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heyheshi · 4 years

Text

10 Years of One Direction

1.9k words

written and uploaded: July 23, 2020

🦋 - fluff

Please like and reblog! Also please don’t post my writings anywhere!

I wasn’t really planning on uploading this Thursday and this isn’t what I was supposed to write lmao, my mind is all over the place for the past few days due to 1D’s 10 year anniversary but oh well, here I am, waiting for Zayn to say something... anyway HAPPY 10 YEARS guys! More power to our family! Gosh I feel so old!

Masterlist

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"I'm almost done with the frosting babe!", you yelled from the kitchen hoping your boyfriend can hear you from his room upstairs. Slowly but surely, you wrote the delicate letters on the cake you made just for this occasion, "10 Years of One Direction".

"Come quick!", you heard footsteps descending from the stairs, "I'm done upstairs love, just gotta bring up the drinks.", Harry kissed your cheeks as he brushed passed you and opened the fridge to get some soda.

"Don't forget the wine. Is the laptop set up?", you asked finishing off the lettering with three exclamation marks.

"It's all done Y/N", your boyfriend laughs at you, "you're much more stressed than me! Loosen up lovie", he winked at you and run back upstairs. You just rolled your eyes and smiled.

You carefully placed the cake on the clean counter and cleaned up your mess. 30 minutes before midnight and you're not on your decent clothes yet!

Now, it's not exactly your fault why you're doing the cake this late. Your boyfriend thought that you made 2 cakes as that's what you both talked about but you decided to just make one and completely forgot to tell him.

You woke up nearing lunch - making a checklist on the things you need to get done for the day as preparation. Quickly eating breakfast (more like brunch) Harry made and started cleaning his room and did his laundry.

You often spend the night at his house so doing the domestic stuff for him is not much of a big deal to you. You basically live here anyway - but today needs extra work.

Around 2 p.m., you started to make the base of the cake as Harry leaves to go to the gym. You finished it, deciding to make the frosting later, and took a nap.

You woke up around 7 p.m., just in time to make dinner. On your way to the kitchen, you can hear H humming, something he does when he's alone. You smiled at the thought, cannot hold back yourself from kissing your boyfriend welcome so you run to where he is - quickly stopping in your track once you see him.

"Hi baby! The cake tastes so good, it'll be phenomenal with your frosting", you saw Harry eating the base of the cake smiling at you. You don't know how to react. Your mind working miles per minute.

"Har- i- babe! I only made one!"

"What do you mean you only made one, lovie?", Harry asked still eating the cake.

"I got tired earlier and just decided to make one...", face-palming yourself for your own carelessness.

"Oh shi- I, we can make another one! I'll make it! I'm so sor-",

"It's alright", you rounded the counter and kissed his messy lips, "I'll make another one, you can finish this one", you smiled reassuringly at him and squeezing his shoulder quick.

"I'll make our dinner, yea?", he offered. You can tell that he feels bad about eating the cake but it's really not a big deal at all. It's food, you're raised to share food and not spoil it. Plus you couldn't really be mad at Harry as he is your boyfriend and it's his special day in a few hours.

"Of course, I'll just start on a new batch.", you kissed Harry once again as you both started working in the kitchen.

Placing the mixture in the oven, the two of you eat the dinner around 8 p.m., Harry made your favorite Alfredo pasta knowing that he's trying to make it up to you.

Both of you being the slowest eater that you are, spent more than an hour eating - always teasing and flirting to each other like it's still the early stages in your relationship.

You told H to get his room ready and that you'll do the dishes instead and a little past 10 p.m., you're only starting on the mixture of the frosting.

Now, finally, you're ready to head upstairs and change into much cleaner clothes. Delicately holding the cake and walking slowly, you finally made it to Harry's room.

It looked like a huge fort, with his bed full of pillows and snacks and his laptop connected to the t.v. with their old music videos playing. You never pictured your boyfriend as the fairy lights type of guy but oh well this night, he is.

His room looks and feels really cozy, he even got balloons on his ceiling and the banner you made a few days ago is hung near his headboard.

You saw your boyfriend fixing the plastic table on the room where more snacks and utensils are placed. As if he can feel your presence, he looked back to the door where you are standing and quickly getting the cake off your hands to place on the table.

"Go get changed love, might as well binge on our old videos while waiting for them.", you only noticed that your boyfriend is already dressed for the occasion.

You forced him to wear their 1D merch with you. He is currently sporting a 1D pajama set, a Liam socks, and a Zayn beanie.

"You look cute babes!", you teased him and run to the bathroom to take a quick shower. You can hear him laughing at you and saying something sounding like "love her to death".

You changed to your own 1D pajama set matching with H and putting on a Narry socks and a Louis beanie and exiting his bathroom.

Harry is singing along to Perfect when you entered his room. You plopped into his bed and cuddled him.

"Ready?", you asked him giddily as you went to his laptop to open the zoom app.

"One kiss and I'm ready.", he winked at you and hugged you from behind. You shrugged him as a joke and pecked his nose.

After connecting his laptop on zoom, you both went back to bed and wait for the others. One by one, the other guys started joining the meeting.

"Harry! Y/N! Man, how's everything?", Liam greeted both of you with Bear on his lap. The three of you are in the middle of your conversation when another user joined in.

"Oi! What's up fuc- oh sh- sorry!", Louis raised his hand as he saw Bear on Liam's screen. El only laughed at her boyfriend and started talking with the rest of you.

Niall joined a bit later speaking without a sound. The rest of you reckoned that he's having a hard time setting up his zoom app until another user joined, and that's when Niall's audio started working.

"Ello lads! And ladies! And baby!", Niall cooed at Bear while Bear only stared at the web came, shyly.

"Sorry guys! Z is still in the bathroom! You know him!", the very pregnant Gigi joined the meeting as the others started talking to each other. You haven't met her in person so you're fangirling over her. Harry squeezed you to his side and laughed at you lightly.

"Hello hello!", at 11:59, Zayn finally appeared on the screen, Louis cheering for his best friend's appearance.

Everyone started talking, Bear being taken away to sleep after a few minutes.

"Was gonna egg your houses, except yours - Harry and Zayn. Liam and Niall, you keep dropping hints fooking hell!", Louis exclaimed while everyone laughed at him.

"I mea-"

"Shut up Liam!", Liam only laughed and put his hands in the air at Lou's antics.

"Harry, Y/N, you two looked like you really planned this!", Gigi complimented you both while you blushed whispering a thank you.

"She forced me to wear this! And look at her socks!", H raised your foot so the others can see it.

"Awe Y/N this is why I love youuu", Niall teased you. You haven't recovered from Gigi, now there's another teasing!

"Leave m’ girl alone! She's fangirling over Gigi!", you nudge Harry's ribs hard, feeling so embarrassed.

"Oh gosh, that's cute! I wanna meet you in person! I've already met El when we did this photoshoot, right El?", Gigi enthusiastically said as Zayn rubs his girlfriend's belly.

"Yes! We have to hang out! Ni and Li! Make sure your girlfriends join us!", Eleanor looks so happy and it makes you wonder how she does it in the midst of all the hate she receives. You and Harry aren't public yet and it makes you think of what will happen when you do.

"Harry keep it in your pants!", Lou suddenly shouted when he saw your boyfriend staring at you.

"M not doing an-"

"Baby fever man!", Niall laughed at Harry for being so obvious. You're so embarrassed at this point so Harry just flexed his room and the cake you made to remove turn the attention away from the both of you.

"Man, how do you think they'll react to the Infinity video?", Niall asked.

"Gonna be a blast, they don't know that Zayn had a part!", your boyfriend exclaimed beside you while everyone agrees. Within the next few hours, different websites will premier it and everyone can hardly wait.

Everyone stayed up until 5 a.m. catching up and reminiscing until they have to forcefully go to sleep for later. They can't wait to see each other for the interview with BBC where they'll be announcing their plans.

Each said goodbyes with a promise to arrive early to spend more time together before the taping starts at 12 p.m.

You and Harry both went to the bathroom to brush your teeth, Harry staring at you through the mirror as you did so.

"Mhve iwn wifh mo."

You rinsed your mouth with the water and replied, "what? I couldn't exactly understand you baby."

Harry finished rinsing his mouth, "I said move in with me... please."

"I- Harry re you sure? I mea-"

"Yes, I am! You're basically living here anyway! I want to take the next step with you.", he tried to woo you while hugging you in front of the mirror.

You nod and said yes. Turning around to kiss him.

"I love you", he said.

"Love you more", you kissed him once more, "Let's head to bed! You gotta be up nice and fresh for later," you tugged his hands towards his room and settled down.

“I always look good babyyy...”, and as much as you wanted to fight your boyfriend, he looks really cuddly now.

“Yes, you do, got a killer genes and all”, you run your hands through his hair smiling softly at him, as you felt your eyes became heavy.

“You do too! Our kids gonna have badass looks!"

“You definitely go a baby fever huh? Let's focus on your interview tomorrow first, yeah?”, you hugged him tight and tickled the back of his neck.

H only laughed, "Definitely got one, wanna be a father to our kids but I also can't wait for our fans to know what we're up to!", Harry placed his head on the crook of your neck.

“Good thing I want you to be the father of my future kids then... and tomorrow, they’re gonna love it! Gonna be thrilled about your announcement! Everyone’s been waiting for it! Happy 10 years again, so proud of you and everyone behind your band's success."

“Thank you lovie", Harry replied as he kissed your neck.

With that, you kissed his forehead goodnight and made sure your alarm is on to start the day.

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joon-ipersgirl · 4 years

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O4 - “serendipity”

genre: strangers to lovers!au, angst, fluff

pairing: jimin x reader (f)

summary: they say home is where the heart is. you’re convinced yours was taken the day your father died. until you meet jimin.

you believe in love but after watching men cycle through your mother’s arms, rocky relations with ex-boyfriends, and broken friendships, you no longer see it in your future. so much so, you never settle in one place long enough to create ties and call it home, choosing a job where you’re always on the go and on your own.

on a chance encounter on a flight from new york city to bali, indonesia, you meet. flustered by jimin’s flirty advances but understanding and good-natured tendencies, you start to fall. what starts off as a work-trip soon blossoms into a budding romance, but will jimin’s secret destroy the relationship before it’s had the chance to truly begin?

word count: 5.5k

warnings: cursing, lots of fluff lol

a/n: part 4 wow! this is my favorite part i’ve written so far. it was a little difficult to edit but we made it. i hope you guys enjoy it. it might be a while before the next part is posted because i have to finish writing and i’ve had major writer’s block lmao, but i’ll try and update my updates page as often as i can. thank you guys for your comments and likes. as always, they are very much so appreciated. thank you to vi for listening to me rant about my stories. enjoy everyone!

full masterlist // series masterlist // previous // next

Jimin looked drained by the time his conversation was over. His hair was out of place from the numerous times he had run his fingers through it out of frustration. Even his eyes looked like they had lost their usual glimmer, instead clouded with anger and exasperation. Though you hadn’t known him for long - in fact, you’re sure it had really only been 40 hours - you knew something was wrong from the downturn of his lips.

“Ready to go?” Jimin asked as he shoved his phone into his pocket.

“Is everything okay?” you asked as you stood and pocketed your own phone, your own happiness taking a backseat to check on him.

“Yeah, yeah.” He ran his fingers through his hair again and looked away from you. “Just some stuff back home.”

“Work stuff?” you suggested with a wry smile. He returned it.

“Yeah, work stuff,” he said with a laugh.

As you headed back in the direction of the hostel, your thoughts drifted back to Milo. Seeing his photo made your heart pound in your chest in the best and worst way possible. He still looked like your little brother, but you knew time had brought changes you weren’t around for. Though Adele said she had given him your number, it was quite possible that he wouldn’t want to speak to you, not after you left him at the worst possible time. It would be a miracle if you could fix what was broken. What you broke.

“Y/N?”

“Hmm?” You blinked up at Jimin.

“I asked if you were hungry?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Food sounds good right now,” you replied.

“Great, because I owe you a meal anyway,” he grinned.

“Oh, you mean for not finding me breakfast at 2:30 in the morning?” you teased. He rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.

“Yeah, that,” he mumbled and slipped his hand in your as he tugged you through the streets of Hong Kong.

Jimin maneuvered through the bustling crowd with ease, their chatter filling the spaces between you. The evening was still as hot as the daytime and your hair started clinging to the side of your face. You knew there was a fine sheen of sweat present on your skin; you could feel it. You passed by numerous food places, but none of them were up to Jimin’s standard. All the while, his hand never left yours. You were actually starting to like it even if you didn’t want to admit it to yourself.

“Yeah, this looks like the spot,” Jimin commented as you stopped abruptly in front of the establishment.

Mingsu’s was a quaint little restaurant nestled between some larger chains. Four sets of plastic tables and chairs sat on the sidewalk under a clear awning. The smell of food wafted from the open front door and your stomach grumbled. Yeah, this was definitely the spot.

“Your seat m’lady.” Jimin pulled out your chair and you sat carefully in it; these were the kind that would lay you on your ass and not think twice about it.

“Why thank you, kind Sir.” You bowed your head as a lady would curtsy. He sat across from you looking like he really could be the son of a mighty Lord during the Anglo-Saxon time period come home from the hunt, his hair sticking to his forehead.

It didn’t take long for your waitress, a middle-aged woman who looked to be just as hot as you were, to come and take your order. You listened in awe again as Jimin translated your orders. To think that it would be just your luck to be stranded in a foreign country with a man who also happened to speak the native tongue. God really looked out for you here and you couldn’t be more indebted.

“So how exactly did you learn to speak Cantonese?” you asked, swirling your straw between the ice cubes in your glass full of water, the condensation sliding down the sides. Your curiosity had finally gotten the best of you.

“My dad, actually. He taught me Korean and Cantonese simultaneously,” he replied, sipping on his Coke. “It wasn’t that fun in the moment, but I guess it comes in handy every now and then.”

“Like when you’re stranded in a foreign country because your plane got fucked up?”

“More like when you want to impress a pretty girl.” He grinned as he rested his chin on his palm while he stared at you. You blushed under his gaze.

“I can only imagine how flirty Mr. Park senior is,” you said with a laugh.

“Actually, he’s not. All the traits of me you find quite insufferable -” he added air quotes around the word “- are from my mom. Dad always thought we were ganging up on him when I was a kid, but Mom and I just have the same sense of humor,” he said with a shrug.

“Your mom and you are closer then I assume?” You couldn’t fathom being close with Adele, not after all of her shit, but it was nice to hear that someone enjoyed their mother’s company.

“As close as you can be when she lives 4,242 miles away,” he chuckled. You gasped. Before you could continue your conversation, your waitress returned with your roasted pork buns, stir-fried beef and flat noodles, steamed sticky rice, and an array of side dishes. Your mouth watered at the sight and you and Jimin wasted no time tucking in.

“Wait, I thought you were a vegetarian?” you asked after swallowing. Jimin glanced up at you with a mouth full roasted pork bun like a deer in headlights.

“Not really. Well, I guess that isn’t correct. I do my part to reduce my meat intake when I’m at home, but when I’m traveling, I like to indulge a little in the local delicacies of the world,” he answered.

“And that doesn’t fuck your stomach up?” You grimaced at the thought.

“Why? Are you worried about me?”

“No, I’m worried about that cramped bathroom we have back at the hostel.” Jimin laughed. “Especially if you decide you need to -”

“I promise you Y/N, I’ll be okay. Trust me.” you continued to eye him warily as you chewed some noodles. You hoped he was right.

“Does your mom really live 4,000 miles from you?” Jimin nodded but told you to hold that thought as he called your waitress over. Throughout their brief conversation, you thought you heard the word ‘sake’ being mentioned and you panicked slightly at the thought of drinking with Jimin. You didn’t know how you would act. Hell, you weren’t sure how he would act if drunk words were sober thoughts.

“To answer your question, yes. She does. She lives in the United Kingdom. Has done for the past 11 years. We text a lot and talk on the phone whenever the time difference permits.”

“Wow, your parents must love it there!” you exclaimed, picturing the London Eye, the double-decker red buses, and Buckingham Palace. London had been on my list of places to travel for a long time, but it had never worked out.

“Mom does, Dad didn’t. He’s back home now, home being Korea. No, they aren’t divorced or separated,” Jimin said, answering your unasked question after noticing your wide eyes. “They have a long-distance relationship and fly out to see one another every couple of weeks.”

“Sounds expensive,” you muttered.

Jimin graciously accepted the teapot and two porcelain white cups your waitress brought over, somehow finding space for them in between the various plates. He poured you a full cup and pushed it in front of you, waiting for me to accept his challenge as he raised his own glass, his usual mischievous glimmer back in his eyes. You carefully picked it up and watched the wispy tendrils of steam evaporate in the air.

“Sip, don’t toss it back,” Jimin guided you. “A toast! To friendship. And to love,” he tacked on playfully. You smiled as you clinked glasses and sipped the clear rice wine. Though it looked like water, it definitely didn’t taste like it.

“And it is expensive,” Jimin continued. “But they do it because they love each other. I guess you could call it an unconventional marriage. They realized they work a lot better apart than being in the same space. They tried to do it the traditional way, Dad convincing Mom to move back to Korea with him while she was pregnant with me and the two of them getting married. She did it for a while too until she just physically couldn’t. She loved my Dad, but she loved herself enough to be honest with him when things weren’t working and they figured it out together. Now, they’re extremely happy,” he ended with a laugh and finished the remainder of his drink.

“So you were born in Korea?”

“Yes.”

“But you live in the United States?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, I just -”

“Is it because I don’t speak in accented English?”

“No!” you cried out in embarrassment. “That’s not what I meant at all!” Jimin’s unrestrained laugh rang out and it was only then that you realized he was teasing. Again. You tossed back the rest of my drink, unsure of whether your face was burning because of the alcohol or him.

“Relax, Shutterfly. I’m not offended. Dad took me to the U.S. after Mom moved back to the U.K. I lost my accent when I got to high school because you know, teenagers suck and they like to bully you when you’re different.” You nodded in complete understanding. The harsh whispers of girls older than you and with the memories of them shoving you onto the ground because you were smaller and looked like you were easy to pick on trickled down from the deep recesses of your mind. “Enough about me though,” Jimin said as he refilled your cup, “How about you? What’s your family like?”

You paused as he waited for you to answer. You toyed with how much you would say to him, how much he really deserved to know. Jimin could afford to be open with you; his family sounded normal, cool even. Your family was a little bit more fucked up than his. you sighed and pushed your fingers through your hair.

“You know, the usual. Dad’s dead, mom’s a bitch, brother hates me,” you replied, your words blending into one another as you waved off the subject with a hand. Jimin stared at you evenly as he processed what you had just said. He cleared his throat before asking if you wanted to elaborate.

“Not really, but it’s okay,” you answered.

“No, Y/N,” he placed his hand on top of mine. “If you really don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.”

“Seriously, it’s cool. It’ll probably do me a lot of good to finally let it all out,” you said with a sigh. “My parents’ love story isn’t like yours. I mean, it kind of started off the same, but it definitely didn’t end that way.” Jimin nodded as he chewed in silence. Your own plate was now left untouched.

“So my dad named me. I was his little girl, his princess. He wasn’t from the best side of town and often got into it with a lot of the local gang members. He saw a lot of shitty stuff and so he left as soon as he turned 18. He landed in California and that’s where he met Adele. Her family had just moved there and she decided to be rebellious and hook up with my dad, acting out because she didn’t want to leave her old life behind. She ended up pregnant with me 2 years later at 18 after they ‘fell in love’,” you said, adding the air quotes around the phrase.

“Being the honorable man that he was, he decided to marry my mother and moved her to New York where he thought he could take better care of her. More job opportunities as and what not. Two years later, my brother came along and things were going pretty good, except when Adele started demanding more and more shit. Dad tried to provide, working longer hours, but it was never enough. Eventually, it was too much. He died of a heart attack when I was in high school. I was sixteen,” you finished. You didn’t look at Jimin as you drained your sake.

“Thank you for sharing that with me even though you didn’t really want to. I appreciate it,” he said solemnly. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“No, it’s fine. Only fair.”

“I don’t think fair is in this equation,” he chuckled and you laughed along with him. “Why do you think your brother hates you?” he asked after a beat.

“Because I left him,” you responded. “I left him alone and ran away from all my problems as soon as I turned 18.” Regret bubbled in your chest as you remembered purposefully ignoring the wave of text messages he sent you and carried on with your new life, focusing on your new man.

“I don’t think he hates you, Y/N.” you laughed bitterly. “Where’d you run away to?”

“California.”

“You sound a lot like your dad,” he replied with a smile. “Viva la revolución right?”

You groaned and covered your face in your hands. “Please don’t tell me you speak Spanish too.” you muttered a string of curses in the language before clamping your hands over your mouth in case he could hear and understand you.

“I don’t, but I see you do. You never told me you could speak Spanish,” he commented as he sipped more sake.

“You never asked,” you teased, your smile humorous as you stared at him from over your own cup.

Jimin’s cheeks had a pretty pink hue from the alcohol. In addition, the alcohol seemed to amplify the gleam in his eyes further as he teased you throughout your conversation. Under the low lighting of Mingsu’s, his skin glowed, a thin sheen of sweat present that you found oddly attractive on him. You closed your eyes gently as you willed the troublesome thoughts away. This was not the time nor the place for them to pop up, not with more than a few ounces of sake under your belt.

You finished the rest of your food, Jimin eating much more than you, and chatted more. You found out he was a freelance museum curator that was under contract for a few different small museums in New York City. A huge downplay on his part, but it explained how he knew so much about art and had all these artsy friends. He was well-educated with a Masters in Fine Arts, a concentration in Art History, and you felt intimidated as you’d barely managed to scrape together an Associates degree.

“Hey look!” Jimin turned his phone screen to you after it chimed. “Looks like we really are leaving tomorrow. Joy even got us seats next to each other like she promised,” he said.

“Of course she did,” you mumbled, remembering Joy’s enthusiasm over Jimin.

“What was that?” he asked as he cupped his ear with his hand.

“I said ‘Yay! Joy managed to get us to sit together. How fantastic. Now we can sit together again’,” you lied with fake zeal.

“Hmm. That’s what I thought you said. Though for a minute there I thought you were jealous of the attention I was getting from other women.” You could tell the nonchalance in his voice was just as fake as the enthusiasm in your own.

“Me? Jealous over you?” You snorted at the thought. Jimin held his chest, his face falling in a look of fake disappointment.

“Damn Y/N, all you had to do was say you didn’t like me -”

“I never said that!”

“Ah, so you do like me then?” He wiggled his eyebrows as he leaned across the table.

“I never said that either!” you giggled and pointed your finger at him. He pretended to bite it and you pulled it away squealing. Jimin laughed at your reaction as the waitress came over. He pulled out his wallet and you scrambled to take out your own until you realized you’d left your own wallet back at the hostel. You blanched.

“Jimin I can’t let you pay for all this!” The mountain of empty plates a reminder of just how much you had eaten.

“Of course you can,” he said as he handed over his card. You scrambled for something to say, to make him return his card, but it was already too late. You shook your head furiously.

“I can pay you back, seriously. This was a lot of food. And then the drinks!” you squeaked. Alcohol was expensive and you had consumed two full teapots of sake. “Please, Jimin,” you begged.

He held his ground as he signed the check and the waitress began removing the dirty dishes. “Absolutely not, Shutterfly. I still owe you an actual breakfast and think of this as me showing you what it’s like to be wined and dined. Mr. Park senior taught me never to let a woman pay for a meal, and I won’t start now, especially not with you.” He stood up and came to stand in front of you, holding his hands out as if he knew you could potentially wobble from the alcohol flowing through your system. “Let someone take care of you for once, yeah? Let me take care of you.”

You stared up at him, surprised at his words. It had been a long time since you’d heard anything like that. It had been a long time since you had let anyone come close to caring for you, determined that you would do it for yourself. Jimin was truly worming his way under your skin and you didn’t like it. You closed your eyes at the thought of Jimin really being there for you and it shook you to your core. Letting out a shaky breath, you placed your hands gently in his as he helped you to your feet, accepting his offer. On one condition.

“Only for tonight,” you whispered into his chest, not daring to look up into his deep brown eyes, but he forced you to as he dragged his lips tenderly against the back of your knuckles.

“Okay,” he agreed. His eyes never left yours and you started to squirm under his intense gaze. He pulled you into his side, tucking you under his arm. “Come on, I want to show you something,” he whispered into your hair as if the words were a secret only meant for the two of you. A shiver ran down your spine as his lips brushed against your temple though you were hotter than before from the alcohol in the humid night.

Jimin took you down the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, pressing you close to him as you walked along leisurely. Little street vendors lined the sidewalk selling sweet treats that made you wish you hadn’t eaten as much so you could try one. You inhaled the scent and tried to commit the smell to memory, wanting to always remember how untroubled you felt though so many things had gone wrong, wanting to really remember how many things had gone.

“We’re here,” Jimin said excitedly and removed his arm from around your shoulder, settling for just holding your hand. You immediately missed the warmth of being against his side.

Here was a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and lounge called Switch!. Its outer brick walls contrasted with the smooth window panes of the establishments next to it. A heavy wooden door rattled as the thumping bass echoed off it. There were a few stragglers standing outside smoking cigarettes as they laughed and joked with one another. Jimin turned to you and grinned, excitement etched across his features.

“Jimin,” you said with uncertainty. “It’s getting kind of late,” you trailed off.

“It’s only a little after ten, Y/N. Come on. This place is really cool,” he insisted. You chewed your lip, not sure whether you could make it a minute longer. Between the alcohol in your bloodstream and the cigarette smoke starting to swirl in your lungs, you were feeling a little out of your element. “Please, Shutterfly,” he pouted. “I promise to have you back home by midnight and before your carriage turns back into a pumpkin.” You rolled your eyes but remembered Michael’s words about enjoying the moment.

“Fine,” you huffed and pulled open the hefty door. Jimin followed closely after.

Switch! resembled your favorite grunge dive bar. It was extremely dark, the only source of lighting being a few strips of LED lights lining the floor and ceilings, and some weak yellow light bulbs. The bar itself was long and made with beautiful redwood that somehow managed to shine in the dim lighting. An extensive alcohol collection sat on the numerous shelves behind the bar. Next to it was a corkboard that was nearly filled with little polaroid pictures of previous patrons. A live band was the source of the thumping bass you had heard outside and you let it wash over me, vibrating the very core of your bones. It seemed like Jimin had a knack for choosing great places.

The two of you headed over to sit in one of the small booths, a waiter appearing immediately to take your order. Jimin asked for two sake bombs to start you off, something about keeping the trend of the night, and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the rickety wooden table. You watched him start to lose himself in the music as he kept time with the beat, his head swaying slowly. His posture exaggerated the broad expanse of his back and you stewed silently behind him, almost cursing his parents for creating a man as attractive as this. You crossed your legs at the knee.

Your waiter returned with your drinks and Jimin yelled a thank you over the loud music. Internally, you were grateful that it was too loud for you to continue your conversation as you were sure Jimin would continue his fervent flirting and you weren’t sure how much more you could take. Not after accepting his offer of letting him take care of you for the night. You took a large sip of the alcoholic mixture. Jimin leaned back and turned his head to you, his hand resting on your bare thigh.

“Do you like it? Are you having fun?” he asked loudly. You winced as his voice pierced through your eardrum.

“Yeah! This is cool. The band is really good!” you yelled back and he grinned, his smile a little lopsided no doubt from the alcohol. His eyes continued to sparkle as he stared down at you. With his hand on your thigh and his face seeming to move closer, all the air felt like it was sucked out of the room. Your heart pounded in your chest as his eyes drifted down to your lips -

“Excuse me?!” Your head snapped around to the individual yelling at you just as Jimin had closed the distance between you, his lips brushing the corner of yours. You could feel his lips stretch into a smile against your cheek as his nose pressed into your skin. You were quite positive he could feel the burn radiating off your cheeks. “Would you guys like to take a picture for our polaroid wall?” the man yelled again. In his hands was a teal polaroid camera.

“Is it free?” you yelled and tried to create some distance between you and Jimin. The photographer laughed and nodded his head.

“Can we get a copy of them to keep?” Jimin asked.

“Sure! I can take a few extra for you guys,” he replied with a shrug. “You guys ready?” Jimin nodded and slipped his arm around your waist, his hand resting on your hip with the other still resting on your knee. He smushed your faces together as the first picture was taken. The photographer took an additional three more after determining your smile wasn’t wide enough in the first one.

“I’ll leave these with you to develop. When you choose the one you guys want us to hang up, just drop it off at the bar. Thanks again!” He disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.

“I’m going to go use the bathroom!” You didn’t wait for Jimin to respond as you eased your way out of the booth and scurried off.

Locking yourself into the single-stall restroom, you tried to catch your breath. You and Jimin had nearly kissed. It wasn’t something you’d dreamed about in an alcohol-induced haze. He had really leaned in like he wanted to kiss you. You pressed your hands to your face to stop the smile from bursting across your cheeks. You covered your face with your hands as you recognized the familiar tick in your chest. A crush. You giggled to yourself as you pushed your hands through your hair. You had a fucking crush on Park Jimin and you were a teensy bit okay with it. A knock at the door burst your bubble of revelation and you quickly washed your hands, apologizing to the other woman as you slipped by her.

“So I think we should give this one to them,” Jimin suggested, pushing the four photos over to you as you sat beside him again. He was pointing to the second one of you where we were both grinning like mad men as he had pressed his face against your own. “The other ones are too cute.”

He was right. The third was Jimin kissing your cheek and you covering your mouth in shock at his actions. The final one was him smiling into your cheek, caressing the other side as he pulled you against him and you smiled with your eyes closed and rested your hand against his arm. This one was your favorite.

“Yeah, you’re right. These came out a lot better than I thought they would,” you said, the bar much quieter as another band got prepared for their set.

“Why wouldn’t they turn out great?” he asked confused.

“You know, the lighting and stuff. Plus my hair and we’ve been drinking so I know my face is all -”

“Stop. You look amazing. Look!” Jimin held the pictures up for you though you were already looking at them; it seemed he was a little more drunk than you were. “Absolutely beautiful,” he added. You smiled softly at him as he placed your favorites into his wallet. “Okay, I’m going to go give them this one. Do you want another drink?” You shook my head no, still nursing your first, and watched him meander his way through the crowd gathered to hear the band. They started up a moment later, a smooth rhythm of R’n’B playing out through the speakers. The beat was infectious and you closed your eyes, dancing in your seat. It felt good to not be concerned with anything, though work still plagued the back of your mind.

“I didn’t know you could dance!” Jimin yelled over the music. You hadn’t noticed his return and his voice startled you.

“I don’t dance!” You said with a laugh.

“But you just were!”

“I really wouldn’t call that dancing, Jimin.”

“Well, show me what is then.” He held his hand out to you. More people had started to dance as well, the change in the atmosphere quite apparent. “Don’t you want to see what dance moves we have stored in the Park family?” You laughed and nearly fell out of the booth trying to imagine Mr. Park senior getting down at the family parties. You were quite intrigued.

“Okay, okay. Let’s go.”

You grabbed his hand after taking another generous mouthful of beer and led him onto the makeshift dance floor. Jimin spun you around to face him and guided your hands around his neck while his hands rested on your lower back, the two of you swaying in time to the song. It was gentle and sweet and you hid your face in his chest as he spun you around. Jimin looked happy as you danced hand in hand, laughing when you stumbled from being inebriated. You hoped that his phone call was as far back in his mind as you physically were from the United States.

You danced for God knows how long until your feet started to hurt and the two of you were almost wet with sweat, lost in the music and the soft touches of one another. Jimin made good on his promise and had you back at the hostel before midnight. If anyone had been downstairs, you would have looked like any lovesick teenagers sneaking home in the dead of night. You were grateful that William and Sonia hadn’t decided to wait up for you as you giggled your way to your room, you hushing Jimin as he unlocked your door.

“Thank you for taking me there, Jimin. I had a really good time tonight,” you said as you kicked off your sneakers and grabbed your sleep shirt and toothbrush.

“It was no trouble at all. I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I had a really good time too,” he replied as he tugged his shirt over his head. Your eyes widened as you took in his smooth torso, the sprinkle of hair starting at his belly button and disappearing into his shorts that he was currently removing -

“Okay! I’m gonna go wait outside while you change! Let me know when you’re done,” you squeaked out and winced at the force at which you closed the door. You could hear Jimin chuckle from the other side. It was becoming quite tiring being flustered around him.

After receiving the all-clear from Jimin to re-enter, you slipped into the bathroom to change and brush your teeth. It was stupid at how happy you were to see your toothbrushes sitting next to each other in the little holder. Tugging the shirt down as far as it would go over your hips, you poked your head around the door to see Jimin already under the covers, one hand holding his book and the other tucked behind his head. So much for getting into bed without being seen. You folded your shorts and shirt, placing them on top of your backpack as you mentally prepared to face Jimin.

“I hope you don’t mind me not taking a shower. I didn’t think it was a good idea with the amount that I had to drink and I definitely don’t think you’re strong enough to pull me out of the shower if I fell,” he said, still not looking at you.

“Hey! I could probably manage!” you yelled, slightly offended that he thought you were weak.

“A naked me? Y/N, you can barely look at me with clothes on,” he snorted and set his book down on the nightstand and looked at you. You blushed as your eyes fell on the gold chain around his neck; he had decided not to wear a shirt to bed tonight. You watched him take in your figure, his eyes roaming over on your bare thighs for a few seconds longer than necessary. “But, if you think you can, I can go -” he started pulling the covers back but you cut him off.

“Nope!” you yelled and held your arms out as if you could magically force him not to move. “It’s fine, really. We can just go to sleep. Wouldn’t want you to get concussed or anything before our flight,” you mumbled. Double-checking the door was locked, you flicked off the light. You stubbed your toe just as you were about to climb in and Jimin laughed.

“Not as fun when it happens to you, right?” You punched his shoulder as you settled under the covers facing away from him, pretending to be mad. “Ah Y/N, come on.” Jimin shifted so he was cuddled up behind you, his hand thrown over your waist. “You’re not really mad at me, are you Shutterfly?” He pressed a chaste kiss to the back of your neck and you shivered. You could feel his grin against your skin again. Truly the bane of your existence.

“No, I’m not mad at you,” you mumbled.

“Good,” he replied and gave you a squeeze. “Thank you for telling me part of your story, for trusting me with that. Thank you for also letting me take care of you tonight. I hope you let me do it again,” he said as he pulled you closer against him and you sighed.

“Goodnight, Y/N.” He punctuated his sentence with a kiss against your cheek, his lips lingering once again.

“Goodnight, Jimin,” you whispered back as he buried his face into your shoulder.

That night, you dreamed of museums, Mingsu’s, and live music.

full masterlist // series masterlist // previous // next

#jimin fanfic #jimin x reader #jimin fluff #BTS jimin #bts fanfic #bts fanfction #fic: bitter and beloved

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thedaveandkimmershow · 3 years

Photo

Last thing first: today ended with our arrival at Crystal Cove. Let’s at least be clear about that personal victory.

We rolled into Moro Campground around 8:30 at night joining our family who’d been awaiting our arrival. And with dinner still warm, we dove right into the steak and beer highlighting the evening’s menu.

It was a much welcomed, much (dare I say) deserved finish to such a fraught road trip as this, one during which the vehicle we used to start the trip did not actually finish the trip.

Okay let’s back up a few days. Because aside from the road trip we’re taking, there are also things we’re seeing along the way that have nothing to do with vacation and everything to do with the broader human condition, much of which we’re only aware at the periphery.

Take last Friday morning, for example, driving into Portland, Oregon.

You see we’re just over the bridge when it hits both of us.

This is worse than Seattle. The manifestation of homelessness is much.

Much.

Worse.

For starters, it's on both sides of I-5 until downtown Portland comes into view. Both sides of I-5 with tents crammed together. Both sides of I-5 with trash packed onto the ground wherever there aren’t tents... including long stretches where it's only deep, compact trash.

Coming off the I-5 exit on our way to Hayden Meadows Square, there’s an entire field of tents between northbound and southbound I-5. Also filled in with deep, compact trash wherever there aren’t people.

The scale of it is what takes us by surprise.

Because no matter where we are on the subject of homelessness... this is objectively not healthy and not safe at both the individual and public level. All this that we see with our own eyes... neither safe nor healthy. For the individuals living in such condition and for the community that wraps around it.

Later Friday evening, we’re fifteen minutes south in Tualatin, Oregon, at that huge Cabala’s on the hunt for a solar laptop charger. We’re talking to one of the younger reps there who winds up telling us about the February ice storm during which many local residents were without electricity for up to ten days.

One more time:

Without electricity.

For up to ten...

Days.

I won’t lie. If I was aware of that story happening three hours south of where I live, it was in that breezy, barely aware manner in which I mentally sift through all kinds of news.

But.

This, here, in Cabala’s with a young man who lived it... who's sharing his personal experience and the experiences of acquaintances, friends, family, and co-workers?

Yeah it’s personal. Direct. And very much real. Real as in people from all around were coming into his store looking for supplies and sharing what was happening where they were.

Ten days.

No power.

Freezing temperatures.

My point being there’s a breathtaking difference between “hearing” this stuff as news on television, radio, social media, or the world wide web... and understanding the experience when you’re fully present with another human being who’s telling you their story.

The difference... is all the difference

Now it’s Saturday morning and we’re stopping in Salem to gas up. And right before the exit to that Fred Meyer where there’s also a gas station, I see a DOT sign that reads “High Ped Activity” or “High Pedestrian Activity”. Either way... something about pedestrians which I actually thought might mean something about demonstrations.

So we roll down to the bottom of the exit and what the DOT’s trying to communicate is now perfectly clear. Because on both sides of the street underneath I-5 is a tightly packed encampment, tents crammed together maybe five or six deep from the curb.

“High Ped Activity” indeed.

There’s a sign along one end of the north part of the encampment. It’s written on a board in front of the tents where drivers can read it while stopped at the light.

“LOST SOULS”

“Abandoned” might be another word you might use instead of “Lost”. Maybe “Forgotten”. Maybe “Neglected”. Maybe “Checked Out”. Maybe “Irresponsible”. Maybe “Wandering”. Maybe “Willful”. I don’t know. They’re just here. This just is. And some of that humanity flows into the parking lot of the Fred Meyer close by.

What strikes me isn’t why doesn’t the city clear these people out.

What strikes me isn’t why doesn’t the city do something for these people.

What strikes me... is how separate this all is. How unto itself. How this is a reality set aside from ours.

And maybe... “Lost Souls” isn’t the worst way to put it.

Okay so Saturday night.

We’re in Medford, Oregon, in a broken down RV on our phones trying to find a place to stay.

But there’s no place to stay. Because all the rooms are booked.

Conference... we figure.

One hotel manager does manage to find us a room... forty miles out of town. Which is how we end up sleeping in the RV in a Fred Meyer parking lot in north Medford.

And then it’s Sunday evening and Karen, the Comfort Inn & Suites manager on duty that day is telling us how the local hotels are sheltering people whose homes were wiped out by last year’s wildfires. Food's being delivered every day to help address continuing need.

And then Monday morning we’re catching a ride with Katie from Oregon Light Truck & RV who’s telling us how low income families were hardest hit in the local community.

By “hardest hit” what Katie really means is that these people lost.

Everything.

She explains how the local community stepped up to such a degree that donations of every kind had to be put on hold while agencies figured out what they had on hand and where specific items needed to go.

Bottom line.

We’re staying at this hotel that feels and looks and runs like a normal hotel. Only it’s bearing the weight of people without homes. And we’d never have known that without talking to Karen and Katie is my point.

We’d never have known any of it... and figured instead that we hit Medford during the midst of a convention.

Instead of during the continuing aftermath of last year’s wildfires.

Now it’s Monday night.

Sacramento, California.

We rolled into town around 10 and have found ourselves at a hotel that’s also bearing the weight of local need. Only this.

Is completely different.

For starters, the lobby, the halls, and the rooms are stripped down to the bare minimum in response to repeated theft. Security guards patrol the property and manage the ongoing activity in the surrounding parking lot. The deposit is $200 instead of the posted $100 because so many rooms have been trashed in the last weeks. There are no rugs anywhere... not even the halls. No coffee makers or hot water for tea. Not even courtesy of the front desk. The TV’s are bolted to the entertainment center. The wifi doesn’t work. And the people who work at the front desk are...

I don’t know. The hired help?

What I’m trying to put my finger on is what we experienced in Medford. Managers worked the front desk. In Sacramento, though, it’s employees working the front desk. Doing the best they can. Dealing with what they can.

There’s no hint of community here. Only the reality of a place besieged and overwhelmed by the reality of providing shelter here in Sacramento.

Yeah.

I’ll be thinking about the difference between Medford and Sacramento for some time to come, I figure. Two hotels. Two stunningly different outcomes from bearing the weight of local need.

And even though both are engaged in the same effort, only one hotel feels like a hotel.

The other does not. Not at all.

It’s just a sad place that’s buckling from the weight it bears.

The reality of this road trip we’re taking is that we’re not doing it with blinders on. Oh don’t get me wrong: we’re not looking for any of this. We’re just not pretending there’s not all kinds of expressions of human calamity. In Portland. In Tualatin. In Salem. In Medford. In Sacramento.

These are experiences that have absolutely nothing to do with vacation and everything to do with the broader human condition of which we’re aware when we choose to be aware. When we allow ourselves to see and hear and feel more than what’s on our itinerary. When we let ourselves experience the lives of other human beings on this planet.

Up close. And in person.

Because there's a breathtaking difference between “hearing” about what’s happening in the world as news on television, radio, social media, or the web in general... and understanding the experience when you’re fully present with another human being who’s telling you their story.

The difference, by the way... is all the difference

And we're fortunate as we always have been... to be able to share time and place, friendship and conversation... with people we've never met and likely will never meet again.

Even as their words and what we've seen on our travels indelibly stamp our understanding of the world around us and the people...

With whom we share it.

#California road trip #Rialta #Portland #Tualatin #Salem #Medford #Sacramento #I-5 #ice storm #wildfires #tent encampments #homelessness

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roswelldetails · 4 years

Text

Episode 203: Good Mother

Sorry so late this week!! I had a deadline for work that kept me away from this early in the week, and Tumblr has been mean tonight. Kudos to @tasyfa for helping me with some of the transcripts while I was stuck working!!

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Determined to regain control of her life in the aftermath of Noah’s death, Isobel (Lily Cowles) makes a risky choice despite its potential consequences. Meanwhile, Alex (Tyler Blackburn) and Michael (Michael Vlamis) work together to unravel the mystery surrounding the night Nora’s (guest star Kayla Ewell) spaceship crashed in 1947. Elsewhere, Liz (Jeanine Mason) makes a surprising confession when Cameron (guest star Riley Voelkel) shows up looking for answers about Max (Nathan Dean). Heather Hemmens, Amber Midthunder and Trevor St. John also star. Jeffrey Hunt directed the episode written by Deirdre Mangan & Carina Adly MacKenzie (#203.) Original airdate 3/30/2020.

DETAILS:

Aliens in the crash are always portrayed as wearing all white.

There's also a silvery gleam on the faces of Nora and Louise following the crash.

Harlan Manes (first introduced in the alien autopsy scene in 1x07) and Hector Valenti (first mentioned in the pilot by Jesse Manes, but visually introduced here) are shown as having both a partnership and a difference in perspective, with Hector being more sympathetic to the aliens from the start - it mirrors what we know about Jim and Jesse's relationship.

Mysterious alien figure in white hood (probably played by Nathan Parsons, but unlikely to actually be Max (see @latessitrice meta) touches Nora's shoulder and she looks pained, then attacks and burns Hector alive, before disappearing into thin air.

Nora is shot in her shoulder.

Liz sent Alex to find Michael at the cave.

The pods "regenerate cells at the same rate as they degrade" keeping them in stasis. The theory of the electrical current is that it will speed up the regeneration so instead of stasis, Max might improve.

Searching for info about Nora led Alex to a sophisticated firewall, which meant that someone was trying to hide information about her.

Jenna's fake energy drinks are called "Speed Demon"

Mimi DeLuca says she was "nowhere" (and then she looks up at the stars). She was wearing the same nightgown and robe as when she disappeared (white...like the aliens in 1947), but instead of bare feet, she had on a pair of elaborate blue and white cowboy boots

Jenna told Sheriff Valenti that Mimi recited the plot from the film Starship Troopers during the car ride into town "like she lived it", with all the voices, but did not provide any information about where she’d been. Sheriff Valenti implies that this is typical behavior from Mimi.

Michael says he's been parked at the pony for a few weeks. Maria says that Mimi was gone for a month. That means that another 2 weeks have passed. (I.e., Max has been dead for 6 weeks now.)

Maria says that they found her mom on I-40 (by the Roswell sign). Also in 2x01 Rosa indicated that she and Liz were on I-40 when they saw Flint - Rosa put together that it was the most direct route to Area 51...however, I-40 does not go through Roswell. In fact, it is over 100 miles from Roswell to I-40 (north on 285). However, it is the most direct route to Area 51 from Roswell.

Isobel points out that Mimi DeLuca waking up in the desert with no memory is similar to what happened to her when Noah took over her body. Michael doesn't believe that they are the same situation though.

Rosa is about to drink spiked coffee when Liz brings her the art supplies. After Liz leaves, she pours it out without drinking it.

Isobel is packing up all of the photos of her and Noah (most look like vacation photos). She hesitates on the photo of them with Max at the wedding that we previously saw in 2x01 at Noah's funeral.

Isobel's baby is now 7 weeks (consistent with the other time frames) and is now the size of a blueberry.

Isobel drinks the rest of the alien death serum and immediately gets cramps/pain in her womb. And then Max's hallucination appears.

Isobel tells not!Max that she has been microdosing with the serum for weeks (2 weeks, based on the timeline) and it hasn't worked.

Not!Max does tell her to call Kyle (i.e, her subconscious knows she should, but she's not listening).

Michael tells Jenna that Max is in Mexico (at first).

Mimi is "hydrated and healthy" and she never felt unsafe.

She thinks she was only gone for a night, coming to see Maria when Jenna found her.

Maria asked Mimi whether Jenna lent the boots to her and Mimi declared they were hers

Liz is surrounded by monitors with alienesque symbols on them (or maybe just The Science!) See photo:

When the alarm sounds Liz looks at her computer screen and reacts - likely a security camera.

When Alex arrives at the Bunker and sees the binder left for him, the computers are on and there is a map showing. See photo:

I tried to figure out what city it is on his computer screen, but no luck. If anyone figures it out, send me an ask & let me know & I'll blast it out!

The 3-ring binder left for Alex, which looked approx. ¾ full with paper documents, was marked on the front:

CAULFIELD * A4N

352-6553 NMG

The text was white on a dark green background that appeared to be a printed label that had been affixed to the front of the binder. The body of the binder was light grey, with a partially shaded circular diagram in the lower center of the front that appeared to be part of the binder itself rather than a later addition like the label.

The Post-It note left on the binder for Alex said, "What side of history do you want to be on?"

There was also a marking on the spine of the binder: CF-143-3453-C78. This is probably a file or record reference, with CF standing for Caulfield. The reference would be visible when the binder was housed on a shelf, allowing easy identification.

When Alex flipped open the binder, the visible portion of the top page read as follows:

HEADQUARTERS

509th BOMB GP (NH)

ROSWELL ARMY AIR FIELD

ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Forwarded.

A07-06 (95) 8 JULY 1947

AFTER ACTION REPORT

Serial

[blacked out text with underscoring] [TOP SECRET stamp]

From: Lt. Colonel Payne Jennings, Roswell Army Air Field

Subject: Engagement with enemy combatants, recovery of unidentified craft, night of 14-15 June, 1947, twelve casualties.

[offscreen] is a fine that concerns the events and

[offscreen] following the discovery of a flying saucer,

To: Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force

[offscreen] dentified rancher notified

[offscreen] [blacked out text] that he found the instrument on

[offscreen] operations were coordinated with

[offscreen] with the intent of detaining or

[offscreen] while assisting in the inves-

[offscreen] reached the crash site

[offscreen] ing object’s entan-

[offscreen] balloon. Ship

[offscreen] of foreign

[offscreen] place

Liz explains The Science to Jenna:

"3 years ago I hypothesized that if I introduced a rare protein to destroyed stem cells they'd regenerate. And I was right. My team in Denver brought dead cells back to life. Rat cells, but, I mean, still, the applications are immeasurable… until our study got shut down. They said it's for ethics reasons, but I think it's because it threatened big pharma. Then a few weeks ago, Kyle found that the pods contain a sort of alien cousin to my regenerative protein. When Max healed Rosa, his electric charge amplified the process. If we can replicate that, then, we can accelerate his recovery, so, I am testing out pig hearts to see…" discussion about pig hearts/human hearts/different kinds of smart…

Liz says she has a few hours before she has to "record the electromagnetic charge interval"

Jenna says that Liz reminds her of Charlie.

Charlie used to rant about gene therapy

Jesse says he requested no visitors until "his brain starts to follow his orders".

He keeps periodically hitting the morphine drip with Alex in the room, though he was ignoring it before Alex got there.

Jesse describes the opening scene of the episode. And then tells Alex "Tripp was never the same".

Rosa's art:

Among the quotes on her collage are:

Body drie up from ...

What did she say

You're no listening

Control her Take her power

I am the Mesa the mighty

Nothing but a muddy trickle

You can't hold us

Sandia

Between them... Damn... One day she'll…

East

Rosa hears Max call out to her (while awake) "Rosa! Help! You're the only one!"

Jenna says that her dad brought her and Charlie to Roswell when they were kids. That they were obsessed with the crash and aliens and the X-Files and it was the perfect trip. It's why she came to Roswell after leaving the military. "It was like trying to go back in time, somehow."

"Time Travel really messed with you. I am eight years older than my older sister. She used to be my hero. She was kinetic, disruptive, cool. Now that I'm an adult I'm pretty sure she's bipolar, and she needs help. And if I try to save Max I'm letting Rosa twist in the wind, so, hence the wine ready in my drawer."

Maria is going through a box labeled "Mom's Stuff" in the Pony when she sees Rosa.

"I'm turning into my mom. I lost time at the gala...Michael's hand...I'm seeing things!"

What Valenti says about Noah's death:

"The M.E., Dr. Holden, listed Noah's cause of death as cardiac arrest due to lightning strike. (note: cardiac arrest = heart attack. Same way Max died.). No other abnormalities were listed. But that's not consistent with the crime scene photos. You see these ligature marks on his wrists and ankles. …. These marks are consistent with zip ties. And these with struggling against police-issue handcuffs. Like Max's.".

Isobel blames it on their sex toys.

What Max said to the grocery clerk "¿Tienes carne sin preservativos?" (Meat without a condom).

About Max's nightmare:

"You remember when I used to come in and sleep on your floor?"

"You used to have a nightmare. You were alone in a cold, dark room and there was something… You couldn't get up. You were…"

"Chained to the floor. I'd wake up all freaked out and run to your room."

Rosa's nightmare:

"I need your help, Rosa."

"Look, I'm not gonna help you die. I have been drinking so that I don't dream."

"I know that."

"It's like you're getting stronger. I hear you now when I'm awake."

"You're right. Something is making me stronger. I feel things. That's why I'm calling for you. Something is wrong with Isobel. Even in the pod I sense it. She's dying. Please."

Liz thinks that Max was able to reach out to save Isobel because the electricity is making him stronger in the pod.

Maria confessed to her mother that she had thought she might be getting sick too, Mimi said Maria would not get lost because she was protected, and reached for the resin pendant with the anti-alien pollen flower that Maria was wearing as usual. When Mimi seemed to go to sleep, Maria removed the necklace and placed it on her mother.

Flashing back to the night of the crash, Nora seems to be tying down the tarp on the back of the truck when Tripp approaches her. He feigns an offer to assist her and then grabs her and orders his men to move in so that they can take her and the truck back to base. Louise appears and black-canary-screams to push them away (sound waves, I presume). She is shot in the stomach/chest. Nora pulls her into the truck and drives them away.

The newspaper clip Michael found is dated October 12, 1948, two days before Nora was captured.

Newspaper transcript:

Last scene - Nora is clearly driving the truck with her powers, as she has both her arms around Louise. They approach a cabin and we're introduced to Roy Bronson, who offers to help.

Roswell Town Fair Charms Locals and Tourists

Photo caption: Smiles abound demonstrate a good time had by all.

Saturday Festivities Drew Healthy Crowds

Second column under photo:

...well as celebrated hometown war heroes, and, of course, Mrs. Benjamin Booker (Carol) whose strawberry Chile pie has won the Roswell Pie Contest four seasons in a row.

Children delighted in activities such as sack races.......

Top of 3rd column:

...ice creams.

Meanwhile the annual pumpkin chunking contest was the main attraction as expected! Pumpkin chunkers arrived from far and wide with their pumpkins and their pumpkin-lurching apparatuses. The prize for best pumpkin chunked went to the Long Family. Their farm foreman Roy Bronson credited his friend and neighbor, a young woman who declined to be named, for the Long's pumpkin chunking victory.

When asked what he'd do with the prize money, Bronson declared that he would "purchase ingredients (for his lady friend) to cook up a nice pumpkin pie".

MUSIC:

Dame - Holy Moly

Tommee Profitt feat. Fleurie - Hurricane

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dustedmagazine · 4 years

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Dust Volume 6, Number 9

New Bomb Turks

Late summer in the oddest year in memory, and we are still, improbably, deluged by music. The world, it seems, will go out with a bang and a whimper and a steady four-on-the-floor, and we at Dusted expect to have headphones on when it all blows to smithereens. This month’s Dust covers the usual gamut, from milestone ambient reissues to several varieties of improvised jazz, from eerie folk to honest punk rock, from surprising debuts to unlooked for but welcome re-emergences. Two hurricanes, a hinged and unhinged convention, wildfires, confusing hybrid school plans and scorching days won’t stop us, and they shouldn’t stop you either. Some days music is the only thing that makes sense. Listen along with Ian Mathers, Bill Meyer, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Nate Knaebel, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Forsythe and Patrick Masterson.

Aix Em Klemm — Aix Em Klemm (Kranky)

Aix Em Klemm by Aix Em Klemm

If there’s one word that probably applies to most fans of Stars of the Lid and its many peers and offshoots, it might just be “patient.” Which means the fact that Aix Em Klemm, the so-far one-off duo between SotL’s Adam Wiltzie and Labradford/Anjou’s Robert Donne, put out this stunning record just under 20 years ago and haven’t followed it up yet is probably regarded more as unfortunate than maddening. With Kranky issuing Aix Em Klemm on vinyl for the first time, though, and even saying of the duo “they still collaborate musically so new Aix Em Klemm recordings remain a possibility,” it’s a perfect time to both appreciate what they did actually give us and maybe just gently lament that there hasn’t been any follow up (yet?). From the reserved vocals that introduce “The Girl With the Flesh Colored Crayon” before it ebbs into beautifully reassuring drones, to the closing, improv-ed highlight “Sparkwood and Twentyone” (written and recorded on the day, after a year or more of trading tapes and mulling a collaboration), Aix Em Klemm stakes out its own unique place in the oeuvres of its creators and its transporting enough that a little over 40 minutes never feels like enough. Still, we can wait for more.

Ian Mathers

Lina Allemano’s Ohrenschmaus — Rats and Mice (Lumo)

Rats and Mice by Lina Allemano's Ohrenschmaus

Pop the word Ohrenschmaus into a translator program and you’ll find that it’s German for “ear candy.” The choice of language makes sense, since the name applies to Canadian trumpeter Lina Allemano’s Berlin-based trio. But the imagery breaks down, since the music that she, electric bassist Dan Peter Sundland and drummer Michael Griener play isn’t sweet and easy. Allemano’s compositions are concentrated, full of events that are involving to follow and demanding to negotiate. One might expect the group’s configuration to leave plenty of room, but between the contrasting written events and the enthusiastic elaborations that the players work upon them, this music does not feel spacious at all. Griener shifts between skin and metal surfaces, and Sundland detonates flurries of activity, but the busyness of their activity never seems gratuitous. No, it’s just the thing to amplify the eventfulness of their leader’s fluent and wide-ranging playing.

Bill Meyer

Jaye Bartell — Kokomo (Radiator Music)

Kokomo by Jaye Bartell

2016 Light Enough introduced me to Jaye Bartell’s pleasingly deep and measured vocal delivery and his elegant way with a tune, reminiscent of Leonard Cohen or M. Ward. There and on this new album, his words have the precision and droll humor of a writer sharply aware of the impact of a well-turned phrase. Kokomo takes its title from the faintly ridiculous and pathologically catchy Beach Boys song featured in the soundtrack to Cocktail. Bartell posits here that too often we live trying to bridge the gulf between our dreams and reality — and how tragi-comic this can be. Tellingly, Bartell’s music is sober and deftly played, but with a lightness to its step and a glint in its eye. (Look no further than the lovely, lilting “Sky Diver,” with its brushed drums and harpsichord.) He’s a smart, reassuring companion, someone who has gone the extra mile for his craft and doesn’t see the need to jump through hoops to catch your attention.

Tim Clarke

Kath Bloom—Bye Bye These Are the Days (Dear Life Records)

Bye Bye These Are The Days by Kath Bloom

You might know Kath Bloom from her 1980s work with Loren Mazzacane Connors or from her spectral “Come Here” featured prominently in the 1995 film “Before Sunrise.” Her high flickering soprano, fluted with vibrato, is instantly recognizable, grounded in down-to-earth folk music, but tinged with otherworldly spiritual resonance. And oddly, her voice hasn’t changed much over the years. Up to last year (before the world fell apart), she was still performing periodically in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, and now we have a new record from her, some 40 years past her Daggett Records debut. Here, her songs are gently shaped around her distinctive voice and twining dual guitars (she plays with fellow Connecticut musician Dave Shapiro of Alexander), yet not soft. They have a wiry idiosyncracy and a resistance to cliché, and the way the guitars work together is rather lovely. I like “When Your House Is Burning,” a song where the central metaphor—a burning house—is so precisely described that it may not be a metaphor at all, not a stand-in for musings on the value of connection, the fleetingness of stuff, but the thing itself. Bloom adds harmonica for the pensive “How Do You Survive,” a song about aging with grace and humor, and in her worn-in voices, the melody stretches out like spider web, transparent but nonetheless very strong.

Jennifer Kelly

Catholic Guilt — This Is What Honesty Sounds Like (Wiretap)

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Catholic Guilt really want us to get their honesty (there's no irony in the new EP's title This Is What Honesty Sounds Like). Authenticity has long been a vaunted (or derided) element of pop music, but the Melbourne-based quintet aren't posturing. They deliver straightforward rock with straightforward thinking, but that doesn't mean the music's easy. The group looks at the world with a mix of dismay and hope, as if they recognize that life is difficult but we don't have to let it kill us. The new EP leans into pop-punk, letting the upbeat approach direct the energy of the two standout tracks. “A Boutique Affair” looks at the challenges of increasing isolation as we age: “It's hard to make friends in your 20s / It's even harder to make 'em in your 30s / At this point I'm really dreading / The thought of making it to my 40s.” Vocalist Brenton Harris might wonder why we should bother growing, but he's determined to age loudly. Single “The Awful Truth” turns its pop guitars into rage as it looks at the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church. By the time Harris says, “I can't wait to watch you burn,” it's clear that the truth may be awful, but at least it's honest.

Justin Cober-Lake

Cutout — Cutout (Driff)

Cutout by Jorrit Dijkstra, Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Nate McBride, Luther Gray

The name Cutout implies removal, but that won’t get you very far in understanding this Boston-based jazz quintet’s music. Quite the contrary, Cutout’s performance dynamic involves judicious addition by a group of musicians who have made a long-term commitment to playing together. Alto and soprano saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra and pianist Pandelis Karayorgis have been business and creative partners for years. They are the co-operators of Driff Records, all of whose releases feature one or both musicians, and they have shared several ensembles, including the large band Bathysphere, the Steve Lacy-themed Whammies, and Cutout. Trombonist Jeb Bishop, bassist Nate McBride, and Luther Gray often show up in these groups, and their smooth execution of sharp corners and sudden turnarounds reflects their shared understanding. What distinguishes Cutout from their other bands is the way they bring material by all five members into the set. Some of this album’s six tracks are single compositions, but others are sequential suites joined by improvisations. There’s plenty of dynamite soloing at work here, but the most intriguing turns come when one of the players elegantly links a couple of his bandmates’ compositions.

Bill Meyer

Tim Daisy & Ken Vandermark — Consequent Duos: series 2a (Audiographic)

Consequent Duos: series 2a by Tim Daisy & Ken Vandermark

Ken Vandermark is a notoriously busy guy; in any ordinary year, the multi-reedist logs an extraordinary number of miles traveled, gigs played, records released and musical partners engaged. This 75-minute long recording braids together three threads of inquiry. It inaugurates the second volume of Consequent Duos, a shelf-full of improvised duos played in North America, mostly with Americans. And as with the other volumes of series 2a, it is a download-only release, part of a sequence of album-length recordings that may not be deemed to be major efforts, but that nonetheless don’t deserve to be filed away forever on some hard drive. Finally, it shares one night in Vandermark’s two decades and counting relationship with drummer Tim Daisy. It takes about ten seconds of any random selection from this concert recording, which preserves what went down one Sunday night in August 2011, to hear why these guys keep working together. The trust and empathy forged by playing literally hundreds of concerts together manifests in music that feels effortless, no matter how technically demanding it actually is. Whether it is the sound of drums being played at a galloping pace with the lightness of knitting needles while the baritone sax pops and roars eruptive masses of sound, or the bass clarinet leaping and trilling with joyous abandon while the percussion swings with dance beats that could get you arrested in certain countries, these guys know just how to make each other sound really good.

Bill Meyer

The Dillards — Old Road New Again (Pinecastle)

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The Dillards' influence on popular music outstrips their own fame (they might even be as well remembered for appearing on The Andy Griffith Show as they are for their proper recordings). The group became an important part of the development of country-rock, especially as they expanded the possible sounds of bluegrass. Nearly 60 years after their first release, they return with Old Road New Again. Only Rodney Dillard (sounding younger than his age) remains from the initial lineup, but he brings along a number of guests to fill out his act. Don Henley appears, and if “My Last Sunset” drifts into Eagles territory, that's no surprise, but Ricky Skaggs, Sam Bush, and others prove the act has plenty of flexibility left in it, whether cutting an original or reworking a classic like “Save the Last Dance.” The album winds down with “This Old Road” and a recounting of some musical history through playful allusion. Even as Dillard looks back, though, he thinks about new ways to push forward. Although the record could work just as reminiscence, the artists show more interest in what comes next.

Justin Cober-Lake

Fire! Orchestra / Krzysztof Penderecki — Actions (Rune Grammofon)

Rune Grammofon · Fire! Orchestra - Actions (excerpt)

The Fire! Orchestra is not so much Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson’s big band as his big house, the place where he can bring his myriad interests together and invite them to interact. They have already taken on free jazz, krautrock and abstracted songcraft, so why not one of the earliest documents of post-third stream classical-jazz interaction? Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki originally composed Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra after hearing the Globe Unity Orchestra and handed it off to trumpeter Don Cherry to realize its first performance in 1971. Cherry’s imprint upon Gustafsson is deep; where do you think his long-running trio, The Thing, got its name? But this is no mere recreation. Some of Fire! Orchestra’s members weren’t even alive when the first version was performed, so the task is to find a way of playing the piece that makes sense now. So, they stretch things out, letting passages evolve organically. Special credit is due to the three-piece, whose contributions melt and glow.

Bill Meyer

Ganser — Just Look At That Sky (felte)

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Chicago quartet Ganser explores the bewilderment, claustrophobia and anxiety induced paranoia of the times on their latest album Just Look At That Sky. Brian Cundiff’s lockstep drumming anchors the record as Charlie Landsman whips out driving chords and intricate riffs that summon touchstones like Ian MacKaye, Thurston Moore and Rowland S Howard and push the songs to the edge of control. Spiky, equally detached and declamatory, Alicia Gaines (bass) and Nadia Garofalo (keyboards) share vocal duties working inside the kinetic rhythms to explore an interior world reactive to circumstance but seeking paths forward.

Centerpiece “Emergency Equipment and Exits” demonstrates what the band can do when they stretch out and build layers of dread; Cundiff and Gaines drop into a propulsive groove as Gaines sings of parties past and now lost to the new reality: “Swallowing negative space/Like DB Cooper falling/Until I too am nothing/And it all seemed so big.” The tempo drops, a lonely keyboard riff, the song builds as Gaines intones “It’s a long way down” and Landsman’s guitar howls into the ether. The combination of exhilaration and enervation encapsulates the power that makes Ganser stand out amongst their peers working at similar intersections of post punk and art noise.

Andrew Forell

Godcaster — Long Haired Locusts (Ramp Local)

Long Haired Locusts by Godcaster

Possibly it’s the pandemic, though the trend seems to predate early 2020, but we have not heard a lot of over-stuffed, over-instrumented, over-the-top art-prog ensemblery lately. Godcaster, from Philly, busts the one-guitarist-on-the-couch paradigm wide open in this manic, Zappa-esque adventure. First of all, there are half a dozen musicians, augmenting the usual bass/drums/guitar with outre axes like flute, trombone and a variety of synthesized keyboards. All six of them lock into wiggy, hyper funky overdrive in opening salvo “Even Your Blood is Electric.” It’s a righteous groove, a tight and feisty disco extravanganza that mutated in the lab, but that sells it short and blurs the complications. Other cuts take the temperature down, but not the oddity. “Apparition of Mother Mary in My Neighborhood” feels like an almost pop song, though conceptualized by a 12-tone composer and interpreted in odd-numbered time signatures. Long Haired Locusts is too precise and earnest to be a gag, but an anarchist sense of humor pops up, as in the single “Don’t Make Stevie Wonder Wonder,” a Curlew-ish irregular jam punctuated with jump-rope chants. All these cuts have a lot of moving parts, a sense of play and a manic attention to detail, and if you’re sick of sad folksinger live streams, Godcaster could be just what you’re looking for.

Jennifer Kelly

Haptic — Uncollected Works (2005-2010) (Haptic)

Uncollected Works (2005-2010) by Haptic

Haptic is best characterized as a Chicago combo. Even though one or another of its members has lived out of town for roughly a third of their existence, the influence that such a situation has on their work’s pace only confirms that they are a band that needs to share space to get much done. The recordings on this DL-only collection of compilation contributions and curios dates from the first third of their existence, when Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg got together on a weekly basis. Heard end to end, these tracks don’t sound much alike. But whether the project at hand is framing a few piano noises with collected sounds, stretching out a bell’s toll, or patiently exploring the potential of signal corps training jazz, it sounds like the work of a common understanding about how sound can be molded and reframed.

Bill Meyer

Boldy James — The Versace Tape (Griselda Records)

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On his third album this year, Boldy James pairs up with Jay Versace, but despite a change in producers, there is little to distinguish the three tapes. After a long hiatus Boldy churns out music to flood the market, and every new tape causes head-scratching. Was it necessary to release this? As a stone cold pro, Boldy never repeats himself. He also never says anything new. His blueprint is all business talk with designer names splashed here and there: “First come, first serve, first through the third, no dealings \ Mama, I apologize, ain't mean to hurt your feelings.” When he steers towards Mafia references in his songs he sounds a bit archaic (but he already sounded retro when he first started in early 2010s). On The Versace Tape, as always, he raps like he’s not giving us the whole picture. He’s holding back, but maybe what’s left unsaid is the best part.

Ray Garraty

Madeline Kenney — Sucker’s Lunch (Carpark)

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How big can a pop song go? This Oakland songwriter’s third full-length is boundlessly expansive without being particularly loud, the choruses swelling effortlessly, like a soap bubble blown to the size of your head. Kenney worked with Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack to produce Sucker’s Lunch and taps Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, Boy Scout’s Taylor Vick and film composer Stephen Steinbrink for vocals. “Tell You Everything” is translucently gorgeous, layers of guitars, drum, percussion and saxophone shifting in iridescent patterns that never overwhelm its sleepy vocals. “Jenny” increases the friction, with a hard beat, surging synths and shoe-gazey gloss on the guitars, but sweetness in the vocals. Kenney’s subject matter is love and its complications, but she ends the disc in “Sweet Coffee” with a lucid purity. “I’m making coffee,” she croons in a breathy voice out of dreams, “Won’t you sit with me?” Sure, let me pull up a chair.

Jennifer Kelly

Josh Kimbrough — Slither, Soar and Disappear (Tompkins Square)

Slither, Soar & Disappear by Josh Kimbrough

Writing an album in the spaces around an infant’s schedule is a delicate business, but Josh Kimbrough managed it quite well on this lovely album. His finger-picked rambles unfold like the slip-sliding time in a baby’s first year, a tumble of frantic activity interspersed with quiet, contemplative intervals. Kimbrough, a veteran of the North Carolina-based Trekky Collective, plays softly but with precision on acoustic solo pieces like “Sunbathing Water Snake” and “Giant Leopard Moth,” but his work really takes on warmth and resonance when he invites collaborators into his quiet, sunlit world. Blues-flecked “Two-thirds of a Snowman” gains an eerie glow from Andrew Marlin’s mandolin, which echoes Kimbrough’s licks in an upper register like the light hitting a shadowy corner. A sustained synth note in “Glowing Treetops” glitters like the surface of a pond—that’s Jeff Crawford of the Dead Tongues, who also play some bass—while gentle bent guitar notes zing like mosquitoes off its clear, cool liquid surface. Bobby Britt loops lush fiddle flourishes around this and other Kimbrough melodies; a rich, subtle blend of string timbres enlivens many of these tracks. The natural world also makes its appearance as well, most prominently in weather-haunted “The Shape of the Wind Is a Tree,” though the album’s light, clean tone throughout is like an open window. And yet despite multiple intermeshing elements, the album works very gently, light and soft enough not to wake a sleeping little one. “Simon’s Lullaby,” near the end, is beautifully communal, supporting Kimbrough’s clear, pensive guitar with the reassuring throb of cello, the bright promise of flute. Much of child raising is a solitary process, but Kimbrough’s meditation on it is not.

Jennifer Kelly

Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin And George Lewis— Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin And George Lewis (Ezz-thetics)

Violinist Harald Kimmig, cellist Alfed Zimmerlin and double bassist Daniel Studer have been mapping out the possibilities of extra-idiomatic improvisation since 2009. They favor juxtapositions of raw and refined timbre, and in their roiling web of activity, the quicker a gesture passes, the more impact it seems to have. The Middle European trio matches up well with American trombonist/electronicist George Lewis, who is likewise devoted to making music spontaneously and unbounded by genre prescriptions or proscriptions. There are passages where it sounds like the four musicians have transcribed muttering and stifled laughter into musical activity. This incomprehensible vocal quality proves magnetic, drawing the listener ever deeper into the fray. While some might object to “chatty” improvisation, in this company, it’s a virtue.

Bill Meyer

Matmos — The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form (Thrill Jockey)

The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form by Matmos

Given the vigor with which Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt approach all of their work, it’s surprising to find Matmos’s new album, The Consuming Flame, to be somewhat lacking in cohesion. Like many of their previous releases there is a unifying concept — in this case, they corralled musical contributions recorded at 99bpm from 99 contributors — but it feels like the creative limitations they imposed on this project weren’t quite stringent enough. Inevitably, given the wide range of contributors (including Oneohtrix Point Never, Yo La Tengo and Mouse On Mars) and Matmos’s formidable technical virtuosity, there are plenty of satisfying passages that feature inventive vocal cut-ups, ear-catching beats and playful juxtapositions, but the presentation of these ideas within three continuous hour-long collages makes it hard to sift the gold as the music flows past. Bizarrely, the album’s presentation on Spotify is more listener-friendly, with each of the three discs broken down into digestible tracks that can be easily trimmed from the bigger picture to assemble your own collage of favorites.

Tim Clarke

Meridian Brothers — Cumbia Siglo XXI (Bongo Joe)

Cumbia Siglo XXI by Meridian Brothers

Eblis Alvarez, the sole musician behind the long-running Colombian space roots experiment known as Meridian Brothers, takes inspiration from like-minded predecessors in Cumbia Siglo XX for this electro-shocked take on coastal cumbia. Eerie blasts of jet-set synthesizer, buzzing funk bass and video game bleeps and bloops haunt the clip-clopping rhythms of these mad ditties. It’s like a Star Wars space port built on the verge of primitive villages, donkey tails swatting flies while lazer beams zip by. “Cumbia de la fuente” gene-splices syncopated hand-drum beats and traditional-sounding choruses with the splintered buzz of synth bass and glittery spurts of MIDI-generated arpeggios. It’s a hot tropical celebration lit by UFO glow. “Puya del Empresario” nudges a hip swaying cumbia rhythm to the foreground, but blares a rough-edged synth riff over it. “Cumbia del Pichaman” transforms Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacherman” into a surreal technological marvel, buzzes and squeaks punctuating the offbeats like a DIY version of Zaxxon gone soft in the equatorial heat.

Jennifer Kelly

Nas — King’s Disease (Mass Appeal)

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Like all of Nas’s output in this century, King’s Disease, his 13th album, is pretty much unlistenable. King from the title here has two meanings. Every black man is a king (every woman is a queen) or should be. And second, it reminds that Nas is a king of rap, even though his royal days are long over. But even kings had to live on crumbs of their fame. With regard to the current moment in history, the album compels the listeners to unite and wear their blackness proud. Nas’ idea for achieving that? Just listen to his truisms and patronizing rants. On “Ultra Black” it’s “We goin' ultra black, I gotta toast to that”. On ‘Til the War is Won”, dedicated to women, it’s “May God gives strength to women who lost their sons \ I give all I have 'til the war is won.” All Nas gives to a black community is his bad music and maybe some charity. Every track here is to some degree about empowering black people, yet the only person Nas ends up empowering is himself. Every line on King’s Disease is disguised as virtue signaling, and the last thing we all need now is patronizing advices from rap millionaires.

Ray Garraty

The New Bomb Turks — Nightmare Scenario: Diamond Edition (Self-released)

Nightmare Scenario - Diamond Edition by New Bomb Turks

It would be understandable if, upon hearing the New Bomb Turks 1993 debut full-length, Destroy-Oh-Boy!, you thought to yourself, "They'll never top this." You wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but you'd be neglecting a much larger story and a key release in their catalog, 2000's Nightmare Scenario. With their debut, the Ohio quartet built a distinct machine out of familiar parts: cheap-lager-fueled thrash, butterflyin'-around rock 'n' roll swagger and barstool-philosopher lyrics. And with the possible exception of fellow buckeyes Gaunt, no other band at the time combined those attributes in quite the same way. It was as if America finally had its own Saints. The Turks would go on to make five more LPs over the next decade. Though lost in the shuffle a bit after jumping to Epitaph in 1996, the band were never going to become darlings of that label's skater boi base anyway. You certainly can't blame them for trying to reach a new audience nor should you overlook the output from that era. 2000's Nightmare Scenario, their third for Epitaph, is gritty, witty, and so full of Midwest blastitude you'd think it was year zero at Datapanik (or at least 1991). Yet to hear the album in its original mixes by Detroit studio guru Jim Diamond, newly issued for the 20th anniversary of its release, is all the more gratifying. It's stripped of that extra coat of paint found on the original, and it reveals what a decade's-worth of relentlessly plying one's trade in the punk rock free market will get you. The Turks were an absolute musical force by this point: they could still hit warp speed but could also swing with the best of them. And frontman Eric Davidson is in full possession of his vocal gifts (always a key aspect of the band's sound), nestling into the groove like a Funhouse-era Iggy or leading the charge as needed. The 20th anniversary Diamond Edition of the album is a nice reminder of just how consistently good the New Bomb Turks were and a nice splash of Pabst in the face for anyone who slept on that reality the first time around.

NOTE: Never above a little frat boy humor, the Turks were always much more about mocking those particular attitudes than ever truly embracing them. With that in mind 100 percent of the digital will be donated to Black Queer & Intersectional Collective bqic.net and Columbus Freedom Fund www.instagram.com/columbusfreedomfund www.instagram.com/columbusfreedomfund.

Nate Knaebel

Siege Column — Darkside Legions (Nuclear War Now!)

Darkside Legions by Siege Column

Some thoughts that occurred on first listening to Darkside Legions, the new LP from Siege Column: Track one, “Devil’s Knights of Hell”: “Whoa, this is pretty nuts. Exciting — raw and barely coherent, but exciting.” Track three, “Snakeskin Mask”: “Okay, I get it. All this stupidity is just too frigging stupid. Enough, already…” Track five, “Funeral Fiend”: “Holy shit! I think this may be genius-level stupid!” And so on. The record keeps on doing that, and the listener (this one, anyways) keeps on generating phrases like “genius-level stupid” in an attempt to cope with the experience. Siege Column is constituted of two shadowy figures from somewhere deep in the chemically treated wilds of New Jersey, and for sure, this is music that could only come from New Jersey. I still can’t figure out if Darkside Legions is too moronic for words, or if that projection beyond words is the mark of some sort of greatness. Meanwhile, the next song is peeling out like a 1969 Chevelle that needs some serious muffler work, trailing empty cans of cheap domestic, wads of bloody paper towel and the smell of burnt hair. Yikes. Feel like I better catch up…

Jonathan Shaw

Smokescreens — “Fork in the Road” (Slumberland)

A Strange Dream by Smokescreens

A new single from LA’s Smokescreens is notably partly because David Kilgour took a hand in it, distilling the band’s jangly sweet sound in a Clean-like way, where the guitar comes coated in liquid clarity and everything else is drenched in beautiful fuzz. Even if you’ve been liking Smokescreens for a while, “Fork in the Road,” is something special, the thump of bass glowing quietly, the guitars cavorting, a synthesizer building dense shimmery textures, the chorus softly harmonized around a koan-ish verse. (How do you go straight at the fork in the road? ) The guitar solo two minutes in is worth the trip all by itself. If the upcoming album is anything like this tune, I’m in.

Jennifer Kelly

Matt Sowell — Organize Or Die (Feeding Tube)

Organize Or Die by Matt Sowell

Too often, the words “sounds like John Fahey” denote either laziness or a sparse descriptive vocabulary on the part of the people who utter them. But it cannot be denied, Matt Sowell sounds like he’s closely studied Fahey’s records, especially the less experimental ones of his Takoma/Vanguard period. There’s a similar melding of bluesy styling, compositional elegance, and emotional evocation. But Sowell’s motives are different. Where Fahey’s music looked at the snarl of personal memory and the blacker, deeper pit of his tangled subconscious, Sowell’s looks outward. Fahey tried to subdue demons within; Sowell calls out the devils of capitalism, and honors the purity of respect untainted by dollars or oil. Of course, since his music is purely instrumental, you can project whatever you want onto it. But in times like these, we need all the resistance and resonance we can get.

Bill Meyer

Treasury of Puppies — S/t (Förlag För Fri Musik)

Treasury of Puppies by Treasury of Puppies

The Gothenburg duo of Charlott Malmenholt and Joakim Karlsson’s debut release as the Treasury of Puppies is lo-fi depressive but charming pop, recorded at the beginning of 2020. A Fairly short release, barely pushing past an EP length, it's in the vein of other Swedish underground releases of the past few years. The two trade chilly, spoken-sung vocals over a set of eight tracks, either buoyed by repeating, fuzzy guitars alongside field recordings, sauntering looped drums and hand-tampered tape sounds, or a layer of delayed static and fuzz churning under over drifting bells and slowly rotating keys.

Ian Forsythe

Trio No Mas — A Tragedy Of Fermented Undulation (Mars Williams)

A Tragedy Of Fermented Undulation by TRIO NO MAS

Chicago has saxophonic tradition, and part of that convention is the expectation that the city’s saxophonists work hard. However you look at it, Mars Williams holds up his end. He’s busy on both local and world stages. In recent years you can hear him melding Albert Ayler and Xmas carols on a couple of continents, freely improvising with the Extraordinary Popular Delusions and playing not-just-old-memories rock and roll with the Psychedelic Furs. But it would seem that he has room for another band, if the situation is right, and that’s the genesis of this trio. Williams sat in with brothers Stefan and Aaron Gonzalez when the Texan rhythm section came through Chicago and then made a couple quick passes through their neck of the woods. This live recording, which is being sold as a download as Williams figures how to make up for not going on the road with the Furs this year, brings us to the other way that Chicago saxophonists work hard. Switching between several horns, he plays them all with a mix of vein-popping force and pyrotechnic fluency. The freres Gonzalez toggle between heavy lurching and molten streaming, pulling back every now and then to create quiet spaces in which Williams can tap into yet another Chicago tradition — the evocative chatter of little toy instruments. If you can handle the unbearable lightness of the no-physical format, this music brings plenty of satisfying heaviness to the sonic realm.

Bill Meyer

Various Artists — Total 20 (Kompakt)

Total 20 by Various Artists

Since 1999, each summer Cologne’s Kompakt label has compiled recent and new tracks from their roster. For fans of the label’s distinctive musical aesthetic — a shuffling, playful, pop-facing, experimental minimalist form of techno — the Total series seems a must-have, but the series has also served as an entrée into Kompakt’s world for curious newcomers, casual listeners and cash-strapped collectors. Total 20 maintains the high standards of its predecessors. Coming in at two plus hours and 22 tracks from stalwarts Michael Mayer, Voigt und Voigt and Jörg Burger share space with newcomers like Kiwi and David Douglas. This edition works as a soundtrack for in home dance sessions, concentrated listening and background for escaping the mope and drag of enforced isolation. The music itself is uniformly of high quality, but the sequencing is key here. Moments of elegantly constructed ambient minimalism (Soela’s “White Becomes Black”), euphoric vocal house (Kiwi’s “Hello Echo”) and high concept psy-trance (ANNA & KITTEN’s “Forever Ravers”) are interwoven with the familiar midtempo Kompakt sound. While it’s a lot to digest at first and may to some ears merge into an amorphous mass, Total 20 will lift your mood, shift your body and shake off your funk. Have a taste, you may find yourself grazing if not gorging.

Andrew Forell

Verikyyneleet — Ilman Kuolemaa (I, Voidhanger)

Ilman Kuolemaa by VERIKYYNELEET

This new LP from Finland’s Verikyyneleet hits a bunch of the essential marks for hyper-obscure, one-man black metal: Difficult to pronounce and vaguely creepy name? Yep (translated from Finnish, Verikyyneleet means something like “tears of blood). Primitivist, kvlt-ish album art with lots of spindly, symmetrical, necromantical forms? Yep (pretty cool, too). Ghastly, croaked, semi-strangulated vocals and sweeping, epical song structures that likely attempt to represent the frozen forests of the Laplander landscape? Yep (see especially “Yhta Luonnon Kansaa,” which empties into another song called “The Great Scream in Nature”). But in spite of the degrees of familiarity struck by those various notes, there’s a compelling idiosyncrasy to Ilman Kuolemaa. And although Finnish weirdo Isla Valve — sole creator of the sounds — has been releasing music under the Verikyyneleet name since 2006, he hasn’t exactly been prolific: two demos in 2006, an EP last year, and now this LP. It’s all rather mysterious. But whatever the back story, the songs are really good. There’s a slightly smeared, off-kilter sound that adds to the strangeness. Is it 4 am and suddenly really, really quiet, wherever you are? Here’s your soundtrack. Light up some candles, turn it up loud and freak out the neighbors.

Jonathan Shaw

Young Dolph — Rich Slave (Paper Route Empire)

youtube

It’s not a little ironic that Adolph Thornton, Jr., 35 years old and some seven records into his career (not counting the endless mixtapes floating around), has peaked both in hard numbers — Rich Slave hit #4 on the Billboard 200 — and stylistically with an album that arrives after the Memphis rapper was supposed to retire from the game. When GQ interviewed him in May, Dolph was locked in and hanging out with his kids, marinating on his next move; with Rich Slave, he’s unlocked a socially conscious side of himself that, admittedly, was always bubbling below the usual braggadocio. Alongside guest spots from Megan Thee Stallion, established sidekick Key Glock and Chicago staple G Herbo, Dolph tweaks his usual template to speak to the moment in what is his most effective full-length deployment yet. There are a trillion rappers who work this hustle, but no one’s done it better this year.

Patrick Masterson

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serrj215 · 4 years

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2nd Room

There was so much to do, too much to do. Raven was starting to regret refusing Bart's and Conner's offer of help. They would have been moved in less than 30 seconds. Of course it would take days to figure out where everything was, and if Bart’s room in the tower was any indication she would be finding her clothes in the dishwasher.

Moving is exhausting despite mystic talents or super powers. It was a mental drain trying to figure out where everything went, where it was supposed to go and what they were missing. Raven had spent half an hour trying to place a small protective statue of Athena. A house warming present from Donna Troy. It was a lovely piece but there was no obvious place to put it. It was the same story with an area rug given to them by Wally and Linda West. It was thick and well made, and it was obvious that Linda picked it out. It was still rolled up leaning against the statue of Athena.

It took Raven hours trying to get the kitchen in order. It didn’t help that her boyfriend's packing style was a little haphazard. She had found most of the utensils in a box labeled bathroom, and the mugs were hidden under Garfield's anime dolls, no sorry figurines he was sensitive about that sort of thing.

It also didn't help that their friend Victor had given them every kitchen gadget known to man as his housewarming gift. It was very sweet of him but Raven was not sure if she trusted herself to operate a microwave, let alone a blender with 26 different speed settings.

Garfield had been a whirl of green energy since she had said "Yes" and agreed to move in together. He had started packing before they even found the apartment. Then he insisted on loading and unloading the moving truck himself. Every time she got close to lifting a box no matter how small or light he was there. "I will get that for you Rave" She started to wonder if he suspected. Maybe he knew on some unconscious level.

Still even without the heavy lifting it had been an exhausting day and each room still had a small mountain of boxes. Where did either of them get so much stuff?

"VICTORY!" Garfield shouted

"And who have you defeated?" Raven shouted back though the apartment as she opened another box labeled kitchen to find two spatulas and a bunch of video game cartridges.

"Come to OUR bedroom and look!" Gar had been doing that all day. It was not the kitchen it was 'our kitchen', not the bathroom it was 'our bathroom'. You have never met someone so happy to be sharing a space.

Raven walked into the bedroom just in time to see her boyfriend flop onto the bare mattress of the newly assembled bed. Once settled on his back he lifted up a small brass L shaped tool and threw it across the room behind a mountain of boxes he had hoped never to see again. This was his 5th attempt to turn a box of wood and steel into a bed.

"I never thought I could hate a piece of metal so much. " he said breathing hard like he had just ran a mile full out.

"Well it's finished. Congratulations. " She said leaning over him.

"Not Yet!" He reached up and pulled her into the bed with him.

"What are you doing!"

"Testing phase, the most important part of the process." He said with a laugh as they tossed together for a moment settling with Raven lying on her side resting her head on Gar's shoulder.

"Satisfied?" She asked pushing her hair out of her face.

"Not even close." He said pulling her closer starting to kiss down her neck. The warmth from his lips flooded into her and started stirring something.

"Not now." she groaned out reluctantly pushing him back a bit. It was sometimes too easy to give in to him. Raven knew if she did they'd be spending the rest of the day “testing” their new bed instead of getting anything done. "We still have to finish unpacking."

He groaned and let his head fall back. "I know we still gotta get the living room setup, the Wifi, we got to find out if the neighborhood pizza place is any good."

She craned her head to look him in an eyebrow raised.

"What? A guy has to eat, and we haven't hit the grocery store yet all that’s in the fridge is water and empty ice cube trays".

She thought for a moment. “The Thai place up the street, it's menu has a big vegetarian section.”

Garfield ears perked a bit. “That does sound good” He sat up a bit in the bed. “I could go for noodles and peanut sauce”

“That and you eating a little less bread a grease might be an idea.”

“We have been moved in for 17 hours and you're trying to change me already?” he said with a laugh.

Ravens arm wrapped around his chest “I just want you around for a while, I promise Pizza is in our future just not tonight. “

"Speaking of the future, what do you want to do with that spare room?" He asked. "I mean we could just do a guest room but maybe a home gym would make more sense?"

"We do still have the Tower for that, I did have another idea."

“You're going to let me turn it into a man cave?” He said with too big a grin to be taken seriously.

“As much as it appeals to me to sequester you, your xBox, your plastic anime girlfriends and eventually Victor so the rest of the house is available for my own peace and quiet, no. “

Garfield tried to hold back a laugh. "How about Raven’s little library. Get some comfy chairs, floor to ceiling shelves for your books, a sign on the door that says SHHHH, the whole 9 yards. All the peace and quiet you could want."

"Tempting, but not what I had in mind.” She squeezed him a bit. He could live there just wrapped up in her.

“Raven, this is our place, You tell me what is going to make you happy, I am just so glad that you are here with me. “

"A nursery" she said quietly.

"You mean like plants?" His mind immediately jumped to an image of a room full of lush green and potted flowers.

"No Gar, there is something that I need to show you.” Raven said getting up. She straddled his waist”

“Oh I like where this is going”

Raven ignored the obvious innuendo and placed her hands on either side of his face. Her eyes closed “Azerath Metrion Zinthos” she chanted opening up a pathway between her and the man she loved. It was not the first time that Raven shared something like this with him. It was another way for her to be close to someone, and it was time to share a secret she had been keeping. Garfield got lost in the sensation and the rhythm of her words, his own lids fell.

Thoughts and images poured into Garfield mind. Playgrounds,joy, stuffed animals,excitement, names,trepidation flashed at random then he felt it. There was another presence, un-directed curious and simple. When Garfield focused his other senses came along. Raven’s familiar scent had changed, intensified in some ways softened in others. Her skin had taken on more color, he had written it off as some extra time in the sun but then he heard it. The gentle but regular thumping of a small heart.

His eyes shot open and his surprise the shock breaking the link. “Raven you're pregnant? I mean that's what I felt right! You...we... are going to-” his voice started shaking.

“Yes Gar.”

“We're going to have a baby?” he said just above a whisper.

“Yes Gar”

“I am going to be a dad?”

“That's generally how it works. “

Garfield was still as a statue for a moment. Then it happened. Raven didn't know what she felt more the tidal wave crash of emotion or the fierce hug wrapped around her. He buried his face in her neck.

"Baby!" He declared “Rave, I didn't think we could, I mean, I thought that this was impossible." His voice shook. “You are going to be a great mom!”

Raven’s arms came around him. “Thank Azar, I wasn’t sure how you would react.”

“I have never felt something so big in my life!. I want to tell everyone, I want to go out and get toys and diapers and you're going to, and things and that things and-” He was talking too fast and his mind was jumping to a dozen places at once.

“Slow down.” Raven said softly one of her hands slowly stroking the back of his head. She kissed his forehead.

He wiped his eyes with his hands, trying to steady himself. The last few minutes was like getting hit by cold lighting. He wanted to tell Vic, and Bart, and Conner, the justice league, he never met Darkside but if he did the first words out of his mouth would be “Me and Rae are having a baby!”

Then a horrible realization hit Garfield square in the face. “SHIT!”

“What’s wrong?”

“The kid is going to need a crib, and a changing table and a dresser, I am going to have to find that damn Allen key” Garfield said flopping back into the bed.

Raven gave a small laugh. “Yes our child will need those, later. Right now can we just enjoy the moment?”

“Your right, we need to celebrate.”

“Gar, the aprt-”

“Can wait!” He sat up taking both her hands. “The boxes are not going anywhere. Let me take you to dinner tonight. Then maybe we can open Dick’s housewarming gift.”

Raven was almost afraid to ask “What did Dick get us?”

Gar’s face broke into a smile a wild look in his eyes. “Satin bed sheets” he said before pouncing on her. The next thing she knew, Raven was on her back. His hands quickly ran under her shirt to do deliciously sinful things. His mouth biting that one spot on the base of her neck taking a sledgehammer to her self control.

“Gar” she moaned out. “What are”

“Trying for twins.” He said before capturing her mouth with his.

@westernfan1 Requested this story and asked for it to be based on the Geoff Jones version of the characters. This was an interesting challenge for me since most of my stuff I write I base on the TTA universe borrowing from other cannons when I need to and where it doesn't conflict. So I do hope you all enjoy it and please be forgiving if a few details are a little off.

I would also would like to thank @loubuggins who gave me a dissertation worthy of university admission on this subject. Thank you Lou in my mind you are the foremost expert on Jones version of Beast Boy and Raven.

#bbrae fanfiction #bbrae babies #serrj215 original #bbrae

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rpf-bat · 5 years

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Come With Your Arms Raised

Pairing: Mikey Way x Reader

Genre: Angst

Summary: Written for Inktober 2019, Day 4. Prompt: “Freeze”. You’re a traffic cop, doing what you do every day - pulling people over who drive recklessly. But, the driver you stopped today, is no ordinary perp - he’s Mikey Fuckin’ Way.

You took your job with the New Jersey State Police very seriously. You’d become a cop, because you wanted to protect people. You’d been a little disappointed, to be honest, when you were first assigned to the traffic division. But, you soon realized, that negligent drivers, caused accidents that left people injured every day. If you could prevent an innocent passenger from getting hurt, by pulling someone over, who was driving under the influence, or at a reckless speed - that was a good thing, right?

So, when you saw the black car flying down I-78 at 95 miles per hour, you turned on your siren, and started tailing behind it immediately.

The car pulled over without a fight. You were relieved - you didn’t really want to get into a high speed chase. You parked your patrol car and got out, planning on asking the driver for his license and registration. But, as soon as you opened your car door, the driver opened his, too.

A lanky man with hair dyed blonde, got out of the vehicle, and started running down the side of the road, away from you.

“Freeze!” you demanded, pulling your pistol from its holder. “Stay right there, and put those hands up, where I can see them!”

The man, surprisingly, complied. He stopped running, and stood in the grass, holding his skinny arms aloft.

I don’t think he’s armed, you realized, and put your own weapon back in its place. You approached him with caution, still worried that this might be some sort of trick.

“Are….are you gonna pat me down?” the man asked nervously. Something seemed oddly familiar about his voice.

“I am now,” you huffed. Why couldn’t he have just stayed in the car, like a normal person?

“Keep those hands up,” you barked, and began to pat the man’s pockets. You couldn’t feel a gun on him, or a knife, or anything like that. Just a wallet. Phew.

“Alright, you can put ‘em down,” you shrugged. “May I see your ID, please?”

“Yeah, alright,” the man acquiesced, pulling it out of the wallet, and handing it to you. You noticed immediately that his license was issued by the state of California. He’s a long way from home.

You glanced back up at him. He was just standing there, quietly. Not resisting, or shouting at you. This was a little unusual, for someone who’d just tried to bolt. The more you looked at him, the more certain you were, that you’d seen him somewhere before.

On TV, maybe? you guessed. If he was from Cali, he might be a celebrity. You’d seen a lot of young Hollywood types in the news lately, being arrested for DUIs. Should I make him do a breathalyzer?

You glanced back down at the license in your hand. Date of birth, you read, 9-20-1980. Date issued, 9-1-2013. Name: Way, Michael James.

“W-wait,” you gasped. “You’re Mikey Way!”

My Chemical Romance had been your favorite band, when you were a teenager. They had their roots right here in the Jersey scene, which you loved. But, you knew that all the members (aside from Frank Iero), had moved out to the West Coast, to pursue their career, years ago.

“You know my band?” Mikey blinked.

“Know you,” you scoffed. “Are you kidding me?! I saw you on Warped Tour, way back in 2004. It was my first concert.”

You’d been fifteen. You couldn’t believe, that ten years had passed since then, already.

“Wow,” Mikey blinked. “You were following us for a long time, then.”

“Yeah, but I heard you officially broke up, last year,” you frowned. Their last actual record release, had been four years ago. You’d bought it, but you hadn’t actually listened to it, in too long.

“We did,” Mikey frowned back. “Hey...it’s kind of cold. Do you mind if I sit back down, in my car? I promise I won’t try and drive off. If you’re going to write me a ticket, go ahead.”

Of course it was cold. It was February in New Jersey.

“Alright,” you nodded, and started walking with him, back towards his car. “What are you doing back in town, anyway?”

“I was supposed to start recording an album for my new band, Electric Century,” Mikey explained.

He’s making new music? you blinked. Wow, cool! But, I need to keep this professional. I can’t go asking for his autograph….he was still driving recklessly, and I do need to write him a ticket for that.

“But if you’re supposed to be in the studio,” you wondered, “why were you out here, driving like that? I clocked you at 30 miles over the speed limit.”

“I know,” Mikey sighed. “That was careless. I’m sorry. I’ll happily pay, however much you decide to fine me. I was just….trying to get away from my bandmate, David.”

“Get away?” you repeated. “Why?”

“Well…..,” Mikey hesitated. “He said we were going to record, but then he tried to make me….make me go to….”

Your eyes fell on something in the passenger’s seat of his car. A small, plastic baggie. And a needle. You’d arrested far too many people for possession, to not recognize what this was.

“Oh, fuck,” you swore softly. “Mikey, no.”

Mikey stood quietly behind you, his face filled with shame.

Oh, no, you thought. He had been your idol, when you were a high school kid. Now, to find him doing something like this….?

You couldn’t hide the disappointment on your face. A lot of people in Hollywood abused substances. You knew that. Hell, you’d watched the documentary, where Mikey’s brother, Gerard, admitted to abusing them himself. But, somehow, you’d still expected better from him.

“That’s why you ran from me,” you realized. “You didn’t want me to find this.”

“Are you going to take me to jail?” Mikey asked softly.

“You’re not putting up a fight,” you sighed, looking back at him. “You stopped running, when I told you to freeze. You could have gotten away, easily. Do you….want to be arrested, for this?”

“I know that what I’m doing to myself, isn’t right,” Mikey acknowledged. “I know it’s going to get me killed, if I keep it up.”

“So, why keep doing it?” you asked.

“I’ve been using narcotics, to deal with the pain I was in, for a long time,” Mikey confessed. “After My Chem broke up, I just felt….adrift. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life anymore. I guess I got depressed.”

“There are better ways to deal with depression,” you sighed, “than this.” You gestured to the paraphernalia in the car seat. You didn’t even want to look at it.

“You’re right,” Mikey frowned. “That’s exactly what David was trying to tell me. As soon as I got off the plane, he started trying to talk me into going to a rehab facility.”

“That’s why you ran away?” you guessed.

“Yeah,” Mikey nodded. “I jumped in my car and just started driving away from his house. I didn’t want to admit that he was right….that I have a problem.”

“It sounds,” you said carefully, “like you’re admitting it now.”

“But, I know, that that’s no excuse, for driving recklessly, the way that I did,” Mikey apologized. “I’m sorry, Officer.”

“You can call me Y/N, if you’d like,” you smiled.

“Are you….not going to arrest me?” Mikey blinked, confused. “I mean, I’m guilty. The stuff I’ve got on me, is something that gets you a lot more, than just a ticket.”

“If I were to take you downtown for possession, right now,” you explained, “you could be facing up to five years in prison.”

“Shit,” Mikey gasped.

“But….I don’t want to do that,” you decided, staring deep into his soulful brown eyes.

“Why?!” Mikey demanded. “Because I used to be in a band that you liked?”

“No, it’s not just that,” you shook your head. “Mikey….I can see that you know, that the direction in life that you’re going, is not good.”

“It’s awful,” Mikey admitted. “I’m not proud of what I’ve been doing in the past couple years, at all.”

“I want to give you a second chance, to turn your life around,” you offered. “Go back to David’s house. Let him check you into a rehab clinic. Stay there for as long as you need to. Get clean.”

“I should,” Mikey whispered. “I should have listened to him, from the beginning.”

He stood in the winter wind for a moment, contemplatively. You watched the breeze blow through his short hair.

“.....you’re really just going to let me go, Y/N?” Mikey asked.

“I’m going to be checking up on you,” you assured him. “If I find out that you didn’t stick with the twelve step program, and I find you out here again, with this stuff on your person….there won’t be a second chance. I’ll have to bring you in, and carry out the full extent of the law.”

“I understand,” Mikey said gratefully. “Thank you so much, Y/N. I’m going to pull myself together. I mean it. Next time you see me, I’m going to be in a much better state of mind.”

“I want to see you perform onstage with Electric Century,” you replied. “I want to see you keep shredding bass, like I know you can. So, go get well, Mikey Way. Take care of yourself.”

“When I’m….well enough, to do something like that,” Mikey promised, “I swear I’ll send you a ticket.”

You watched him get back into his car, and drive off, into the setting sun. You knew you had made the right decision. Your job was to help people - and the help he needed, wasn’t handcuffs. His music had saved your life, when you were younger. You felt peace, knowing that you may have just played some small part, in saving his.

#mikey way imagine #mikey way x reader #inktober #cops au

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script-a-world · 5 years

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Submitted via Google Form: So, I have created a map, putting in cities with distances and stuff. But I am having a lot of trouble with transportation between places.

I am not sure about the real logistics of time, engineering, traffic, etc to have my transportation suitable and efficient.

Say, differences between actual high speed bullet trains, just high speed express trains, local trains and maybe areas they serve. Buses that bypass big cities, going through mountains to get to smaller towns?

I'm kinda attempting to design a whole entire system here actually but making it realistic is well, so hard. In actual real life, I always can't even understand the logistics of real transportation and keep wondering why there is no transportation between A and B, or even simple things like how very low speed cheap transportation like trams still actually work. And... that's just public transport. I also need to work on private transport as well, and you know, the oh so varying road signs, speed limits, laws, etc etc.

I have been actually attempting research on real life. I mean, sometimes I can get it. But, when faced with my own story, it's all a mess. I certainly don't have the facts and I'm messed up.

Feral: In brief, as with any cultural artifact, transportation is a social construct. The how’s and the why’s depend very heavily on the terrain the transportation will cross, the resources the infrastructure requires, and the economic and/or civil value of building up one type of transportation or building up of one area with transportation over another. Factors like politics, classicism, and racism play a huge role, especially if you are looking at American transportation networks and lack thereof.

The thing to keep in mind when trying for verisimilitude with worldbuilding is that most cities aren’t planned. Or if the center is planned, the rest grows organically as they city population grows. Most cities were well developed before the idea of public transportation systems or the need for travel by paved roads was a thing. Some defining features of cities that seem planned from the beginning were in fact, not, and only exist because someone was really inventive. See for example, the subway system of New York or the Boulevards of Paris. For writing purposes, if it is truly necessary for your story (like if you’re writing road-trip style narrative) and you need the kind of detail that a complete work up of transportation would provide, I recommend picking one or two real world examples that are culturally similar to the city or cities you are designing and just kinda… borrow.

Constablewrites: For me, the biggest thing that triggers my plausibility Spidey-sense is the amount of time it takes to get between places. Like, when you have horses covering 200 miles in a day, or people popping instantaneously around Los Angeles between locations that would still be 30 minutes apart even if there were magically no traffic.

Now, sometimes this falls under acceptable breaks with reality. (Would 24 have really worked if Jack had to spend an episode and a half sitting on the 405?) But I feel like in most cases, as long as the length of the trip isn’t way off in either direction given the mode of transportation, technology level, and other established facts about the setting, you don’t need to dig too deeply into the details.

Tex: Congratulations on discovering the field of civil engineering! To be more specific, transportation and traffic engineering. While Feral and Constablewrites bring up excellent points, I will gently deposit a grab-bag of engineering for your perusal:

PDF - Fundamentals of Transportation by Wikimedia

The profile of Kara M. Kockelman, Ph.D., P.E., as hosted on the Cockrell School of Engineering

PDF - Transport Planning and Engineering, as edited by CA O’Flaherty

PDFDrive’s myriad selection of transportation engineering textbook PDFs

PDF - Railroad Engineering 101: Session 38, as presented by David Wilcock

Railway engineering has a lot of subfields, so you’ll need to be specific on that front. As in nature, engineering relies upon a significant amount of observation. Which cities use what transportation methods, and in what mixture? Why did they pick those? What’s the history behind those decisions? How much does the environment impact these decisions, and how much do cultural biases?

You’ve mentioned that you’ve already come up with cities and their relative distances - how did you come to these conclusions? What are the personalities of these cities? How do they interact with each other? Again, what is the environment like? What’s their level of technological advancement? How much money do these cities receive from their state, or from municipal tax revenue? What are their priorities in transportation?

It sounds like you wish to know the entire depth and breadth of a topic before you muck about in its waters - this is unrealistic, as in real life even the best-trained, most-experienced engineers don’t know everything. Figure out your priorities, and figure out what this world of yours requires in terms of transportation. Get the goals written down first and then work from there - that’s realistic, as is attempting to figure out the solutions to your stumbling blocks. Sometimes the most inane-sounding, ridiculous thing works and it’s not immediately apparent.

Bina: I’ll first answer some of your questions regarding why real life transport has the structure it does, then I’ll give you some advice on how to make “realistic” transportation for your map.

Why is there no transportation between A and B? Why not make a new path? The answer is typically because it’s already possible to get from A to B in an indirect way. And if it’s *possible* to get from A to B, why spend the time, money, and labor *optimizing* the path from A to B? Why spend potentially millions of dollars and months of construction just to cut time off a commute that’s already doable? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Furthermore, maybe there’s other external reasons. Maybe there’s a huge nature reserve between A and B. Or private property owned by someone who won’t allow the government to build across it. Or maybe the land is already reserved for some other project.

Now, why was there no transport between A and B to begin with? Well, lots of reasons. Maybe the landscape doesn’t allow it. Maybe the ground is too soft to build on, or there’s mountains too large to blast through, or the technology at the time means that a direct path isn't feasible and it's all you can do to go an indirect way. Another reason is because maybe a C existed first that was closer to A, with a path from A to C already in place. When B came up, it was easier to go from C to B rather than make the longer path from A to B. Years later it may be the case that C becomes an unimportant town and A and B are bustling hubs that people travel between frequently, but... why make a new road when one already exists? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

That same ideology applies to why “outdated” systems of transport are still operating today. If it works, why take the time and money to tear it down, pave it over, and replace it with something else? Even if these trams or carriages or what-have-you are a waste of money to maintain, a city might keep them for a number of reasons. Maybe they’re a cultural hallmark of the city and tourists love them. Maybe they service niche areas and the outcry of removing access to/from those areas would be huge. Maybe they operate in areas that are impossible for the city to safely and easily construct around. Maybe the city is just lazy or slow with its legislation and never got around to it.

Hopefully that provides some insight.

Now, as for how to realistic public transport in your map. I don’t know what technology level you have or what size cities you’re dealing with, so I’ll take a step back and answer the following: “how do I make a realistic road network across my map that connects all my cities and towns?”

For that, you can take a look at the mapmaking tutorial here. It gives advice on how to add roads to your region map in a natural-looking manner. Simulate which cities/towns came FIRST and connect those together based on how much those places need to communicate, taking into account the landscape. Roads are built between places that EXIST, and I’m assuming your cities weren’t all built at the same time. If you have one city that’s the oldest and largest one in the middle of the country I can guarantee that all roads will lead to it. If a city is particularly important to the economy, it'll have more transportation leading to it. If a city is in the center of many others on the map, it may become a crossroads of travel for the other cities to reach each other. Of course, there are stipulations, and those are listed in the link given. Good luck!

#anonymous #google submitted #transportation

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thechanelmuse · 5 years

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The notable Ruth E. Carter finally won her beyond deserved Oscar at the 91st Annual Academy Awards for Best Costume. She’s been putting in work for over 30 years. Her first big break was working as a costume designer for Spike Lee’s 1988 film, School Daze.

Below is an excerpt from Spike Lee’s behind-the-scenes book, Uplift the Race: The Construction of School Daze, about Ruth sneakily and frantically trying to recover a missing piece of costume. We all have a beginning story:

Ruth E. Carter: Towards the end, I think it was the last week, it was like the day before the last day of shooting with Kyme and Larry’s love scene, I packed some things to send home and Kyme’s sweater got packed.

Patrice Johnson (Assistant Costumer): We got to the set to see how everything was going as usual at five o’clock everything was going just fine. Come five-oh-five Ruth gets this hysterical look in her eyes. She said, “The sweater, we need it tomorrow.” It didn’t click at first. Then I said, “Oh, my God, this is it. This is it, it’s over”—because it’s in a box, it’s at airfreight, or it’s in L.A., in which case Ruth had to go to L.A. That was it—no either way—no one could know. No one could know.

Ruth: We were selling everything. Everybody was buying stuff when we had our list. You know, we were organized. It wasn’t like we were just selling things at random, but the sweater was a big controversy from the beginning—when we were going to use it or not for that scene. But we were, because they walk from one scene to another and she has that on. So it was written down, it was just one of those wild things. So I got on the phone and called the air freight people to try and get this sweater back. Well, when I first called he said, “Oh, yeah, I think the boxes are still here. Let me look in the back and I’ll call you.“

Yeah, that was before they knew that it was like flying out of Atlanta to L.A. He called me back and he said, “I’m sorry.“ I said, “Well you have to get that sweater. I mean it’s really a life-and-death matter. I mean, it’s my life here.“ All I could picture was Jennifer, my wardrobe person, flying off the handle—which she always did—and Spike coming up to me and saying, “Well, what happened?“ and me having to tell the truth and fess up that I packed sweater.

Patrice: It with a bloody mistake, we couldn’t let anybody in the wardrobe department now… because we had the Panic Patrol, that was Jennifer. And for the Panic Patrol, no matter what happened, it rained that day, they would say, “Oh, no, and now it’s raining.“

Ruth: They would panic about everything. So anyway, he called me back, and he said there was no way, you know, that I can have it. So after I said it’s a life-or-death matter, he told me that he would call his supervisor and find out if he could get it off the belt or something like that.

Patrice: But it was a very rare chance—this had never happened before…

Ruth: Right, it was just like all arrows pointing at me—”You fucked up. You know it. Deal with it. Think of what you’re gonna do now.“ I mean, it was like one of those items that’s hard to replace—it’s not like we bought it out of the store. We had it made. So anyway, he said, “Okay, my supervisor has authorized me to take this off the belt, but you have to have the person with you who signed the check. I mean, signed the freight slip.“ Since Robi and I were sending things together, she had signed it. So it was a good thing that she was with Patrice and Jeffrey Cooper (a PA), who was driving. The airfreight man said, “You gotta get here by nine,“ and they weren’t back yet—and it was eight o’clock, well, maybe a quarter to eight. So I met them coming in the driveway, jumping up and down… with my hands in their

Patrice: ...saying, “You have to go to airfreight, you have to go to airfreight,” and Jeff said, “Okay, I can take you. Where is it?”

Ruth: I swear, we were in the south of Atlanta, this place was way out. I mean hills, valleys, the whole bit. And here we were driving frantically, like ninety miles an hour. It started to rain and thunder and it was dark. So we were like going someplace for the first time and started to get lost. We were stopping at places, running into stores—only place that was open was this Asian gift store. The lady in there gave me perfect directions, but we still couldn’t find a place.

Patrice: We got really lost.

Ruth: So then it’s about a quarter to nine, and I said, “We’ve got to call the freight company. They’ll think we don’t need anymore—they’re going home at nine.”

Patrice: Suicide.

Ruth: We stop at this payphone and it’s hard to hear and there are like Mack trucks going by, a million of them, and you can’t hear and the guy says that he will meet us at the convenience store that we were at and drive us back. Anyway, so he drives us over there, the box was there, and we go through it, and I had other little things that I had, you know, packed and stuff, like little T-shirts and stuff, and I was just given the whole staff gifts and…

Patrice: She said, “I’ll give you anything, I’ll give you anything—if you can just get this sweater. We’re doing a movie; we’ve got all the kinds of stuff I can give you—here’s pajamas. Do you want pajamas?” It was so funny.

Ruth: So it worked out, but by the skin of our teeth. It was like the most...harried moment of the whole shoot.

Stay committed.

#so funny that i've been reading all of spikes books for the month of february #both him and ruth won #go figure #ruth e. carter #spike lee #patrice johnson #school daze

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necropsittacus · 5 years

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answer all the ones you have an interesting answer for, i guess?

i had FAR too much fun with this and it’s horrifically long so. Apologies For That. also thank you friend

2: What’s your dream pet? (Real or not)i really want some finches, when i'm actually in a place to care for an animal? maybe a pigeon3: Do you have a favorite clothing style?in real life i actually Wear button downs and black jeans most of the time for convenience. *ideally* it would be something more like "unholy union of like three different goth aesthetics, and sith fashion, and also Pirate. and spikes/chains/glowy lights." it's probably good for everyone else's eyes that i'm too cheap to redo my entire wardrobe in line with my ideal aesthetic sensibilities. i also have a set color scheme; at most one bright color, which is generally red, blue, or purple, and everything else should be black or grey. 8: What is your Greek personality type? [Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, or Melancholic]melancholic with choleric leanings.9: Are you ticklish?nope! im pretty sure i trained myself out of it 12: Do you prefer tea, coffee, or cocoa?tea. i like the taste of coffee if it's very heavily creamed and sugared but it does terrible things to my body so i don't drink it. too much chocolate also makes me sick14: Would you rather be a vampire, elf, or merperson?VAMPIRE. practically already am. 16: How tall are you?5'7"-5'8". measurements have varied. 17: If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?starscreamthis one is Already a name change? i've been through a few names and honestly i'm pretty happy with "ren." i thought about changing to something people could actually spell right on the first try, but nothing Felt right? 20: Do you like space or the ocean more?ocean! but both are pretty neat21: Are you religious?yes, but it's not remotely clear what i actually believe, just that it's Something 23: Would you rather be nocturnal or diurnal [opposite of nocturnal]?i'm already practically nocturnal tbh and it's fun 30: Favorite movie?i really appreciate the star wars prequels32: How many pets have you own in your lifetime?nine; six fish and three budgies, not all at the same time37: What is your eye color?green38: Introvert or extrovert?i think the whole dichotomy is a bit overhyped and doesn't exactly apply to me. my situation is more that i act like extroverts are "supposed" to with close friends but people i don't already know and like very much are deeply exhausting to be around and i'd rather not40: Hugs or kisses?depends. hand/forehead/cheek/etc kisses are intensely blessed and important to me, but i don't particularly enjoy making out or whatnot, and hugs are Very nice. 42: Who is someone you love deeply?tumblr user @autisticsansa44: Do you like tattoos and piercings?yeah!45: Do you smoke or have you eiver done so?yeah, occasionally. obligatory disclaimer that it's a terrible habit and you shouldn't start. it's more a "i'm extremely anxious and need to do SOMETHING" thing than a regular habit, though. 57: Have any mental disorders? [Only ask this if you know the user doesn’t mind!]several. it's just not 100% clear which ones. the most recent Professional Opinion was OCD and CPTSD with probably related anxiety and depression. also autism but i don't think that's quite the same thing58: What does your URL mean?it's a pun on "neurodivergent" that i stole from someone else's post about liches61: What makes you unfollow a blog?if your opinions start pissing me off too much or you post things i consider morally objectionable or dangerous to me. also if we have a sufficiently bad personal fight. i don't really care if a mutual or someone i've been following for a long time stops having common interests with me or anything like that, at that point i'm invested in You as a Person and will stick around for that64: Favorite animal(s):all birds. also cetaceans69: What is your star sign?i'm a fake scorpio. i have been telling people i'm a scorpio and tagging zodiac posts accordingly for literal years, out of a combination of the stereotype applying to me much better than the one for my Actual Birthday and residual influence from homestuck. 76: Do you like birds?i LOVE birds.86: Can you run a mile within ten minutes?i can't run a mile at ALL i'll have an asthma atatck88: Can you touch your toes and keep your legs straight completely?no and trying hurts90: If you were an animal, which one would you be?goth cockatoo94: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds?both of those sound fantastic. i want to say fly, though, both because bird thing!!!!, my latest batch of Attachment/Projection Characters has me thinking about the idea a lot, and mind reading seems like it would likely become a burden on me. i struggle enough with other people's feelings about me as it is96: Winter or summer?winter. summer is consistently a miserable time for me101: Favorite type of shoesaesthetically, high heeled black lace up boots. irl i mostly wear combat boots, though103: Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If so, why?vegetarian. i don't really Know why; it was how i was raised, i have no actual desire to eat meat, and i'm reasonably certain trying to start now would interact disastrously with a lot of my preexisting food issues. also, some of you are incapable of not responding to asshole vegans by acting like eating meat is a moral imperative and it's ok to bully people who don't. so even if i did want to, i wouldn't out of sheer spite106: Do you like bugs?depends on the kind. bees/wasps, dragonflies, and butterfly/moth type things are all fine. i'm deathly afraid of crickets107: Do you like spiders?yeah! i think they're cute109: Can you draw:not very well, but i keep doing it anyway114: Do you prefer cloudy or sunny days?cloudy. bright light tends to hurt me115: Someone you’d like to kiss or cuddle right now:i'm in an odd place right now where i'm either not sure if the people i'm closest to (and/or most want to Become close with) would be comfortable with anything of the sort, or know for a fact that they wouldn't be, so i'm going to refrain from naming anyone, but certain friends129: What would you want written on your tombstone?"túrin turambar dagnir glaurunga." for old times' sake/the sentimental value. i doubt christopher tolkien would give anyone permission for that, though131: What is something you love but also hate about yourself?arrogance, ambition, drive to succeed out of sheer Spite. it's a very good aesthetic, but i don't imagine it's very pleasant to actually *interact* with someone with a complex about being #1 132: Do you smile with your teeth showing for pictures?nope. i exclusively either smirk or keep my face as blank as possible; i don't think smiling like that looks good on me. 133: Computer or TV?computer. i don't actually know how to operate a television139: What nicknames do you have/have had?a lot. tends to come with changing your name 500 times. atm i don't really have any, to my slight disappointment140: Did you have any pretend or imaginary friends?i had imaginary enemies as a kid143: Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts/help?depends? it's hard for me to help people, especially to guess what kind of thing actually Is helpful to them, and i absolutely LOVE being given things, but also if i know someone well enough that we're giving each other things i would feel absolutely terrible not reciprocating, and doing it makes me happy. 145: How many languages do you speak fluently?only english, unfortunately. i have like a six year olds level of russian, which i want to improve, and i think i Could get there with japanese eventually if i start taking classes again147: Are you androgynous?honestly i can't really tell? not deliberately so, particularly, but i think i have a very Traditionally Feminine kind of pretty face and the way that combines with mostly masculine presentation and facial hair is pretty androgynous148: Favorite physical thing about yourself:this isn't a Specific Thing per se, but i do think HRT has been taking my appearance in a very "g1 seeker" direction and i am DELIGHTED151: If you could go back into time and live in one era, which would you choose?hm. viking stuff is a Big Aesthetic, but also i think i deserve to be a sickly victorian gentleman and die of tuberculosis154: Do you like to kiss others’ foreheads or hands for platonic reasons?YES. this is one of my favorite forms of affection irl. also hand kissing is The Most Valid kind of kissing. 155: Do you like to play with others’ hair?yes!!!157: Something that makes you nervous/anxious:talking to people when i'm not 100% sure where i stand with them or how much they like me. especially if i'm requesting anything.168: Do you like to wear makeup?i used to. i probably still would if i could do it without being read as a woman, but as it is the discomfort of being misgendered outweighs the joy of Having Sparkly Colors on My Face

#long post #ask memes #circus to air missile #VERY long post im sorry i. got a bit carried away #smoking ment

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donnasaufley-blog · 5 years

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Public Accountability For Donna Saufley; Or, Why I Quit Working At Hiker Heaven (2019)

In March of last year, I was sitting in the southern California desert trying to find direction after years of travel and exhaustion from studying communal spaces. I decided I would take on a simpler spiritual pursuit of walking across the country and rather than walking on the shoulder of highways, I decided it would likely be more scenic to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I had about $20 in my pocket, an ILBE marine bag, and had a sharpie made sign up in a public counter-culture tourist location known as Slab City seeking donated gear for a PCT attempt. The hike in itself is a different story of its own and I invite you to follow me on social media if travel for greater meaning without allowing money to prevent it interests you, but the contents of this article surrounds how I ended up working at a famous hiker spot known as Hiker Heaven during the last couple seasons.

Hiking the PCT without finances took a great deal of creativity and ethical approaches in being honest with trail angels as I made my way up the trail. I tripled my money working at Carmen’s Garden, did worktrade for StillHouse Hostel, moved firewood for Trail Angels in Big Bear, etc. I dumpster dived and hiker boxed scored most of my calories. I had written an email and planned to stay a week volunteering at Hiker Heaven, in order to rest before continuing on was the original plan. When I finally did reach Agua Dulce, my perspective of the trail had changed a great deal. I found the rugged desolate nature I once read about on the trail was nowhere to be found in this new boom of thru-hiking popularity where every 15 minutes another person in a puffy is passing by asking how many miles you walked so far for the day. Being someone who decided to hike for solitude and ecological connection, I found the time alone rare and felt more like I was contributing to a form of unsustainable eco-tourism that made me feel ashamed. When Donna Saufley invited me to stay and offered to pay me for my help, I saw my safest route to exit the thru-hike attempt. I ended up staying for a month and a half, which turned out to be profitable to me at a rate of $100 a week for more than full-time work and access to lots of hiking gear.

I decided as Hiker Heaven closed its doors to northbound hikers on the 30th, I would take a train to Portland to work with radicals at OccupyICEPDX protesting the recent family separations and militarization of the border. When that ended, I combined my skills of frugal travel mixed with the endurance of long distance hiking to attempt bike touring down the coast. At the end of my trip, I went a route that put me through Agua Dulce on my way to visit friends in Tucson. While there I was invited to return for hiker season. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to work out as well as the year before, but had nothing better to do and no other prospects for replenishing my supplies. I kinda went out of my way to get a train ticket back from Tucson a month later, but had high hopes the season would make up for the loss.

It turned out upon returning the Pacific Crest Trail was facing very high snow levels at elevation in southern California due to the polar vortex, which pushed back the arrival of hikers by over a month. This is an uncontrollable thing for all parties involved, but meant for me I had a whole month of draining resources to take care of myself in the expensive nowhere mountain town of Agua Dulce. By the time the first groups of hikers began to show up, I’d already drained more resources than Donna was going to pay for the whole season. In a way, it began to feel like an entrapment to work anywhere from 30-60 hours a week just to make up for the net loss of getting into the situation in the first place. I began to notice more details than my short time at Hiker Heaven the year before. Suddenly the comments by Donna about supposedly “barely scraping by financially” became entangled (sometimes within hours) with talk of selling their house at a market value of $500k to move to the pacific northwest, increasing the workers’ of Saufley Electric’s pay, the possible $10-30k in donations from PCT hikers that would be flowing in, and their incessant shopping began to grate. Especially when said to someone who has been living out of backpacks (and now a bike) for nearly a decade of their life. It would be nothing for her to pay all their volunteers a stipend, but she chooses not to for her own benefit. It’s also not hard to imagine when draining resources just for the chance to listen to Donna’s opinions and finally learning some semblance of the economy behind everything, how my bohemian work gig I once thought great to avoid contributing to military violence by doing “volunteer work” for a possible $100 a week “gift” began to feel more like exploitation than the cheat code to avoid taxes to a murderous government it once was.

To make matters worse, those endless opinions from Donna were more politically fueled this year. As last year they had a “no talking politics” rule, most likely because they were an employing a hiker at the time with anti-Muslim and transphobic prejudices than for herself. An example of new frustrations began when Donna started to interrupt and point out my using gender neutral terms for everyone as “wrong.” When explained to her grammatically they/them has existed longer than he or she as a pronoun, with suggestions to learn this by googling some things her response was, “Well, at least I’m only going to be doing this one more year.” This alongside my constantly being referenced as a he/him was one of many annoyances (though it was something I was expecting to suffer for a couple months in exchange for the resources I thought I would get). It seemed I was just nodding my head at whatever the daily opinions were to get it over with, rather than debate a business owning white lady in a $500k house who gets all her news from nightly viewings of MSNBC that she might not have any clue what is happening in the streets or around the world (let alone gender theory).

Things finally came to a head when a group of rightwing hikers came through. Prior to this season you should know, I had discovered a great organization known as Indigenous Women Hike who had a campaign to bring the racism of John Muir into conversations among outdoors culture and industry. I had even been sponsored a Rethink The Wild shirt from them via an individual to wear for hiker season in order to start the conversation with people hiking across indigenous lands via the Pacific Crest Trail. Indigenous sovereignty is a very important issue for me is the reason why I would quit. I quickly began to feel uncomfortable by this group of hikers as they camped by the RV I was staying in and had late night campfire discussions where I overhead bits of Fox News-like dialogue-isms such as: “It’s not racist if it’s a fact, man” in reference to some statistics they were claiming about black people.

“I was never called a Nazi until Trump was in office and I told people I voted for him.”

And references to, “those antifa fucks” and “race wars.”

Originally I thought I would just wait out their leaving, as in all traveling it is a common occurrence to just have to put up with someone repeating Fox News rhetoric. The following day, however, Donna was taking one of them grocery shopping and I had to go along to get my own groceries. On the way back I was in the backseat listening to their discussion. It turned out this hiker (with a name I cannot recall) was an ex-military white South African and he began talking about his country/ politics. This began by Donna mentioning their liberal centrist views of not being proud of Donald Trump, in which he responded that in his country Donald Trump is considered an international hero. This he said was because he demanded white farmers stop being murdered in South Africa or the USA would intervene. The white genocide myth in South Africa is statistically inaccurate and is a story being spun by white nationalist groups around the world. He began talking about how in South Africa white people are the minority and black people would like to kill him just for his skin color. An example he had of this is how in America people consider Nelson Mandela to be a great leader, but his people call Nelson Mandela a terrorist. He lauded Fox News as the only accurate news representation, said journalists could never be trusted anywhere else and how in growing up surrounded by race wars he had a better understanding of what was happening in the world. Donna didn’t have much to say or counter any of this, other than a statement of maybe she would see things differently if she had lived his life and that, “maybe the South Africa stuff is like how everyone gets upset when Israel fires at Palestine, but never when Palestine shoots at Israel.”

The talk about all this dissipated as he spoke of his bodyguard work for figures such as Sean Connery, which seemed to delight Donna.

Back at Hiker Heaven the discussions with the rightwing hikers didn’t cease, and they seemed to get wide-eyed or talk of preparation for the future in the face of the race war stories this man had to tell them. The moment I knew I could no longer work for Donna Saufley was later that evening, while standing in the garage doing laundry. I described the kinds of things I heard these people talking about and called them white nationalists, with which Donna responded, “it makes my stomach churn to know there are people with those opinions here, but there is nothing I can do to change them.” She then followed this by describing how there are “some people” in this world who want to remove monuments or change the names of things, but they can’t change the past. Much like she can’t change their so-called opinions on race. This struck my last chord and so I brought up John Muir directly as a historical figure on the PCT and his anti-indigenous work with the Indian Removal Act that led to countless deaths. When she told me this was just the way things are and it’s silly to change it, I asked how returning the name to something as it was for thousands of years before Europeans invaded and put the name of someone responsible for their relatives' deaths as little as a couple hundred years ago was wrong? She became flustered and said it’s just the way it is, “and there’s nothing anyone can do to change it other than accept it.”

I walked back to the RV I was staying in and didn’t leave it for the night. I halfway packed my stuff up in the realization I had to leave. The next afternoon, Donna came by and asked if I was ready to start working for the day. I told her I planned to leave in a couple days and no longer wished to work for her due to her racist views toward indigenous people and her centrism to (the money of) white nationalists/ supremacists. She then got angry and told me I had ONE HOUR to get off her property. This caught me off guard, as I expected her to at least give me the couple days to get my things in order and be civil about it. I told her no, I’ll leave in a couple days. She demanded I leave or she would call the sheriff. I told her to call the sheriff, as they would have to give me an eviction notice. She stomped off and I began packing to leave within an hour anyways, expecting her to escalate the situation. Within ten minutes she had cut off the power to the RV and turned off the Hiker Heaven WiFi. I’d began separating what could be carried on my bike and tossing useless/ trash items out the door due to the space being small. She then stood in front of the RV and called all the male hikers to gather around, where she then asked them to remove me from the property. Gaslighting and twisting the things I’d said around, such as saying I referred to ALL hikers as “white supremacists” (which thankfully the actual white supremacist and white nationalists had hiked out that morning) and how I had become anti-hiker (in reference to discussions I had with her about the environmental strain of thru-hiking culture over the last years). This is when I pulled out my phone and began to record in case it took a violent direction, as I knew my legal right to be there and how they didn’t have any right to lay a hand on me. I was honestly prepared to defend myself with mace in one pocket and a knife in the other. I hoped making them understand my position in some fashion, my legal right to defend myself in the scenario, warning them of my intention to do so, and the presence of a camera would deescalate the situation. Which thankfully, at some level it did! A few of them asked me if they could help me pack and I said no, plus demanded they not come near me. As I had no idea who these people were or what they might be preparing to do. One became aggressive (older man in back of photo below) demanding I be gone within an hour or he’d make me, alongside the oldest of the men being the most hostile. He even sat in a chair outside the RV while I packed my things telling me how I should be ashamed to insult such a “well-respected” lady of the hiking community. Only one of the hikers (wearing sunglasses in picture below) came up to me before I left and apologized for what was happening, then handed me $15. The rest made themselves scarce. Donna informed me as I was leaving if I shared what happened she would leave a “bad review” of me on my WarmShowers account (an app for cyclists to host bike tourists for free) so I would never have places to stay during my bike tours. As there doesn’t seem to be a depth Donna Saufley isn’t willing to sink to.

After leaving Hiker Heaven, I had to pedal two days to the nearest REI to return some hiking bags I got in order to have some money on the road. All in all, I am traveling again with several hundred dollars less than expected, lost $90 in groceries purchased the day before, and hundreds in equipment I wasn’t given the time to mail off. Not only did Donna prove to be their own kind of racist in the end, exploited labor out of people like me for years, but also ripped off someone with very little in the world for nearly half they own. I’m writing this about a month from the incident, because it’s the first time I’ve had enough of a break to do so. As pedaling 40-80 miles a day and trying to figure out what direction to go in takes up a great deal of time. My hope in sharing this is to encourage people not to support Hiker Heaven if they have any trace of ethics in their decisions, and simply not let such a privileged person get away with doing what they did without it following her legacy.

In the future, I intend to write more about my observations over two years around the thru-hiking industry and subsequent culture. My time spent interacting with such large amounts of hikers and history I learned while working at Hiker Heaven will be used, as well as this event. This article is more to have this specific incident out in the public to warn others ASAP.

#Donna Saufley #Hiker Heaven #Saufley Electric #Pacific Crest Trail #PCT2019 #PCTClassOF2019 #racist #racistbusiness #racism #fascist #antifa

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the-firebird69 · 2 years

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You have a huge Army headed this way it's gigantic it's coming from South America again the wailing on the blockade and the shatteredome is emptying because of it and the blockade is coming down the four and 500s are coming out we have a third of the 400s out and 500 is be coming after and the war on Ukraine is all about that. But this for us it's coming up is from my territory it's about 400 quadrillion heavily armed and there's coming up the coast and they're coming up through Texas and they're coming out through the Southern States and they have a channel about 10 miles wide to go through and scan the crap out of everything they have spaceships and they're going to arrive in Tallahassee in about 20 minutes I need to start pressuring and the ships those chips will come down from New England and it's going to get cloudy and it might rain but it's going to get cooler thankfully and it's happening now ships are already heading down they'll take about another 20 minutes to get here too but it's very huge it's a huge Force and giant giant groups are going to Colorado huge huge infights over this will and testimony it's ridiculous stuff it really is

In San Francisco we have several lawsuits on them cuz they're trying to arrest your son from there remotely they tried sending in warrants if in San Francisco police department and State Police and their local law enforcement Justice people and we are suing them because it's a wrongful death lawsuit that's going on already and it's against Donald Trump and several others who are there doing it and you can see them doing it in the video and we are suing their justice system part of it only the city of San Francisco and the state of California is going after them for doing it Governor newsom is going after them and because you can and he wants to tech and stuff but really it's not a really great thing to do and a lot of people here are trying to get warrants what happened there and other places where people are grabbed around him and it's kind of ironic because some of them were grabbing them and got information about from it and they're going to be arrested

Bitol and Goddess Wife

We presented the lawsuit against Charles county this morning and it's not for money and it's not really a cantankerous it was just requesting that they perform the work and the job because it's their territory and we said it straight we said no it's not the city it's you guys and you're just arguing and it doesn't make any sense and they're sending something back shortly and it's a lot of people say that says it's not a fiefdom and we don't have to listen to you and it's directed to the city of punta Gorda and the authorities there and it's it's got the law and when it was written and who's writing the law and some of them too about the Charlotte county having that territory and they do the trash pickup too and other things like that so the kind of this made and they don't really get it but they will and it's kind of weird too because of sitting here arguing something that's in writing and that they were working on too but it's sent over and it's coming back to the city today and the city is probably going to block and stuff and the county was just coming in and do the work so we don't really care too much but they say within the week which means probably early next week sometime possibly and they're going to notify stand and they probably will back charge them because he's supposedly done to work it's true too he's notified they have all the documentation with the county it's been 30 days and it's 3 days over the due date

Bitol and Goddess Wife

It's not like a charge or a black mark and it's not much money so I'm going to pay for it and he didn't complain to them either he's trying to help me during the time that they said we had to get it fixed they said I think they shouldn't do that and he was right because it's not done that well and they rip it out they probably write it up and say we did a s***** job and shouldn't have touched it probably try stuff as a matter of fact it's a move on he and I so he's like bulked up with no shirt on and jeans but I look like a Morton Joe and the bench it's kind of a contrast it was kind of friends with Brad this is a weird part they're going to try for us and it's a move and we need to tell people Stan says and I confirm so we're going to we're going to start a lawsuit on that and we're going to start maneuvers on it we're going to notify people but that's what they're doing and the county is Tommy f

Bitol and Goddess Wife

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snowpatrolfanclubbrazil · 6 years

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By Paul Mcnamee

Chasing Cars was the UK's most widely played song of the Noughties. But after global success, Snow Patrol have been quiet for seven years. Frontman Gary Lightbody was drawn into the 'dirt darkness' by drink and depression but now, he tells Paul McNamee, he's found his way home.

Gary Lightbody's moment came two years ago in a gym in Santa Monica. The Snow Patrol frontman has long had a reputation of indulging his appetites. But even he was going at in on a bigger scale, with a fierce, Valhallan vigour. The band's last tour had finished in late 2012.an then: "I started drinking." he says, "with a gusto that a professional boxer might train for a prize fight. It'd be mostly beer, I was quite a happy drunk. There was a hell of a lot of fun. Until it wasn't.

"I'd get to 2am sitting on my own, have a cry, and then a glass of something [stronger], I didn't have any relationships and I wasn't having sex either.I was very hermetic. Around 2015/2016 I was drinking every day and also I was hating it. I regret doing it even though I knew I was doing it out of compulsion" He was hitting the gym in the mornings to sweat it off. Then came the moment.

"I bent down to touch my toes and everything started spinning. It felt like the floor beneath me was moving. I thoughy it was an earthquake. But I kept going on. I phoned a friend who lived around the corner. I was like, 'Are we having an earthquake?' He said "Something's going on here'.

"I had a bunch of CT scans on my head. My whole head was infected - sinus, ears, eyes, everything. I'd been having styes and stuff on my eyes. Stick a teabag on it. This was the week before I was going to France to see Northen Ireland play in their first tournament i 30 years. I siad to the doctor, 'I'm flying to France in five days'. He's like, "No, you're not. If you fly with the air pressure it's feel like daggers ripping into your head'. I was still thinking maybe I'll be alright. I spoke to a friend, Gabrielle, an acupuncturist, an extraordinary human being. She'd been trying to get me to stop drinking for while..." So he stopped. Or at least, he began to stop. And in flooded the dark realities he'd been masking.

In recent weeks, as he's been working around the release of Wildness, Snow Patrol first album in seven years, Lightbody has started to talk for the first time about the mental health problems which have plagued him for year. ("I didn't talk about anything, nobody knew, the band didn't know.") Last year, after 12 months sober, came another key moment.

"Last summer", he says, "I thought I'd be relieved to get the album done. We'd just finished. But I wasn't. I was devasted. I'd opened a place in my psyche and I didn't know how to shut the door. It was like ark of the covenant was opened [from Raider Of The Lost Ark] and there were melting faces left and right and I didn't know how to shut the thing down. So instead of talking to somebody I tried to shut myself out. Let my own face melt. And the band knew something and they flew from London and arrived at the door and I broke down and told them everything.

I have a depressive personality that has no relationship with reality. I could be having the best time on the surface and yet my depression goes 'You're still a cunt. Don't forget that. I'm dragging you down into the inkand the dirt and the darkness'. I could be playing to 15,000 people and three hours later be in a hotel room cruying on the floor. That's happened a bunch of times. The depression and the success have no relation to each other. It's just part of me. I've learned that rather than running from it, which you can never really do - you can have and turn and face it and look it in the eyes and say I'm not afraid of you any more".

And so he went home. Back to Northen Ireland, to North Down where he was brought up. It's the place he was desperate to leave in 1994, whe he ran to Dundee to star university, to start a band , to start years of chipping away with no success. Then he wrote Run and everything changed.

It's easy, given their time away, to forget just how huge Snow Patrol were for a period from the mid to late Noughties, Nobody, really, was bigger. The song Chasing Cars, from fourth album Eyes Open, was picked up for UA his TV show Grey's Anatomy and propelled them to massive fame. Lightbody moved to Santa Monica around 2009. ("Soon as my feet hit the sand in Santa Monica something just hit and I thought, I want to live here") Recently he claimed he'd moved back to Northern Ireland because the band were getting ready to work again and he needed to be near them. But it feels like the truth is little more complicated.

"You're right. There are quite few reasons. My dad isn't well, my mum isn't coping very well and my niece is going to be 11 in July, I've missed most of her life living in LA.

"And I missed home. It's a time in Northern Ireland as well when it feels like we're at a bit of a crossroads again. I felt a bit of a calling back here. Not that I figure I can help in any way, but I certainly won't feel connected if I'm 5,000 miles away I wanted to reconnect". We're meeting in the Crawfordsburn Inn, the picture post card hotel not far from Gary's shorefront home, overlooking Belfast Lough.

It feels timely. We meet on the 20th anniversay of a concert in Belfast's Waterfront Hall, hosted by U2, that helped deliver a huge Yes vote in the referendum for the Good Friday Agreement. In a nation where defiant, No's had been the lingua franca, a Yes was significant. A political statement and a cleansing.

On that day, John Hume and David Trimble were ushered onstage by Bono , a man with a keen eye for a moment, U2 sang Don't Let me Down. Ash were there too, being young and hopefull. Twenty years on, as Lightbody says, Northern Ireland is at a bit of a crossroads. And he's found his way home. The album, Wildness, is worth the wait. If Snow Patrol had touched on themes of running and movement in the past, Wildness has a leitmotif of finally settling; The word 'home' is laced throught several songs. Two tracks in particular illustrate what Snow Patrol can really do - the anthemic reach of the huge, wondroug openning track Life on Earth ( a track that took Gary five years to complete) and the intimancy of What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?), a piece with just Gary on piano, a heartbreaker written for a friend going through a divorce.

The song Soon marks another significant theme. It deal with Lightbody's father Jack's battle with Alzheimer's . It's a simple builder, full of grace note and sadness. There is a something quietly heroic in it. The video, filmed in Lightbody's apartment, sees him and his fater watching old home movies his dad recorded throught the years. As well as the sadness over what his father is losing, there is an understanding of a farewell to lost youth that the hopefulness of that other country is worth revisiting for both of them. "I love my dad," he says. "I have a lot of respect for him so I wanted to honour him, but at the same time I also have a lot of guilt for being away for most of my adult life. I don't just mean LA, I mean Glasgow, London, or on tour constantly. And there is probably a place in my head where I go when I'm feeling somesick and that is both a place of calm and nostalgia and also a place of guilt and some shame.

"I've felt I've been running away most of the time from myself. So [he pauses]...someof the home references are me feeling disconnected rather than connected...feeling like I'd never really found a home. I never truly felt at home when I was growinh up in Northern Ireland. Then I left and never really felt at home anywhere else. And then I moved back to Northen Ireland and now I do feel at home here, but that has also coincided with me feeling at home inside my own body. Which was the whole problem the whole time. I wasn't comfortable with myself, I didn't like myself. So you have to figure that out before you can feel at home anywhere.

The band's influence and legacy go beyond their own work. They've helped shape the sounds that have become pervasive in post-millennial pop. Lightbody and band member Johnny McDaid have written with, among others, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and One Direction. Snow Patrol took Sheeran on the road in the States in 2011, helping him break through. They remain close. "Between myself and Johnny McDaid, we're written a lot of things for other pop acts, him more than me", he say. "I would say Ed came fully formed from his first album. He'd done the groundwork. All the grafting that you need to do, when you're a young band. He busked his ass off from the age of 15 on the streets of London, sleeping on his mate's couch. He had turned up to gigs and said to promoter, can you give me 15 minutes after the doors open. And promoters say aye. That's how he started. He grafted harder and still does to this day - harder than anyone I know. Sheeran's returning the favour, taking the the band on an American tour autumn.

Refusing to accept Snow Patrol as fountainheads of a sound, Lightbody says they are more like Zelig, "probably bystanders". One got away, though. Mutual friend James Corden introduced Lightbody to Adele.

"It happened to be a birthday of somebody that James and Adele knew...and I sat down with her and she said when are we going to do [a song]. We did two days - Adele, Johnny McDaid and me - the bones of three really amazing fucking songs. But we never got round to finishing it. And then the album came out and obviously we weren't on it."

While his own album has just come out, there is already preassure to get busy on the next. Long time producer, friend and mentor Garret "Jacknife" Lee has been in touch ("he says we need to get cracking on the next one"). For now, ahead of their own arena tour in the winter, Lightbody is learning to cope, listening to podcasts ("StuffyouShouldKnow from HowStuffWorks is my favourite one") and Bon Iver ("I think he's the finest songwriter alive") and working things out.

"Me, now not drinking, I like myself but I'm socially awkward, I'd rather be sitting with bandmates, my family. I'm 41. I know what I want.

And that is?

"Peace I want to make sure that every day of my life I take a moment and realise eveything is calmer. I've learned how to meditate, learned how to do Qigong. Learned a whole load of practices that I do every day. They mitigate the madness. The greatest thing I ever did for my own emotional wellbeing was to talk."

And if we went back 20 years, and said here are the successes, here are the demands it'll make on you mentally, personally, physically - would you have taken it? "I would have taken it for half the successes I can't believe what happened to us. I still can't believe when I look back at it, at everything that is successful that has been good. At everything that is still happening. It is a dream, It's a bloody dream."

#snow patrol #gary lightbody #article #news #interview

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highlyspecificsigns · 6 years

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the signs as stuff tori amos has said about her creative process

ARIES: B-Side, 1994, on “God”: “Singing "God" was really empowering -- the primitive, the seduction. Seducing God a bit was wonderful. He's great, he had a good time. He's smiling! I mean look, it's about communicating with a force that you've been so controlled by, and saying I need to deal with this force.”

TAURUS: Seattle End Sessions, 1998, on “Playboy Mommy”: “I had written this thing and I couldn't get the first line. And I was in France with my friend Beenie. I go a lot of places with my friend Beenie. And um, we were with another friend of hers and her mother. Anyway, two of them are having an argument, right? So I decided champagne for everybody was a good idea. And that's what you do in France. And it was like after lunch, so that's good, that's improvement. And um anyway they make very good champagne -- we had Krug -- and if, you know, if you ever have that experience just like even if you have to steal it it's really worth the experience. So okay, I sent champagne around because everybody's arguing and then Beenie comes to like update me on the fighting and who's winning. And so I'm standing at the top of the stairs I'm in this shmoozy suite, I'm embarrassed to say it but I was. And so we're standing at the top and she goes, you know, "Let's go out to the deck and talk about this." So it's one of those round staircases like they have in the Love Boat. And so I'm in these Prada platforms and um I'm at the top of the stairs and I fall all the way down the stairs 'cause I trip on my Prada shoes, serves me right. So I trip all the way down and I lie flat on my face and I swear to Christ I'm lying flat and my nose is like um taped to the rug. And I said, "Oh Beenie, I need more champagne, this is so horrible." But I laid there and I said, "Oh my God, Beenie, oh my god, I have the first line."

GEMINI: VH1.com, 1999, on “Glory of the ‘80s”: “I wasn't into the L.A. [hard] rock scene even though I had big hair and I had thigh-high plastic boots. I think I was more into the gothic witch thing. Pirates. It was that whole dressing-up moment, Adam Ant with tits, but not really -- his were much cuter than mine or my friends'. We used to wake up and go to Retail Slut and pick up a few pieces for the week. There was a balance of thigh-high plastic boots and going to see your shaman. I liked that. It was all happening at the same time. Everything was so much on the outside, pleasing things on the outside, but there was a lot of camaraderie that I really adored. A lot of us were friends, going to see different bands. It wasn't competitive in the way it became in the '90s.”

CANCER: Under the Pink liner notes, 2015, on “Cloud on My Tongue”: “This guy has permeated her force field. Even if they've never physically touched -- he exists within her. Her hope seemed to be that he would value that she had him orbiting -- that he would understand what that meant instead of seeing this relationship as a conquest. It was just the beginning of us creating a solar system together, but he saw it as the end game. She truly valued being someone's other, and he valued many others at the time -- that was his fulfillment. She realized that even though she had let him in, she had to get him out because he couldn't value being in such a sacred position. It's kind of tragic, actually.”

LEO: Deluxe, 1998, on “She’s Your Cocaine”: For "She's Your Cocaine" I put on this tiny black body suit, jeans and high heels, got a margarita and walked outside for 30 minutes to drink Tequila in Cornwall, in the freezing November night. After a take I'll get the guys a coffee and I'll say, "The artist is on one today, isn't she?" They often agree.

VIRGO: Boys for Pele liner notes, 2016, on “Doughnut Song”: “The Ballywilliam House is an old Georgian house on a tall hill over the river. It feels like you can see forever, and sometimes when the fog rolls in, you can stand on the precipice and thing there are people standing around you on those hills from two thousand years ago, lighting those fires for the summer solstice. I was drawn into this hypnotic space, where you wouldn't know if you were in the 20th century. It was disorienting, but instead of my guard going up, I was open to whatever was out there. And this song romanced me.”

LIBRA: Little Earthquakes songbook, on “Happy Phantom”: “When the songs began showing up I wrote their names on separate envelopes and made a faery ring in the middle of the house. I'd sit in the middle of the ring to focus on a song's direction. All of the songs seemed to work toward the completeness of the other. They decided we needed to hang out with death for awhile.”

SCORPIO: BAM, 1994, on “Pretty Good Year”: “Who do you think Lucy is? ...I'm not telling you who Lucy is.”

SAGITTARIUS: Spinner, 2007, on “Caught a Lite Sneeze”: “As a minister's daughter, Boys for Pele freed me. I could sleep with -- well, as I told you -- not only could I sleep with my own male essence that I needed to find, but I woke up and realized that Lucifer wore a white suit and high heels, and drove a nice, cute white truck. And she was very happy.”

CAPRICORN: Making Music, 1996, on “Professional Widow”: “That's my Lady Macbeth, the side of me that wanted power. But power in a man's world. I wanted to be Indiana Jones, not the girlfriend [laughs]. But as I began to do that I started to alienate many men. "Widow" is my hunger for the energy I felt some of the men in my life possessed: the ability to be king. I wasn't content just being a muse. I was the creative force. I was in relationships with different men where if they could honor that, they couldn't honor the woman, and if they could honor the woman, they couldn't honor the creative force.”

AQUARIUS: VH1 Storytellers, 1998, on “Hey Jupiter”: “I was going through something in my life, and I felt the presence at the end of my bed of a ghost of someone I recognized. I was in a hotel room in Arizona during the Under the Pink tour. I followed this ghost into the bathroom. I turned on all the water... the shower... I let the room steam up... the water became part of the sound, almost like an orchestra... and this ghost drew a picture for me in the mirror in the steam. The way I interpreted the picture was that earth and Jupiter were in love billions of years ago, then they were separated, and now they are billions of miles apart, and this is earth's love song to Jupiter.”

PISCES: VH1 Storytellers, 1998, on “Father Lucifer”: “When I came home, I guess it was at Thanksgiving because I remember a bird and forks going down at the table, when my father said to me, "Tori Ellen, I can't believe you wrote this song about me." And I said, "I write everything about you, what are you surprised about?" And he said, "No, but I'm really hurt about this one." And I said, "Well which one is it?" And he said, "Well, you called me Satan." And I said, "No! I was taking drugs with a South American shaman and I really did visit the Devil and I had a journey." And he went, "Oh, Praise Jesus!"

#tori amos #the signs #the signs as #astrology #zodiac #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces

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saintsnsinnersbdb · 3 years

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Deal with the Devil: The End of the Beginning (Part 6)

Written by @Lassiter_SASBDB.

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srinhn

It was a normal, blue-collar suburban neighborhood, filled with 1950’s ranch homes and split-levels. Mature trees lined streets that were probably filled with kids on bikes and dog-walkers during warm weather months, although now they were barren except for a couple of people shoveling snow off the sidewalks and a few toddlers playing in the white stuff with a stay-at-home parent in their respective yards. Shortly the Catholic K-12 down the street would let out and younger kids would trudge their way home while teens tentatively navigated the slick streets in 200,000+ mile Subaru’s and Nissans that had been purchased not by their parents but by working summer and after-school jobs and saving their money to do it themselves. Yeah, this was that kind of human neighborhood. So why was Devina here?

Short answer is hiding out. After I’d rousted her from that obnoxious ode to regentrification in yuppieville she’d gone deep. So deep I’d thought for a while she’d left Caldwell. But I knew I couldn’t be that lucky, so I’d kept looking. The easiest way to find her was to focus on missing persons. Not the bodies, although there would be plenty of those, but she was smart and careful. She wasn’t going to leave any of those where I might put together a pattern. But I’d been looking for the wrong /kind/ of missing persons.

Devina’s preferred prey was male and not too sober. A horny, drunk man was a sitting duck. She’d take females, too. Had all too often, but her bait for them tended to be emotional support or some such shit. She “bonded” with them when they were at low points. So I’d been looking for singles. People who had gone missing from bars or been depressed and just ghosted. I’d been over hundreds of missing persons reports…yeah, computer hacking isn’t my bag, but when you can go invisible and look over a cop’s shoulder for an afternoon it’s a piece of cake to get the right passwords. Then it’s just a little late night B&E into the police station and an empty office. But I’d looked for months and hadn’t found anything I couldn’t track down. And yes, some of them had been dead, but a few inquiries “up top” had let me know the souls had made it where they were supposed to. Obviously not Devina’s victims, as taking the souls was the whole point for the bitch. So I’d finally backed off that angle, taking a wait-until it-smacks-me-in-the-face approach.

For a while I’d turned my attention to the problems of the Brotherhood and the race. That whole deity-in-training thing was turning out to be a full time job. I kind of liked it. Who knew I had it in me? But while “tending my flock” I’d stumbled across something that sent me in a new direction.

Now,I’m not big into the whole “organized religion” thing, even for the race, but I tried to keep tapped into this one particular Catholic church. Most of the brothers aren’t big on prayers to the Virgin Scribe unless shit is going down hard, but Butch was a regular, so long as he could do it in a Catholic church like his human mother had taught him and this was his one of choice. I wasn’t 100% sure prayers not directed to the VS would get to me through the whole ethereal call-forwarding system the Creator had put in effect, so sometimes I went to hear Butch’s in person. I know, I know, I could have just tapped into his head when he was in the manse or the pit, but it seemed like an invasion of privacy to do it in his personal space. A church was basically public, so it felt more acceptable to go invisible and sit in the pew behind him while I listened in. I didn’t wanna neglect him. And it was a beautiful place. The serenity there was on par with my place in the forest so sometimes during the day, after my morning deity duty, I’d go back to the church and hang around and kinda veg in it while the Brotherhood slept. Or whatever. With all the shellans these days you never knew. Or, given the volume level, sometimes you did, but you didn’t /wanna/ know, feel me? So some days I decided to be missing during the fireworks and this place was calming. Ellen and Maury only relieve the stress of being a deity so much, you know? And if I followed the priests back to the rectory, well, hey, the nun who cooked for them made killer snickerdoodles. I kept trying to snitch the recipe for #Fritz but she did it all from her head and man, I am SO not going to pick a nun’s brain.*shudders at the implications* It was while I was looking over her shoulder as she baked that I overheard the three priests that lived there talking.

They’d lost a family from their parish that week. I mean literally LOST them. Dad, mom, and four kids, ages 4 through 9. Just vanished. The kids all went to the parish school and when none of them showed up four days running and the voicemails to the parents weren’t being returned one of the priests had gone to check on them. All he had found was an empty house. He’d called the police and filed a missing persons report to start a preliminary investigation but essentially both mom and dad had called into work one morning and said they were taking a week off, and since it’s not illegal to take vacation time, the cops had done nothing. But it was odd that the school hadn’t been contacted at all. So I did a little digging of my own and what do you know...a pattern.

Six families from different parishes in Caldwell had disappeared in the last four months. Thirty-seven souls in all. All the families had been Catholic. All the families had young children, one just a few months old. And the mother in all the families had attended a stay-at-home mom support group that met every Thursday night in the gymnasium of St. Phillip Neri’s Church and Catholic School. The same one that was just down the street. And the group was open to people from all parishes in the archdiocese, which explained why the missing families were from all over the city.

It hadn’t been hard from there. I’d stationed myself outside the gym two Thursday nights ago and waited and lo and behold, who should walk out, but Devina, bundled up in a puffy white coat that made her look like the Pillsbury Doughboy and fake giggling with a human female. It was “soooo tough to relax when the kids couldn’t get out much because of the cold” she said and then she said her condo on the beach in Florida was “sooooo relaxing” and such a help. And then she offered her nonexistent condo to the frustrated mom and her family for a stress-free vacay. And bingo, bango, done, I knew how she was luring the families in.

She’d left the woman in the parking lot as others came out, getting into a predictably boring, yet originally expensive, used Volvo, thereby confirming her image as a middle-class mom who could afford a few luxuries and putt-putted to the last house on a street that dead-ended at a dense woods with a “no trespassing” sign on the the fence that separated it from neighborhood. That gave me a good idea what she was doing with the bodies.

I’d done my recon in the past two weeks. While she hadn’t brought any new victims home, she did have a routine she invariably followed. In the mornings she made a public appearance with a pair of toddler-sized gollums she glamoured into looking like rosy-faced children. Playing in the front yard, a walk with a stroller in the park, going to the grocery store… it was always carefully planned to give her maximum exposure to her victim group without allowing them to get too involved in interacting with the “kids”. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon she put the golems in carseats and left the house at 1:58 PM. I’d followed her those days and found Devina had a standing 2:30 appointment with a therapist. Good to know somebody else knew what a neurotic bitch she was. She’d deactivated the gollums and left them in the car in a parking garage while she had her appointment, magicking the rear window tint to opacity so no one noticed them there. Afterwards she indulged her inner compulsive shopper for an hour or two and then headed back home.

And now, on /this/ Thursday I was standing across the street from her modest hideout waiting for her to leave. Like clockwork, at 1:58 the garage door rose and the Volvo backed out of the driveway. I had stayed invisible while I waited for her to leave -- even though I’d taken the precaution of tucking my long black and blonde streaked hair down inside my coat with a black watch cap shoved over my head and added shades and a black scarf to obstruct most of my face, I’d decided discretion was the better part of valor here. While it was obviously a friendly neighborhood, 6’7” of unknown muscle encased in black leather standing on a dead end street would make anyone take notice and I did/not/want to be noticed. And I was glad I had. Devina must have sensed something off. She stopped the car after she’d backed onto the street and looked up and down it. She’d paused as her gaze fell on where I was standing and squinted. I simply stood there watching. If she saw me and we did this the hard way, it was no skin off my nose. I’d just thought it would be simpler if I searched for the souls and released them myself before deciding what to do about her this time. Finally, she’d given up and driven down the street to turn onto the main drag. As the last wisp of frozen exhaust from her car disappeared, I turned my attention to her house.

It was a tidy little brick ranch. No gargoyles or garishly macabre door knockers this time. The front lawn was fenced but otherwise unadorned. The curtains were drawn on the large picture window as well as the jalousies that were probably the bedrooms’ windows to the world. Down lower, hopper windows told me there was a basement. All in all, even if the basement is finished, there’s probably only 1400 square feet absolute max. A huge comedown for her. Devina liked luxury and lots of it. This probably was very nearly Hell for her. *smirking as I fold my arms across my chest.*

Getting inside wasn’t a problem. Although Devina knew how to keep me out she was just arrogant enough to assume this was enough of a change to keep me from finding her and maintaining warding requires power that she doesn’t have an abundance of right now. Thirty-seven souls weren’t going to be enough to keep it powered up and maintain the glamour that kept people from seeing the evil hellbitch she really was. But she could have put in ADT and that was going to take some finesse. I didn’t want her coming back before I was ready for her. As I dematerialized just inside the front door I took a moment and looked around. To the left, just behind where the door would hide it if I’d opened it was a control box with a steady green light. It was either set to trigger when the door opened or had motion sensors connected to it. Either way was no big deal. While it might have caught an unwary human, all I had to do was demat from room to room and stand still while I scoped them out.

As I stood in the doorway looked through the small living room it was apparent that Devina was maintaining her cover well. There was nothing here to indicate she wasn’t what she seemed. A photo of her in a wedding dress with a man in a tux graced the foyer wall surrounded by pictures of the “kids”. On the table beneath it lay a scrapbook, conveniently open to an obituary for National Guard Captain Alan Veckman, KIA in Afghanistan. A wife and two kids were listed as the only survivors. That explained why she hadn’t gollumed up a spouse for her image. She’d just tracked this guy down, photoshopped herself into their wedding picture, and probably taken the wife and kids as her first victims this time around. Instant sympathetic widow.

The house had had some modernization done on the inside. Instead of closed off main rooms the dining room walls had been knocked down to open it up to both living room and kitchen, forming the more-currently-popular “great room''. From here I could see all the public spaces were clean. No macabre art work on the walls, no horrific but trendy sculpture. Just a few framed prints on the walls and the typical kid’s finger paintings on the fridge. I popped into the kids bedroom and the hall bath, doing a quick check, but finding nothing then moved on to the master. It had been remodeled too, probably taking out the third bedroom to enlarge it and add the spa-like ensuite. This space, small by Devina’s norms, still felt more like her. Where the great room had been “Leave It To Beaver” tidy, this place was an overpacked disaster. Her shopping addiction was apparent in the overstuffed closet and bags of clothing laying on the floor. Jewelry strung haphazardly across the dresser and the unmade bed completed the total mess. The bathroom had every known brand of cosmetic, perfume and skin treatment known to man represented, and that was just a waste of money, given she relied on magick to maintain her outwardly pretty face and body. Lots of scented bath crap around the tub, too. Keeping the stench of evil down must require some heavy maintenance. But still nothing that hinted at her new well of souls.

Only one place left to check. The basement. I’d spied the door to it in the kitchen. If any door was going to be wired to alert her, it would be that one, but if it was her gateway to hell, ADT wasn’t going to be her alert system. Dematting to the kitchen, I look at the door and open my senses. There was nothing alive in that basement but there sure was a lot of pain coming from it. I dematerialize to the otherside of the door and flick on the stairwell light. The smell hits me immediately. The odor of death is distinctive. The odor of death by torture even more so. Blood, feces, spilled intestines, vomit….and the residual agony...I had to stop on the steps and take a deep breath to steel myself. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, been on battlefields. But I never get used to this.

Jaw set grimly, I focus on the details of my surroundings to get me down the stairs. The walls are painted yellow concrete blocks, the ceiling exposed floor joists. The floor at the bottom of the stairs is smooth concrete. My eyes follow the slope of the concrete to the center drain, beginning to take in the blood and viscera still laying on the floor. She must have magicked the whole damned place to keep the smell down here. Nausea rises in my throat, but I force it down as my gaze rises to the table over the center drain. It’s a steel autopsy table, the kind sits on a pedestal and raises and lowers for the user's convenience. It has a sink attached to it and channels that run down the sides to let blood and body fluids drain away . But unlike standard autopsy tables this one also has straps attached. Ones for wrists, ankles and forehead as well as thicker ones that run over the chest and thighs. I guess Devina wanted options. Staked to the wall behind it is the mutilated body of a female. Early 30’s, blonde, fair skinned where the corpse wasn’t ripped open or stained with red. Before moving towards it, I flip another switch that lights the corners of the basement. I take in the empty cell in the corner. Makes sense. If she’s taking families she can’t work on them all at once and holding them immobile takes power she doesn’t have. And on the concrete wall that runs behind the staircase I see it. Instead of a well she’s created a wall this time. Faces frozen in agony are embedded along it. Male, female...children…

”Creator,” it’s a scream in my head “she did this to CHILDREN!” I can feel His pain, but the whisper enters my head “She has a part to play. She must live.”

I choke back an agonized cry and move towards the woman staked to the wall. Gently I close her already clouded eyes, murmuring “I’m sorry. I was too late for you and your family. But I’ll set you free.” I know she’s not in there anymore. She’s on that god damned wall. The body is just the alarm system. Devina will know if it’s moved. Well, I’ll get to that.

Moving to the wall, I let my wings become visible. The basement ceiling is too low for me to spread them fully, but I can feel the souls’ pain and terror. Going full angel will help calm them, I hope. The white light I normally suppress to a dim glow that can be at least partially explained by the light catching all my piercings is fully released to become a white light so brilliant it would burn the retina’s of a mortal.

“𒂼𒅈𒄄.” Release, in ancient Summarian, the language taught to humans by the angels. “Ama-ar-gi. Release,” I repeat it again and again as the souls gradually disengage from the wall and come to stand before me. Fathers, mothers...little ones, all confused and fearful. But even as they shimmer into existence, the rheapers come. I knew they would. As I serve the Creator, they serve Death. I help mortal souls find their way in life. They help souls move on and find their way once their mortal bodies can no longer serve them. And, like me, they’ve seen it all, but also like me, this sickens them. After the initial shock of pity passes, compassion settles on their faces as they begin to take the souls. Somehow they know which souls belong together and they take them as families.

After the last has gone, one rheaper remains. She’s small and dark-haired, her 5’3” frame barely reaching chest high on me, but she comes towards me, pounding her finger into my chest and hissing,

“They weren’t supposed to die yet! Take. Care. Of. This. Or we will.”

“I can’t. The Creator says she has to live. For at least a little longer.”

“Good thing we don’t answer to Him, then isn’t it? My boss doesn’t like waste of the life spark and this is incredible waste,” she shoots back at me. As I look at her, not a little shocked, she shrugs “What, you didn’t know? Everything dies. Even at the Creator’s level, there’s balance. Balance for Life is Death. Two sides of the same coin. So,” putting her hands on her hips and squaring off with me,” handle this before we do.”

“The demon has a part to play. I don’t like it, but I’m forbidden to kill her.” My frustration must be showing in my face, because she softens a little bit.

“Then get creative with it. Because the rheaper way won’t be creative. Just final.”

She disappears in front of me, a fine black mist swirling into nothing. ‘Get creative,’ she’d said. Biting my lip, an idea I really don’t like hits me, but one of the Creator’s early lessons pushes back on my initial rejection. ‘Being a deity often consists of doing things you don’t like.’ Yeah, this qualifies. With a sigh, I go to the body staked on the other wall and gently remove it, laying it on the autopsy table. The sudden drop in power when the souls were freed would have been enough to alert Davina there was trouble. At this point moving the female’s body was just respect for the dead. But I wouldn’t face the bitch over it.

As I go back up the stairs, I open the door to the kitchen and cross to take a seat at the table just as I hear the garage door go up. As she bursts through the door from the garage, she shrieks,

“YOU! What have you DONE?!!!!”

“Hello to you, too. Long time no see.” Everything in me wants to slam a lightning bolt through that glamored body just to see it twitch, but that’s not the plan. “You knew I’d still be looking for you. Did you really think hiding out in this hovel would be enough camouflage? You have a very distinct signature.”

“Those souls were MINE! They came to me freely. You had no RIGHT!” The last comes out as an angry wail and ok, I’m done with diplomacy. Rising from my chair I slam my hand thunderously on the table.

“I have EVERY right. You broke the rules. You took innocents…children. Babes in arms. You’re only allowed ones that have the ability to make their own choices.”

She glares at me, then crosses her arms and simpers, “The parents made their choices for them. Children have such power, You know, the more innocent the soul, the greater the energy. I’m short on that, thanks to you, so kids were a quick way to restore it. And the pain of the parents as they watched their brats die...it was sooo delicious. That kind of pain is almost as powerful as the kids' souls. So I’m stronger now than I was the last time we faced off. Whatcha’ going to do about it?”

Motherfucking bitch….Oh, so not getting away with that. Holding a hand out, I release a bolt of electricity that knocks her back against the refrigerator and spears through her body to pin her to it.

“What am I going to do about it?” I repeat. “I can do a lot of /very/ painful things to you Devina that won’t result in your --immediate-- death. You’ll just wish it did. I’m not that naive angel boy you once knew and betrayed. Deity-level upgrades come with deity-level thinking. And you aren’t strong enough to break free even from that,” nodding at the electric bindings holding her to the fridge, “Now are you? So I have a lot of pain in store for you. Maybe I”ll use your own autopsy table. But,” materializing a silver handled angel’s dagger, the blade flashing blue fire, “I think I’ll bring my own tools.”

The thing is, while I really would like to end Devina, torture isn’t my thing. It makes me wanna throw up. But ‘get creative’ the rheaper had said, so creative I was being. Devina doesn’t know what the kind of changes the Creator made with me when he agreed to bring me up to a deity, might have done to my psyche. In her fallen, psychotic brain the Creator is a cold, distant daddy figure capable of enjoying causing His children pain and she’s getting back at Him by embracing the dark side. So I can see the doubt growing in those dark eyes. She’s asking herself if I’m still the same egocentric, soft, gullible angel-boy toy she used and killed centuries ago or am I growing up in Daddy’s image? Have I turned into a being that is detached enough to use pain for my own ends? Thing is, I hope I am becoming more like the Creator. Because He’s nothing like what she thinks He is and nothing like who I used to be either. He’s just….more. But the doubt is good for my plan.

The energy trapping her against the refrigerator is doing its job. Not only is it keeping her immobilized, it’s sapping her strength enough that her true appearance is flickering through. Time to move to the next step. Calmly, I take the tip of my dagger and clean a nail with it before pointing it at her.

“You’re losing your mojo babe. Your face is showing. I don’t think all those creams and cosmetics are helpful for decayed, oozing skin.”

“OH!....Lassiter, please, don’t do this to me. To us. Remember what we were…”

Oh, I remember all right. In my nightmares. But this tact plays. I heave a sigh and look at her sadly, as though remembering something bittersweet.

“We did have some good times didn’t we. You were something special back then. We had something special.” Oh gag me, this is more likely to make me puke than torturing her. But she seizes on it.

“We did, yes, we did. Let me go, Lassiter and we can again. I never stopped loving you, I just got caught up in it all. It’s so dog-eat-dog on the dark side!”

Christ, how do I not kill her when she spews shit like this? But be creative. Creative. Think of it as an acting job. Ok… Sadly, I shake my head.

“Too much water has passed under that bridge for me to cross it again Devina. But…” pausing for effect, “for old times sake, maybe we could come to an agreement. Something that lets me not have to kill you.” Right now. Not have to kill you right now…. She makes a major effort to hold the glamour and pours a combination of pleading sensuality into her eyes that should have won her an Oscar.

“Oh, baby,” I cringe inwardly as she calls me ‘baby’, “I’m so sorry. But,” And there it is, the self-interest speaking…. “What kind of agreement did you have in mind?”

Bingo. Gotcha hooked. “If I let you go, you have to promise not to go after innocents. You have to leave them alone. And that includes their parents. And,people who are kind of lost, too. You can’t use that emo bonding thing with them to lure them in anymore.”

“But, but…,” she makes a pout, “what does that leave me with? I have to have /some/ leeway or I’ll die.”

And this is the part that irks me most. It goes against everything in me. But she’ll fuck it up, probably sooner that later and I won’t have to keep my end.

“Go back to trolling for your prey in bars. If they choose you, really choose you, you can keep them. You’ll have to work harder for it. A quick fuck in the backseat of the car isn’t going to be enough to get their souls. But if you can get them obsessed with you? You can keep them.”

“It will take me forever to restore myself that way!” It comes out as a wail but she’s almost there.

“It will take time,” I agree. “But meanwhile you won’t be stuck in suburbia living in a 1400 sq ft. dump. You can indulge yourself in the highlife again and I won’t hunt you. Think of it. A luxury loft, being able to wear Prada and Coach without blowing your image…think of the time it takes you to build back up as doing penance in the demonic equivalent of Club Fed. Payment for the innocents you took. All the perks, just a few restrictions. It’s the best I can offer you.”

“Fine,” she spits out, and I have to struggle to keep the uniquely male satisfaction of knowing that whenever a female says ‘fine’ it’s absolutely not fine but that she has no other options, off my face. “But you’re going to have to let me out of this restraint.” And then she coos “We’ll seal it with a kiss.”

Oh, hells no to that. “I’d rather we seal it with this.” Holding up my hand I materialize a contract containing everything we’ve talked about. And some very special wording. “You’ll sign it in your blood.” Laying the document on the counter, I release the energy restraints and grab her arm. Using the dagger I slice her arm as she howls in both pain and outrage, but not fast enough to do anything about it.

“Here. Use this. It’s appropriate.” My wings materialize and I bend one forward towards my hand. Managing to pluck a silvery secondary feather, I dip the tip in the blood running down her arm and hand it to her. “The magick in my feathers will make it doubly binding. Break the agreement and I’ll know. Immediately.”

If looks could kill, she’d be frying an angel right now. And with her, at full power, looks could. But she doesn’t have the juice right now and we both know it. She scrawls her name on the document and thrusts it at me, but drops the hand holding my feather. “Here. Take it.”

“Uh,uh uh...not so fast. I’ll take that feather back too.” Can’t let her keep it. No telling what kind of evil she’d use it to conjure up on me. Taking both feather and contract back, I step back from her and add, “You should have read the contract. In addition to specifying how you can attract souls it also specifies only /human/ souls.”

Dropping all pretense of cordiality now, I narrow my eyes at her. “I know you were imprisoned and I know how you were freed and by whom. Stick with taking the human souls agreed upon in the way we agreed upon and we don’t have a problem.” Until she breaks the contract. Then all bets are off. But one thing at a time.

“I’m going to make you pay for this Lassiter!” She yells as she grabs for the contract.

“Oh, please, bitch,” dematerializing contract and feather back to my room at the manse, “stop with the evil super-villain talk. It’s really cliche and Darkseid did it better.”

Walking to the door, I jerk it open, setting off the alarm system she’d neglected to turn off when she came in. As the earsplitting siren split the neighborhood quiet, I added...

“Oh, and if you want to avoid the police, I’d be vacating this place PDQ. I’ll be phoning in a dead body in the basement as soon as I’m out the door. Laters, babe.”

The resounding crash of what had to be the blender off the countertop hitting the door makes me chuckle as I dial 911.

“911? Yeah, I want to report a dead body….”

#DealWithTheDevil #TheEndOfTheBeginning #PartSix #TBC #SaintsNSinners #BDB #SASBDB

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