#(so his effective numbers are about twice as high as my raw numbers)

[gcldfanged]

(hey soda you should write me a drabble of jae watching tseng shoot veld)

"You must eliminate the Leader of Avalanche and the fugitive, Verdot."

The words are clear as day even with the commlink's static buzz, a wave of silence permeating the very air around them as dust devils howled to life around the platoon.

Jae takes a protective stance near Veld and Elfe, his right hand slowly reaching for his sidearm.

Reno seems to follow his lead, barking out his answer.

"We ain't gonna swallow that!"

Rude appears to be in silent agreement as well, staring down the infantrymen pointing their rifles at the group with a cold and intense gaze- As though he were convinced he could dodge bullets like in the grainy film footage of schlocky action drivel, all gunkata and superhuman feats of agility, like slicing a bullet into clean twinned halves with little more than a Wutaian katana made from steel folded over a thousand fucking times.

All that was left was Tseng.

The other agent drew his gun, much to the surprise of Reno and Verdot, while Yoon merely followed suit and prepared to cover Tseng with his own sidearm. His dark eyes were wide open, focused intently on the number of enemies and their slim chances of survival.

He could deal with the odds.

The soldiers trained their sights upon their targets, the cyclopic visors masking their expressions.

"This is my answer," Tseng stated calmly. "... as the Head of the Turks."

No sooner than Tseng had pivoted on his heel to re-aim his firearm, Jae-hyo blocked his path with his own body, a mixture of disgust and disbelief twisting his expression into a pained grimace. The adrenaline was making him twitchy, almost high from the epinephrine released into his system. Words weren't even necessary by that point, they both knew that Jae wouldn't hesitate to kill a fellow agent if Verdot's life was on the line.

Except Tseng wasn't aiming for Veld at all.

The gunshot rang out like a clap of thunder and Elfe dropped to the dusty earth, the canvas fatigues of her uniform blooming a deep shade of crimson. Blood spilled out into the plains grass and mud, making a dull hued river of vitae.

"You and I both know this is the only way."

"Fuck. You," Jae spat viciously, grinding out the curses through clenched teeth.

His mind was still trying to catch up, from watching Elfe die to readjusting his stance, his trigger finger ready to pull back firmly because you did NOT squeeze a trigger- That was weeknight crime drama procedurals talking and not the actions of a dyed in the wool honest to god killer.

But could he kill Tseng? He'd already hesitated. Once, twice, a million fucking lifetimes ago.

He hated this. The little games that Shinra played, where all the judges were crooked and the politics were childishly cruel and wicked, all for the sake of warming their fat asses on some MATEVY leather and chrome chaise lounge that cost about as much as a luxury car. It was... evil, in it's more raw and purest form.

Verdot's hand was soft against his left shoulder, a craggy palm snaking over the padded bulk of his jacket and just resting there with it's familiar and meaningful weight.

"Stand down, kid... Tseng's making the right decision."

Tseng's gaze leveled with Veld's in some unspoken communication happening between them that Yoon was irritated to not be privy to. How could this be the right decision? Since when and who decided that- He wouldn't, could not accept that Verdot had to die a meaningless traitor's death.

The mental image of Verdot's haunting rictus staring back at him from the inside of a black bag steeled his resolve, until Verdot twisted Jae's arm behind his back, effectively disarming him in the blink of an eye.

"This is who we are. That is the true spirit of the Turks."

The harder he struggled, the tighter Verdot held onto him, jamming his wrist between his shoulder blades so he couldn't move without dislocating a shoulder.

"Sir, please don't do this-"

Tseng continued the one-sided conversation, ignoring Yoon's begging and frantic cries for mercy, to stop, to put a halt to this farcical turn of events.

"I knew you would understand, sir... For everything up until now- Thank you."

Verdot releases his arm, but his foot hooks around Jae's ankle and sends him sprawling onto the ground. The world inverts, a sea of stars glimmering against a canvas of inky black replacing the image of his comrade pointing a gun at their leader- Their mentor, their savior.

The gunshot is so close his ears start ringing, brimstone and sulfur filling his nostrils. He can't hear anything else, if anything more is being said, struggling to scramble onto his hands and knees. He feels it before he can see properly, the slump of Verdot's weight against his side. The hot slickness of his blood soaking into the dark wool gabardine and starched cotton of his suit. It pools and seeps against his skin, leaving his sleeve heavy.

He can't even find the strength to breathe, his chest constricting tightly as his right hand reaches out to lightly hold onto the elder man's fingers. They're limp, they don't squeeze back with a confident, masculine strength. Just lie there, splayed against the dirt.

The tears come near instantaneously, blurring his vision as he presses his forehead into the ground roughly. Teeth bared, clenched so tightly his jaw feels like it might crack at any moment, his throat seizing up as he heaves out broken animal noises and gasps, gripping tightly to Verdot's still warm hand like a lifeline. It's like he's forgotten how to get up and right himself, reduced to just laying there in the spreading pool of blood, hoping the crust of dirt and rock and limestone beneath would just open up and swallow him whole- Pulverize his bones and grind him into dust, melt his remains into molten iron.

Distantly, he hears Reno's knees hit the floor, the redhead's anguished cries joining his own.

#ceaselxss #◈ five fingers two black hooves [ic] #◈ WRITING #THANK YOU SO MUCH CAS I HATE THIS

[vespertine-legacy]

Some fun moments from last night while progging Apex...

Vi, sometime around like... 4th pull: [surreptitiously drops legacy bank] rest of the raid: whatcha doin’ there, Vi? Vi: oh, nothin... just... you know... grabbing my gear... rest of the raid: VI???? me, who has healed Vi naked through two bosses without letting her die: pffft, gear just slows you down Vi: Right??? Pol (other healer): Doubt

On the pull where we tried having Frenzy also run for stims during voltinator “because Apex doesn’t move during voltinator anyway”

Ash: oh that’s not good (because Apex moved while Frenzy was out of position and started dropping acid puddles in Very Bad Spots) me: [throwing hots on Ash, Princess, Frenzy, and myself, popping a defensive and hydraulics, and running through the acid puddle to get back into position] it’s fine Ash and Princess: [go the long way to get back into position to avoid the acid puddles] Ash: oh no, oh no, oh no Princess’s HP: [plummeting] me: it’s fine

I don’t remember when this exchange happened but:

me: [with tears streaming down my face from too many pulls without blinking] can someone please remind me to blink at like, any point during this fight? because when it starts getting hairy, I don’t, and this fight is entirely too long for that Princess: OH MY GOD, SAME

Anyway, on our last pull, we got him down to like 25% and then the entire server lagged so hard that Apex just straight up froze for all of us but Frenzy for like 10 straight seconds, so Frenzy was just like “voltinator,” expecting us to, you know, do our jobs for voltinator, but no one could do anything, so Frenzy was like “um, voltinator,” with a little more feeling, but we still couldn’t do anything, and then he insta-killed us.

#swtor #november plays swtor #how none of us noticed that vi was not geared for that many pulls? #but also the off tank honestly doesn't really need gear during apex???? #i probably look an absolute mess while healing hm apex #tears and eventually snot seriously just STREAMING down my face #that fight is so damn long #and i can't take the time to blink #but pol and i are getting into a really good rhythm on the fight and getting to where we can keep everyone pretty well up the entire time #pol made a comment last night about me pulling better numbers than him on most of the pulls #and like... it was the first time i did #but i would dang sure hope i start pulling higher numbers than him #since he's having to run the flares #which makes him have down time on his heals #and i only have to run for stims once #(also blah blah i know numbers don't make the healer blah blah) #(but we're also progging hm mono) #(and i can't get a handle on the mechanics in there) #(so his effective numbers are about twice as high as my raw numbers) #(which hurts) #(both my feelings and the raid's ability to stay alive whoops)

[eggytranslations]

Volume 1, Chapter 1-Ambush

Content warnings: death, ableism, suicidal thoughts, mention of racism?

The whole thing happened so suddenly.

“Thump—”,  a small blue and white porcelain bowl fell to the ground, rolled twice, and fractured into several small pieces. At the same time, the shiny brass bell that had been polished by time also fell from a great height, jingling twice with an especially alarming panic, and then slumped over beside the fragments.

“Shaoye…shaoye, shaoye...somebody help! Shaoye has been bitten by a snake!...”

The shrill voice cut through this early spring afternoon, a rare bright and sunny day. Very quickly, endless bustling footsteps came from the originally tranquil mountain courtyard—kick and clatter—you could even hear the sounds of these panicked footsteps knocking over things. 

Shen Qingxuan widened his eyes to stare ahead, working hard, trying to get a glimpse of the beast that had bit him, but his eyes were blurred, as if they were covered by a layer of thin white gauze, so no matter how hard he tried he could not see clearly. Internally, he could not help but be stunned by the snake’s powerful venom, but also secretly think, man proposes but God disposes. He had thought of countless ways of dying, yet how could he have foreseen that he would ultimately end by a snake’s venomous fangs?

Thinking up to now, in his heart of hearts, he was not shocked, and just closed his eyes. He was vaguely aware that the servants who rushed over had moved him from the chair, and were frantically calling for the physician while yelling for someone to fetch the antidote pills.

And anything after that, he did not know at all.

The eldest young master of the Shen family was bit by a snake in his mountain villa.

This news travelled like the birds in the mountain forest had flapped their wings and carried it out themselves, taking only a cup of tea’s time before sounds of horse feet came from the originally tranquil mountain path. One after another, the horse carriage and silk sedan chair

finally arrived outside the doors of the mountain villa in a rush. 

The rider on the horse and the noble in the sedan hurriedly disembarked, entered through the doors, and without anyone greeting them, burst into Shen Qingxuan’s room. 

The man lay behind green gauze curtains with both eyes shut tight. His forehead was overtaken by an unclear black-purple color, that dense color was even gradually spreading throughout his whole face. His originally light colored lips became strangely flushed red from the contrast of his black-purple face. His refreshing outer appearance was completely gone. At a glance, he actually looked like three parts human and seven parts ghost already.

“Xiao Xuan!” An elder with lightly frosted temples saw Shen Qingxuan’s state and let out a low cry that was sorrowful and grieved to the utmost point. “My son!” He cried, as if he still had words to say, but could only choke.

“Laoye.” The uninvolved steward who stood to the side quickly interrupted his master’s grief, and reminded him, “Laoye should not be grieving now, the proper thing to do is to think of an idea to save shaoye’s life first.”

“Yes, yes.” Under the rush of grief for his son, Master Shen only woke up to his error through that warning, and he quickly got up with a hand over his eyes. Still choking with sobs, he asked the servant beside him: “Did you all remove the toxin yet?”

“There are always snakes, insects, rats, and ants on the mountain, therefore all the regular medicines are supplied. The antidote pills for snake venom have just been given to shaoye, but...the effects are not clear.”

“What kind of snake was it, could you see clearly?” the steward hurriedly asked.

“It was too chaotic then, this lowly servant could not see clearly. It was coiled on the pergola

in the yard, but it was also blocked by the branches. In my quick glance, I only saw a section that was as big as the mouth of a bowl…” the servant spoke and gestured, but once he finished speaking, his forehead was firmly slapped. The steward angrily said, “Glib-tongued servant, you are full of nonsense!” Ignoring the servant’s tearful complaints, the steward simply explained to Master Shen, “Laoye, Lu-mou also lived in the mountain forests as a child, but I have never heard of a snake that could grow that thick and big. Unless it is a python, but big as pythons are, they do not easily bite people, and their toxicity is even less likely to be this fierce. This servant must be speaking rubbish, he is only describing it so dreadfully so that he can be punished less.”

Master Shen was terribly upset, and could not handle this presently. He just angrily told the retainer to scram.

“Where is the bite?” The steward asked again of the servant girl who was shaking by the doorpost. She was Shen Qingxuan’s personal handmaid.

“On the wrist.” The maidservand’s face was pallid, and she anxiously added, “Since the sunshine was good today, shaoye wanted to sunbathe, so I wheeled him into the yard. As usual, shaoye wanted to drink a pot of floral tea at that moment. After making the tea for shaoye, I was going to bring some tea cakes, but just as I turned around and walked a couple steps, I heard the tea cup fall to the ground. When I turned back around, shaoye had already been bitten by the snake...” At this point, the maidservant already had tears in her eyes, and was sobbing.

“You saw that snake?”

“I saw it. That person was not lying. That snake really was as thick as the mouth of a bowl, and perched on the railing. When I saw it, it had just drawn back. I saw it was pitch-black, only its abdomen had a bit of gold. I have been on this mountain serving shaoye all these years, and saw some snakes that were beaten dead, but I have never seen such a large snake...”

“It was really that big?” The steward was still uncertain.

Her knees went soft, the girl kneeled on the ground, crying while vowing: “How would this maidservant lie about such an important matter? If there is a trace of a lie, then this maidservant shall die miserably!”

On this side of the room, the steward checked the testimony. On the other side, Master Shen suppressed his sadness to observe his son’s injuries. When he pulled out his eldest son’s wrist, he saw that the injury bitten by the snake’s fangs had already been crossed through with a knife. This helped him relax a bit, knowing a servant was quick-witted enough to promptly slit an opening and suck out the poisonous blood. But this snake venom is too aggressive; in just a short period, it caused a grown man to lose all his senses. Unfortunately, this toxin may have already entered the bloodstream, and would be difficult to clear!

Master Shen grasped that thin and pale wrist, his heart filling with sorrow. It is said that the eldest son is the pillar of his family. He did not have a son until he was 30, yet he let Shen Qingxuan fall into an ice cave at the age of eight. After the rescue and a high fever, not only did his son become mute, but his lower limbs were also damaged by the frostbite, and could only ever be paralyzed on the daybed. Master Shen originally thought it would be easy to raise and support him. There was no need for him to obtain fame and fortune; with the Shen family fortunes, there was no issue supporting the eldest son for his whole, peaceful life. However, who would have thought that at age 27, he would be bitten by a snake.

“That ruinous beast!” With a low shout, Master Shen even had thoughts to catch that snake and eat its meat raw.

“Laoye, do not worry.” The old steward, who has looked after the Shen family his whole life, yet again consoled. “Shaoye’s health has always been weak. Year in and year out, he has been rehabilitating in the mountain villa, therefore all kinds of precious medicines are more or less prepared. Maybe there is still a means.”

“What kind of means?”

“Does laoye still remember what happened during last year’s Mid-Autumn? Someone from Nanman, who had dealt business with the Shen family, gave a tribute of two pills that were said to be capable of relieving all the world’s strangest poisons?”

“I remember, I remember. I saved that medicine. ...Does it really work?”

“Laoshen does not know either, I am just told that the Nanman wetlands contain poisonous insects and wild beasts in numbers. This pill might really have miraculous effects, perhaps?”

“Then why have you not fetched it?” Master Shen stood up in a hurry.

“Aye.”

The medication was quickly retrieved, dissolved in warm water, and administered. As he was fed the medicine, Shen Qingxuan’s jaw was clenched tight, his facial muscles rigid, seemingly a hair’s breadth away from death.

The whole room was engulfed in a state of panic, and the air felt heavy.

Night fell, and the servants lit the oil lamps. Light and shadow quivered.

Shen Qingxuan’s bedroom door opened sometimes and closed sometimes, people shuffling out and in.

Yet not one person noticed, in the swaying shadow of the oil lamp, there quietly stood a man.

Black hair flowed loosely down to his waist. He was also dressed in a black robe, standing with both hands behind his back. The lapels of his robe were embroidered with gold thread into simple decorative patterns. Expression ice cold and lips pursed, he was standing there for who knows how long.

Not one person noticed, and even the people who brushed past him did not cast a glance at him. If anyone had seen him, they surely would not turn a blind eye to this man that looked like a demon on earth.

But indeed, not a single person knew his presence.

The night grew late, Master Shen was tired in both body and heart. He wanted to keep vigil by his son’s bedside, but old age ruthlessly shackled his parental affections. It was the end of February, and although spring had begun, the nights were still cold. After a few soft coughs, Master Shen faintly felt his head start to hurt. Under the steward’s encouragement, although he was loath to leave, he still went to a room warmed by charcoal fire and lay down on the bed.

In the bedroom, there were only the steward and three servants left still looking after Shen Qingxuan.

After another two double-hours passed, Shen Qingxuan, whose breathing had been shallow, gradually gained a steadier and stronger breathing sound. In the shadows, the unmoved, standing man slightly raised his eyes. His eyes showed a spark of surprise; he did not believe this world had an antidote that could actually detoxify his venom.

As expected, when he concentrated a bit to take a closer look at the gaunt and frail man lying on the bed, it dawned on him: this is the so-called rally before death.

Those antidote drugs, at most, only delayed a few threads of time. Antidote? Pure delusion.

Shen Qingxuan struggled to open his eyes. His heavy eyelids felt like they weighed a ton, no matter how he tried, he could not open them.

However, the servant girl waiting by him saw his movements, and joyfully shouted: “Shaoye, shaoye!"

Her noise had a rash joy, and woke up the small courtyard and mountain forest that just fell asleep.

Very quickly, Master Shen came over dressed in a cloak

and did not even stop to put on his socks and shoes. He frantically ran, and yelled: “Xuan’er, Xuan’er...Have you awakened, Xuan’er? Dad is worried sick...” 

Perhaps the calls of his family gave Shen Qingxuan strength, his quivering eyelids worked to open, and finally they budged. His eyes were slack, taking a moment to focus until the depths of his eyes had some liveliness. 

Shen Qingxuan slightly opened his mouth to speak, yet could not make a sound.

But everyone knew he said, “Dad.”

“Ah, dad is here...” the old man immediately burst into tears. Master Shen did not even care to consider how many years he spent with the stance of an elder, he shakingly grabbed his son’s hand, murmuring, “Qingxuan ah, do you feel better? If you are better, then Dad will be so relieved…”

Shen Qingxuan used all his strength, just to barely pull his rigid face into a small smile. Internally, however, he somehow knew he could not escape death this time. His whole body was entrapped in a sense of paralysis with no ability to move. Whenever he breathed, his nostrils filled with a fishy sweet scent; what’s more, in front of his eyes were bursts of pitch-black with intervals of clarity.

The sensations when one is on the brink of death are probably like this.

Actually, there was nothing to dread. For disabled people like him, death was really not as dreadful as living.

Only, he could not bear to leave his parents and younger brother.

These years, his family was the only pillar he had to support him in continuing to seek happiness in life. Everytime he thought about his parent’s pitiful grief after his passing from this world, he could not bear it in his heart.

He thought about his own death, not because he was abandoning and resigning himself to despair. These years in the wheelchair, he actually grew accustomed to this existence of not being able to take care of himself. Burying his childhood dreams of flourishing a whip and riding a horse was not a very challenging task at all.

He thought about his own death because his health was deteriorating year after year.

Before, he could occasionally bask in the sun, call someone to push him, and go for a stroll in the wooded forest.

But in the last two years, he was getting worse. Catch a little draft, and he would be ill for a period, each time more serious than the last. Eventually, it became so bad he could not get out of bed for a month or two.

This winter, he did not go outside. He barely even opened the windows.

He finally recovered, and wanted to bask a bit in the sun, yet he startled a snake that had just ended its winter hibernation and was out to bask in the sun as well.

Thinking of this, Shen Qingxuan could not help but smile, and think to himself that this sunbathing, it seems, whether for himself or the snake, was not comfortable.

He knew in his heart that the snake was just sunning itself on the railing at first, and he was sitting in his chair—man and snake minding their own business. 

They could have lived harmoniously in peace and returned to their respectives homes after sunbathing.

But somehow a soiled piece of leaf just had to fall into the clear tea water. His natural disposition preferred cleanliness, so he, immediately and without another thought, threw out the bowl of hot tea.

At the time, he did not see that snake. Once he realized it was improper, the tea had already been thrown out, and had drenched those shiny black scales with steaming hot water.

The startled snake turned its head around and took a bite out of the hand he did not retract in time.

In truth though, it was more of his own fault. Such hot water, nevermind a snake, even a mere rabbit would be startled enough to retaliate.

It was a very mighty snake. He only caught one glimpse of it, then got distracted by the pain and had to look away. But Shen Qingxuan still remembered that the snake was gleaming black all over; when crouched with its head erect, its neck and abdomen gleamed golden yellow, which was particularly dazzling in the light of the afternoon sun. Later, he wanted to take a closer look, but could not see clearly anymore. He also was not sure if that snake was scalded or not.

It is said these kinds of apodal animals are completely covered with small scales, and probably are not really easily harmed by a cup of hot tea.

In front of his eyes was another moment of extremely dizzying blackness, to the point that even the sound of his father’s voice by his ear was also drifting away. Shen Qingxuan still wanted to listen hard to what his father was saying, but could only hear the beating thunder in his ears. All the disorderly fragmented sentences came through the thundering, yet were still unable to reach his mind. Shen Qingxuan only knew that his father was speaking, but no matter how hard he exerted himself, he could not hear clearly what exactly his father was saying.

Shen Qingxuan knew well enough that his life was at its limit, internally, he was not sure if he was more melancholic or more relieved. He always knew he was a person not long for this world, but the arrival of this scene still caught him off guard.

The concern in his heart made him want to have one last look at this world that had accompanied him for 20 some years. Even if he barely had the strength to breathe, Shen Qingxuan still worked hard to open his eyes wide—the scattered expression within his eyes was also stubbornly gathered back—to gaze at his family. Focusing for a protracted moment.

His father who was normally healthy and well maintained, appeared old and ragged at this moment. The old steward who had rushed about and busied himself for the Shen family his whole life, the maidservant who had already cried into a mess, all of the familiar people who had been doing their best to take care of him all of these years...his eyes slowly, almost rigidly, moved over everyone’s face, Shen Qingxuan haltingly lifted the corners of his mouth, and showed a shallow smile. As if saying goodbye.

His smile was quite faint, appearing ferocious and crude on his currently three-parts-human-seven-parts-ghost-like face.

Yet, it displayed a profound fondness for and reluctance to let go of living.

Such a despairing fondness, yet it also carried a relief towards death.

Perhaps this smile was too striking for the eyes and too startling for the heart. The cold and still man in the shadows, who had watched this entire scene from beginning to end, raised his eyelids. His pupils, which were as dark as the waters of the deep abyss, rippled from a sudden splash.

#a snake encounter #yu she #su hen #danmei #tl #eggytranslations

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #115: Sakata Kintoki (Rider)

This time on “Fate and Phantasms”: We’re always trying to make the best build possible. Little do we know that we’re about to face our greatest challenge yet: building a goddamn motorcycle. Join us as we build: Sakata Kintoki (Rider)!

(As usual, his build breakdown is below the cut, or you can check out his character sheet over here!)

Next up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8WvSGNEV24

Race and Background

Yes, we’re still doing that bit from the first time. This means Kintoki’s still a Golden Dragonborn, gaining +2 Strength and +1 Charisma. This also gives you a fiery Breath Weapon once per short rest and Fire Resistance. That’s not very in character, but you’re gold, and that’s good enough!

As a motorcycle delinquent/Kamen Rider expy, you’re a Folk Hero, giving you proficiency with Animal Handling and Survival. You can literally talk to animals. Handling them shouldn’t be an issue.

Ability Scores

You’re pretty strong, which is probably why your Strength should be as high as possible. Your preferred method of fighting is crashing into people with your motorcycle, so your Constitution should be pretty high as well. Third is Charisma- bad boys are in these days. Your wisdom isn’t that bad, we’ll need it for multiclassing and also you know animals well enough to speak to them. Your Dexterity isn’t great; despite wearing leather armor, your main defense is your bike being faster than the enemies. Finally, we’re dumping Intelligence. Changing classes didn’t turn you into a professor.

Class Levels

1. Fighter 1: Getting your ride is our top priority, but that’ll take a couple levels. In the meantime we should make sure you’re at least a bit competent off the bike. Your fighting style is Unarmed Fighting, giving your unarmed strikes more power and letting you deal damage by grappling. I’d think grappling someone and running your bike would already deal damage, but now it’s RAW. You can also use your bonus action to gain a Second Wind for a smoke break.

You also get proficiency with Strength and Constitution saves, as well as Intimidation and Athletics. Bikers are scary, man.

2. Bard 1: Okay, now we can get that bike. If you want justification for the class, you did mistake the Rider class for Kamen Rider, so there you go. You’re powered by Saturday morning kid’s shows.

Becoming a bard gives you one skill proficiency of your choice- I’m gonna say Insight. You look like you can read the room pretty well. You can also cast Spells using your Charisma, and you can give Bardic Inspiration to another creature as a bonus action a number of times per long rest equal to your charisma modifier. This is a d6 that the creature can add to an attack roll, skill check, or saving throw within the next ten minutes. You’re a nice guy like that.

This Kintoki’s a bit more thunder than lightning, so for your spells grab Thunderclap and Thunderwave to stay on brand, Friends and Animal Friendship to talk to squirrels, and Heroism and Longstrider to protect your wheels and give them a nitro boost.

3. Bard 2: Second level bards are Jacks of All Trades, giving you half your proficiency bonus on any skill check you’re not proficient in. This includes initiative, so even with your +0 dexterity modifier you can be a bit faster out the gate. You also gain a Song of Rest for extra healing over short rests if you like that sort of thing.

Also you can Speak with Animals now, so they can tell you how much faster you are than them.

4. Bard 3: Time to make some golden creations! As a Creation bard, you’ll find your inspiration dice are a bit more golden thanks to your Note of Potential, gaining extra effects. If used on an ability check they can roll twice and take the higher number, on an attack roll they force an constitution save (DC 8 plus your proficiency plus your charisma modifier) or creatures around them take thunder damage, and if used on a saving throw the creature gains a bit of temporary HP. 

The bigger draw this level, however, is the Performance of Creation. As an action, you can create a medium or smaller item worth less than 20 times your bard level in GP. It lasts a number of hours equal to your proficiency bonus, and you can use this once per long rest, or by burning a second level spell slot to use it again. It’s not enough to make a motorcycle just yet, but you can at least make that cool belt buckle.

Finally, you get Expertise in two skills, doubling your proficiency bonus. I’d go with Athletics and Animal Handling. You’ll need some lower body strength to hang onto your bike while fighting.

You can also cast second level spells now, like Enhance Ability to give a creature advantage on a kind of skill check. Give yourself a constitution boost to help with those Thousand Mile Drives.

5. Bard 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to round out your Strength and bring your Wisdom up to multiclassing minimums.

You can also cast Mending for another way to fix up your bike, or Shatter to break everything else.

6. Bard 5: At fifth level your inspiration becomes d8s, and you become a Font of Inspiration. This means you regain inspiration dice on short rests as well as long ones.

To celebrate, you learn how to put on a proper tokukatsu Motivational Speech from Acquisitions Incorporated, giving up to five creatures temporary hit points, advantage on wisdom saves, and advantage on its next attacks after its hit. The spell ends on a creature once the hit points are removed, otherwise it lasts for an hour.

7. Bard 6: Now we’re cooking! Now you can finally use an Animating Performance to make your motorcycle, a large Dancing Item. The item stays dancing for an hour, and you can use your bonus action to command it. You can animate an object once per long rest, or by burning a 3rd level spell slot to do it again. Plus, your Performance of Creation can make large items now, so a motorcycle is totally on the table!

The movement speed on a dancing item’s only 30′ which isn’t ideal, but on the plus side your bike can fly, so... I’d say it balances out the cool factor.

Sadly bards don’t get Haste, but if we can’t speed up your bike, at least we can Slow down your enemies.

Oh yeah, you also get Countercharm, spend an action to give allies advantage against being charmed or frightened, not really great but you can always use it for an “I know you’re in there” fight.

8. Fighter 2: Now that that detour’s out of the way, we can get back to fighting. Second level fighters get an Action Surge, tacking an extra action onto your turn once per short rest. Cast two spells, multitask with healing and hitting, or just hit people over and over again. It’s pretty versatile.

9. Fighter 3: Cavaliers get an extra skill proficiency, and Performance will really help you sell your Kintoki action figures. You’re also Born to the Seat, giving you advantage against falling off your mount and mounting/dismounting your cycle only costs 5′ of movement.

As a hero of justice, you can also apply an Unwavering Mark to a creature when you hit them that lasts until the end of your next turn. If the marked creature is within 5′, it will have trouble hitting other creatures, and if it still does you can make a special attack against the creature next turn as a bonus action. The attack has advantage, and deals extra damage as well. You can make these attacks a number of times per long rest equal to your strength modifier.

10. Fighter 4: Speaking of advantage and being good at riding things, use this ASI to become a Mounted Combatant, giving you advantage on attacks against creatures smaller than your mount, the ability to redirect attacks to you instead of your mount, and giving your mount evasion, meaning it takes half damage on a failed dexterity save and no damage on a success.

11. Fighter 5: Fifth level fighters get an extra attack each attack action. It’s not very complicated, but it is very useful.

12. Cleric 1: Your dad’s a god, you get more thunder powers. As a cleric, you can cast and prepare spells using your Wisdom. As a Tempest Cleric, you can channel the Wrath of the Storm. When a creature within melee range hits you with an attack, you can react to blast lightning or thunder back at them with a dexterity save attached. You can use this a number of times per long rest equal to your Wisdom modifier. (So if you’re using the standard array, once.)

You can also cast Thaumaturgy for more dramatic entrances, Resistance so you’ll wipe out less often, and Light because every motorcycle needs a headlight. You can also kick up some dust with your domain spells, Fog Cloud and Thunderwave. You already have a better thunderwave from your bard levels, but hey why not be redundant. 

13. Cleric 2: Second level clerics can Channel Divinity in two ways. You can either Turn Undead to make walking corpses into running... away from you... corpses... (not my best work), or you can channel it into Destructive Wrath, allowing you to deal maximum damage when you deal lightning or thunder damage. Your spells are pretty low level, so the extra efficiency is appreciated. You can use this once per short rest, or you can burn your channel divinity use to Harness Divine Power, refilling a spell slot that’s less than half your proficiency modifier as a bonus action.

14. Fighter 6: Use your next ASI to boost your Charisma for stronger spells and more inspiration.

15. Fighter 7: As a more seasoned cavalier, you could react to add a bonus to a nearby allie’s AC when they’re being attacked a number of times per long rest equal to your Constitution modifier. You could, but unfortunately Warding Maneuver requires a melee weapon or shield, and you do things barehanded.

16. Fighter 8: If your hands are going to cause you this much trouble, they’d better be good at their job. Use this ASI to max out your Strength so they’re great at their job.

17. Fighter 9: Ninth level fighters are Indomitable, letting you re-roll a failed save once per long rest. You probably shouldn’t use this on your intelligence saves, you’re not making those either way.

18. Fighter 10: Tenth level cavaliers actually get something we can use, the ability to Hold the Line. This means your opportunity attacks can activate on a creature moving within your reach, and they also reduce the target’s speed to 0 on hit. A good hero keeps the villains focused on them.

19. Fighter 11: We’re almost done, but first you get another Extra Attack for even more punching goodness.

20. Fighter 12: Use your capstone ASI for more Constitution to get more HP and better concentration. You only have so many spells, you’ve got to make the most of them.

Pros:

Thanks to Animating Performance, you can literally make your motorcycle out of anything, as long as its large enough to ride. It also means you’ve got a flying bike, though if you want to keep it closer to canon you could flavor it as having the ability to ride up walls.

You can deal very consistent damage thanks to your high number of attacks and free advantage from mounting your bike. You’re also able to make your limited spell slots count, maximizing their damage with channel divinity.

Your skills as a cavalier make you good at getting enemies’ attention and keeping it away from squishier party members. Mix in a bit of healing from your cleric levels, and you can be a surprisingly good tank in a pinch.

Cons: 

You like to ride on things, and you also use a lot of spells with indiscriminate damage. That’s not a good combination, especially since your bike is a construct.

Having, at best, a leather jacket and a +0 to dexterity means your AC is pretty low. Your best defense is not being near the enemy when they get a chance to hit back.

Having to command your bike eats up all your bonus actions, meaning you’ll have to chose between using your unwavering mark or riding.

#Fate Grand Order #FGO #D&D 5e #Kintoki rider #Fate and Phantasms #Cleric #Fighter #Bard

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 268: Please Don’t Tap on the Glass

Previously on BnHA: Dabi revealed his true identity to Hawks! His real name is actually [sound of semi truck horns blaring]. What’s that? You didn’t hear me? I said it’s [sound of dolphins chattering]. You really need to listen better. Anyway, so Dabi set Hawks on fire a bunch of times, and Hawks had some flashbacks indicating that Endeavor saved him when he was a small child, and just when it was starting to look like we might get our second tragic death chapter in a row, Tokoyami showed up to defend his mentor! Meanwhile in Jakku, Miruko remembered that even though kicking ass is fun and she’s really good at it, she still had a job to do, so she sped off toward Ujiko’s little hideaway, getting stabbed and impaled a bunch of times along the way and losing an ear and shit (I very much look forward to the cyberpunk robot-limbed Miruko 2.0 that we had better fucking get once this arc is over). Fortunately Endeavor showed up to help her out! Anyway, so absolutely no one was talking about this last week, but the chapter totally ended with Miruko about to bust open Tomura’s bacta tank with a badass roundhouse kick, so, uh. Shit might be about to go down you guys.

Today on BnHA: Shit does indeed go down, but at a very languid pace. Ujiko apparently built Tomura’s holding tank out of Nokia phones and kevlar, so even though Miruko gets a few good kicks in, she ultimately doesn’t do more than just crack it. So now the tank is just standing there leaking ominously while Ujiko sobs for no reason and we all ponder whether or not a 75%-charged Tomura will be any less doom-harbinging than the full-fledged deal. In the meantime we’ve got Girl Noumu thinking strategic thoughts and chucking acid at peeps; Crust still doing absolutely nothing; Endeavor not doing that much better to be honest; and Mic and Aizawa ready and raring to go kill the old man who turned their dead buddy into a sentient Einstein-Rosen bridge. Obviously I’m all in favor of this last bit, but I’m also on team “Mic and Aizawa not dying horribly” though, so. I do have some concerns here.

full disclosure, I’m very sleep-deprived for various reasons related to various things which can be broadly summed up as Just 2020 In General. so anyway, I’m dealing with it, but I’ve noticed that my rate of typos and errors and such has shot waaaaay up in this past week or so, so I’m just putting that out there that you may find some weird shit in this post! maybe I will write the same sentence maybe I will write the same sentence multiple times, or or the same word twice in a row by mistake, or use the completely wrong word. you are more than welcome to point this out and I will not take any offense and will indeed be grateful because I’ve apparently gone blind to it all! anyway so how are you I hope everyone is well

anyway! the chapter is early (god for all I know it’s been out for hours already. HOW FAR BEHIND AM I) so I’m recapping it early so that I will have more time to play Animal Crossing and fish and craft all of my troubles away. speaking of which Horikoshi, you had better not bring me any troubles this week, I am not in the mood do you hear

good fucking lord

is all of that Miruko’s blood??!? god, she’s even better at bleeding than everyone else. now hold up all you excited vampires, you all can get in line, I was here first

by the way Endeavor, I gave you a pass last week because your entrance was so fucking raw and you saved my girl’s life and that was really neat my man. but now that I’ve recovered from my shock and awe and am ready to be sarcastic once more, I just want to say... welcome to the party, guy. did you stop for drive-thru on your commute from the other side of the planet. were you simply not immune to the bizarre 5th dimensional time-stands-still effects of March 2020. are you curious at all how your son has changed during these past 20 years, and by “son” I am referring not to Dabi, but Shouto. are you looking forward to meeting all of Shouto’s children. are you excited to be a granddad. anyway thank you so fucking much for finally making your way down to this lair with all the speed and haste of a federal appeals process

and I see Crust is still fighting this guy after six decades

(ETA: I would be more upset about the scan quality here, but let’s face it, nobody actually cares about seeing this in HD. I’m sorry Crust.)

and we’re really expected to believe this is the very next ranked hero below Miruko. could it be that the hero ranking system is actually flawed. don’t tell me. I’m just as shocked as you are

seriously??

are we really going to stop and chat with Geriatric Hero: Crust over here. really. far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Number One. but I’m just saying, I’m pretty sure he does still have... let’s just check... one... two... yep, two arms. not that I’m saying your system for prioritizing which of your fellow heroes to help out should be based off of the number of arms they have. but also I am saying that

OH SONNY BOY

is that a two-page panel of Aizawa Hatake Kakashi Shouta and his loyal husband Screaming Man leaping into the fray to take on some high end Noumus with their bad and sexy selves. I think that’s exactly what it is. are we blessed or are we blessed. Aizawa I’m pleased to see you haven’t aged a day and are looking just as fine as ever in this the year 2045

oh wow Endeavor I thought you had incinerated it

why wouldn’t you incinerate it. please incinerate it. did you not learn your lesson. please don’t start taking your cues from Dilly Dally Hero: Crust over here

oh wow

and yet Miruko was kicking all of their asses like they were made of plywood. really though guys. only number five. okay

Aizawa’s shouting that he wasn’t able to erase that last Noumu who was impaling Miruko because his vision was obstructed. that’s okay Aizawa, that’s why Endeavor is hopefully about to incinerate him

oh snap here we go

again, one has to wonder what kinds of interactions with rabbits Horikoshi has had in his troubled young life so as to influence his writing of Miruko’s quirk in such a way. did you at some point get rabbits confused with... I don’t even know. polar bears?! not that I’m fucking complaining holy shit

anyway, so just a friendly reminder that if Miruko dies here I will in fact push the button which triggers the hidden ejector seat built into Horikoshi’s office chair. he will be missed. but he had a good run

ho lyyyyyyy shit

so... Miruko I love you but... then why would you break the fucking vat apart with your moon-powered legs. Miruko. Miruko are you listening. oh shit she’s missing an ear I forgot. oh shit. oh shit

MIRUKO I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BUT WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU JUST KICK THE BALD MAN IN THE LAB COAT INSTEAD goddammit well it’s been nice knowing y’all

well then. so this is happening. this is really happening. at least she saved us all from having to face the 100%-charged world-ending Tomura somewhere down the line. instead all we have to do is face the 74%-charged Tomura right fucking now. so that’s. ...I wonder how Tokoyami is doing

holy shit!

leave it to Girl Noumu to be the smart one. for a minute I thought maybe Ujiko had given her Ragdoll’s long-lost quirk. but then I realized that this isn’t a quirk at all, this is just her being smart and using her Big Noumu Brain. anyway so I’m preemptively sorry for having to root against you, Girl Noumu

so now she’s pondering how to disable Aizawa’s quirk. meanwhile I just remembered that we haven’t seen her quirk yet I think. please let it be something good

oh snap she ran away and made it out of Aizawa’s sight range oh fuck

the fuck is up with this thicc fucking Girl Noumu page I can’t tell wtf is going on

LOL OH SHIT

NOT TO WORRY GUYS SHE’S JUST SHOOTING BIG GIANT GLOBS OF ACID AT EVERYONE. can anyone tell if Endeavor has incinerated this Noumu yet down in the middle panel on the left. what is the fucking holdup

and now there’s a big double page of Miruko shattering Tomura’s Noumu Vat, and I can’t quite tell, but it looks like her eyes might be rolling back in a way which I decidedly do not like

(ETA: nah on closer inspection we’re good.)

didn’t she just do this like four pages ago. and how the hell did Tomura suddenly jump from 74% to 75% in like .2 seconds

oh thank god she’s still awake. but now she’s being dragged back now by the Noumu’s bone appendage things because Endeavor SERIOUSLY CANNOT GET HIS FUCKING ACT TOGETHER LONG ENOUGH TO FUCKING LIGHT ITS BRAIN TO ASHES ALREADY, LIKE SERIOUSLY THOUGH. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL OF THAT TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING FAST AND THE DIFFERENCE A SPLIT SECOND MAKES

Miruko if we make it out of this alive, I’m promoting you to number one. Fatgum will be number two. the only two pro heroes in this arc who have actually impressed me at all. shame on the rest of you. shame

so now somehow or some way Miruko is being flung into Endeavor at the speed of light

I don’t understand this at all. did the Noumu retract those bone whips back into its body superfast while dragging Miruko back with them and somehow it managed to avoid being hit by her projectile body but Endeavor took the impact straight on. this doesn’t make any kind of sense to me with my admittedly rudimentary understanding of physics. but then again it is a fucking manga so I’m not about to call NASA and ask them if this could really happen. so this was a waste of a paragraph I guess!! my bad!!

swear to god this is like the fifth panel of Ujiko just screaming. please just stop. what do you have to be worried about anyway? although if Tomura suddenly went crazy upon awakening and just straight up killed you for no reason, that sure would be delightful! that wouldn’t happen, though. or would it

WHAT IS THIS FUCKING FISH TANK MADE OF

IS THIS A TUBE OF GLASS OR A FUCKING FALLOUT SHELTER

ENDEAVOR I’M GLAD YOU’RE CONCERNED ABOUT MIRUKO BECAUSE I AM TOO, AND ALSO IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO SEE THAT YOU DO HAVE A HEART, BUT ALSO MAYBE JUST LEAVE HER FOR NOW THOUGH, SERIOUSLY??

though on the other hand it’s already too late to stop this inevitable tide, so maybe at this point they should all just get the fuck out of there instead. at least Miruko did her fucking job and saved you all from having to face the invincible unstoppable version. that’ll be a real comfort to everyone when he’s out laying waste to the countryside, I’m sure. but still

-- oh no

the boys heard that. listen you guys, I want Ujiko to die as much as anyone, but I’m gonna need you to not go anywhere near Shigaraki fucking Tomura now or ever. please. do you hear me?? you two still have both of your ears goddammit I want some acknowledgement

-- NO!!!

(ETA: is that. a fucking Tomura dialogue bubble. something stirs in the east. a sleepless malice. the eyes of the enemy are moving.)

THE MANGA GIVETH AND THE MANGA TAKETH AWAY nooooo from 20 pages last week back down to the usual 17. I got spoiled. I expected too much. sob

so now we settle in to wait two weeks to see if Mic’s piercing tones can shatter this fucking adamantium tank like a wine glass. I’m not sure I’m ready for the Noumuraki Tomuracalpse you guys. then again by this point I’m braced for just about anything though so bring it

#bnha 268 #miruko #mirko #I finally caved and did it both ways #endeavor #aizawa shouta #present mic #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste spoiler recap #makeste reads bnha #happy easter everyone #don't mention it to horikoshi though #he's terrified of rabbits as we all know #they are vicious and unstoppable #so please treat them with respect

[your-dietician]

How intense psychotherapy and a Bel-Air love nest led to John Lennon's classic debut album

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/how-intense-psychotherapy-and-a-bel-air-love-nest-led-to-john-lennons-classic-debut-album/

How intense psychotherapy and a Bel-Air love nest led to John Lennon's classic debut album

John Lennon and Yoko Ono in January 1970. (Richard DiLello / Yoko Ono Lennon)

In the months before John Lennon and Yoko Ono entered Abbey Road Studios in London to start work on what would become the album “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,” the couple were renting a home on Nimes Road in one of L.A.’s fanciest neighborhoods, Bel-Air.

The Beatles were still the most famous group in the world but were in the midst of breaking up, with members traveling to and from London to finish “Abbey Road,” work on various solo projects for their label Apple Records and argue about release schedules and royalties.

Living along a curvy lane behind walls that afforded complete privacy and overwhelming views of the city, Lennon and Ono were a world away from that drama. They woke to the sounds of chirping birds, sprinklers and lawnmowers, enjoyed their tea alone and, when so inclined, chilled by the pool. Lennon worked on some songs, including “Working Class Hero,” “Mother,” “Well, Well, Well” and “God.”

Then, each morning, Lennon would drive down Beverly Glen to psychologist Arthur Janov’s West Hollywood office, enter a darkened, soundproof room and scream as loudly and violently as he could.

“He used to finish a session feeling incredibly good,” Janov once recalled.

This backdrop set the tone for “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,” which came out in December 1970 and is the subject of an exhaustively documented box set just released by Capitol/UME and the Lennon estate. Called “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (The Ultimate Collection),” it comes with six CDs, two Blu-ray discs, a hardbound book, poster and postcards. It’s a revelatory set, especially for those with access to hi-fi gear and a darkened, soundproof room.

Newly mixed to increase Lennon’s vocal presence from fresh high-resolution transfers, the set features 87 recordings that have never been officially released, including rehearsal sessions, demo tapes recorded on Nimes Road and a series of alternative mixes drawn from unused tracks — congas on “Hold On” are a revelation, for example. An accompanying coffee table book, “John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band,” offers an even deeper dive into the couple’s creative partnership.

Story continues

“During 1970, we did extensive Primal Scream therapy for six months, which was very beneficial for us and many of the songs were inspired as a result of those sessions,” writes Ono in the preface to the coffee table book, adding that “John’s songs were a literate expression of his feelings.” (Ono declined an interview request for this article.)

John Lennon relaxing by the swimming pool at his and Yoko Ono’s rented home in Bel-Air during the summer of 1970. (Yoko Ono Lennon)

The result, “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,” was Lennon’s debut solo album. It was issued the same day as Ono’s companion album, “Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band,” and found Lennon in an intimate setting with a few friends purging unfiltered emotions into songs about “freaks on the phone,” isolation, leaders who “tortured and scared you for 20-odd years” and his lack of belief in, among concepts, Jesus, magic, Adolf Hitler, the I Ching, the Buddha, yoga, kings and the Beatles.

“He had changed a hell of a lot because of this primal scream thing, and that was really heavy,” says Klaus Voormann, who played bass on the album, on the phone from Germany. “It was heavy for him, it was heavy for Yoko, and it was heavy for us.”

As with most things Beatle-related, the critics loved Lennon’s “Plastic Ono Band” when it came out. Creem’s Dave Marsh wrote that it was “interesting and even enlightening to see a man working out his trauma on black plastic but more than that, it’s totally enthralling to see that Lennon has once again unified, to some degree, his life and his music into a truly whole statement.”

The Times’ Robert Hilburn called it “nothing short of a masterpiece,” and “a work that is filled with pain and sorrow, searching and struggle. It is frightfully honest, profoundly moving.” That its emotion is tied to a bestselling psychology self-help book is often overlooked, but it played a central role in Hilburn’s review.

Arthur Janov in 1998. (Ann Summa/Getty Images)

“Primal therapy has to do with the traumas you’ve undergone in the womb, at birth, in infancy and childhood,” Janov explained in an interview excerpted in the book. “We have needs that we are all born with, and when those basic needs are not met, we hurt. And when that hurt is big enough, it’s imprinted in the system. It changes our whole physiologic system and all those pains are held in storage, causing tension, anxiety and depression.”

After Lennon and Ono read Janov’s book, “The Primal Scream” (subtitled “Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis”), Ono asked that Janov travel to them in London, which he did. “He was in bad shape. He couldn’t leave his room,” Janov said of Lennon. But Janov had work in L.A., so Lennon and Ono followed him back and rented a home in Bel-Air. Lennon wasn’t the only one enduring pain. He and Ono had been trying to have a baby, but she had suffered two miscarriages.

Forced to return to England six months later to deal with visa issues, Lennon and Ono were barely off the plane before they entered Abbey Road. The sparse, emotionally raw Lennon solo album is dense with echoes of his West Hollywood wails, and the sessions were the same, Voormann says.

Voormann, best known for creating the art for “Revolver,” had met Lennon and the rest of the Beatles long before Beatlemania took hold, when they were rocking the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, in the early 1960s, and he remained within the band’s inner circle. At the end of the decade, Voormann had just concluded a run with Manfred Mann when Lennon called to ask whether he’d join him, Ono, Ringo Starr and producer Phil Spector at Abbey Road. Needless to say, it was a welcome invitation.

At Abbey Road, Voormann described walking into “a whole vibe. There was crying. There was laughing. There was happiness. There was hugging each other. And we were all part of this amazing atmosphere.”

John Lennon at EMI Studios in London on Oct. 9, 1970. (Yoko Ono Lennon)

Simon Hilton, the box set’s producer and production manager, said that contrary to reports that Lennon “was angry and throwing headphones and stuff and making a fuss” during the week at Abbey Road, “there’s no evidence of that at all.”

Listening to the rehearsal tapes, which find Lennon, Starr and Voormann working through classics including “Honey Don’t,” “Mystery Train,” “Glad All Over” and the Beatles’ “Get Back,” Hilton continues, “you can hear what an amazing time they were having.”

The three were “obviously working really hard but also really enjoying being in each other’s presence. They were such good mates and I’m sure after the tensions of sitting in the room with Paul and George and Ringo, this was a huge relief.” (Hilton stresses that “John never had any beef with Ringo, ever.”)

“There is a playfulness among the three main musicians that in no way represents how earnest the songs are,” says Rob Stevens, who worked as a mixing engineer on “The Ultimate Collection” and oversaw the raw studio mix recordings and outtakes. “The laser beam is turned on right when the take starts and it’s turned off at the end — and there’s some real silliness before and afterwards.”

A Klaus Voormann illustration from the “John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band” sessions in October 1970. (Klaus Voormann)

All you need to do is listen to “Mother,” the wrenching opening song on the album, to appreciate the ways in which primal scream therapy informed the sessions.

Voormann remembers worrying about Lennon’s vocal cords as he sung the track’s climactic ending, which finds the singer pushing his limits. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, I hope he’s not going to lose his voice.'” Lennon, the bassist adds, was never trained as a singer, and cited as an example once requesting “Please Mr. Postman” during the Hamburg days. Lennon declined. “He said, ‘No, let’s do it as the last number because if I do that now, I’m going to be hoarse all night.'”

Lennon is on the cusp of hoarseness, Voormann says, in the final version of “Mother,” which is a song that addresses Lennon’s relationship with his mom, Julia, who as a young parent left Lennon to live with his Aunt Mimi and only sporadically reached out after that. (“I lost her twice,” Lennon recalled during an interview. “Once as a 5-year-old when I was moved in with my aunty, and once again when she actually physically died.”)

“His voice is already starting to break on the record,” Voormann says, “and it’s fantastic because he is really screaming as much and as long as he can. He wanted to get that out of his system. The wounds were opened up inside of him, and these wounds he put into those songs.”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono in London on Feb. 11, 1970. (Richard DiLello / Yoko Ono Lennon)

If there was a flaw, for Ono it was in the final mix. Lennon’s voice wasn’t prominent enough. For this new remaster, Ono suggested the engineers make it more prominent. “That was Yoko’s directive right from the beginning,” says Paul Hicks, who mixed and engineered much of the new set. “‘Bring John’s voice out to the fore’ and ‘You’ll find all the emotion in John’s voice.'”

Adds Rob Stevens of Lennon and Ono’s Lenono Archives, “Bringing John’s voice up was a real revelation for just about anybody who had listened to anything else that he had done.” Referring to a microphone effect that adds a sharp echo, Stevens added that Lennon “covered his voice up with a ton of slap. There’s a ton of reverb.” Stevens says that in the process of working on the recordings, he was able to remove the reverb and hear the unfiltered Lennon. “What was there was the same emotion but more nuanced because there wasn’t a slap or two or three behind it.”

The producer and engineer John Leckie was 20 when he landed a coveted entry-level job running tape at Abbey Road Studios in London. He started in January 1970 and, not long after, was in the studio recording “All Things Must Pass” with George Harrison, and half a year later he was working on Lennon’s record.

Leckie, who has gone on to produce essential records by the Fall, Radiohead, XTC, Elastica, My Morning Jacket and dozens more, says that he recalls this early Lennon session as being a relaxed, comfortable environment. Spector was a quiet, unobtrusive presence — there was no “Wall of Sound” at Abbey Road — and Ono was more involved with the creative back and forth.

“Phil wasn’t there all the time, but my memory is that he was there a lot of time and when he was there, it was really good vibes. It’s funny, because when people ask me about this record, they always seem to think there was this angst — dreadful, painful. ‘What was it like to be in the room with John pouring out all this angst about his abuse over the years and the terrible terror he was going through?'”

Leckie continues, “It wasn’t like that at all, and you can tell by this box and the outtakes it was great fun. He was playing with his best friends. He was playing with Ringo and Klaus Voormann, and he’d known Klaus since Hamburg.”

Voormann underscores the sense of camaraderie at play, an experience jarred by hearing the rehearsal tapes anew. “All this came back to me. It felt so good having certainty knowing we were really a group — this little tiny group, just Ringo, me and John.”

Lennon’s solo debut, in hindsight, was an outlier. He started recording its follow-up, “Imagine,” less than a year later, and not long after that, he and Ono separated. Lennon moved back to L.A. and commenced a bender that many nights led him just a block from Janov’s office, getting drunk with Harry Nilsson at the Troubadour. Lennon and Ono reconciled a few years later. The five studio albums that followed “Plastic Ono Band,” while accomplished, seldom matched the feral energy and sharpened pen found on his debut.

Meanwhile, by 1974, Janov was in the pages of The Times being lumped in with Dear Abby, Billy Graham, radio talk show hosts and witches, as a guru who “professes to have an answer for sale.” A documentary called “Primal Process” followed a few years later. One reviewer praised the film but warned that “the continuous crying can be taxing.” In the 1980s, the English new wave group Tears for Fears took its name from Janov’s therapeutic method, and the similarly inspired “Shout” became one of its signature hits.

Janov, for the record, loved “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.” Speaking to Hilburn in 1970, the therapist and author, who died in 2017, described it as “a very dialectic album. It is the most personal statement imaginable, yet it has a universal language. It could only be written by someone who has arrived at a state of understanding himself. It isn’t something that any kid with a guitar could sit down and write.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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[axe-trio-commanders]

Immortality

Second time writing from one of several AU’s of my commanders! This one is... actually this one isn’t even really an AU, it’s. Actually just the cannon for someone else’s commanders, and we decided it’d be fun to put Seremnis in there. This fic is actually about the first time she more officially meets the rest of this universe’s Dragon’s Watch! It’s... it’s an eventful meeting. A whole big lot of lws4 spoilers inbound, as well as a... just a whole lot of blood and gore and Bad Dead Things Sounds. Not sure if it’s enough to count as the... actual body horror I was going for, but. Hey, these things never go as planned anyways, so... have fun! (Also blame @actually-an-octopus for... Well, this au specifically, but also all the other ones)

"The rumors of my... immortality, are drastically... understated..."

She watched, comfortably perched in a high, shadowed corner of the room. It was far from the first time she'd been there, listening in on the lich's various conversations- most of them overly long, drawn out monologues. Thorns, he could make a monologue out of anything. She'd expected this time to be different, considering how much planning he'd apparently done, but... there he was, still droning on, and on…

She looked to the white-furred charr he was trying to intimidate, almost completely ignoring the norn by her side... quite frankly, she wasn't surprised that the lich hadn't noticed her hiding spot. He had quite the tendency for tunnel vision, and it was especially apparent now- all the sylvari was surprised about was that the Vigil commander hadn't come with, though she did spot his deadeye warband member. She'd long-since stopped flinching at the crackling of the lich's bones, the way tar and dried skin squelched as he righted himself... she had spent far too much time in this palace. But, now that her commander was here, and she finally had a reason to…

She was sure there'd be backup. The commander of whispers wouldn't come without a plan for backup- but while they were waiting for backup to arrive…

The small sylvari dropped, soundlessly, to the floor, the light of various sigils on the floor and up her arms beginning to glow a harsh white. She felt power flowing into her form, bark snapping and beginning to drip sap that hit the floor with a dull hiss, and then- it burst, a spray of golden sap lost in the abrupt swirl of green and black fog, raw necromantic power just begging to be used- and, eyes on the opposing lich, she'd simply... let it. The floor turned to swiss as a hoard of unstable, screeching minions crawled out of it from some dark corner of the mists, flinging themselves at Joko in a bloody mass and quite literally exploding as he tried to gain control over them- and, well, of course, she'd take the opportunity to siphon what power she could. She simply... relished in it for a few moments, savoring the *rush* that a mild case of possession could give someone.

"You- heathen!" Joko shouted, flinging the last of the minions across the room as it spattered against the wall in a sickening crunch, blood coating the gilded walls in a fine mist as it, too, exploded. "You'd betray your benefactor in his moment of triumph?"

She let out a dark laugh, voice echoing and distorted as her ill-gotten form faded- and she'd let herself fall directly into her shade, dark shadows swallowing her form as she concentrated the power she'd stolen into volatile form. Her vision quickly went dark, excepting a few lights in the room- larger, smaller blue, dark orange, bright orange... sick, twisting, tumbling green and black- she'd let the energy loose towards that one, watching a portion of it dissipate into the air, scattered.

"...-ards! Fix this!"

Hm... more of them. Extensions of that sickly life force- oh so familiar. She heard the muffled sounds of notched arrows, grinning in a way only shades could. She'd simply... tilt her head to the side, feeling the small breeze of projectiles whizzing past- saw the new life force begin to drain out of them in thick globs, and pulling it to herself en masse with a mere twitch of a semi-physical finger.

It was muffled enough in her shade to ignore it as she continued her attack, but he was still talking. On fire as he might be, as much life force as she stole and ripped away, he still-

"Enough!"

The small sylvari stumbled back a step as she returned to her physical form, staff gripped in both hands. He hadn't really done that himself- she'd simply run out of excess life force- but she was content to let him think it was.

"You are no commander, no dragon-killer," the lich snarled, a chill running up her spine as the entire space cooled considerably. Sensible alternative to ice magic, in a desert. "And yet you think you have the ability to dethrone the magnificent lich-king?!"

She paused, straightening as if she had to take a moment to consider- only for him to interrupt again, circling her.

"I am immortal! You should know better, I've been teaching you for months! All that training to take the glorious position of my general, and this is-"

"Do you ever shut up?!" Seremnis snapped- watching with immense satisfaction as surprise, then outright rage showed itself upon the lich's face.

"You have no idea how much I've looked forward to this- just listening to you is nauseating, not to mention the actual smell," she continued- taking casual stock of the awakened beginning to fill the rafters.

"You..." the malice in the one word filled the room. "You were made to serve-"

"Do you really love your own voice that much?" She rolled past a barrage of arrows, waving her staff across the floor and listening to the sounds of archers scrambling over themselves to flee. "I'd bet if you ever got your own speeches recorded, you'd do nothing but listen to them as your whole kingdom fell around you."

"And you don't have a loyal bone in your body."

"Sylvari don't have bones."

"Then what-"

"Teeth aren't bones."

"Fine, not a loyal leaf. You think anyone in your precious Tyria will let you back in? You've sold your soul to the highest bidder twice."

Seremnis barked out a laugh, watching the lich step towards her, only to be surrounded in a pen of poison, chill, and a flurry of small, invisible cuts.

"You really think I was ever on your side? I asked for control of your soldiers and didn't bat an eye when I took more! You really never caught on until now?" She tilted her head, tutting. "I expected better from you."

"Oh, you want 'better'?"

Okay- okay, that had maybe been pushing it a little, but he kept leaving himself so wide open for-

Seremnis danced back as a near-hoard of awakened began piling into the room, the dark shape of a scythe extending from her staff as she placed mark upon mark in the room, tripping and stunning them en masse, barely flinching as attacks began landing; claws, dripping tar, tearing through soft bark, dark sludge mixing with bright sap.

"If you really fancy yourself a good enough lich to replace me, why not prove it?"

The lich's voice rang out clear over the sea of snarls, and she... considered it. Prove it, hm?

She stood, ignoring the teeth currently digging into arm- focusing, instead, on channeling her own necromantic power through the awakened around her- to force them to stop, force them to turn on their master- and, slowly... she felt the teeth in her arm remove themselves, watched as heads in the awakened crowd her around her slowly, jerkily... 

With the sound of bone in friction with bone, tar and organs crushed to compensate, they turned their heads towards Joko. And, sap dripping in a thick ooze down her back and arm, Seremnis allowed herself a sly grin. A 'better lich', hm? Oh, she'd wanted to try this for so long... It'd worked, always, when the lich wasn't paying attention- sending awakened off on long trips around Elona, by the caves under Istan, ignoring the ever-increasing number of Tyrian awakened who, mysteriously, never returned- but in front of him? Really, it could make a necromancer blush.

Unfortunately, Joko didn't seem to share the sentiment, and she felt the ground beneath her... shift- swirling into sand, pulling her just deep enough to bury her feet before surrounding her- digging into wounds, then further, into and down her throat- she felt the awakened return to shredding through what remained... Distantly, she heard the lich saying something along the lines of "Now, where were we?"

And she grinned, croaking out her last words- a sigil of healing glowing beneath the mass, the life force of every awakened around her abruptly portioned in order to extend her own life just a little longer.

"...The rumors of my immortality... are greatly..."

She only heard part of the enraged response of "NO!" before shadows crawled up her arm- once again enveloping her as she stood- once again pulling on the life force of the awakened as they stumbled and fell, feeling the satisfaction of rejuvenation.

Her voice, once again twisted and warped, finished her earlier statement as she concentrated her stolen power to once again unleash.

"...understated."

...What? He'd probably plagiarized it from somewhere, too.

...

"You... you were a far better fight than I thought you'd be," Joko drawled.

She could almost see his smug face- but only almost, given that her own face was currently pinned to the ground by a smelly, smelly lich foot. The dirt irritated the several lacerations on her face, even as that somewhat paled in comparison to the canid's claws digging into her side to keep her down- and... thhorns, she could feel them moving, pressing into raw 'muscle', but... somehow, all she could think about was how absolutely terrible a lich's feet smelled. Experiencing death so often gave one a strange perspective on things, she supposed.

"I suppose I did train you-"

"You've ignored me for the past five months."

She flinched as he dug the bottom of his staff into her shoulder, twisting into soft bark.

"Silence! You learned by my mere presence. An unfortunate side effect of being as great as I am."

She suppressed the urge to groan. He was still talking. But... in keeping his anger focused, in drawing out the fight as long as she could... she had successfully kept his focus off her commander. In that, at least, she'd won.

"Really, I should have expected such treachery from such a morally twisted thing like you, commander," he continued- almost as an afterthought.

Oh... ohh, she was in- so much pain, but she... still couldn't stop the little, childish giggle that escaped her. "Y... you've never given credit to the right person in your llife, have you?"

She let a moment pass, let the question hover.

"...You're really going to tell me this... disaster was your idea?" Joko muttered.

Seremnis smiled, innocence playing on a face it didn't belong to.

"All she asked me to do was watch Aurene."

A beat of silence, and then...

The window shattered.

...

...She didn't... have the energy left, to fall back into shade. To heal herself. Joko had started starving her of it midway through the fight- with how easy it was to draw out, it wasn't hard for her to believe that the lich had intended to make her suffer. But now, with the awakened, evidently, no longer a moral option...

...But Symph was here. She'd be okay. Her commander was…

A thought rather immediately backed by fact as she felt a purer healing magic flowing through her form- taking a deep breath, despite the pain it caused. She listened to the somewhat muffled conversation around her, felt the druid's old fern hound lightly nose her face, lamenting momentarily that she hadn't brought any treats for him.

It was... it was over. The awakened were free. It was over...

--

...She stood, leaning against a decorative pillar in one of the more... shaded areas of the fortress of Jahai. She was doing her best to ignore the sidelong glances every side of the debate was giving her- she was used to it, she told herself. She wasn't a new little Whispers recruit. She'd given just about every side a reason to be suspicious- betrayed the pact, then betrayed Joko... even before she'd done any substantial work, she'd heard the angry mutterings of anyone who knew her to be a necromancer.

...But she was used to that.

She took a long breath, wincing at the pain that still lingered from the rather deep wound in her side. It'd almost made her miss this thing- and even then, she'd had to make the trip with an escort. It would be worth it, though, as soon as everyone was here.

She'd narrow her eyes as the debate between the factions droned on, despite Symph's best attempts to placate them. Seremnis understood the importance of it, of course, but... she didn't exactly envy the position.

"...Now we can finally begin the main event."

Seremnis looked up- catching sight of the increase in Mordant Crescent around the room, saw their drawn weapons. She narrowed her eyes, starting to pull necromantic power around herself, listening... admittedly, only a little closer, as the Archon continued his rant. Injured or not, if anything happened to Symph now...

"Awakened, sunspears- you're all pathetic. And now? You're-"

And the crack of a shotgun resounded through the rotunda, the Archon stumbling forwards- turning, in rage, to confront whoever had fired. Seremnis... let her magic fall away again, a small smile on her face. Yes, he was right. The main event was here.

The Archon only had time to spit a few more insults before Koss had him more... permanently silenced, even as many others in the room continued to look for the source of the gunfire.

And when they found it…

Another crowd of awakened followed Koss into the room- one in front decidedly Asuran, blowing a small trail of smoke away from a crystal-formed rifle, her wide, sharp-toothed grin seeming permanently affixed to her face as she surveyed the room. She was far from the only one there- Pact insignias, armor and weapons littered the new crowd of charr, asura, norn- even a few sylvari were scattered among the many humans in the awakened crowd.

Every one of them, Seremnis recognized. She knew most of their names- had them written on a long paper list of those the Pact had lost to Joko. If she hadn't snuck them out of the palace herself, before getting caught...

Well, they were simply unaccounted disappearances from the stealth-trained units Joko had given her command over. The great lich had no reason to suspect her replacing disappearances, after all.

Even if every one of them had disappeared around Istan.

Even if over half of them had been former pact members.

Even if he'd lost a quarter of his forces by the time the commanders launched their attack on the fortress.

What reason would he ever have to suspect a soft little lone sylvari, when he had plagues and dragon-killing commanders to deal with?

...What? She had always wanted to try double-crossing someone.

#tyriaslibrary #tyriaslibrary event #body horror #or my best approximation at least;;; #haven't intentionally tried to do that in uh. ever #seremnis #symphony of silence #albas seventooth #he's not here but he's mentioned so #yea those two and a lovely mushroom named calyp are the three commanders of this 'verse #they're also in axe trio cannon but. often under different names #definitely different personalities #but albas is always fluffy #palawa joko #sylvari #charr #awakened #koss #enkkioh #seremnis in cannon would have absolutely done this if she had the chance #but she did not uvu #cw blood #cw nasty bone noises #this is at least the second time enkkioh has shot someone with a shotgun in the middle of a meeting #the same shotgun too #enkkioh is not known for her diplomacy skills #cw gunfire #only once tho

[ptrparkcrs]

& you say rise above (self-para)

summary: peter meets an old friend in an unexpected place and faces dire consequences word count: 3002 trigger warnings: violence, injury, death mention, spider-man cops (completely useless, but existent)

It was ten seventeen PM. He had been at work late, probably too late, troubleshooting something small and nitpicky that even he barely understood. At least there was always food somewhere in the building, and FRIDAY liked him enough to not yell at him when he stole a second donut, or a third, or when he ordered an extra-large pizza on Tony Stark’s credit card. As long as he didn’t leave his workspace too greasy and saved some leftovers for Tony, he’d probably be fine.

Whatever it was he had been supposed to be working on, clean energy or artificial intelligence or consumer goods or fancy sunglasses, it probably wasn’t supposed to have been reconstructing the lenses of Spider-Man’s mask to better conform to his facial expressions, but Peter had had to do some repairs after Gabby had torn the thing to shreds. If Tony caught him sewing on the clock, what was he going to do? Let Spider-Man go without a mask? Put Peter’s life at risk? No, he’d be fine. He’d been too antsy to focus on real work, his ribs still healing, his face still a little tender. He’d needed a concrete physical distraction and the satisfaction of knowing he was fixing something.

(He’d be totally fine in a day or two; he was almost there, but Gabby had done a pretty solid number on him. Broken ribs, a black eye, scabs where the pavement had rubbed his chin raw, the whole shebang. He told everyone it was a bike accident, even though he didn’t own a bike, because nearly beaten to death by a chemically ramped-up teenager wasn’t something that could realistically have happened to completely normal, non-superhero guy Peter Parker. In retrospect, he should have said he’d crashed his skateboard into a taxi again, which he had done more than once in high school, but hindsight was 20/20.) 

Still, the time spent on the mask during the day had meant a pile of unfinished work, which had meant staying at the tower later. Peter knew that, as best as he’d tried not to be, he was a nepotism hire. He’d waltzed into Stark industries with little training and few qualifications, and he was determined to prove that he was just as suited to be here as anyone else. Yeah, he’d had the internship, but he’d gotten that through sheer dumb luck and minor internet fame, and he and Tony both knew it had been a cover, anyway. Yeah, he had a college degree, but most of his actual work experience had been mediocre photography for a vaguely predatory, second-rate newspaper. He’d been a child prodigy, sure, but last he’d checked most child prodigies peaked sometime around high school, and building the Spider-Man suit for personal gain wasn’t about to go on his resume. He knew any interview process he’d gone through had been performative; he knew that the job had been his no matter what, so long as he hadn’t actually blown up the company. He didn’t want Tony to regret his decision, and he really did want to keep his job. That meant actually doing his work, even if he did have to stay long past dark.

So he’d finally finished—the work and the mask—and headed home to find Sandwich demanding a second dinner and a walk. Fine. Okay. He could do that.

“All you’ve got going for you is your body, bud,” he said. “Don’t know why you’re so determined to ruin that.” Sandwich was beautiful, in a scraggly rescue dog kind of way (Aunt May said he looked like the dog from Annie, which was probably a compliment), but he was also dumb as a rock. He put a few treats in the bowl anyway and went to find a leash.

As he dug through the storage cube where he was sure he’d left the good collar, Peter heard sirens. They sounded close, maybe a few blocks away, and getting closer. His police scanner was on his nightstand, but there wasn’t time to check. Sirens were as good a cue as any.

“I’ll be back soon,” he told Sandwich, as he grabbed his suit from the pile on the floor, pulled it on, and headed towards the window. “We’ll walk later. Promise. Please don’t eat the couch again while I’m gone.”

The dog grunted and went back to eating.

&&&

Web swinging was hard today. His body groaned with every movement, resisting the stress of his acrobatics. Still healing. He hadn’t realized she’d gotten him quite that badly; he’d been up against way worse than a single teenage girl, but he hadn’t had anyone try so determinedly to kill him from such close range in a long time--not since Norman, or maybe Harry, but that had felt a little more reluctant. Fine, he’d go easy on the somersaults.

So long as whatever was up there wasn’t a troupe of murderous acrobats, he’d probably be okay. At least the new mask was holding up well.

What was up ahead, three or five or seven or twenty-six blocks from his apartment, he’d lost count, was—lights. Sirens. Yelling. A strange, echoing thump-thump. Shit. He dropped himself onto a rooftop to survey the scene, his ribs only groaning a little bit as he landed in a crouch. A bank, long closed for the night, its windows smashed. A row of police cars, like a barricade. Coming in from the north, fire trucks, an ambulance. A small throng of bystanders, their phones out, edging around the scene. A trail of broken asphalt running away in the opposite direction.

And in the middle of it all, a figure.

A man, maybe. In a long jacket, something more than the night obscuring his face. He—if it was a he—didn’t seem very big, but he hovered several feet above the ground, supported by what appeared to be a pair of giant robotic arms. Another pair spread wide into the night air, lashing at anyone who tried to approach.

Peter was pretty sure he’d seen those arms before, or something very like them. Mostly in sketches, then once or twice in a lab in college, never in use, just propped up safely against the back wall. They help my dexterity, Peter. More precise.

But that had been in a secure research lab up at Columbia, where the arms had helped a man’s clumsy hands study nuclear physics at an atomic scale, not ravage a bank on the Lower East Side. Stolen tech, maybe? A copycat? Convergent evolution, two people independently building the same machine at the same time? But what were the odds of that, really? These were robotic arms, not clean energy or self-driving cars. It was too niche. Who was this man, and what could he want?

He swung down, closer, landing on the hood of a police car. The officer standing next to it looked down at Peter and sighed.

“Hey, Spider-Man,” he said. “You can go home. We’ve got this.”

Peter tethered himself to a lamppost closer to the bank and leapt off the hood, angry at his stupid fragile body keeping him from somersaulting away for maximum dramatic effect. “That’s what you always say, Bill.”

“It’s David.”

“I really don’t care.”

He landed on the lamppost, but just barely. The many-armed man had seen him coming and was getting closer, one of his robotic limbs swiping at Peter’s perch. Peter leaped off before the pole could crash down and rolled to the ground, where he finally got a good look at his assailant.

He hadn’t imagined it. He knew those arms.

“Doctor Oc—"

Doctor Octavius. His thesis advisor. A kind, absentminded, academic type, the brand who left their office littered with sticky notes to remember to buy milk, who replied to emails four days late at two in the morning. He’d called Peter a genius kid, said he’d had what it takes to save the world. Because that’s what scientists do, Peter. We change things. We fix them. We make them better. We help the people who can’t help themselves—you get that, don’t you?

Oh, he got it.

Doc was wearing glasses, and his jovial smile had twisted into a sneer, but it was unmistakably him. He lowered himself to the ground, all four metal arms swirling around him.“Oh, great,” he said. “It’s the bug boy. What, couldn’t send any of the real superheroes to stop me? Daddy too busy arresting innocent people?”

With all due respect, Peter thought, what the fuck? Sure, he wasn’t an Enforcer, but his old professor going on a crime spree with a set of weaponized robot arms, probably having some sort of episode, called for enforcement.

He lifted himself off the ground slowly. His body was already screaming for a break, and they were barely getting started. “Look, dude, I respect the whole eight-legs thing, but you don’t gotta be so literal about it. It’s kinda—what’s the word? Tacky.”

Doc lunged at him; Peter dodged. “Wait, no,” he continued. “Kitschy. Campy. Gaudy.” Another swipe, another dodge. “No, I was right the first time. Tacky, it’s tacky.”

The next swipe came from behind him, and Peter jumped out of the way just in time. “What do you even want, Doc? For a guy in tights to teach you that robbing banks and taking hostages is wrong? Congrats, you got it!” He didn’t know if there were hostages; he’d been too stunned by Otto to check, he just assumed there were. There were almost always hostages when the guys in costumes got involved.

“How do you know my name?” Octavius growled.

Yep, there were hostages.

“I dunno, it was just a vibe. You kind of look like my dentist.” And the man who shaped my college career, but same thing.

Most nights he could go on like this forever. Banter, dodge, punch, jump, repeat. Talk him into submission, until he was too worn down by Peter’s endless punchlines to punch back.  Tonight, he was tired. He was injured. He had a dog at home waiting for a walk. This needed to be quick—rescue the hostages, get Otto taken in and looked after. (Kindly, he hoped; the Otto Octavius he knew was a good man, and was probably in there somewhere, scared and confused.) In the morning, maybe Peter Parker could call to innocently, coincidentally check in on his old mentor and get the full story.

“You’re a nuisance, Spider-Man. You know that, don’t you?”

“So it said on my report cards.”

Octavius stepped closer, and Peter webbed one of his metal legs to the ground, but he kept swiping. In his real arms, the human ones, Peter could see a briefcase, presumably full of the stolen money or techno-weapons for looting safety deposit boxes. So he already had what he wanted, but still the hostages, still the rampage, still the crazed look behind those horrible dark goggles. Peter could deal with him, the cops could free the hostages, they’d be fine, this was fine, everything was going to be fine.

But how had this happened—why had this happened? Did he poison everyone he touched? Ben, Gwen, Norman, even Harry, all either dead or driven mad by his proximity. Who next? Tony? May? Steph? MJ? His high school science teacher? His next-door neighbors?

You ruin everything, Peter Parker. They’re safer if you don’t love them, if they don’t love you. You’re a time bomb. A nuclear blast. Look at what you do to them. What you’ve done. You’re not worth it.

His spider sense alerting him to an incoming blow put a pause on the cycle of self-loathing. He couldn’t dodge in time, and an angry fist landed hard against his face. He groaned, and he tasted the blood from his (now probably broken) nose as it dripped into his mouth. “What do you want, Otto?” he spat.

Shit.

“Doctor” he could get away with as a joke, but how would Spider-Man know Doctor Octavius’s first name? He wouldn’t, that’s how. Not unless they knew each other in real life, civilian life, faces uncovered and feet on the ground. Peter, you idiot. His cover, which he had so carefully maintained for the past eight years, was about a minute from being blown by an academic in octopus cosplay. 

This shouldn’t have been happening. He was a professional, he was good at this. He had learned from his past, he was doing better, and these were amateur mistakes. He was off his game, that’s what this was. He was exhausted, injured, overworked, stunned by the improbability of it all. His whole life was improbable; he should have known to expect this kind of thing by now, but he wasn’t convinced he wasn’t living out some middle schooler’s sadistic Mad Libs. He still had time to fix this.

Otto said nothing; he just laughed.

Peter tried to launch himself in the air for a swing and a kick, but his reflexes were slowing, his injuries worsening. Whatever healing he’d done had been set back several days, and every movement was more labored than the last. Before he could evade, the arms, all of them now free of webbing, wrapped themselves around him and pulled him in. Peter hissed in response, his exhalation short and shallow, doing his best to suppress a yelp.

“Oh, come on. Personal space, dude,” he said, and the top left arm pinched his wrists together in response. He was now being held fast in evil, sentient handcuffs, no hopes of swinging away in sight. Nothing this stupid would have happened to Tony; Tony would have had lasers and lights and taken out this guy in minutes. Hell, he could have called in the Iron Legion for backup if he’d wanted, but a single man didn’t deserve it. Peter was a disappointment, again. This should have been so easy, and yet.

And yet.

Peter wasn’t Tony Stark.

“Otto,” growled Octavius.

Peter said nothing.

“Why did you call me that?”

This time, Peter squirmed. He was being held tightly, so tightly. His wrists were raw, his chest burning, and at some point, he had started to bleed. Work was going to have to buy bike accident twice this week. ”I told you. You look like my dentist. His name’s Otto. It was a lucky guess.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

His head spun and his mouth tasted like iron and asphalt as the world tunneled in around the edges of his vision. His hands still tied, he tried to gain some leverage with a kick, but the other arms squeezed even tighter until he was sure he felt a crunch. Great. This was it, this was how he died. Sometime around midnight outside a random bank because his college thesis advisor had taken up a life of crime and he’d been too weak and injured to do anything about it. Yeah, that tracked.

“Who are you, Spider-Man?”

Peter couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only steel himself as his spider sense turned on high alert. Imminent danger, big time. Yeah, he got it. With the human hand not holding the briefcase, Otto pulled the mask from his head.

And immediately dropped him, limp and winded and battered, to the ground.

Peter’s bare skin was so cold, the streetlights so bright, every sound and smell heightened without the mask.

Otto’s face had cleared with recognition, and his sneer fell away. “Peter?”

Peter groaned. Then he peeled himself off the ground and launched a flurry of web bombs until Otto was wrapped tightly all over. It wouldn’t hold long, but it would have to hold long enough to get him taken safely into custody. Locked up in the Raft for ten to life, a brilliant man’s work cut short by his own creation. (Was it too soon to make Frankenstein jokes?) But Peter couldn’t think about the tragedy of it yet. He had to keep moving.

He kept his head down until he found the mask by Otto’s feet. His hands were shaking, and it took impossibly long to fit it back over his head. It was twisted or too small or made for someone else entirely, bunching around his neck and pulling uncomfortably against his swollen face. And then he stood up, wobbly and wheezing, and faced the officers who were pulling the hostages from the building. Maybe they’d been inside. Maybe they hadn’t seen him. Maybe it was okay.

“You’ve got this from here, Bill,” he said, and, with every ounce of willpower he had left, he swung away on shaky arms to pick up his dog, call Aunt May, and hide in his childhood bedroom for the rest of his life.

&&&

The officers may not have seen him, but there had been bystanders. There are always bystanders, just like there are always hostages. They have cameras. They have social media. They flock to danger, to drama, to sensationalism. They post suffering for the likes and the retweets and the fleeting moments of fame. A Spider-Man sighting was pretty commonplace--novel, but not extraordinary. But this tableau, a hero in crisis, an identity revealed, that was media gold. This was a millennial icon’s Pyrrhic victory. This was a new weak spot in the Accords. And under all that bravado, he was just a scared little boy. They didn't recognize him (there was at least one audible boo when someone realized that Spider-Man was just another pasty white boy), but they’d seen him, and that was enough.

The responsible thing would have been to keep his secret, to respect the sanctity of what had happened here tonight. But the bystanders are never responsible.

While all the others had been texting and tweeting and snapping and streaming, at least one had had the wherewithal to take a picture with one of their fancy, enormous, three-lensed phone cameras and capture Spider-Man unmasked, clear as day, battered and bloody but distinctly him, and send it straight to the Daily Bugle.

(The ball’s in your court now, Jameson.)

#( self-para ) #( & you say rise above ) #tw: injury #tw: violence #tw: death mention #( yeah i fucked with my own canon for dramatic effect sue me )

[shartlord420]

What do you think Matt Engarde would be like if he wasn’t bad?

EXCELLENT question. And I apologize in advance- the reason it took me so long to answer this one is because.......... I have a lot of thoughts, and Tumblr has no character limit, so I wrote an essay. Hope you don’t mind a bit of light reading!

 So, to start with, I think we need to answer a few questions first.

 1.  What is it that makes someone good or bad?

 I don’t think anyone would really ague that Matt is a good person. He’s a villain character! He’s the big bad of Justice for All, of course he’s a bad person.

But why exactly is that? What is it about him that makes him a bad person?

In my opinion, the terms good and bad are a little too vague. Everyone has their own view of morals and right and wrong, good and bad. So, to simplify things, instead of good or bad… I’ll be approaching things as either “harmful” or “helpful”.

And Matt Engarde was indeed a very harmful person overall. His beliefs and his actions both caused immense harm to those around him, and even ultimately to himself, even if he believed he was acting in his own self-interest.

So, the question is, what would Matt Engarde be like if he wasn’t as harmful as a person as he is? What would that look like?

And to get to the bottom of that… we go to question number two.

 2.  Why is Matt Engarde a harmful person?

 Now, we don’t exactly have a fully fleshed out canonical character backstory for Matt, so we aren’t going to be able to sift through his childhood and pinpoint “Ah, there it is, THAT’S why he’s so fucked”, but we can still look at all that we do know about him and try to piece things together from that.

So, what do we know about Matt?

Well, he’s an actor. A young actor, in fact. They don’t give us exact dates when it comes to the beginning of his career, nor details about his acting career. But from what we do know, he’s been acting at least since he was 19, presumably earlier. He was 19 years old when Celeste died. We don’t know how long her relationships with either man were, and we don’t know how much time had passed between Matt breaking up with her and her starting to date Juan. Considering how heavily everything effected Celeste, though, I’d wager that it was at LEAST a year for all of this to transpire, maybe more. So that puts Matt as a starlet of at least 18.

Personally, I would wager that Matt was probably a child star, or at the very least had his start in the entertainment industry rather early on. My friend proposed the idea that he likely had fairly wealthy parents that were also in the industry to some degree, and I’d put my money on that as well.

The acting world is tough. It’s something you find out pretty early on if you have any sort of interest in it. Acting, singing, modeling- stardom is difficult to obtain. The competition is real and cutthroat. It’s hard work. It seems like a really dreamy job from a distance. Plenty of people fantasize about being discovered for their talent and just rising to the top, but that’s not really typically how it works.

Sure, it’s certainly possible to have raw talent and to be scouted! But the illusion that everyone has equal chances and opportunity is just that: an illusion. Just take a moment to look through the early lives of child stars. On the rare occasion you’ll see a starlet who came from nowhere but just happened to be scouted, but for a majority of them you’ll see two common factors pop up. Wealthy parents and/or parents that are in the entertainment industry themselves. The fact that they ended up in the entertainment industry wasn’t luck or chance- they had what most other kids didn’t have. They had opportunity.

There’s no part in Ace Attorney where it’s stated that Matt Engarde came from a wealthy family, or came from a family with roots in the entertainment industry, but it feels like a natural conclusion to me. Considering his wealth, his early rise to stardom, his prowess in the entertainment industry, and all of his flaws- these can all be easily explained under the assumption that he did indeed come from a privileged upbringing such as that.

So, what does this mean for Matt Engarde?

 “Because of the nature of show business, child actors are exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex at an early age. At the same time, young actors must constantly cope with rejection, jealousy, self-scrutiny, obsessive thoughts, and the nonstop need to be perfect.”

“These children are at high risk of becoming emotionally unstable and of becoming drug, alcohol, or sex abusers.”

 … the entertainment industry is rough. It’s a difficult field for an adult, let alone a child. I’d say this would give ample insight into how someone could end up the way that Matt Engarde did.

He’s competitive. Well, of course he is. Growing up in the industry he’d know he’d have to be if he wants to get anywhere. His fellow actors aren’t peers, aren’t potential friends- they’re competition. Everyone dreams of getting the lead role, but only one person can. You have to work to get that lead role. And presuming he grew up in the darker parts of the industry… well, he’d know that not everyone plays fair to get that lead role. So why should he? That’s showbiz, baby.

It isn’t uncommon for child stars to kind of miss out on a normal childhood. They’re working from a young age. Less high school drama and clubs and friends, and more private acting classes and sets and homeschooling on the road… less opportunity to just get to know people under normal circumstances. His entire world would pretty much just be within the industry. All his peers would be those in the entertainment industry with him.

… Which would make everyone else potential competition. And if everybody’s competition, if everyone is potentially willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure their rise to the top… well, then you can’t really trust or get close to anyone, can you? Because if you let your guard down and trust them, well, then they might just use that against you. It’s a weakness. Trusting in others and getting close to others is a weakness. He can’t expose vulnerabilities- it’d put everything he works for in danger.

And so when you mix this warped entertainment industry worldview with a level of privilege, you get someone who just kind of believe this is how the world works. And instead of being faced with consequences for the things he does, he’s instead met with nothing but rewards. As long as everything’s under the radar, everything’s fine. Keep up the public image and you can do whatever you want. No comprehension of real world consequences or the impact of his actions because they never affect him, and they’ve been completely normalized to him. Why would he think twice about it?

So of course he’d be a fucked up individual with no qualms about harming others.

But let’s also discuss the implications about being a person who can’t trust others, who doesn’t allow himself to rely on others, who views closeness and vulnerability as weaknesses and dangers.

Human beings are social creatures by nature. We weren’t designed to be alone, we just weren’t. People break down in isolation, people suffer on their own. Nobody wants to be alone, not really. We seek out communities, we form bonds with one another, we’re stronger together. That’s the one truly beautiful and wonderful thing about humanity- our unbelievable social nature that leads us to do shit like raising tarantulas and wholeheartedly loving them. Human beings didn’t survive and thrive because they were strong and powerful and coldblooded. We thrived because we worked together. We thrive because of our connections, our bonds with other people.

So you can imagine the toll it would take on an individual who believes that they simply can’t get close to another human being. Someone who views everyone around them as a potential threat instead of a potential friend. Someone who thinks they have to control and manipulate the people around them instead of just knowing and being able to trust that those around them have their best interests in mind.

What an absolute fucked up way to live.

It’s like being a parrot who believes that if they make a sound they’ll be hurt. If you know anything about birds, if you’ve ever had a bird, you know what I mean. Birds don’t shut up. They just can’t! There’s no way to train a bird to not be noisy, it’s just the way they are, and it’s hard wired into them. They’re social creatures that engage with each other by screaming all the time. To exist without doing something that is natural to them would be stressful, to say the least.

To be a human deprived of genuine human connection would be agony. And without therapy, you wouldn’t even know why you feel so terrible. It makes sense that someone like that would harbor a lot of pent up emotional turmoil, stress and frustration. And even if they weren’t able to place exactly why they felt that way, it would make sense that those feelings would intensify when they saw others actually being close with one another. Other people doing the thing that you believe you can’t do, seeing people being happy doing so. And so, that anger and hurt and frustration would be aimed at those people. Lashing out.

Because they’re wrong and stupid to do such a thing. Because the world is dangerous- how can they just brazenly trust in another person, so proudly display such a horrendous weakness? They have to be the ones in the wrong. Because it can’t just be him, right? Because then why would it just be him? What’s so wrong with him that there’s no one out there that he can trust? Why can’t he have that? It has to be them who’s wrong. It has to be. To admit otherwise would be world shattering.

You can see shades of his desire for closeness with others if you look closely enough. Even if he denies himself personal relationships, he soaks up the adoration and praise from fans. It’s like the illusion of closeness without the actual intimacy. It’s ultimately hollow, so it could never truly fill the hole, but it’s something. Fame and popularity and approval from the public- that’s his substitute. But it’s not the same.

In his breakdown you see it too. He finally gets slammed with the consequences of his actions, and in those final moments, it’s painfully obvious to himself and everyone around him. He’s alone. He’s completely and totally alone. He’s a man who’s burned every single last one of his bridges, and no matter how much he begs for someone to help him... there’s no one coming to his rescue.  

The closest thing he had to genuine intimacy was most likely with his cat, Shoe. Because cats can’t stab you in the back. Cats don’t think like that.  You feed a cat, you take care of it, and it loves you. A cat isn’t the same treat as a person is. So, while there’s minimal evidence with regards to Matt’s relationship with Shoe, I do like to imagine that Shoe was probably very important to him. A very precious friend indeed.

 And this brings me to answering the final question! (You know... the actual question you asked?)

 3.  What would Matt Engarde be like if he wasn’t bad/harmful?

 Matt Engarde was undoubtably a harmful person, but that doesn’t mean he was devoid of positive traits. If he were actually able to push past his issues, if he were able to allow himself to trust in others and work on forming actual bonds with other people… well, I don’t think he’d change too dramatically.

The biggest difference I’d say would be him actually being close with others, or at the very least trying to. Being more genuine and vulnerable with others, instead of constantly putting up an act and shutting others out. Being honest and trying to trust others instead of default relying on manipulation and control tactics.

Besides his struggles, he’s also a very hardworking man. As horrible as some of his methods were, he was undoubtably a skilled actor, and it takes WORK to get to where he did. He had dreams and ambitions and he had the determination and the skill to achieve them. If he could rely on his hard work and genuine connections instead of manipulations and blackmail… that would be a better Matt.

He has a genuine passion for acting, for performance. I don’t think that would change.

I think he wouldn’t rely on playing dumb as much. He’d be more honest and open. Somewhere between his fakey nice persona and his evil persona, something more real. I don’t think he’d pretend to be as nice, he’d be a bit more openly obnoxious and mean and competitive, at least at first. Which may sound counter-intuitive to being a better person, but it’s being more open and honest about his feelings. You don’t just flip a magic switch and fix your world views. But being honest about how you feel instead of bottling it up inside and pretending all the time makes it a lot easier to make progress, to have your worldview challenged and improved upon.

I think he’d probably always struggle a bit with competitiveness and impulsivity and anger, but with time and appropriate help and guidance, he’d be able to manage it in healthy ways instead of lashing out and letting things spiral out of control.

So I guess overall, I’d say Good Matt would be kind of just a toned down version of regular Matt. Matt With Therapy, basically. Being aware of his issues and working on them, not letting things spiral out of control, actively doing personal damage control and preventing himself from lashing out at others, and working on developing interpersonal connections and bonds with others while being fussy and complaining the entire way. But ultimately being a lot, lot happier and healthier.He’s a kind of childish theater kid, he has a flair for the dramatic, he has a tendency to get caught up in himself and forget about others- I don’t think any of this changes. The main real difference is simply the willingness to think about people other than himself, and to see the value in his relationships with them, and to put the effort into maintaining them. The choice to do better. That’s all.

#matt engarde #ace attorney #ace attorney justice for all #character analysis #simon says

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 8

Angel Olsen

Now half a year in the pandemic, we’re starting to see the emergence of quarantine records, whether in the trove of reissues hastily assembled to stand in for new product or home recorded projects made with extremely close friends and family or albums that are conceived and written around the concept of isolation. Music isn’t real life, exactly, but it lives nearby. And in any case, it’s still music and can be good or bad whether it’s been unearthed from a forgotten box of tapes, recorded at home without collaboration or side people or technologically gerry-rigged so that distanced partners can work together. So, as long as you all are making music, we will continue to listen and find records that move us, as the world burns all around. This edition’s contributors included Patrick Masterson, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Justin Cober-Lake and Ray Garraty. Enjoy.

+ — #playboy (Deluxe Edition) (self-released)

#playboy (deluxe edition) by +

One of the most genuinely confounding records I’ve heard this year comes courtesy SEO-unfriendly artist + aka Plus Sign fka Emanuel James Vinson, a Chicago rapper, city planner and all-around community activist who spends his time helping with the city’s Let’s Build Garden City initiative when he’s not making music (which is frequent, by the way — take a look at the breadth of that Bandcamp discography). The concept with #playboy, originally released in April but deluxed in late May, is simple: Two kids find a music machine called #playboy in their basement and start tinkering with it. Its childlike whimsy is conveyed in the song titles (“Getting the Hang of It,” “Wake Up Jam (Waking Up)”) every bit as much as it is in the music, with occasionally grating indulgences, the odd earworm and a brief appearance by borderless internet hip-hop hero Lil B that makes perfect sense in context; the kindred spirit of that community-building cult auteur is strong here. You may wind up loving this record or you may wind up hating it, but I can promise you this: You’ll be thinking about it and the artist behind it long after it’s over.

Patrick Masterson

 Actress — Mad Voyage Mixtape (self-released)

I once suggested Darren Cunningham mucks about with his music because he can’t help himself. That was about six years ago on the occasion of his purported “final” album Untitled; with the benefit of hindsight, we can see he was (like so many others, to greater or lesser consequence) just pulling our leg with that PR. Hell, he’s released two albums worth of music in July alone: The first was the mid-month surprise LP 88, which follows in the vein of his acclaimed high period as an often brilliant, occasionally frustrating patchwork of submersible beats best played at high volume with a low end. The second came at the end of the month in an m4a file shared the old fashioned way on a forum via Mediafire link, nearly an hour and a half long, and per the man himself, “All SP-303, sketchbook beats, recorded this past week [the first week of July] straight to recorder or cassette.” It feels very much like a homespun Actress mixtape and is probably best thought of as livelier accompaniment to 88 but, even still, there’s no noticeable drop in quality — once Actress, always Actress. If headier lo-fi beat tapes are your beat, this will slot comfortably in line.

Patrick Masterson

  bdrmm - Bedroom (Sonic Cathedral)

Hull five-piece bdrmm play a satisfyingly crepuscular version of shoegaze on their debut album Bedroom. Ryan Smith, his brother Jordan on bass, guitarist Joe Vickers, Danny Hull on synths and drummer Luke Irvin combine the widescreen sound of Ride with a cloak of gothic post-punk. Like the late, lamented Girls Names, bdrmm find a sweet spot where atmosphere and dynamics either build to euphoric crescendos or bask in bleak funereal splendor. Bedroom seems deliberately sequenced from celebration to lament. “A Reason To Celebrate” evokes Ride at their most anthemic, the tripping staccato driven “Happy” summons the spirit of The Cure of Seventeen Seconds before the pace drops for the second half, the songs become quieter and darker as the band finds a more personal voice. “(The Silence)” is an ambient whispered wraith of a thing, “Forget The Credits” impressively mopey slowcore. bdrmm don’t always transcend their influences, but this debut is an atmospheric treat if your taste runs to the darker end of the musical buffet.

Andrew Forell  

 Circulatory System — Circulatory System (Elephant 6 Recording Co.)

Circulatory System by Circulatory System

Nearly 20 years after its initial release, the excellent eponymous debut album by Will Cullen Hart’s psychedelic chamber-pop band Circulatory System gets a long overdue vinyl reissue. While his previous project, the undeniably great Olivia Tremor Control, tended to lean more towards classic psych-pop’s traditional tropes — hard-panned drums, loads of disorientating tape effects, wonky harmonized vocals — Circulatory System taps into something utterly uncanny. Both Signal Morning (2009) and Mosaics Within Mosaics (2014) have their moments, but this is front-to-back brilliant, conjuring a sublime atmosphere of reflective estrangement. The music is a thick, grainy soup of shimmering instrumentation, from the eerie (“Joy,” “Now,” “Should a Cloud Replace a Compass?”) to the joyful (“Yesterday’s World,” “The Lovely Universe,” “Waves of Bark and Light”), but part of the album’s magic is the way everything flows into a seamless whole. As is vinyl’s tendency, the rhythm section really comes alive here, the fuzz bass and tom-heavy drum parts booming out, with plenty of vivid details in the mix swimming into view. A worthy reissue of an essential album.

Tim Clarke

 Cloud Factory — #1 (Howlin’ Banana)

Cloud Factory #1 by Cloud Factory

Cloud Factory, from Toulouse, France, overlays the serrated edges of garage pop with a serene dream-pop drift. It’s an appealing mix of hard and soft, like being pummeled to death by pillows or threatened gunpoint by a teddy bear. “Amnesia,” for instance, erupts in a vicious, sawed off, trouble-making bass line, then soars from there in untroubled female vocals. Later, “No Data,” punches hard with raw percussion, then lays on a liquid, lucid guitar line that encourages middle-distance staring. None of these songs really up the ante with memorable melodies, sharp words or that intangible R’NR energy that distinguishes great punk rock from the so so. Not loud, not soft, not great, not bad. Cloud Factory resides in the indeterminant middle.

Jennifer Kelly

 Entry — Detriment (Southern Lord)

Detriment by Entry

Nuthin fancy here, folks. Just eight songs — plus a flexing, fuzzing intro — of American hardcore punk. Entry has been grinding away for a few years now, and Detriment doesn’t advance much past the musical terrain the band marked off on the No Relief 7-inch (2016). That’s OK. The essential formula is time tested: d-beat rhythms, overdriven amps and Sara G.’s ferocious vocals delivering the necessary affect. That would be: pissed off, just this side of hopeless. Detriment sounds like what might happen if Poison Idea (c. 1988) stumbled into a seminar on Riot Grrrl; after everyone got tired of beating the living shit out of one another, they’d make some songs. “Selective Empathy” is pretty representative. Big riffs, a breakdown, and more than enough throaty yelling to let you know that you’re in some trouble. You might recognize the sound of Clayton Stevens’ guitar from his work with Touché Amoré — but maybe it’s better if you don’t. This isn’t music for mopery. Watch out for the spit, snot and blood, and flip the record.

Jonathan Shaw  

 Equiknoxx — VF Live: Equiknoxx (The Vinyl Factory)

There’s nothing like a little roots music to get you through the sweltering summer heat, and this early July mix by Gavin “Gavsborg” Blair (half of forward-thinking Kingston dancehall unit Equiknoxx) was a personal favorite of the past month for hitting that spot. The group tends to throw curveballs at the genres it tinkers with, and Blair’s mix highlights why they’re so good at it: The crates run deep. Spanning everything from legendary producer and DJ Prince Jazzbo to in-house music fresh out the box (e.g., “Did Not Make This For Jah_9” was released in late May), Blair sets the mood and educates you along the way. Like everything else these cats do (and that includes the NTS show — support your independent radio station!), it’s hard not to give the highest recommendation.

Patrick Masterson  

 Ezra Feinberg — Recumbent Speech (Related States)

Recumbent Speech by Ezra Feinberg

Knowing that Ezra Feinberg is a practicing psychoanalyst, it’s tempting to read meaning into the name of his second solo album. But be careful to think twice about the meaning you perceive and ask yourself, is it the product of Feinberg on the couch or your own projection? His choice to name one of the record’s six instrumentals (there are voices, but no words) “Letter To My Mind” certainly suggests that there’s an internal dialogue at work, but the music feels most like a layered deployment of good ideas than an exchange of intrapsychic forces. The synthesizers shimmer and cycle like something from a mid-1970s Cluster record, resting upon a pillow of vibraphone and electric piano tones, which in turn billow under the influence of undulating layers of drums. Feinberg’s guitar leads are bright and pithy, like something Pat Metheny might come up with if he knew he was going to have to pay a steep price for every note he played. Ah, but there I go, projecting an implication of adversary process where there may be none. Might it be that Feinberg, having spent a full work week immersed in the psychic conflicts of others, wants to lay back on the couch and exhale? If so, this album is an apt companion.

Bill Meyer  

 Honey Radar — Sing the Snow Away: The Chunklet Years (Chunklet)

Sing the Snow Away: The Chunklet Years by Honey Radar

Jason Henn of Honey Radar has a solid claim at being his generation’s Bob Pollard, a prolific, absurdist songwriter, who tosses off hooky melodies as if channeling them from the spirit world. His least polished material glints with melody hidden beneath banks of fuzz, whispery and fragile on records, but surprisingly muscular in his rocking live shows. This 28-song compilation assembles the singles, splits, EPs and bonus tracks Henn recorded for Chunklet between 2015 and the present; it would be a daunting amount of material except that it goes down like cotton candy, sweet, airy, colorful and gone before you know it. Like the Kinks, Henn has a way of making strident rock and roll hooks sound wistful and dreamy. In “Lilac Pharmacy,” guitar lines rip and buck and roar, but from a distance, hardly disrupting Henn’s placid murmur. “Medium Mary Todd” ratchets up the tension a bit, with a tangled snarl of lick and swagger, but the vocals edge towards quiet whimsy a la Sic Alps; a second version runs a bit hotter, rougher and more electric, while a third, recorded at WFMU, gives an inkling of the Honey Radar concert experience. A couple of fine covers — of the Fall’s early rant “Middle Class Revolt” and of the Monkees rarity “Wind-Up Man”— suggest the fine, loamy soil that Henn’s art grows out of, while alternate versions of half a dozen tracks hint at the various forms his ideas can take. It’s a wonderful overview of Honey Radar so far, though let’s hope it’s not a career retrospective. Henn has a bunch of records left to make yet if he wants to edge out Pollard.

Jennifer Kelly

 Iron Wigs — Your Birthday’s Cancelled (Mello Music Group)

Your Birthday's Cancelled by IRON WIGS

As an adjective, “goofy” had gotten a bad rep in hip hop. Anything that is unusual, inventive and not in line with “keeping it real” is immediately stigmatized as goofy, weird, nerdy and bad. Iron Wigs is goofy but hold the pejorative connotations. Chicago representatives Vic Spencer and Verbal Kent team up here with Sonnyjim from the UK to do some wild rhyming. They collaborated before, but Your Birthday’s Cancelled is a complete, fully fleshed project, masterfully executed from start to finish. Instead of the usual gun busting you get a fist in the ribs. Instead of drug slinging, a blunt to activate your rhymes. Each member of the group has a distinctive delivery which makes you to listen carefully for every verse, no skipping. It’s a relief to listen to rap artists who don’t pretend they’re out in the streets while they’re at home enjoying a favorite TV series. The standout track here is “Bally Animals & Rugbys” with Roc Marciano dropping by for a verse.

Ray Garraty  

 Levinson / Mahlmeister — Shores (Trouble In Mind)

Shores by levinson / mahlmeister

Jamie Levinson and Donny Mahlmeister’s Bandcamp page indicates that they’re based in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. This goes further towards explaining their association with Trouble in Mind Records, which is located in the same county, than their music, which brings to mind something much further north. The duo’s music is mostly electronic, with modular synthesizers setting the pulse and sweeping the pitch spectrum while lap steel guitar adds flourishes and a shruti box thickens the textures. The album is split into two, with each track — one is named “Ascend,” the other “Release” — taking up one side of a 50-minute cassette. The first side trundles steadily onwards, and the second seems to bask in a glow to that never totally fades. Since there’s no “Descend,” it’s easy to imagine this music sound tracking a drive into the Canadian north, the journey unspooling under a sky that never darkens, its progress towards Hudson Bay unhindered by other traffic or turns in the road. Perhaps that’s just one listener’s fantasy of easy social distancing and escape from the present’s grim digital glare into a retro-futurist, analog dream. But in dreams we’re free to fly without being seated next to some knucklehead with his mask over his eyes instead of his mouth, so dream on, dreamers. This tape is volume one of the Explorers Series, Trouble in Mind’s projected program of limited edition cassette releases.

Bill Meyer

 Klara Lewis — Ingrid (Editions Mego)

Klara Lewis’s latest recording shows a narrowing of focus. Previously she seemed to be trying ideas and methods on for size, investigating ambient electronics or hinting at pop melody without completely committing. Given the approach to music modeled by her father, Graham Lewis of Wire and Dome, she probably does not feel the need to do just one thing, and that’s a healthy angle if one wants to stay interested and flexible. But there’s also something to be said for really digging into an idea, and that’s what she has done here. Ingrid is a one-track, one-sided 12.” Burrowing further into one-ness, it is made from one looped cello phrase, which gets filtered and distorted on each pass. The effect suggests decay, but not so much the gradual transformation of a William Basinski piece as the pitiless abrasion of a woodworker going over a plank with sander. The combination of repetition and coarsening hits a spot closer to one that Tony Conrad might reach, and that’s an itch worth scratching.

Bill Meyer

Luis Lopes Humanization 4tet — Believe, Believe (Clean Feed)

The cruel economics of contemporary creative music-making favor an ensemble like Humanization 4tet. At a minimum, the filial Texan rhythm section of Stefan and Aaron Gonzalez (drums and bass respectively) and Lisbon-based duo of Rodrigo Amado (tenor saxophone) and Luís Lopes can each count on having the other half of a band on the other side of the Atlantic. But any project that’s on its fourth record in a dozen years has more going for it than the chance to save on plane tickets. For the Portuguese musicians, it’s an opportunity to feel an unabashedly high-energy force at their backs, as well as a chance to drink from a deep well of harmolodic blues. And for the Gonzalez brothers, it’s the reward of being the absolute right guys for the job; it has to be a gas to know that the heft they put into their swing is so deeply appreciated. While Lopes’ name remains up front, everyone contributes compositions, and everyone gives their all on every tune.

Bill Meyer  

 Joanna Mattrey — Veiled (Relative Pitch)

Veiled by Joanna Mattrey

This solo CD, which closely follows a collaborative cassette on Astral Spirits, is only the second recording with Joanna Mattrey’s name on the spine. But Mattrey is no newcomer. The New England Conservatory-trained violist has been playing straight and pop gigs for a while. If you caught Chance the Rapper on Saturday Night Live, Cuddle Magic with strings or a host of classical gigs around New York City, you’ve seen her. But if black dress and heels gigs pay her bills, improvised music nourishes her heart. And if sounds raw enough to scrape the roof of the world nourish yours, this album is new food. The premise of Veiled is finding veins of concealed beauty concealed, and that search impels Mattrey to tune her viola to sound like a horse-haired Tuvan fiddle, clamp objects to the strings and blast her signal through some satisfyingly filthy amplification. And whether it’s a slender tune or a complex texture, the reward is always there.

Bill Meyer

  Angel Olsen — “Whole New Mess” single (Jagjaguwar)

Everyone processes a breakup differently (though, to be fair, that’s probably less true now than ever). For Angel Olsen in 2018, it meant retreating to The Unknown, a century-old church in Anacortes, Washington, that Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum and producer Nicholas Wilbur made into a recording studio. What ultimately came from those sessions was All Mirrors, but Whole New Mess is a chance to revisit that album (fully nine of these 11 songs are ones you’ve heard before; only the title-track and “Waving, Smiling” are new) in a more intimate framework — just Angel, a guitar, a mic and her reverberant heartache. The most cynical view to be taken here is that it’s a stopgap capitalizing on people’s vulnerability amid a pandemic quarantine, but it could also be a corrective for the bloat of All Mirrors, a record I listened to once and haven’t thought about since. Late Björkian excess doesn’t suit her nearly as well as the light touch delivered herein, and your interest will similarly hinge on how much Whole New Mess sounds like the old one.

Patrick Masterson   

 Ono — Red Summer (American Dreams)

Red Summer by ONO

Ono, the long-running noise-punk-poetry-protest project headed by P Michael Grego and travis, tackles the Red Summer of 1919, evoking the brutal race riots that erupted as soldiers returned from World War I. During that summer, conflicts raged from Chicago to the deep south, as white supremacists rioted against newly empowered returning Black veterans and an increased number of Black factory workers employed in America’s northern factories. Ono captures the violence—and its links to contemporary race-based conflicts—in an abstract and visionary style, with travis declaiming against an agitated froth of avant garde sound. “A Dream of Sodomy” lurches and rolls in funk-punk bravado, as travis declaims all the nightmarish scenarios that haunt his nocturnal hours, while “Coon” natters rhythmically across a fever-lit foundation of hand-drums, mosquito buzz and flute. “26 June 1919” wanders through a blasted, rioting landscape, sounds buzzing and pinging and roaring around travis’ fractured poetry. “White men, red men, Manchester town, send ‘em home, Oklahoma, send ‘em home, in a Black man house, send ‘em home, send ‘em home,” he chants, ominously, vertiginously. The center isn’t holding, for sure. The disc closes with the uneasy truce of “Sycamore Trees,” where steam blasts of synthesizer sound rush up and around travis’ vibrating, basso verses about meeting under the sycamore trees, a metaphor like the blues and gospel and nearly all Black music is full of metaphor about reuniting in a better place. Powerful.

Jennifer Kelly

 Julian Taylor — The Ridge (Howling Turtle, Inc.)

Singer-songwriter Julian Taylor does the little things well. That's not to say that he doesn't do the obvious things well, too, on his latest release The Ridge. His easy voice fits his songs, letting autobiography come with comfortable phrasing. As a writer, he tends toward the straightforward, avoiding extended metaphors or oblique references. The title track considers a particular form of life, and Taylor sticks to the tangible, singing about the stable, “Shovel manure, clean their beds, and prepare the feed for the day.” Taylor's songs make sense of the immediate world and relationships around him, but they avoid woolgathering. The album feels a bit removed from the current climate, but that's no complaint when Taylor's developed a welcoming place to visit. It isn't always easy here, but it's always companionable.

But back to those little things. Each song has carefully detailed orchestration and production. The record goes down easy whether tending toward James Taylor, Cat Stevens or something closer to country, and much of that easiness comes from the precise placement of every note. Burke Carroll's pedal steel, for instance, never exists for its own sake, but to serve the lyric that Taylor sings. The album contains enough space to feel like a rural Canadian ridge, with details drawn into to support Taylor's direct stories. The Ridge could easily go unnoticed (unobtrusiveness not being a highly rewarded trait), but its subtlety and care make it worth taking your boots off and sitting down for a minute.

Justin Cober-Lake  

 Various Artists — For a Better Tomorrow (Garden Portal)

For A Better Tomorrow by Various Artists

Compilation albums loom large in the American Primitive Guitar realm. Takoma, Tompkins Square and Locust all had larger ambitions than merely offering a sampling of wares, and to them, Garden Portal says, “hold my beer. I’ve got some collecting and playing to do.” For A Better Tomorrow started out as a Bernie Sanders fundraising endeavor. But when Bernie bailed and COVID-19 came on the scene, Garden Portal pivoted to support Athens Mutual Aid Network, an umbrella organization that coordinates aid to the underserved in this trying time. But in addition to good works, there’s some good work going on here. Not all of it is guitar-centric, but even the tracks that aren’t are close enough to the strings and heart template of the aforementioned parties to merit consideration under the same rubric. Joseph Allred’s been ultra-productive recently, so it’s actually helpful to be reminded of the spirit that infuses his playing by listening to it one track at a time. Rob Noyes’ “Diminished” takes the listener on a deep dive into the construction of sentiment and sound. And Will Csorba’s Pelt-like blast of fiddle drone, “Requiem for Ociel Guadalupe Martinez,” will put your hair up high enough to make that self-inflicted quarantine do a bit easier to execute.

Bill Meyer

  Various Artists — The Storehouse Presents (The Storehouse)

The Storehouse Presents by The Storehouse

The coronavirus pandemic put the brakes on many things. You doubtless have your own list of loss, but for the proprietors of The Storehouse, the catalog of things kissed goodbye directly corresponds to their endeavor’s inventory of reasons to be. Over the past few years, the Storehouse has invited audiences out to a West Michigan farmhouse to enjoy a potluck meal and a concert played by some musicians of note. If there had been no lockdown, listeners could have enjoyed the Sun Ra Arkestra last April. Instead, no one’s playing, and no one’s getting paid, so the Storehouse has compiled this set of live and exclusive studio tracks to sell on Bandcamp in order to benefit the musicians and the Music Maker Relief Foundation. The cause, is good, but so are the tunes. Want to hear Steve Gunn and William Tyler in sympathetic orbit? Or Joan Shelley pledging her love? Or the first hints of Mind Over Mirrors’ new direction? Step right this way, preferably on one of 2020’s first Fridays.

Bill Meyer

 Z-Ro — Rohammad Ali (1 Deep Entertainment / Empire)

On one of his previous tracks, Z-Ro admitted that he’s basically just writing the same song over and over again (that’s how meta he is now, writing songs on writing songs). While he exaggerated a bit, he was not that far from the truth. In the last half dozen years he’s been writing the same three or four songs in various combinations, reconfigurations and forms. Rohammad Ali follows the same template: haters hate him, but he’s OK and is counting his money. Multiply this by 17, and here is the album. Despite this self-cannibalizing (lots of poets did that), Z-Ro with every new album sounds fresh and far from tired. The self-repeats just fuel him. Rohammad Ali has only one rap guest, and it’s Shaquille O’Neal whose rap career didn’t jump off in the 1990s. A lack of guests only proves that Z-Ro can self-sustain without support from the outside. The only thing from the outside he needs is hate.

Ray Garraty

#dusted magazine #dust #+ #patrick masterson #actress #bdrmm #andrew forell #circulatory system #tim clarke #cloud factory #jennifer kelly #entry #jonathan shaw #equiknoxx #ezra feinberg #bill meyer #honey radar #iron wigs #jaime levinson #donny mahlmeister #ray garraty #klara lewis #luis lopes humanization 4tet #joanna mattrey #angel olsen #ono #julian taylor #justin cober-lake #garden portal #the storehouse

[semblanche]

ask to be added/removed from my tag list!

current title: terras town

pov: third person, unknown number of narrators

genre: urban fantasy

status: first chapter done

summary:

Terras Town is another world, built on the laws of beasts.

Magic has warped its people to the point where bloodshed is seen as a side effect of breathing, and survival is just a stepping stone off others backs. Its people have no trust there, and their children have no shame. They have nothing our world would envy.

Terras Town is another world; the heavier side of the same coin.

Think of it as the first floor of a two story apartment, while we're lucky enough to stay on the second. The two worlds are kept apart by a thin magical barrier older than time itself - and twice as sensitive to change.

Terras Town is another world - and it should stay as such.

Which is why when Jekyll, seventeen year old high school 'drop-out' and aspiring graffiti artist, finds themself mysteriously trapped in Terras Town with no idea how to return, it's only a matter of time before the barrier breaks - and their world comes crashing down on them all.

Jekyll's only hope is a boy named Ben, who went mysteriously missing a few weeks back. Now it's up to Jekyll to find Ben so they can get back home - and make sure Ben has a home to get back to.

Terras Town is another world. And you can't get a taste of another world without it cutting your tongue.

(A story of a family that spills more blood than it's made of, all the wrong kinds of love, and bones that whisper only the truth.)

excerpt:

In the Desert, there is no rain.

The only pools to be found are pools of sand, sleek and scalding, a graveyard of lukewarm corpses and forgotten names.

Any dead man’s footsteps are long gone, swallowed and swept over by a law of nature not interested in the affairs of men - or maybe just by bad luck. Bad luck is what you’d need to have to be travelling across the Desert to begin with.

The heat in the Desert beats down in waves, almost tangible in their torture. They curl around the unlucky travelers’ throats and suck them dry, seep into their very skins and leave them raw and blistering.

In the Desert, there is no rain. And there sure as hell is no mercy.

Although, really, maybe such a fate was the mercy all along. If the travelers didn’t wish to die, then why would they try crossing the Desert to begin with? Its endless, glass-like expanses start at the town borders and carry on as far as the eye can see. There’s a beginning, sure, but no middle, no end. Maybe the travelers just hadn’t thought this far yet.

The two people currently crossing the Desert are not travelers.

They are cloaked in appropriate desert gear, with enough layers to keep the sun at bay but with enough space for the wind to filter through and breeze over their skin.

The shorter one walks with short, quick steps, her feet barely touching the ground. She is holding a large paper that looks like a map, and her eyes scour it hungrily, devouring every line.

Her taller friend trails behind her dutifully, occasionally taking a swig from the flask of water he's carrying and sighing just softly enough for her not to hear. His joy at being included battles with his dislike of what he’s being included in, and there is no sign of either side winning.

Every so often, the girl will stop, and her friend will crash into her. The girl will angrily scold him, find a thread in his heart to unravel just enough for her to pull a meek apology from his lips, and then return to her hunt. The cycle soon repeats.

They are a strange pair. But they are not travelers. Because unlike travelers, they've come prepared.

And unlike travelers, they intend to return home.

The girl, once again, stops. The boy crashes into her. Instinctively, he shrinks back, waiting for her reprimand. When it doesn't come, he takes courage.

“Sorry,” he says. “Wasn't looking where I was going.”

“Why would you,” the girl mumbles. Her eyes are still on the map. “I'm the one with the map. Everything all looks the same without it.”

“I'll give you that,” the boy, whose name is Egg, admits. He sighs, happy with the direction this conversation has taken. “So, are we lost, then?”

His relief was premature. The girl snaps to attention like a rubber band.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, looking at him like one might a particularly stubborn stain on their best shirt. “Of course not.”

“Of course not,” Egg agrees instantly. If his friend is a rubber band, he is play-doh, content with being shaped and molded however she sees fit if it means she’ll keep him around.

The girl, whose name is Eve, sighs. She turns the map upside down, then right side up again, as if that’ll change what’s drawn on it. “I know where we are,” she says firmly, more to herself than Egg. “I know where we are.”

“Of course you do,” Egg says comfortingly. It’s the wrong thing to say. Eve whips around to glower at him, already deep lines on her cheeks and forehead deepening with hatred.

“Do not patronize me,” she seethes. “You’re lucky I even brought you along.”

“I am,” Egg agrees humbly. “Thank you.”

“I could have left you behind. I didn’t need your help.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“And I do know where we are, you know. I’m not lost.”

This time, Egg has the sense to keep quiet. Eve waits for a second, eyebrows raised as if daring him to disagree– when he doesn’t, she turns away again with a huff of disgust. A moment passes as she looks over the map again. Egg wipes his forehead.

Around them, the sand shifts, the wind unraveling it like threads of a carpet beneath their feet. The sun is no closer to setting than it was when they first started their journey, but it’s starting to look like it’s thinking about it.

Time is running out.

And so is Eve's patience.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #wip introduction #urban fantasy #lgbt fantasy #alternate universe #terras town #ya fantasy #original writing #she writes #whew boy this is long! and late #long and late #title of your sex tape

[happymetalgirl]

Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

Apart from the finally realizing release of Tool’s exasperatingly long-teased fifth album next month and arguably Rammstein’s ten-year-awaited self-titled album, Slipknot’s We Are Not Your Kind is and was always going to be 2019′s biggest metal release, and since its release its chart success has fulfilled that prophecy.

 Every new Slipknot release is quite the momentous and fixating occasion for the metal community, both for fans of the band their detractors, and part of these new releases feeling like such a big occasion is because they don’t come often. Despite the band blowing up in no modest sense of the phrase at the turn of the millennium with the one-two punches of their iconic self-titled debut and its successor, Iowa, the band have only released four more albums (including this one) in the nearly two decades since their sophomore album in 2001. And despite the motifs of brotherhood the band make a notable part of their image, the tight-knittedness among the nine of them there always seems to be some kind of inner tension or circumstantial tumult surrounding the band and these releases that results in hiatuses and hold-ups that result in these long push-backs.

The band took a hiatus right after Iowa’s draining touring cycle and volatile recording process that nearly prevented them from getting their first Grammy with 2004′s Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), after which they took another hiatus before the tense and disjointed recording of 2008′s All Hope Is Gone, which the band have since cited in hindsight as a low-point of moral for them. Bassist Paul Gray’s death after the album’s touring cycle understandably put the band’s future in doubt and, along with the departure of longtime and beloved drummer Joey Jordison, contributed to the six-year gap between All Hope Is Gone and .5: The Gray Chapter (this album’s predecessor), which I consider their best work since Iowa. And Remember when Jim Root said he didn’t want the next Slipknot album to take a long-ass time... back in 2015? Yet, here we are, nearly five years after album number five with album number six. And yet, Slipknot consistently remains one of metal’s most recognized figureheads and biggest touring acts. I mean, fucking Slayer opened for them the first time I saw them live.

As much as we can take their presence for granted at this point, Slipknot’s unprecedented ascent from the desolation of Iowa to worldwide stardom and maintenance of it with a lot of “despite” along the way is certainly spectacularly intriguing. And the band’s sustained high profile could be owed as much to the band’s magnificent balancing act of raw, death-flavored nu metal and anthemic alternative metal as it is to frontman Corey Taylor’s notorious charisma with the metal press and his ability to draw headlines and speak so widely and mostly eloquently to and for the metal community. Like if this genre had to elect a president for some reason and candidates had to campaign for it like any other presidency, Corey Taylor would easily be the most poised to demagogue his way into office, with Loudwire Fox-News-ing behind him the whole way there, and that hypothetical scenario is the only time I will liken Corey Taylor to Donald Trump because I know the former really does not like the latter. But again, Slipknot’s career has been an impressive balancing act of infectious melodies and tasty grooves with unbridled visceral aggression that unites both casual and deeply invested metal fans and that a lot of other bands see as the optimum career model in this day and age (often citing Slipknot as the last big metal band to get hugely culturally relevant outside metal). So with the twenty-year mark of the debut of heavy metal’s arguably last big figure, how does that band’s sixth record contribute to the preservation of their relevance?

Like just about every Slipknot album before it, We Are Not Your Kind came with its own contextual tempest, this time being percussionist Chris Fehn’s suing of the rest of the band for financial injustices just a week and a half after the album’s announcement and swift subsequent dismissal from the band, leaving only six of the nine members that recorded the band’s first four albums. As much as the band’s proclamations of camaraderie in the face of one internal conflict after another might seem unfounded, internal disputes and line-up metamorphoses are a common reality of most bands, and it’s not surprising that the nine members in a band twice the size of the average band in the genre get sick of each other and fall out in some way. They can’t all be Rammstein, but even that marriage has had its rough patches despite never suffering a line-up change. But the falling out with Chris Fehn is not like your usual “creative differences” or “time for a new chapter”. The allegations of unethical financial misconduct by his former bandmates of his lawsuit are seriously heavy and potentially quite damaging to Slipknot’s and that hypothetical metal president’s reputation. Yet it has been relatively quiet since Fehn’s departure, the potential juiciness of which would be undoubtedly squeezed by any surrounding press, which has led to a lot of speculation about the band perhaps trying to resolve this with Fehn quietly and diplomatically and about his yet-unidentified replacement perhaps not being a replacement at all. And I bring this up because of “All out Life”, the single that was released in late 2018 from which this album’s title is derived that I did not place on my year-end best songs list last year because it sure seemed like it was intended to be on an album. Despite being a truly ripping riff-fest featuring the album’s title as a lyric, “All out Life” was curiously left off the final track listing of We Are Not Your Kind, which led to speculations of it being left off for legal reasons in the face of this pending lawsuit (being that Fehn was featured on the track). Yet, the song made it onto the Japanese release of the album as a bonus track at the end, which leads me to explain how I’m going to be assessing this album. “All out Life” is a great, identifiably Slipknot track and the album is better with it, and while it’s not the most official part of the album, I’m listening to the album with it every time, and I’m including it as part of the album for all assessment purposes. It’s a song the feels like it was intended to be more of an opening statement right after a signature Slipknot intro track, and its sudden finish feels a little weird at the end of the album, but it works in its own way as a more abrupt closer more effectively than “Solway Firth” does as a not-so-grand finale. So, yeah, for the good of this album, I’m taking its differently-titled-not-included title track into account.

Okay! Wow! That’s a lot of context; let’s have a peaceful, uneventful album roll-out next time guys, even though I’m sure the seventh album being due to be released (by extrapolation of the pattern of its predecessors’ releases) during the Kanye presidency will inevitably come with some more gaffs, laughs, and way-too-long preambles, maybe stick it out for one more album, Clown, for me, so I don’t have to write another history paper. (Good God what am I going to do next month with Tool’s new album) OKAY! Enough! On to the fucking musical content of Slipknot’s sixth album.

Like I said, I really loved this album’s predecessor, .5: The Gray Chapter; the band were dialed in both compositionally and performatively all throughout the measuredly varied track listing, and the production was spot-on, with Corey sounding assertive and with Mick Thompson’s and Jim Root’s guitar tone to fucking die for. We Are Not Your Kind is a different story. It’s not a stylistically or procedurally radical departure or anything, and much of the production carries over from their last album. But there’s a certain twist to the band’s otherwise enrapturing X factor that feels like they’re trying to do something unnatural for them. And a lot of it stems from the odd bits of widely noted experimentation among the longer-on-average tracks across this album compared to previous albums. It’s not that the band haven’t incorporated diversions into industrial or eerie ambient tension-building territory in the past, but albums past have incorporated these non-exclusively-metal features in cohesive ways that contribute supportively to the albums’ flow, whereas here, the flow of certain songs and certain sections of the album feel disjointed as a result. Also contributing to the weird flow of the album is the distinct era-mimicking of certain songs (quite possibly unintentionally). The album’s opening song after the “Insert Coin” intro track (which might unfortunately be the most meager and least effective hype-building intro track of the band’s six albums) and lead single, “Unsainted”, feels quite like it’s 2019′s “Sulfur”, with the similarly alternating gruff alt. metal verses and soaring cleans on the melodic choruses and the bridge slowdown. Like “Sulfur”, I find the primary melody sufficiently anthemic, and even though I wish the band did more with the choir supplementation that kicks the melody off, I quite like the song. But then there are stylistically schizophrenic trajectory and flow disruptions not too long after, like the distinctly Vol. 3-type groove-banger, “Nero Forte”, whose pair of headbang-inducing nu metal beat and falsetto melody and the battle snare drum march at the bridge akin to “The Blister Exists” are certain calling cards to the band’s third album. Fans seem to have taken quite a liking to this song in particular, and I like the delicious nu metal riffage at the core of it, but I feel like the song is a bit repetitive as it goes on and still needs to do a little more across its run time to feel as fulfilling as it should be. I’m sure it’ll get the crowds moving though, and I sure appreciate that.

The album even presents even full-on callbacks to the fast-paced visceral vitriol of Iowa on “Red Flag” and the industrial nu metal creepiness of the debut on “Birth of the Cruel”. The pensive acoustic strumming and seething melodic guitar work of the interestingly emotionally progressive “A Liar’s Funeral” also feels somewhat lifted from the dynamic of the band’s previous album (which makes for a pretty bright highlight in my eyes). “Orphan” and “Not Long for This World” revel in the same thick, crunchy guitar tone, metallic percussion, loud-soft dynamics, emotive guitar melodies, and elevating chorus vocal melodies that made songs like “Nomadic”, “Sarcatrophe”, and “The One That Kills the Least” on The Gray Chapter so integral to its consistency, and “Critical Darling” feels like it pairs Iowa-reminiscent violent alternative metal verses with a Vol. 3-esque melodic chorus. Again, I quite like these songs. And on their own they are mostly well-composed and all fine and dandy, and I’m certainly not knocking Slipknot for sounding like themselves, but together the songs run like a compilation album with some rarities and scrapped tracks from the vault tossed in the mix as well. But getting past the weird flow of the album is not too high of a hurdle to clear, and once cleared, the album really is a confident, appetizing, and satiating exhibition of Slipknot’s time-tested talents that have put them at the level they are at.

The album has been noted as palpably experimental in comparison to previous efforts, which occurs in the album’s dark, muggy corners interspersed around the usual verse-chorus-verse-chorus structures at the foundation of the album: the ambient experimental bits that take the form of codas like the end of “Critical Darling” or interlude tracks like reverbed xylophone plinking of “What’s Next” and the incantation of “Death Because of Death”.

Despite its cliché title, the album’s most perplexing exercise of experimentation comes on the drawn-out, experimental, atmospheric melancholy of the song “My Pain”; it serves as a breather of sorts on kind of a take-it-or-leave-it basis. And the song “Spiders” I’m not really a fan of either; the repetitiveness of its harmonized chorus clashing with the intended spook of the song gets old kind of fast, which is too bad because I quite like the industrial sampling, the eerie piano plinking, and the weirdly effects-driven guitar solo around it. But honestly, that’s the lowest the album goes for me, and there are still positives to be taken from those songs, which is a testament to the band’s work on this record.

This album honestly took some time to grow on me after my first experiences with its weird flow left me perplexed. But once I got past the flow and familiar with the album enough to be able to focus more distinctly on the individual tracks, I was able to see it as a comprehensive display of the band’s full arsenal of abilities, a balancing act of Slipknot’s long-running balancing acts that still manages to make room for surprises (that the band might be able to expand upon in the future as they continue to carefully develop their sound) without sacrificing compositional or stylistic/aesthetic integrity. Again, the flow on this album is quite unlike any other Slipknot album, but it’s hardly enough to spoil the strong compositions from end to end. Despite my and many others’ high expectations for this album (and perhaps its high susceptibility to disappointment), I was pleasantly surprised with We Are Not Your Kind; and I think the band will be able to look back on this album positively in the years to come. Evidently, we should probably just let Slipknot take their time on the next one too because this one was worth the wait. And I know it’s probably the basic bitch thing to do to praise a Slipknot album like all the other mainstream metal critics probably are, but I can genuinely see why, and I’m not gonna slag an album just because its creators are extremely popular and it looks good for underground karma points. It’s apparently fun for jaded metal fans to shit on Slipknot for not playing 280 bpm blast beats or for using clean vocal melodies and emotive acoustic sections like a bunch of pussies, which is laughable. I mean if you don’t like what Slipknot strive for and it’s not your cup of tea, that’s chill, but if you’re talking shit because you think you’re special for liking a lesser known death metal band that plays faster and think Slipknot is shit because they aren’t doing what you want by not playing like your favorite techdeath band, that’s so tired, narrow-sighted, and embarrassing not just to you, but to the aforementioned chill people you embarrass by extension. If liking a Slipknot album like Loudwire and Metal Hammer probably do makes me a basic bitch, then buy me a pumpkin spice latte next month and send me a crop top with “live laugh love” on it in the form of a black metal logo.

Despite/10

#Slipknot #We Are Not Your Kind #WANYK #new music #new album #album review #alternative metal #nu metal #heavy metal #metal

[izzyovercoffee]

Prompt number: 18. Secrets? I love secrets. Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition Rating: G? PG? Warnings/Tags: None, that I can tell. Summary: Captain Sovris has ants in the middle of winter.

##. where lies remain, you’ll only find more snow

  Cold. Cold, and long, were the days once winter finally fell upon them and blanketed the mountain in soft, endlessly-falling snow. Months they had hidden away, the Inquisition, tucked within solid stone walls ever-growing under constant maintenance. And yes, while they were high enough atop the mountainscape to scrape the sky, as the name Skyhold belied, they were low enough in elevation to feel the changing of the seasons—even if the bitter cold undercut even the warmest summer nights on tense threats. 

Janin, for her part, welcomed the cold—even if, perhaps, in her older age she could not appreciate the chill as well as she did when she were young and foolish and poorly dressed. She had grown on the streets of Orlais, had worn little better than rags for clothes and a hood to cover her hair—and, when she was older, understood the hood was to hide her rounded ears from prying eyes whenever she returned to her mother's home in the alienage.

She had not minded the snow, then. Her mother had said she was an anomaly. A strange, wretched thing that could withstand even the most wicked of ice and winter's mistresses. She had a colorful way of speaking, her mother—and a colorful way of enunciating her points with other ... points, as it were. Both literal and metaphorical.

Janin Sovris was a long, long way from home. 

To be truthful, she had not had a home in a very, very long time. But as she looked out past the banners that whipped in the air by the freezing wind from the south, as she looked down the long rolling curve of the landscape that allowed her to peer with keen eyes past the borders of Orlais, she knew she would never choose to return to her once-home, if ever given the heavily unlikely chance. 

There was nothing there for her, and hadn't been for quite some time.

Still, she held fast to the wall, and she looked down over the land of white snow, and if she narrowed her view she could, perhaps, convince herself that she could see straight to Gourin. 

She could not, of course, but that was neither here nor there the point of the matter.

What was the point, then? 

The point was that she ... suddenly felt a creeping suspicion grow upon her—an understanding she did not want to regard even as she had written, late that past night, an encoded letter addressed to her benefactor in the north—and grip her heart with such sudden arresting insistence that she could not, rightfully, ignore it any longer.

Perhaps... Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, she had found another home.

But oh, that bore warning, didn't it? That bore a reconsideration—a need to leave the land and assess her position within the Inquisition. She did not doubt, of course, that she could easily take leave at any time she needed to—none of the Inquisitors would ever deign to tell her no, not when she had proven her loyalty time and time again when the war was high and the rivers of red lyrium ran raw across the landscape. Even despite her nationale, her allegiance, her public d’alliance that bound her irrevocably to Tevinter, they no longer questioned her dedication to the Cause of the Inquisition.

But she questioned herself, time and again. Where could she do better, if not here? Where could she have most impact, if not there? Where, where, where? 

The constant questioning, the voice within her head that sounded like her own and fed only on her doubt and misconceptions...

She had remained idle for too long, and she knew this well.

"Captain Sovris."

A scout's voice broke her from her reverie, and she turned to look upon the young man standing there in thick furs under the falling snow. He wore the armor bearing the sigil of the Inquisition proudly on his person, and he stood stock still as he waited for her response. 

"Speak," she said. 

"The Spymaster wishes a word with you." 

Janin considered his demeanor with interest. He looked proud, and cold, and slightly impatient—all obvious things to expect from a man his age and his stature, in his position. But in his eyes she saw uncertainty, a hesitation that spoke, perhaps, to fear. 

It was a look that many within the Inquisition still held towards her—and one that few still held towards the one other Tevint housed within the castle grounds. 

It rested as a great frustration for her that she could not glean the Spymaster's mood from the general ... biases ... many at Skyhold still regarded her person with. And when the Spymaster rarely chose the same messenger twice when it came to summoning Janin, specifically… 

Well.

Janin could not help but understand that that was a consciously chosen decision. 

"Thank you," Janin responded in her same soft, even tone. "Anything else?" 

"No ser." 

She nodded, thoughtful. "Go, then, and seek warmth." 

The messenger did not need to be told twice, and about-faced so abruptly she might have sworn the snow scattered in every direction—an exaggeration, of course, but one she silently delighted in. 

As she pulled away from the wall, she turned one last long look in the direction of Orlais, and the direction of her once-home of Gourin, in Orlais' countryside. She breathed in, long and steady, and let out a low exhale. Then she turned to look up towards the highest tower at the center of Skyhold—to where the Spymaster awaited her presence.

And off she went.   

   Though the chill breeze of winter drafted in through the wide opened shutters, hardly any snow fell within the inner spaces of the Spymaster's Tower. Janin herself watched with distant interest as the lady spymaster stood propped up against the wooden supports that held the curved roof of the tower, and watched as she held her still-warm tea between both hands. The snow fell, until the white turned in the air and floated gently away from the opened shutters. 

Magicked, Janin assumed. She'd seen such idly done back in the home of her benefactor, though it were only to deny the rain entry—snow rarely fell in all of Tevinter, save for a few select locations at very high elevation, beyond the heat of the land. 

"And you wish to leave?" Leliana asked, quietly—as if she did not previously clear the uppermost level of the tower until only the two of them remained. As if none could truly avoid overhearing their conversation. "Because you wish to stay?" 

"That is so," Janin said, and turned the delicate porcelain cup forty degrees on its dish. "You must be aware that this Inquisition cannot remain a permanent fixture in the landscape." 

"And why not?" Leliana asked.

"Because Orlais still exists," Janin said, simply.

A noise escaped the hood that kept the Spymaster's face hidden away, and for a moment Janin could not identify the sound. As Leliana turned, however, Janin realized what she heard was something she had not heard from this particular woman in a very, very long time—laughter. 

"Ah, yes, I had momentarily forgotten your high opinion of Orlais," the Spymaster said with a rueful smile. 

Janin met her smile with a small one of her own. "Forgive me if I find that hard to believe." 

"You are forgiven," she smoothed the air with an empty hand and set down her half-filled cup of tea. "Have you voiced your request to any of our Inquisitors?" 

"I have not," Janin said. "You are the first I've spoken with."

Leliana considered her in silence, hovering as she did between Janin and the open window and blocked the light of the outer world. It was as if a small, blurred white halo surrounded her—and though Janin understood that to be a mixture of the snow, the magic, and the cold, a part of her still felt arrested at the sight. 

"Is it not strange that you choose to confide in me, first?"

Janin considered Leliana in silence for a moment longer.

"Evidently not," she began, with care, "as I am here on your request, and I find it difficult to believe you simply desired my company, of all others in Skyhold." 

Though the Spymaster remained statuesque and unreadable in the warm light of the hold and the cold light of the outer world, Janin hoped it was understanding she saw in the Spymaster's eyes, and not something untoward or dangerous. 

"You have been staring out towards Orlais for as long as the storm has lingered here," Leliana said. "And, I assume, towards Gourin."

"That is so." It did not make sense to deny what was true, though for a moment she considered it.

"Are you homesick?" 

Janin considered the question. "I... have ants." 

Leliana's brows rose, and Janin understood to have said the wrong thing. She thought longer on the phrase, and added: "I am not used to remaining in one place for so long. I am used to walking, changing beds every several nights—"

"You are antsy?" Leliana asked. 

Janin nodded. "Yes. Antsy. I am antsy." 

"Have you spoken to the Healer regarding your state?"

"I had hoped you would not misunderstand me." She turned to her empty porcelain cup and rotated it further, so as to have the handle faced away from her. "I wish to walk, and to come back. But I do not expect, you, or the inquisitors, to trust for me to return."

"Ah, you would be surprised." Leliana slowly turned on her heel, and looked once more out the open shutters to the white-blanketed world below. The silence hung, heavy, as Leliana continued to stare long out into the distance, into the blizzard, and the powdered, faded world. Time stilled, then, to the quiet hum of the Tower's life far below in its many-leveled library. 

If Janin listened with care, she could hear the discussion between one lost-and-found Altus with the smooth-shaven elvhen hedge mage far below. A third, dissenting voice added to the discussion—albeit one slightly high, as if wrought with as much irritation as she held humor for something the young Altus said. 

And then Leliana spoke: "The young inquisitor has had a, shall we say, softening effect on me. I could grant you leave, for a short time—given that you understand you must return when called upon."

"I cannot go where you will not find me—of that, I am certain," Janin said with a soft, if fond, smile at the thought of the young Inquisitor. Janin rose to her feet from her seat at the Spymaster's table, and walked to the banister to peer down below. A fourth voice joined the discussion at the Tower's lowest level—the very same youngest Inquisitor of the four that governed Skyhold, and he yelled up to the highest point, to his Captain and his Spymaster.

"Janin! Leliana!" 

As Janin stared down over the banister, Leliana stepped up to the place just at her left shoulder.

In a voice so soft, Janin could scarcely tell if she imagined it, she heard the Spymaster ask: "Is it because he reminds you of your son?"

A chill as cold as the very air outside stilled her down to her core. 

She felt the wax and wane of anger rise and fall within her, and traded it away in favor of raising a hand to wave back to the young inquisitor below.

“I had heard a rumor, once,” the Spymaster continued, cordial, as if having a pleasant conversation over tea. “That those once exposed to the delights of violence find it difficult to give it away forever. I’ve long wondered if there was any truth to it.”

With her eyes fixed on the youngest Inquisitor, Janin breathed in through her nose, and out through her mouth she answered, as steel does to a wondering wind: "I do not wish to commit his body to a blood ritual, if that is your question, Spymaster." 

Again, the strange sound just shy of a laugh parted the weighted silence between them

"And here I thought we were past pleasantries... Comtesse." 

Janin slowly released the banister and took a step back, away from the edge, and away from the Spymaster. 

She had not been a Comtesse for a very, very long time.

And no sacrifice in all the worlds could return her there. Of that, she was certain.

"Leave the dead with the dead, Spymaster." Janin adjusted her sword belt to sit more comfortably astride her hips, and turned towards the stairs. "There is nothing to be gleaned from pillaged graves." 

As she took the first step, her sensitive ears picked up the words Leliana spoke over the open air of the tower: "That which remains remain to be seen, I think." 

Only if they wished to be, Janin thought.

But some secrets, she’s learned, were best left alone where they lay, never to be exhumed again.

#writing: mine #writing: dragon age #oc: janin sovris #writing: fictober19

[xoruffitup]

AITAF’s Broadway Show

WHERE DO I START? Okay, at the beginning, I guess - Deep breaths!

First, I want to describe the beautifully diverse group that came together for this extraordinary evening. It started with me and two amazing girls I met at SNL. (One being @reylonly <3) We sat together during the SNL dress rehearsal, exchanged phone numbers afterwards, and we’ve had the best group chat going ever since. My veteran dad came for me and @reylonly’s military ticket admission, while our third SNL friend had managed to connect with a colleague’s mother, who was an army nurse. The vet nurse loves theater and brought her husband as well, so we were a pretty inspiring group of all ages and backgrounds, and shared amazing conversation throughout the night.

The evening started with a very classy reception. We saw Joanne floating around talking to people and she looked stunninggg. The reception area wasn’t that big though, so we soon went down to the theater to find our seats.

We sat in the 5th row!! So when Adam came up to the front of the stage to give an introductory speech at the beginning about the inspiration to start AITAF, their 10-year anniversary, and to thank everyone who made the performance possible, I was just sitting there basking in awe and the fact that he was really THERE. TALKING. SO CLOSE. No, I would not get over it even at all for the following 2 and a half hours... :’)

I’ve read a bit of Sam Shepard but never seen True West performed live, but wow you could not ask for two better actors to play the main characters: Brothers Austin (Adam) and Lee (Michael Shannon). They said before they started the reading that they’d only rehearsed that afternoon, which is nothing short of INCREDIBLE, given how well these two played off each other. This play is full of furious, dark humor and there’s an edge of potential violence undercutting almost every scene, building the tension more and more until Austin finally tries to strangle Lee in the final scene. These two pushed and pulled at each other, getting in each other’s faces and needling each other with sharp words and insults. It was like the actors had been playing off each other for months; They knew just how to drive each other to the breaking point, and they were each brilliant in depicting the moments of rupture.

Adam highlights: There was an amazing section when Austin gets very drunk. Adam sang twice, the second time a hilarious mix of singing and shouting. He started the play wearing a blue t shirt with a grey sweater on top, but during this scene he pulled the sweater over his head, dragged it off, then bundled it up and stuffed it under his shirt. He walked around like that for a good five minutes. He half-fell against a wall and dropped to the floor, only to do a handstand and kick his feet up against the wall. (!!! This was AMAZING ahaha) At some point he did an INCREDIBLE coyote yelping noise. Another point, he talked with an entire mouthful of water and it fountained everywhere hilariously.

Lee bets Austin that he couldn’t steal any household appliances even if he wanted to, not even a toaster. (Lee steals a television early in the play.) This results in Austin stealing the entire neighborhood’s toasters and collecting them in their kitchen. (“There’s a lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning!” “You need breakfast... How about some toast?” “I love the smell of toast in the morning... it makes me feel like anything’s possible.”) All of Adam’s toast-related jokes were just killer. :’)

Obviously, Adam always looks stunning in person, but this time the highlight was unquestionably THE HAIR. The lush, long, majestic hair. There was a portion in the play when he knelt down at the front of the stage and put his head down on the floor, and !!!! THAT HEAD OF STUNNING STELLAR HAIR WOW. There was also A LOT of pushing his hair back with his hands and it got me every. single. damn. time. Be still my beating heart. (it never does when Adam’s involved...)

After the play ended, the cast stayed on stage for the Q&A, joined by the Director. Adam facilitated some discussion among the actors on their previous participation in AITAF events, and the differences between acting on stage and in film. Then he opened it up for questions from the audience.

Q&A highlights:

Someone asked how Adam manages to create a sense of intimacy in all his scenes, even when working on big films. The title “King of micro-expressions” was used, asking whether that aspect is intentional. Adam first reacted with his typical “what-me-talented?-crazy” look of skepticism, but then LOL he just bust out into every ridiculous face he could think of, to show off those micro expressions. It was SO PRESH AND FUNNY.

A few questions later, someone asked what advice he would give to his younger self while he was in the Marines, if he had a chance. Adam’s initial joke response was just: “Microexpressions” and everyone lost it.

Okay this was hands down the purest moment! The cast on stage couldn’t really see up into the balcony because of the lights, so at first Adam shaded his eyes and squinted real hard when a woman in the balcony started her question with “Hi Adam, we crossed paths back in Mishawaka a few times.” Then Adam saw who it was, grinned, and told everyone it was his high school drama teacher!! As she then began her question, she suddenly got extremely emotional and I couldn’t see it, but heard in her voice she was already or would shortly start to cry. After a moment she managed to finish her question - Whether the people Adam meets and performs for when he travels to military bases talk to him afterwards to thank him for sharing his talent and the gift of his craft. It made me a little choked up too, not gonna lie, to hear someone who knew and had some role in Adam’s earliest forays into theater, be overcome by seeing how far he’s come and all the manifold ways he puts his singular talent to use to better the world around him.

I ASKED A QUESTION AND I WAS SO CLOSE THAT HE AND I TALKED DIRECTLY TO EACH OTHER, HE LOOKED STRAIGHT AT ME AS HE ANSWERED AND IT WAS LIKE HAPPY FIREWORKS GOING OFF IN MY WHOLE BODY AHHHHHHHH. I asked him about how he’s seen attitudes change towards AITAF’s work throughout its whole 10-year journey, and I’d like to think he appreciated the question for his reflections back to their first performance and how far they’ve come since then. Video here because my friend is amazing!!!!

A SECOND BULLET DEDICATED JUST TO MY AMAZED DISBELIEF THAT ADAM SPOKE TO ME. Like, he responded to words that came out of my mouth and I somehow managed to speak said words while speaking directly to him?? SLAP ME IM DREAMING :’’’D How did I actually manage to keep myself together while in close proximity to him?! Let alone speaking directly to him?!!! I SURPRISE EVEN MYSELF. But then again, Adam seems to make the impossible possible :’)

I frequently watch theater, but tonight was really a thrilling surprise. I KNEW Adam would be stellar, of course, but I didn’t know if any of the play’s power would be lost with it just being performed as a reading. To the contrary, the performance style may have even made it better! There’s a lot of raw, angry energy in this play, and this stripped-down reading was performed with an immediacy and visceral energy I’ve rarely ever seen on stage. The movements weren’t all blocked out and planned; There was no shuffling of people or props on or off stage; There were no protracted pauses or fancy stage effects to build an atmosphere around the actors; They created everything with just their voices, words, and bodies.

I’m so, SO immensely grateful I got to attend tonight, because this might have been even better than seeing Adam in a full play. Tonight was unfiltered and instinctive, Adam just going for it and throwing everything into the part for a solid, uninterrupted 2 hours. It was equally stunning to see him just remove himself from the whole 2-hour buildup of angry tension as he started the Q&A. (Though there was a laugh among the audience when Adam turned to Michael Shannon for the first time in the Q&A, like “sure you guys really don’t want to strangle each other?”)

Tonight was wonderful and wholesome, moving and inspiring from start to finish. From the people I shared the evening with, to the frank dialogues that occurred during the Q&A about negative stigmas sometimes attached to the arts within the military, to testimonials of how AITAF’s programming guided military families into shared engagement with the arts. It was wonderful to hear the military audience around me responding with genuine enthusiasm to Adam’s initial introduction, applauding and voicing agreement. I appreciated the chance to hear Adam speak so candidly and enthusiastically about his passion project; Just as much as I appreciated slapping @reylonly’s leg and whispering “Why are his feet so cute?” and “Look at his HAIR.” :’)

TL;DR TAKEAWAY: Adam is truly insanely talented and his selfless commitment to AITAF’s goal of bringing theater to military audiences as an enhanced outlet of self-expression is so, so admirable. This man is never in it for himself, and only puts himself in center stage when there’s a larger utility for doing so. You could see that tonight, when he’d realize he was the only one answering two or three questions in a row and would look around self-consciously to his fellow cast members and say “I feel like I’m monopolizing the conversation” or “Feel free to stop me anytime... jump in anYTIME, GUYS, ANYTIME.” (<Increasingly anxiously)

SOMEHOW, Adam succeeded in the impossible tonight: Making me love him even more. But perhaps having him gazing right at me as he spoke to me was sure to have that effect :’D

Nope, still have no fucking clue how I managed it or how I survived. :’’’)

#Adam Driver #AITAF #Sorry for the grainy pics but I still wanted to use them #Please feel free to ask me anything at all about the event! #Would love to talk about it moreee : D #Would love to talk about it forever!! #Arts In The Armed Forces #driverdaily

[potterwatch-transcripts]

First Broadcast: 1st September 1998.

Lee Jordan: Good Evening all and welcome to the worlds number one Harry Potter fan show, Potterwatch. I’m River, and we are coming to you live from Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Headmistress McGonagall has kindly consented to let us be here for the night and so Rapier and I will be reporting on the pre-sorting excitement.

George Weasley: That’s right River. I think it’s fair to say that this is the greatest thing to happen to hogwarts since James Potter and Sirius Black enchanted the entirety of the teaching staff to look like popular muggle characters ‘the Justice League’.

Lee: I hear Dumbledore made an exceptional ‘Wonder Woman’ whatever that is. A quick update on little tommy Riddle, brought to you by our special guest, Peeves.

Peeves: Voldy is moldy Voldy is moldy!

George: Sheer poetry. Ah now here comes the headmistress herself. Professor!!

Professor McGonagall: Hello gentlemen. It is against my better judgement that I let you attend but I recieved letters from the minister, Harry Potter and a rather odd one from what appeared to be the muggle Queen, so I couldn’t refuse.

Lee: you won’t even know we’re here. Now Professor, is it true, upon Harry Potter joining the Auror office, you were seen high fiving everyone you met, and sent a howler to Dolores Umbridge in Azkaban saying and I quote ‘suck it Dolores you hag’

McGonagall: I can neither confirm nor deny this.

George: did you just wink at us Professor.

McGonagall: don’t be absurd Weasley. Five points from Gryffindor.

George: Professor I don’t even go here.

McGonnagall: Nevertheless

Lee: ok Professor, what in your opinion are Harry Potter’s greatest achievements and lowest points.

McGonagall: an unusually good question. Besides the obvious I believe his O in his OWL defence against the dark arts was most pleasing. He actually scored 103%. Only 3 other students have ever over 100 in an exam. As for his lowest, helping lose 150 point is one night in what I later learned was an illegal dragon smuggling operation. Blast Hagrid.

George: fascinating. One last thing Professor. Is it true you offered Harry the DADA job and he declined?

McGonagall: sadly yes, he wanted to help rid our world of death eaters before retiring from the Auror office.

Lee: Thank you Professor. Now Rapier, as we wait for the students to arrive, you have some news for us.

George: Indeed I do River. Our top story regards a favourite of our fans, Teddy Lupin. My reports indicate that master Lupin now has learned a wide selection of curse words. Rumours claiming they were taught to him by the Weasley siblings, excluding Percy are totally unfounded and just because I may have taught your grandson to say crap is not a good enough reason to hex me Andromeda.

Lee: truely his mother’s son.

George: indeed. next up, Minister Shacklebolt has announced wide reforms to the department of magical law enforcement. The reforms will, among other things, add sectumsempra to the list of unforgivable curses, and provide comprehensive training to all ministry employees on how to resist the impirius curse.

Lee: that would’ve been useful this time last year.

George: you’re not wrong River. And finally, reports are coming in that Harry Potter has just been fined 100 gallons after a muggle saw him attempting to force a reluctant hippogriff through the front door of his London home. When asked for comment Potter said ‘why didn’t I just leave that bloody bird with Hagrid’.

Lee: not even the great boy who lived is above the law hey Rapier?

George: you save the wizarding world ONE TIME!

Lee: At least twice if not more.

George: you save the wizarding world numerous times and you think the laws don’t apply to you.

Lee: I’m going to have to stop you there Rapier, the first students are arriving. Ah I see Hermione Granger, returning to complete her seventh year, and Ginny Weasley, the coolest Weasley.

George: Oi. Hey Hermione, Gin, over here.

*moments silence*

Hermione Granger: Hello boys.

Ginny Weasley: hey guys.

Lee: Hermione you’ve returned to complete your N.E.W.Ts. Why? Are you mad? Has the year on the run with Harry Potter causes some sort of mental instability?

Hermione: No Lee. I believe that the best way to contribute to the magical society, and help further the rights of our fellow magical creatures is to complete my education.

George: How dull. Ginny. What’s it like kissing the boy who lived. I imagine he’s exceptional.

Ginny: oh yes. You can feel the raw power radiating off him. He tastes like victory and treacle tart.

Lee: you’re the luckiest woman on Earth. Hermione, by contrast you ended up with Potter’s sidekick, Ronald ‘less cool than George’ Weasley.

George: cheers River. Is kissing Ron as sloppy as it seems?

Hermione: *sigh* come on Ginny, let’s try and get a good view of the sorting.

Lee: How rude. Ah and here comes Luna Lovegood. Merlin’s nipples what is that?!

*Distant McGonagall voice*: Jordan!!!

George: it appears dear listeners Miss Lovegood has brought one of her special events hats to the sorting. This one appears to depict a giant representation of Harry Potter’s face.

Lee: that is horrifying. Oh look, when she taps it with her wand it says ‘Down with Voldemort’. Luna! Over here.

Luna Lovegood: Oh hello Lee. George. What are you doing here?

Lee: we’re reporting on the start of term at Hogwarts.

Luna: oh how nice. Daddy tried to get a press pass when I was sorted but he had to cancel. Something about a flying car.

George: nice one Ron. Luna I can see the sorting is about to start. Can you quickly comment on the claims made by Rita Skeeter that Harry Potter is in fact, an unregistered animagus, becoming a penguin?

Luna: oh I don’t think that’s true. Harry doesn’t have the aura of a penguin. And besides, birds aren’t effected by wrackspurts, and Harry’s head is full of them.

Lee: Luna I have no idea what any of that means but thank you.

George: she’s mad that one. Lovable but mad. Merlins beard that hat is scary.

Lee: As the sorting begins, we will end today’s show. Thank you all for listening from myself and Rapier. Tune in next time for more Potterwatch. The password will be Hogwarts.

#headcanon #hogwarts #potterwatch #harry potter #luna lovegood #ginny weasley #hermione grainger #minerva mcgonagall #merlin #lee jordan #george weasley #kinglsey shacklebolt #dolores umbridge #ron weasley #peeves #rita skeeter #buckbeak #hagrid #teddy lupin #andromeda tonks #james potter #sirius black #albus dumbledore

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Their Hero Academia: Chapter 13

Raw and unedited (especially until I get Chapters 14-16 written to upload along with it), but I finished the 1st draft tonight and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Especially with switching to some new protagonists. Chapters 0-12 can be found here:

Their Hero Academia – Chapter 13: Takuma Sero Makes a Show of It

If there was one thing Takuma Sero liked about living in the dorms, it was the sense of privacy. Sure, there were fifteen other people living in the dorms, three others on his floor, but compared to his home, that was nothing.  Between his parents, his three younger brothers, and baby sister, there was always somebody trying to butt into whatever he was doing.  At least on his floor, all he had was his best bro Kenta Sato. Daisuke Shoji simply kept his head down and Takiyo Aoyama had made it clear early on he had no interest in “whatever nonsense you two are getting up to.”

As if trying to become the next internet sensations was nonsense.

Which reminded him… he really ought to check their hit counter.  With Kirishima-Bakugo out of the cafeteria yesterday, he’d actually been free to host a new round of “Will Sato Eat It?” without fear of being exploded or having her tear his arms off.  He was actually pretty certain she wouldn’t do the last part.  Their parents had been friends for decades and he was on reasonably good terms with her most of the time.  But yesterday had been pretty impressive as far as the game went. Kenta had eaten a soup bowl, a baseball, a rock, and a tire that someone had somehow managed to get into the cafeteria.

Kenta’s dad had broken it up after that, with a threat to report their antics to Aizawa if they kept doing it.  And Kenta had gotten a talking to from his dad later on about irresponsible Quirk use and making a spectacle of himself.   At least the elder Sato had learned the futility of trying to rat them out to Takuma’s parents.  His mom was one of the most Instagram-famous Pro-Heroes in the business.  She actively encouraged his aspirations.  His dad was just vaguely puzzled by the whole thing and just let his mom take the lead.

Checking the video upload, he found that the hit counter was already in the thousands.  Wisely, he opted not to look at the comments.   It was like his mom always said, “Never read the comments.”   Sure, you got a validation high from some of it, but there were way too many trolls and mudslingers to make it worth it.

Takuma broke into a grin. “Yeah, we’re gonna be famous. Just you see.  Heroes and entertainment sensations.”

He checked the time and found he still had nearly an hour before class.  Plenty of time to finish getting ready.  There was also the matter of homework he hadn’t quite completed, but he could probably copy the answers from somebody, at least enough to squeak by. Math was going to be the death of him. He understood numbers well enough, but once you started getting letters involved with numbers, his brain just refused to track any of it.  It had nearly sunk his entrance exam score, but he’d managed to just barely pass that. A good practical exam score had done wonders for making up the difference.

Twenty minutes later, he was out of his room and ready to go.  He did not have the world’s most developed fashion sense (much to the regret of Kimiko Ojiro, his other best friend, who had declared him “the worst gay best friend ever”), but he had an entertainer’s sense for showmanship in his appearance.  He spotted Kenta coming out of his room and gave him a double finger guns.

“Sixty-five hundred hits in less than twenty-four hours, my man!”

“All right!” Kenta said, giving him a fist bump.  “That’s twice as many as the last video!”   He let out a burp and clutched his stomach.

“You okay, man?” Takuma asked.

Kenta shook his head and burped again.  “Heartburn and indigestion.  Dad says just because I can get anything doesn’t mean I should.”  He grinned, thick lips pulling back to reveal his perfectly white teeth.  “But I say it’s a small price to pay for being famous.”

“More famous in your case,” Takuma told him.  Kenta was already a good bit famous from all the times he appeared in pictures and his stories on his father’s “Food and Family” blog. According to his mom, it was crazy popular with single moms.

Kenta waved it off. “That’s really Dad’s thing.  This is ours!”

Takuma was about to begin discussions of the plans for their next video when he was distracted by the sight of Daisuke Shoji walking back to his rooms, clearly having come from the showers.  The six-armed boy was only wearing a towel wrapped around his waist, his silver hair still damp, and a small about of moisture still visible on the muscles of his arms and abs.  He nodded politely to Takuma and Kenta on his way back to his room.  Takuma kept watching until Shoji’s door closed.

His trace was broken by Kenta giving him a small shove.  “You okay there, bud?  Kind of went away for a little while?”

He sighed.  “Why are the hot ones always straight?”

Kenta gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.  “Hey, there’s lots of other guys at U.A.  You’ll find somebody.  Or you could always try online dating?”

Takuma made a face. “I’m not that desperate.”

Anything further was interrupted by his and Kenta’s phones buzzing.  Both checked and he saw they had identical texts from the school’s emergency alert system.

Homeroom has been cancelled.  All first-year students should report to the Gran Torino Memorial Auditorium at 0800.

Kenta gave him a curious look.

“Don’t look at me, man,” he said quickly.  “I haven’t broken any rules that would cause a grade level assembly.”

“This school year,” Kenta said.  “I still can’t believe the time you…”

“Don’t remind me.  I’m still barely out of being grounded for that.”

“I think that was the first time I ever actually saw your parents punish you.”

“Oh, would you look at the time, we should really be getting to the Auditorium!”

***

“Any idea what this is about, Takuma?” Kimiko asked. He assumed she was looking at him, but honestly, even after having known her all his life, it was hard to tell.

He shook his head. “Beats the heck out of me.”

All around, the other seats in the Auditorium were filling up with the first year students.  There were the three Heroics classes, three General Ed classes, three Support classes, and three Business and Management classes.   Sixteen students each in the Heroics, twenty in each of the others, for one hundred eight students total left the auditorium about half full.  

Down on the stage, he could see the majority of the teaching staff.  There were the three Heroics Homeroom teachers, Aizawa, Super Ball, and Battle Fist.  There was Power Loader, the aging director of the Support courses.  Word around campus was that he was considering retirement after experiencing the Iida Twins.  And there was FireFox, their math teacher; Hawkeye, their English teacher; Figure Sk8, the dark-haired daughter of the Twins and Izumi’s uncle and aunt, who taught their Science classes; Palette, the paint-themed Art History teacher; and Hopper, Tokoyami’s uncle and their Literature teacher.  There Hound Dog, the school counselor, Vice-Principal Midnight, and even Kenta’s dad.   He also spotted Doctor Izumi sitting with her husband, Kota, the Rescue Hero and Rescue Instructor called Water Spout (or, at his mom embarrassingly always referred to him, “the first man to see me naked”) There was also All Might, and several teachers he didn’t know, who he presumed taught some of the classes taken by the other courses.  Whatever this was about, they were taking it very seriously.

And slowly approaching the podium, leaning heavily on his cane, was Principal Nezu.  Takuma wasn’t sure if he was a rat or a bear or possibly some kind of creature from Australia (or was it Austria?  Whichever one had the kangaroos.  Those were real, right?), but he understood that the old animal was crazy smart.  He’d guided U.A. through some of its roughest years and managed to still come out on top.

“I am sorry to interrupt your usual class schedule,” Nezu began.  “I know your studies are of great importance to you all.  But after the events of the last few days, both here at our school and elsewhere, we have been made aware of events which you all deserve to know.  The Center for Quirk Research is expected to make a statement later this morning, but we thought it might be best if comes from us.”

He took in a breath and continued.  “The CQR has discovered, working in conjunction with several Pro-Heroes, the existence of a virus which causes the victim to lose control of their Quirk.  It appears the Quirk is… man made.”

Any side conversations that had been going on were immediately silenced.

Nezu went on.  “After an as yet unknown incubation period, it causes a power-flare up during which time the user’s Quirk will activate out of their control.  This lack of control appears to last an indefinite amount of time, but appears to be a onetime flare up.  Unfortunately, even as the number of cases are growing, information is scarce.  There appear to be no obvious early symptoms and we are unsure how the virus is being transmitted. At this time, it appears that only Emitter and Transformation type Quirks are effected.”

A ripple went through the crowd as the full impact of the Principal’s statement took effect. Anything that could do that is dangerous indeed.  From the time they were young, they’d always been taught about the importance of controlling their Quirks.  And now something could just take that away…

“That’s…   that’s not good,” Takuma said.  Absently, he rubbed the patches on his right hand where his Acid Tape came from.  His Quirk was technically a Mutation type, since he had slightly different physical structures to allow for it.  But his mom was an Emitter type, so were many of his friends.  So were a lot of people out there in the world.  And there were lots of people out there with really powerful Quirks.   What if somebody like Ground Zero or Deku caught this thing?

“We’re… we’re okay,” he heard Kimiko say.  “Not… not like I can get more invisible.”

“Hey,” Kenta said, “it’s gonna be okay.  People’re smart.  They’ll get this figured out.”  Kenta’s dad was an Emitter type too, he recalled, even if Kenta’s own Quirk was a very minor Mutant type.

Nezu continued, “We are able to run tests for the virus and will be doing screening following this assembly.  However, as there are no tell-tale symptoms prior to manifestation, we urge you to talk to your teachers or Doctor Izumi should you have any concerns.  We will be doing everything we can to protect you, which includes providing you as with much of your usual structure as possible. Classes, including Heroics courses, will continue as normal.  Rest assured, everyone is doing everything they can to get to the bottom of this. But at this point, cases are isolated and sporadic.  We advise caution, but there is no need to panic.”

Takuma made it a point to never take life seriously.  But for once, that didn’t seem like such a good idea.

***

“You heard what the Principal said,” Aizawa said, after they had returned to the classroom.  “The moment you feel anything out of the ordinary or even suspect that something might be wrong, I expect you to tell me or another teacher.  Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mister Aizawa,” the class said, nearly as one.

“Good,” Aizawa said. “Now, we are going to proceed as normally as possible.  Which means we have a little bit of business to settle.  Choose a class representative.  I don’t care how.”   He zipped himself into his sleeping bag and disappeared behind his desk.

“Well,” Midoriya said, “I think we should probably vote on it?”

“I vote Toshi!” Shota Shinso cried out.

“Toshi,” Asuka Tokoyami agreed.

“I’ve got to go with Midoriya too,” Isamu Haimawari said.

“Toshi has my vote as well,” Izumi Todoroki added.

“Guys… Shouldn’t this be a secret ballot?” Midoriya asked quickly.

“Too late now,” Takuma said. “Besides, I think we all know you’re gonna win it.”

As much as he loved the spotlight, he loathed responsibility.  Better Midoriya than him any day.  Besides, it would take away from his own pursuits.  And Midoriya really was good at taking charge and helping people who needed it.  Guy wanted to help the whole world, even more than the average Hero-in-Training.

“Personally, I think moi would be best,” Takiyo Aoyama said.

“Oh, give it up, Frenchie,” Mika Mineta told him.  “Midoriya’s definitely the best shot at this.”

“I fear I must agree with the rest,” Akaya Koda told Aoyama.  She really seemed to be one of the few people who could stand the arrogant blond for more than a few minutes.  She must have had the patience of a saint.

“Going with Midoriya here too,” Kenta said.

“Yep, me too,” Chihiro Kaminari added.  “And Tokoyami for vice-rep while we’re at it.”

“I like those ideas!” Kimiko said.  “Both of them!”

“Makes sense to me,” Shoji said.

“This is highly against protocol,” Tensei Iida said.  “But I cannot argue with the consensus either.”

“My younger brother is correct,” Sora Iida said.  “I agree with the conclusions drawn.”

“You really must stop using that qualifier!  I am only younger by three minutes!”

“It is scientifically accurate!  Do you dispute this?”

“It is needlessly semantic, and yet I cannot argue with the precision!”

“If I agree, will it shut them up?” Katsumi Kirishima-Bakugo asked.

Motion was carried. Midoriya and Tokoyami were their class reps.

Takuma belatedly realized that probably gave them some kind of power of his and Kenta’s antics, but that was their problem, not his.  Besides, it was worth it to see Aoyama pout.

***

“Hua-whah!” Even though Takuma had practiced swinging from building to building by using his Acid Tape many times with his dad, doing it always made him feel like his stomach was going to flop out of his mouth.  It didn’t help that his Quirk was more complicated than his dad’s.   The elder Sero only had to think about shooting out his Tape until it hit something.  Takuma’s Acid Tape meant that he had to be continually concentrating both on dispensing more tape and on maintaining the properties.  Since he could make it anything from slick to sticky to acidic, that meant he had to do a lot more concentrating.  And doing that while ten stories up made it all the more problematic.

Even if it was supposed to be a simple Heroics exercise in cityscape navigation.  All they had to do was make it from one end of the faux-cityscape as quickly as they could.  For quite a few, like Kimiko, Kenta, or Koda, there wasn’t much more they could do than run as fast as they could.  Others were doing a much more impressive job.  Midoriya was bouncing with leaps that were easily carrying him, the Iida Twins were blasting through the air, and Haimawari was zipping through the streets. And somehow, Kirishima-Bakugo had gotten herself up on the rooftops and was parkouring herself through the course.

Takuma let himself go flying through the air for a moment, before shooting out another strand of Acid Tape.  It stuck to the fire escape and as he began to swing, he could feel something go wrong. With a sickening sound of tearing metal, the piece of the fire escape he had snagged with his tape snapped and broke, sending him falling!

He shot out another strand of Acid Tape, trying to save himself, but instead of snagging a lower portion of the fire escape, it melted right through it.  He’d made it too acidic!  He was gonna die!  He was never gonna reach a million followers!  Involuntarily, he felt his eyes close.

And just as suddenly, powerful arms caught him and he was rising.  So he was dead then, and the angels were carrying him away.  Good-bye world, he only regretted that he not let more of you gaze upon his awesomeness…

“Are you all right, Sero?” a voice asked.  “I was afraid I would not be able to match your falling speed without causing you injury, but I believe I was able to calculate something close enough…”

An angel who apparently sounded just like Tensei Iida.  He chanced opening his eyes and the first thing he saw was himself, reflected in the chest plate of Iida’s costume.  Looking up, he saw a silver helmet.  Definitely Iida.  Which meant he wasn’t dead?  He was alive! He could still get that million followers!

“Sero?” Iida repeated. “Are you all right?”  He slowly started reducing power in his jets, letting them drift downward.

Oh, right.  He needed to answer his rescuing angel’s questions. “Oh, ah, yeah, I’m fine,” he said, finding himself stumbling over his words.  “You really saved my ass, there, Iida.  Thanks.”

“Of course,” Iida said. “As your friend and classmate, not to mention as an aspiring Hero, it is my duty.”

“Well, right now, you’re my hero, Iida.”

Inwardly, he groaned. Was he really saying something that stupid?   Apparently, he was.  At least Kimiko and Kenta weren’t there to hear it.  They’d never let him hear the end of it.

***

The Iida Twins could be found in the Common Room, pouring over blueprints.  Usually, the Twins spent whatever free time they had in the Support Workshop, but according to Sora, Power Loader had kicked them out under out under threat of unspecified punishment, all because they had “accidentally used too much power and caused a few small explosions and fires.”  So the two had returned to the dorms instead to work on what they could.

Takuma, Kenta, and Kimiko peered from around the corner at them.

“This is a really dumb idea,” Takuma said.  “And I know all about dumb ideas.”

“If you were doing this for me,” Kenta said, “you’d be making your “good idea” face.  The one that always means it’s something that’s going to get us in trouble.”

“Besides,” Kimiko said, “this is for romance!  We’ve got to! You’re cute, he’s hot, you’re pink, he’s got pink hair, I’m gonna call you Pinky-Squared!”

“We don’t even know if he likes guys!  He could be into girls!  Or machines! I’m gonna make a fool of myself!”

Kimiko slapped him upside the head.  “That’s loser talk!”

“You want us to film it?” Kenta asked.  “You’re good in front of a camera.”

Takuma went a paler shade of pink.  “…No. Definitely not.  I do not need this preserved for posterity if it all goes south.”

“Look, this is the most romantic thing to happen since school started,” Kimiko told him.  “So you are not chickening out now!  Kenta and I are going to get Sora out of the room and you are going to ask Tensei out! Do you understand!?”

How someone whose face he couldn’t see could have such an intense glare, he didn’t know, but her tone suggested that there was no arguing with her.

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s do this!”

***

I can’t do this!

With Sora out of the room (he was so stressed he literally could not remember what excuse Kenta and Kimiko had used to get her out of there and he had seen it literally seconds ago), Takuma was free to make his move.  His smooth move.  His ever so smooth move.  He was the king of smooth.

He was not smooth.

As casually as he could, he approached the table where Tensei was still working.  “Oh, ah, hey, Iida,” he said.   “Ah, thanks again for saving me like that.  Pretty sure I was on my way to being a pile of pink goo.”

“The fall was not nearly enough to reduce you to goo,” Iida said, looking up from his blueprints.  “But it would have been very messy all the same. I am happy I was able to prevent that.”

He rubbed the back of his head.  “Yeah, well, either way, I appreciate it.”   He frowned, trying to think of how best to proceed.  “So, uh, what are you working on?”

A very crazed (and very attractive) grin spread its way across Tensei’s face.  “Modifications to Sora’s and my Hero costumes.  After training yesterday, we came up with several potential ideas to improve performance and work with our Quirks, such as a more adjustable wing system and potential storage for emergency supplies of apple and grape juice.”

“And that exploded?”

“Oh, no,” Iida said.  “That was the idea for a capture-weapon to add as an additional support item.  We may have made the propulsion element a little too strong.  Power Loader apparently believed that we would benefit from some time away.  But I do not see how we can improve our designs to their fullest without practical, hands on work.  And we cannot do that if we are banned from the workshop for a week.”

“That sucks, man,” Takuma agreed.  It’d be like someone telling him he couldn’t upload stuff to the ‘net.  A guy had to have a passion, after all.  “But, ah, I guess that means you’re gonna have some free time?”

Iida frowned.  “Unfortunately, yes.  There is only so much we can do without the space to put theory into practice.”

Okay, it was now or never.   He could be brave!  He had this!

…He didn’t have this!

He had this!

He didn’t have this!

He had this!

“So, um…,” he said, “if you’re gonna have the free time…  maybe you’dlikespendingsomeofitwithmesomewhere?”

Iida blinked.  “I… don’t think I caught that, Sero.”

He took a deep breath. “I was thinking, if you were gonna have free time anyway… maybe you’d want to spend some of it with me? Somewhere?  Like a date?”

Iida’s eyes widened in surprise and for once, it looked like he was at a loss for words.  “I… I would like that very much, Sero.”

He had this!

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