∗ 12﹕ Kimiko sends a  text  that  wasn’t  meant  for  Kaeko.

[ text meme | @xkaekox | verse; modern ]

[ txt: 9:33pm ] No, you fucking idiot. Do you need me to spell it out for you?

N-O-T __ I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-E-D.

[ txt: 9:37pm ] That wasn’t meant for you.

[ txt: 9:38pm ] But on that note, do you want to help me ruin this fuckers life? 😈

Nessian Week: AU Day

I work well with deadlines so even though this is just a run-of-the-mill Modern!AU, I thought I’d post this drabble that’s been knocking around in my head for a few weeks today! It has a little part two that I’m hoping to post later tonight :)

           Cassian could tell something was on Nesta’s mind all through dinner. He could tell as soon as he got home from work, really. It wasn’t about him, he didn’t think, since she’d kissed him welcome home and let him squeeze her ass. No, there was just…something. Something that made her eyes a little vacant and her words a little quiet. But during dinner she just let him talk about work, nodding and answering, and if there was one thing Cassian had learned about Nesta, it was to give her space. He would give it a little longer, and then he would ask.

           After dinner they watched an episode of the Netflix show they were working their way through and then got ready for bed. Even though it was only eight thirty, their rigid commitment to mornings at the gym meant they were always early to bed, early to rise.

           As they crawled under the covers, Cassian finally poked Nesta’s side and said, “Hey. Something you want to talk about?”

           He had long since learned that “what’s wrong” and “talk to me” didn’t work on Nesta. He had learned to just ask if she wanted to talk, and that sometimes, the answer was no. That was okay. He had also often assured her that one of the reasons he kept his chest so big was for ample cuddle room, if that was all she wanted instead.

           But tonight, Nesta sighed and looked at the ceiling, gathering her thoughts. Cassian propped himself up on one elbow, waiting.

           “I’ve been thinking about trying for law school again,” Nesta said at last.

           “Oh,” Cassian said, surprised but not unpleasantly so. When everything had gone to shit and their father had died, Nesta had withdrawn what Cassian was told was a very promising and competitive law school application. That had been over two years ago now, and Cassian had found himself wondering more than once if she missed no longer being on that path, or if it was something she had ever wanted for herself at all.

           “Yeah,” she agreed, then continued, “I just don’t think the sugar baby lifestyle suits me as well as it suits Feyre, you know?” Cassian laughed. “Seriously! She just lives in a big house and paints all day and is going to give Rhys as many babies as he wants, and I’m really happy for her.”

           “He really loves her,” Cassian said, feeling a need to defend his brother. It was maybe undeniable that Rhysand technically qualified as Feyre’s sugar daddy given their age gap, but the implication that he just wanted her for baby making, even though Cassian knew Nesta didn’t mean it like that, riled him just a little.

           “I know,” Nesta said, unfazed. “I said I was happy for her. I just don’t know that that’s for me, you know? I want to do something. I want to have a career and something that I am outside of just us.” If Cassian was not used to Nesta’s bluntness, he might have been offended. But she turned to look at him with her crystal-blue eyes unusually wide and vulnerable, and he knew this was really something that had been weighing on her for a while.

           “Okay, hell yeah,” Cassian said. “My Nesta, girlbossing it up. I’m all for it, whatever you want to do. Law school, business mogul, dean—you’ll kick ass no matter what.”

           Nesta rolled her eyes, but Cassian could see her cheeks had turned slightly pink. “Don’t ever call me girlboss again.”

           “No promises.”

           Nesta rolled her eyes again, and Cassian grinned wider. For a moment, Nesta picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, and then she said, “Or if none of them work out, I guess I could lean into the sugar baby lifestyle and start an OnlyFans.”

           Cassian suppressed a groan, imagining Nesta’s OnlyFans. The amount of money he would have paid for that if she wasn’t his…. “And I’d be your top supporter,” he promised.

           She gave him an exasperated look. “Anything I’d post on OnlyFans you get for free.”

           “But I’m going to support your endeavors, no matter what they are,” Cassian said. “You could try a new career every year for the rest of our lives and I’d be right there by your side. You’ll be the best at whatever you do, baby, you and I both know that.”

           “That’s actually a good point,” she said, pointing at him. “If I get in you’re not allowed to pay my tuition. And neither is Rhysand.”

           “What?” Cassian exclaimed. “Of course I am!”

           “You are not,” Nesta said, her voice leaving no room for argument. “This is my career, my path. I’ll get myself through and pay off the loans on my own.”

           It was a shame there was no talking Nesta into taking charity. If she had decided it would wound her pride to have Cassian pay her tuition, there would be no changing her mind. But he understood—if she wanted this to be something that was hers, it didn’t make sense to have him tied to it so intrinsically. He could accept that. Sort of.

           “Fine,” he said. “But I’m still paying rent and buying groceries and bringing you really big, sugary coffees when you have a hard day of studying. No argument.”

           That earned him another eye roll, but this time with a small smile. “Fine.” She scooted closer so she could snuggle against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her to pull her close.

           Something in him relaxed just having her so close, but there was still tension in her arms, in her fingers on his back, so he just stroked her hair and waited. Finally, she whispered, “Did you mean it?”

           “About the sugary coffees? Of course. I know we try to eat right, but—”

           “No,” Nesta interrupted. “About…every year, for the rest of our lives. You being by my side.” She tightened her arms and fingers like she was clinging to him.

           For the first time tonight, Cassian was totally taken aback. That was what had thrown her? Wasn’t it obvious? Wasn’t it…what she wanted? “Yeah,” he said, ignoring a cold wash of fear in his stomach. “You don’t think I’m going anywhere, do you? Like I could ever even look at another woman now that I’ve loved you? This is it for me, Ness. Honestly you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

           He half expected her to shoot back about stalking or restraining orders or the like, but instead she squeezed him so tight even he almost had the wind knocked out of him. She moved her face from his chest to bury it against his neck, and though he didn’t feel the wet heat of tears, her ragged breaths sounded like she was trying not to cry. “Nesta,” he whispered softly. “Don’t tell me you want a career because you think I might leave you. I’m not going anywhere.”

           “I don’t just want it because of that,” she managed, voice choked. “But you can’t know. You can’t know you won’t get sick of me.”

           “How could I possibly get sick of you? You have ruined me for all other women, Ness, I mean that. And I don’t just mean about sex, though the sex I have with you is absolutely the best sex I’ve ever had in my life, no contest.” She let out a choked laugh against his chest. He could feel her tears now. “I am genuinely excited to see you chase your dreams, Nesta. I’m excited to bring you sugary coffees, and take you out for nice dinners after your big exams, and watch you kick the ass of every other attorney who is unfortunate enough to go up against you. You’re my everything. I don’t want you to spend any more time doubting that.”

           “I know,” Nesta whispered. “I know. You’re my everything too. I’ve never cared about anything as much as I care about you. That’s what’s so scary.”

           Cassian had known almost from the moment he met her that she was the woman he was going to marry. In his mind, however, it was such an inevitability that he hadn’t felt the need to rush. He thought of them as the type to just be together until one day they’d look at each other and say “hey, we should probably get married, huh?” But sometimes he forgot that there was a lot of insecurity under Nesta’s kickass physique and haughty stares. Maybe she needed that promise set in stone (a very expensive, very shiny stone) more than he had realized. He didn’t think she was hounding for a rock, but if she was worried that his lack of commitment was because he was leaving himself a doorway out, he needed to show her that she couldn’t be more wrong.

           As she rolled onto her back and invited him to have some of that life-changing sex, he thought to himself that maybe it was time he went and got a ring.

@nessianweek

The Light in my Darkness - 23

Pairing: None at the moment

Warning: Still sad. Short chapter is short. 

A/N: We’ve only got like 2 maybe three chapters left. It depends on how wordy the next chapter gets. The end is nigh. 

***

The days that followed were filled with tears and work. So much work. You’d already completed your final projects for your classes and once your professors discovered you had a show at the 107, they were more than willing to release you from attending the last two weeks of the semester.

Your time was split between your studio and the gallery. Steve had already covered the windows so the two of you could start hanging and rearranging your work. Meanwhile you were still working on some last minute pieces which you would occasionally show up to the gallery with.

The opening was now a mere two days away and everything was in place. Steve and you had retired to his office after once last look around. He poured you a drink and handed it to you before taking a seat behind his desk.

“How are you?” he asked.

You frowned at the drink in you hand and shrugged. “Everything looks good. I’m a little nervous but I know I put forward my best. I—”

“I’m not talking about the show, Y/N.”

“Oh.” Steve had very tactfully not mentioned Clint once since Thanksgiving. You had been hoping he’d continue in that vein until roughly the end of time.

“I left you alone because I could see you using your work to process things, but the show’s ready. Your work is done. So how are you doing?” He tilted his head as he looked you over.

You sighed and leaned back in your seat. “He left me because I loved him too much even though I’m pretty sure he loved me too. He’s fucked up and aggravating and I miss him.” You gulped down the contents of your glass and sat it on the desk. “And I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be discussing this with you. He’s your friend.”

Steve gave a little shrug. “So are you. Besides, I like to think I’m a good enough friend I can tell Barton when he’s making a colossal mistake.”

That earned him a soft smile. “Thanks, Steve. I mean that.”

He nodded. “Go home, Y/N. Get some rest. Take care of yourself and I’ll see you Friday.”

***

“Busy,” Clint barked at the knock on his office door, expecting to be left alone after that.

The door opened and Natasha poked her head in with an arched brow and a frown. “Really?”

He cleared his throat and turned his attention to the paperwork on his desk. “I told Wade I wasn’t to be disturbed.”

“Good for you. I don’t give a shit.” She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. He ignored her as she took one of the seats in front of his desk. He let the silence stretch. He had no desire for conversation. “Why are you being a dick?”

He glanced up at that. “Excuse me?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “You heard me. No one wants to come anywhere near you. I’ve got messages from clients and employees alike wondering what the hell is going on and I have no idea what to tell them.”

“I don’t answer to them. Or you.”

“What about Wanda? Do you answer to her because she’s as tired of it as the rest of us?”

He tossed his pen on his desk and leaned back in his chair. “She called you?”

Nat made a sound of agreement.

Clint sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to be better.”

“It seems to me that this wouldn’t be an issue if you just kept her. She was good for you.” She looked at her nails, purposely ignoring his eyes on her.

“You know why, Nat. It wouldn’t last. It never does.” He clenched his teeth in irritation with his best friend. He’d told her more than anyone. She should understand without making him talk about it.

“And this is based on your vast experience with healthy relationships?”

“All right, I get it. You think I should have stayed with her.” He just wanted this conversation to be over. He spent enough time thinking about Y/N without Nat bringing you up.

“I do, but that’s not the point.” She straightened in her seat, then leaned toward him. “Why is it that you insist in punishing yourself? Nothing that happened with Laura was your fault. She was a conniving bitch who thankfully represents a small minority of the women out there. Why do you keep letting her dictate your happiness?”

“It’s not about her. Not really.” He turned his chair so his back was to her as he looked out the window. “When I found out about everything…well, you know how I was. Peter and I were supposed to go camping for a week. Try out some prototypes. I canceled on him. He was a little disappointed but he didn’t mind. We rescheduled for another week.”

Clint cleared his throat. “But he knew the prototypes were important and needed to be tested so he decided to go up without me. He was old enough and the site was already reserved. He left me a note. I didn’t find it until after the accident. Until he…”

“Clint.” Her voice was soft and full of pain.

He shook his head. He didn’t deserve her sympathy. “I promised myself then that I would never allow myself to be broken like that again. I had to be there for Wanda.”

“Bullshit.”

He turned to face her. “What?”

“I mean, that was very touching and all, but it’s an excuse.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” He’d never told anyone what he’d just admitted to her and this was her response?

“I’m going to be honest. When you lost Peter so soon after what happened with Laura, I was worried. Really worried. I couldn’t see how you were going to pull yourself out of it. But you did it. And you raised a kickass kid in the process, but she’s an adult now, Clint. You can’t keep using her as a reason to not take the chance.”

Nat got to her feet and headed to the door. She paused with her hand on the handle. “If anyone is worth the chance it’s Y/N, and you know it.” With that she was gone.

He buried his face in his hands. He wasn’t wrong about this. Was he?

***

You sorted through the mail as you walked up to your apartment, frowning as you came across an envelope from a law firm. Odinsons Attorneys at Law. Why did that sound familiar?

Once you were in your apartment and had put your things away, you sat in a chair and opened the envelope. You unfolded the single sheet inside and quickly skimmed the letter. You sucked in a breath as you realized what this was. After taking a minute to calm yourself, you went back to the beginning and read it again. This time you went slowly making certain you understood what you were being told.

Without really thinking about it, you pulled out your phone and called Wanda. “Did you know about this?” you asked before she’d even finished saying hello.

“You’re going to have to be more specific, Y/N. I know about a lot of things and not so much about others.”

You smiled in spite of yourself. “I got a letter from Clint’s lawyer.”

“What?”

You hummed. “The apartment is mine as long as I am in school. He’s also paying my tuition and having a monthly allowance placed into an account in my name. I’m supposed to make an appointment to meet with them and fill out some paperwork.”

“Holy shit, Y/N. He really does love you.”

Your heart twinged with a jolt of hope you quickly shut down. “Or he feels guilty because I’m your best friend.”

“Guilt is an apartment with his daughter and tuition. Your own place and a monthly allowance is pure love.”

You shook your head, amused at her insistence. “You know I can’t accept this, right?”

“The hell you can’t.”

“I feel like you shouldn’t be encouraging me to take your dad’s money.”

“Oh, sweetheart, take it all. Maybe he’ll come to his senses when he’s broke.”

So here’s the thing...

I’m really freaking hard to scare. Unlike my cat that just booked it into another room when our UPS guy dropped a package off at the door. Perfect timing, Percy. Perfect timing...

Anyways! I have NOT had a good scare in probably two decades. No matter what fiction I pick up that promises to chill and thrill me, neither happens.

Now keep this in mind.

As of right now I am launching a business and yes, this will tie into the weird opener. Be patient, please.

I am launching Vox et Liber, a publishing house for ALL kinds of stories and ALL kinds of voices. I started working on this in November 2019, what do you mean that was only 8 months ago?! I originally thought the publishing house up after learning a bunch of facts about the publishing world over the summer.

VeL publishing will be a new kind of publishing and I can say that with 100% confidence because I am building this beast from the ground up, with the help of @hazandlouwho​, my fiance, and a few other amazing people!

Because this business is getting started independently, which means no investors, we are working with a VERY small amount of cash reserved for start up. Initially all works will be published digitally. We do plan on launching a Kickstarter in September/October to get enough funds to keep this going and to do it right which means getting stories published physically and sold to both indie bookstores and Barnes and Noble. Please be on the look out for that.

If any awesome people want to donate to help us not break my own personal bank, which will be easy to do since Covid-19 forced me to quit my job working with the public because I’m high risk and unemployment has kept me in limbo for going on 3 weeks, you can tip us on Ko-Fi by clicking here. ALL donations and funds raised go towards launching VeL and all projects under the VeL umbrella.

Bringing it around to the scares. VeL is launching our first project and we need all you awesome writers’ help. As of today we are opening submissions for our first ever anthology, Graveyard Visits. It’s horror with the theme of marginalized voices written as Own Voice fiction. Meaning stories written by marginalized groups with their marginalized groups as main characters.

Submissions are going to be open from July 1st until August 12th 11:59pm EST. Stories are expected to be between 2.5k-5k words in length. We will be paying $.02 per word as well as giving you a digital copy of the anthology. Submission Guidelines can be found here.

Now the whole me being hard to scare; I want to be scared. Submit your best, your scariest, and most bone-chilling stories.

Also, not so subtly gonna add a nudge to @thebibliosphere​ because I feel like she might have something up her sleeve. If not for this anthology then definitely our erotica one that will be announced later this summer.

We also have a podcast series in the works but I will do another post on that once I or my awesome soon to be brother in law (that’s STILL weird) have a moment to do up some graphics.

Click below for my rant on why traditional publishing right now is a soul sucking leech on EVERYONE.

On average with hardcover books an author is lucky to make $1.50 off each one sold and that’s only AFTER they sell enough to cover their advance. I also found out the average advance is like 3k per book. Some (not including the wicked big names who get a shit ton more) can get as high as 5k but others can get as low as a 1k. An author is lucky to see that twice a year (selling 2 books) because they have to spend time MARKETING book 1 instead of writing book 2. 

Keep in mind fiction hardcovers are generally sold between 19.99 (usually YA) or 29.99 (usually adult). Wicked big difference, huh? I get there’s a lot that goes into making a book, trust me I do but the split between should leave the authors getting around $4 per copy instead of less than $2. That $2.50 is just extra that the publishing house takes because it can.

Then there are the mass paperbacks which an author gets paid 50 damn cents per copy. Yes, those books retail for anywhere between 7.99 and 14.99 per book and sell way faster than hardcovers. Take it from an ex-bookseller.

Most books take on average 500 to 1,000 hours of work put into them before they even get handed off to the publisher for the FIRST time. At minimum that author sees an hourly return wage of $6 which is BELOW the United fucking States shit-tastic minimum peasant wage. We devalue the arts so fucking much- arg! But that can be a separate rant for another day.

Then after doing more research I realized just how off balanced the publishing world STILL is in the year of hell 2020. Don’t believe me click the link. Sarah Park Dahlen did a great article with a great graphic on it. 

As of 2015, yes I’m paraphrasing to continue to rant, children’s books had ALMOST more books about anthropomorphic cars, household items, and animals than there were books about Black kids, Asian Pacific kids, Latinx kids, or Native American/First Nation kids combined. Talking teakettles and their kindred got a whopping 12.5% while if you add up all the groups above you get 14.2%. None on there own beat out the freaking Easter Bunny! Of course books about White kids are the highest at 73.3%. Yes, this was as of 2015 but as an avid reader who reads middle-grade and up books for fun I can tell you nothing much has changed. Books about black kids maybe SLIGHTLY higher since the BLM movement (fuck yes progress!!) but I’d be heartstoppingly shocked if they beat out talking fucking trucks.

And that’s just race. From what I gathered with all the publishing houses less than 100 books with LGBTQIAP+ main characters are published each year. Wtf? And among that as of 2015 55% percent are about cisgendered males and 31% are cisgendered females. (Thank you @malindalo​, you are awesome and I’ve enjoyed meeting you at the Boston Teen Author festival the last few years.) So, just focusing on those 2 first letters, huh? I want to read a story about a kickass transwoman that has to deal with transitioning WHILE demons have torn their way out of hell. That would be badass! Holy shit, someone trans write that!

Same goes for people that live with disabilities whether they are physical or mental, including mental illness and neurodivergents like myself. If you haven’t figured out by this rant just how ADHD I am than you might need an ADHD in your life. My brain works differently and I would have killed growing up to read about characters that have to deal with what I deal with. We have Percy Jackson now and his all ‘verse but it’s not enough and it wasn’t published until I was on my way to college.

All that aside we now have all the bs coming out about what’s been going on in traditional publishing. About all the dickweeds that have been using their power and pull to sexually harass new authors, most often the new authors are young women. I unfollowed people and canceled a pre-order because fuck that shit! Also, I don’t give a fuck how big a name someone is if the hate they spew makes all their trans fans collectively feel like shit for not believing the simple fact that transwomen are women then they deserve to get dropped like the bag of shit they are. TERFs can fuck right off. 

All the publishing bs has made me more determined to get VeL off the ground because no, no, no. We’ll have none of that. All the listed above reasons can go play in traffic. We will be paying our authors better and taking care of them from day 1. We will be making sure our catalog is so damn diverse that you’d have to be looking at the wrong website to not find a story that you can’t see yourself in and lastly, if we hear of any of our authors pulling a Myke Cole or a Sam Sykes than they are dropped. It is in the best interests of our authors futures that they aren’t shitbags. /end rant

If y’all have any questions about anything of this, I think my dms are open or if I’m wrong just tag me. My days lately have been chained to my shit dell computer with one or both cats pinning me to the couch. I finish this up as Percy settles in on my legs. Also, thunderstorm is starting up and both are sleeping through it? If only I could be so lucky when the fiance and I have kids...

Hey so I’ve been seeing you post a lot about La Casa de Papel recently. What exactly is it? It looks kinda interesting.

Thank you so much for asking!

I am delighted beyond reason to have the opportunity to tell you - and by extension the entire world - why this show has cleared my skin, watered my crops, and legitimately healed my soul after this particularly soul-crushing season of Grimdark White Man Television almost broke me as a human being.

I will attempt to keep this as spoiler-free as I possibly can, because this is a show that should be experienced in the moment, but in a nutshell, La Casa de Papel is a heist show set in present-day Madrid which follows both a found family of thieves who rob the Royal Mint of Spain, and the law enforcement officials on the outside who are chasing them.

If that is enough for you, go right to your TV or computer, fire up the ol’ Netflix, and don’t waste any more time.

If, however, you need a little more, here are the top five things I flail about to every single person in my life to convince them they need to start watching this show like immediately and then come back and tell me all about it.

For visual flair, we’ll intersperse them with some gifs of ladies, because I know my audience.

5. character driving plot > plot driving character.

You know that infuriating thing lazy TV writers do where, in order to to hurry up and get to the big explosion or battle scene or dragon attack or whatever, which is the only bit they really care about, they handwave away the whole concept of motivation and make some character do something that any halfway-attentive viewer will immediately clock that they would never actually do?

There is none of that bullshit here.

In its simplest form, the plot of La Casa de Papel is as follows: a brilliant criminal mastermind devises a heist which cannot possibly go wrong, and then we proceed to watch all the ways in which it goes wrong.

This is a fantastic setup for an action story, made even more breathlessly exciting by strategic use of my favorite heist movie plot device (as perfected by Ocean’s Eleven): namely, “scene where it looks like our crime heroes have been outsmarted and are now threatened by a completely unforeseen disaster” immediately followed by “flashback to the team prepping for the heist where we learn that of course they prepared for this exact scenario.”

But from time to time, things do actually go wrong (as they must, or else there would be no story); and, when they do, it is never because you can tell a writer just wanted to write a scene where bullets go flying, and didn’t care how he got there. These characters are so clear, their behavior so consistent, that when gasp-worthy plot twists happen, they happen because of course that character, in this exact scenario, would do that exact thing.

I’m telling you, I came to this show for a ship (more on that in a minute) and I stayed for a swooning, heart-eyes writer crush on the impeccably-designed plot structure and characterization.

4. High stakes, low gore.

Tone-wise, on a sliding scale of Heist Film Intensity where a really fluffy episode of Leverage is a 1, Reservoir Dogs is a 10, and the Ocean’s franchise is somewhere in the 3-4 range, I would place La Casa at a 5 or a 6, which is perfect for me. I love action, suspense, drama and adventure, but I hate gratuitous violence (especially when it’s pointless and masturbatory and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot) and have a very low tolerance for blood and gore. So I kept waiting for the story to eventually take a hard left turn into Tarantino Land, until eventually it was all just one huge pile of dead bodies, and was genuinely surprised when it didn’t.

This is how I learned just how badly my brain has been fucked up by lazy showrunners who think shock deaths are the only way to raise stakes. During the first season of this show, before I had figured out that it was a Flawless Gem of Television Which So Far Has Not Once Disappointed Me, there were probably a dozen moments where I was absolutely convinced that some character was about to be gruesomely killed for shock value … and I was wrong every single time.

Reader, it was fucking wild.

Every single time I was convinced that person A was going to shoot person B in the head because blah blah maximum angst over here in this part of the story and then it will motivate person C to do this other thing, the show did the hard work of finding a smarter, more unexpected direction to take that character’s story. That means that when deaths do come along - and there are a couple - they feel genuinely earned, and they matter deeply to the story and to us.

3. I would die for these women.

This show loves women. Like it truly, authentically, uncompromisingly loves women in all our fucked-up messy glorious complexity. There are no “types” or cliches here; no one is forced to be only one thing. Fuck your one-dimensional Strong Female Characters, lazy writers.

For one thing, on many shows you might be lucky if you get maybe one mom who is given a personality and a story outside of motherhood. Often, on shows written by men, the fact of her motherhood diminishes her strength or her agency. On this show, nearly every one of the central female characters is both a mom and an action hero simultaneously. Seriously. By season 3 there are four different battle moms. They’re all different, they’re not all on the same side, they have different perspectives, and their role as mother impacts the story differently, but that’s the joy of having a whole lot of different kinds of women - no one has to be everything to everyone.

These women are complicated. They laugh, they cry, they crack dirty jokes, they get laid, they have babies, they fight, they make mistakes, they fall in love, they grow. Men pull sexist shit and they shut it the fuck down. Some of them have love stories, some of them don’t, but they are never defined by or triangulated around relationships with men. They get to have relationships with each other. All of them are excellent at their jobs.

Tokyo is the kind of hot mess antihero protagonist we’ve been watching middle-aged white men play for decades.

Allison is such a realistic teenage girl it’s genuinely painful to watch.

Monica has one of the best arcs I’ve ever seen on television, this is not a drill.

Alicia is terrifying. (A pregnant black ops interrogator! ON WHAT OTHER FUCKING SHOW!?!??)

Nairobi is unlike any other character you’ve seen on TV before; she’s got a little bit of Parker from Leverage, a little bit of Raven Reyes from The 100, but she’s entirely her own creature and you will fall in love with her instantly.

And Raquel. Oh, my love, my angel, my hero, Inspector Raquel Murillo. Love of my goddamn life. A fierce, kickass hostage negotiator swimming upstream against a tide of workplace misogyny who sometimes has to make the frustrating little male-appeasing compromises we all have to make to get through the workday. A beautiful, sexy, powerful heroine over 40 whose femininity isn’t diminished based on some bullshit notion that, for example, pairing your tough-bitch suit and gun holster with red toenails and a lacy blouse detracts from your strength. A loving mom and daughter who has to juggle raising a small child and caring for an aging parent with the stress of, you know, trying to stop the biggest robbery in the history of Spain. A domestic violence survivor (TW for those who need it; nothing is ever shown onscreen, but it’s discussed several times) who is given the space to discuss the things that have happened to her and how she has worked through them with such dignity, accuracy and respect that you can tell the writers did their homework.

This is a show where you can tell there are women in the writers’ room.

2. The Professor and Raquel. I don’t want to spoil a single thing for you here except to say that I myself was lured into this show by the promise of electric sexual chemistry between a criminal mastermind and the police inspector hunting him down, and my God I was not disappointed.

1. Love.

This show came into my life at a period where I was so weary of cynicism on television - so fucking furious at showrunners who dangle hope in front of us and then crush it, who only care about building anything if they can tear it down later, who treat love and fun and joy and hope and family and happiness like they’re intellectually lesser than grimdark nihilism with no soul - that I was honestly kind of broken by it. I was just so. fucking. tired. Tired of “the way we show this heroine is strong is to kill off her love interest.” Tired of “sorry but all this rape and murder is NECESSARY because of REALISM” (particularly rich when coming from shows featuring evil A.I.’s or dragons and ice zombies). Tired of getting invested in relationships - whether ships or friends or found families - only to realize that the show I was watching was always going to sacrifice character to force plot mechanics into place, and those relationships were never going to get the kind of care and focus I wanted them to get.

But that is not this show.

The single most revolutionary thing, to me, about La Casa de Papel - the thing that sets it apart from every other rollercoaster action thrill ride on television - is that every single thread of the plot is tied to love.

Every.

Single.

One.

Love of all different shapes and sizes - parents and children, friendships, doomed crushes (straight and queer), toxic exes, blossoming romances, siblings - and over it all, a deep, deep love for humanity.

The thing I said before, about how when things go wrong they go wrong in character-driven ways? It’s this. Love is why everything on this show happens. Love is what makes children want to live up to their parents and what makes parents fight to leave a better world for their children. Love is why deaths have stakes. Love is why we spend so much screentime lingering on small moments another show might ignore, like all the thieves at heist camp sitting down every night to have dinner together and argue about paella techniques. Love is what causes chaos in the middle of the heist; when there’s one person in the room you care about more than the others, you can get distracted and take your eye off the ball. Love is how your enemies can get to you, by leveraging or blackmailing the people who matter most, knowing that you’ll crack if they’re in danger. Love, gone wrong, causes toxic men to develop possessive and controlling behavior towards women. Love is how the Professor gets the idea for the heist in the first place. The plan is flawless on paper, but it doesn’t account for the human variable, and over and over again we see that relationships and connection and sex and family and love cause people to behave in unpredictable ways and throw the whole plan into chaos, which is what makes for a dynamic and compelling story.

How refreshing to see a show simply refuse to grant the oft-repeated premise that a show cannot have both high-octane thrills, and a big soft squishy heart, at the same time.

ANYWAY, I’VE TAKEN UP ENOUGH OF YOUR VALUABLE TV-WATCHING TIME, GO JUMP ON BOARD THIS TRAIN AND COME SCREAM ABOUT IDEALISTIC SPANISH ROBIN HOODS WITH ME, AND LET THE GOOD SHIP SERQUEL INTO YOUR LIFE, YOU WON’T BE SORRY

THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK

Review: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

“I’m the one they should be scared of.  Not you, not Mr. J – me.  ’Cause I’m Harley-fuckin’-Quinn.”

A triumphant riot of not just girl-power, but the true indomitable spirit of women who have been wronged their entire lives kicking back at the ones who have tried to ruin them.

Birds of Prey is truly one of the greatest movies I have seen in a long time, and this is after having seen some fantastic competition.  Finally, a Harley movie that actually cares about her as a character, as a person, that shows off all the things that makes her great and somehow doesn’t have to make her the film’s sole lead to give her the space she needs to perform.  She’s naïve, excitable, an emotional rollercoaster in a pair of rollerblades and the most delightful not-quite-villain to watch on screen.  Harley has broken up with the Joker and set out on her own, but she never forgets the clown look she is so known and loved for.  Where so many Joker depictions try to show of the madness of clowns, the scary side to make the Joker a formidable villain, Harley Quinn is joyous.  She’s a jack-in-the-box with a rocket launcher, pigtails and smiley-face mallet and maniacal glee in every bit of mayhem she causes.  Yeah, in her own words, she’s not a good person – but you want to be her best friend anyway because you can’t help but love her. Every outfit was sexy but not sexualised, all about Harley’s wild self-expression and not about how much of her ass could fit into each shot; you can feel that this was directed and produced by women; created by women, a project loved by the women behind it. There’s enough emotion to make you really feel for the characters despite the comedy, but manages to flip effortlessly between genuine emotion and humour without cheapening the authentic feelings like other films have done in the past (looking at you, Deadpool).

The film also makes brilliant use of its 15 rating with an explosion of foul language and violence – but none of it gratuitous.  The fights are gritty, lively, and feature none of the signature lady-fighting technique synonymous with Black Widow that involves bringing a man down with her thighs around his face.  The women in this movie punch, brass-knuckle or bare-knuckle; they swing bats and break limbs, they smash windows and noses and get punched back themselves because they aren’t reduced to something pretty for the time of the fight; the fights are fun, but never feel fake.  There’s enough weight behind the combat scenes to carry each of them without losing the fun of watching them.  The Booby-Trap fight scene is the obvious standout, the title scene of the movie where we finally have everything the movie promised us delivered on perfectly, but there are so many others – Harley’s raid on the police station with the shotgun is another personal favourite.  And good news – rumours of Harley having an ex-girlfriend are in fact true!  Bisexual badass Harley Quinn takes centre-stage.

But speaking of Harley, this isn’t just her movie: I couldn’t review this film without paying proper homage to the other characters.  Renee Montoya, a detective overshadowed when her partner took credit for her career-making case, watching him be captain while she never gets the respect she deserves.  For a movie with a cop as one of its leads I was surprised (very pleasantly) at the general tone the film takes towards the police (in colloquial terms, BoP said “fuck blue lives!” and I love it).  Renee’s a force to be reckoned with, a good heart in a bad city and she knows it. The film openly makes fun of how she speaks like an 80s cop movie, but only for the cheese of it all, because the intention behind the cheese, the desire to do good despite the rules, is what this film is all about and while I won’t spoil Montoya’s ending, I was ecstatic for her.  Oh, and did I mention she has an ex-girlfriend who appears multiple times in the movie?  Dinah Lance, Black Canary, is an iconic heroine of DC.  A crime lord’s club songbird with a bite, she clearly has a rough history with police and a lot of mistrust, but there’s a heart of gold beneath it all and she breaks all the rules she’s set for herself to save an innocent life.  Dinah also gets to show off her powers in a fight and it does not disappoint.  Lastly of the Birds, we have Huntress.  A mystery for much of the movie, she’s a lot of motorcycling around and mysteriously killing people for reasons unknown. However, when she does join the gang and come into the light, she’s incredible.  A ruthless assassin with not great people skills which make her formidable but adorably awkward as well, her character realistically reminds the audience that childhood trauma can indeed make superheroes – but that doesn’t magically undo the fact that it is, in fact, trauma.  Her interactions with Cassandra Cain are touching and she’s a fascinating case of someone with no real stake in the affairs that all the other characters are caught up in but takes a stand regardless because it’s the right thing to do.  Also, all these ladies are in fact very beautiful and powerful and kickass and I am very gay.

Cassandra makes the last of the protagonists and she doesn’t let her young age or small stature make her seem any smaller against her co-stars.  Fabulously cast and brilliantly acted, Cassandra is a little shit that people can’t help but take a liking to, but also very much a child in a frightening world who has no idea what she’s gotten mixed up in.  I can’t lie, it’s also very refreshing to see a kid being played and acted like a damn kid, not a thirty-year-old in a schoolgirl skirt.  The Booby-Trap fight where the Birds and Harley are furiously fighting dozens of goons whilst working to protect Cassandra is a really powerful scene, not just for the technicolour girl-power but also because the sight of women working together to protect a young girl in ways they themselves could not be protected is…*chef’s kiss*.

I don’t want to spoil any more than I may already have done, but the villains are phenomenal.  Ewan McGregor does an amazing job with Black Mask, terrifyingly unstable and violent, yet so entertaining at the same time. Also, queer-coded (or canon, if you take McGregor’s own words on the matter) villains are absolutely no issue with me when at least two of our main cast of incredible ladies are queer on screen in this movie (and yes, imo, the bad guys are gay your honour).

Conclusion:

A supernova of harlequin madness and an absolute resounding triumph.  Birds of Prey is everything we needed when Suicide Squad’s own neon-painted violence failed to live up to its potential.  The movie is vividly coloured and non-stop fun.  It’s lurid, violent, and perfectly Harley.

10/10

Part 1, Chapter 1

Or: Big Detective

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes--die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.

“The Man in the Crowd”

Edgar Allen Poe

I’ve heard people say that beginning stories with quotes like this is pretentious, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered some for stories I’ve been thinking up. I’m partial to the “feel for your hatchet” quote from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for one of them. As for how this quote relates to the story, I guess it’s a good way to describe the Masquerade, or the World of Darkness in general, or as a fancy way of hinting to the audience about the nature of the story’s mysteries. Or it just sounds cool?

St. Louis—March 10, 1994

Missouri isn’t the place I’d expect a vampire story to be set, but I guess everywhere has its shadowy underworld.

Two years after the prologue, we’re introduced to the first of the main viewpoint characters. He realizes he’s being followed, thanks to “A sixth sense, the result of years of detective work...” He pretends to scratch his foot and casually scans the crowd.

It was late, nearly midnight, but in St. Louis’ ‘adult’ entertainment strip, things were just starting to happen.

Dozens of people crowded the sidewalk. Men and women, black and white, they were all part of the usual weekend crowd. Cheap whores in black leather outfits that exhibited all of their charms mixed with high-class hookers dressed in silks. In a tough economy, both were anxious for business. Teenagers and college students hunted for drugs, bargaining with street dealers for the best price. Red-faced drunks begged for quarters. Young kids, dressed in rags and violating the curfew, danced on street corners, looking to grow up fast.

A hellhole full of life, in other words.

Young and old, they shared one trait in common. None of them expressed the least bit of interest in the motionless figure of Dire McCann.

We get the full name of our first main POV character. It reminds me of when one of the Penny Arcade guys named their D&D character “Jim Darkmagic”, but without the self awareness.

Dire had been traveling around America for the past few months, so he doesn’t know who he could have pissed off enough recently to get someone to track him. He’s recently been working for Alexander Vargoss, “a rich and powerful industrialist”, and, unsurprisingly, a vampire.

McCann couldn’t believe that his missions for Vargoss had anything to do with his tail tonight. Nobody with any intelligence, even major crooks, hassled the secretive industrialist or interfered with his plans. Besides being incredibly wealthy, with connections in both the police department and the mayor’s office, Vargoss was also the most powerful vampires in St. Louis. In the argot of the Kindred, he was the Prince of the city. And, like the medieval princes of old, from whom the term had been taken (yeah, no shit), Vargoss ruled with an iron hand. Any Kindred or kine (human) foolish enough to cross him ended up dead. The permanent end of the Final Death.

The narrator tells us a little about McCann.

Mysteries annoyed McCann.

Then you’re in the wrong profession, buddy. Wrong franchise too, come to think of it.

Especially when they revolved around him. Though he possessed extraordinary patience, the detective never delayed the inevitable, As he repeatedly told acquaintances, he liked to face the devil straight up.

I’m now picturing McCann as one of those guys who force a catchphrase and annoy those acquaintances by trying to insert it into everything as the whole room groans. 

“Beer shouldn’t be green, even when it’s St. Patrick’s Day. But I’ll try one anyway, cause as we all know... I like to face the devil straight up.”

Luckily for the other characters, he doesn’t actually use that phrase in the story.

Oftentimes, that policy lead to bloodshed. But McCann, though he deemed himself the quiet type, was no stranger to violence. When necessary, he was quite deadly.

It’s mentioned that McCann’s carrying a stack of letters and a small box, and goes on to explain McCann’s mail collecting habits; how he collects from an all-night delivery center because while it’s more expensive he at least doesn’t have to worry about clerks stealing anything valuable.

The certainty of being watched had not started until after he had retrieved his mail. That perplexed McCann. A stakeout meant a long-term commitment of time and resources. He wondered who was after him? And why? The detective meant to find out.

We’ve safely established that Dire McCann is one of those old hard boiled mystery novel style private eyes. One who occasionally does jobs for a vampire. Nowadays private detectives are usually portrayed as weird creeps who bug phones and peek in windows to take photos of cheating spouses, like paparazzi for normal folk. More realistic, sure, but not a portrayal that’d last long in this setting. They’d end up seeing much more than they should, and being weird creeps with a borderline illegal profession instead of quiet but deadly badasses with careful mail collecting habits, they’d be easily killed to uphold the Masquerade.

McCann decides to face the devil straight up and heads into a nearby alley that he’s familiar with, preparing a trap. As he goes through the alley, we’re told that McCann is a great big slab of meat of a man.

A big, broad-shouldered man, standing four inches over six feet and weighing near two-fifty, the investigator moved with astonishing swiftness.

Guess he’s called “Dire” because he’s to a normal dude what a dire wolf is to a normal wolf. Still a goofy name.

The alley is dark, no lights except for moonlight, and there’re rats and trash everywhere. Time for some social commentary.

McCann stifled a snort of disgust. So much for keeping the neighborhoods clean. The main streets looked fine, but out of sight, just beyond the bend, urban decay ruled. Decades of graft and corruption had taken their toll on basic city services.  St. Louis was no different from every big city. The rich and famous received all the benefits of modern life, while the poor and middle class suffered with the crumbs. Things never really changed, McCann decided, his gaze searching the walls. At least not in his lifetime.

The story is peppered with bits like this. The World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World, but sometimes it can get a little too real. You’ll see. Oh, and don’t think I missed that ominous last line about his lifetime. The narration insists that Dire McCann is human, though...

McCann hides in an alcove a dozen steps away from the twelve-foot high steel privacy fence the alley ends at, out of sight from anyone following him. From his topcoat (all the implied hard-boiledness of a trenchcoat but without looking like a hobo) he pulls out his gun. Vampires are hard to kill and most guns are useless against them, but since it takes time for them to heal enough force can immobilize them. That’s why the narration, somewhat over dramatically. reveals that McCann’s gun isn’t a .45 automatic or a .375 Magnum, but an Ingram MAC 10, whose bullets “could rip any normal man to shreds and smash a vampire flat.”

Eventually, the guy tailing McCann shows up.

Hugging the shadows, the newcomer was a short, stocky man in his mid-thirties, with swarthy, cruel features.

Swarthy, huh? As descriptions go, swarthy is like the evil twin of “olive-skinned”. Both are used by fantasy writers to describe people of color, but in a vague way that doesn’t tell you their actual ethnicity so sometimes they could just be white people with tans like the Dornishmen in A Song of Ice and Fire. While “olive-skinned” is generally a catch-all term, “swarthy” is more negative. Which is unfortunate since swarthy literally means “dark skinned”. Now, I don’t want you to think I’m accusing Robert Weinberg of being racist. I’ve heard people say that they thought swarthy meant something like “roguish”, like a thief or pirate or something. But I wouldn’t recommend using swarthy as a description when writing.

 Also he’s called “swarthy” like five goddamn times.

The tail realizes he lost McCann and goes to examine the fence at the end of the alley, walking past McCann’s hiding spot in the process. Trap sprung, McCann steps out behind the tail MAC-10 aimed at him. After some back and forth (“Lose something, brother?” “McCann, right?”) McCann tries to ask who-

The detective never completed the sentence. The stranger’s right hand twisted unexpectedly. As if by magic, a thin cord flashed out from beneath the man’s arm and-wrapped whip like around the Ingram. McCann was caught completely by surprise. Before he could squeeze down on the trigger, the gun went flying from the detective’s hands.

Phhhhthahaha, that’s great! After all that build-up over how he uses a kickass MAC-10 instead of a Magnum like that pussy Dirty Harry, he’s immediately disarmed. By a guy who turns out to be a regular human, too.

Free of the threat of the submachine gun, the swarthy man attacked with a ferocity that had McCann reeling. A series of savage karate kicks to his chest sent the detective stumbling backwards. Steel-tipped boots felt like hammers striking McCann’s body. Growling deep in his throat, the assassin leapt into the air, aiming a sideways thrust for the detective’s head. Enough force propelled to crush McCann’s skull like an eggshell. But it never connected.

McCann grabs and twists the leg, breaking the assassin’s kneecap, then knocks him out with a wooden box. After a few minutes of searching, McCann finds his gun and the assassin’s rope.

A long thin strand of black fiberglass it was knotted in three places to crush to crush a man’s windpipe on impact. The weapon successfully melded melded modern technology with ancient sacrificial ritual.

Huh. Sounds like an interesting weapon for a guy who’ll turn out to be an unimportant throwaway assassin.

You ever heard of the inverse ninja law? How the more enemies the hero has to fight at once, the easier they are to defeat, while just one guy is a real threat? There’s a related trope that this scene reminded me of; the more unusual an opponent’s weapon is, the harder they are to defeat. A ninja wielding a katana is gonna be a chump, but the guy with the chain with a scythe at the end? Watch out for that guy. It would explain how the assassin could instantly disarm McCann like some sort of kung fu lord but go down in one move not long after he throws the rope away.

Course, that’s just tropey shit. The more practical reason the assassin lost was because he didn’t just shoot McCann after disarming him, instead resorting to riskier physical combat. But that’s why tropes like the inverse ninja law exist. They typically make the fight scenes more exciting and varied depending on context. It wouldn’t be much of a story if McCann lost his gun and then got shot in the head.

Still kind of funny how eccentric the guy’s weapon is and how much of a physical threat he briefly posed compared to how he’s about to be described. Reminds me of something I wrote during my teenage online role playing story days, where two of the protagonists fought some nameless generic guard and I made it weirdly dramatic and over the top.

McCann ties the assassin’s hands behind his back, with his own fiberglass rope to add insult to injury. He attempts to interrogate the assassin, who responds by demanding to be taken to the police and given a lawyer.

McCann smiled. “Funny thing about this part of town. Cops don’t come around here very often. They figure anyone crazy enough to wander about deserves what they get.” McCann rapped the muzzle of the gun against his prisoner’s undamaged knee. “You’re on your own, my friend. Back here, we’re isolated from view. Nobody can see or hear a thing. There’s no cops, no lawyers. Just you and me. And my gun.”

MAC-10 shots echoing out of an alley would get some attention, but the threat works. The assassin starts sweating and flickering his gaze between McCann and the gun.

Mentally, the detective shrugged in disgust. (Don’t ask me what a mental shrug is) He was wasting his time threatening this clown. It took a lot more than a veiled threat to worry a true professional. The swarthy man was cheap talent, hired merely as a diversion.

A cheap talent clown who was kicking your ass a few minutes ago, you smug meathead.

This bit highlights the problem with the previous fight scene. This assassin was shown just a few paragraphs ago to be an expert with an unusual weapon who could turn the tables on McCann even though the detective had snuck up on him and had a submachine gun aimed at him, and a good enough physical fighter to overpower McCann with karate kicks and nearly cave his head in, but now he’s presented as an incompetent and disposable pawn who whines about wanting a lawyer. The scene could have just had the assassin pull a gun on McCann, who quickly subdues him. It’d fit the assassin’s later description as unprofessional and amateur better. Instead, Weinberg tried to go for “cool’ but ended up with “silly”. So remember, writing something just because it’s cool is fine, but try to make it consistent with the rest of the story.

Now what was that about the assassin being “hired merely as a diversion?”

A decoy! The thought slammed through McCann as the sensation of being observed suddenly flared. Instead, the big detective flung himself flat on the ground in the darkness.

I like the needless qualifier that McCann is a big detective. There’s something cute about it.

The realization that this assassin was a decoy apparently triggered a sort of spider-sense. The moment McCann, who is large, dove to the ground, a second assassin opened fire at him from the corner of the alley. They missed McCann, despite his above-average size, but killed the first guy. McCann fires back, but the new assailant already fled.

“Strike quickly, then move. That was the operational procedure of a true professional.  Never waste time on meaningless chatter or second tries. Mistakes like that were for amateurs like the dead man sprawled against the wall.

Oh what the hell is this? McCann was the one caught off guard by “meaningless chatter.” He was disarmed by the first assassin while he was talking to him. The guy was easily bamboozed by McCann’s “hide in an alcove and sneak up on him when he passes” trap, but McCann totally blew that advantage by talking so it doesn’t really count. The guy’s just blaming the poor dead man for his own screw ups. “A true professional wouldn’t have let himself get hammered in the chest by karate kicks, unlike this dead clown who totally got karate kicked and not me. Also wouldn’t have been disarmed by my, not his, weird rope thing that’s totally mine, not his.”

The big dick thinks “the real assassin” was gone.

A short, muffled gasp and a flash of white leather indicated that McCann jumped to the wrong conclusion. The detective shook his head in disbelief. The night held more surprises than he liked.

Three figures stepped into the moonlight.

We finally meet some goddamn vampires.

Their leader was a tall, aristocratic man with a face that appeared to be carved from weathered stone. He wore a black tuxedo with a ruffled white shirt, a red bow tie, and a matching red cummerband. To McCann, it was a costume right out of a wedding. Or a funeral. The detective, though, knew better than to speak his thoughts. No one dared insult Alexander Vargoss, Ventrue Clan elder. And the vampire Prince of St. Louis.

Gotta say, despite him being a Ventrue, I can respect the man for not being above walk down a filthy rat infested alley wearing a fancy wedding outfit just to dramatically reveal himself to the big oaf he occasionally employs.

A step behind him stood two nearly identical platinum blondes. White leather jumpsuits clung to their voluptuous figures like second skins. High cheekbones, pitch black eyes, and wide sensuous lips gave them a predatory look.

Well yeah, it’s a 90′s dark fantasy novel. Of course they’re hot.

McCann had encountered them before. They were Fawn and Flavia, Vargoss’s twin bodyguards. Silent and deadly, they never spoke. Or acted without direct command of their Ventrue employer. Assamite assassins, the twins enjoyed their notorious nicknames as the Dark Angels of the Kindred.

A name like ~*~The Dark Angels~*~ seems quaint nowadays, but again, 90′s fantasy novel. But hey, maybe they were named by a Toreador.

Fawn’s holding the corpse of the second assassin, a “horrified expression frozen on his face.” She has blood on her upper lip like an old “Got Milk” ad.

With a flick of her long tongue, she wiped it clean. Then, mischievously, the vampire smiled seductively at McCann.

The detective shuddered. Though she looked to be in her early twenties, McCann knew the girl and her sister were actually hundreds of years old. Oftentimes, the pair mocked him with suggestive gestures. They enjoyed pretending that passion still stirred within their perfect forms. But McCann wasn’t fooled. Along with food and drink, vampires no longer craved sex. For them, hot blood was the ultimate high. Carnal pleasures meant little to them. However, McCann had heard tales of Kindred who had taken human lovers in a desperate attempt to regain some of their lost humanity. The notion made his flesh crawl.

Way to be judgmental, investigatore grande.

There aren’t any actual sex scenes in this book, but trust me, the subject of undead sex will come up again.

Vargoss gives one of those humble little “we were just in the neighborhood” explanations. Specifically, they were on their way to McCann’s office to be haughty little undeads to their human freelance employee in a proper setting when they saw him enter the alley followed by “two lowlife scum”. They figured McCann wouldn’t want their help, so they stayed hidden.

“However, when your adversary chose to flee rather than fight, I demanded he stop.” Vargoss shook his head in mock despair. “The fool chose instead to pull his weapon on me. Fawn, of course, reacted.”

McCann loots the bodies, finding some money and a billfold he’ll examine later. There’s a paragraph giving us another glimpse at how cruel the world (of darkness) is, telling us that the assassins will be mistaken for vagrants and that since there’s fifty unexplained deaths in St. Louis every month, two dead bums won’t be mentioned in the newspaper. McCann says that Vargoss could’ve warned him before the second assassin started shooting.

“Nonsense,” said the Prince, smiling. “I had absolute confidence in your ability to deal with the situation. Circumstances proved that my trust was not misplaced.”

“That first fight, however, there I overestimated you. A shorter man with a rope was taking you to school for a while. No, don’t pull the stoic grumpy private eye act and deny what happened. We all saw it.”

“And if you were wrong?”

“There are other humans, McCann,” said the Prince. “Never forget that. I find you vastly entertaining. And quite useful despite your mortal limitations. I would mourn your passing. But you are not indispensable. There will always be others to take your place. In five hundred years, you will be no more than a pleasant memory. I will still remain.”

Vampires are to other monsters what elves are to other fantasy races: smug little shits. It’s why more people fantasize about banging werewolves and fish people these days. But Vargoss is talking down to McCann of all people here, so I’ll let it side.

“What a cheerful sentiment,” said the detective.  He picked his words very carefully. Vargoss appreciated his honesty and his sarcasm—within limits. No vampire in St. Louis mocked the Prince of the city. Much less a human, no matter how entertaining. McCann tiptoed on a tightrope where undead horrors feared to tread.

“Ah, McCann. What a scamp he is with his silly first name and his sarcastic barbs. But not too sarcastic. He knows I can make him defecate in his hands and throw it at other people like the big ape he is.”

“I cannot afford the luxury of emotions,” declared Vargoss, almost wistfully. “We Kindred are an ambitious race. It is part of our heritage. More than a few of my loyal subjects believe that they should rule this city, not I. Too many of my nights are spent squelching their ill-conceived plots.”

I’m imagining Vargoss being voiced by David Warner here. You know, the guy who voiced Ra’s al Ghul in Batman: The Animated Series, The Lobe in Freakazoid, and that one crappy villain from Gargoyles.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” said McCann.

“Shakespeare understood the politics of power,” said Vargoss. “He should have been one of us.”

As long as he wouldn’t be made a Toreador, ‘cause then he’d spend his eternal life writing just the shittiest plays and sonnets imaginable. Also, careful there, Mr. Weinberg. Remember than Edgar Allen Poe is your dead poet waifu. You don’t want to make him jealous.

Vargoss has had enough witty back and forth and commands McCann to come to his club around midnight. He has a guest from overseas with news of “extremely disturbing events” from the former Soviet Union and for whatever reason he wants some human detective’s opinion on it.

“I’ll be there”, said the detective . “At midnight.”

“Because as we all know-”

“McCann, no-”

“I like to face the devil straight up.”

“Damn you, Dire McCann... Who’s even the devil in this context? What’s going on overseas? Me?”

Vargoss and the ~*~Dark Angels~*~ leave. As the chapter ends, McCann is standing alone in the alley with the two corpses.

Holding in his hands a small box and a stack of letters, several with foreign postmarks. And an enigmatic smile on his face.

"in fact I could and probably will write a huge meta post about how Wyatt is a poster child for how toxic masculinity ruins even good-hearted and well-intentioned men and how Wyatt is actually suffering and not allowed to live up to his full potential as a person due to the said toxic masculinity that was his upbringing" YEP! ALL THAT! None of the way he's acted is a surprise because between his childhood and the military he probably never learned better. But he needs to DEAL WITH IT! (1)

(2) I think what Jess said to him in 2x04 about how he claims to change and does but then changes right back is so important. Because I’m sure he doesn’t realize when he’s hurting people. And I’m sure he genuinely does feel bad when it’s pointed out to him. But when this shit is so ingrained you can’t just flick a switch (or drive a car into a lake) and have it magically go away. The man needs help. And not from Lucy or Jess. #GetWyattLoganATherapist2k18

OH GOD YES TO ALL OF THIS

Everyone please prepare yourselves for my great big rambling Wyatt is a Victim of Toxic Masculinity and This is Important.

…putting this under a read more because this got massive.

The thing with characters who exhibit toxic masculinity is that we’re either a) shown them exhibiting these traits and told through this and other narrative elements that we’re not supposed to like them, or b) we’re shown these traits by accident, as positive things, and we’re supposed to keep liking these characters (which is a sign of the toxic masculinity the show writers have ingrained and are unconsciously showcasing in said characters).

Rarely do we get to see c) which is toxic masculinity shown in a character that we’re supposed to like, but the behavior itself is shown as wrong. And I really, really hope that with Wyatt, we get option C.

Because I love Wyatt, I do. He is my Soft Puppy Boi. And the thing that kills me is that Wyatt is at his best when he’s allowed to be Soft. Flynn and Rufus and even Mason we see have this kind of hard, masculine side to them and we see them at their best when they’re showing that off. Not that they don’t have soft moments either, like dear God basically any moment when Flynn and Lucy interact in season two it’s so full on soft hearteyes I’m gagging on it (in the best way). But when Wyatt tries to be all “I’m a badass and I’m going to intimidate you” it doesn’t come off right. It’s like the little dog being all barky so that it can prove to you it’s a Big and Fierce Doggo. Wyatt’s a badass (*swoons at the Delta Force outfit*) and he is a soldier and he’s quite competent but he doesn’t have that Scary Alpha Shut Up So I Can Yell at You vibe that the other men (and even Lucy) have.

Wyatt’s best moments in the show are when he’s allowed to be soft. When he tells the story of how he proposed to Jess at the tree where they first kissed and how nervous he was. When he’s at the Alamo and he connects with this young boy and tells him it’s okay, I understand your pain. When he holds Lucy as she cries. When he tells Jess that we’re your family, please, come home. Those are the moments, those nurturing moments, where Wyatt really shines. Even Lucy isn’t as nurturing as Wyatt is. Lucy is very good at talking to people but it’s more of an intellectual, platonic, we’re on the same level and we’re working our shit out kind of talk. Wyatt just takes on this very, dare I say maternal, let me take you into my arms and hold you while you cry it out attitude that is so unbelievably soft and sweet.

But Wyatt was a) raised in Texas b) raised by an abusive father and c) enlisted in the Army. None of those environments (apologies, Texans) are very good for raising a boy who knows that it’s okay to be soft and vulnerable etc etc. So instead, Wyatt tries to be what his dad and society and the Army showed him a man is supposed to be, which is: tough, hardened, takes no shit, demands answers, and never has his authority questioned.

We see glimpses of this in the first season, of course. His incendiary reaction to Flynn, which is because of a sexuality crisis because it’s ingrained in men that You are Alpha and you must beat all opponents into submission. He feels his masculinity being challenged by someone who is so clearly aggressive in manner, someone who is masculine and in charge and demanding, and so Wyatt reactions arguably more violently to Flynn than Rufus or Lucy. Not that Rufus or Lucy dislike Flynn any less than Wyatt in season one, just that their reactions are more measured, they know how to control themselves. Wyatt goes off the fucking deep end.

In general, actually, Wyatt’s not good with emotions. A classic example of toxic masculinity, where you’re told the only emotions you’re allowed are Anger and Stoicism, and any other emotions are to be bottled up and only shared with your mom or your girlfriend (which is why men get so depressed during a breakup, even more so than women, because women have been shown to have a support network of friends they can turn to for support and men do not). We see this in Wyatt multiple times in season one, Karma Chameleon being a great example.

But luckily in season one we also get to see Wyatt showing what a great person he is, and I love it because unfortunately bad behavior (abusive, toxic, PTSD, whatever behavior) is not on 24/7. Men stunted by our misogynistic culture are not raging assholes 100% of the time. If they were, we would be able to avoid them better (ugh). But Wyatt has a lot of good things about him, especially, again, when he is allowed to show that soft, nurturing side that I firmly believe is his true, default state of being.

one can also be Soft and a Kickass BAMF so don’t @me about how I’m saying Wyatt’s lame or not good in a fight etc

ACTUALLY YOU KNOW WHAT WE’RE GOING TO GET INTO THIS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND TRASH LORDS BECAUSE GUESS WHO KNOWS STAGE COMBAT AND HOW A GOOD FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHER USES FIGHTS TO CONVEY CHARACTER

I’m so fucking lazy and bad with technology so you guys aren’t getting any gifs BUT please recall that when Wyatt is up against Flynn and Emma in fights?

He loses.

He gets his ass handed to him on a silver goddamn platter.

And this isn’t because Wyatt isn’t good in a fight. We all saw him make us take cold showers infiltrate Rittenhouse. But the fight choreographers have done something truly beautiful with those fight scenes and have taken the opportunity to show us time and again that while Wyatt is a kickass fighter, he is not a naturally aggressive person.

Look when you’re in a fight for your life and you want to win? You need to possess a certain level of I Want To Rip Your Throat Out. Flynn has that. Emma definitely has that. But Wyatt doesn’t have that. We see it when he can’t shoot Carol or Jess, how he consistently hesitates on taking shots and can’t set aside his personal attachments the way that Flynn can. Hell, Lucy has now twice gone Darkside on us (Jesse James and then Emma) and Wyatt has yet to. If you doubt my belief that Wyatt’s natural default state of being is soft and nurturing, go and rewatch every single damn fight scene he’s in. He pulls his punches. He opts for fighting maneuvers meant to incapacitate but not destroy. You don’t notice it when he’s up against nameless goons or hapless civilians trying to fight, but when he’s fighting Flynn and Emma, it’s very noticeable. He simply lacks their level of ruthless aggression.

A good fight choreographer uses fights to portray character. A great example of this is Steve Rogers in the MCU. I fucking love Steve’s fights because he doesn’t fight like a six foot man. No no no. He fights. like. a girl.

The moves he uses are flexible and balletic, and are moves designed to a) use the world around him (furniture) to his advantage as a weapon and b) use his opponent’s body and weight against them. Those are all classic techniques taught to women, not because of gender but because women are often much smaller than the men they’re fighting. So you have to adjust your fight style accordingly. In fact, Steve and Peggy’s fighting styles are exactly the same.

What does that tell us from watching Steve’s fight scenes?

That he was taught how to fight while he was pre-serum, most likely by Peggy, in a style that would most benefit his small body size aka how to fight like a girl. Once he got the serum, nobody bothered to change that training.

A good fight choreographer uses fights to portray character. Wyatt doesn’t go for the throat, or the eyes, he’s constantly fighting like he’s scrambling for the upper hand and taken aback. Just look at the boy’s eyes when he’s fighting. When Lucy picks up a gun, when Flynn’s fighting someone even in season two when he’s on the side of the good, there is this terrifying look in their eyes where you just know, somebody’s about to die. Wyatt never, ever has that look on his face. Instead he looks like he’s trying to figure out how to subdue this person. Not kill, subdue. Even when he has a gun in his hand and is sniping, there’s a detachment, no vengeance, no real aggression. He’s fighting because it’s what he was trained to do and what he’s good at and what he feels he’s supposed to be good at, not because he gets any real satisfaction out of the fight.

…okay now that we’ve got that massive tangent out of the way…

AND THEN SEASON TWO HAPPENS AND HOOOO BOY.

Wyatt is placed in a position of having to choose between Jess and Lucy, and the toxic masculinity rears its ugly head fully for the first time. Wyatt’s behavior sucks, let’s all agree on that, because he commits to Jess but then treats Lucy as an emotional sidepiece, which isn’t fair to either woman.

But this is a classic example of the three things that men are, unfortunately, taught in our society (American society, I cannot speak for the rest of the world):

1. You are entitled to whatever you want.

2. You do not have to explain your actions or emotions to anyone.

3. The most important thing is your emotions and how you feel.

So, more detail:

1. You are entitled to whatever you want. Wyatt wants his wife back, but he also wants that continued emotional intimacy with Lucy. So he sets out to have both. He doesn’t seem to understand why it’s wrong and why would he? Nobody has ever explained to him that he can’t have it. We see this constantly in our real lives, from extreme cases like rape and gun violence to little things like my brother not shutting the fuck up and taking ‘no’ for an answer when I told him I wasn’t sharing my goddamn book with him.

2. You do not have to explain your actions or emotions to anyone. I cannot even begin to tell you how many men I know who are incapable, apparently, of saying how they feel. They are raised to believe that they shouldn’t explain themselves, which then means that they don’t know how to explain themselves, and so emotions get horribly bottled up and are usually unleashed in rage and violence. Wyatt did a lot of this in season two, where he would act and then wouldn’t explain or apologize. Hoooooo boy his apologizing was out of whack. But it makes sense if you see it from the perspective of someone who has been taught that he is allowed to act without needing to provide an explanation.

3. The most important thing is your emotions and how you feel. We saw this illustrated beautifully in 2.07 when Lucy tells Wyatt to “stop acting like you’re the one who got hurt” and Flynn telling him that he should talk to Lucy instead of Flynn because “Lucy is an adult who’s capable of making her own choices.” Both times Wyatt tries to act based upon his emotions, without considering the feelings of others, and both times he’s shot down.

Even his love confession in 2.10 wasn’t about what Lucy wanted. It was about WYATT’S emotions and how HE felt like he had to get this weight off of his chest, and how HE wanted comfort and reassurance in that moment. If he’d been thinking about how Lucy felt, he would have told her that it would be okay, that Rufus’s actions wouldn’t be in vain, that they’d find a way to make this work out.

And we’re getting to see how that toxic masculinity actually damages Wyatt. It prevents him from having the education of how to talk about his emotions properly. It prevents him from being able to properly connect with others because he can’t explain himself, listen to them, or apologize when he messes up. It traps him in this cycle–the cycle that Jess mentioned, of drinking and cheating–because he can’t just be himself. I think it’s compounded here by the fact that Wyatt is not naturally an aggressive Alpha Male person. He’s soft and comforting and nurturing. Look at how he is with Jess about the baby, he’s a goddamn PUPPY for crying out loud.

But Wyatt ran straight from a conservative small town with an abusive father into the arms of one of the most rigid and masculine and toxic environments in society, the Army. And even if the Army WASN’T a place for fostering toxic masculinity, the bloodshed and violence are sure as hell gonna mess you up. He hasn’t had a chance to learn how to show his vulnerability, and apologize, and acknowledge the feelings of others and put that before his own.

Compare this to Rufus and Flynn, who were both raised primarily by women. Rufus didn’t meet Mason until he was an older teenager, and Flynn barely even talks about his father but went back through time to see his mother smile. These are the two men who were raised by women, and we see the results. They’re able to apologize when they mess up. They openly discuss emotions. They show vulnerability and know it’s not a weakness. They put the feelings of others first.

Wyatt needs a GODDAMN THERAPIST because he’s just a very loving nurturing person who’s been forced into what he thinks a man ought to be and not given the emotional education necessary to handle being an adult or having mature adult relationships. He’s painfully far behind everyone else in emotional maturity. And it’s actually heartbreaking.

Of course, Wyatt’s solution to this is to find a woman to become romantically involved with and then dump all of his shit on her, because men are taught that’s what they should do. This is why Wyatt continues to try and jerk Lucy around after he’s back with Jess–he doesn’t realize how he’s treating her or that he’s allowed to go to anyone else with his emotions. In his head, he can literally only connect with Lucy by being romantic with her, because that’s the only way he was taught he’s allowed to be vulnerable with someone. Hell, Rufus has to FORCE Wyatt to talk about anything emotional and even then Wyatt can barely get the words out or just sits there and lets Rufus lecture him (Karma Chameleon, 2.01, 2.02, 2.03, 2.09/2.10, etc).

Get Wyatt a Goddamn Therapist 2k18 because this poor Soft Puppy Boi just really would be happiest if he knew that he was allowed to be that nurturing soft nonaggressive self and that being vulnerable is okay. God, add the years of childhood abuse that he has never focused on and whatever the hell he saw and went through in a goddamn war, it’s no wonder he’s so fucking messed up.

And of course he thinks he’s beyond it. As someone who survived and escaped an abusive parent and watched her family survive and escape that abuse, I can tell you that you’re going to do something like drive a car into a lake and feel pretty damn cathartic and like you buried the demon. But you haven’t, not really, until you’ve talked it out. You have to talk about it. You need to talk about your trauma. And Wyatt hasn’t. He hasn’t really talked about his dad, or the Army, or killing that man for Jess, or the whole Jess thing… he’s barely scratched the surface, and usually under duress (like being tied to a chair really Flynn???).

I really, really hope the writers give us a nice, season-long redemption arc for Wyatt where he finally realizes and owns up to his mistakes and finds someone (Denise, probably, unless she pulls some strings and gets a therapist down in that bunker) to talk to about all of his issues (Flynn actually would also be a good person to talk to, they are so painfully similar it hurts me, also More Flogan 2k18) and works through those. I hope that the writers show the audience that good men can be and are victims of toxic masculinity and how it traps them just as much as it hurts the people around them. And I hope that the writers show us how a man trapped in that can realize it, and escape, and improve and grow.

I want back the Wyatt that I fell in love with in season one, and that’s going to mean a long hard road ahead for our puppy. But I believe in it. I just hope the writers do it justice.

CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE- Tomi Adeyemi

This book. Wow. I have a lot of strong feelings. 

Was it amazing? Well, I wouldn’t say amazing, but I would definitely say that I enjoyed reading it. It was a good, solid read. If you loved Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth, you’ll most probably like this book, because it has new, exotic languages, animals, food and terms of its own, a badass female character, and a lot of hot guys. I felt a lot of CTM vibes while reading this book.

Throne of Glass lovers may also like this book because it has magic in it, and like in Sarah J Maas’s books, there is an “evil” king who has trapped magic and people try to bring it back.

Let me start by giving an introduction.

The story takes place in the land of Orisha, where magic used to live and thrive in gifted people called the maji. There were ten magical clans which had different powers, for example, the maji of the Aféfé clan could manipulate air and the maji of the Èmí clan could see into a person’s mind, enter their dreams and look into their spirit and soul. Each clan had a deity which was worshipped, for example, the deity of the Aiye clan was Ògún, and the deities were the children of the Sky Mother. But this was all before King Saran put a spell over the land, depriving the maji of their magic and enslaving them because they killed his family and he saw how dangerous they could be. Zélie, the daughter of a Reaper(that’s a maji title) of the Ikú clan, the clan of life and death, lives with hate in her heart for the king and his brutal and tyrannical rule. When the Raid happens (that’s when the spell was put on the land) Zélie’s mother was taken by the king’s soldiers and to prevent it from happening, she used her magic, and in the process killed herself with the soldiers restraining her. Her father is left very weak.

One day, when going to sell some rare fish in the capital of Orisha, she ends up helping a strange girl escape from the clutches of the royal guard. As she is fleeing on her lionaire (one species of all the beautiful ones in this book), she has a moment with the captain of the guard, who happens to be crown Prince Inan. When she reaches her town, however, the girl is revealed to be none other than Princess Amari, daughter of the king, and she has stolen something that could help bring magic back. 

It is a tale about how Zel, her brother Tzain, and Amari embark on a very dangerous journey to bring magic back and stop maji oppression while having the prince and his guards racing to stop them. 

There are a few specific things that I love about the book other than just the general plot. 

First of all, the representation, and the fact that this story is based on black oppression and also that it is a West African inspired fantasy series. As far as I recall, there is no white character in these books, which makes me so happy because normally, YA books either don’t have any biracial, black, or characters of different sexualities and if they do have them, there are very few of them. Tomi also wrote this because she wanted to make a change in her own way. She wanted at least one person to know and be aware of the crimes against unarmed black men, women and children which made her feel helpless and angry.

The second thing was that the female characters in this book were good. And by good, I mean mindblowing. In most YA books, when there’s a #badassfemale, she’s usually passive, which means that even though she might be portrayed as kickass and fiery and ruthless and merciless and courageous, there’s no actual proof of her being any of these things. *cough Clary Fray cough* And there’s the other trope, where the seemingly shy and introverted character is given a glow-up and proclaimed as badass, but is still the same old crybaby. I expected both of these in this book, but it exceeded my expectations and actually proved why Zélie was badass and why Amari had indeed changed and become more confident.

Another reason was the setting. It was so surreal, and I found myself wanting to dive into the world of Orisha, and eat jollof rice and have white, crazy-curly hair like all the maji and have it braided by my beautiful, powerful mother and go riding on a panthenaire and fight with my majacite sword(majacite is a metal that is way more precious than gold). 

A few other reasons were the descriptions of how magic worked, the adventure in most of the book and that one romance didn’t particularly work out. I always love those in a book.

Now to a few things that  I did not particularly like.

For one, Prince Inan. I was crazy about this guy in the beginning mostly because he’s pretty hot and there was some obvious romance him and Zélie. I always love that trope in a book where two people go from enemies to friends to lovers, and that was pretty evident in this story. I expected Zélie to change Inan, to get him to have his own opinions and not what his father made him believe. And it happened. I was so happy about it. But then, Inan witnesses a noble sacrifice, and misinterprets it, and everything goes downhill from there. He starts behaving exactly like his stupid, horrible father. I started to want him dead in the second part of the book(pretty macabre I know), not because I had anything personal, but for the sake of Orisha and Zélie. A kingdom needs a ruler whose first thought is the welfare of his/her people, and even if a fraction of them are suffering, this person should do something about it, pronto. AND THIS GUY WOW. It was so frustrating to see him go through that shit where he chooses to let people be oppressed instead of even thinking about the possibility of a better future because of them. And he thinks he’s doing it to protect them, but he doesn’t realise that that’s absolute bullshit, even though it’s happening right in front of his eyes. Why would anyone do that? Not to mention, Zélie deserves so much better. Oh and towards the end. Phew. Let’s just say that I was really furious about what happened, and then I was pretty satisfied. Saying any more would completely spoil the parts of the book that I haven’t spoiled yet(sorry).

Another is Tzain. Tzain is a pretty paranoid older brother, and that is okay only to a point. He’s also hot(why am I saying this so much oh god). I understand that he lost his mother and he would do anything to prevent his sister and father getting taken, but instead of being protective, he’s unnecessarily harsh on Zélie. He’s always demanding something and blames her for things that aren’t her fault. He keeps insisting that she be careful in EVERY situation. He also says something to her that I can’t ever believe because no brother would ever say something like that to a sister, his own blood. He should lay off Zélie and frankly, I find him pretty annoying. One of the few things that I like about him is that he’s pretty good looking. He’s really tall. And hot.(having successfully swooned over the two main males, I will try to stop saying ‘hot’ now) 

But another thing I absolutely love about this book is that every character has flaws. Every character is realistic. Brave but arrogant, ambitious but still inside their shell, talented but a little dull in personality, means well but doesn’t have independent thoughts. It’s portrayed amazingly. The plotline is also very exciting, and I didn’t want to put this book down. 

Overall, this was a very good read, and I’m glad that I spontaneously picked it up at a bookstore without knowing the first thing about it.

Hope you enjoyed this and possibly added something new to your booklist.

Clack Week 2017 Day 4

Day 4: Uniform/Make-up

. . . . .

Arching his back as he stretched, Zack let out a low groan of relief. These constant monster extermination missions were killer. If this kept up, he’d be too exhausted to go on any dates!

He grinned to himself, thinking of the cute blond that he hadn’t managed to ask out yet. He would. Eventually. Cloud was just always busy with missions or training or-

Zack sighed, smile fading as he tipped his head back.

Who was he kidding? Cloud was adorable and sweet and kickass and- and-

And Zack was too much of a wimp to actually take the dive. It was stupid, of course. Even if Cloud said no, it wouldn’t change anything. Zack would grin and whine and pout and Cloud would roll his eyes and laugh at him, calling him a dork and saying he wasn’t falling for his player wiles. They would keep training, and Cloud would keep getting better. Zack just… didn’t want to hear a no. He wanted to be able to hold Cloud’s hand, give him cheesy kisses at the most cliche times, wanted to be able to shower him with affection- well, more affection. He wanted so much, and he knew how much it would hurt to be told no.

Zack pouted, tugging at his bangs as he got on the elevator to head up to his rooms.

“Pouting again, puppy?” A man was already leaning against the wall, book in his hands.

Zack sent the redheaded mage a glare. “Shut up, Genesis.”

The commander smirked. “My friend, the fates are cruel. There are no dreams, no honor remains.”

Zack scowled, “I don’t need dating advice from you.” He crossed his arms petulantly.

“Apparently,” Genesis retorted dryly, “you do. You’re mooning again, meaning you still haven’t asked your little trooper out.”

“It’s not that easy!”

“You, Zack Fair, serial heartbreaker-”

“Hey!”

“-are saying that it’s difficult to ask someone out.”

“I’m not a serial heartbreaker.”

“You do have a certain reputation.”

“And that,” Zack sighed, running a hand through his hair, “is part of the problem. He’ll probably think I’m kidding or messing around. He has more reasons to say no than to say yes. I just… don’t want to hear the no.”

Genesis sighed, shaking his head. “Honestly… Will the outcome be worse than what you have now?”

“Huh?”

“Will the outcome be worse than what you have now?” Genesis repeated impatiently. “If you ask him out, whether he says yes or no, will it be worse than the miserable pining that you’re doing now?”

Zack fidgeted under the redhead’s glare. “Well… no, but-”

“But nothing!” Genesis threw up his hands in exasperation. “Just ask him! You’re anxious and distracted, which is worrying Angeal, which is negatively impacting my life.”

“My misery is detracting from your life,” Zack repeated skeptically.

“Yes,” the redhead snapped, crossing his arms. “Angeal keeps worrying about you, which means that he doesn’t pay as much attention to me. You are negatively impacting my sex life, and I do not appreciate it!”

Zack stared at him blankly for a minute, then groaned. “I should have known.” He shuddered. “Ugh, I don’t want to know about your sex life.”

“I don’t have one right now because of you!”

The brunette cringed. “Alright alright, I get it. I’ll be miserable more subtly.”

“Good,” Genesis nodded, then swept off at the 49th floor. Zack leaned against the wall with a pout as the doors closed and the elevator moved up a floor.

He started grumbling about annoying meddling redheads as he got off on the 50th floor and moved to his apartment. He swiped his keycard and stepped inside, immediately slipping his boots off inside the door before moving towards his room. He just wanted a shower and a nap. Maybe he could see if Cloud was free to hang out later-

He opened his bedroom door, to be met with an… interesting sight.

Cloud froze from in front of the mirror, staring at Zack in abject horror, purple halter-top dress flowing down his body and around his legs.

Zack’s lips parted slightly as he took in the sudden sight, eyes scanning the blond with stunned amazement. “Holy shit.”

“Z-Z-Zack,” Cloud stuttered, wrapping his arms around himself, “Y-You’re back early. I-” He glanced down, panic in his eyes. “I can explain. I- This is-” He faltered helplessly.

Zack shook himself out of his reverie, shooting a crooked grin at the blond. “You’re an awful liar, Spike.” He stepped fully into the room, resting his hands on his waist. He eyed Cloud appreciatively. It was a good color on him, actually, and while he didn’t exactly have a feminine figure, he wasn’t exactly the most masculine person either. The dress fit the curves of his body very nicely. “It looks good on you. I like the color, too.”

Cloud’s jaw dropped, and he stared at Zack in shock. “You… you don’t…”

“Don’t what?” Zack tilted his head curiously, sending another smile at Cloud. “Think it’s weird? Not really. I’ve definitely seen weirder. I’m half-convinced that Genesis does the same thing anyway. Don’t,” Zack added hastily, “tell him I said that. He doesn’t need another reason to set me on fire. Anyway, it’s really no one else’s business anyway.” He shrugged. “It does look good on you.”

Cloud was still staring at him, that same stunned fragility about him, as though he was expecting it to be a joke. Zack’s gaze softened and he moved closer, reaching out and tugging gently on one of Cloud’s bangs. “Gaia to Cloud,” he teased. “You in there?”

Sucking in a breath, Cloud suddenly reached out and flung his arms around Zack. The SOLDIER caught him, looking down with surprise.

“Cloud? You okay?”

With another shuddering breath, Cloud nodded. He remained where he was for another few moments then reluctantly pulled away, wiping at his face. “I- Yeah. I-I’m okay. I just… I didn’t expect…”

“What? Didn’t expect me to be fine with it? Why wouldn’t I be?”

Cloud shrugged uncomfortably, hand gripping his opposite arm unconsciously. “A lot of people aren’t. If anyone in the infantry found out…” He winced. “It would be… unpleasant.” He scoffed bitterly, “Back in Nibelheim, I’d be lynched for it.”

Zack winced as well. Small towns were not known for their progressiveness. He reached out and ruffled Cloud’s hair. “Well I think you look hot as hell.” He winked, “Who cares what the haters think, right? As long as you enjoy it, it’s none of their business.” With that pronouncement, and a sagely nod to himself, he plopped back on the bed, jostling the boxes as he did so. He glanced over them curiously. “What’re these?”

Cloud flushed, though he was still beaming happily from Zack’s words and acceptance. “Ah… a couple more dresses, some make-up. Y’know. Stuff.”

Zack sent him another grin. “The whole nine yards?”

“Pretty much,” Cloud admitted, practically glowing from unexpected happiness.

“Can I see them?” Zack asked eagerly, sitting up and folding his legs on the bed.

A blush overtook Cloud’s face and he ducked his head. “You actually want to see them?” He peeked at Zack timidly from beneath his bangs.

“Absolutely,” Zack’s grin was wide and warm. “I wanna see if all look as good on you as that one does.”

Cloud’s cheeks were painted red, but he nodded slightly. “If you really wanna see them…” He moved over to the bed, picking three of the boxes up. A small one and a middle-sized one were left. Zack raised an inquisitive brow and Cloud flashed him a quick smile. “The small one is make-up, which I’m not going to go through the effort of putting on right now, and shoes, which I’m not going to wear yet.”

“Ah,” Zack nodded in understanding. He waited until Cloud slipped into the bathroom, then peeked into the shoebox. He eyed the sandals within with appreciation. They were pretty. Gold, with crisscrossing straps reaching up to and around the ankle.

He closed the box and leaned back, waiting for Cloud to come back out. Staring at the ceiling, he allowed himself a wry smile. Cloud was absolutely adorable, and finding out he liked this wasn’t actually as surprising as he’d thought. There’d been hints already, in their many excursions out. Eyes lingering on a pretty dress as they passed the storefront, looking at a lingerie advertisement with appreciation, watching women trying on make-up at boutiques they passed, trying on various high-heels as a “joke”. Little things, subtle things, but they were still there.

He looked down as the bathroom door opened, and inhaled sharply as Cloud stepped out.

He was wearing a sky blue dress with long sleeves, except that the sleeves and low curved collar were lace with flower designs. The rest of the dress had a silky texture, though only the torso was covered in lace. The front reached about halfway down his thighs, while the back reached to his knees, and the bottom was ruffled slightly. He was flushed, looking embarrassed and nervous, though there was an excited spark in his eyes. His hands were curled together, fidgeting slightly, and he had one leg folded behind the other.

In other words, he looked absolutely adorable and breathtaking. Zack found a lump in his throat, and swallowed harshly to try to get rid of it. Cloud bit his lip nervously at his silence.

“Zack?”

Zack took a deep breath, trying to focus his scattered thoughts. At was fine, he would play it cool and-

“You look gorgeous.”

Shit. So much for playing it cool. Though there was something to be said about blunt honesty, Zack mused as Cloud lit up at the compliment.

“You really think so?” Cloud asked, smoothing the front of his dress shyly.

“You have no idea,” was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Shit, was all he could think as Cloud looked at him with surprise and curiosity.

The blond tilted his head, “What do you mean?”

“Ah,” Zack felt his face heat up with embarrassment and mild panic. “I- Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Zack?” Cloud moved forward, sitting down next to him. “What’s wrong?”

He opened and closed his mouth for a moment, trying to gather his courage. Then he glanced over and saw Cloud’s blue eyes watching him worriedly, and he was lost.

“Doyouwanttogoonadatewithme?” he rushed out, then clamped his mouth shut nervously.

Cloud stared at him for a moment, trying to puzzle out what he’d said, then his eyes widened as he realized what Zack was asking. His mouth dropped in shock. “Wh-What?” he stammered out. “You want to- Me?!”

“Yeah you,” Zack’s cheeks were heated as he looked over at the gaping blond. “I’ve been trying to ask you forever, but…” He rubbed the back of neck. “I was worried you’d say no, so…” He shrugged, looking away.

Cloud spluttered in shock. “But- You- I’m- Why?”

“What do you mean why?” Zack frowned. “You’re awesome! You’re sweet but kickass, you laugh at my jokes and go along with my crazy ideas, but you also call me out on my shit which is awesome, plus you’re absolutely adorable and hot and- and- and-” Zack’s cheeks turned red. “And I’m gushing again. Sorry, but I mean…” He faltered helplessly with a small shrug.

Cloud was staring at him in abject shock. “You… you really mean it. You actually want…” His lips parted breathlessly, before a smile broke out across his face. “You actually want to go out with me.”

“Of course I do,” Zack pouted, crossing his arms.

The blond ducked his head with a shy smile, peeking up at Zack. “So…” He played with edge of the dress. “You… want to go get dinner?”

A bright grin broke out across Zack’s face. “Hey,” he protested cheerfully, “I thought I was asking you out!”

Cloud laughed, “Well, you can pick the restaurant then.”

“Deal,” Zack grin turned wicked, and he reached out to tug on the end of Cloud’s dress. “You gonna wear this?”

The blond’s eyes widened. “You… think I should?”

He shrugged, “It’s up to you.” He winked at Cloud. “I wouldn’t complain if you wanted to. But if you’d rather go out in like, pants and a button up or something, that’s cool too.”

Cloud’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and a smirk crossed his face. He had that expression that always preceded a fun and mischievous idea. Zack perked up in interest. “You know what? I’ll wear this… but you have to wear your Second Class uniform.”

“Deal!” Zack grinned brightly, catching Cloud’s hand and bringing it up to kiss the back. The blond flushed, but his smile didn’t disappear.

“You get changed, and I’ll go get make-up on.” He raised a teasing brow, “Any suggestions?”

The brunette’s breath caught, and he examined Cloud’s face thoughtfully. “Hmm…” He brushed his thumb over the skin next to Cloud’s eye. “Maybe…” He leaned in and kissed Cloud’s cheek. “Gold would look good on you.”

A blush had overtaken Cloud’s face, but he nodded in agreement. “Good suggestion.” Standing up, he grabbed the make-up box and hurried to the bathroom. Zack watched him go with warm amusement.

Then he leapt up and moved to his closet to get his uniform. He finally had a date with Cloud, he was gonna look amazing.

. . . . .

This didn’t turn out at all like I was planning. Oh well. This didn’t focus much on either make-up or uniform, but… Meh. Cloud looks amazing in a dress and Zack is very happy to finally get a date from him.

(I’ll do a continuation of the date itself another time.)

I know it doesn’t exactly follow the prompts, but… I hope you like it anyway?

Wings, out~!

Like A Secret In Your Throat

Pairing: none

Genre: Fluff

Summary: Request fic for @bipolardonnie. “could you do a oneshot where drummer!reader accidentally outs herself as liking girls in an interview and the band help her and defend her with the media backlash?”

“So, I’m loving the new look,” the interviewer commented, eyeing the marching band-esque uniforms you and your band had donned to promote your new album, The Black Parade.

“Thank you,” Gerard smiled, running a hand through his newly blonde hair. “I knew some of the fans were going to complain when they saw it, because they really loved the aesthetic of our last album. But, to inaugurate this new era for the band, we wanted to do something different.”

“I guess time will tell if it’s a good decision, or not,” Mikey admitted.

“Some of us have made questionable fashion decisions in the past,” Ray chuckled.

“Oh, like when you straightened your hair?” Frank teased.

“Ray, your hair was never meant to be any straighter than I am,” you laughed.

The interviewer’s eyes went wide, and your laughter died on your lips when you realized what it was you just said.

“Y/N…..did you just imply that you are not straight?” the interviewer asked, shoving their microphone in your face.

Fuck, you thought. How could you have been so stupid as to let something like that slip out?! Your bandmates all already knew that you liked girls, but you hadn’t officially come out in a press conference, or anything like that, yet. You didn’t want the drama that would come with the inevitable scandal.

But, now it was too late. You couldn’t think of a single way to convince the reporter that they’d just misinterpreted what you said. You had no choice but to come out on national television.

“I’ve……had relationships with women in the past,” you confessed. That was vague. It almost made it sound like you didn’t want to date more girls in the future.

Why should I pretend like that’s the case, though? you frowned. I’m not ashamed of my sexual orientation. I shouldn’t have to lie.

You never had outright lied about your sexuality, in any interview. It just hadn’t come up. And you didn’t want to be the one to broach the subject first. You could already imagine homophobic parents telling their kids they weren’t allowed to listen to MCR anymore. You could see angry, Bible-wielding protesters picketing your next gig. Shit, what if your dumb confession made your band’s new album flop?

The live studio audience had gasped when you dropped your bombshell, and now you could hear them whispering to each other. The spotlights suddenly seemed so bright. The interviewer was looking at you like she wanted you to say something else, but you didn’t know what to say. You wanted to just run backstage to the green room and never come back.

“So what if Y/N dates girls?” Frank said suddenly, grabbing the mic from the reporter. “I just want to say that nobody in My Chemical Romance gives a shit. Y/N is a kickass drummer, and we’re her friends, no matter who she dates.”

“If any of our fans have a problem with Y/N’s orientation,” Gerard added, taking the mic from Frank, “we don’t want them at our shows, either. We’ve always been against any kind of bigotry. I think anyone who’s a fan of our band already knows that.”

“Is that why you and Frank kissed onstage during your last tour, Gerard?” the interviewer asked. “Is Y/N the only LGBT member of the band?”

You rolled your eyes at this. The so-called “Frerard” shippers you kept seeing in the forums on MCR’s website were ridiculous.

“Hey, Y/N,” Mikey joked softly, poking you in the arm. “Now that you’ve come out and stuff, maybe the fangirls will stop writing fanfiction about you and Gerard.”

“They’re still writing porn about me and Gerard, even though everyone knows I date girls, too,” Frank laughed.

“That’s true,” you grinned. Your bandmates were keeping your mood up, despite the shocking revelation you’d just made.

“Let’s talk more about your lesbianism, Y/N,” the interviewer insisted, wresting her mic back from Gerard. “How many women have you dated? Are you seeing someone now?”

“She’s not,” Ray answered for you. “So, hey, fans of ours who are girls! And also like girls! If you’ve got a crush on our drummer, here’s your chance!”

You blushed, burying your face in your hands.

“Hey, you’re a rock star now, Y/N,” Gerard laughed. “Think of how many girls you could get!”

“As if we’re the kind of band who got famous just to get girls,” you snorted.

“Yeah, we’re really not in this for fame, or women, or money, or anything like that,” Frank said seriously. “It’s about the music. Like, for real, what we came onto your TV show to talk about tonight is our new album, not who Y/N dates.”

“Our album is called The Black Parade,” Mikey reminded. “It’s going to be released on October 23, 2006. I hope you go out and buy a copy!”

“You must know,” the interviewer accused, “that people are going to wonder if Y/N chose now to come out, intentionally, to give your band publicity.”

“As if I would ever say it like that on purpose!” you snapped. “The last thing I want is to take attention away from the wonderful music my band and I spent months composing together!”

Truthfully, you were terrified of what people were going to say about you now that they knew the truth. You were cursing yourself for your stupid slip of the tongue.

“Y/N isn’t manipulative like that,” Ray agreed. “She would never try to attract negative press.”

“If people say negative things about our band because of Y/N’s sexuality, I don’t want them listening to this new record anyway,” Gerard insisted. “I don’t think this is going to hurt our sales, anyway, because our fans are great kids, who are always very tolerant and respectful of one another.”

“Even if it did hurt our sales, I don’t care,” Frank commented. “I’m not in a band because I want to sell records. I’m in a band because I love playing guitar with my best friends.”

“Some of the drum parts Y/N composed for our new songs are really great,” Mikey complimented. “They go with the guitar riffs Frank and Ray came up with, and my bass playing, really well.”

“You…..you can’t just go back to talking about your album as if Y/N didn’t just drop a total bombshell,” the interviewer protested.

“Yeah, we can,” Frank smirked, stealing the mic again. “So we’ve got this song called ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’…..”

“Y/N, do you identify as a lesbian? Or are you bisexual? Pansexual, perhaps?” the interviewer tried to steer the conversation back.

“……Yeah, ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ is a great song,” Gerard went on, ignoring the interviewer completely. “I’m really excited for the single to be released, because….”

“Y/N can’t just refuse to answer my questions!” the interviewer cried, growing frustrated.

“Actually, she can if she wants to,” Mikey said calmly. “The world doesn’t have the ‘right to know’ everything about her sex life, ok?”

“It’s ok, Mikey,” you said, summoning your nerve as you took the mic back. “I’ve thought about it, and…..I don’t want to hide who I am anymore. I want to be proud of it. I want every girl out there, who loves My Chemical Romance, and loves other girls, to know that nothing is wrong with her, because I’m just like her. And I’m not scared to say so.”

Representation mattered, you realized. There weren’t a lot of openly gay musicians in the scene right now. Maybe you needed to be the first.

“You’re being really brave, Y/N,” Ray said softly, too quiet for the camera crew or the audience to hear.

“Thanks, Ray,” you whispered back. You were grateful that he, and all of your bandmates, were being so supportive of you. If they hadn’t had your back, you weren’t sure you’d have had the nerve to say what you said next:

“My name is Y/N! I’m the drummer of My Chemical Romance, and I’m here, and I’m queer, and I ain’t going anywhere!”

The studio audience clapped for you, and so did the four men sitting by your side. Whatever Fox News, or whoever, had to say about this, you knew they would always stick by you. And it was the opinions of these friends, who you’d spent four years now touring the country with, that mattered. Not anybody else’s.

Supernatural: College

Okay, so an anon requested I write a Sastiel College AU fanfiction with no other context. Of course, I figured oh she wants to see Sam and Cas in a cute relationship, probably being roommates or being in the same classes and having tickle fights and whatnot. Alright, fine, I think it’s cute too so I agree.

But then I started thinking.... there was no specific requirement for me and this fic from said anon. I have the artistic liberty to take this information and write with it what I will. And so given this blank canvas of a college au, I applied it to my own current college experience. 

I need to get my feelings out somehow and making Castiel into myself seemed like a wonderful way to do it. I’m a freshman in college, I just finished my first semester and I’m in my second. I hate it. I have no friends. I am a depressed piece of shit. So now that you have this backstory, keep in mind that everything you read Castiel going through is almost exactly what I am going through. 

There is no cutesy tickle fights, no teasing, nothing like that. It’s just Castiel and his thoughts and experiences. 

College was..... not all it was cracked up to be. Castiel went through high school hearing these grandiose pictures painted of how great college was and how it'll be so amazing to finally leave high school and 'discover who you are.' But to this one student, he never saw it as that great. He applied to college since that's what you do in high school, always keeping his grades up and pretty well above average for the most part. He had friends, was involved in clubs and other activities. He loved high school, and he knew he was going to a college none of his friends were going to. He'd be leaving them, leaving his family, too. It was going to be a change he wasn't sure he was ready for. But with some family help moving into his new dorm, he pushed open the ajar door and saw another mother and father with their son, who was his new roommate. "Hey," the young man smiled, "Are you Castiel?" The young man nodded, "Yes, hi. You're Sam, then." Sam nodded and smiled wide, going to shake Castiel's hand, but he saw him holding a big box. He laughed and said, "Wehe'll shake hands after you've settled in." Castiel nodded, smiling pleasantly at Sam. His parents and even Sam and his family helped Cas set up himself in the small dorm room. He saw his parents making small talk with Sam's, and everyone seemed like pleasant people. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. After a long day's work of orientation and saying goodbye to families, all the freshman students settled into their new lives as residents of a college campus. "Whew," Sam flopped down onto his bed as he and Castiel were now alone, "Whahat a day, huh?" Castiel nodded, "Yes." "Where did you say you were from?" "I didn't, but I'm from Massachusetts. You?" "Kansas," Sam smiled. He sure did seem to do that a lot. "Wow, so you really are far from home, then. How'd you decide on this school?" "They have a great sports program. I play volleyball," Sam said. "Oh," Castiel nodded, "Yes, you have the, uh... build for it." Sam laughed, "Thahahahanks. What about you?" "I'm here because I got a decent scholarship and I found the campus appealing." "Yeah, I can see why you chose it. Those are good reasons. You're not into sports?" Castiel shook his head, "Not in the least bit." "Ah, thahat's okay. What's your major again?" "English." "Oh cool, I'm in the Law school here." Castiel nodded, "Oh, very nice," he was never good at small talk, so this whole conversation was practically causing him physical pain. And so the two went through the process of discussing what classes they were taking and other 'fun facts' about the other. After a few days of freshman orientation, which proceeded by at the painstaking pace of molasses, the classes began. The first day was always an introduction, going over the syllabus and the necessary books needed for each class. For Castiel, most of his classes were English-based obviously so he had a large number of novels and plays to purchase. Fun for any broke college student. And so far, Castiel hadn't really found his group yet. During orientation, he would see people exchanging numbers and they started to go out to eat together and do other activities with one another. Maybe it was because Castiel never extended himself out to people, or some other unlikeable factor about himself, but he simply had not clicked. He hoped with the start of classes that he would make a friend. No such luck after the first day. How odd this feeling was. He was a likable person, he knew he had to be. Otherwise, he wouldn't still have good friends from grade school that he remained friends with throughout high school, even when they went to separate ones. He wouldn't have graduated his high school with a tremendous set of friends and acquaintances. College was different. He would come to learn that. What probably did not help his friendless situation was his reluctance to participate in any adventures his dorm building went on with his Residential Assistant. They offered trips to local museums, and offered food in the lounges most nights, obviously all laying in place so residents could get to know their neighbors. Castiel hadn't gone to one. Sam walked into the dorm room on a night the lounge was hosting a dorm building Q&A Taco Night and he grabbed his keys and ID card, "Hey, Castiel. Are you going to the meeting?" Castiel looked over from his bed and he shook his head, "I don't think so." "Oh," Sam nodded, "Alright. Me and a few other guys are heading down there. Find me if you change your mind, okay?" he smiled kindly and left again. When the door shut behind Sam, Castiel let out a sigh. Dammit. If he had just gotten off his suddenly shy ass and said yes to Sam, he could've gotten the in he needed. As the night drew on, the light from outside dimmed and Castiel remained on his laptop. He watched videos, went on his blogs, and wrote for chat rooms, all things he normally did on the Internet. But midway through a YouTube tutorial video, he felt a pain in his chest. Throughout all the previous nights, he had been checking his Snapchat and Instagram. And he had been witnessing all of his friends scattered in different schools and states all at parties or hanging with a group of friends and seemingly having an amazing time; just like college was supposed to be! Right? Tears welled up in Castiel's eyes and he couldn't help it. He just felt so goddamn lonely. It was a pit in his stomach that surged and made him feel sick. He cried, laying down in his bed and holding a tissue to his face. How could everyone else he knew have made friends in an instant? It had barely been a week! How the fuck did everyone do it and master it so well!? Even the roommate hope of a friend had started to fleet by him. Sam was working on tryouts for the volleyball team and had already formed bonds with other players. He cried throughout the night in his quiet dorm room, hearing the occasional chatter from out in the hallways or outside of the building itself. Sam had not returned, even when Castiel had stopped crying. The freshman simply got dressed for bed and a pretty embarrassing time of night and he pulled the covers up over him and fell into a greatly appreciated sleep, where he wouldn't feel judged or pressured for being alone in his own dreaming mind. The first Friday night of the college year finally arrived. New friends went to parties or galas being held by the college, or went elsewhere to have their night of fun. Castiel watched Sam get dressed up, not speaking a word to him, and then the other man left the dorm room to probably have a kickass fun night. Castiel remained in a message group on his laptop with his friends from middle school, each exchanging their experiences so far, classes they hate, friends they've made, etc. It comforted him to hear that one other friend wasn't having such luck in college in terms of making friends yet either. However, he would check her Snapchat story and see her taking pictures with other students. Surely they were considered friends. Meanwhile Castiel had barely even opened his mouth to speak to anyone on his campus at all. It was getting deafening when you couldn't even hear your own voice anymore because you had no one to talk to. There was no one else to talk to or converse with. No one you could speak your mind to and tell them exactly what you were feeling and why you were getting depressed and why couldn't anyone talk to me enough to ask me to lunch with them and why I can't meet people and make friends!? And from there it would spiral, and Castiel knew it was. He did his homework almost nightly, whenever he had it. It was all he had to keep him occupied, if you could call it that. A godsend arrived when the club fair came around. This was his chance to really get involved and get friends. He put his email down for all sorts of clubs and took fliers with their meeting times. He then went back to his dorm, filled with purpose. He further organized which meetings he could make and other he prioritized over others since a lot were occurring on the same nights. So he went around throughout the week attending club intro meetings and seeing which ones he liked the most. He settled on continuing to attend a book club. He knew he could piece in some time to read on the side, having done his homework on time always and of course with all the quiet time he spent with himself in his nearly always empty dorm room. And as other clubs fell out of interest, the book club remained strong. He thought maybe he could finally find happiness in the small group of upper, middle, and lower classmen and women. Still.... time passed. He would read his book club book, attend class, take notes and tests and essays, return to his dorm, do homework, attend a book club meeting, and repeat the cycle. Holy shit, nothing was changing. What was he doing wrong!? Not one fucking time had he had the courage to turn to a classmate or person in the bookclub and say, 'Gee golly, well this class/book is really interesting. I would sure love to maybe get breakfast in the dining hall sometime so we can discuss the class/book.' Sure, no one was talking to him or looking like they wanted to be his friend. But when he really thought about it... was he helping the matter? He had lost the balls to start a conversation and ask to hang out. Granted, that had never been his strong suit, but how did he come out of such a large high school with so many friends. Something had to click or he would literally be going insane. The library that Castiel had gone to once or twice to print things out was quickly becoming his new friend. Either that or the gym were his two new favorite spots. At the library, he could surround himself with both silence and books, one of which he needed more of and another, well.... he was getting used to by now. At the gym, he enjoyed the treadmill and other muscle-building machines. It would take his mind off the building mountains of classwork he had fallen behind on. And it would then get him focused so he could stay up later and work harder for his grades. A cycle. That's all his life had become. And nothing broke the cycle. There were no Fridays or weekends where he could explore the town around his campus with friends. There were no free times where he would find himself at a party and drink and dance the night away. Snapchats were constantly filled with friends building new lives with new friends. He knew he shouldn't be watching them anymore if they upset him so much, but at the same time, he wanted to keep up. He wanted to see how close these strangers were getting with the people he knew for four years and more. The only small bits of relief he got was when he called his mother on the phone on occasional mornings. He would be calling daily if his mother could handle talking to him that frequently. But he would tell her everything that was going on, all the complaints he had and all the longings he possessed that willed him to want to return home. Home where everything was safe and familiar and friendly. His mother would update him on things going on in her life, and the third time he spoke to her in the beginning he had started to break down on the phone just at her babbling on about her experience at the grocery store in his hometown. Details. Minute factions of a much larger picture. Those insignificant stories suddenly filled him with such longing and such joy that he had to cry. And college went on. He waited for Thanksgiving break, driving home and never wanting to leave. And then Christmas break came. Oh what a joyous break that was. A whole month of staying home, eating good food, seeing friends and having laughs and sharing memories. He was back on top of the world and dreaded the day he had to move back in. It was cold and raining, a perfect foreboding of his life back on campus. Small talk with Sam upon their arrival, nothing more. How was break? Good. Yeah, it was great being home with family for a while but I'm so happy to be back. Yeah. Back into the cycle Castiel went. New classes, new faces, new experiences. Right? 

Brovaries: The True Danger Of The ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie

You know what I wonder about Wonder Woman ? When did the estrogenocide embark, and how come we got no advanced alarming? A pox! A pox on those cervixecutioners and their fallopian plan! My( male) God, save yourselves! Save your boys and your grandpas! Save the bizarre uncle who tells unwarranted floors. Save Dad’s collection of vintage Playboy s. The wives are starting! And not in the PornHub way! I insured Wonder Woman , a film about a superhero who is a woman( unlike a humanity ), and I am shook. I’d discovered the kerfuffle over the Alamo Drafthouse provide women-only screenings, and like many of you, I laughed it off. “Who cares? ” visualized I. “Just a few crazy dames putting on their lipstick and giving the foods soak while they run have their little hen party, watching a film about some kickass World War I soldiers and their gal buddy. Give ’em have their merriment before they come home. To whom? Daddy, that’s whom. Or who. Whichever is manlier.”

But let me tell you this, dear reader — and by “dear, ” I don’t aim “my dear, ” like a noblewoman, because men, right now I want you to stop speak this out loud to your little girl. Move have her fix us a neat glass of Scotch. You read this alone. Stop moving your cheeks so she doesn’t receive. Or move to a room she isn’t allowed in, like your tannery/ bodybuilding studio. Good. Now that we’re alone, I can warn you: Wonder Woman isn’t about kickass The first world war soldiers and their gal buddy. It’s about a kickass gal and her World War I cronies. The souls … they’re … secondary attributes!

At my screening, there was an actual woman garmented as Wonder Woman in the crowd. Whole groups of females sat together, unchaperoned and gobbling nutrient that seems to not even be low-fat, as though they weren’t concerned with retain their figures. There were cheers when Wonder Woman leapt into the combat and fought men. Penis-having souls! And she won! Pretty easily!

I get story. I understand the principles of imagination and whimsy. I get that maidens like to imagine themselves as a princess or a scullery girl. But those legends all have princes or prosperous tycoons who help a critical storytelling capacity: They give the woman know what to do and when she needs to do it. And those men too save the working day from the rogue so the status of women is also possible safe and then furnish her vulva to the man in a show of respect and appreciation. Do you know how often of that happened in Wonder Woman ? I reckon none. I can’t remember because I blacked out for a spell, and when I woke up I was sharing a coffee with a woman and listening to her opinion on something. And I discovered it interesting!

All the old-time staples of Wonder Woman are present in the film, but not one of them is even remotely justified. I can only usurp the editor was a terminated moron. Hopefully, the director’s piece excuses even a fraction of the otherwise-gaping patch faults. Like, how is there an island of merely women, yet it’s contained within statues and stone houses and there are numerous weapons? Who made all that trash? And Wonder Woman has a supernatural lasso that obligates parties to tell the truth, yet the first time we see it, the status of women is utilizing it. How? You can’t precisely guess at shit like this! C’mon, being!

So here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I was really into the Hulk. I had a Hulk Halloween costume and I wanted to be the Hulk. I guessed how great it would be to be so super strong and smash events. Now dream the little girls go to Wonder Woman , and having that same gumption of awe that I experienced about the Hulk. Imagine them choosing they want to be strong, independent heroes. Dream them wanting to take the lead and change “the worlds”. For the better! I represent … what?

Imagine those female-only Wonder Woman screenings. Dream a chamber full of maidens being awed by this super strong, super gallant reference — who has a uterus, I’m willing to bet — and them thinking that this sort of anti-man discrimination is OK. Perhaps they can see other movies without beings. Perhaps they are unable have women-only gyms and spas. Perhaps they’ll open up schools that merely daughters can accompany! Maybe they’ll have some kind of girl-only frats! And groups where daughters can read helpful abilities funded by the sale of luscious goddamn cookies! Is that the world you want to live in? Perhaps lesbians will be suspended having copulation with husbands! THEN WHAT ??

Listen, I affection the dames as much as any man who hopes to one day rain with a maid and run a nipple like the dial on an old-timey television receiver. I get it. But I likewise get that it’s superHEro , not superSHEro. They spell just the way it is for a reason. It’s because they’re followers. And they know what they’re doing.

Women are great at all kinds of things — they can scratch your cervix really well, and they’re super better at folding those fitted sheets. But aren’t guys the true heroes of “the worlds”? Without followers, would we have life-changing inventions like syringes, life rafts, the electrical refrigerator, computer software, algorithms, Kevlar, or residential solar power? I don’t know how to check, but I’m presupposing no.

I know a panic now. A fear that all the chicks and sugars and babes of “the worlds” are going to be all “Please stop announcing me those names.” But it’s deeper than that, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll say to you my dread secret: I fear I’m going to respect their bids. Because I, dear male reader, speculated Wonder Woman was pretty awesome. I find my own ovaries, ever so faintly, flutter during the action situations. I felt like it was just a good movie instead of a good lady movie.

So protest on, man-friends. Do it for the Gipper, if you for some reason know me as the Gipper. Because I am lost to you now. I have to trade in my testicles for a smaller, less robust duet that come with a parallel clutch. I liked Wonder Woman . I felt OK with the girl kinfolk going to see it. I’m a lost cause. But you don’t “ve got to be”. You can hold fast to your faith that maidens don’t deserve their own happenings, and that servicemen can, should, and need to be at the forefront of every aspect of a woman’s life. You can hold on to that belief.

Are you doing that? Are you supporting on?

The post Brovaries: The True Danger Of The ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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Brovaries: The True Danger Of The ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie

You know what I wonder about Wonder Woman ? When did the estrogenocide embark, and how come we got no advanced alarming? A pox! A pox on those cervixecutioners and their fallopian plan! My( male) God, save yourselves! Save your boys and your grandpas! Save the bizarre uncle who tells unwarranted floors. Save Dad’s collection of vintage Playboy s. The wives are starting! And not in the PornHub way! I insured Wonder Woman , a film about a superhero who is a woman( unlike a humanity ), and I am shook. I’d discovered the kerfuffle over the Alamo Drafthouse provide women-only screenings, and like many of you, I laughed it off. “Who cares? ” visualized I. “Just a few crazy dames putting on their lipstick and giving the foods soak while they run have their little hen party, watching a film about some kickass World War I soldiers and their gal buddy. Give ’em have their merriment before they come home. To whom? Daddy, that’s whom. Or who. Whichever is manlier.”

But let me tell you this, dear reader — and by “dear, ” I don’t aim “my dear, ” like a noblewoman, because men, right now I want you to stop speak this out loud to your little girl. Move have her fix us a neat glass of Scotch. You read this alone. Stop moving your cheeks so she doesn’t receive. Or move to a room she isn’t allowed in, like your tannery/ bodybuilding studio. Good. Now that we’re alone, I can warn you: Wonder Woman isn’t about kickass The first world war soldiers and their gal buddy. It’s about a kickass gal and her World War I cronies. The souls … they’re … secondary attributes!

At my screening, there was an actual woman garmented as Wonder Woman in the crowd. Whole groups of females sat together, unchaperoned and gobbling nutrient that seems to not even be low-fat, as though they weren’t concerned with retain their figures. There were cheers when Wonder Woman leapt into the combat and fought men. Penis-having souls! And she won! Pretty easily!

I get story. I understand the principles of imagination and whimsy. I get that maidens like to imagine themselves as a princess or a scullery girl. But those legends all have princes or prosperous tycoons who help a critical storytelling capacity: They give the woman know what to do and when she needs to do it. And those men too save the working day from the rogue so the status of women is also possible safe and then furnish her vulva to the man in a show of respect and appreciation. Do you know how often of that happened in Wonder Woman ? I reckon none. I can’t remember because I blacked out for a spell, and when I woke up I was sharing a coffee with a woman and listening to her opinion on something. And I discovered it interesting!

All the old-time staples of Wonder Woman are present in the film, but not one of them is even remotely justified. I can only usurp the editor was a terminated moron. Hopefully, the director’s piece excuses even a fraction of the otherwise-gaping patch faults. Like, how is there an island of merely women, yet it’s contained within statues and stone houses and there are numerous weapons? Who made all that trash? And Wonder Woman has a supernatural lasso that obligates parties to tell the truth, yet the first time we see it, the status of women is utilizing it. How? You can’t precisely guess at shit like this! C’mon, being!

So here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I was really into the Hulk. I had a Hulk Halloween costume and I wanted to be the Hulk. I guessed how great it would be to be so super strong and smash events. Now dream the little girls go to Wonder Woman , and having that same gumption of awe that I experienced about the Hulk. Imagine them choosing they want to be strong, independent heroes. Dream them wanting to take the lead and change “the worlds”. For the better! I represent … what?

Imagine those female-only Wonder Woman screenings. Dream a chamber full of maidens being awed by this super strong, super gallant reference — who has a uterus, I’m willing to bet — and them thinking that this sort of anti-man discrimination is OK. Perhaps they can see other movies without beings. Perhaps they are unable have women-only gyms and spas. Perhaps they’ll open up schools that merely daughters can accompany! Maybe they’ll have some kind of girl-only frats! And groups where daughters can read helpful abilities funded by the sale of luscious goddamn cookies! Is that the world you want to live in? Perhaps lesbians will be suspended having copulation with husbands! THEN WHAT ??

Listen, I affection the dames as much as any man who hopes to one day rain with a maid and run a nipple like the dial on an old-timey television receiver. I get it. But I likewise get that it’s superHEro , not superSHEro. They spell just the way it is for a reason. It’s because they’re followers. And they know what they’re doing.

Women are great at all kinds of things — they can scratch your cervix really well, and they’re super better at folding those fitted sheets. But aren’t guys the true heroes of “the worlds”? Without followers, would we have life-changing inventions like syringes, life rafts, the electrical refrigerator, computer software, algorithms, Kevlar, or residential solar power? I don’t know how to check, but I’m presupposing no.

I know a panic now. A fear that all the chicks and sugars and babes of “the worlds” are going to be all “Please stop announcing me those names.” But it’s deeper than that, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll say to you my dread secret: I fear I’m going to respect their bids. Because I, dear male reader, speculated Wonder Woman was pretty awesome. I find my own ovaries, ever so faintly, flutter during the action situations. I felt like it was just a good movie instead of a good lady movie.

So protest on, man-friends. Do it for the Gipper, if you for some reason know me as the Gipper. Because I am lost to you now. I have to trade in my testicles for a smaller, less robust duet that come with a parallel clutch. I liked Wonder Woman . I felt OK with the girl kinfolk going to see it. I’m a lost cause. But you don’t “ve got to be”. You can hold fast to your faith that maidens don’t deserve their own happenings, and that servicemen can, should, and need to be at the forefront of every aspect of a woman’s life. You can hold on to that belief.

Are you doing that? Are you supporting on?

The post Brovaries: The True Danger Of The ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2sbOzM2 via IFTTT

Brovaries: The True Danger Of The ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie

You know what I wonder about Wonder Woman ? When did the estrogenocide embark, and how come we got no advanced alarming? A pox! A pox on those cervixecutioners and their fallopian plan! My( male) God, save yourselves! Save your boys and your grandpas! Save the bizarre uncle who tells unwarranted floors. Save Dad’s collection of vintage Playboy s. The wives are starting! And not in the PornHub way! I insured Wonder Woman , a film about a superhero who is a woman( unlike a humanity ), and I am shook. I’d discovered the kerfuffle over the Alamo Drafthouse provide women-only screenings, and like many of you, I laughed it off. “Who cares? ” visualized I. “Just a few crazy dames putting on their lipstick and giving the foods soak while they run have their little hen party, watching a film about some kickass World War I soldiers and their gal buddy. Give ’em have their merriment before they come home. To whom? Daddy, that’s whom. Or who. Whichever is manlier.”

But let me tell you this, dear reader — and by “dear, ” I don’t aim “my dear, ” like a noblewoman, because men, right now I want you to stop speak this out loud to your little girl. Move have her fix us a neat glass of Scotch. You read this alone. Stop moving your cheeks so she doesn’t receive. Or move to a room she isn’t allowed in, like your tannery/ bodybuilding studio. Good. Now that we’re alone, I can warn you: Wonder Woman isn’t about kickass The first world war soldiers and their gal buddy. It’s about a kickass gal and her World War I cronies. The souls … they’re … secondary attributes!

At my screening, there was an actual woman garmented as Wonder Woman in the crowd. Whole groups of females sat together, unchaperoned and gobbling nutrient that seems to not even be low-fat, as though they weren’t concerned with retain their figures. There were cheers when Wonder Woman leapt into the combat and fought men. Penis-having souls! And she won! Pretty easily!

I get story. I understand the principles of imagination and whimsy. I get that maidens like to imagine themselves as a princess or a scullery girl. But those legends all have princes or prosperous tycoons who help a critical storytelling capacity: They give the woman know what to do and when she needs to do it. And those men too save the working day from the rogue so the status of women is also possible safe and then furnish her vulva to the man in a show of respect and appreciation. Do you know how often of that happened in Wonder Woman ? I reckon none. I can’t remember because I blacked out for a spell, and when I woke up I was sharing a coffee with a woman and listening to her opinion on something. And I discovered it interesting!

All the old-time staples of Wonder Woman are present in the film, but not one of them is even remotely justified. I can only usurp the editor was a terminated moron. Hopefully, the director’s piece excuses even a fraction of the otherwise-gaping patch faults. Like, how is there an island of merely women, yet it’s contained within statues and stone houses and there are numerous weapons? Who made all that trash? And Wonder Woman has a supernatural lasso that obligates parties to tell the truth, yet the first time we see it, the status of women is utilizing it. How? You can’t precisely guess at shit like this! C’mon, being!

So here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I was really into the Hulk. I had a Hulk Halloween costume and I wanted to be the Hulk. I guessed how great it would be to be so super strong and smash events. Now dream the little girls go to Wonder Woman , and having that same gumption of awe that I experienced about the Hulk. Imagine them choosing they want to be strong, independent heroes. Dream them wanting to take the lead and change “the worlds”. For the better! I represent … what?

Imagine those female-only Wonder Woman screenings. Dream a chamber full of maidens being awed by this super strong, super gallant reference — who has a uterus, I’m willing to bet — and them thinking that this sort of anti-man discrimination is OK. Perhaps they can see other movies without beings. Perhaps they are unable have women-only gyms and spas. Perhaps they’ll open up schools that merely daughters can accompany! Maybe they’ll have some kind of girl-only frats! And groups where daughters can read helpful abilities funded by the sale of luscious goddamn cookies! Is that the world you want to live in? Perhaps lesbians will be suspended having copulation with husbands! THEN WHAT ??

Listen, I affection the dames as much as any man who hopes to one day rain with a maid and run a nipple like the dial on an old-timey television receiver. I get it. But I likewise get that it’s superHEro , not superSHEro. They spell just the way it is for a reason. It’s because they’re followers. And they know what they’re doing.

Women are great at all kinds of things — they can scratch your cervix really well, and they’re super better at folding those fitted sheets. But aren’t guys the true heroes of “the worlds”? Without followers, would we have life-changing inventions like syringes, life rafts, the electrical refrigerator, computer software, algorithms, Kevlar, or residential solar power? I don’t know how to check, but I’m presupposing no.

I know a panic now. A fear that all the chicks and sugars and babes of “the worlds” are going to be all “Please stop announcing me those names.” But it’s deeper than that, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll say to you my dread secret: I fear I’m going to respect their bids. Because I, dear male reader, speculated Wonder Woman was pretty awesome. I find my own ovaries, ever so faintly, flutter during the action situations. I felt like it was just a good movie instead of a good lady movie.

So protest on, man-friends. Do it for the Gipper, if you for some reason know me as the Gipper. Because I am lost to you now. I have to trade in my testicles for a smaller, less robust duet that come with a parallel clutch. I liked Wonder Woman . I felt OK with the girl kinfolk going to see it. I’m a lost cause. But you don’t “ve got to be”. You can hold fast to your faith that maidens don’t deserve their own happenings, and that servicemen can, should, and need to be at the forefront of every aspect of a woman’s life. You can hold on to that belief.

Are you doing that? Are you supporting on?

The post Brovaries: The True Danger Of The ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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