#also the hybrids song has been stuck in my head since the show came out... lmAO

[raylex]

I love my lima bean husband

#this lil version of him was so cute I can't believe I haven't brought him up yet HE'S ADORABLE #also the hybrids song has been stuck in my head since the show came out... lmAO #self ship #💜☀️ray of sunshine☀️💜 #mine #(mia if you see this I did get your ask you sent me a while back about him and I wanted to DRAW A RESPONSE but I am going thru ARTBLOCK but #-I promise I DID SEE IT!! and I will respond with a drawing!! at some point!)

[meltwonu]

s n a k e     |     e y e s     [chapter 3]

pairing; snakehybrid!woozi x female!reader

this chapter’s notes; 🥺💕thank you for all the interest in snake eyes!! I can't believe it!! y’all don’t know how happy that makes me because I love this au!! 💕💕💕 in this chapter: jihoonie makes a small oopsies 🥴oral(female receiving), minor switch!woozi, hehehe... im sorry, im mean and u will know why 😭😭💕 also this chapter is long, strap in for the long ass ride!! yeehaw

chapters; 1 - 2 - 3 - x - x - x - x

It takes a week and a half for you and Jihoon to really fall into a rhythm that suits his and your needs.

Jihoon is still shy around you, only spending an hour or two with you while you work until he feels too awkward again, slinking away back into his room. You wonder, periodically, if he happened to hear what you were doing in your bedroom the night he came to stay with you and if that was the reason he’d been so shy and quiet around you. But you quickly shake the thoughts out of your head, preferring to believe that he hadn’t, for your sake and his. Jihoon had never mentioned anything to you anyway, so you had no reason to believe he’d heard anything.

But it’s a rainy Sunday afternoon that has you bundled up in an oversized sweater on the living room sofa, laptop haphazardly on a side table while you take a break from writing. A movie plays quietly on the tv in front of you, but you don’t really pay attention to it. Jihoon emerges from his room, covered up in a big sweater and his sweats as he takes a seat on the opposite end of the sofa.

“It’s… r-really cold today…” His voice is soft, almost a whisper, as he pulls his legs up onto the sofa, crossing them as he tries to cover his skin. “I… kinda had a h-hard time sleeping.”

“Did you need more heaters? The forecast said it’s supposed to rain for the next couple days, Jihoon…” You trail off, already sliding off of the sofa as you fetch a blanket for the cold male. “I can go pick you up another one tomorrow, if you’d like?” Draping the soft blanket over him, he thanks you, snuggling into the soft material. “If it’s okay… I don’t want you to go out of your way if it’s too much.” You chuckle, settling into your spot on the sofa again as you pick up your laptop to get a bit of work done.

“Nonsense, I want you to be comfortable here.”

Jihoon’s stomach grumbles 45 minutes later as he sinks deeper into the plush blanket, hiding the flush that covers his cheeks. You laugh slightly, already hopping off to make him and yourself a snack to eat.

“You’re more than welcome to rummage the kitchen whenever you want, y’kno. Or if you want me to make you something to eat, you can always ask.”

“Sorry I’m just… still getting used to it. You’re definitely nicer than my past owners.” You hum, curious about how his previous owners treated him for him to be this shy, or if he was just naturally always this timid. “It’s okay! Take your time. I know it’s weird but I’m… I’m still getting used to it too.” You feel your body heating up, suddenly reminded of a questionable dream you’d had the previous night; the cute snake hybrid invading even your mind when you slept recently. God I really need to get laid somehow, you think, maybe that cute barista from down the street would be interested? I think his name was Jun. Reminder to self to get his number next time.

You grab a pan, setting it onto the stove as you gather ingredients to make ddeokbokki; something that Jihoon really loved to snack on. “Hey, Jihoon? Did you wanna help me make this? I can teach you a bit!” 

There’s a shuffling from the living room before the blonde haired male steps into the kitchen, a curious look on his face.

“I’ve never cooked before though…”

“It’ s okay! I can teach you. Just so that.. Um, just in case I’m not home or something and you get hungry?” He nods, stepping closer towards you as you set various ingredients onto the counter top. “Okay, I’ll just... Watch you.” You smile at him, urging him to come closer as you begin explaining what to do. But Jihoon’s mind fixates on something else, your voice getting drowned out when he feels the warmth radiating off of your body when he steps closer. Unbeknownst to you, Jihoon decides to stand almost directly behind you as you continue to explain how to cook to him.

When his hands start to slide up the hem of your sweater, you pause, setting the measuring cup back onto the counter top where it was before. Jihoon’s cold fingertips begin traveling up your sides, delicately caressing your skin under your sweater. Your breath is caught in your throat when he then leans his head over your shoulder, his tongue softly lapping at the exposed skin of your neck. A moan catches in your throat when you realize your body’s already rapidly heating up at his touch, the snake hybrid behind you also letting out a tiny moan of his own when he realizes how warm you’ve gotten.

But you snap back to reality, panic taking over when you let out a garbled noise, pushing back against Jihoon.

“Oh my g-god, wait--wh--”

Jihoon panics, pupils shaking as he pulls away completely, pressing himself into the fridge for a second before immediately bolting out of the kitchen without a word; only a door slam in the distance letting you know where he is.

A couple hours pass, the rain still pattering against the window as the moon rises beyond the clouds.

The ddeokbokki from earlier went unmade; ingredients going back to their original places as you decided to retreat to your own bedroom to catch your breath and cool yourself down. You really hadn’t hated what happened earlier, but it was quite the shock, and you could only imagine what Jihoon was feeling as well. But you set those feelings aside, making your way down the hallway to his bedroom to ask him about dinner. Fuck, he must be starving. He didn’t even eat earlier, you think.

You knock on his door, a muffled “yes?” coming from the other side.

“Jihoon did you want to eat dinner with me or will you eat later?”

“Uhm, hmm, I’m…um, I’ll.. I’ll eat with y-you.”

You set up the dinner table, setting Jihoon’s food across from you. You were glad that he just ate normal human food as it made it easier for you to take care of him; unsure if you could sit and watch him eat what snakes normally did. Hearing a door click, you break out of your thoughts, seeing him walk towards the dining table with a blush on his face.

“I… um…”

“Yes Jihoon?”

“I just… about earlier, I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have… um, stuck my hands in y-your shirt like that…”

The memory alone has you blushing, his delicate and cold fingertips brushing against your ribcage had a tingle traveling up your spine and down to your fingertips. You hadn’t hated it; just the shock from his touches had you initially recoiling, sending Jihoon running straight for his bedroom where he had holed up for hours.

“I… It was okay. I, um, didn’t hate it actually…”

“O-oh, uh, so… um, is it okay? If… If I do that sometimes? It’s… you feel nicer than, um, the h-heaters in my room so…”

“Y-yeah, I mean… y-yes, that would be… okay.” Shock momentarily flits over his features before a genuine smile etches onto his face. “Okay… U-um I mean, it---it won’t---I won’t, y’know, stick my hands in your shirt but maybe like---like we can, um, cuddle? Sometimes?” You almost choke on your food at his suggestion, suddenly too shy to make eye contact with him at how innocent it all sounded.

“Yeah that… that would be fine!”

The two of you have normal dinner conversations, you asking him about songs he’s been working on while he asks you about work. You remind him that you’ll pick up a new heater in the morning and begin clearing the table with his help.

When the dishes are cleared, you bid Jihoon a good night; thankful that the snake hybrid wasn’t too awkward after everything that had happened earlier in the day. He calls your name as you turn away from your doorway to face him again.

“Yes, Jihoon?”

“Um, I was wondering… If it’d be okay if I slept in your room? It’s just… Uh, it’s cold and raining and... yeah.”  

You contemplate it for a second, wondering if that was really the best idea, all things considered. But you mentally shrug, thinking, it’s just sleep.

“Sure, why not. Why don’t you get ready for bed and just… come in when you’re ready?” He nods, thanking you before he slinks down the hallway to his bedroom to change. The entire thing feels a little questionable, but you shrug it off, getting ready for bed before Jihoon shows up.

Admittedly, you normally would sleep in a big shirt and panties since you slept alone. But since Jihoon would be joining you this time, you slip on a sweater and some pajama pants, opting to be completely covered in order to prevent any potential mishaps. You could only pray your dreams were normal.

There’s a knock on the door when you slide under the bed sheets, adjusting your pillows before you reply.

“Come in!”

Jihoon opens the door, shutting it behind him as he stands in front of it awkwardly. Much like yourself, he stands there in an oversized sweater and pajama pants, hands digging into the material of his sweater as he takes in the features of your bedroom. When his eyes finally land on you already under the sheets, you pat the side of the bed that’s empty, inviting him in.

“C’mon let’s sleep. I still need to go out tomorrow morning to get your things.”

The extra heater is forgotten the next morning when you wake up in his iron grip.

It’s not uncomfortable, but he’s only got one arm wrapped around your waist and you find it almost virtually impossible to escape his hold as he snores softly into your neck. So you lay there, listening to the pitter-patter of the non-stop rain and his soft breaths, thankful that the two of you had fallen asleep without a hitch and that your dreams were normal.

Jihoon had quietly slid into the large bed with you, muttering a ‘good night’ before your radiating warmth under the sheets had lulled him to sleep.

You don’t know how much time passes as you lay there, but eventually Jihoon decides to wake up, a yawn and a simple ‘good morning’ muffled into your skin before he pulls away, turning to face the opposite side. You sit up, rubbing your tired eyes as you check the clock. 11:09am.

“Did you want breakfast?”

You never buy the heater; Jihoon happily moving some of his personal items to your bedroom after that late morning breakfast. And you didn’t mind, as long as the snake hybrid was happy, so were you.

He had dragged in a heater, using it on nights when you came to bed late, only for you to shut it off when you finally slid underneath the covers. He would easily find your warmth, rolling over to lock you into his grasp as you fell asleep.

It became routine over the next couple of weeks, even when the clouds cleared and the days and nights were warm. Jihoon opened up to you more as well, dragging his keyboard into the living room to play you some of the songs he’d been working on in his old bedroom, now a work space. You’d often work in your spare room but recently you’d been spending more time in the living room with Jihoon, finding the space more comfortable to be in. Setting your work away, you lay down on the sofa, a yawn on your lips.

“Hey, can I, um, ask you something?”

His voice breaks you out of your train of thought as you adjust your body. Jihoon sits on the floor near the window, fingers tapping random keys on the keyboard as he avoids eye contact.

“Yeah, what’s up?” There’s hesitance written all over his face before he nods to himself, exhaling sharply before he replies.

“I… I know maybe I’m asking for a lot and, I mean, feel free to say no because I know you probably will! And that’s--that’s okay but I was wondering… if--if I…” Jihoon pauses for much too long as you raise a brow.

“If you what? Jihoon, is everything okay?”

“I, yeah, everything’s fine, I just.. I’m sorry, I… It’s okay if you think it’s weird and I’ve never really done it before either but I just, I noticed when… when I touch you, you get really, um, warm and I… I like it a lot so I was wondering if I could try something?”

A million different thoughts float through your head in a millisecond and you can’t stop the blush that creeps up your neck and paints your face red.

“Um, I guess… it would depend? What exactly… did you want to try?” You bite the inside of your cheek, already trying to keep yourself from squirming around.

“I… can I try… eating you out? I wanna see something.”

The formality of Jihoon asking so politely if he could go down on you sends your brain short circuiting quicker than lightning.

He’s convinced at this point you hate him and will probably send him back to the adoption home the next day when he sees the blank look on your face as you process.

“Shit, I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked that, I---”

“Y-yes…”

“Wait, what, hold--” Jihoon turns into a sputtering mess, his palms clammy against his sweats as he squirms. “Wait, did you say… yes?” You nod, already feeling the heat pooling in your lower abdomen as you shift awkwardly on the sofa. “Yeah I… um, I’d… be okay with that…” Trailing off, you try to look at everything but Jihoon, mildly embarrassed at how increasingly wet you were already getting.

“O-okay, um, when should we… do it?” Jihoon’s voice is shaky and to anyone else he sounded nervous, but inside he could barely contain his new found excitement.

“Now is okay? I… I’m okay with right now.” You finally look at him, finding him already crawling over to you on the floor before moving the coffee table enough to sit on his knees in front of you. “I guess, let’s start…?” He trails off, the blush never leaving his face as he twiddles his thumbs. You nod, sitting up to slide your shorts off, shimmying to the edge of the sofa as you spread your legs for him.

“Interesting.”

“W-what?” You stare at him from between your legs as he slots himself in front of you, cold palms holding your thighs open as you shiver from his touch. “Nothing, just… you’re already wet.”

If there was a sinkhole underneath you, you’d like for it to take you right about now. The embarrassment sets your body on fire as Jihoon chuckles under his breath. “And now you’re really warm? Interesting.” You bite your lip as he leans in closer to your clothed mound, his tongue peeking out from between his lips.

“Ready to test my theory?”

Gulping, he doesn’t even give you a chance to reply before he’s licking you through your panties, his tongue adding pressure along the wet patch growing on the fabric. Your thighs threaten to clamp shut around his head but his grip on you is too tight, prying your legs wide open as he continues to lick at your clothed entrance.

Jihoon pauses for a second, a groan leaving his lips. “Fuck, you taste so good, I need to get these panties off of you now.” Agreeing, you hook your fingers into the band of your panties, ready to get them off.

“Ah, ah, not like that.” There’s a ghost of a smirk on his face before he lets go of your thighs, fingertips pushing your hands away and replacing them with his before he tears them in half, the soaked material sliding off of your body as you stare at him in shock.

“Jihoon, what th---”

“What? Didn’t think I was capable?” You’re at a loss for words; the sudden change in his demeanor from shy to slightly dominating, intoxicating. “I’m just… wow.” He laughs at your lack of response, gripping your thighs again as he leans back in, his tongue already on your slit as he licks up a stripe from your clit to your entrance. Your hands immediately tangle into his hair, moaning as his tongue laps at your wetness.

You feel like you’re floating on clouds, warm and dreamy while Jihoon eats you out. He hadn’t even used his fingers on you yet, only sliding his tongue through your folds and prodding at your entrance and you were sure you could cum just like this.

“Ngh, Jihoon… Can you… make me cum?”

The male between your legs hums in response before his tongue flicks at your clit, a groan leaving you when he draws harsh circles around the nub. You can feel the pressure in your body cresting as you try to grind down on his waiting tongue.

“Jihoon, I’m---”

When you wake up, Jihoon is still by the window, notebook full of music related jargon as he glances up at you. “Oh hey, I was wondering when you’d wake up. You fell asleep so fast after you laid down, I was gonna ask if you wanted to hear some of the stuff I was working on but you were out like a light.”

Your head is void of any thoughts as you stare blankly into Jihoon’s face; the entire thing had been a dream. A cold sweat coats your body as you sit up, the wetness between your legs insanely real.

“I… yeah, I guess I was tired… I--I didn’t say anything weird in my sleep, did I?”

Jihoon ponders for a moment, lips tilting cutely up into a pout.

“No, I mean, you made some weird little squeaky noises but… that was it. Why? Did you have a weird dream or something?”

“Uh… no, just… wondering.”

Fuck.

#snakehybrid!woozi #woozi smut #seventeen smut #svt smut #woozi scenarios #woozi imagines #seventeen imagines #svt imagines #svt scenarios #seventeen scenarios

[qianoir]

After Midnight 3 - Stars

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: college dropout!Ten (WayV) x fem!reader

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: non-idol au, angst with fluff on top

𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 13+

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: cursing (censored), lying, family problems, mentions death of reader's father, romance

♡ 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1.9K

𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭: @staysstrays

Preview < 1 < 2 < 3

Your head was pounding from your ears drinking in the tantrum of a 3 year old boy, the cries diving straight into your ringing eardrums. A young couple showed up with their child who started offing himself about your café not having some made up hybrid cake he wanted for the last 10 minutes.

The boy started flailing around and knocked his mother's iced Americano out of her hand in the process, landing the freezing and pungent liquid all over you.

The LED clock above you flickered with a new hour, freeing you from the café’s dark roasted chains. You ripped the soaked apron over your head and stuffed it into the back room’s washing machine before taking hold of your belongings and rushing out of the building after saying a quick “good-bye” to your mother- who was not about to deal with the coddled boy and you leaving all at once, so she kicked the spoiled family out, them following your irritated trail on the way through the doors.

You were walking fast to have a little costume change before meeting up with Ten and his friends, 5 o’clock coming within the next 20 minutes.

Y/N

Heyyo I had a little accident at work so I'm going to stop by my place to clean up before heading over to yours.

Once you were in your own space, you peeled the rest of the coffee soaked clothing off of your body, sticking the wet collection into the washer to cold soak after dressing up nicely.

TEN

d.amn it y/n you are too old to be soiling yourself

???

Y/N

That’s not what I meant!

TEN

Whatever ;p

Stepping out into the bright evening air, you realized you don't even know where the hell to go. The napkin with the address was in the pocket of your apron washing back at the café.

You recognized the street that leads to Décalcomanie, the street that leads to Myeongdong, and one leading to a duck shop.

Admitting defeat, you texted Ten.

Y/N

hey so I left the napkin with your address in my apron.. which I don't have would you mind sending it to me?

TEN

such a handful~

You followed the GPS to his address. His apartment building was on the other side of your school you usually metro to, so it was a pretty tiring walk. Arriving fashionably late, you knocked on door number 117.

There was a lot of commotion and screaming, as you were previously informed. Finally, Ten opened the door and waved for you to come in.

Taking your shoes off at the entrance, you saw three guys tackling each other, two others playing video games, and one really fine looking man behind an island in the kitchen.

"Hello!!" One of the guys being tackled shouted and waved at you which got him punched in the back by the guy orchestrating the tackling. You hesitantly waved back "Hi Y/N!!" The boy in the kitchen said with a charming smile.

"Lovely place." You said to Ten with a giggle as he closed the door with an annoyed look on his face. "Y/N, these are my friends,"

He took you over to the couch where the two players were. "This is Sicheng and Xuxi," The two boys playing Mario Kart threw a glance your way and waved with a smile. "these fools are Hendery, Xiaojun, and Yangyang.."

Hendery strained to wave again under the two boys with a big smile on his face, as did the two others. Ten swayed you into the kitchen and introduced you to the last man. This guy was so handsome, like the Asian bachelor. "I'm Kun." The man greeted, kindly.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Y/N. Our Ten always talks about you." Yangyang says walking towards you two. Ten sent him a glare. "Is that so?"

"At least I'm not blind from having my head up my ass all day, Yangyang shut up!" His voice cracked, making you and Yangyang erupt in laughter.

"Anyways, if you'll excuse us- I invited Y/N here for us to be alone." He took your wrist in his grasp and led you to a room.

Ten pet a space on the bed for you to sit down while he leaned over his desk, searching on his laptop. A slow beat filled the room. You recognized this song- the song your dad would play for your mom in the car on long road trips: Something by The Beatles.

Something in the way she moves

attracts me like no other lover

Something in her style that shows me

I don’t want to leave her now

you know I believe and how.

Your parents were so in love. When your father first heard this song, he had made it their special theme to portray their love. They had both become big fans of The Beatles and always had this song pop up at least once in every holiday or event playlist or could be caught quoting it occasionally when the timing was right. Your heart sank in your chest at the memory.

You hadn't realized that the song had ended or that Ten was at your side watching you intently. You looked up at him and he offered a small smile.

"My parents used to listen to this song all the time."

"Really? Are you guys close?"

Your mouth felt sour hearing the inevitable question. “My dad died from pneumonia when I was younger. My mom tries to be present for me, but I know she misses him.” Tears puddled at your waterline as you forced yourself not to cry. “Sometimes I think she only keeps trying because she thinks I’m studying premed when I really hide pointe shoes in my closet. I don’t have the heart to tell her what I’m really majoring in.. because I’m terrified of us losing each other completely and frankly, she would never forgive me of my dishonesty if she would stay.”

"It's not wrong.. following your passion" Ten announced after a whole note of silence, "I'm sorry for making you bring up such a past, but I’m happy I can at least sympathize with you..” He looked away from you to recall his memories clearly.

“My parents didn't agree with me wanting to study dance either. And they certainly did not agree with me leaving my hometown in Thailand and dropping out of college to come here for the best art opportunities. Mine and the rest of the guys outside; all of us are a little more distant from our family than usual just because we are passionate." Ten confessed.

"I'm sorry." You weakly rasped.

"I'm not." Ten smiled at you.

"My friends and I are doing what we love without anyone holding us back and one day it's going to all pay off.. I know it will.. If it wouldn't I would have never dropped out."

You could understand where he was coming from. He is really passionate and faithful to his dreams, it is a little inspiring.

"And you seem to be doing good on your own, too. You're studying dance, which I'm sure you're amazing at, and working at the café to help your mom, letting people make a mess of you that you always undoubtedly pick yourself up from." You laughed, the sad tears rolling down your cheeks and turning to bittersweet tears of joy.

"Thank you, Ten."

"Anytime, Y/N." He handed you a napkin for your eyes.

A cough was heard outside the closed door, along with faint whispers.

"Lucas, shut the HELL up!"

Ten got up and opened the door, making four boys come tumbling inside the room.

All rushing to get up, Lucas stayed laying on the floor, "Uh, hi guys." he offered a charming smile. "We were just coming to tell you that dinner is ready?" Yangyang shrugged obviously.

Ten snickered.

"Nice try, guys-"

"Dinner is ready!" Kun yelled from the kitchen.

"What did I tell you?" Yangyang stuck out his tongue, cockily. Ten rolled his eyes and looked over at you,

"Would you like to stay for dinner?"

"Uhm-"

"She is staying, I already made her a plate!" Kun yelled once again from the kitchen. The other boys ran out of the doorway to the kitchen.

"I guess it's settled then..." Ten sighed and reached his hand out to you, which you took. You were led into the dining room where the other boys sat. Ten placed you in a chair next to his and Kun’s.

Kun had made zhajiangmian, a Chinese traditional celebration/comfort food aka Chinese spaghetti. It tasted so much better than the bread pastries and milk teas you had been living off of in the past year.

Everyone was very talkative during dinner, you even found out that Ten choreographs his own dances for himself and the others to perform and learned that Kun has a degree in music from a prestigious university in Beijing. The boys you had dinner with were really fun to be around and gave you lots of energy after the intricate start to the new semester.

You didn't realize how lonely your little apartment was until now, even when sharing it with your mother most nights. They made you feel so comfortable and content after lacking companionship since your high school days. Also the food was really good, thanks to Kun.

Everybody finished their food but still continued the little chat at the dinner table "And this one time, Ten ate butter thinking it was ice cream! Who does that!?" Yangyang finished off his story punching the table with laughter.

You glanced at the time on your phone. It was almost 10 o'clock and you had to get to sleep early for your new 8 AM class.

Ten turned to you when he felt short tugs at his hoodie. "Cinderella has to get home?"

The room got quiet with Ten’s words, but quickly exploded in a swarm of whines and begs for you to stay. You gave them an apologetic smile.

Ten stood up, pulling me with him, "I'll walk you home." He was already at the door, kicking on his shoes. Everyone bid you good-bye as you waved to all of them before you and Ten were out the door.

"It's this way." You motioned in the direction of your apartments. Ten nodded and followed your path. It was silent the whole way, but it was a nice silence. It was peaceful with just you two. Arriving soon, you  stopped in front of the entrance and turned around to look at Ten.

"Thank you for having me over, I really enjoyed it. Your friends are really nice."

"Of course. I’m really glad you came. I like spending time with you and I think my friends do as well."

Smiles were exchanged and hearts skipped, both of your breathing patterns were evident in each other’s dialogue. "Do you have any last lyrics before we end the night?"

Your building never shines like the others in its distance. The only light around you is the one that blooms in space and allows the stars to twinkle down to where you stand. Ten took your chin is his hand and created perfect eye contact:

"Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do.”

He tossed your chin up before walking off into the night.

To Be Continued…

Something by The Beatles

Yellow by Coldplay

𝘲𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘪𝘳

#wayv x reader #nct x reader #ten x reader #wayv imagines #wayv fluff #wayv angst #nct imagines #nct fluff #nct angst #ten imagines #ten fluff #ten angst #qianoir

[youarejesting]

My fics in 2020

I am proud of this year. I worked hard until the end. 2020 was my year of finishing my stories. I have done so much and next year I want to do more. So keep an eye out Jester will take over.

Fandom(s): BTS, mentions of NCT, BLACKPINK, MONSTA X.

Networks:@btscreatorscorner @castlebangtan

Total Fics: 34

Total chapters: 404

Total Words: 565,587 Total vids and fake subs: 13 

Best and Worst Title?

Best: ‘Music is the spark that sets my soul on fire’ and its sequel ‘Dance is the celebration of the flame’

Worst: The Check Up

Best and Worst first line?

Best: Yoongi never understood why people would say one's blood is important. (Mania)

Worst: It all started in Mykonos. (Steal my sunshine)

Best and Worst ending line?

Best: “I got you this pretty dress” Seokjin grinned showing you the dress before hugging you and giving your forehead a kiss, “Let’s go burn it” (Me & the ghost in number 23)

Worst: But all you got was a sharp-toothed smile. (Pandemonium)

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than, or about what was expected?

I think I wrote what I expected, but I think I could have definitely finished more. Which is a bit upsetting.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? 

I don’t have limitations to my writing so nothing is deemed unpredictable.

I am however generally surprised by my love of throwing in twists and also gore, I love gore.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Wild space: it is strange because I am not particularly a fan of space and scifi, but I am really into writing world building things and having the ability to create a whole planet was amazing.

Most popular story? 

Tumblr:

Seoulmates

Femme

Quarantine

AO3: 

Quarantine

BTS365

Love Listening

Story most underappreciated by the universe? 

Tiny Tan: Limited Edition

Story that could have been better? 

All

Sexiest story?

 Love Listening

Saddest story? 

 Me & the ghost in number 23

Fluffiest story? 

Mall Santa

Most fun story? 

BTS Among Us 

Hardest story to write? 

Kisaeng

Daylight (i'm still writing it haha)

Easiest/most fun story to write? 

Light it up

What story took the longest?

365 lol took all year

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? 

The biggest risk I took all year was posting my work. Living life on the edge.

What are your fic writing goals for next year? 

To double my writing

Fics that you wrote in 2020:

BTS365: 365 mini stories ✓ fluff, comedy, angst, romance, mature, action, adventure, smut. This has it all. Find your birthday and read your story. I wanted to give something unique to people.

Quarantine: 100 Chapters ✓ Something to accompany you while you are alone during quarantine and the pandemic. I was lonely and I figured so was everyone else. So, I decided to have BTS help us all go on an adventure that didn’t focus on the covid virus but on some other aspects around it.

Femme: 50 Chapters ✓ A futuristic world where women are rare. This was an indulgement fic that gave circumstances for the reader to be in a polyamorous relationship with the boys and live a glamorous life. Ending was a bit rushed.

Seoulmates: 29 (ongoing) Each member of BTS has a unique soulmate bond. I love the idea of this, another indulgent fic but you aren’t alone with the boys you have friends and you can play different parts.

Witching: 11 Chapter ✓ When your brother goes missing trying to find them gets you in a turf war between two covens. This fic was actually a way for me to vent for a project I wanted to complete but the project is so big that I wrote this instead.

Herb: 2 Parts ✓ mature, smut. Jimin claims he has everything you need, he doesn’t disappoint. I came across this idea within the 365’s and extended it because I liked the idea so much. Jimin has everything from casseroles to scarfes, cat food to cell phone chargers and the reader just wants to be loved and relieve stress.

Limited Edition: 10 Chapters ✓ BTS boys are sold as limited edition figurines. This was originally me venting about not having any merch and then became a daydream that what if the merch came alive. And the story was born.

BTS Among Us: 7 Chapters ✓ gore, action, adventure, scifi, angst, death of main characters. This one was so funny for me, I had my friend pick a colour and that was the imposter from the start. I was amazed that no one figured it out in the end. I want to play again soon.

Light it up: 13 Chapters ✓ fluff, comedy, angst, romance, mature, action, adventure. This was inspired by the dynamite trailer, I loved it so much that I began writing, I had no clear direction but as I wrote it started to shape and someone said it was like stranger things and I credited Stranger things cause it did indeed have a similar premise and I don’t want to pretend I came up with something that has already been done.

Love listening: 2 Parts ✓ SMUT, comedy, fluff, angst, romance, mature. This was inspired by a strange video that came up on the internet, I was searching for BTS misheard lyrics and the video I clicked had some funny ones but after that the next suggested video was bts moans and auto play was on and well this fic was born.

Me & the ghost in Number 23: 11 ✓ fluff, comedy, scifi, supernatural, romance, angst, mature, smut, death of main character. This was inspired by many of the ghost text au’s I had read but many of them were like the show oh my ghost where the main ghost character isn’t actually dead just in a coma and I thought the opposite way instead of them waking up, I wanted things to shape the other way. This one was so difficult to write and I cried a lot due to the loneliness Jimin was facing and the mourning from Yoongi.

Hope in the sheets: 4 chapters (so far) fluff, comedy, smut, adventure, slice of life, romance, angst, mature, growing up. This one is a fic that targets my childish desires. I have grown up so much and this fic is a visual representation of that. 

Asks: 77 (ongoing) where the bts boys answer the readers questions and concerns.

Reactions: 15 (ongoing) 

Prompts: 18 (ongoing)

One shots:

Kisaeng: This was a reverse fic project, the idea that instead of Mulan pretending to be a man and going off to war, it was BTS dressing as women to stay home from war. I loved writing about fictional history. 

Steal my Sunshine: This was a summer project. I wanted to write something that felt like a very bad spy movie, like Mellissa Mccarthy and Mr Bean-esque. I formed this one and it made me laugh the whole time writing it.

Blue Side: This was talking to myself about being sad and admitting that I could be sad but I should learn to split the happy and sad into two worlds and limit my time in them both, it was about equal balance and finding the good in the sad and the sad in the good. I don’t know how hard to explain.

Temptation: I had fun writing but it is pure SMUT. not even good SMUT.

Pandemonium: This was really fun. The premise is dark and the ending is left ambiguous, in the original, Namjoon kills the reader but I left it open so you can imagine them continuing their relationship or not.

Mall santa: A fluffy christmas piece. A secret santa I wrote that I felt needed to be soft and quirky and have just all the hallmark moments.

Mad: This one is finished, but I have it published privately at the moment waiting to unveil it as it is well SMUTTY. I don’t know what it is about Taehyung but he is always so dark and I guess that's what people find appealing. I had this idea from a 365prompt and well I had to write it.

One wish: This was a birthday fic that I wrote for a friend. I wanted people to read it on their birthdays or imagine their birthdays and themselves in this position if they made the same wish.

The Check Up: I wrote for this for a friend going through a personal procedure, they were nervous so I took their bias and made something I hoped they could think about while in the procedure and I even explained the steps and what might happen over the next few days hoping the whole thing wouldn’t seem as scary because technically her mind had already been through it when reading the story.

Sparks of the heart: Robots developing human feeling. It was a cute universe and Yoongi’s story will be a series within 2021.

Dance machine 3000

Digital Art

Electronic Tonic

Circuit chef

Random Access Memory

Kookies Trojans and Malware

Feel Better: Another fic written for a author who was sick, I wanted them to endulge in some escapism whilst they were sick.

Music is the spark that sets my soul on fire & Dance is the celebration of the flame: These two were requests that I loved dearly.

Horror movies: Cheesy damsel in distress meets boys will be boys.

I will wait (somesay): This song wouldn’t get out of my head so I had to write it.

Wild Space: When I wanted to write a hybrid AU but I already have a hybrid AU being edited. So hybrid werewolves meets space.

The Bomb: This one is compete and ready to post I had to talk myself out of writing this as a series but I love the story line. I love the end.

Lost Boys: This has been stuck in my head since i had a dream about it and I finally wrote it into the new year. I hope you like it.

Mania: Not my favourite work, love ABO universe I just haven’t got an actually story line so it is on hold.

Incaceration: The story that never was, I really need to get around to this one.

Tagging: @moccahobi I know you wanted to tag me... but I am finished so I am tagging you.

#bts #bangtan sonyeondan #bts imagines #bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts fic #bts author #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic 2020 #bts fic 2020 #bts 2020 #author 2020 #review 2020 #btscreatorscorner #castlebangtan

[liskantope]

Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

#walt disney #disney films #snow white #pinocchio #tooth fairy #Jordan Peterson #fantasia #dumbo #bambi #cinderella #Alice In Wonderland #peter pan #lady and the tramp #sleeping beauty #one hundred and one dalmations #sword in the stone #mary poppins #jungle book #Italian language #fatphobia #the beatles #alcoholism

[falloutforties]

Five Years {Chapter Two}

Description: Nora meets some new friends, and encounters some of the worst creatures the wasteland has to offer. But it’s no big deal, really. Lemons into lemonade, right?

Warnings: Again, no real warnings for this chapter aside from language and some violence. 

Note from the Author: This story is also on ao3, if you’d rather read it there, but I will continue to post it here as well! Writing and publishing this story has given me something exciting to do during quarantine, so I hope that someone sees it and also finds some excitement.

II. BAD RADS

From the second she hit the ground, she decisively ignored the pang in the soles of her feet and sprinted across the mottled street, dodging upturned cars and pieces of unsettled tar that littered the road. The thing was moving fast, faster than she would ever have imagined, sweeping great gusts of wind across the city as it moved.

It was beautiful in an incredibly terrifying way, she had to give it that. If it were stuffed and displayed behind a glass case in a museum, she would have gawked at it, but it wasn’t stuffed, its heart was still beating, and she was losing stamina.

“Fuck it!” She shouted and hoisted the mini-gun onto her hip with a wretched groan. Everything she did hurt her physically, but the thought of being ripped limb from limb by the creature seemed to hurt more, so she suffered the massive bruise that would certainly grow from her hip bone into her ribcage where the mini-gun sat spinning idly.

“RED BUTTON!” Screamed Garvey from the museum’s balcony. “THERE’S A RED BUTTON! PRESS THE RED BUTTON! RED BUTTON!”

He kept repeating it, over and over, and it took her mind a few seconds to process before she spotted it, and the mini-gun began to whir at a frightening pace. As it heated up, the creature lunged towards her with the bloody debris of a raider stuck between its teeth and on its horns, dripping bits of lung onto the street. She could have vomited, but there was no time. She would have to reschedule.

“GET FUCKED, YOU SLIMY BASTARD!” If her plan didn’t work, she would have looked foolish screaming such harsh words just before getting ripped apart. They would have been excellent last words, but they wouldn’t look very pretty printed on a marble tombstone. Much to her surprise, and the aesthetic benefit of her epitaph, the gun began firing right into the monster’s chest, finally sending it sprawling out across the street.

As the ringing in her ears died, she watched the monster’s enormous chest heave ragged breaths as it died. The mini-gun still spun in front of her, ready in case the monster had a friend, but the streets grew an eerie quiet that replaced the ringing with a stale, audible silence.

“Fucking shit, fuck, fuck, shit, fucking fuck,” she muttered. The mini-gun finally gave way and crashed into the gravel beneath her as her knees buckled, sending her face-forward into the rubble. She heard Garvey’s feet hit the pavement and the frantic calls of Sturges behind him.

“I’m fine, guys,” she assured. In her mind, she was waving her hand at them as a sign of life, but her physical body was unaware of her intentions as it lay limp and crumpled like a rag doll. “Don’t worry, I’m alive. Just a little tired. Just gonna take a little nap here, right on the road. No worries, no worries.”

“Get her off the ground, Sturges, we’ve got to get her inside.”

“I’m on it, boss.”

She felt Sturges’s roughened hands scoop beneath her armpits, hoisting her from her pathetic position into his arms. She vaguely understood that this was the first real human contact she had in so long, but she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed by it. She imagined Nate’s face, scornfully watching her as another man carried her to safety.

“Thank you,” she said as she was set on a cushion on the lobby’s floor. The Minutemen surrounded her, watching to see if her eyes would shut permanently. “I’m fine, folks. Don’t worry about me.”

“That was some show, ma’am. I’ve been handling a gun as long as I can remember, but I don’t think I would last that long against a Deathclaw.”

“Is that what it’s called? Man. I guess that makes sense, though.”

“Never seen a Deathclaw before?”

“Nah, never had the pleasure,” she intoned with a dreamy smile. Nora was just happy to be alive, even if it meant she might live to see another Satan-Lizard hybrid. The sight of Preston Garvey sat in front of her with a concerned expression on his kind face made her swell with pride, and Sturges posted by the front door made her feel safe. She liked the wastelanders. She liked all the people she’d met— she even liked the raiders, in a weird way. Everyone was plucky and happy to just be alive.

“Once you’re feeling up to it, you ought to come with us. We heard of an old neighborhood close by that would make a good spot for a settlement. Sanctuary Hills. Appropriate name, huh?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Garvey?” Marcy questioned from her place against the far wall. “We might be safer holed up in this place.”

“We’ll never know unless we try. Sanctuary might be exactly the kind of place we need.”

“Sanctuary will be good for you,” Nora interrupted, and Garvey turned to her in surprise. “I used to live there. Before the war, that is.”

“The war? What war?”

“The war. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when I’m not at death’s doorstep, but I think Sanctuary Hills would be a perfect home for the Minutemen.”

She closed her eyes and pictured the little settlement in her mind, but for the first time, she saw it as it was, the wrecked little suburban paradise that sat just below the looming hill of Vault 111. She saw the skeletons of houses and the spindly arms of irradiated trees that grew through the empty windows. She saw the empty beds, the dirty halls, the rusted doorframes. And she saw life in that. She saw Preston Garvey stepping lively down the neighborhood streets at night with his hands in his pockets, whistling a song no one knew the name of. She saw Marcy and Jun huddled together in bed on a cold night, listening to the crickets chirp in the woods outside.

There was life in Sanctuary Hills. It was hidden in the darkened corners of ruined houses, but it was there, and it was perhaps even more meaningful than before the war.

“Alright then. Everyone rest up. By morning, we’ll move on to Sanctuary Hills.”

On the afternoon of the next day, she sat cross-legged on the floor of her Sanctuary home, where she once would have kneeled on the sticky plasticky linoleum, scrubbing at grout because the Hawthorne’s were coming over for Sunday brunch the next day, and they would be keenly inspecting the grout.

Recently, she had been practicing a train-of-thought exercise in which she let her thoughts go wherever they wanted. Most times, she kept a strict adherence to thought-rules. She couldn’t afford to think with too much sentimentality or hope, because the word no longer conformed to such things, but she allowed herself moments of wildness when she felt that her feelings could no longer be restricted to the dusty back corners of her head.

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare. I had to cram so many things to store everything in there.

She wondered where she would be in five years, and for the first time, she seemed to notice that her prescience did not extend to the rest of the year, even. She would just have to wait and see the next morning, and then the next, and the next, until she woke up and knew she would die.

Assuming she would be alive in five years, would she have wasted away? Turned to chems in her misery, taking hits of jet between grand Nietzschean thoughts about the meaninglessness of life? Would she succumb to the horrors of radiated life, her skin beginning to pool in rough gauntlets down to the tips of her fingers?

I do have to admit— being irradiated enough to glow green would look cool as fuck.

Fuck, fuck. FUCK.

She loved swearing. Even in her head, it felt liberating. Before the bombs fell, she had never once swore aloud, much less for people to hear. The language of the wasteland was beautifully rough, and she loved hearing even the most profane raiders spit vitriol at her, even as she shot back from behind an old Gunner’s barrier.

“FUCK!” She yelled out loud, with a smile. She wasn’t sure if Codsworth heard her, or if he was appalled at her sudden outburst of foul language, but she didn’t care. He would understand.

She wondered errantly if he was programmed graciously enough to be able to swear so violently himself.

If Codsworth said ‘fuck’, that would make this whole thing worth it, I think.

It had been three weeks since she had pulled herself from that damned vault, and so far, she had to give the Nuclear Apocalypse credit. It had really done a number on good ole Planet Earth, and it was certainly creative in its exploits.

Two-headed cows? Beautiful, brilliant, exceptional storytelling. Conceptually, it was all very nice. In practice? She thought it could do better.

Three weeks out of cryogenic storage, and the worst the wasteland had done to her thus far was get a switchblade stuck in her leg, which she in turn stuck into a raider’s leg. She was turning radioactive lemons into radioactive lemonade, and it was spicy in ways that lemonade shouldn’t be, but at least she wasn’t dead.

“Mum,” Codsworth interrupted her train of thought as he meandered into the living room. He had a few spots of rust on him now, an addition she was sure would infuriate him if she knew whether he was able to see himself in a mirror.

He’s not a vampire, he’s a robot. Of course he can see himself in a mirror. Just like he can see me.

“Hi, Codsworth,” she replied. She stood up from the floor and her joints creaked. That was a fun new problem that came with being over 200 years old, she had discovered. Her joints now sounded like the sputtering of an old car engine. She wasn’t built for this apocalypse business.

“Your friends from Concord have arrived, and their leader requests your presence.”

“Thank you, Codsworth.”

She wiped a stray tear from her eye that she hadn’t been aware of prior and headed towards the door to see her new ragtag group of friends making their way across the bridge to Sanctuary Hills, the Red Rocket Truck Stop looming behind them.

She hadn’t been completely useless in her three weeks in the wasteland. In fact, Nora was quite proud of herself. She had always wondered if she would survive in one of those tacky zombie movies that ran on weekends on Channel 42— “The Commonwealth’s Home for All Things Sci-Fi and Horror!”— and now she knew for a fact that she would survive.

In three weeks, Nora had restored the necessary parts of her old Sanctuary home, given her old robot butler a dusty bowler hat, traveled to Concord, beat the Ever-Loving Shit out of some giant glowing cockroaches, fought a Satanic Lizard, and met a really cool dog. The dog was now sleeping in a little red doghouse she had moved to her front lawn.

She had always wanted a dog. Having a baby, Nora had once thought, would be a gateway drug to getting a dog. That was Pro #4 on her list of Pros and Cons of baby-having. Now, she could have a dog, totally baby-free.

Take that, Nate.

As soon as Preston stood square-shouldered before the first house on the street, a menacing roar of thunder split the sky, and nauseous yellow clouds rolled in over the horizon. Nora wanted to think that it looked like the end of the world, but the apocalypse had already happened. This was just another awful thing she would have to live through.

She stood up and gazed at the sky under the shade of her palm as Garvey approached.

“Radstorm coming,” he mentioned casually.

“Radstorm?”

“Radiation storm. Bad news for anyone without a gas mask.”

“Radiation storm,” she muttered under her breath. “Of course there are radiation storms. What do people typically do during a radiation storm?”

“Stay inside, if you can. In your case, I would recommend getting a good sleep. You don’t look so good.”

“You sure you don’t need my help?” She asked, praying that the answer was no, but she couldn’t bring herself to go to sleep without at least asking. Damned maternal instincts.

Preston chuckled, “No, you go ahead to sleep, ma’am. You’ve already done more than we could ask for.”

Nora wondered if she would be able to sleep in her old bed. She hadn’t even tried, opting always for the Hawthorne’s old queen bed, now doubly-stuffed with Bloatfly larvae in the seems. Every time she walked into her old bedroom, she had to walk down the hall, and when she walked down the hall, she had to walk by Shaun’s room.

The child haunted her in so many ways, and she decided, after breaking out of a high-security vault and killing a Deathclaw in the middle of Concord, perhaps she was more able than she thought. She was going to find that child. Shaun was going to come home.

#deacon x sole survivor #deacon fo4 #fallout 4 deacon #fallout 4 fanfiction #female sole survivor #also i've never tagged a fic before? #if anyone is reading this and has tips on how to properly tag a fic... let me know bb

[fixxofvixx]

TEACHING VIXX - CHAPTER SIXTY

Holy Crap, I made it to sixty chapters!!!! I am really sorry but this chapter is a bit long.  I just couldn’t stop writing!!!  

Also, there are two links in this chapter.  You don’t have to click on them but it will help you understand the story a little bit more.  If they don’t work or if something isn’t clear, just let me know!

I really hope you enjoy this chapter.  It’s been in my head pretty much since I started this fic.  PLEASE let me know what you think! <3

---------------------------------------------------------

Your immediate instinct was to run but you needed to find Taekwoon first. You focused on his heartbeat and you could tell he was close. You tried to go in the direction of the pull but the hands on your shoulders held you in place.

“Taekwoon?” Your voice shook a little as a thousand scenarios ran through your head. You didn’t know if he was hurt, hiding to play some sort of joke, or if someone was holding him like you.

Finally, the hands turned you a bit to the left and urged you to walk forward. You stumbled a bit but stayed upright. The hands were gentle but firm.

After about 20 or so steps the hands stopped you. Taekwoon’s heart was stronger now, indicating that you were closer to him. But it was still erratic. Suddenly, the hands on your shoulders were gone. Your body shook with adrenaline. You were worried that maybe the situation was about to turn worse.

As soon as you carefully reached for the blindfold a piano sound came out of nowhere. You jumped as the sound reverberated around the stadium.

Ripping the blindfold off, you stared in disbelief at he sight before you.

There in the center stage was Taekwoon. Relief flooded you that he was okay. More than okay, actually. Not 30 feet away from you, Taekwoon was seated at a beautiful piano. You recognized the song immediately. You had never told him how much you loved the song but hearing him play it now brought tears to your eyes.

SONG

As he started the first verse of the song, your legs almost gave out. You always knew his voice was perfect for this song.

Hands appeared on your back, gently pushing you forward. You didn’t even glance back to see who it was. You mindlessly strode towards Taekwoon. His fingers glided over the keys effortlessly and his voice sounded angelic. Tears were streaming down your cheeks now. You didn’t care. This was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen.

When the song was finished, Taekwoon looked up at you. His green eyes were sparkling and found yours instantly. You didn’t have the power to look away. Not that you wanted to.

He stood and came closer to you. He reached forward and brushed the tears from your cheeks. He brushed the hair away from your face and cupped your cheeks.

“I know you think I’ve been lying to you. I know you could hear the difference in my heartbeat when I told you nothing was wrong. But, I couldn’t let you find out about my secret.”

You looked at him in confusion. You wanted to ask a million questions but words were stuck in your throat.

“I’ve told you before but I’m going to say it again. Just like the song said in the beginning. I knew you would be mine when I first met you. Something in my gut told me you were going to be the best thing thats ever happened to me. Never in my dreams could I have found a more perfect woman.”

He paused for a moment and his hands left your cheeks. He put his hand in his pocket and returned with something in his fist. You started to speak but was stopped when he suddenly kneeled. Air left your lungs. New tears sprang from your eyes.

“Which is why I would like to make it permanent.” He looked into your eyes and you saw nothing but pure love there.

“Taekwoon…”

“(Y/N), will you marry me?”

You choked out a cry. You just wanted this beautiful moment to stand still forever. You wanted time to freeze.

“Yes.”

A huge smile broke out on Taekwoon’s face as he took your hand in his. He slid the ring on and for the hundredth time tonight, your heart seized. You knew this ring. Taekwoon stood and his arms enveloped you.

You started to ask but chaos erupted on stage in the form of the rest of VIXX. Various degrees of congratulatory calls filled the large space.

Suddenly, the large screen behind you flickered. It was the main screen that showed the various videos during their concert. What you saw on the screen brought a hard lump to your throat.

“Mom? Dad?”

“Hi sweetheart! Oh, honey, I’m so happy for you!!” Your mom was crying as much as you were now and you were pretty sure your Dad was holding back the tears in his eyes.

“But, how?”

“Taekwoon has been talking with us for about two weeks about planning this for you. It was a little difficult language wise but Hyuk helped as well. We’ve been watching the whole thing on Hyuk’s phone.”

You glanced at the maknae and sure enough, he was holding his phone up, live streaming.

“Taekwoon asked if we would like to come personally but I feared the trip would be too hard on us. But he promised a visit to us soon.” You nodded in understanding and wrapped your arms around Taekwoon.

“When I came home that day after you had been asleep for two days, I told you I had been at practice but I had actually went to pick up this from the post office.” He grabbed your hand and held it up, showing off your engagement ring.

“I offered to send that to Taekwoon after he asked about rings. I knew you had always loved your grandmother’s ring. I figured it would be suitable.”

“Its more than suitable. Its everything. I couldn’t ask for more.”

“You go have fun with your friends and new fiance. We can talk later, okay? I love you sweetie.”

“I love you too Mom, Dad.”

“I love you too, cupcake.”

After a couple of seconds, the screen went dark. The only thing you could think to do was turn back around to Taekwoon and cry on his chest. His arms came around you again and he buried his head in your neck. His lips sought any patch of skin he could reach.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. There’ll be time for that later. Right now, we need to go back to our hotel and celebrate!!!” Jaehwan pulled on your arm and separated you from Taekwoon. A low growl came from the panther and you smiled. Nothing could dampen your spirits right now.

“Bring her back.” Taekwoon’s voice sounded fatally dark.

Jaehwan chuckled nervously and circled his hand around your wrist. He leaned towards you and whispered.

“Run.” Jaehwan took off, dragging you behind him. You expected Taekwoon to be right on your tail but when you looked around you saw him being held back by four other hybrids.

You and Jaehwan ran until you reached the van and took off with the staff to the hotel. He gave your phone back to you but the battery was dead.

Before you realized it, you were back at the hotel. Jaehwan had somehow convinced you to stop in the store across the street and get some snacks and alcohol. He was certain that a party was required.

You were in the hotel room with Jaehwan for about 15 minutes before Taekwoon’s heartbeat became noticeable. You looked at Jaehwan but he made no indication that he could hear it.

“Jaehwan,” the raven looked at you, a smile plastered on his face. “Taekwoon just got here.”

The smile disappeared and fear took over.

“Noona….”

Before he could beg for protection, the hotel door opened and Taekwoon burst through. You knew he was aware of your location but his red eyes were only on Jaehwan.

“Hyung, wait! I was just joking! Distance makes the heart grow fonder, right?”

Taekwoon wasn’t listening. He was dead set on Jaehwan. When he was halfway across the room you stepped in front of him. He hesitated for a moment but tried to go around you. You grabbed his face and pulled it towards your own. You attached your lips to his and ran your thumb over his tattoo. He stilled immediately. His heartbeat slowed then picked up again at warp speed. He tried to deepen the kiss but you stepped back, not wanting to get carried away in front of the guys.

Taekwoon held you close and looked up at Jaehwan.

“Count yourself very lucky.”

Jaehwan just giggled, confident in his safety now.

“Noona went to the store for us and got all the celebration necessities! Let us begin!”

——————-

An hour into the sudden party, Wonshik and JiYoon had taken off to the other hotel room with their own sampling of the party refreshments. The rest lay scattered around the room involved in various activies.

You had ended up sitting in between Taekwoon’s legs next to the window. Your back lay against his chest, enjoying the feeling of having him surround you. You had given up drinking after one glass but Taekwoon was in high spirits and seemed to be drinking his bottomless glass simply out of habit.

You sat there turning your engagement ring around your finger. Taekwoon’s hand came up and laced his fingers through yours. You smiled at the feeling.

“Do you know what the ring means?”

“I know that it was your grandmother’s. And it doesn’t hurt that the stone in the middle is green.  But, that’s about it.” You agreed that it was interesting that the color of the stone almost matched his eyes.

RING

“My grandmother was Irish and this was the wedding ring that my grandfather had made for her. The design is very old and very popular in Ireland.” You pulled your fingers from his and raised your hand so he could see. “The crown on top represents loyalty. A reminder to remain faithful to your spouse. The hands are for friendship. Because its not enough just to be lovers. The heart, of course, stands for love. It is protected by the crown and the hands to keep it safe just as you should do in life.”

You almost teared up reciting the words your grandmother had told you so many times. But it was a happy feeling. It was something you knew she would have been proud of.

Taekwoon’s hand came up to your cheek and tilted your head back so your lips could reach his. His kiss was needy, slow, and sensual. It was several moments before he allowed you to pull away.

Hyuk chose that moment to wander over and fill Taekwoon’s cup. He placed a kiss on your cheek before turning the cup up to his lips, emptying immediately. He sat the cup down and turned his head to your neck, placing tiny kisses everywhere. After a few minutes the kisses were accompanied by a string of giggles.

Curious, you pulled out of his arms completely and he let out a tiny whine until you turned around and sat facing him. He tried to pull you in for another kiss you held him back. Something in his eyes made you stop.

“Taekwoon? What’s wrong with your eyes? The color is weird.”

“Huh? Weird how?” Another giggle. His fingers held your hips as he tried to bring your body to his.

“They’re pink. Like hot pink.” You leaned forward to get a better look but Taekwoon closed the distance quickly and licked your nose.

Startled by the action, you jumped back. You had a sneaking suspicion about what was going on.

“Hey, Taekwoon. What color do hybrid’s eyes turn when they’re drunk?” He thought a bit then shrugged his shoulders.

“I dunno. I don’t remember.”

“Pink. They turn pink.” You spun quickly to find Hakyeon behind you. He had his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “C'mon, I’ll help you get him to your room. I would keep him here but he would realize eventually that you’re gone and tear down the place looking for you.”

You nodded and stood up.

“Hey. I’m not finished with you. Get back down here.” Taekwoon complained as he swayed a bit on the floor. He tried to reach for you but missed.

Hakyeon grabbed one of his arms and pulled him up effortlessly. Before you could be jealous of hybrid strength, you quickly latched onto Taekwoon’s side.

“Where are we going? I liked our spot over there.” Taekwoon pouted cutely and you couldn’t help but giggle.

“We’re going to my room.”

“Oh, nevermind. I like that better. I can do things to you in there. I couldn’t do it earlier ‘cause there were too many people.” He tried to lean over to kiss you but Hakyeon smacked him on top of the head.

“Be a gentleman, Taekwoon.” Hakyeon scolded him but Taekwoon just stuck his tongue out at him. You took out the key card from your back pocket and opened your door. A blast of cold air from the room hit you and you shivered.

“Are you cold? I can warm you up in no time.” He smiled and you noticed his pink eyes had a glow to them. You sat him down on the bed and he wriggled his eyebrows at you.

He suddenly furrowed those same eyebrows and looked at Hakyeon. “You can’t stay. I plan on getting her naked. So you can’t stay. She’s mine. Okay? She likes panthers, not jaguars. Panthers are bigger, you know.” He whispered the last part and winked at Hakyeon, who simply rolled his eyes.

You started to smack him but another giggle came from behind you. You turned around to see Hyuk holding his phone up, obviously recording the situation. He looked up at you and winked.

“I’ll send it to you later, Noona.” You shook your head and laughed as he exited the room with Hakyeon.

You heard the growl but didn’t have time to react. Before you knew it, you were on your back, underneath a very playful, drunk panther.

“Hi.” He giggled and started placing small kisses on your cheeks. He went from that to giving you little kitten licks along your throat. His hands encircled your wrists and held them down against the mattress. His lips were suddenly at your ear and you involuntarily shuddered.

“You wanna be my prey?” He bit down on your shoulder and growled. His hands moved from your wrists and began pulling up the hem of your shirt. Exposing your stomach, he moved his head downwards. He littered your entire torso with tiny kisses, nipping in places here and there. You gasped at the sensation and he raised his head back up to meet yours. His eyes were still bright pink and you just stared at their beauty.

“I love you, you know. I really, really do. You know I can’t lie. You’d hear it. Do you believe me? I hated lying to you earlier but if I told you then I wouldn’t have been able to surprise you. I think surprises are better. Your parents are nice. I had a hard time talking to them and I felt bad but Hyukkie helped me. I think they like me. You like me, too, right? Or, wait. Love. You love me, right? I love yo–”

You grabbed his face and pulled it down, capturing his lips so you could end his rambling. When you released him he had a goofy grin on his face.

“I love you, too, Taekwoon.”

He smiled and kept his face mere centimeters from yours. His face turned mischievous and your heart skipped a beat. Anticipation ran full force through your body.

“You wanna get naked now? I think you should. Yeah, that’s more fun.” The pink in his eyes were starting to fade and you almost wished it wouldn’t. Taekwoon’s silliness was growing on you. His fingers were toying with the button on your jeans as his lips sought your neck.

You waited but he didn’t make any further moves. You heard his heart turn to a steady rhythm and realized that he had fallen asleep. You rolled your eyes and laughed. You supposed the longing ache in your body would have to wait.

You were so getting revenge tomorrow.

--------------------------------

As an end note, you can thank @burnt-enough-starlight for the pink eyes and drunk leo idea....because she sends me torturous pictures and then we collaborated hahaha ;)

#Vixx #vixx fic #taekwoon fic #hybrid #taekwoon hybrid #leo fic

[bobbystompy]

My Top 75 Songs Of 2019

Previously: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

First time going below 100 songs since 2015, and I cannot wait. Giving this extra juice already.

As always, criteria and info:

This is a list of what I personally like, not ones I’m saying are the “best” from the year; more subjective than objective

No artist is featured more than once

If it comes down to choosing between two songs, I try to give more weight to a single or featured track

Each song on the list is linked in the title if you wanna check them out for yourself; there is also a Spotify playlist at the bottom that includes the majority of the songs

This is usually the part where I put up a pump up video, but we are going with something a little different this year.

(It was stuck my head. Blame Blink-155.)

75) YG - “In The Dark”

The video begins with YG chugging a full tequila bottle -- sure. This song is very bad. It’s like he’s in a competition to make the verse lyrics worse than the chorus lyrics (spoiler alert: the verses “win”); not even satanic imagery can save this.

74) Solange - “Stay Flo”

Here’s a weird take: wouldn’t Solange’s career be way more fun if everyone slept on her? Instead, it’s hype on hype -- plus being Beyoncé’s sister -- which makes it nearly impossible to deliver. This has a fun beat/vibe but is kinda boring... and was still easily my favorite off her album.

73) Art Alexakis - “The Hot Water Test”

My doctors told me that I had a disease / I will slowly fall apart until there’s nothing left that looks like me

This song makes the stakes clear immediately. It was released a few months after I saw Art play in June 2019 on my birthday. At the intimate show, he revealed his multiple sclerosis diagnosis as if we were all his closest friends. Something like this is never easy to deal with -- a similar announcement by the Lucky Boys Confusion singer did not help matters -- but music can help such a painful situation, and it’s clearly Alexakis’ exile here.

72) The Cranberries - “In The End”

A very suitable sendoff for the band following the passing of singer Dolores O’Riordan. The recording story (via NPR):

O'Riordan died suddenly in January 2018 at 46 years old and left behind the vocal tracks to what was intended to be the band's latest album. Now, O'Riordan's bandmates have decided to complete that album, In The End — the last album the band will release — in her memory. 

[...]

In June 2017, O'Riordan and Hogan started emailing album ideas and demos back and forth to each other. O'Riordan had been very open about her struggles with mental health and addiction, which would affect the band at times, but they wanted to make a new album. Hogan says that when they were emailing those demos, she was in a good place. They started laying down her demos.

"All of that was kind of behind her," Hogan says. "She's kind of found a way to cope with the mental health thing. That's why she wanted to write so much. That's what she kept saying, 'I have so much to say, I just need the music to put it to.' "

Hogan says O'Riordan's apparent stability is what made her death even more tragic and devastating. (Officials ruled O'Riordan's cause of death to be accidental drowning due to alcohol intoxication.) But after a period of mourning, the remaining band members remembered they still had O'Riordan's demos. As Hogan remembers, they finally had the courage to start listening to them again in late February and, with her family's permission, started recording in April. "We spoke to her family and said, 'Look, how do you feel about us finishing the album?' And they were really supportive," Lawler says. "They were delighted, actually. They gave us their blessing."

Hogan says, in a sense, they were used to O'Riordan not being in the studio when they recorded — "Dolores hated hanging around the studio once we worked on our parts" — but, of course, this time was different.

71) Raleigh Ritchie - “Time In A Tree”

Exercise time. Play the first minute or so of this song without looking at any YouTube visuals.

/waits for you

OK, who are you picturing singing this? Got your image?

Well, whatever it was, you’re wrong -- it’s GREY WORM HIMSELF.

This was the best thing about “Game of Thrones” in 2019, sadly.

70) Culture Abuse - “Goo”

Simple, effective, gets out before you can dislike much.

69) Lil Pump f/ Lil Wayne - “Be Like Me”

Sometimes, a song starts, and you can just tell it’s going to be ignorant. Even before the vocals kick in. This was probably our moment here:

Between that and the beat, it’s like the only thing you can think is “Ohhhh, he’s about to say some horrible things about women.”

Other choice lines:

- “Yes, I’m hella ignorant, I don’t give a fuck” (he even says it in the song)

- “I take drugs like it’s Vitamin C / I’m a millionaire, but I don’t know how to read”

This song almost feels like it existed already.

68) The Get Up Kids - “Satellite”

Finally, our first rock song with some punch. This probably takes the crown from both DMB and P.O.D.

67) Bad Religion - “My Sanity”

BR is historically my favorite band, so it is rather deflating to see them so far back on this list. That said, it is Year 40 (!!!) of their existence, so some can be forgiven. Yet... we’ve never needed them more, you know? It’s this weird mixture of resentment but understanding.

66) Billy Liar - “The Righteous & The Rats”

Gonna see him (them?) open for The Bombpops in March; looks quite promising. Has an old school Brit punk feel.

65) Beach Slang - “AAA”

Beach Slang never lets you forget they love -- no, like, LOVE -- The Replacements. When this cover dropped, I googled “replacements AAA”, and, surprisingly, nothing came up.

Ohhh, what I fool I was. After more digging, I discovered a band called Grandpaboy who performed “AAA”.

“Oh, damn -- he finally went outside the box with this pick.”

No. Grandpaboy is fronted by Paul Westerberg. Singer of, you guessed it, The Replacements.

James Alex wears his heart on his sleeve so hard, he might as well give the heart a little jacket so his heart can wear its own heart on its sleeve.

HE DID THAT TOO?!

You can’t even make jokes about this band; they live in the jokes with their damn earnestness.

64) Gesaffelstein & The Weeknd - “Lost In The Fire”

Even lesser known Weeknd-involved tracks sound like they could lead a soundtrack or close out a festival. Are you familiar with this one at all? It has 87 million views on YouTube. Abel is never not not playing.

63) FIDLAR - “By Myself”

Started from the bottom and I’m still at the bottom

Falling apart never felt so carefree and burdenless.

62) Constant Elevation - “Fuck Runnin”

As hardcore punk as this list is gonna get. All glory to Vinnie Caruana. Though none of his solo tracks from 2019 made it, this has an undeniable energy and confidence. Plus probably the best song title of the year.

61) Maren Morris f/ Brandi Carlile - “Common”

A focused duet that drills into relationship dynamics before throwing a personal theology wrench in the middle of the chorus.

60) Anti-Flag - “Christian Nationalist”

AF going in on the white, religious right. This is like throwing a 50 mph pitch to -- /looks up good baseball players -- Pete Alonso.

59) Cokie The Clown - “Punk Rock Saved My Life”

This is less of a song and more of a confessional essay, and it gets harder and harder to look away with every revealing detail. If NOFX’s Fat Mike needed this character as a vehicle to get all of these autobiographical details off his chest, hopefully it’s a helpful therapy.

58) White Reaper - “Might Be Right”

“Judy French” is such an untoppable song, but “Might Be Right” has a similar dynamic.

57) Denzel Curry - “RICKY”

Denzel Curry as a rap moniker is such a slam dunk.

/looks up actual name

!!!

56) Ariana Grande - “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored”

It takes a special kind of hot girl twisted to issue this unflinching request while totally pulling it off.

55) Goody Grace f/ blink-182 - “Scumbag”

Not sure if Goody is a Soundcloud rapper, punk rocker, or some kinda emo hybrid of both.

A few asides:

- Have we ever -- ever -- heard Travis Barker this subdued on drums?

- On the Blink-155 podcast, Goody said he gave Tom from the Plain White T’s a songwriting credit because he unintentionally lifted some melodies from “Hey There Delilah”, but... I really don’t hear it at all; like, it sounds maybe in the same key but not much else?

54) Jonas Brothers - “Sucker”

Despite their popularity in the past, I do not think I could name a single JoBros song. That changed in 2019 with this poppy, light, clappy, Maroon 5-style single.

53) Goo Goo Dolls - “Money, Fame & Fortune”

Someone -- coulda sworn it was Brendan Kelly -- said this was Goo Goo Dolls sounding like Fake Problems, and that is spot on.

52) AJJ - “A Poem”

A poem is song that no one cares about

This short, folky tune led to one of my favorite Twitter exchanges of the year, when I reached out to a music journalist with a question and AJJ came flying off the top rope.

51) DaBaby - “Suge”

This song is fun, but I really don’t get it. Beat is cool, flow is fine... this is the new face of hip-hop? His name is DaBaby! What are we doing here?!

50) Laura Stevenson - “Jesus, Etc.”

Taking a classic and doing it full justice/adding some harmonies.

49) blink-182 - “Not Another Christmas Song”

Blink’s 2019 album “Nine” was very, very bad because it tried too hard and was not good. This song, released later in the year, takes an opposite approach and actually works. We get lyrics that are discontent, even clumsy at times -- the “I miss fucking in the rain” line is so out of place/cringe-y but actually feels real and not workshopped by 10 producers. The trio can hopefully use this better b-side to figure out the best songwriting should flow out of you without having to go through multiple stations on a conveyor belt first.

48) Dave Hause - “Eye Aye I”

This song has a lot I love (catchy chorus, wistful thoughts, hairline analyses) and a lot I don’t (genuine use of the word “old bores”, Van Halen getting respect), but one thing is clear: Dave Hause is in complete control.

47) Beck - “Up All Night”

I’ve casually followed Beck’s entire career and would not have guessed this was him if given 100 chances. As an exercise, I’m going to pull up the 2020 Coachella lineup and randomly point to an artist.

/pulls up lineup and points

I got Daniel Caesar. If you told me this was Daniel Caesar, that would probably make more sense here.

46) Shawn Mendes - “If I Can’t Have You”

Randomly came into Shawn Mendes tickets in 2019, and good gracious, that was something. Other than parents, we were the oldest people there by a lot. Getting to watch thousands of teens and preteens legitimately having the best moment of their lives was downright inspiring. When you’re that young, it’s not even hyperbole. Phones were flagrantly out; I’m talking 20+ minutes of straight video being filmed. I wanted to judge so badly, but if you gave me an iPhone at my first concert when I was 14, who the hell knows how egregious my behavior would’ve been. As fun as the whole experience was, I never wanted to be in a grimy punk club more. Sometimes, leaving your comfort zone makes you appreciate your home base more.

This is a rock solid pop song, but there are way too many you/you rhymes to not penalize it some.

45) Big Thief - “Cattails”

The whitest song you will ever hear that isn’t written by Vampire Weekend.

44) Bayside - “Prayers”

Bayside went super metal with their 2019 release “Interrobang” (such a sick name). So yes, the guitars are a touch harder than you might be used to, but the chorus soars; a great hook transcends genre.

43) Naughty Boy & Mike Posner - “Live Before I Die”

Few had as interesting of a year as Mike Posner. Following a breakup, the death of his father, and the death of Avicii, he decided to walk across the United States of America. He legit became Forrest Gump, right down to the beard and grown out hair.

In the video, you can see how a snakebite hospitalized him and almost derailed the whole trek. After a rehabilitation period where he almost lost his leg, our man finally makes it to the Pacific Ocean. If nothing else, watch for the ending -- it’s exhilarating.

42) Post Malone - “Wow.”

Post is flexing in this one; we’ve got slow motion jamming with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, international flights, a dancing beard guy, and a Fall Out Boy name check which really makes them sound cooler than they are now.

41) Bryce Vine f/ YG - “La La Land”

Sometimes, these summertime Cali songs write themselves. That is until YG comes in and flips over the board before you can finish the game. By the time the Coachella reference is dropped when Bryce comes back in, you realize 1:47 may have actually been a better endpoint for the song than its 2:47 length.

40) David Rokos - “Backseat Drives”

It’s winter in Chicago, again and until forever. If you haven’t been to the Jewel in the South Loop or Marshall Field’s before they changed it, just listen to this so you don’t actually have to.

39) Simple Creatures - “Drug”

Mark Hoppus and the dude from All Time Low give us this synth-pop bop that feels like the duo shooting their shot at a real mainstream pop hits. It didn’t quite get there, but they should feel OK about where it landed.

38) Chris Cresswell - “To The Wind”

My interest in The Flatliners ramped up considerably in 2019, as their near decade old record “Cavalcade” got plenty of spins (peep “Filthy Habits”; just stunningly incredible punk). Though they did not release anything this year, their singer put out “To The Wind”, a longing song about missing someone.

37) Kesha f/ Big Freedia - “Raising Hell”

Kesha, with the help of New Orleans’ Big Freedia, gives us another one. I’ve personally dug Kesha for a while now, but when is it time for us as a society to put her into the all-time conversation for pop artists? She has at least, like, seven HOF certifiable bangers. Plus she kills a guy in this music video.

In conclusion, I think this could translate to a country song very easily.

36) No Lenox - “Marquee”

Illinois/Japan’s No Lenox are back with Reuben Baird on the mixer and legendary masterer Collin Jordan (of The Boiler Room) on the, well, master, and the fullness in sound leads to the assault that is the “I saw your name on the marquee / Your friends were milling around outside” part. They only play it once, but I really could’ve gone for closer to five.

35) Red City Radio - “Love A Liar”

Rapid fire Red City Radio gets this one done in exactly 120 seconds.

34) Barely March - “Lead Single”

This sounds like Joyce Manor turned up to a 17 out of 10 before unexpectedly turning into a hellogoodbye song.

33) New Lenox - “Old Words”

Not a typo from two songs ago -- legitimately a different band. This one was written by your boy. The first 15 seconds were from a demo recorded 1/2/16 before developing the rest in 2019 (after some encouragement). We have Dave Rokos on guitar/bass, Dave Hernandez on hums, and Brian Bedford on some very temporary sleigh bells. Themes: online dating, resolutions, exes, currents, Black Wednesday, hope, and Carly Rae Jepsen stage banter.

32) MakeWar - “Sails”

Honey, I can’t make it on my own

You might get some Gaslight Anthem vibes as the vocals come in, but by the time the song ends, MakeWar leaves their own imprint on this impassioned ballad.

31) Sheryl Crow & Johnny Cash - “Redemption Day”

Was gonna say Johnny’s voice could move mountains before realizing no, Johnny’s voice is the mountains.

30) American Football f/ Hayley Williams - “Uncomfortably Numb”

Sensitivity deprived I can't feel a thing inside I blamed my father in my youth Now as a father, I blame the booze

An unlikely collaboration that makes you forget about its unlikeliness by the two minute mark. The two voices trade spots, mesh, harmonize, and weave throughout this beautiful song.

Asides:

- Blake from “Workaholics” in the video?!

- Choose to interpret this song’s title as a Pink Floyd diss

- “I’ll make new friends in the ambulance” should be a 2005-level emo lyric that we all mock, yet it’s somehow one of the most stunningly appropriate closers of the entire year

- I wish my friend Luke was with us to hear it

29) Stuck Out Here - “Embarrass You”

Stuck Out Here got onto my radar with 2014′s amazingly named “Getting Used To Feeling Like Shit”. Five years later, they’re back -- and not feeling much better. The Toronto quartet’s Bandcamp describes the song like this:

They’re fucking up, but unlike previous releases, they’re finally holding themselves accountable. 

You can even kinda hear their Canadian accents in the “I’m sorry I embarrass you...” part.

28) The Weeknd - “Heartless”

The Weeknd will be on these lists as long as he continues to make music even 1/8th as good as this.

27) The Chainsmokers f/ blink-182 - “P.S. I Hope You’re Happy”

A simple song that’s a touch more clever than you first realize. The Chainsmokers guy is giving me some real Owl City vibes. Also, how airtight of an apology is the line “I blame myself for when I was someone else”. It’s like the modern way of saying “When I was a child, I spoke like a child”. 

Also also, the “I will find a way somehow...” harmony in the pre-chorus is as pretty as music got in 2019. The Chainsmokers are so sonically pleasing, whether you end up liking the music or not.

26) Vampire Weekend - “Harmony Hall”

ooooooooh, that crisp guitar in the intro

25) Alex Lahey - “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself”

If Carly Rae Jepsen can get a sword, why can’t Alex Lahey get a god damn saxophone? HIT ME.

That solo, combined with the “Mighty Ducks” reference in the chorus, make this song untouchable.

24) Lizzo - “Truth Hurts”

Let’s be clear: this did drop in 2017 but was technically re-released in 2019, so it does qualify for our list despite the criteria threatening timeline. Anyway.

The walking piano part, the iconic intro line (with a lawsuit!), the Minnesota Vikings reference (causing a Green Bay radio edit), and all of the damn positivity. Lizzo was among music’s big winners this year, and her success made you wonder how the hell someone this talented was slept on for those two years.

Let’s end with the purse.

23) An Horse - “Ship Of Fools”

Awkward band name, but a song that makes you pay attention. Kinda like Tegan and Sara, had they stayed more rock. So much urgency in the vocals and lyrics.

22) Charli XCX f/ Lizzo - “Blame It On Your Love”

Trippy vid; Charli continues to give us anthems. Wasn’t super high on the Lizzo cameo, but it somehow made more sense in the context of said video.

21) Sincere Engineer - “Dragged Across The Finish Line”

Sincere Engineer is back -- you can tell from the second those guitar leads get goin’. Drums from 1:19 to 1:36 = /heart eyes emoji. My buddy Cox said his next tattoo very well could be the outro lyric “Too dumb to succeed, too honest to cheat”.

(Bonus fact: they did a beer collaboration/show with Pollyanna Brewing Company in 2019.)

20) Lil Nas X - “Old Town Road”

Was unwilling to listen when this first dropped solely because of how horrible Lil Nas X’s name is (”What if a rapper came out named ‘Lil Jay-Z X’?!”)... what a foolish notion. One billion streams and a Billy Cyrus cameo later, I wouldn’t have been able to miss out on the Song of the Summer (and year) if I tried. More notes:

- Picked this because I had to, but “Panini” is legit good (200+ million streams)

- Went with the original (sorry, Billy), which is a beautiful 1:53 long (brevity, brevity, brevity)

- Did you know: Lil Nas X uses a Nine Inch Nails sample on the beat? This Rolling Stone interview with Trent Reznor is super interesting

Reznor calls “Old Town Road” “undeniably hooky,” but once it exploded, he took a back seat to the phenomenon. “The reason I haven’t stepped in to comment anything about it is, I don’t feel it’s my place to play any kind of social critic to that,” he says. “It was a material that was used in a significant way and it turned into something that became something else, and those guys should be the ones the spotlight is on…. They asked if I wanted to do a cameo in the video, and it was flattering, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t feel like it’s my place to shine a light on me for that. I say that with complete respect.”

Still, Reznor is amazed at how the song became a juggernaut. “Having been listed on the credits of the all-time, Number One whatever-the-fuck-it-is wasn’t something…I didn’t see that one coming,” he says. “But the world is full of weird things that happen like that. It’s flattering. But I don’t feel it’s for me to step in there and pat myself on the back for that.”

19) Gryffin & Carly Rae Jepsen - “OMG”

What doesn’t this little bop have? It’s kinda Chainsmoker-y and tingles like cool breath hitting the back of your neck.

18) Craig Finn - “Blankets”

You travel your whole life just to get out to the place you’re gonna die

I love everything about this song: the artwork, the intro, the climax, the command Craig Finn has from start to finish -- with such a payoff. Now several albums in, the greatest compliment we can give is that his solo stuff now feels more essential than Hold Steady releases*. You can even hear it in this line: “When we got to the Twin Cities / I said ‘Man, I know some songs about this place’”. Another life.

17) Carly Rae Jepsen - “Now That I Found You”

Carly always keeps us in the sky; picking one song was difficult because the album is even more fulfilling as you get to put the pieces together.

16) Billie Eilish - “Bad Guy”

Different genres*, but Billie Eilish lived up to her hype in the exact same way Lana Del Rey did in the earlier part of the decade. Lana said she was the gangster Nancy Sinatra and totally fucking was. Billie feels like something potentially even bigger. Nearly everything about her aura lets you project (or even second guess, if you’re a skeptic). Is she dead-eyed because she’s high or disaffected? Or just Aubrey Plaza? Is it her or her brother that’s pulling the strings? How can someone so young be so good already? In the skinny fashion era of All Achilles Everything, how is she rocking such loose fits?

“I never want the world to know everything about me. I mean that’s why I wear big baggy clothes,” she said. “Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath.”

“Nobody can be like ‘Oh, she’s slim-thick, she’s not slim-thick, she’s got a flat ass, she’s got a fat ass,’” she continued. “No one can say any of that because they don’t know.”

It almost seems too easy, but how much sense does that make to you?

Great jokes aside, I have so much anticipation for what’s next, with assured belief in its potential. Pitchfork: 

In 10 years, she will still be well under 30. Let’s hope the planet survives that long.

Yes.

(* - though not totally)

15) Ben Gibbard - “Filler”

Before you check Gibbard’s, please listen to the original by Minor Threat. That’s what he had to work with. From there, a total transformation while doing the near impossible -- keeping its beating heart.

14) Martha - “Wrestlemania VIII”

Third favorite song title of the year/favorite music video of the year. This is energetic, bratty punk at its finest; also surprised to find out it was British, but, based on the upcoming tour dates and YouTube description...

This is a silly & frankly quite rubbish video but when you are a band trapped within surveillance capitalism's endless hunger for content trying to promote a tour sometimes things will be a silly & frankly quite rubbish. 

I love them. Seriously didn’t even notice the accents in the singing until I knew to look for them; now, it’s all I can hear. Also, the part in the video where they finally show someone with an instrument, only he stops playing guitar halfway into the solo (/crying emoji).

THEY SAY ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDA

13) Chance The Rapper f/ Ben Gibbard - “Do You Remember”

Chance The Rapper dropped a one hour and 17 minute album in 2019 because he is a monster. I could not name three songs on it, but this one stood out big. It’s Chano doing what he does best: reminiscing and evoking summer in his city. Gibbard on the hook gives it that 2005 nostalgia while also making you say “Damn, it’s been nearly 15 years since 2005?!”

Fav two lines:

1) “Used to have obsession with the ‘27 Club’ / Now I'm turning 27, wanna make it to the 2070 club / Put the 27's down, Lord, give me a clean lung / Took the ring up out the box, I know this ain't no brief love”

2) “That summer left a couple tan lines / I love my city, they let me cut the line on the Dan Ryan”

(If you know, you know.)

Two more asides:

- If you Google “death cab for cutie”, the next autofill from there is “do you remember”. Rough for the legacy.

- “My daughter on the swing like the 2017 Cubs” is a line that confused me, but here’s how Genius explained it:

Chance is talking about a memorable summer and the things that made him happy. This line continues that theme when he raps about his daughter happily on a swing and how that’s similar to the 2017 Cubs. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016; therefore, the 2017 season was one of celebration and relaxation as the pressure of the 108 year drought was over. 

12) Lana Del Rey - “The Greatest”

I miss Long Beach, and I miss you...

Listening to this song feels like watching the cement dry on a classic in real time. Lana Del Rey’s galactic “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” dominated lists at the end of 2019, and she -- to borrow her word -- fucking deserved it.

- The Beach Boys line is so god damn perfect

- The guitar solo (soooo sick)

- The breathy singing; the crooning; the notes that go up and then down until you’re surrounded by melody

- The perfection of this album name (minus the very iffy exclamation point) will have me comparing nearly any other all-time album title for probably the rest of our lives 

- Tried playing this album during my Monday night pickup basketball run, and it very much failed... but that’s about the only thing it couldn’t do

- I’m told the dude with her on the album cover is Jack Nicholson’s grandson (named Duke Nicholson, because of course)

11) Off With Their Heads - “No Love”

If you do not like punk rock, this will be unlistenable. If you do, what a treat! I love how dissatisfied and put off he sounds, and, while there are a few more lively songs remaining on the list, none in 2019 got fast-tracked to my workout/pump up playlist at this speed.

Factoring in the band’s van accident (occurred after the release of this song), the “There’s nothing I could say that’s ever gonna make it right” outro becomes hauntingly clairvoyant.

10) Drake f/ Rick Ross - “Money In The Grave”

We need to face facts: it was a down year for stadium hip-hop. Nowhere on this list do you see Jay, Em, Kendrick, or Kanye (rest in peace). This was my favorite rap song of the year, and it couldn’t even crack the Top 5. Similar to his beloved Raptors -- who are being celebrated here -- it’s almost as if Drake needed some injuries outside his own locker room to get the crown. But I’m done being bummed, let’s focus on the good:

- Ohhhh, the intro (”I mean where. the fuck. should I. really even start?”)

- The way he says “grave” in the hook like he can barely contain 

- The hook itself -- read it out loud: “When I die, put my money in the grave”

- How cool Ross sounds when he breaks in

- The Zion reference

The bad:

- Rarely take this angle, but really wouldn’t mind if it were longer

- Misogyny

9) PUP - “Bloody Mary, Kate And Ashley”

Second favorite song title of the year, 6/8 time signature, satanic references, drugs, hallucinations (maybe), and, yes, the Olsen twins.

8) Better Oblivion Community Center - “Sleepwalkin’”

“It’s impossible to count...”

The intro, as the tempo gets jarringly slower and slower, ironically helps you acclimate quicker. This Phoebe Bridgers/Conor Oberst collab was my No. 1 played track of 2019 (the album coming out in January definitely helped). The song builds to Phoebe’s solo part:

You like beer and chocolate I like setting off those bottle rockets We can never compromise But fighting 'til the death keeps us alive

It’s sung so well, you can almost feel the heat of the spotlight on her through the stereo. The lyrics could be anything.

The chill guitar solo takes us out.

7) AM Taxi - “Saint Jane”

Adam Krier is such a rockstar, he had me shouting “I’m no hero, at best a zero!” within my fifth listen -- and I was skeptical as hell when I first heard the line. But that’s about where it stopped. You can tell this song is going to rip even before the vocals come in. When they do (”These fears don’t die, you get older and they multiply”), it’s just fucking time to go.

6) Taylor Swift - “Paper Rings”

My favorite pop song of 2019. Tay is firing on all cylinders; every lyric is exactly where it’s supposed to be; boppy and fun and sincere (while still being light-hearted). Still holding out minor hope it will be a single in 2020.

5) Pkew Pkew Pkew - “The Polynesian”

I’ve always said the best songs make you want to live the lyrics, whether they are positive or negative. This one had me researching “polynesian wisconsin” faster than I’m comfortable disclosing. And yes “bed bugs” and “needles” were both in the Top 7 recommended searches after those first two words.

Pkew Pkew Pkew collaborated with Craig Finn on some of their lyrics on 2019′s “Optimal Lifestyles”, and I’d be blown away if he doesn’t have fingerprints on this one -- the storytelling is pristine. Go into this open-minded, and I’d be shocked if you weren’t shouting the “Goatees, tall cans, camo pants, and Packers fans” mantra by the end.

Bonus story: this St. Patrick’s day in Chicago, I asked my friend Sara (Wisconsin native) if she’d ever stayed there, and she held up her elbow and showed me a scar from the hotel’s water slide. Your boy was over the moon.

4) Spanish Love Songs - “Losers”

It gets harder, doesn’t it?

Dylan Slocum has a way of not just writing depressing songs -- many lyricists are good at that -- but specifically depressing songs. This song contemplates death, homelessness, squandering your limited time on the planet, credit card debt, leeching off your parents because you have no other choice, crippling illness, and completely giving up because there genuinely is no other choice. The last lines are, without any hint of winking, “We’re mediocre. We’re losers. Forever.”

It’s wonderful.

Two straight Top 4 finishes for SLS; their 2020 album should be something special.

3) oso oso - “the view”

If Jade Lilitri is making personal progress in “microscopic strides”, you wouldn’t be able to tell by his songwriting. Every tune has a way of warming up your entire body and being. This grabs you, whether it’s the laid back guitar or the mismatched quick drums or the big ass chorus. While it came down to this one or “basking in the glow” (an actual single), the bridge here puts us over the top:

But not as much as the phone ringing Not as much playing my house Not as much as the way her goddamn voice sounds It's like taking in sun And then taking it back I fall into old habits I'm stepping over your cracks again

Her voice? This song.

2) The Menzingers - “Strangers Forever”

This song makes me want to rip up walls, sprint through streets with no destination, shred my lungs screaming off rooftops, bash hands drumming the steering wheel until my sprained fingers beg me to stop. It is such a perfect encapsulation of my favorite band of the decade and possibly of all-time.

Scranton’s sons gave me everything and more from 2010 through 2019, so it’s fitting they end so high here. This is probably the most clownable sentence of them all, but I am so constantly thankful I am alive to experience Greg Barnett’s songwriting. What he creates, I can only compare to the best books or movies or athletes or even personal relationships.

The way the guitar alternates in the headphones to start, the drums that go big and push the song along, the reverb vox that certainly could have less reverb, the “it is what it is”-style lyric of “My miserable memory’s making me more miserable”, the oceanic imagery, the quiet bridge that explodes into a final chorus. Barnett said the overall theme was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”.

In it, the character Darya Alexandrovna learns of her husbands infidelity and declares: “Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers — strangers forever!” The idea of becoming a stranger to someone you so intimately know stuck with me, and became the overarching narrative to this song. Dolly’s statement is definitive, but she also realizes the trappings of 19th century patriarchal Russian society. It’s a complex conundrum, and while lyrically I speak in the first person, this song exists in a world outside of my own personal experiences. I wanted to write about the finality of relationships that need to end this way. Strangers Forever. 

My only gripe is I wish there were more. But I’m the same person who never wants them to stop.

1) Signals Midwest f/ Sincere Engineer - “Your New Old Apartment”

Only one song could make me fear missing the chance to be with the love of my life the same year I married her. As discussed in “The Polynesian”, the best songs have the consistent ability to put you in someone else’s shoes. You are either reliving something you personally experienced or maybe taking it all in for the first time. And that can be powerful -- especially dealing with anything big picture.

“Your New Old Apartment” launches me into 2009 without ever asking. Age: 23. My life was transient, I had no career, I didn’t even believe in marriage. I left my retail job in the Chicago suburbs for an unpaid newspaper internship in New Jersey. When I saw the people I loved, I always tried to make it count. Still do.

The descriptors and feeling are suffocating, right from the jump:

I only saw you a couple times last year Once at a wedding, once at a funeral I wore the same clothes to both, and I was worried you would notice ‘cause yours were impeccable

That’s me, then. Not knowing how to dress but hoping to get by anyway. I remember talking to my buddy P before buying my “work clothes” and learning you needed to match your shoes with your belt. Boyish adulthood.

The song continues, and the narrator is filled in on 5-year plans. It may be cliche to speak, but every current moment is simultaneously your youngest and oldest. Being in my early 30s now, it is so easy to scoff at anyone’s best laid plans, but I’m also the same cat who thought The Wonder Years’ “Jesus Christ, I’m 26 / All the people I graduated with / All have kids, all have wives, all have people who care if they come home at night” was life-defining, because I was the same age when that dropped, and it always hits the hardest when it’s all around you.

What I love about these lyrics are the careful observation mixed with mature-behind-his-years restraint. For a very long time in my life, I did not think I would get to be with my wife as anything more than a friend. When you are forced to come to terms with those potential realities, you must make concessions and convince yourself they’re OK. So when it’s revealed the narrator’s muse is married, he resigns himself to hopefully seeing the person more and at least being adjacent to the life they are living. It is tragic but still something. It is alternate hope in the hopeless.

I can picture myself listening to this song that wasn’t yet written while leaving a 2009 or 2010 or 2013 wedding and wishing I told her everything. But I wouldn’t have -- not then. I would have poured my heart out into a diary and quoted a line or three from this at the bottom. But that was then, this is now. 

In 2019, her new old apartment will be my new old apartment, and that will never be lost on me.

* * *

Bonus coverage. Since we are at the end of the decade, I rounded up our No. 1 song from each year and have that below:

2010: The Menzingers - “Time Tables” 2011: Jay-Z & Kanye West - “Gotta Have It” 2012: Carly Rae Jepsen - “Call Me Maybe” 2013: Kanye West - “On Sight” 2014: The Menzingers - “Where Your Heartache Exists” 2015: Big Sean f/ Kanye West - “All Your Fault” 2016: The Menzingers - “Lookers” 2017: The Menzingers - “After The Party” 2018: Horror Squad - “I Smoke The Blood” 2019: Signals Midwest f/ Sincere Engineer - “Your New Old Apartment”

* * *

It’s time to stop writing. Thank you so much for reading.

Spotify playlist is here, featuring 70 of the 75.

#taylor swift #oso oso #pkew pkew pkew #the menzingers #2019 #2020 #pup #drake #rick ross #chance the rapper #lana del rey #craig finn #carly rae jepsen #sincere engineer #lizzo #alex lahey #vampire weekend #the chainsmokers #blink-182 #the weeknd #kesha #post malone #bayside #dababy #jonas brothers #ariane grande #music #lists #denzel curry #maren morris

[kraftdinnermac]

- INCOMING LONG AND EMOTIONAL POST -

I am completely devastated, and not entirely sure where to begin…

I guess I’ll start where it all began: when I was 5 years old my brother brought home a CD that was dominating the charts upon its release, that album was Linkin Park’s “Hybrid Theory”. As the youngest child, I always had great fun stealing my older brother’s things, and one of my favorite things to take from his room was easily this CD. It was the anthem of my entire upbringing and completely shaped the foundation of my musical tastes today. That album, still to this day, remains my most listened to album on this earth. Hands down.

I was so captivated by Linkin Park and how unique they were. They had rapping, turn tables, samples, screaming, and heavy guitar riffs. They were arguably the most innovative band that I still have ever encountered. They broke through barriers viciously and with full force. In the beginning no body liked them, and no body wanted to sign them, and they would try to change their band by saying “no screaming” or “no rapping”, but they stood true to themselves and proved everyone wrong, and showed the world that they were legends.

Chester Bennington was the first screamer I ever came to love. Before I even really knew what metal music was, or especially what scream vocals were and how they could sound good, I was obsessed with Chester. His screams sound like he has 3 different pitches being sung at once, and his soft clean vocals sound so gentle they could put you to sleep. Even from a young age I knew this man was talented, and I simply couldn’t get enough of him.

Flash forward to today. I still site Linkin Park to be one of the biggest influences on me in terms of musical taste, I still know Hybrid Theory and Meteora back to front, upside down and backwards, and I still get goosebumps whenever I hear Chester sing. I still find myself going back to watch some live videos, particularly their “Live in Texas” DVD performance, where 15 minutes into the concert Chester is already completely soaked in sweat because he’s giving it 110%. I am forever feeling nostalgic when I hear Chester’s voice, and I still enjoy him just as much today.

I literally can’t express enough how big of an influence Linkin Park has had on my life, and Chester specifically as well. I remember whenever I used to draw people when I was young and I would always deck them out in tattoos and piercings, I would always draw red and blue flames on their wrists, just like Chester had. I also remember how I always wanted to wear my hair spikey, and Chester was probably 75% of the reason why. As much as I loved the entire band, and each member for their own reasons, Chester always stuck out to me and always caught my attention. Even today as I am trying to teach myself to become a screamer, I am often going back to Chester’s tracks for inspiration and guidance.

Today I learned that Chester Bennington committed suicide, and it felt like dunking my head under freezing water. I was completely shocked and frankly couldn’t believe that it was true. I heard the news within minutes that it hit the internet, and for the following hour or two I was scavenging articles to see if there were any more sources to confirm this. Sadly, I then stumbled across a tweet by Linkin Park band mate Mike Shinoda who confirmed that it was true. My stomach sank.

There have been many celebrity deaths to happen in my day, some more painful than others, but I have to admit this easily takes the cake. Chester was so close to me, so important and so significant. To me he was untouchable, he was an icon that was simply too talented and too amazing. To think that probably one of my biggest hero’s since I was 5 years old was still vulnerable to pain and suffering to the extent he was, and to be driven to such a horrific end, it was nearly impossible to imagine. But it was true, regardless of what I thought or how I felt, it was all true. For the first time with any celebrity death, this one left a hole somewhere.

Chester passed away on July 20th, 2017, the day that would’ve been Chris Cornell’s 53rd birthday. For those of you who don’t know or are unaware, Chris Cornell was a singer (Soundgarden and Audioslave) who died by suicide on May 18 of this year, just over 2 months ago. Chris was a very close friend to Chester, and it was clear he was deeply impacted by the loss of his friend. Not long after his passing, Linkin Park performed “One More Light”, a song off their May album by the same name, live on Jimmy Kimmel in memory of Chris. The lyrical content of this song is about “who cares if one more light in the sky goes out” which of course is a metaphor for someone dying, in which Chester responds “I do”. It’s a beautiful song and given the meaning of the performance it was incredibly powerful. Chester was choking up during his performance; you could see his tearing eyes hiding behind his sunglasses, and you could see his mouth shaking as he tried not to break down. The entire performance was incredibly moving.

Statistics have shown that when someone commits suicide, their family, friends, and loved ones become at greater risk of suicide themselves due to the inability to cope with the loss of a loved one. It pains me so much to see how this is most likely what happened to Chester. By listening to his lyrics over the course of his career, it’s obvious Chester was no stranger to pain, but for his passing to happen the day of Chris Cornell’s birthday…I truly believe that this “second hand suicide” was the case, which saddens me so much.

I had such a difficult time trying to choose the best song to accompany this post. Entire songs and lyrics have been racing through my head ever since I heard the news. Truthfully, I could choose a good number of songs that would suit this post; however, instead of choosing my favorite Linkin Park song, or choose the one single that everyone will seem to recognize, or Chester’s favorite Linkin Park song (Breaking the Habit), or even their current single from their new album One More Light,“Heavy”, which talks about carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and how he can’t seem to just let it all go (such a sad song and now it’s even more sad given his passing…), I eventually decided to use this song: Leave Out All The Rest (from their album “Minutes to Midnight”)

Every single lyric in this song speaks to all of us about what has happened right now. As I listen to Chester sing the chorus…

“When my time comes; Forget the wrong that I’ve done; Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed. And don’t resent me; And when you’re feeling empty; Keep me in your memory; Leave out all the rest, leave out all the rest”

…I can’t help but picture him singing this to all of us from above. Almost as if he’s comforting us all in this time of grief and suffering. It’s a message to all of us to remember the good things about one another. Every word of this song resonates with this horrible tragedy; and I don’t know about you but I think it’s incredibly overwhelming.

Chester Bennington was an absolute icon to not only me, but to millions of others. Without Chester and Linkin Park music would not be the same today, and that involves other genres than rock/metal. The influence Linkin Park has had on the music industry is unmeasurable, spanning across decades. The role that Chester played in Linkin Park and their success was absolutely huge, and it’s impossible to properly gauge how much of a loss it is for this world to lose such an incredible, smart, funny, and talented human being. He will be missed profoundly by myself and millions others all around the world.

If you ever have thoughts of suicide, or know somebody that does, or even if you’ve just thought about the option harmlessly a few times, please please please don’t hesitate to reach out! Talk to a friend, a family member, a teacher, a mentor, a coach, a family friend, or call one of the many help lines out there. (Suicide Prevention Hotline: [phone] - Kids Help Phone: [phone]) You are not in this alone, and mental illness can be beaten!!! And if you are someone who has a friend or loved one who you think may be suicidal or going through intense hardships with mental illness, reach out to them! Tell them how much you appreciate and love them, and reassure them of how important they are in your life. Even if it’s just a quick and harmless text, saying “I care about you” just once could decide the difference between life and death.

I know this was a very long post, and if you made it this far then i thank you sincerely for taking the time to get through all of this. I wanted to keep this post as brief as possible, but with the way that I explain myself, and the level of impact this news has had on me, there was no way I could contain this to a simple paragraph. So again, thank you.

I love you all, you are all beautiful. We’re going to get through this life together!

Rest in peace, Chester Bennington. An undeniable legend! March 20th, 1976 - July 20th, 2017

#chester bennington #Linkin Park #suicide #death #chester #mike shinoda #LP #sad #emotional #me #personal #childhood #hero #icon #music #scream #screaming #screamer #metal #nu metal #hybrid theory #meteora #minutes to midnight #a thousand suns #living things #the hunting party #one more light #heavy #leave out all the rest #dead

[splitshortsyeah]

Caribou 'Swim'

-Tim Shea

‘Swim’ was the album of the year for some back in 2010. I didn’t get to it right away (official release on 4/20….). Chris and Matt’s website (now defunct NotDrugs.com) said something about one of the songs and I remember thinking it had a lot of drums. The website is one of the few things deleted from the internet, so I think I am barely holding on to that little memory because of the album artwork -- these orange and flowery concentric circles over a black background. It seemed unique at the time, and I'd say it still is. The look matches the sound and the whole package with the 2xLP is a bit of a trip.

Caribou was in the lineup for Moogfest 2010 and so songs from Swim made the playlist we used to ready to ourselves and score the someteen hour drive to Asheville, NC. I didn’t miss them that time around --  at the show under the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. One of the guys we traveled with was saying people were still singing “SUN, SUN” in the bathroom after the show. We kept singing it in the hottub that night whilst the Carlo of Chabils bobbed around. I was still playing songs from the show the next morning on the drive back into town for the next run of what the festival offered. The free acid certainly enhanced the absorption of Dan Snaith’s unique noise at the time, but that album, that show, really that whole weekend opened the box to some really wild music for me, which I’d say was the intended impact of Moogfest -- also how to properly pronounce Moog.

Was Caribou a man, a whole band, a Manitoba? I didn't know. I had never heard anything like it before. His little voice, all those noises, the leftfield samples, the thump! I have since dived deep into the discography and am still up to my chest. He had 4 albums prior to Swim, all of them with pretty expected progression from one to the next. Definitely a talented musician who was having a great time making very fun swolled up psych folk music. Most of the time you heard a drum…and it was a drum. A guitar…and it was a guitar. Orchestral snippets for baroque effect? Yeah I’ve heard horns and strings like that before, not too many machines I think.

On ‘Swim’, Dan broke out and made up his mind to move every part of the human being -- head to toe, mind to soul. His sound bites and samples became just about unplaceable. The BPM of 120 or greater chugged through most the album, and Tibetan bowls just kept showing up. He said this back then “The idea of making stuff that was accidentally dance music was very appealing to me” and “it's quite liberating to think that as long as the music's rhythmic and propulsive in a certain way, then I can put Tibetan bowls and a harp in this track and I can still play it in a club”. I think that sums it up.  

The opening, um, note or sound or squealchow(?) always catches, again and again. “SUN” is the jam and the most lasting of the songs (also the priciest 12in from the album) but Hannibal and Bowls are deeper cuts I hope to play for my kids one day to show them how cool I think I once thought I was. As a whole, the album is wrought with cacophony, but the way Dan makes it always work is an attestation to how he knew what he was doing despite something like this never being done before.

It was his first concerted foray into electronic music. A few forgettable remixes came out of ‘Andorra’ but those were already out of his hands. After ‘Swim’, he has never looked back. He got the whole album remixed by some real heavy hitters. Most were fine, but Motor City Drum Ensembles’ stand out take on “Leave House” made a compilation from the venerable Mister Saturday Night. He toured and opened for Radiohead (I missed most of that show and all of Caribou cause we were rolling up a few before we went and got stuck in traffic. Internet says they closed with “SUN”…alas). His Daphni side project led to a FabricLive mix of all his own material (much like Villalobos and Omar S before him). The 12in label Jiaolong kickstartered Toro y Moi’s electronic producer moniker Les Sin (Grind was eventually included in the Moodymann’s unparalleled DJ Kicks). 

His two follow up albums still brought the thump. But they weren’t quite as brilliantly off the wall. Kinda like he was trying to write SONGS and not just finding new and accidental grooves. ‘Our Love’ had its highlights (“Can’t Do Without You” and most of Side B), but just as many misses. The title track was a pretty obvious and unfortunate attempt at “SUN” 2.0 and the Lanza collab was lamented for its unmet potential. Suddenly he seemed to slide into that natural progression his first four albums had, just more of the bleep and bloop this time around. Both birthed more remixes. Mostly courtesy of his friends with a couple of his own retakes, possibly to avoid the scatter shot result from ‘Swim’’s entire work over. I can’t speak to how he makes music now (or ever) and whether it’s proper ‘electronic’ or still this hybrid thing he came up with in 2010 (I mean he still tours with a band I think, so probably hybrid), but there is definitely a before ‘Swim’ and after ‘Swim’ sound to Caribou’s catalogue. I doubt his shift left early fans behind but having been awe struck by the live show in 2010, his nod toward dance music gained him fans at a strobing rate. 2010 is when Caribou turned in most of his psychedelics for some heavy euphories, and ten years later, we are still coming up. 

[kristie-rp]

5. Do you hear the people sing?

Who: Jackson Masters (also: Damien Reyes, Red Arcton, James ‘Scorpian’ something, Desmond Reyes, Anastasia Innot) What: A character study, I guess? Focus on Jackson and music, anyway.

“ – And apparently, it would be a fucking fool’s errand, if you will, to bother putting effort, because I am always a disappointment, and those who are always disappointments need not try to do what they are best at.”

Jackson doesn’t hesitate to throw a drumstick at Damien’s head for that bullshit, and Scorpian – James, but calling him that tends to lead nowhere, because he elects to ignore it – scoffs so he doesn’t have to. “You’re full of shit, you pretentious asshole,” he says to Damien.

The stick hits the side of Damien’s head, and he shakes his head as if to clear it, and grins lazily over the beer he’s been pretty much sculling. He’s high on something, probably; Jackson knows him well enough to know he only gets this verbose – and polite – when he’s not sober. “But Scorp, haven’t I disappointed you by beginning to say anything about it in the first place? And haven’t I therefore proven my point exactly? I didn’t have to put any effort in at all, and yet, here we are – you, disappointed; me, proven right. Again.”

“I’ll give you again,” Scorpian snaps nonsensically, and Jackson laughs as he lunges at him.

“We’re doing Pretty Reckless today,” Red says as she walks in. She’s got a real name, but unlike Scorpian and his badly kept secret, it isn’t a well known secret, and anyway, Red sounds kind of sensible, in Jackson’s estimation, so he’s never asked her what the truth is. She doesn’t bother acknowledging the headlock Damien is currently in, except to roll her eyes. “Mostly ‘cause Dam’ over here needs practice at his high notes if he ever wants to get anywhere before the newbie arrives to replace Mr Traitor over here.”

Jackson spreads his hands in surrender. “Look, if I had any input at all, I’d say no. But it’s my mums’ greatest wish that I go.”

“Fucking Juilliard, you shit,” Scorpian says, which is a fair point.

“If you needed a piece of paper from somewhere fancy to prove you’re a talented musician, Jack’, we could’ve broken into the Fort and written something up on one of their embroidered napkins.”

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t the same thing,” Jackson tells Damien, “but thanks.”

“Course it ain’t the same thing. One of them you aren’t ditching us. What’re we meant to do without a drummer? Tell us that, O great traitor.”

Jackson snorts, and flaps a hand at them dismissively. “It’s not like I’m going to Juilliard to study drumming. I’m doing piano – keyboard – the blend, if I can. You guys will still be the only people with recordings of me banging the drums.”

“Yeah, because the sixteen other instruments you can play aren’t enough for you. A fucking harp, honestly, why did you learn that?”

The answer, which Damien would say if he were sober enough to be paying more attention and share the memory with the others, would be that Damien bet Jackson he couldn’t learn to play Zombie by the Cranberries on a harp in a month. Jackson had learned it by the end of the week, and won naming rights for the band Damien was dragging him into at the time. So it happened that Distressed Monday was a name Jackson had plucked from the aether just before exams, and also figured out how to cover popular songs on the harp, just an extension of playing by ear and driving his former instructors insane.

“One of you can take care of the drum side of things fine. I have faith in you,” Jackson defends weakly. “Look, are we going to get in some practice, or not?”

-

Before Juilliard, Jackson is wound tight, a cord on the precipice of snapping, the most neurotic member of the band he’d joined in high school. He’d looked the part before he was asked, wearing studded leather jackets stolen from his fathers’ collection, too-tight jeans that cut off the circulation to everything below the waist, and boots that weren’t platforms, quite, but came close. Damien had been the one to invite him to try his hand at being the drummer, back when it was nothing more than an abstract plan, and had sold it as stress relief.

(A certain kind of pressure came from being the child of a grunge master and an operatic genius, something Damien knew. Damien had, at one time, been one of Jackson’s most trusted friends, aware of the struggle Jackson felt thanks to the one panic attack he’d witnessed, back when he and Jackson first met.

It was before the drugs, before the band, before anything; the would-be punk rocker had found a boy in a studded leather jacket, huddled in an alleyway just off his favourite record shop. Aborted breaths had caught his attention, and he’d reluctantly peered into the alley, expecting a situation of the like Anastasia had saved his brother from ages ago. Instead, he finds a lone boy, older than him, unbruised and unmarked, fighting for a full breath and hunched in on himself, as close to the ground as he can get. Damien talked him down from the terror of certain death, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Or should be.)

During Juilliard, Jackson focuses on the music. He drives his tutors insane with his fondness for learning by ear, but they manage to beat an understanding of actual written music into him, proper, lengthy things, and not the aborted mess of notes his father and mother are fond of. He promised before he left that he’d keep contact with his friends from Port Lyndon, but as assignments swamp and more time passes between their messages and his own, it becomes too awkward to reply with yet another excuse. So Jackson lets the contact die off in drips and drabs, and loses himself to the music.

It’s at Juilliard that he starts singing, minoring in it, discovering a knack for it that must be inherited from his mother. She’s operatic, and enthralling, and enrapturing; he has some of that when he sings, too; it has applied to much of the music he has played over the years. He tends to ignore the way his tutors struggle to complain about anything other than his approach to learning music, and so it goes largely unnoticed. So Jackson picks up singing and spends years mastering both that and piano, and he comes out of it with such a range his tutors try to convince him to go for opera, like his mother – it is not every day one finds a switch, capable of being either tenor or bass and anything in between, somehow keeping it convincing regardless of the role he fills. He’s a coloratura for sure, and it enraptures and vexes those assigned to train him, especially when he denies operatic training in favour of going home to a YouTube channel and music hosted on various streaming services.

(The blood of a siren runs in his mothers veins – Kiri Kaufman is a hybrid, a half-blood, half human and half supernatural. Her son is one-quarter siren; sea water and enchanting runs in his veins. If he heard of magic and chose to dabble, he could be gifted in charming others to do his bidding, if he so desired. Technically speaking, a drop of siren blood is enough to give some the power to take over the world, at least through musical means.

Jackson knows none of this, of course. He is absently aware of the supernatural and the way the sea calls to him, sometimes, but he thinks of it not at all. It’s less stressful, that way – and he has had to stress less somehow. How else could he not be the tightly wound geek of yesteryear?)

-

After Juilliard, Jackson comes home to meet step-siblings, as Kiri has married in his absence. There are three of them, all younger than him, and their dad is a decent bloke called John, who Jackson isn’t really interested in getting to know. And his dad is in L.A., has been there since Christmas break after Jackson started at the world’s most well known music college.

So he moves into a tiny flat with half-heartedly improvised sound proofing in the form of foam stuck to his walls, and dives into the world of YouTube fame in earnest, taking advantage of his many musical talents (prodigious in all except guitar, which for some reason didn’t come as easily) to gain a following that grows by the day. And also into local fame. There’s no reason he can’t perform in bars or be hired for concerts at parties, after all.

“What the shit,” someone says after a show at a dingy bar that Jackson is fairly sure has a fight right. “Jackson? Jackson Masters? Didn’t you go off to music school or something?”

Jackson pauses, surprised at being recognised despite the fact that he’s been known in certain circles all his life (the media in Port Lyndon is easily bored, since so many of the potentially impossible things get covered up somehow). It takes him a moment to place the voice, even after he turns around. “Desmond?”

Desmond Reyes had been the older, overprotective, brother of Damien, way back when. He’d been adopted by this blonde femme fatale, and – there she is, Jackson thinks in some surprise, catching sight of Anastasia over the hulking mass of a man he remembers being – well, not weedy, no one could seem weedy alongside a teenaged Damien, but something close to it. “Red had a theory that you thought you were too good for them since you got into Juilliard. Between us, I’m pretty sure she just missed ogling you.”

There’s a taunt there, Jackson is fairly sure. He offers a placid smile instead and clasps Desmond’s hand in a brief shake, amusement piling over the place where he is sure he’d have once begun hyperventilating. “I’m no better than I was back then,” he says instead of freaking out, “how are the others, anyway? Is DM still a thing?”

“Despite Damien’s best efforts to make it not, yeah, Monday’s still a thing.”

Jackson blinks. “Is that an undertone I hear? Did something happen – did Damien do something?” Because when Jackson had left, Damien had been high more often than not, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the drugs had… complicated matters for the band, or pissed off Red enough that she might actually leave.

A shadow passes over Desmond’s face and, as if summoned by a change in mood, Anastasia appears and elbows her friend – soulmate, Jackson had always privately thought – until he takes a beer off her hands so she can clap him on the shoulder. “Damien messed up,” she says, blunt. “Didn’t stop at ecstasy, just got worse and worse. And then got Angeline into it, until she got herself out. He’s – not great, now.”

Jackson is fairly certain he doesn’t know an Angeline. Regardless, he frowns, concerned in spite of the tone Anastasia adopts that very clearly says she thinks whatever Damien gets, he deserves. “He’s still looking after himself besides that, right? Food and shelter and such?”

Anastasia and Desmond exchange a look. “Um,” Desmond says, and waits for Anastasia to say something. Anastasia doesn’t seem to know what to say, though, aside from “You should talk to Scorpian and Red, they know better than we do.”

It’s not the full story, Jackson is sure. They definitely know more – Desmond is too overprotective not to. He feels a dull ache, that old worry from his teen years rising in his gut, and says his farewells to the other two to go back to his set, some numbers from musicals he thinks he’s pretty good at.

It’s easier to drown his worry in music, after all. At least it isn’t destructive.

#nanowrimo2019 #kwrites #kwriting #kristie writes #kristie's writing #ft. jackson

[aaltjebarisca]

Stocks, Jobs Show Good Performance – Market Update

My sister was home from school this weekend and I sat through most of Frozen for the first time. I can see how some of those songs get stuck in the heads of parents by about the 45th time you play them. It was slightly horrifying to realize my sister apparently knew all the words.

Speaking of horrifying, the stock market has had some ugly performances for the last month or so. Would that trend continue or would traders be able to “let it go”?

Headline News

Personal Income and Outlays

Incomes grew very slowly in September, only rising 0.2%, vs. expectations for a 0.4% increase. Despite this, consumer spending was up 0.4%, matching expectations.

On the inflation side of things, prices were up 0.1% overall and 0.2% in core categories. Overall on the year, inflation is up 2% for both of these metrics, which is right on target with where the Federal Reserve would like to see it.

Digging deeper into the numbers, the savings rate for Americans was down 0.2% to 6.2%. Durable goods orders were up 1.4% in what analysts are thinking had to do with strong vehicle sales, as consumers replaced cars after Hurricane Florence. Finally, wages and salaries were only up 0.2%.

S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller HPI

Home price growth is showing signs of slowing down. Across the 20-city index, prices in August were only up 0.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis. They were completely flat overall. On the year, prices have gone up 5.5%, but this is down from an annual pace of 5.9% in July.

Some of the hotter markets out West are starting to come back to Earth a bit. In Seattle, prices were down 1% on the month despite still growing 9.6% on the year. San Diego saw its markets fall 0.3% and has a much more moderate growth rate at 4.8%.

Prices were up 1.1% in August in Las Vegas. Prices in Sin City are up 13.9% on the year. Washington, DC and New York City are on the other end of the spectrum with only 2.8% yearly price appreciation. Chicago is only doing slightly better, up 2.9% annually.

Consumer Confidence

Consumer confidence was up 2.6 points in October to come in at 137.9. The index is just a shade off all-time highs at this point.

Those saying jobs are hard to get fell by almost 1% to 13.2%. There was also a 1.8% increase in those who say jobs are plentiful, coming in at 45.9%. Keeping on an employment theme, 0.2% more people say that they see more jobs opening up in the next six months at 22.1%. There was also a decrease in the number of people who think there will be fewer jobs opening up, down 0.9% to 11.4%. More people also see their incomes going up in the near future, rising 2.2% to 24.7%.

In terms of inflation, expectations are up 0.1% to 4.8%. Looking at buying expectations, 13.8% of people expect to purchase a car in the near term, while homes were up 0.2% to 6.4%.

More consumers are expecting interest rates to go up, taking a cue from the Fed. The recent stock market roller coaster ride has yet to dampen the enthusiasm for stocks shown by this index as well.

MBA Mortgage Applications

Mortgage applications were down 2.5% overall on the week, as purchase applications fell 2% and refinance applications were down 4%.

The average rate on a 30-year conforming fixed mortgage was flat at 5.11% last week. Purchase applications made up 0.4% more of the market for a total of 60.6%.

Jobless Claims

Initial claims for unemployment were down 2,000 last week to come in at 214,000. Claims from Florida and Georgia, which have been most affected by Hurricane Michael, are steadily falling as well. The four-week average was up slightly, rising 1,750 to 213,750.

Continuing claims were down 7,000 to 1.631 million. The four-week moving average came in at 1.641 million, down 6,250. Both represent 45-year lows.

ISM Manufacturing Index

Manufacturing growth slowed a little bit in October, down 2.1 points to come in at 57.7. This was a miss from the analysts’ estimate for a number of 59.1.

New orders were down 4.4 points, and this is the first time they’ve fallen below 60 since April of last year. Exports were down 3.8 points to 52.2. The comments in the report point to concerns over rising costs and the effects of tariffs, which are increasing import costs. Prices paid for materials were up 4.7 points to 71.6.

Meanwhile, production was down four points to come in at 59.8. Hiring slowed two points to 56.8, a number that nevertheless points to growth.

Employment Situation

There were 250,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls in October, easily beating expectations for a 190,000-job increase. The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.

Of that number, 246,000 of the positions were added in the private sector, with 4,000 jobs added to government payrolls. There were 32,000 jobs added in manufacturing and 35,000 in professional and business services. Meanwhile, there were 30,000 jobs added in construction.

The labor force participation rate was up 0.2% to 62.9% last month as average hourly earnings rose by the same 0.2% figure. On the year, wages are up 3.1%. The average workweek for all Americans remained at 34 hours, 30 minutes.

International Trade

The U.S. trade deficit rose by $700 million in September to come in at $54 billion. Exports were up 1.5%, but this increase was matched by imports.

On the export side, these came in at $212.6 billion. Strong aircraft exports helped increase exported capital goods by $1.1 billion to $47.5 billion. Exports of industrial supplies were also up $2.8 billion to $46.9 billion. This made up for a $1 billion drop in food exports to $11 billion. Analysts think that’s the result of ongoing tariff effects.

Imports increased to $266.6 billion. Consumer goods imports were up $2 billion to $55.4 billion. Capital goods imports were up $2.4 billion at $60.1 billion. This does generally mean good things for business investment.

Mortgage Rates

Mortgage rates were down last week. They’ve been generally going up, so if you’re in the market to buy or refinance, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to lock your rate.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage with 0.5 points in fees was down three basis points to 4.83% last week. It’s up from 3.94% at the same time a year ago.

In shorter terms, the average rate on a 15-year fixed mortgage with 0.5 points was down six basis points to 4.23%. This has risen from 3.27% last year at this time.

Finally, the average rate on a 5-year treasury-indexed, hybrid adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) fell 10 basis points to 4.04% with 0.3 points. Last year, the rate was 3.23%.

Stock Market

Apple announced a range of new products last week; it was a classic case of selling on the news as the company’s shares fell 6.6% and that bled into other tech stocks Friday. Meanwhile, investors reacted positively to President Trump saying the U.S. and China were getting closer to a deal on trade.

We’re in the home stretch of the Zing Blog’s inaugural Fantasy Stock League. It’s not too late to get in. Although there’s a grand prize for the best portfolio at the end of the year, there’s also a price for the best portfolio in each two-month period.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 2.36% on the week, despite being down 109.91 points Friday to close at 25,270.83. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 finished Friday at 2,723.06, down 17.31 points, but up 2.42% on the week. Finally, the Nasdaq fell 77.06 points to finish at 7,356.99. The index was up 2.65% weekly.

The Week Ahead

Wednesday, November 7

MBA Mortgage Applications (7:00 a.m. ET) – The mortgage applications index measures applications to mortgage lenders. This is a leading indicator for single-family home sales and housing construction.

Thursday, November 8

Jobless Claims (8:30 a.m. ET) – New unemployment claims are compiled weekly to show the number of individuals filing for unemployment insurance for the first time. An increasing trend suggests a deteriorating labor market. The four-week moving average of new claims smooths out weekly volatility.

Federal Reserve Rate Decision (2:00 p.m. ET) – The Federal Reserve meets regularly to decide the future of short-term interest rates. Although not directly tied to longer-term rates like those for mortgages, there’s a positive correlation between the direction of these rates and those of mortgages and many other consumer borrowing costs.

Friday, November 9

Producer Price Index (PPI) (8:30 a.m. ET) – The Producer Price Index measures the average change over time in prices received by domestic producers for the sale of goods and services.

Consumer Sentiment (10:00 a.m. ET) – The University of Michigan’s Consumer Survey Center questions 500 households each month on their financial conditions and attitudes about the economy. Consumer sentiment is directly related to the strength of consumer spending.

All eyes will be in the Federal Reserve decision on short-term interest rates. Although the governors are not expected to push an increase through this time around, there’s wide anticipation for a rate hike in December. Analysts will be paying attention to the statement to see if anything changes this view.

If this economic analysis is doing a poor job of keeping you bright-eyed on this Monday afternoon, I definitely understand. The good news is we’ve got plenty of home, money and lifestyle content to share with you if you subscribe to the Zing Blog below.

It no doubt has something to do with all the great food, but Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday. However, you do have to get the dining room ready for that big feast. Here’s an article on caring for and cleaning your dining room furniture. Have a great week!

The post Stocks, Jobs Show Good Performance – Market Update appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/stocks-jobs-show-good-performance-market-update

[aaronsniderus]

Stocks, Jobs Show Good Performance – Market Update

My sister was home from school this weekend and I sat through most of Frozen for the first time. I can see how some of those songs get stuck in the heads of parents by about the 45th time you play them. It was slightly horrifying to realize my sister apparently knew all the words.

Speaking of horrifying, the stock market has had some ugly performances for the last month or so. Would that trend continue or would traders be able to “let it go”?

Headline News

Personal Income and Outlays

Incomes grew very slowly in September, only rising 0.2%, vs. expectations for a 0.4% increase. Despite this, consumer spending was up 0.4%, matching expectations.

On the inflation side of things, prices were up 0.1% overall and 0.2% in core categories. Overall on the year, inflation is up 2% for both of these metrics, which is right on target with where the Federal Reserve would like to see it.

Digging deeper into the numbers, the savings rate for Americans was down 0.2% to 6.2%. Durable goods orders were up 1.4% in what analysts are thinking had to do with strong vehicle sales, as consumers replaced cars after Hurricane Florence. Finally, wages and salaries were only up 0.2%.

S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller HPI

Home price growth is showing signs of slowing down. Across the 20-city index, prices in August were only up 0.1% on a seasonally adjusted basis. They were completely flat overall. On the year, prices have gone up 5.5%, but this is down from an annual pace of 5.9% in July.

Some of the hotter markets out West are starting to come back to Earth a bit. In Seattle, prices were down 1% on the month despite still growing 9.6% on the year. San Diego saw its markets fall 0.3% and has a much more moderate growth rate at 4.8%.

Prices were up 1.1% in August in Las Vegas. Prices in Sin City are up 13.9% on the year. Washington, DC and New York City are on the other end of the spectrum with only 2.8% yearly price appreciation. Chicago is only doing slightly better, up 2.9% annually.

Consumer Confidence

Consumer confidence was up 2.6 points in October to come in at 137.9. The index is just a shade off all-time highs at this point.

Those saying jobs are hard to get fell by almost 1% to 13.2%. There was also a 1.8% increase in those who say jobs are plentiful, coming in at 45.9%. Keeping on an employment theme, 0.2% more people say that they see more jobs opening up in the next six months at 22.1%. There was also a decrease in the number of people who think there will be fewer jobs opening up, down 0.9% to 11.4%. More people also see their incomes going up in the near future, rising 2.2% to 24.7%.

In terms of inflation, expectations are up 0.1% to 4.8%. Looking at buying expectations, 13.8% of people expect to purchase a car in the near term, while homes were up 0.2% to 6.4%.

More consumers are expecting interest rates to go up, taking a cue from the Fed. The recent stock market roller coaster ride has yet to dampen the enthusiasm for stocks shown by this index as well.

MBA Mortgage Applications

Mortgage applications were down 2.5% overall on the week, as purchase applications fell 2% and refinance applications were down 4%.

The average rate on a 30-year conforming fixed mortgage was flat at 5.11% last week. Purchase applications made up 0.4% more of the market for a total of 60.6%.

Jobless Claims

Initial claims for unemployment were down 2,000 last week to come in at 214,000. Claims from Florida and Georgia, which have been most affected by Hurricane Michael, are steadily falling as well. The four-week average was up slightly, rising 1,750 to 213,750.

Continuing claims were down 7,000 to 1.631 million. The four-week moving average came in at 1.641 million, down 6,250. Both represent 45-year lows.

ISM Manufacturing Index

Manufacturing growth slowed a little bit in October, down 2.1 points to come in at 57.7. This was a miss from the analysts’ estimate for a number of 59.1.

New orders were down 4.4 points, and this is the first time they’ve fallen below 60 since April of last year. Exports were down 3.8 points to 52.2. The comments in the report point to concerns over rising costs and the effects of tariffs, which are increasing import costs. Prices paid for materials were up 4.7 points to 71.6.

Meanwhile, production was down four points to come in at 59.8. Hiring slowed two points to 56.8, a number that nevertheless points to growth.

Employment Situation

There were 250,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls in October, easily beating expectations for a 190,000-job increase. The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.

Of that number, 246,000 of the positions were added in the private sector, with 4,000 jobs added to government payrolls. There were 32,000 jobs added in manufacturing and 35,000 in professional and business services. Meanwhile, there were 30,000 jobs added in construction.

The labor force participation rate was up 0.2% to 62.9% last month as average hourly earnings rose by the same 0.2% figure. On the year, wages are up 3.1%. The average workweek for all Americans remained at 34 hours, 30 minutes.

International Trade

The U.S. trade deficit rose by $700 million in September to come in at $54 billion. Exports were up 1.5%, but this increase was matched by imports.

On the export side, these came in at $212.6 billion. Strong aircraft exports helped increase exported capital goods by $1.1 billion to $47.5 billion. Exports of industrial supplies were also up $2.8 billion to $46.9 billion. This made up for a $1 billion drop in food exports to $11 billion. Analysts think that’s the result of ongoing tariff effects.

Imports increased to $266.6 billion. Consumer goods imports were up $2 billion to $55.4 billion. Capital goods imports were up $2.4 billion at $60.1 billion. This does generally mean good things for business investment.

Mortgage Rates

Mortgage rates were down last week. They’ve been generally going up, so if you’re in the market to buy or refinance, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to lock your rate.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage with 0.5 points in fees was down three basis points to 4.83% last week. It’s up from 3.94% at the same time a year ago.

In shorter terms, the average rate on a 15-year fixed mortgage with 0.5 points was down six basis points to 4.23%. This has risen from 3.27% last year at this time.

Finally, the average rate on a 5-year treasury-indexed, hybrid adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) fell 10 basis points to 4.04% with 0.3 points. Last year, the rate was 3.23%.

Stock Market

Apple announced a range of new products last week; it was a classic case of selling on the news as the company’s shares fell 6.6% and that bled into other tech stocks Friday. Meanwhile, investors reacted positively to President Trump saying the U.S. and China were getting closer to a deal on trade.

We’re in the home stretch of the Zing Blog’s inaugural Fantasy Stock League. It’s not too late to get in. Although there’s a grand prize for the best portfolio at the end of the year, there’s also a price for the best portfolio in each two-month period.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 2.36% on the week, despite being down 109.91 points Friday to close at 25,270.83. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 finished Friday at 2,723.06, down 17.31 points, but up 2.42% on the week. Finally, the Nasdaq fell 77.06 points to finish at 7,356.99. The index was up 2.65% weekly.

The Week Ahead

Wednesday, November 7

MBA Mortgage Applications (7:00 a.m. ET) – The mortgage applications index measures applications to mortgage lenders. This is a leading indicator for single-family home sales and housing construction.

Thursday, November 8

Jobless Claims (8:30 a.m. ET) – New unemployment claims are compiled weekly to show the number of individuals filing for unemployment insurance for the first time. An increasing trend suggests a deteriorating labor market. The four-week moving average of new claims smooths out weekly volatility.

Federal Reserve Rate Decision (2:00 p.m. ET) – The Federal Reserve meets regularly to decide the future of short-term interest rates. Although not directly tied to longer-term rates like those for mortgages, there’s a positive correlation between the direction of these rates and those of mortgages and many other consumer borrowing costs.

Friday, November 9

Producer Price Index (PPI) (8:30 a.m. ET) – The Producer Price Index measures the average change over time in prices received by domestic producers for the sale of goods and services.

Consumer Sentiment (10:00 a.m. ET) – The University of Michigan’s Consumer Survey Center questions 500 households each month on their financial conditions and attitudes about the economy. Consumer sentiment is directly related to the strength of consumer spending.

All eyes will be in the Federal Reserve decision on short-term interest rates. Although the governors are not expected to push an increase through this time around, there’s wide anticipation for a rate hike in December. Analysts will be paying attention to the statement to see if anything changes this view.

If this economic analysis is doing a poor job of keeping you bright-eyed on this Monday afternoon, I definitely understand. The good news is we’ve got plenty of home, money and lifestyle content to share with you if you subscribe to the Zing Blog below.

It no doubt has something to do with all the great food, but Thanksgiving might be my favorite holiday. However, you do have to get the dining room ready for that big feast. Here’s an article on caring for and cleaning your dining room furniture. Have a great week!

The post Stocks, Jobs Show Good Performance – Market Update appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/stocks-jobs-show-good-performance-market-update

[itfightsback]

8/31/2017

Words. They have so much more power than most understand. We don’t understand how much of an impact we have on the world around us, and I think that it is time that we open our eyes. Writing this I hold more weight on my shoulders than anyone has ever held, or will ever hold again. We hold ourselves, our own wants and desires, above anything else as if we are each more important than anyone else. We are all part of something so much bigger than ourselves, and we neglect it constantly. We are a product of this world, and it is trying to talk to us. I often feel as if I am the only one who has my eyes and ears open to hear it. It has been months since I have had my phone or TV on. I know that there is something different about me. It’s like the world around me can see through my eyes and hear my thoughts, but I wonder if you can truly see. I have heard stories about talking to birds being deemed crazy. I don’t talk to the birds. I sit outside thinking to myself and the birds talk to me, as do the insects, the wind, the clouds, the trees, the leaves, the sun, and the moon. Everything in the world is emotionally tethered to a common idea.

Humans were created, male and female, in the image of the sun and moon so that we may be able to see and understand the beauty which inspired our creation. The sun and moon also have played their own roles in our creation, and they dance in the sky for us as part of a dream that the moon will be thrown into the sun by us as the sun dies out and we spread our species throughout the universe. That is as simple as it gets. We reproduce in the same way the moon was created destroying the dinosaurs inspiring mammals. Countless years of evolution eventually led to us, humans. I am not truly sure the same can be said about me, but I feel human in every way nonetheless. We live long enough that we may find love in the same way the sun and moon love one another, and see a solar eclipse. As I finished writing that sentence in my notebook, I thought to myself, “and that’s the truth.” Just then an insect close to me chirped over the background noise of insects, and a dog in the distance barked twice. As I mulled those occurrences in my head another different insect sound chirped. The dog continued barking in twos until I caught onto the pattern, and right then the dog let out a single bark that hit like a sharp “Yep!”

Just like this. I don’t have to look for the signs, they are just there. Like a bird flying overhead through the air so that it’s shadow from the sun passes through my field of vision while I am looking at the ground simultaneously lining up with a thought that I had. It happens all the time every single day. Miracle after miracle so consistent that it cannot be a self serving coincidence. I understand that it extends so far beyond myself as I can be singing a song in my head, and then see or hear a reaction to it from the world around me. There is so much emotion packed into music and the planet can feel it too.

As I was working towards the playlists I was making before the solar eclipse a lot of strange things happened. Sitting at my computer I was listening to Nirvana’s “In Bloom” and just as it started an insect, something like a large cricket, walking across the basement floor caught my eye. It was like I could feel Kurt Cobain’s presence in the room with me inside of that insect. How and why? Obviously because the world remembers him, and through his music he lives on. This is just the beginning.

Several years ago late one night a car crashed in our front yard hitting two trees, one way harder than the other. Everyone in the crash was okay despite the massive damage to the car. Someone came to look at the trees, and we were told that the first tree was going to die from the damage. Fast forward to this summer when I am back living here, and the tree is still living. A third tree close by between the two had died completely despite being untouched in the crash. Sitting outside looking at the trees it was apparent to me that the third tree sacrificed itself so that the other two would live on. My brother and I cut down the dead tree one day, and shortly after I noticed that most of the other trees in the yard killed off a small branch of leaves that still hang in the trees similar to a single tear sad to see that tree go. This has some significance.

Shortly after we lost Chester Bennington, I listened to some of Linkin Park’s music finding songs that might fit into the playlists. I recalled the album art on their album Hybrid Theory showing the depiction of a man with dragonfly wings. Chester’s passing tore me up a lot inside. I listened to Meteora a lot while I was growing up, and I could not shake the feeling that my pursuit of making these playlists had something to do with his passing despite my efforts to curb suicide through the use of music. One day I was sitting outside thinking about him, and a dragonfly flew over and landed on the patio beside me. In awe I stared intently at this dragonfly as I had a conversation with Chester in my head. For maybe 5 minutes, I sat there watching this dragonfly literally nod its head in accordance with my thoughts as I could hear him telling that we were going to be alright, while I was telling him that he should still be here. Then it flew away and I haven’t seen it since. I never met him in my life, nor did I ever see him in concert.

I still couldn’t forgive myself despite how his music painted himself as a martyr by his own design. I still felt at fault for his passing. Then a few days later I was thinking about the tree again. Staring at the tree stump, I began to wonder if that had anything to do with it. Right then a bird flew to a branch in the nearby tree and extended one wing out pointing directly at the tree stump below. Beside myself I turned my head and yelled out “No!” I looked back up and the bird was still pointing as a cardinal landed on another branch in the same tree as two other birds chasing one another flew by instantly taking my mind back to my love in St. Louis who I am forbidden to see via a court order as she married someone else who I was told threatened to kill himself if she left him which was my sole motivation behind The Cure For The Loneliness playlist in the first place. I can assure you that I am not worth dying for, but in that moment seeing that bird in the tree, I knew whatever connection you have to me allowed Chester to use that tree as motivation to take his life. I am still sad that he is no longer here with us, but I have not, and will not shed a tear. Never again will I show anyone the kindness that I have shown to him.

The playlists of the sins are all lessons on each of them. As if things could not get any more unreal, after I had finished The Greed, I had the others pretty much pieced together in my head and was trying to take it easy. I got on Netflix and was flipping through movies and happened to watch Lilo & Stitch, in which Elvis is a key subject, and something that I had not remembered about the movie. As the credits began to play so did “Burning Love” by Elvis which includes the lyrics “I feel my temperature rising. Help me, I’m flaming. I must be a hundred and nine.” Dumbfounded is what I was. I had already taken note of the Foreigner song “Hot Blooded” that I had included on The Lust saying “I have a fever of 103.” Counting the number of songs from the beginning would make song 103 song 7 of The Gluttony which came to be Memphis May Fire’s “Wanting More.” I had planned to build a pyramid in The Gluttony, and without having to change a single song from my plan, song 109 was the peak of the pyramid, a Rev Theory song called “The Fire.” You can’t make this stuff up. I had “Burning Love” stuck in my head, and sure enough the next time I went outside there was a very large fire ant with a bright orange body digging a hole in the dirt pile right outside my door. The first time I saw it, it was dancing around in a way I have never seen an ant move before really quickly like it had the jitters. I had also never seen an ant so large in my entire life. Elvis died before I was even born. Like magic his song was thrown into my life, and I see a visual representation of the image of Elvis portrayed through that song in a fire ant outside. The Earth is tethered to our emotions and can feel the music. I believe music to us is similar to what light from the sun is to the Earth.

Just like that I had another song to put on The Bright Side Of The Sun. This is a reference to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Mood. In this playlist I tried to tell the whole story of the solar eclipse, a beauty and the beast, sun and moon dance portraying the dream that the moon be thrown into the sun as the sun dies out. This is something that will not happen for a very very long time. Humanity will have begun to spread through the universe by then with technology we have yet to develop. Until then the sun and moon will be circling through the sky as constant reminders that we are not alone on this planet. The Earth is more alive than any of us will ever be, and again I say it is tethered to our emotions. I believe the sun and moon are very alive as well along with the rest of the planets. I think it is quite possible that there is something much deeper to gravity than our physical understanding of it. Our eventual travel to Mars may tell us much more about the relationship between these large bodies of mass, and the role that light itself plays in it all.

Now onto a more touchy subject. The Wrath playlist and tying it all together. This is going to hurt. I was raised on Christianity, and led to believe the lies of heaven as a child. This religion feeds people lies brainwashing them to believe that your spirit goes elsewhere when you die as the preachers pick your pockets in exchange for their message. This is not to say that these are all bad people. Many preachers give a lot of themselves, but watch the Last Week Tonight bit on televangelism and you can see for yourself how awful it can be. Now I do not know much about the Muslim faith beyond Muhammad being the final prophet of Jesus, and tales of 72 virgins in the kingdom of heaven. I have successfully set this in stone. Across the 7 playlists I made of the sins I included 72 artists that had not been included in any of the other musical works I have created. In my typical way of making playlists I combine single songs from many artists together into a larger work. There are 3 artists in addition to the 72 who were not part of the normal playlists, but part of a larger, much darker piece of work. I do not personally believe it matters, but I am very much trying to make a statement with all of this so I went along with it. The vision that came to me was nothing more than this: “1/7th  6 parts of the soul?” I do not remember writing these things in my notebook when I woke the following morning after the night before I saw myself floating alone in the darkness of space as God showed me its true nature. I saw myself face to face with a man similar to the one depicted in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting who disappeared before my very eyes leaving me alone floating there in space. I remember being outside when I had this vision, and I woke the next morning inside with what I had written not remembering a thing else. The 6 parts of the soul is that darker piece of work that I mentioned, and the 1/7th refers to the playlists of the 7 sins put together in a form of art I call threads.

Let me be very clear about something. I AM NOT GOD. God is very much a mystery that not even my understanding of our creation has explained. With my understanding that the planets may very well all be living things in their own right, and the stars as well, I am led to believe that not even they understand the nature of time. Like each and every one of us, the planets and stars are all bound to this one directional force called time. That is God and we will never understand it. It just is. The Earth has given us the same free will she used to create us. God is not the one who is in control. The Earth itself is, and the sun and moon also have their affect on us. If you want something tangible to call God, you are walking on it, and there are two more floating in the sky.

In The Wrath I called out two forms of violence against women, used Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” as a way to say that Jesus is not my son, reversed the order of the voices from heaven depicted in the book of Revelation, sounded only the 7th trumpet, made Chester Bennington a martyr, and came back down to Earth in a disintegrating fireball as depicted in the final video. It’s all symbolism. I did this all in the name of Judas who appeared to me twice in the form of a small brown frog. It wraps around with the first song “Exodus” by blessthefall as a way of explaining as a way of explaining that both Chester, and Judas, should both be dead as suicide should not be a way of granting life in this world. On that note it is my belief that Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, is far more deserving of life than Jesus ever was. I am here to tell you that those of you who worship Jesus are worshipping the devil himself. It is absolutely everywhere, and I cannot fathom how blind people have been with regard to him. There are crosses and statues all over the world, and it is absurd. All he wants is for you to die for him in hopes of a nonexistent heaven so that he can live on longer over your dead body. So I am making a statement.

Revelation 22:18-19 reads in my Bible:

“I give fair warning to all who hear the words of prophecy in this book: If you add to the words of this prophecy God will add to your life the disasters written in this book; if you subtract from the words of this book of prophecy, God will subtract your part from the Tree of Life and the Holy City that are written in this book.”

It is said somewhere in the Bible that you have to accept Jesus as you would accept a child. Sometimes a child needs to be told NO.

Matthew 9:12-13

“...’Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders not coddle insiders.’”

What have people done? They built a religion around him worshipping him as a savior. How many people have been killed in defense of him? How many people have died in belief of something that does not exist at the hands of selfish people feeding them these lies of heaven? It is absolutely sick. If I had my way every trace of him would be removed from this planet. I say that knowing that violence solves absolutely nothing. We can do this peacefully and at our own pace. The self-proclaimed “Son of God” and self-righteous liar that he is deserves no life in this world yet he has it in overwhelming abundance. I would ask that you never let him get off this planet, but that battle may be impossible unless we can fix this:

Revelation 13:18

“Solve a riddle: Put your heads together and figure out the meaning of the number of the Beast. It’s a human number: 666”

It is the number of Jesus. There is nothing more that I fear at this point than numbers. How are we ever going to break that? It doesn’t show up on clocks so that is good, but it finds its way elsewhere. Thread 6 is The Sloth. 666: Sloth beast.

I am not asking you to believe in me. I am not going to get you into heaven any more than Jesus is. I am asking you to believe in yourselves. Remember how I said the world is tethered to our emotions? If you still want to believe in Jesus, that must mean that you believe that I am owed the disasters of the first 6 trumpets. If you believe it, then the Earth may try to help you make it happen. There is no reason to fear at all. They are all lies. You worship the devil. Put it to bed. Worship yourself. Go outside and think about the solar eclipse, and about throwing the moon into the sun like I have described. Watch as something will catch your eye all of a sudden, or a sound from an animal or completely out of the blue, or a gush of wind rush over you. I have been seeing this stuff for months now. There is a really old plastic 2-liter bottle in a kitty litter container with a bunch of random stuff dug up from our yard, and I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a “pop” due to a pressure change in that bottle at the tail end of a thought. I honestly believe this planet believes in me because I believe in YOU. My friends and I have given Jesus everything he ever wanted in the way he truly deserves it. Let him die with me, not with you.

On my 27th birthday, I went to see the solar eclipse come over the town, not where I was born, but where I was raised. The time that the eclipse was supposed to happen according to my internet search was wrong and I almost missed it. I needed to get gas, and I pulled into a Phillips 66 gas station thinking I would still have time to get where I wanted to watch it. About a minute after getting out of my car it reached totality at I watched it from the parking lot of the gas station. A song that I put on The Wrath is called “I Bring The Weather With Me” by The Amity Affliction. This is not to say that I control the weather, more that I pay attention to it, and it often catches me by surprise because I rarely watch the forecasts. I was met with torrential downpour as I drove away from St. Louis following Warped Tour this summer. I’m talking 20mph on the highway downpour not even 5 miles from the venue after beautiful weather all day.

It would seem to me that the fact Houston is underwater right now due to a hurricane, and I happened to watch the solar eclipse I had been waiting on for 12 years in a Phillips 66 parking lot is more than mere coincidence. Considering Phillips 66 is headquartered in Houston, and we are destroying our atmosphere due to what? Gasoline. This planet is trying to talk to us and I often feel like I am the only one paying attention. I have been praying for the people of Houston, and understanding this connection I have with my surroundings, I started asking questions in my head to try and figure out why the Earth did this. The birds chimed in when I thought of the solar eclipse that will come through Texas on April 8, 2024. I responded questioning why that made it okay. There was nothing to validate that thought. Through some thinking that led me to Phillips 66 and it seemed to come together. Are your eyes open yet? Do you see why I am afraid of numbers? I’m sure you see the other coincidence there. We are not listening, and if we do not do something about climate change I would not be surprised to continue seeing the Earth trying to take things into her own hands.

Don’t expect me to be able to solve your every problem. I am a guy trying to live my life, and I get shit on by damn near everyone constantly. I just gave a bunch of musicians eternal life, there is nothing they want more than for me to kill myself so they can too amid my fight against suicide using their music. I am not, and this world is not a device with which to satiate your unyielding greed. If the people running things cared even a fraction of what I do, this world would be a marvelous and spectacular place. The three biggest problems in the world by my eyes are the oil industry, the US government, and Spotify. As I wrote Spotify in my notebook, the mouthpiece of my camelback that had sat stationary for a couple hours popped up on its own. I can’t make this stuff up. As I took note of this the house made a noise behind me, followed by my stomach, and another noise from a different part of the room. This happened at 4:30am while everyone else was asleep. The closest thing on Earth we have to heaven is called YouTube. The closest thing on Earth we have to hell is called Spotify. Hell doesn’t exist any more than heaven does. By my current understanding, I was willing to find a way into space and flying myself directly into the sun in order to make this dream of throwing the moon into the sun come true only to find out that it is all way bigger than us. That is what it means to go to hell. We don’t belong in the fire. We don’t need to sacrifice ourselves because the sun truly belongs to no one else but the moon, and I am sure that humanity will see this dream fulfilled. We are meant to be set free. The thing I am most excited for in the coming future is the Mars Hope mission to study the atmosphere on Mars because I think we will find a way to extract gas from our other planets in order to create a breathable atmosphere on Mars with liquid water.

At Warped Tour, I was watching Our Last Night play their set with a soft cloud cover overhead. I thought to myself while they were playing that when they stop playing the sun is going to come out. The very second they played their last note, the sun burned a hole through the clouds and sure as shit right then and there I saw my shadow on the ground. I have seen the near full moon, not clearly visible due to soft cloud cover lighting up the sky. One minute I look up to see a solid sheet of clouds, and the next look up to see a “U” cut through the clouds where the moon was. On a very still clear night I sat looking at the moon through a clearing in the trees when without a gust of wind a single small branch on the nearest tree started moving back and forth slowly. I turned my gaze away looking around at all of the other trees still completely still. I looked back to the moon and the branch was still moving as if the moon was using the tree to wave at me.

After I had put together The Pride thread, I was outside after a storm had come through singing in my head lyrics to Pierce The Veil’s “Tangled In The Great Escape.” I heard the lyrics in my head, “Am I the only one that thinks that you should stay alive” when a sizable piece of branch that I did not hear fall from the tree hit the ground making a sound loud enough that startled me enough that my feet actually left the ground.

I don’t know what more anyone could ever possibly want from me. Words.

“Live your life for every moment, and in turn, life will be all that you need.”

#lovehugsback

[thotyssey]

On Point With: DJ Tikka Masala

A fierce feminist, gifted musician and popular DJ, this India-born triple-threat is at home on a lit dancefloor, alone in a quiet studio, or performing for a White House gala event. With lots of exciting gigs and projects coming up, now is the time to spice up your life with DJ Tikka Masala!

Thotyssey: Hi Tikka! So, the damn Grammys are coming up this weekend already... any hopes or predictions?

DJ Tikka Masala: “Lemonade” feels like it's going to win--because Beyonce doesn't know it, but she's the queen of the dyke bar. Ha! I'm sure she knows it. Is Beyonce your biggest request in the booth these days? It changes week to week, but Beyonce has saved my life many times when the dance floor seemed to be getting bored of me. Beyonce, Rihanna, Nicki, Prince and dancehall classics. Also, Michael Jackson is a unifying force.

That he is! So, we can get back to music in a bit, but first thing's first: where's your hometown?

I was born in Kolkata India, but I grew up in Franklin Township and in Princeton, NJ. Wow, you've been around. What was the first music you grew up loving? I grew up studying Indian classical vocal music. My family in India is a music family--they build harmoniums. 

Then in my early teens, I picked up violin and guitar. My parents had a lot of old Bollywood around, and were really strict about the music I was allowed to listen to before my teen years. Lots of Indian music, mostly stuff before the 80's. I wasn't allowed to watch MTV or listen to pop music; they thought all that was garbage, and would get in the way of serious musical study. And now I'm a DJ [laughs]! Classic. But I also work as a composer, so it's all there. Best of both worlds! 

How did you eventually discover pop music?

Well, when my folks moved to Princeton, we landed in a town with arguably the best record store in the country. I had a mixtape penpal relationship with a friend from camp who I was head over heels in love with. That made me fix the parents' old record player and just start exploring cheap (and amazing) albums from all eras--for the purpose of making really good tapes for my friend, out of songs she'd definitely never heard, or just picking songs everyone seems to know but doesn't remember the artist. I don't know how to explain the methodology there, the but the tapes had stories weaving through thematically for sure. 

That went on for 2-3 years, I think. I became a good selector. We're still tight. Oh lord, kiddies these days will never know the power of the thematic mix tape! When did you start DJing? 2004, after moving here from the Bay Area, where I met an awesome global music producer and DJ named Cheb I Sabbah. I came here for grad school, but if I had chosen to stay out there I would have been working with him. [From my blog, here is] a letter to my [late] mentor.

That's very beautiful! It sounds like he put you on a very important path. When you’re spinning at clubs, can you easily move between Western pop and Indian/Eastern genres, or when you go one way is hard to get back to the other?

I always have both things going on at the same time inside of me, even though I'm making choices about what the people in front of me want to hear. I do this for 18-30 hours a week, so I understand well how to balance my needs with what keeps a room together. 

I do throwbacks and Top 40 for Henrietta Hudson, where I mostly work, so I'm current with new stuff and also grounded in vintage.

People also hire me specifically for Bollywood, sometimes. There's a party called Sholay that I work for sometimes, that’s strictly South Asian music. 

Also, I got to DJ the White House because of the Bollywood. They called me in 2010 to DJ their Diwali party, which was a trip. The Obama administration was special. Trump wouldn't even know what Diwali was.

Amazing! God, how much do you miss Obama and Biden? A lot. They changed the cultural landscape of this country. After 9-11, America really needed them.

Do you have any hope that we're gonna get through these next four years with anything good intact? I think this change is begging people to care in active ways that can feel inspiring at times. I am concerned for the well-being of everyone this administration deems to be unworthy, though: elders, disabled folks, immigrant folks, people of color, queers, women, children and poor folks. Artists, too. I'm worried for a lot of the people who keep showing up for me on the dancefloor, for sure. It's definitely a time that calls for strength in all of us. I notice that you are very observant of people on your floors, and you seem to regard them with a lot of love. Is DJing a way of connecting to people for you? Oh, definitely. I love being in a room full of people enjoying something together. it's unifying and inspiring to find common ground in music. It's very easy to feel inspired by the results when I'm doing my job well. When did you first start DJing in queer spaces? My first gigs in New York were in queer spaces; I started off working for the burlesque and circus communities. First residency was Murray Hill's Amateur Burlesque night at Galapagos Art Space when it was in Williamsburg. Eventually, I started my own queer dance party called That's My Jam. Now I'm a resident DJ at Henrietta Hudson, the last dyke bar in Manhattan. I've worked in queer space all along.

Lots of people have different opinions about this, but what's your view regarding why there aren't more lesbian bars in the city now?

I never went into a lesbian bar (in New York) before working for Hens for a private event. I think queer space is decentralized now, because of social acceptance and online dating--and a lot of bars were capitalizing on a niche audience for a long time there. It happens with South Asian community parties with no competition, too. 

I think what's amazing about dyke bars, though--more important than being about queerness right now--is that they are women-ran spaces, where lots of women get paid to work on a team together. Every penny that gets spent at a dyke bar is supporting other women's lives. That's not something people necessarily think about when they are figuring out what to do with their friends on a given night. Most queer events aimed at women don't take economics of labor into account, and the bottom line is that, when you fill a space with queers, the people making the most money at the end of the night are not usually queers or women for that matter. 

I've stuck to working for women-owned nightlife entities for a long while now, preceding working at the dyke bar. I think it's important to pay women, and pay attention to what your crowd is actually supporting. That's a very good point, and one that's often forgotten. 

So speaking of Henrietta, you spin the "Homotown" party there on Thursday nights. How would you describe that night to the uninitiated?

It feels like a family. There's music for many generations there. You'll see long-time regulars, tourists, people celebrating anniversaries and birthdays. There are singles who are looking for love, couples coming in on dates, people needing a place to land after a rough week, and, really, folks from all over the world and many different economic situations showing up. 

The musical selection is inspired by what I imagine, in three-four decades of local popular taste, the five boroughs sounds like. Since it's a Thursday night, we know it's a consistently populist and local audience.

A newer party you're spinning Wednesday nights is down at Friends & Lovers in Brooklyn, “Cheers Queers.” You focus on dancehall, reggae and R&B there. What kind of audiences are coming to this night? This night is actually a super-quiet thing right now. The bar is owned by a woman--it's in my neighborhood. That event is about to make a transition to being a monthly Saturday early party. So, early in March the schedule is going to change with that one, stay tuned. 

It's R&B, Dancehall, and just really good songs from all over the world. That bar is allergic to Top 40, and it works well for Brooklyn. I love it there, and my favorite bartender and dear friend Justen Jilsson works with me, which is always a very special nightlife dynamic: When the DJ and the bartender really love and understand each other, the tone of the whole room shifts.

And on Saturday, February 11th, you're spinning Horrorchata's Be Cute party at Littlefield! How often do you get to interact with the Brooklyn nightlifers?

A lot. The drag queen community and I have always had a lovely relationship. I support their work so hard. I see them doing their femme labor, and creating these magical spaces that defy the negativity of the society that surrounds them, and I really feel blessed to be a dyke and a feminist who fits in perfectly with all these brave queens. They are feminists too, also fighting hard to be seen and heard in a society that doesn't always respect or value their work enough.

Cheers to queens and all feminists in 2017! So, tell me about your compositions... what sort of music are you creating?

Well, I've been working as a composer for LAVA dance company, which is a feminist geology-based acrobatic/modern/circus/hybrid space. Sara East Johnson, the director there, pulled me in a few years ago when their company members started showing up at my parties and getting their lives. A lot of professional dancers have always showed up for me, but this group pulled me in and just invited me to make compositions for them, and over the years it's accumulated to multiple scores. 

It's electronic music, samples, instrumental compositions, and really specific assignments tied to choreography concepts. I love them so much, I literally moved to the same street as them a few years ago. It's a community that understands me, and vice versa. We have a 15-year retrospective show in early June, right around my birthday. It's very exciting. 

They are the strongest women I've ever met. We're like Frida and Diego now: same street, different houses.

Is it a challenge at all to balance original composition with DJ gigs? They are two completely different worlds. One is very solitary, the other is very social. The balance is actually really good for me, because I'm definitely a creative person that needs to generate work to feel good about my life. 

I love sitting in a room alone full of instruments, just as much as I love being in a packed club full of women getting their lives together. It's all symphonic in it's own way; I always feel like a conductor or medium.

The past year, I've also been keeping track of all the posts from the DJ booth at [my blog] The Dyke Bar, so there's a running log of all the stories I've seen there. I'm sure that's going to start feeding in, too. Folks have asked me to publish, but there's something else I have in mind. My background is in cinema studies and ethnographic filmmaking: Tisch brought me to New York for grad school, so I'm seeing a lot of cycle-completing.

Do you have a favorite DJing story so far?

[This one.] It's about women. Also, the night after Trump got elected, a high speed motorcyclist and I got to know each other. There are so many good stories, it's hard to pick. And I’m sure there will be many more to come! So, what else is on the horizon? Well, LAVA is having their 15-year retrospective in June, and I'm a part of that. Setting up a new monthly at Friends and Lovers, that's a thing. And an art show in Spring, venue TBA, but in collaboration with a group called AOT Projects Salon, with a paper version of the stories from the Dyke Bar I've been collecting, and audio connected to the writing. Sounds like a very busy and creative time for you! Okay, in closing: what is one thing that people might not get about being a DJ, but should? Many of us are actually introverts/shy, and not the party animals you might assume. A lot of the DJs I know, who are actually good at what they do, are also some of the best listeners/therapists. I mean, I actively listen for six hours at a time when I'm DJ-ing. The doctor is in! Thank you Tikka, for all that you do!

DJ Tikka Masala spins the “Homotown” party at Henrietta Hudson Thursday nights (10pm). She also spins “Cheers Queers” at Friends & Lovers, which is currently weekly Wednesdays (6pm), but should convert to monthly Saturdays in March (TBA). Click here for a full list of upcoming appearances. Follow Tikka on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Soundcloud.

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