he had welcomed her and wrapped his arms around her glass bowl. Emmet could faintly hear the man's voice, but he was speaking quietly to her, and with the distance between them and the clacking sound of the train moving, Emmet couldn't make out what he was saying. Chandelure just trilled happily, and after he pat her glass once more, she floated back to Emmet.

"I am verrry sorry for Chandelure," Emmet apologized with a tip of his hat. "She is not normally like this."

"It's alright, she meant no harm," the man said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "She is a very sweet pokemon, and I'm excited to see how she does in battle!"

Emmet nodded, adjusted his hat, then pointed towards his opponent.

"Chandelure, Will-O-Wisp on Probopass! Eelektross, Thunderbolt on Gliscor!"

Both pokemon sent out their attacks, with purple flames and electricity shooting across the train car. The man rolled back to avoid the hit, but his pokemon weren't so lucky. Probopass and Gliscor both took the hits, but they still stayed floating in the air. They were hurt, but ready to attack.

"Probopass, Earth Power on Eelektross, agile style! Then go for Flash Cannon! Gliscor, Stone Edge on Chandelure, strong style!" The man commanded as he pointed towards Emmet's team.

Probopass glowed as it created a crack in the flooring. Luckily, the cars of the Battle Subway were built to be reinforced, able to take attacks of any type without sustaining damage. This crack would simply need welded down later at best. The crack continued on towards Eelektross, then dirt and ground formed and shot up from the floor, hitting the eel pokemon. It didn't do much damage, but Probopass quickly changed tracks to shoot a powerful beam at Eelektross, sending Emmet's partner back a bit. He still stayed up though, and Emmet flashed a proud smile to his pokemon.

Meanwhile, Gliscor stabbed both of his claws into the floor, creating huge rocks. The rocks shot up all the way towards Chandelure, hitting her and sending her spinning. She quickly steadied herself, but it was clear that she had been badly hurt. She was still determined though.

"Okay, Chandelure, use Overheat on Probopass! Eelektross, use Discharge!"

Chandelure and Eelektross did as they were told. Chandelure sent a fiery blast at Probopass, dealing a good bit of damage. Eelektross then sent out an electric wave, hitting every pokemon in the car, and also causing the hairs on Emmet's neck and arms to stand up, as well as the man's ponytail to frizz out a bit. Gliscor and Probopass both took the hit, and while Chandelure was hit too, she at least shook it off fairly well.

"Gliscor, Aerial Ace on Eelektross! Probopass, Power Gem strong style on Chandelure!"

"Dodge it!"

Chandelure managed to dodge the blast from Probopass, but Gliscor's Aerial Ace unfortunately hit Eelektross. He was still able to fight, but Emmet knew it wouldn't be for too long. He had to end this.

"Eelektross, Thunderbolt again on Gliscor! Chandelure, another Will-O-Wisp on Probopass!"

"Dodge!"

Probopass was able to dodge the attack, but Gliscor wasn't so lucky. It seemed like all of their pokemon were getting close to fainting. This was going to be a close battle.

"Let's finish this!" The man exclaimed. "Gliscor, Earth Power strong style on Eelektross! Probopass, another Power Gem strong style on Chandelure!"

Both pokemon readied their attacks.

"Dodge it!"

But it was too late. The ground came up and hit Eelektross, and the sparkling blast flew across the train car to hit Chandelure. Emmet had to shield his eyes from the bright blast, but once he opened them, he saw both of his pokemon were fainted on the floor. He had lost.

He recalled Eelektross and Chandelure, then held their pokeballs close to himself.

"You both did great. We came verrrry close. You and the rest of the team have earned some treats tonight."

Emmet pocketed the pokeballs and turned to look at his opponent. The man had recalled his pokemon and was quietly talking to them, presumably to congratulate them on their win. Emmet walked across the car to face him.

"I am Emmet. I lost against you. Because you are the strongest trainer I've fought lately. Yup! You put up a verrrrry fun challenge. I hope you will ride the trains some more."

Emmet then stuck out his hand to properly congratulate his opponent. The man shook his hand, then chuckled a little.

"That was a great battle, Emmet! I forgot how fun it was to battle you! Now, remind me, how many wins is that for me now?"

Before Emmet could even think of a response, the man pulled down his face mask. Emmet's eyes widened as he looked back at a face that almost exactly mirrored his own. Ingo. His brother Ingo. His twin brother Ingo had just beaten him in a doubles battle and was now smiling back at him and shaking his hand.

"Ingo?!" Emmet immediately let go of his hand and pulled his brother into a hug. Ingo just laughed and hugged him back, harder than Emmet had ever thought was possible from his twin. There was a mix of laughing and crying from both of them as Emmet tried to make sense of what was happening.

"Ingo, i-is it... is it really you?" Emmet pulled away just enough to look at his brother.

He looked older, but that was mostly just around the eyes. Ingo had some wrinkles and eye bags, but it wasn't like Emmet could say that he himself didn't have the same wrinkles and heavy eye bags. After many sleepless nights and years spent worrying over his brother's whereabouts, he knew he had aged quite a bit. Along with that, Ingo's normal frown was pulled up a bit into a smile. It was a small, warm smile, but coming from Ingo, that was the biggest smile he had ever seen. His brother also had a short pointed goatee, which Emmet had to laugh at. It almost matched his own goatee, which was shorter and pointed more up towards his mouth. Even while separated, they still found ways to match. However, the receding hairline had certainly caught Emmet off guard, along with how long his brother's hair had grown. Sure, Emmet's hair was starting to thin, but not that drastically, and he still managed to keep his hair cut short. Where had his brother been, and what had he been up to?

"It's really me, Emmet, I promise," Ingo said, answering his earlier question. He sniffled, and even though he was crying with tears staining his cheeks, Ingo instead wiped at his brother's eyes. The affectionate gesture just brought more tears for Emmet.

"You... you're really home," Emmet cried. "You're alive and back home."

"Yeah, I'm alive and here," Ingo said. When had his voice become so quiet? "And I'm so incredibly happy to see you."

Emmet pulled Ingo into another tight squeeze. After a moment, he realized something and pulled away again.

"I am Emmet. You battled me before telling me you were here!" he exclaimed. "And what's with the mask and the disguise?"

Ingo laughed and patted his brother's shoulder.

"Haha, I wanted to see how you'd react!" Ingo said between laughs. "I thought it would be fun to surprise you!"

"You are so mean!" Emmet punched Ingo in the shoulder, but he wasn't actually mad. Sure, he was a little pissed off that Ingo had made him go through a whole battle without telling him who he was, but he also had to admit that it was a little funny. "You are so mean to me! My own brother! Battling me and beating me before telling me you are back! The worst brother ever!"

Ingo just laughed more, then raised a hand to his chest in mock hurt and shock as he gasped dramatically.

"Emmet! How could you say such a thing! My own brother!" His voice played up the mock hurt, but his eyes were upturned in the way that let Emmet know he was really smiling.

"Yup! I am deeply hurt, Ingo. Verrrry hurt! Disguising yourself from me."

"It was just a joke, brother! I meant no harm!"

"Verrrry mean to your poor, sweet twin brother. I am Emmet. I will never recover."

"Nooo!" Ingo lifted his arms dramatically, which just caused Emmet to laugh. They both fell into another laughing fit and hugged each other.

"...I am Emmet. I have missed this. I missed you verrrrrry much, Ingo. I am so glad you are back," Emmet said once they were calmed down. He rested his head on his brother's shoulder, and Ingo responded by gently rubbing Emmet's back.

"I missed you too, Emmet," Ingo said, his voice once again uncharacteristically soft. "Although, I must admit that my amnesia prevented me from fully remembering you for quite a while."

Emmet pulled away a little at that.

"Amnesia?"

"I'm okay, I promise," Ingo assured him. "But it's a long story. The short version is that I had sustained a head injury, resulting in amnesia. I couldn't remember much aside from my name. But I could eventually vaguely remember a man that looked like me. That was all I knew for a while, other than the fact that I knew he was someone close to me that I missed deeply. But I had some help, and I've been able to remember you and our home here in Unova, and our pokemon. I will need assistance remembering more, so, I hope you'll help conduct me back onto the right tracks."

"Of course," Emmet held his twin close. "Of course I will help you. I am Emmet. You are Ingo. We are a two car train again. I will help you in any way I can."

"Thank you, Emmet," Ingo said as he buried his face in Emmet's shoulder again. Emmet hugged him close for a while longer. If he could, he would just stay like this forever.

However, the train eventually had to pull back into Gear Station. Ingo pulled his mask back up, saying how he didn't want to cause a huge fuss with his reappearance just yet. Emmet understood that, and together, they stepped off of the train. Emmet then made a call over his radio to the depot agents, saying he would be taking the rest of the day off, citing that something with his family had come up. As they walked out of the station, Ingo suddenly perked up.

"Oh! There are two people that I'd like you to meet," he said excitedly as he pulled out a phone. He eagerly began sending a text to a group chat. Emmet peeked over at his brother's phone and saw the names Dawn and Johanna.

"Who are Dawn and Johanna?" he asked.

"The people I'd like you to meet!" Ingo explained excitedly. "Dawn is a wonderful young girl with incredible battling skills! She is actually the one who helped me get home. As for Johanna, she is Dawn's mother. She's an incredibly kind and strong woman, and she's actually a talented contest coordinator from Sinnoh! She is, um, also my girlfriend."

Even with the mask on, Emmet could tell that his brother was blushing. Emmet's jaw hung open slightly.

"You have a girlfriend?!"

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flutteringfable · 11 months

Text

venti appearance hcs bc i love him he is so silly and has never done anything wrong at all

khanri'ah? destroyed? haha i have no idea what you’re talking about venti is so innocent and soft and would never do such a thing

all jokes aside, i like thinking about scars he might have, or little quirks about his outfit etc. enjoy my silly brainrot about this goofball

this post got very long but honestly considering its about one of my favorite blorbos i’m not surprised

no content warnings aside from maybe mentions of injuries and scars? nothing crazy tho 👍

starting at the top, his hair!

venti tends to sleep in trees a lot (he probably has his own actual house somewhere but he likes to nap in the wild for some reason), so he often has leaves or moss in his hair. he does his best to brush or wash it out when he can, but he hangs out outdoors so often it kind of doesn’t help

the tips of his braids glow when he’s excited, angry, flustered, etc.

no one (except for a choice few people, of course) has really guessed that the hair glow happens because he’s an archon

venti is so eccentric that people are just like “yeah we dunno he’s just like that it’s probs something to do w his vision idk”

sometimes, on particularly hot days or when he needs to keep it out of his face, he pulls it into a sort of half-up ponytail and pins his bangs to the side.

he likes to put feathers in the ends of his braids! he finds finch feathers pretty, and he also likes to use dvalin’s feathers sometimes

dvalin’s feathers glow with his hair, for some reason. maybe its the anemo? maybe it’s their strong connection? who knows

his hair is very fluffy and soft. he washes it often, and it tends to fluff out a little bit when it gets dry. having it braided and then undoing it after a while adds to the fluff.

moving down a bit, his face!

*clears throat into mic, standing in front of thousands of venti fans* glowy freckles.

he has a mix of regular and glowy freckles! they’re a lot more prominent when he’s been out in the sun

he has a really bad habit of chewing on his lips when he’s writing or thinking very hard about something, so while they are soft, there’s always marks and cracks from where he bites them.

his cheeks are almost always rosy since he spends a lot of time outside.

he has some small scars around the edges of his face from when dvalin was a baby and liked to climb all over him (mostly onto his head)

i know archons technically don’t suffer ailments like eyestrain as badly as mortals do, but venti has been writing poetry for thousands of years. he probably gets migraines, and might wear reading glasses to write sometimes.

the glasses are intricately designed, and they’re one of the only things he’s ever saved up money for other than alcohol.

he just liked the pretty ones a lot, especially since they had a sort of winged/angelic theme to their design

i’m not really sure what shape the lenses would be, but i like the idea of them being round. they have a little chain on them that has a feather charm attached. the frames are golden (not actual gold, of course. though venti may or may not have been willing to pay the extra expenses had they been real gold.)

the handles are also golden, and they have feather shaped accents near where the frames connect.

anyway, he wears them out once in a while when he wants to work on his wips at the tavern or on the barbatos statue. he doesn’t drink much when he has them with him, because of course he would prefer to not break his favorite and only pair of glasses by passing out or otherwise.

venti has a bad habit of staying up too long and losing track of time, so occasionally he gets dark circles under his eyes

next up, his build and scars etc!

venti stands at about 5’ 4” (~163 cm)

his clothing hides a lot of the way he’s built, aside from his legs

he has a soft chest and tummy (perfect for putting ur head on for a nice nap)

he has surprisingly toned arms? he’s not noticeably buff like alhaitham or itto but he has a lot of muscle in his arms from using his bow.

speaking of his bow, he has a lot of scars from when he was still learning to use it

there’s a mark on his inner left arm from when he accidentally hit it with his bowstring. it used to happen so often that there’s a faint permanent scar there.

he has a lot of soreness and issues with his hands and wrists because he writes and uses his bow a lot, but it used to be MUCH worse when he was still learning

nowadays he knows how to handle the cramps and aches, but when he was learning, he had no idea how to ease them. he could barely write or play his lyre for a while because archery combined with composing music and poetry was taking a serious toll on his arms and hands.

he gets ink marks on his hands a lot

he paints his nails! he has a lot of different colored polishes but his favorite is a soft teal.

everyone knows about the archon markings on his chest and leg, but i raise you:

archon markings where his wings should be when he isn’t in his god form

which is why he wears the cape, since all his markings tend to glow dimly all the time and his shirt is kind of thin.

and finally, his outfit!

in his mortal form, venti loves to collect feathers, crystals, and flowers. he puts them wherever he can fit them, since he oftentimes doesn’t have a pocket or bag aside from his mora pouch. so, when he goes out to windrise for inspiration (or a nap) m, expect him to return with a windwheel aster weaved into a braid and maybe a dove feather tucked behind his ear.

when he’s embarrassed, venti will pull up both sides of his cape to hide his face in

he also tends to fidget with it and his hair when he’s nervous or bored

in my heart he wears thigh highs, idc what hoyoverse reveals them as if they ever do

somehow, venti has some sort of crazy luck and his socks always stay up. they might get a little bunched up in some places after battles, but they never fall completely.

is it archon stuff? black magic? just a venti thing? top ten questions science still can’t answer

he tends to keep a lot of things in his hat. he doesn’t carry much very often, so he can put a quill, his notebook, and a corked bottle of ink underneath it and carry it wherever he pleases.

the ribbon on his cape is only decorative. the cape actually has a small button and a loop that connects to keep it fastened.

that’s about it! if i think of any more i might edit this list, but i think i got everything i wanted out there. hope you enjoyed, and feel free to share your own venti headcanons! i love him sm i would love new perspectives on him from people who are just as normal about him as me <3

#fable writes 💫#venti genshin impact #venti the bard #genshin impact #venti genshin #headcanons #genshin headcanons #venti headcanons

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4thenookie · 9 months

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Hi hi i heard you wanted some headcanons!! As always this is /lh, not meant to be taken that seriously, agree to disagree, yada yada all that good jazz lmao. Most of them are pretty crack-y in nature as well, they're just meant for fun lol. And with that, I'll compile my miles long headcanon list into (mostly) sorted by character for everyone's convenience lmao

- starting off strong with trans EJ! Idk why but do headcanons really need a reason? (I do know why) (i like to make my blorbos suffer 💖) (and also [diverges your neuros] [transes your genders] [homos your sexuals]). Also biromantic asexual king

- more EJ because he's THE blorbo. Boy is british asf and he knows BSL and is learning ASL. Touch averse as well. I feel like EJ would actually be a decent if not great cook.

- EJ purring like a cat when he's content/happy? I think yes! Also has a tail with one of those tail tuft thingies? Kinda like lions if you know what i mean. And the pointy ears (peak character design yaknow)

- moving on. I feel like Jeff knows how to play an instrument. Probably electric guitar. He also has like a bajillion band t-shirts. Jeff also likes to take long, hot showers but hates to comb his hair lol

- while Brian cooks food so bad/raw it could as well just still be alive, Toby is either a great cook or a disaster in the kitchen with seemingly no indicator for which one it's going to be on any given day. I'm talking managing to burn a pot of water one day and cooking a michelen star worthy meal the next.

- Kagekao is actually fluent in English and speaks and understands it perfectly, he just refuses to speak it. He takes great amusement in watching other people lose their minds over this

- speaking of languages, i feel like Toby would be bilingual if not multilingual. He speaks English and German, maybe even Spanish if we're going the multilingual route

- also. Oh my god. The generational difference between BEN "memelord who quotes vines like there's no tomorrow" Drowned and Slenderman is just. I cant stop laughing thinking about it. Any given conversation between these two is just a gamble on who is going to lose it first

- BRVR is kinds Lost Silver's pet but also not really? Like he just kinda goes wherever but Lost Silver mainly takes care of him

- LJ he/it truther

- Me and a friend came up with this which probably explains why it is cracky as fuck but hear me out. Jeff as a makeup artist. He made Slender look like Beyonce once. No one knows how he did it and how he's not dead (the answer, as my friend said, is "no one can hate Beyonce")

- i feel like Toby, BEN, and Jeff would be like. The chaos trio. God knows what will happen when you put the three of then alone in a room together

- i also feel like Brian sunburns really easily.

- Tim is one of those dads that wants to leave in the middle of the night for road trips / holidays to avoid the traffic jams

Hope this makes even a bit of sense and i hope you enjoyed whatever my brain spewed at me lol if u ever wanna share more headcanons or talk about blorbos or share character slander (looking at Brian and LJ (affectionate)) feel free to dm me!! (I dont mind i promise lol /lh)

hi!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg these are so so so real thank you for sharing them with me!!!! ill go into some more detail under the cut :)

to be honest, i can kinda see trans ej being real now that you mention it, ill definitely think about that a lot!! and i also hc him as asexual!!!! :)

im british and i claim ej as one of us lmaooo

i absolutely agree w the purring thing!!! i think ej does a lot of cat things idk :)))) i love all of your ej headcanons!!!

tbh i can see jeff either playing electric guitar like you said or maybe drums?? just any instrument he can go ham on when hes mad lmao

in my hc he has the worst case of chronic greasy hair and he doesnt want to do anything about it

cooking hcs are so real brian can NOT cook!!!!!!! toby will either serve you some 5 star gourmet shit or some rotten takeout he found during a dumpster dive

omg omg omg I hardly see anybody talk about kagekao!!!!!! i totally agree he would do that lmaooo

idk if its canon or not but i read somewhere that tobys German so i totally agree that hed be bilingual!!!

oh my god BEN whos native language is memes meets grandpa slendy that would be so funny

in 4 words youve converted me into a fellow he/it LJ truther!!!! could we consider he/it ej too? maybe??

ik you said it was a cracky hc but i can actually kinda see jeff being good at makeup??? like one of those things where he tries it once and it's the most drop dead gorgeous makeup look you've EVER seen and everyones like how did you do that

toby BEN and jeff are an absolute riot when rheyre together lmao

omg i never thought about it but brian sunburning super easy is so real!! and in summer he always wears sunglasses so he has like an unburnt patch on his face where his sunglasses were yk??

OMG YES LMAOOOOO "guys get up our flights in 10 hours WE'RE GONNA BE LATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" he would 100% have a checklist or 3

thank you so much for sharing these with me!! i hope you dont mind me adding my own thoughts lol but theyre so much fun to think about!!!! if you ever wanna slander lj and brian with someone feel free to dm me lmao!!!!!! take care <33333

#creepypasta #creepypasta headcanons #ask #eyeless jack #jeff the killer #I forgot who else we talked about lmaoooooo #ticci toby #ben drowned #laughing jack

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waylyngdraws · 1 month

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this is my vtm oc. this is also the chupacabra.

i don't mean that metaphorically — i actually decided, what if el chupacabra was actually a nosferatu ? i mean, a little disfigured vampire-dog-alien crawling around mexico ? how could i resist ?

NONE of the players knew. (apart from one — who thought it was obvious so said nothing). I was in this play-by post, playing this cryptid, that i named CHOO, for FOUR MONTHS before i revealed this. choo itself didn't even know this; it stopped putting down sophisticated memories when it went feral for about 100 years. some ventrue had to use forgetful mind to dig out the memory. after revealing that they'd got in trouble, the ventrue asked how. the response was this:

"Kindred not, not want, not want seen…Choo seen, seen lots…Delores say, say Choo is famous. Lots, lots know, know Choo, Choo long name."

another ventrue cottons on and loses his fucking mind. i switch the tupper i'm using from one that has the display name 'Choo' to 'El Chupacabra'. the server's having a complete breakdown. i am cackling.

i changed its design slightly so it's covered in hair rather than mangey because like,, if it didn't, everyone would see it's just a vampire'd child.

(cw: body horror, teeth)

here it is !

some of my favourite interactions with this character have been its early ones. it had never seen another non-nosferatu before, so the first one it meets, it insists:

"Sherriff, I is friend. You take off face now." It cocks its head, seemingly unaware how unnerving it sounds.

i love this character. it had no idea that kindred can just look like that, and tried for ages to get the Sheriff to stop using mask of many faces. except it doesn't know all of those words. so that's how it decides to express that.

this is the character introduction !

You knew it was a mistake not to call that taxi.

One moment there's nothing in front of you, the next, there's…something there. In the gloom of the alley, your first instinct would be to say it's an overlarge shaggy dog, had it not been for the spines down its back. As it cocks its head to examine you, you glimpse through pale gold fur a single orbish protrusion on its head, bulging with manic energy, that you can only assume is an eye. It blinks, and two separate eyelids move to cover its ungodly, reptilian stare. It seems like an animal, but for the way it moves, observing you; that, and its front paws, which are very clearly hands — if, large gangly hands, with too many joints. Its back paws are very clearly paws, stemming from legs that, were they human, you'd say they bent the wrong way. The other sign of humanity is that it wears a patchy loincloth. It starts to crawl toward you, in a distinctly human fashion, and you realise with a sickening lurch to your stomach that it must be a child. Choo the Nosferatu lowers its jaw to show you, friend, its best feature — a mouth glutted with keen teeth, gleaming in the light of the far-off streetlamp.

But then you run.

The sound behind you — is it a padding or a scuttling? Your clumsy human feet aren't up to it, and now you've shown your hand; friends don't run.

Runners are prey.

hope you enjoyed blorbo #3 ! unlike the other two cunts, this is my baby and can do no wrong. also. to avoid breaking the masquerade, it walks around in a little dog coat and wellies.

#artists on tumblr #digital art #digital illustration #vampire: the masquerade #vampire the masquerade #vtm #vtm oc #vtm art #nosferatu #body horror #teeth #chupacabra #cryptid #writing #the chupacabra #el chupacabra

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actual-corpse · 4 months

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After one real life hour.

It feels like I got nothing done.

The Bachelor is barely taller than the children (and he calls Teensy "pumpkin" which is just too cute)

Why does Maria have nipples on her dress?

Eva Yan did not have to be dressed like That (I was shook.... So I tried to flirt with her through dialog options)

WORM

RUNNING WORM

Big Vlad is sus af

So. Much. Walking.

Went to investigate a fire. Found a revolver and 5 bullets. (Not foretold by Harris The Bomber)

It's only 11 o'clock on Day 1... I shall not be lulled into a false sense of safety.

Talked to some strangers. Got accosted for spring water. Told the man to drink from the river and then called him an animal. (I had no idea I had water even though I JUST checked my inventory)

WASD mouse controls are hard (grew up a console gamer. Don't feel like digging out my controller)

Misread "Torch" as "Touch". Got surprised when I tried to "touch" something and ended up with extra light

BLORBO

What.the.fuck.are.these.people.saying?????

Executor complains about not being able to see through the mask (that shit looks so cool)

Idk how only 13% of players beat Day 1... seems like a walk in the park.... for now?

The Saburov wife is definitely on Something ("Do My eyes look like buttons to you?" WHAT DO YOU MEAN?)

TELL ME WERE LITTLE VLAD IS EVA! I PROMISED YOU I WOULD HELP THE WORM please don't make me cross the rivers again

What are the circles? What are the handprints? What is life?

"You spin my head right 'round, right 'round" *shakes mouse* "GET OUT OF THE WALL! Oh.... I was stuck on a wall sconce... my bad"

"Hellooooo... A strange man is entering your house.... Anybody hooooome?"

*Enters Big Vlad's house* *jumps* "WORM?!"

Commenting on the *interesting* art the Steppe People have in their houses.

WTF ARE THE HOUSES

Why is Isidor's house in 3 people's back yards?

Fucking. Fences

*"Why are you running?" Meme*

Using coupons as a mousepad.

Game runs pretty good on a laptop... Wtf is so wrong with the Sims 4? Why does it run like shit through a sieve? (It ran bad before mods...)

I hear dogs barking.... where are the dogs?

Bought meat. Why? Idk.

When do I eat?

When do I sleep?

DO I NEED WATER?!?

What do the symbols mean?

I played long enough to move my second load of laundry into the dryer. It's 3AM and I need to sleep.

Can't let my sleep schedule fuck up this late in the week. Especially since university starts next Tuesday and all of my classes start at 8AM.

I'd love to be able to record my gameplays... I like to share experiences with people, and recording as I play is a very efficient means of doing so. I just don't have the money for video capture software.

#id really love to record my Dark Souls playthrough #if i make money... so be it. that isnt my main goal though #pathologic #Actual Corpse Plays Pathologic

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chronic-ghost · 8 months

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Chapter 9 of Recovery Road

chapter rating: E (18+)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

word count: 11845

chapter summary: if you thought you knew the full story of natalie lorraine, you were myth-taken

chapter warnings/tags: non-consensual touching, implied sexual assault, emotionally abusive parents, drug/alcohol use, underaged drug/alcohol use, women existing in the male gaze, putting too much of myself into characters as per yooshg

a/n: Header comes from the “Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses” by John William Waterhouse. Song for this chapter is Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac – watch me make a fic playlist after the fact lmao. Bear with me while I wax embarrassingly poetic about my favorite oc blorbo. Remember this does end well!!!

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There are many different types of myth but, essentially, they can be grouped into three: etiological myths, historical myths, psychological myths. Etiological myths can offer explanations for why the world is the way it is. Historical myths retell an event from the past but elevate it with greater meaning than the actual event (if it even happened). [Lastly] psychological myths present one with a journey from the known to the unknown which, according to both Jung and Campbell, represents a psychological need to balance the external world with one's internal consciousness of it. – Mythology, Joshua Mark

“in front of my mother and my sisters,

i pretend love is cheap and vulgar.

i act like it’s a sin–

i pretend that love is for women on a dark path.

but at night i dream of a love so heavy

it makes my spine throb–

i dream up a lover who makes love like he is

separating salt from water.”

— Salma Deera, “salt”

Natalie Lorraine is a myth.

And like in all the great myths, birth is a painful, violent emergence.

Slowly, labored across years and many heartbeats, what remains is the inevitable conclusion of being fucked over, of being lazy and careless, of innocence taken too soon. Careless children grow up to be careless mothers, careless fathers.

The titans of the world leave to make their mark on history and, in doing so, mark their children in a way more powerful, more regretful than any legend could possibly make them out to be.

Medea is brutalized in legends and in verse for the most heinous a mother can commit.

Odysseys forgets what being a father means.

Oedipus Rex curses his children with an unforgivable sin by way of their mother, their grandmother, and that staggering failure is felt through to Antigone, a generation removed. Antigone dies. Haemon and Eurydice die too. Pain and grief are family heirlooms passed through pale fingers at the stroke of midnight.

But despite all that. Before all that.

Myths begin when the heroes are forced to make a choice, choose a direction in the way their lives end up. It might not always be obvious, and the gods might have things in store for them. But there is a choice and the fallen hero always chooses.

But they were all children once. You have to remember that. You have to believe that.

(Aetiologic)

I hate these socks, you think to yourself, they’re itchy and they hurt my toes. Every time you swing your legs over the edge of that leather couch, your legs too short to touch the ground, the toe of your shoe pinches you. You really, really want to take off your shoes, but Mom said you had to keep them on all day, especially in the office. In his office. You think your dress looks like one of your baby dolls and you don’t like it.

So you stop kicking, even though the sound of your heel against the leather made a funny noise. You can move too, and make the leather squeak, and that is pretty fun too. Grinning, you bounce like you aren’t supposed to on your bed back home, the cushions chirping – it sounds like they’re farting – you giggle, rocking back on your hands from left to right, squealing along with the leather as you made it –

“Enough!”

You freeze, tears immediately welling in your eyes, fear almost painful in your chest.

But he’s not talking to you. Your father is still in his office, with the door barely shut, and he’s talking to someone on the phone. Yelling, actually. He’s been in there since the little hand was on the fifteen and now it’s on the thirty. He told you to wait there while he called your mom. You tried to sit still, but it was boring and all the toys were back in the other room.

He never yelled at you, your dad, but he did yell at your mom.

When you talked to the other kids in your preschool class, their mommies and daddies lived in the same house together, slept in the same bed, talked nicely to each other. Yours didn’t.

“Well, what am I supposed to do with her, LeAnne? I told you I have a meeting at four today and she could be here for three hours. I told you! I can’t have her here! You need to come pick up your daughter!”

Your foot kicks up and down. You didn’t like it when they talked about you like you weren’t there.

“Hey there.” A woman with blonde hair and big eyes sits down next to you. She was always around your dad, and always handled his papers and briefcase and sometimes his coffee. She is younger than your mom but way older than you are. You think she’s really, really pretty. None of her dresses look like baby doll dresses. “I’m sorry your dad is taking so long. Do you want something to eat, or drink?”

You shake your head. Your mom said not to talk to strangers, so you didn’t open your mouth.

“Are you bored? Do you wanna watch some TV?”

TVs were everywhere in your dad’s office building. Down near the elevators, and then more when you got out. It always seemed like people were watching a tv and the actors on the tv. Actors were people whose job it was to be on the tv or in the movies, your dad told you. He told you he knew a lot of famous actors, but when you told the kids in your class about it, they said they didn’t know any of those people.

“You’re just making things up!”

“You’re a liar!”

You really wanted your dad to introduce you to an actor, just to prove them wrong. You thought it was pretty cool how everyone was always watching them. Like they couldn’t look away.

You nod at the pretty lady. She smiles and picks up the skinny black tv remote on the table in front of the couch.

The tv in the corner of the room pops on. The size of it doesn’t take up the wall like some of the tvs in the office do, but it’s still bigger than the one you have at home.

The nice lady taps the button a few times, the channels changing, until she comes to the kids channel. It’s a little old for you – all of the shows at preschool are cartoons and this one has real people in it – but you want this woman to like you.

“Do you like this one? Friends in the Family? It’s so funny!”

She turns and leans back against the couch with you. You hear people laughing on the screen, even though you don’t see anyone. There’s a young girl, older than you but younger than this nice lady, and she has a boy with her on her parents’ couch. The boy leans in and kisses her cheek and the invisible people go ‘oooooh’.

“Ooooh!” You mimic and the nice woman laughs, grinning at you. Something warm and tight goes up your chest, and you pinch your lip with your teeth, toes curling in your stupid shoes. You liked making her laugh.

On the screen, a little girl – maybe the other girl’s sister – pushes through the kitchen door. You gasp in surprise. She looks like she could be in your preschool class. She’s all mad and she crosses her arms, pouting.

“Someone’s gonna get it!”

The invisible people laugh and the nice lady giggles so hard she leans forward and you’re giggling too, even though you don’t quite get it. That warm feeling reminds you of when you drink soda too fast, but it’s good.

You frown too, put your hands on your hips, parroting the little girl on tv, “someone’s gonna get it!”

Her pretty mouth opens in surprise, her eyes sparkling.

“Oh my God, that was so good! You sound just like her!” You giggle, your face hot. “Have you ever asked your dad about acting?”

You shake your head. You, an actor? On tv? No way!

“Well, you should! You could be really good!”

You don’t know what to say, you want to keep making the same faces that little girl is, when your dad’s door opens. The young woman next to you lurches forward and shuts off the tv. He comes out and you can’t tell if he’s angry or upset or if that’s just how he looks. You’re not around him enough to know. But he stands in front of you, thinking something.

“Judy, would you get us two juice boxes from the fridge downstairs?”

“Of course, Mr. Milken.”

The young woman leaves and you’re a little afraid. You don’t want him to yell at you for watching that show for older kids. You twist your little fingers.

“That was your mom on the phone. She’s going to be a little late.”

You nod. “Okay.”

“Did you have fun today at my office? Did you like meeting all my friends?”

You nod, this time quicker. “Yes! I would like to meet an actor one day!”

At that, he smiles and you relax. People who are angry don’t smile.

“While we wait for your mom, do you wanna play paper football?”

“What’s that?”

“C’mon. I’ll show you.”

So the myth begins. All it takes is a single idea. A single want. A single desire. An innately human desire. We build myths and we tell stories and we fill them with the things we want to hear.

You’re turning fourteen next month. It’s circled on your calendar in your bedroom. It’s not like it’s that big of a deal, but at least now you could start the emancipation process. If you wanted to. You laid awake at night, thinking about what you’d call yourself if you ever changed your name. Something vaguely French-sounding. European for sure. But they were just fantasies to get you through the day.

It’s early in the morning. You haven’t heard anything from Mom’s room in a while so you figure it’s just the two of you in the house again. You totter out of your room, blinking sleep from your eyes – it was a very late night on set last night and probably would be again, given how the production of this made-for-tv movie was going and especially with the extra homework you’ve been doing to make up for the time off you’ve taken – as you wander across the small, sun-streaked living room, and around the corner to the kitchen. You hear something from the fridge and just as you are about to ask your mom if she’s cooking (which is never a good idea), a man stands up. He’s older than you but younger than your mom and he has the last piece of your sourdough bread in his mouth. He smirks and you unconsciously tug down the hem of your sleep shorts.

This has been happening more and more lately. The way men, older men, look at you, it’s different now. Has been for a while, but now there’s more of them, their gazes sit on your bare skin longer, the light in their eyes changing, the lines around their mouths tightening. You don’t really know what it is they want, but it’s baffling to you that they think looking at you like that will convince you to give anything to them.

It's the way your mom’s new boyfriend is looking at you. Your cheeks heat up without your consent and you hate it.

He’s hungry and he’s scrounging around in the fridge and now he’s looking at you. Still hungry.

“Hey, you must be LeAnne’s daughter,” he says, taking the bread slice out of his mouth and propping his hairy arm on the top of the refrigerator door, his gaze sweeping you from head to toe as if deciding whether or not to make a sandwich out of you. Who likes this kind of shit? Oh, that’s right. Your mom.

You narrow your eyes at him. “Yeah. That’s me. Is she here?”

His eyes follow the backs of your thighs as you walk over to the coffee pot and take out week-old coffee grounds. They’ve turned blue, started to mold, but you dump them out into the trash with three good smacks.

“Uh, she’s still in bed. She said you could get to school on your own.”

Behind you, the fridge door slams shut and you curl your toes, begging yourself not to flinch. There’s something inside of you demanding you to not show weakness. Steadying your own hand, you dig into the jar holding the coffee grounds. It’s halfway empty, you make a note to pick up some later, the thought pressed up against the swell of panic that’s growing at the edge of your awareness.

“I’m Alan.” He leans up against the counter out of the corner of your eye. “I know we just met, but I could take you, to school . . . if you want.”

His thick middle has nothing to do with age, only poor health. Evident further by his off-yellow teeth and bad breath.

“I’m o-okay. Thank you.”

There’s three minutes left on the coffee timer. His gaze is like open palms on your skin. You hate it. He sidles up closer and your nails dig half-moon crescents into your skin. The lovely smell of coffee brewing is overwhelmed by his cheap cologne. He’s big. Bigger than you. Bigger than any of the boys in your class, or any of the men on set. You’ve never really noticed the men on set, they’ve never been this close before, but you’re sure he’s bigger than all of them.

You’ve never felt quite so small.

“You were in that movie, right? ‘Those ain’t your average space-invaders’, that was you right?” You nod, the back of your throat drying out. He chuckles. “You were good. Really good. You were so pretty.”

“I was ten.”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Ten outta ten.”

Your stomach clenches and it’s like he can tell. Alan reaches the two inches across the linoleum and gently strokes your forearm. A light, smelly panic sweat breaks out over your forehead, under your armpits.

You want him away from you, want him gone, to run back to your room, but where would that get you?

Roll over, play dead, show your under belly. You don’t know what else to do to make him go away.

“Well, if you see my mom,” you ease around him, your forearm sliding from his grasp just as his fingers tighten, making sure you don’t seem offended, “tell her I’ve got a ride to–,”

“Hey, wait, where ya going?”

You all but run back to your room, the coffee pot beeping behind you. You throw open your bedroom door and leap inside, locking it behind you. You don’t realize you’re panting until you feel light-headed, dizzy – you feel sticky all of a sudden and rush into your bathroom. Steam pours from the scalding hot water, the red handle all the way to the right, as you stand over it, watching it rush down the drain. With your lips pinched between your teeth, you run your hands under it and muffle a scream. It hurts. It burns but it’s like his touch is evaporating off your skin and there’s relief in that. It’s the first time you realize that the pain you give yourself is different from the pain that they give you.

Not all of them are like that.

Some of them are actually kind of okay.

You’re fifteen and dressed as a pumpkin for the Halloween party hosted by the studio, the suit baggy and oversized, and for once, your mom’s friends don’t stare at you. No one really has all night and it’s nice. You feel like you can ease into the wall and no one would notice. There’s a long black couch on the other side of a plant with glowing lights in the shape of ghosts wrapped around its trunk. You stepside around a few directors, one of your other actors, and head straight for the couch.

You don’t realize Jim, your mom’s current boyfriend is already there until you sit down and groan. He laughs from the opposite end and you jump.

He’s more her age, thankfully, and doesn’t really seem to notice if you’re at home or not. In fact, you can’t really remember another conversation with him that lasted longer than a few minutes.

“You liking the party?” He asks.

You shrug – never show your actual feelings. “It’s kinda late. I’ve got classes on Monday, so I’m hoping to make it an early night.”

He nods, slowly, distracted. There’s something about his eyes that isn’t right. Not in the way that he looks at you, but at everything, like he’s trying to look through a dense fog.

Your mother is nowhere to be found, which isn’t entirely out of the ordinary for this sort of thing. She’d either show up and be the life of the party or show up so trashed she had to be escorted out of the building.

But it is odd for her to just leave one of her toys lying around.

“Do you know where my mom is?” You ask Jim and he shakes his head, as though it takes a considerable amount of effort just to hold himself upright. There’s definitely something wrong with him.

And then you see the smoke coming from his fingers and you finally realize that skunky smell is coming from him.

He sees your gaze fall. “You want a hit?” He asks, either not remembering your question or not wanting to answer.

You’d never tried it before, not really having time between shooting schedules and school and your mom wanting to take you out to meet new casting directors and writers. You sit there, staring and realize Jim is probably one of the only consistent people you see in your life, everyone else a revolving door of names and faces and elbows to rub. A tiredness breaks over you like the push of a wave and you sway, wanting nothing more than to be at home under the covers. You wish you’d brought your walkman, so you could have hid out on the soundstage until the party was over.

You’d grown skinny over the past year. Rewarded and praised for it by producers and studio execs, you saw that people listened to you more, looked you in the eye when you were beautiful, made more beautiful by the thinness of your cheeks, your narrow thighs. Your mother was convinced you were taking pills, but couldn’t find anything in the house. And yet, the real reason behind it all was sometimes you were just too tired to eat. Too tired to move. Happy to curl up wherever you found yourself and sleep until the next person needed something from you.

But this is what you wanted, after all. You asked for a life of movies and revolving doors and fake people and men staring at your ass. You are reminded of this all the time.

You nod at Jim, curiosity getting the better of you and wondering if other girls did this sort of thing in basements or with their friends or boyfriends. You portray a teenage girl on television, but sometimes you don’t feel like one at all.

He reaches out to you and you take it. You’d smoke a cigarette once, with a few of the kids from that one time you guest-starred on that sitcom, so you think this’ll be the same.

“What’s it going to feel like?” You ask, the white paper inches from your lips. Jim looked at you and his eyes sort of crinkled.

“It’s good. Real good. Like there’s a cloud between you and the rest of the world.”

That did sound nice.

You put your lips and inhale – it burns in a way you weren’t expecting – and you cough. Jim laughs in a way that makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong, that you’re silly.

“You’ll get it,” he says, “you’ll get it.”

You try again and remember that he held his breath before exhaling. You do the same, but the scratch makes your eyes water, your chest tighten, but you hold on, until you feel smoke cauterizing the back of your throat close and you cough again, less this time.

Jim laughs again and takes back the skunky cigarette. “Hey, look at that, your first joint and you handled it like a champ.”

He smokes more, losing interest in you, so he turns and watches the party. Your heart beats roughly in your chest, but that might be more of the nerves than anything else. You fidget on the couch, waiting for something to happen, but it never does.

“I think I need another h-hit. I don’t feel anything.”

Jim frowns at you, shaking his head. “Hell no. You took two giant puffs on your first go. I’m not babysitting you when you’re puking in the toilet with the spins.”

“The spins?”

“When you drink while you’re high. Can be a real bad mix.”

You blush, wondering if he saw you take sips from the flask in your purse or he just assumes you’re always drinking because you’re LeAnne’s daughter.

“Just sit back, relax, you’ll feel it. In a bit.”

So you try his approach, nonchalantly watching people dressed in devil costumes, in white vampire fangs and cloaks, little skimpy bunny outfits, as the party rages on. You watch, and slowly, the whole thing feels distant. Like you’re in the far back of a theater and everything in front of you is some sort of stage.

You find you like it in the back row, in the quiet and the darkness. It’s warm, sort of like you’re dizzy but you sway with the movement and you don’t get sick. You find that you are rolling your head back and forth and you giggle.

Jim smirks at you, that joint almost gone. “Yeah, there it is.”

You’d never been high like this before. Buzzed a little bit from the beer in your flask, but this was new. This was . . .

“It’s nice,” you smile widely to the ceiling. “Does it always feel this way?”

“Like I said, you can mix with alcohol and get really fucked up.” Jim shrugs. “And different strains do different things. This is gonna relax your brain, but there’s others that’ll give you a body high.”

Body, this thing you’re in that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you.

“But a mental high from weed and a mental high from glue are like two totally different things.”

Your bones feel like they weigh a thousand pounds and you could just melt into the leather. But you turn your head, dropping it against the back of the couch.

“You can get high from glue?”

“You can get high from just about anything.”

“Oh.”

The needle-like feeling that pricks your heart every time you come to one of these parties is gone. The sloshy oozy feeling in your stomach when you go into public with your mother is gone. There is nothing left inside of you except weight and heat and air that comes in through your nose and out through your mouth.

You giggle again. What if this is how a pumpkin feels all the time?

“Will it always feel like this?”

He doesn’t understand your question, doesn’t care enough to think about it, so he answers the only way he can. “Nah, should only last for a few hours. Then you’re good. No hangover, which is a plus.”

“But I always want it to feel this way.”

He grins again and pulls out a small plastic baggy with some fuzzy brussel-sprout-looking vegetable inside.

“Got twenty bucks on you?”

You’re sixteen and you’ve just started in your first major motion picture. Offers are rolling in, you no longer have to seek them out. The brand new telephone for your brand new house is constantly ringing. You have to unplug it to sleep at night. But that usually makes your mother yell at you.

She wants to answer every call that comes through. As if this house was hers.

You sit cross-legged on your bed, grinding up the weed you bought off a sound-stage guy earlier today in your silver grinder, your headphones in to drown out the noises coming from the other side of the house as well as the ones in your head.

This boyfriend was not so nice and in a drunken stupor grabbed your ass in front of LeAnne. She raged and yelled and blamed you.

Get out, she told you. Leave. Get out. We don’t want you here. Leave.

This is my house, you old bitch.

Licking the paper gently, you finish rolling the joint and press pause on your walkman. Stevie Nicks pauses in her crooning, and is it over now, do you know how? pick up the pieces and go home, and you remind yourself to find a purply drape at the next flee market. Reaching to the end of the bed, you plug in your headphones to the hot pink tv and flip to the right station.

Henry had sent in a new tv for your birthday, and you had that promptly thrown out. You bought this with your first check from residuals.

It’s almost eleven. It’s about to start.

You light the joint, inhaling smoothly, as the credits for Twenty-Three and Fun start up.

The joint quivers at the end of your knee, your toes curling. It wasn’t produced by your father’s company, but it was all anyone talked about at school, in the gossip mags. You thought about buying Tiger Beat just for the pictures . . . of one specific cast member.

You bite your nail as the theme song plays and the credits roll through all the gorgeous, young actors smiling as they go about their perfectly average lives in the big city.

And then his name shows up and you inhale smoke quickly to stifle the thing expanding in your chest.

Dieter Bravo.

His smooth soft hair, dark sweet eyes. God, he is so cute.

Your hand clenches the sheets. You’ve never had a boyfriend, only been kissed once while at dance in between shooting schedules that you’d begged your mom to let you attend. It was bad, it tasted bad, his lips were rubbery and wet, and you didn’t feel anything.

Not like when you imagine what it would be like to be kissed by him.

Twenty-Three and Fun is out of your demographic, but maybe you could convince someone to let you try out for the part of someone’s little sister who comes in for the weekend. You’d just love the chance to meet him. He makes you feel like nothing you’ve ever felt before, nothing you know what to do with, but you tingle all over with it.

You’re at the tail end of sixteen when the spiral starts.

When you don’t know where to put this loneliness that’s been dragging you down.

Men stare at you but not in the way you want. Girls your own age won’t look at you, and women glare at you while their husbands stare. And boys, God, boys your own age –

You wipe the tears from your eyes, the wind snarling through your hair, the heat of the summer night sinking into your skin like wet clay. You know you’re driving too fast, but you don’t care.

Every day you go to work and put on someone else’s skin. Their clothes. Their face. For a while, it’s been freeing, to pretend to have normal problems, a normal family, a normal life. Because you knew even if you had never chosen to go into your father’s industry – which was now just as much yours – you knew your life wasn’t ever going to be normal. Not in the way it mattered anyway.

But there is something there when you step in front of a camera. A feeling that doesn’t come from a dark place, from feelings of abandonment and loneliness – it comes from a place inside of you that still feels like you own, still is yours to hold and keep safe, despite everyone taking things from you without asking. Instead of taking, it gives. It builds. It grows, despite the salted earth of your soul.

You like becoming someone else for a while, thinking as they do. Dancing, laughing, eating, playing as someone other than yourself. You like to create. You crave it. You create life for someone else that doesn’t exist and you love it. It feels right, imagining something if not for you, for someone else. Someone who looks like you but isn’t you. It feels good to dream.

But lately.

Lately, this job is no longer an act of creation. It’s fake smiles and ad campaigns and commercials and it feels rotten. Hollow. Like you’re under the eyes of a thousand leering men instead of just one. It feels cheap. You feel cheap, for wanting it to be something more. This desire for life itself dies in your hands, choked out, aborted before it had the chance to breathe.

Your body, yourself, is being twisted, molded into something you don’t want it to become and the only time, the only time you feel as though you have even some slight control is when you have none at all. When you detach from your corporeal form, so high or drunk you can’t feel your fingers.

It began with the beer your mom’s boyfriends left in the fridge, then the pills in her medicine cabinet. Then the mini bottles of Crown Royal and Jim Beam in the mini-fridges at your dad’s office. No one ever seemed to care when you swiped the whole row into your backpack. Maybe others had done the exact same thing.

You didn’t know how or why these things made you feel better but they did. You didn’t care about the tears on your face, the hot flood of anger beating in your chest, and you didn’t care about the speed limit, not even when you saw the flashing red and blue lights.

But you started to care when they put you in lock up and then you definitely did when your father’s lawyer bailed you out.

You went home and threw up for six hours. No one came to check on you, no one came to find you when you yanked the phone cord out of the wall. You clutched the porcelain basin of the toilet for what felt like days. Years. You aged decades that night.

When you woke up, you showered, ate, and called back your father’s lawyer.

You had decided on a name, a new name to put on the emancipation papers.

You told the lawyer very clearly and seriously over the phone: “I want my name to be Natalie Lorraine.”

It was the emancipation that finally did it. The final chop from the parental vine. The day she kicked you out, you came home from school, in between shoots for a new film with Gerard Butler and in talks for something with Helen Miram, and you find your mother curled up on the kitchen table. At first, you legitimately thought she was dead; the top half of her body was crumpled against the wood, her feet tangled with the rungs of the chair. She faced away from you, her right hand curled around an empty crystal tumbler and a three-fourths empty bottle of Belvedere inches from her fingertips.

You stare, dumb-founded, your heart so slow you could hear it pound like a drum in your ears. And then she twitches.

And then she wails.

“How could you? How could you do this to me? I’m your mother. You owe me. You owe me you owe me you owe me.”

She heaves boneless to the floor, the glass and bottle slipping out of her hand and shattering like droplets of rain. You can’t move, transfixed, as your mother, hands split open, knees carving bloody trails across the tile, drags herself towards your feet, like a freshly dug-up corpse.

She’s muttering, spitting, snarling – she’s a starved, beaten beast, ready to make its last stand.

You were a mistake

You ruined me

You ruined your father for me

Her sentences are blurred, notched together, overlapping, and intertwining. The only thing you remember is the vitriol and hatred more palpable than her own breath.

Someone older, someone more separated from their pink, flushed girlhood would have the callouses to ease the burn, dull the cut. But at sixteen, you didn’t. At sixteen, with a burgeoning substance abuse problem and at the mercy of the first of many instances where adulthood begins to rob you of the small pleasures of life, you watch your mother crumble and it scares you.

In that moment you want nothing more than to be taken care of, in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s asking too much but it clearly is. You want to be safe in a way that is primal, the animal fear of the dark and unknown. You’ve seen your mother drunk before but not this drunk, never heard the sounds she’s making — the wailing, the disappointment, the sorrow and rage. It scares you so badly you want to cry.

The gap between girlhood and womanhood is closed when you understand your mother is only human. Nothing less. And nothing more.

She’s still muttering hateful, horrible things as you take her to her feet and ease her onto the couch.

She’s silent when you throw a blanket over her.

She’s pale, shaking, green.

Go away. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you around me. Leave me alone.

Leave me.

Go away.

You leave her, not knowing if it's serious enough to call 911, if you can actually die from drinking too much, but that fear, that vice-grip around your chest, it’s squeezing your lungs so tightly, tears leak out of the corner of your eyes. But then it sinks. Sinks into your bones, your blood, your muscles. Watching your mother folded up like a broken doll, you experience fear like you’ve never felt before.

Blink and you’re in your room.

Blink and you’re under your bed, curled up, knees to your chin, and you’re crying. You can’t stop crying. It’s the only thing that seems to appease the fear, the sense that nothing is real and everything is going to turn out badly and it makes your stomach twist. You gag on your own spit and you shake and you tremble and you experience your first panic attack without anyone to tell you what’s going on. How to survive something like that. You grow up thinking this is how everyone lives and you’re just too pathetic to take it. You let that shame and embarrassment fester and grow because it has no way of stopping.

Your father is also served with the papers.

Two weeks later, the production for your upcoming movie was suddenly put on hold. The role with Helen Miriam went to someone else.

He never helped you get ahead in the industry, but he absolutely blocked you from it. He never called you again.

Someone, someone else, might have been hurt by the fact that your father cut you off without so much as a goodbye. But it’s not like you could miss what you never had.

You take the hint and enroll in UC Santa Barbara under your new name.

The myth of your maidenhood ended in much of the same way it began: at the behest of someone else and exiled as an afterthought.

You tried the whole sleep-around-to-fill-a-need thing for the freshmen year of college. It didn’t take. You liked sex but you liked the chase more. You liked the hunt, the thrill, the unconscious desire to touch, when the desire to do something first emerges in their heads. You like to watch the basic urge emerge in their darkened eyes before the other shoe drops. Drops and splatters coherent and rational thought like a bug on a windshield.

You liked sex, even if more often you had to get yourself off while your partner had fallen asleep, their needs met. But you liked being wanted more. The drugs helped bridge the gap and given that you had no idea how to make friends because you'd never had one your own age before, the puddles of bodies that dripped onto couches and floors at parties seemed to be as good a social circle as any. They all started to recognize you at parties, in lecture halls, at bars. They nodded, you nodded back, and you sat down.

No longer alone.

But not entirely wanted either.

It was enough though.

By your third year, you were known more for your party provisions (with your old contacts from the industry) than your ex-boyfriends.

You meet Heidi Morgan through one of your production management professors.

You’d gone in to speak with your professor, a man notorious for sleeping with his students, and believed you to be next in line (men were so much better at doing what you asked when they thought you’d sleep with them), so you were hoping that you could convince him that it was actually your lab partner who stole the paper from you, not the other way around, when you see him with someone else.

Blonde, small, feisty.

Heidi Morgan takes one look at the grotesque ogling in his eyes and promptly introduces herself.

In her own fire and take-no-shit attitude, you find kindred spirits.

She later asks you out for drinks, you think it’s been too long since you went down on a girl, and you completely misread the situation.

She clears things up and then asks you to read for a part. The whiplash makes your head spin, but given that she’s not calling you a giant slut, it’s probably good news.

She knows who you are. Suspected because you looked familiar and because she has friends in some truly weird places, she confirms her suspicions by the end of the day. So she gives you a call, you show up, flirt too much, and maybe end up with a job.

She gives you the script. It’s good.

Really good.

Why me? You ask her. You graduate in two weeks. You’re turning twenty-two in a few days. There’s nothing you’ve done in recent years to make her have this kind of faith in you. All digital memories of you reflect a knobby-kneed, round-cheeked little girl then that same little girl with tits and a smirk well beyond her years.

She didn’t think she might find her lead in a dingy auditorium, she says, but crazier things have happened. It’s not a guarantee, or a promise, just an offer. Try out, see what happens.

Crazier things have happened.

The rest is less myth and more old history.

(Historic)

The day you meet him is not unlike any other. Except in the little things. Your bra strap breaks when you go to put it on. Your belt loop gets caught in a door handle and nearly shucks your pants to the floor. You somehow get lost on the way to the studio even though you have your phone mapping the route. It takes you around and around and around until you get out and ask a very confused gas station attendant where the fuck the sound stage is.

It’s not momentous. Annoying, perhaps, so annoying that all these little things pester your brain like flies gorging on rotten fruit. You’re distracted, one eye always glancing over your shoulder. Trouble, trouble, trouble, your problems seem to whisper, you’re in trouble.

A PA comes to find you, saying Heidi specifically asked for your presence but she’s gone missing. He thinks he knows where to find her, if you’d come with him. You eye him up from the black leather couch you’re draped across, irritated at the day and at him for his shameless staring. You nod, and immediately he starts running his mouth about his own Hollywood dreams. He’s a writer, you know, maybe you’ve heard of some of his smaller indie work, it’s not very much, but folks who know say it's good so maybe he’ll be able to sell it if –

The door to the back of the lot opens and it’s like god snapped his fingers in your ear. It’s not momentous, or earth-shattering, but holy shit does it fuck you up.

He’s broad. Tall. Forearms, thick and veiny, stocky thumbs and tense fingers. His hair is just on the edge of being long, but combed back in some attempt to tame it, to fold it into submission. His right earlobe is puckered, pierced, but no earring. His beard and mustache are trimmed, clean shaven elsewhere. Despite how he’s built out adult male muscle from his days on Twenty-Three and Fun, he still has those boyish eyes, a dimple that would drive anyone up a wall, and eyelashes you’d pay a thousand dollars for. You knew this was coming but it still feels like a kick in the chest.

That kick burns when you realize something.

He’s fucking pissed. He’s beautiful, carved from your very dreams of what the most gorgeous man on earth would look like, but he’s fucking pissed.

Surprisingly, at you.

Well, that’s disappointing.

He comes at you with his claws drawn and you’ve never, ever been one to back down. You swipe back and hope you draw blood.

You discover other things about Dieter Bravo, the boy who you used to have a heart-stopping crush on when you didn’t know anything better. Fantasy will always be better than reality, and this isn’t exactly how you’d thought your first meeting would go.

And yet, you discover something else, something very, very curious. Something soft and impressionable, bruised purple and green. Something you want to lean on with your entire weight until he chokes. It’s ugly, but it’s amusing. Maybe this is how you hoped your first meeting would go, albeit with some tricky obstacles and a ticking clock.

You want to press and see what spills out.

Dieter Bravo cannot and does not look away from you.

The day you meet Dieter Bravo is also the day you meet The Sixers, the day you meet Marie. She’s small, mousy, but apparently a fucking rock star on the drums. You like the irony; quiet and unassuming until she bangs through your head with percussion. Where the rest of her bandmates are wide-eyed and eager and come with more drugs than a pharmacy, there’s something about Marie that you find so tenderly earnest you kind of wish you didn’t come dressed like you were going out to eat the fleshly hearts of men everywhere. You want to approach her on her level. You don’t want to scare her away. There’s something redemptive about a kind, sweet girl like Marie striking up a friendship with you.

If you could ever figure out how to start one.

“Excited for the filming to start?” You ask her after nearly everyone’s picked up their things and left after the reading. She glances at you, then over her shoulder, as if you were talking to someone else. You instantly feel insanely protective of her.

She blinks a few times before distractedly shaking her head. “No. I’m actually terrified.”

“About being in a movie?”

She cringes, as if it’s the most shameful thing in the world.

“Yeah. I love playing in front of crowds, but something about being on camera scares me.”

You make a note to find out the next time they’re playing live.

“It’s honestly not that bad. It feels a little weird, like some unblinking eye staring at you, but then it just kind of fades away.”

She bites her lip, tucking that short brown hair over her ear. “Have you done this before?”

You’re not exactly hiding your childhood movie star past, but you don’t really want it broadcasted.

“Here and there.”

The rest of her bandmates are chatting amongst themselves, perhaps not yet aware you’re trying to befriend one of them. You’re not quite sure how it’s going.

“If you ever want, we could talk and I could give you some pointers.”

Fuck, why did that sound like a line? It shouldn’t. You didn’t want it to. Where was the line between asking someone to be your friend and asking someone for a fuck?

If she notices your embarrassment, she doesn't show it. She grins brightly, unashamed. “Yes! Oh my god, yes, please. I’d love that!”

Normally, when giving someone your number, you’d grab their hand and write it in Sharpie, giving them a good wink. Now you tear off a corner of the call sheet and write down your number in shaking hands. It’s a small piece of paper, easily lost. That’s okay, if she does lose it. No need to freak out.

She’s grinning, smile expanding across that round face of hers as she takes your number when someone calls her name.

Roxie, the one with bright-red flaming hair and gorgeously thick eyebrows, takes a glance at the piece of paper in Marie’s fingers. One eyebrow arches, and she says nothing.

Roxie looks at you like she wants to devour you whole. You think you’ll let her.

You decide to ignore him.

Whatever his problem with you is, it doesn’t have to be dealt with immediately. Maybe he’ll come around and if not, no skin off your nose. It’s none of your business what happens off camera, what he thinks about you as a person. All that matters is giving a good performance and you know you can do that.

You just sort of wish you had known more about the role before Heidi offered it. You really sort of wish you had known Dieter was going to be your co-star. That night, after approaching him in the parking lot, you had two glasses of wine to settle your trembling nerves, and you flipped through the script.

He was so calm and collected at the table read today. Cool, relaxed, at ease with himself and the world. Everyone knew him, everyone talked about him, either directly to you or in snatches of conversation.

Dieter Bravo – you could not ask for a better scene partner!

Dieter Bravo – he’s so, so nice. He always stops for fans!

Dieter Bravo – this shoot is going to be so much fun with him!

You’d never been particularly star-struck, but for the first time in your life, the idea of working with your co-star was daunting. When you were up against Gerard Butler, you’d been in the game for a while, knew the industry, showed up in the trades. Now, you felt like any other Santa Barbara graduate stumbling out in front of the camera for the first time. Where was that all-knowing smirk you had perfected at fifteen? God, had you always been so transparent?

You felt like you had to prove yourself at that table read. You know you were going a bit overboard, but they watched you, transfixed, and it empowered you. Mark Bronson, Marie, the rest of The Sixers, they watched you like Taylor had possessed your body and you instantly became a rockstar.

Only, he didn’t. He watched you and didn’t look away, but he looked so uninterested in your performance, the tears that filled your eyes were partially real.

And then he touched you and in that moment, you knew he was mocking you. Laughing at you, you fucking child. He was the legendary star here, not you, and to think you ever had a chance was laughable. The heat of disgust in his eyes hurt, more than you wanted to admit.

It was day one and he hated you.

Things escalate.

He caught you high on set and it felt like you were being scolded by your older brother. He didn’t get it. He never did. All that shit about how he knows what it’s like – bullshit. All fucking bullshit. He was somehow always in the corner of your eye, watching you, begging you to fuck up so he could expose you like the fraud you are.

And a pathetic fraud you are at that. He touches you and it’s like algae, hot and dense, spreading across your skin. You fight the feeling that strokes your cunt and you grit your teeth. Stop touching me, go away, stay back – please.

You’re twenty-two and still harboring that fucking crush you had when you were sixteen. It’s embarrassing. It’s pathetic. It’s so, so, so wrong.

You try to ignore him. Try to exorcize him from your every waking thought. It doesn’t take. You get drunk at the pool party and you want his eyes, anyone’s eyes, on you.

Marie is shy, you try to sober up around her, but you’re too far gone and you don’t want her to see you like this.

So you find Roxie. And Samuel. They give you something that makes your pupils dilate to the size of quarters and you feel like you’re made of cosmic dust. When they touch you, beauty and awe and the atoms of the universe bloom across your skin. You like kissing them, you decide. The water dripping off you from the pool feels like bad lovers and broken kingdoms up for sale.

You end up at his door. You don’t mean to. You genuinely forgot what room you were in.

Consciously, you know he’s married. Consciously, you know he hates you. But that doesn’t stop you from asking anyway.

“You could join us, you know.”

You want so badly to be his theatrical equal that it hurts, it burns hotter for a moment than your desire for him, and he just stares at you. Consciousness somewhere in a nearby galaxy, you can’t read the look on his face. And then it blurs, he closes the door, and the entire hallway grows thick, heavy leaves.

Disappointment is a physical object and it burrows into your chest. You think you can feel your ribs moving to make room.

Sam and Roxie fuck on your bed while you’re curled up on the futon. You don’t even change out of your suit. You kick them out as soon as they are done, not wanting their hungry gazes to turn to you.

This is always the worst part. When the emotions and memories that you’ve managed to pry off you as you coat yourself in a protective layer of LSD, finally come back. They wrap around you like a vice and you can feel the beginnings of a panic attack start in the tremble of your fingers. You stay there in the armchair, damp and cold and shivering and trying not to choke on your own throat, until the early hours of the morning. You think you could die like this but you don’t. You never actually do.

He doesn’t bring it up and neither do you. You sort of wish he would, just for a chance to . . . no, that’s fucked up and, if not legally, morally wrong. You can’t wish for anything when it comes to him.

It’s easier to hate him. To pretend like he was some over-involved, self-obsessed diva who stepped on your lines on purpose and flat-out refused to run scenes with you. It was easier as a whole for a while.

Marie started talking to you on her own now and that made you forget Dieter for a bit. The rest of the group was hesitant in their welcome, despite what had almost happened between you, Sam, and Roxie. But they all came around when you gave them the cleanest Molly they’d had in years.

It was like college all over again, but the faces were consistent this time. Five of them. You smoked in their van, fuzzy orange carpet fibers tickling your ear as you looked up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the roof.

“Why are you called The Sixers if there are five of you?” You ask suddenly.

There’s a pause and then a collective chuckle. You watch it like lightning spark between them.

Nick finally speaks up: “Because it sounds like the sex-ers.”

“Sixty-nine n’ feeling fine.”

You laugh with them this time and you feel your breath mix with theirs.

While meeting him wasn’t a particularly momentous occasion, the drive up to his AirBnB was. Maybe it was the lack of air this high up, but around every turn, your chest got a little tighter. The Sixers had shown you The Labyrinth with David Bowie last weekend (“how have you never seen that movie? Did you grow up under a rock?”) and you can’t help but think of the Goblin King coming to whisk you away. At the very least, the amount of rings they wore were the same.

You try desperately to not look at his white-knuckles around the steering wheel and fail tremendously.

The thing is, you don’t really want to fight with him. You don’t want to have to interact with him through this hazy, distant, drugged out wall, but that seems like the only way he’ll talk to you. He’s always scowling at you, like you’d done something wrong, and you hadn’t. Sure, you thought about it and fucked yourself on the biggest dildo you had about it, but you hadn’t actually done anything. You hadn’t even made a move on him, not even bat an eyelash. But it seems like you just breathe in his direction and that sets him off.

You still don’t understand why his past drug problem is now your problem too. In your absence from Hollywood, you’d somehow missed his ups-and-downs as he transitioned out of a teenage heartthrob into a fully adult hot mess. You’d certainly missed his marriage announcement until you googled it in the bathroom after lunch one day to see if what you’d heard the two techs talk about was true.

She’s so fucking hot.

Yeah, she was a model, right? Dude fucking scored big.

Fuck, she was a model. Even if she wasn’t, she certainly looked it, from all the red-carpet photos of the two of them. He looked at her with complete and total adoration.

Hollywood party boy settles down with recent marriage to cubist painter’s daughter

The headline was wordy but got the point across. He was off-limits.

You didn’t know how to make someone like you if you couldn’t offer them sex or drugs. What the fuck were you supposed to do with the sober and married Dieter Bravo?

And yet, there were times. Moments. Fragments. Bursts of light in a mirror, where you thought he looked too long. How his eyes flickered black when you talked about your bra, or your tits, or your ass. But that’s all they were – fleeting instances of your own insanity bleeding into reality. He would never look at you like that. He hated you.

It scared you, the way he expected you to act when you couldn’t hide behind being high, when you couldn’t flirt your way out of a particularly tense situation. He wanted you raw, exposed, your face revealed to the light you had spent years hiding from.

And then he did the darndest thing.

He was nice about it. In the kitchen, and then on the patio, he asked you questions about your start in the industry, what you’d like to do with your life, how you saw your career going. He cooked for you and made you laugh. He invoked the holy saint Sister Heidi as a bargaining chip and it was all the excuse you needed to drop the boxing gloves. You didn’t want to fight with him. You wanted to be his friend. You wanted him to like you.

Scratch that.

You wanted him to fuck you within an inch of your life and, sure, it was stupid to finger-fuck yourself to him, on the same couch as him, but maybe you wanted to get a little caught. Okay, a lot caught because then he’d tell you to fuck off and he’d draw the line in the goddamn sand and, sure, it’d be embarrassing and, sure, it’d hurt like hell but you’d get over it. You’d nurse your heart but you’d get back on that fucking bike because you really, really wanted this movie to work – but –

He fucking doesn’t.

He doesn’t kiss you but he wants to. He looks at you like he wants to suck the marrow from your bones, drink the blood from your heart through your cunt.

Dieter Bravo wants to kiss you desperately, but because he is a good man, he doesn’t. And because you’re a shit person, you make it hard on him. You make it hurt because it hurts you and just for once, for a second, you want someone to understand how you feel. How you hurt. How you ache.

That house in New Mexico changed everything. For you. For him.

Friends didn’t make time with each other because they were trying to plug up the moans in their head. Friends didn’t keep busy to keep their hands off each other. You weren’t friends with him, but you did get along. You learned a lot about him. You’d never had a real friend before but you sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to feel.

Instead of a myth, your relationship is built in handprints. Red blotches on cave walls, their original meaning lost to time, a dead language no one speaks any more. Sometimes the prints overlap, sometimes they don’t. There are no words spoken, but the feeling is there all the same.

You think, if you could just take your aching heart out of your body, you could actually be Dieter Bravo’s friend. He fills in holes you didn’t realize were empty. Chasms for art, for acting, for food that didn’t come in a can or delivered on your front door. He knows about wine, and whiskey, and needs help dressing himself. He never made you feel like your asks were too much, your need to connect too great. He took your hand and told you what you wanted was normal. He’s funny, patient, and loves Shirley MaClaine movies. He did her entire monologue from The Apartment one night after hours of begging and it brought you to tears. You had a scene partner in Dieter Bravo, you had someone to challenge you, to rethink scenes and pull back deeper and deeper character layers. He’d taken a course online about psychology to have a new perspective on analyzing characters and you thought it was fucking genius.

Marie filled certain relationship needs – a girl to talk about drama with, a fellow fan of live music, someone to make you look up to – but Dieter fulfilled more, if not all of them. Despite working in an artistic industry for years, you’d never once talked trade with someone and certainly not someone who knew it so well. You were awestruck by him.

Call it infatuation, call it being horny, but there is a connection, a red through line that connects you both. And for a while, that’s enough.

Until it isn’t.

The mark of his blotchy handprints on your heart stop when you fuck some guy you barely know because Dieter hurt you.

When he won’t look at you while he’s pretending to fuck you, you feel self-conscious again, like he’s going to think you’re some inexperienced little nepo baby. But he does his duty and you do yours and you’ve never felt so empty.

Your handprint stays, while his blurs away.

(Psychologic)

After production ends, you exist in the margins. No more mythologizing. No more cave drawings.

And then Marie shows up.

She takes you to get your nails done like it's the most normal thing in the world. What is wrong with her? Doesn’t she know what you are?

You get smoothies and see some live music and she keeps you from spiraling. There is no possible way she knew about the lines of coke upstairs in your bedroom, but she takes you out into the light all the same.

You go out to shows with The Sixers. They love having a groupie who’s a Hollywood star. Marie seems embarrassed when they show-case you, but you find you don’t mind waving a bit on stage and introducing the band. You think you see a pair of deep brown eyes in the crowd occasionally but you know it’s not. You have to accept your fate. He might not like you and he doesn’t hate you, but he certainly doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Not friends, not lovers, but something else. Something almost.

You and the Sixers swim in the ocean off the Santa Barbara coast. You go to parties and you play the bongo drums in a treehouse in South Los Angeles. You bring the good drugs and everyone loves you.

You don’t want to go to the wrap party, but Marie insists. You think she likes being famous just for all the opportunities to get dressed up and do your make up. She told you once that you are the prettiest girl she’d ever seen without any motive behind it. She wasn’t trying to fuck you or fuck with your head. It was just the truth in her eyes and it made you nauseous.

You go to the wrap party because it’s something better to do than get high on shrooms for the fourth time this week and as a reward, Cooper shares his blunt with you in the car. You laugh easily and often and loudly and Cooper keeps you steady with a hand on your waist. You’re nervous, you want to drink more, but you already feel like you’re carrying too many cups and plates and the noise it’s going to make when you drop them all is going to be deafening.

He’s here. He’s here with his fucking gorgeous wife and you stand behind Cooper so you have something blocking your line of sight.

Just as you are about to order your first vodka soda of the night, Dieter rushes back into the house. The weed and coke in you switch the plugs in your brain and suddenly you are very, very angry.

But the Dieter you find is fragile, beaten down, vulnerable. He talks to you like he did in New Mexico and it dulls the edges around the hole in your chest. He looks at you like you’re his saving grace, his last hope.

Myths lie. They blur the truth to make a better story. They build up a man larger than life, they make goddesses out of women, and they sanctify, canonize love. They make you ache with the wanting of the fantasy of it, and that’s on purpose. Myths are the human experience on fire.

Kissing him, you feel on fucking fire.

Meeting him didn’t feel momentous. But fucking him certainly was.

The settlement of your mythology burns to the ground, flames licking the sky. He has crystalized in your veins and, in an instant, you’re hopelessly addicted.

With Dieter Bravo, you come to like sex. You come to love it actually. It’s an itch, a fluttering, warm feeling that makes you twitch and tense when his hands aren’t on you. There’s some part of you that knows the inherent danger of giving one man, much less this man, that much power over you, but fuck, you can’t help it.

You’re too young, too inexperienced in the world to know the difference between when a man wants you for sex and when a man loves you. In your mind, the two are the same and cannot be separated. You know what it feels like to be wanted to be fucked, but in your nativity you assume that’s how a man looks at you when he wants to love you — and this time you’d welcome it.

There isn’t much to say about New Orleans, except for three things:

One, you’ve successfully confused yourself into thinking this is what being in a relationship with him would be like.

Two, you’ve never felt safer and more wanted and more complete than you ever have when you take drugs with Dieter. (that primal animal fear is gone for the first time in what feels like years)

And three, you’re so fucking in love with him you’re sick with it.

In the sickness, you grow weak. You burn with fever. Your bones ache and your mind races. His touch is simultaneously a balm and a contagion.

You love him. You love him. You love him.

You love him unlike anything or anyone.

Marie is actually the only one who ventures a guess. Who catches you, wings pinned to the corkboard, and asks you point-blank, “are you fucking Dieter Bravo?”

Maybe she’s braver because it’s over text, permanent traces of your infidelity, but you stare at her message for hours. You think about it in the hotel shower after the plane lands in Los Angeles. You haven’t seen her in weeks and you’ve stopped returning her phone calls.

Your high falters at the idea that you might have (and probably did) lose a friend over him. But what did that matter, in the grand scheme of things, your sickness asks you, now that you have him?

Now that he’s the only thing that matters. Now that he is everything.

He goes back to his wife.

After everything. After what you did for him. After what you gave up. How you prostrated yourself for his love, for a moment of his time. He can’t see it, it’s eating you up. You think cancer has kinder teeth than his.

The foundations of the core of your being are rocked. It doesn’t feel real because he’s still in this hotel with you, the same hotel where you fucked in the bathroom, where you flirted with him for the cameras to sell the movie, where he begged you to stay with him, you’re gonna stay, right? you’re gonna be with me, after this? And maybe it isn’t real because he only lasts being apart from you for twelve, maybe fourteen hours. Maybe he’s sick too. Maybe he’s fucked just as much as you are.

In your dark, deep wretched heart, you hope he is. You hope he’d die without you. But you don’t know. You don’t know because he never says it.

This time, it’s real, he promises. This time, he’s never going back. This time he’s going to say he loves you, his kisses pledge to you.

This time he’s not going to leave you.

In the mornings after Chloe leaves and you kiss him E-tablets with your tongue and he fucks you in every way he knows how, he curls up next to you and you tell him. It doesn’t matter he doesn’t seem to hear you.

You tell him you love him, have always loved him. Dieter Bravo turned from an imaginary companion, to a friend you didn’t want, and now to a lover who makes you think you’re special. Something valuable, precious. Something that is worth keeping.

Until you’re not.

Myths serve to answer questions about our place in the natural order of things. To ease tension. To provide guidance.

Why does it rain?

Where do the seasons come from?

What is the sun, and why does it leave and return?

What is heartbreak?

What is grief? What is sorrow? How do we carry them with us?

How do we go on when the world is determined to break us?

When you’ve always had nothing, and now you still have nothing and no one – he doesn’t love you and he’s going back to his pregnant wife – you ask, what’s the fucking point?

Not even the myths can answer that one.

Later, when you wake up under the bright lights of a hospital room, your memory is cracked, broken into terracotta pieces on the ground. There are things missing from you.

You don’t remember calling Oliver, only that he was there and he was high out of his mind and he gave you whatever he had in his pockets. You don’t remember what you took, or if Oliver was kind to you when he watched you swallow pill after pill.

You don’t remember the shower, the ambulance ride, or being admitted.

You aren’t sure exactly what you’ve lost. But you feel the missing edges.

Dieter is missing from you.

If you close your eyes, still the movement of your body, block out the noises of the machines and the hospital around you, you think you remember hearing him say it.

You think he might have said it when he kissed your forehead, but it feels older than that. Like his words and his actions stem from two different memories but you’re so fucked up they blur together. You want to hold onto that new memory, as fabricated as it might be, for as long as you can.

But then sleep over takes you again and it flushes everything out. The next time you wake up, you don’t remember that he ever said, I love you.

When you wake up, you know he’s gone. You don’t know how you know, or why, but it feels like a piece of you has been torn away in a bloody chunk. Like someone had taken pliers to your fingernails and tore them off until blood splattered onto the floor.

Like someone put a knee to your shoulder and wrenched white teeth out of your mouth.

Until you are gummy and dripping.

You open your eyes not to Dieter, not Heidi, but Marie. Mousy, intelligent, thoughtful Marie curled up asleep in the chair next to you.

The sound of your crying wakes her up. Wordless, judgement-less, she crawls into bed with you, takes you into her arms, and lets you sob like the heart-broken mess you’ve become.

God, can you die from pain like this?

She strokes your forehead and tells you, no, you can’t. You might want to, but you can’t.

For the first time in your life, you’re not a myth.

You’re not a story of a little girl whose parents didn’t love her enough.

You are not the story of an actress whose star burned too bright and hot and the cosmos punished her for her hubris.

You’re not the story of a woman who fell in love too hard and too fast with drugs and a man much older than her and got shattered on the rocks.

The book has closed, the final chapter has come. There are no more stories to tell, nothing left to make fantastic.

You are a broken human body.

Natalie Lorraine is a myth.

You were a child once. You have to remember that.

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