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#guess what really happened and what is total satire I dare you
soulless-puppy · 3 years
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Being an ex-Christian is like
Sleeping in on sundays and thinking it’s the height of luxury
Tarot feels powerful and validating and a little naughty
Still rocking out to that one Third Day live album so much that Spotify tells you “that’s So You” on your horoscope playlist
I can’t believe I spent x number of years avoiding R-rated movies and masturbation, what a waste
Omg 90% of my religion was social anxiety
How come I never heard dirty versions of veggie tales songs at church camp how did no one stop and think “I Love My Lips” might be strange for children to sing
Murder podcasts
Reading incest fanfic and wondering why the incest is supposed to be the most shocking part
I wish I had tried to hook up with guys at church camp, everyone thought I was a slut for listening to pop music anyway
There is nothing after death everything just stops wow that’s a relief but also I regret volunteering at vacation bible school that was like 12 weeks out of my finite life spent on stale goldfish and bad skits
I want to be a witch, where do I start
Bisexual and confused all the time
Telling kids they’re going to hell is child abuse and yes I will say that bluntly on thanksgiving in front of grandma
Fuck is definitely my favorite word
I haven’t cracked open a bible in years but I still remember enough to make a Baptist pastor angry that women can legally read
HAIL SATAN
Socialism is what St Stephen was stoned for, fuck you
Switching between porn and religious trauma ~nostalgia~ playlists and back to porn
Wait he wasn’t trying to focus on Jesus and not dating he was GAY, OMG
I forgot that Balam’s donkey was a thing and had to sit down and process that that is something my father 100% believes in
Wait I didn’t want to be Jennifer Knapp, I had a massive crush on Jennifer Knapp omg
Why did I have to waste my time being Protestant??? Catholicism seems so fucked up but a little sexy, man
Yes I still pray when I can’t find my keys shut up and help me find my keys
Sorry can you slow down a bit my parents didn’t allow me to learn science while homeschooling, explain it to me like I’m ten
I wish there was a heaven so that I could kick the Apostle Paul in the shins when I arrived and then leave immediately
OH THANK FUCK I DIDN’T MARRY AT 20
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mikeshanlon · 4 years
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iwwv anon and PHEW OK. I def did not expect that essay and now I feel bad cause I KNOW my thots r not gonna be articulate or right. nonetheless! i think Oliver does qualify as an unreliable narrator cause hes. very oblivious but not like... Richard papen (who is a whole ass clown don't get me started on tsh) but not like addy from dare me(I will support till the day I die that dare me is da like I WILL die on this hill) who sees what she wants to see. 1/?
i think he just... thinks that his friends r diff ppl than they actually r? that doesnt rly make sense but yea. what I mean is that everything the characters do is coated in that empathetic view Oliver has which is usually wrong? so we don't get an objective look into the characters. meredith is my girl like I love the hot popular girl trope deconstruction but at the end of the book she's not at a great place like she's w someone that doesn't love her like she needs to be loved... 2/
I guess the most probable ending is that James never meets Oliver again and that everyone is kinda stuck on what happened but that's soo sad and I really don't want to think abt it. ngl iwwv wasn't like my fave book ever and I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with dark academia sometimes but what i rly liked abt the book is that despite how fucked up everyone is and how toxic they r to each other they do at heart care abt one another...3/
like I rly liked that esp cause at that point the only other da book (other than dare me!) that I had read was tsh and godd every character is so fuckinh annoying and they all hate each other. i was super confused by it till I saw someone saying that it's satire and I felt my mind explode. I feel like this is so long but I didnt rly properly answer all you wrote sorry! I think its a pretty good book tho it has some crazy quotes like hold awn Im gonna look at the highlighted stuff on my copy.. 4/
Were you in love with him?” “Yes,” [...]Yes, I was.” It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still. LIKEEE PHEWW OK OK OK. WE OUT HERE. that line literally made me go crazy. I'm so sorry for any spelling mistakes or like general mistakes I made here English isn't my first language, it's 1am and I wrote this in the notes app w/o looking it over. so like.. NOT a professional review lemme tell you. 5/5
 Ahh im so sorry I did not see this before I yeeted for a month!!!
Oooh okay first of all dare me as a DA… I’ve only watched the show but like yeah I see the Elements for sure.
Also yeah I can understand what you mean abt Oliver being an unreliable narrator now… Ig my view of unreliable was more like they are purposefully twisting the truth or omitting facts or just literally don’t know shit but I get how personal bias can make the narrator unreliable. I do think the assertion that Oliver thinks his friends are different than they actually are makes sense. He sees James in a very positive light and though I like James a lot and think he is better than, like, Richard, he definitely has darker moments and manipulates Oliver at times (again I’d like to think it’s not the most nefarious thing in the world but like him just being shitty bc he’s in a dark place and he one, wants to do anything he can so Oliver doesn’t figure out he fought Richard so Oliver still thinks of him the same way/bc he knows Oliver would do something stupid like get himself arrested for James; and two, is very jealous that Oliver is with Meredith after Richard dies and has sort of a somewhat positive outcome from Richard’s death versus James being riddled with guilt and anger). And yeah, the probable ending is they never meet but I refuse to acknowledge that so LGNRG. Also that line makes me go CRAZZZZZZZZZZY!!! There are so many great lines, both using Shakespeare and on their own and its like okay give me a moment im going bonkers…
Personally, I haven’t read that many dark academia novels yet (bc for some reason i can barely finish a book rn sigh) but the concept interests me. I think what’s compelling is the setting/atmosphere of like ~mysterious college vibes~, and the idea of a sort of niche, obsessive bond and pursuit of knowledge with a tight knit group of friends (and the like inherent homoeroticism in every single DA elrngenrg). Like Dead Poet’s Society (the film I haven’t read the book) isn’t Dark in the same way most other dark academia is by like, obsession and death and manipulation (though of course there are dark elements with Neil’s storyline), but I think the other building blocks of academia are present there in a more wholesome way and you can see why people are drawn to that idea. As for the more Dark aspects I think it’s interesting to analyze things like group psyche, obsession, manipulation, etc, like what went wrong for everything to take such a dark turn???
 But, like everything else, it really has to be done well or else its just like okay….… I’ve tried to read TSH twice and I may try again but from the 100+ ish pages I read I totally get what you mean. IWWV is so interesting to me bc the characters are all very compelling and multifaceted and I like that they are a close friendship, we come in after 4 years of them spending all the time together and to me that is apparent. Like you said, we can see fissures and problems especially as the novel continues but there is care there between them. That also makes the decision to let Richard die much more interesting and sinister imo, as well as how all of them interact with each other after he dies, and how the roles of the group change without their “leader” so to speak. Also, maybe it’s just bc I like Shakespeare, but I think the academia part of IWWV is so much more accessible compared to TSH. Like I don’t know every Shakespeare play or anything so I didn’t understand every nuance or was like immediately like oh this is from Cymbeline or whatever the fuck, but you could understand the gist of things and it made sense that they spoke in Shakespeare lines bc that’s all they’ve been doing for four years and also theatre kids are Like That. Their pretention also provided any Layers to the story, like the parallels between the characters they play and their own arcs, how some of the lines echoed their own thots, foreshadowed, or they were able to say things through Shakespeare (I’m thinking of like, Oliver realized he loved James during Romeo and Juliet, the foreshadowing that James was going to ruin Richard’s life and that he dislikes Meredith/Richard when he quotes Mercutio at the start “A plague o’ both your houses”, the exchange Oliver and James had onstage and had that kiss during King Lear before Oliver was arrested,etc.) (Also I think the structure of some of the dialogue being formatted like a play really helped make it feel more realistic and immersive). Versus TSH which is just so pedantic and dense and hard to follow at times im like I get they are smart but what??? And maybe that’s part of the satire aspect (or maybe im dumb) but like donna I read TGF I know you are pretentious and info dump abt random obscure shit anyways so erglknerg. Like to me there was a Point to all of the academic Shakespeare stuff in IWWV and it was the soul of the book, and M.L. Rio made it very interesting—like the way that the directors reimagined the plays and had Julius Caesar be like a modern political play, the cool mirror shit in King Lear, the Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet performances where they did them at events and interacted with their environments (which were one of my favorite parts of the books bc I just think that concept is so interesting), etc. For TSH the shit they did literally just felt like “okay look at them they’re smart see you can’t even keep up!” like okay… I felt lost a lot and only like snapped into reality whenever Henry (?) was like oh… murder….. and even then I was like idk what this dude is saying but like he’s being darksided LMAO. And I also agree that it’s just like… Richard being thrown in the middle of this group could lend itself to some cool ideas but its hard to believe that he fits into the friendship group and hes just like hell yeah I love Greek so much and lets go kill this guy other than like okay ur gay and stupid and just want to impress Henry or whatever his name was (which he was but I digress). It’s just not as impactful to me as this close friend group falling apart. Ik TSH fans might be angry if they see this (and of course I haven’t finished the book so my perception may be warped but I also kno many ppl felt that way u did) bc I’ve seen ppl say IWWV is just like TSH but “lackluster” or whatever and while I can see some parallels (mostly b/w Richard and Henry and Alexander and Francis), I really think M.L. Rio expanded upon common DA tropes and the interesting parts of TSH but made it her own and interesting and oh yeah there are actually multiple compelling female characters and LGBT characters (and no incest)!!!
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twiststreet · 4 years
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Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joker” scored a record $13.3 million on Thursday night in North America. [...] The Joaquin Phoenix-starrer is now looking at a possible offshore weekend bow of $110M+. If that holds, along with domestic expectations, it is also looking at a $200M+ global opening, and further has a shot at overtaking Venom‘s 2018 record October global debut.  [...] Weeks of speculation as to ‘Joker’s’ opening weekend performance and its status as one of the most talked about movies of the year have made the acclaimed (and controversial) film a must-see cinematic event,” Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said.
Feel like Rambling Instead of Doing My Chorin’ Dept.: I have zero interest in this Joker movie since I prefer cinema and/or low-grade Japanese pornography (which in my estimation is cinema in the Scorsese of sense of the word because you learn a lot about psychology, the punishing psychology of sempais).  I have zero interest in like adult super-clown movies or whatever the fuck’s going on here-- and I don’t want to understand the psychology of someone who doesn’t have enough sex, I’m just too afraid that letting those kind of thoughts into my head might make me slightly less excellent at intercourse and the world would be robbed forever (Ladies).  And add in even a remote chance of some shiny chrome War Boy blowing away my theater...?  Imma pass.  The only Batman villain I’m risking death for is Egghead...
But boy, watching people talk about and around this movie-- what a giant pile of yikes, which has ended exactly how all moral panics about art invariably end, with a giant pile of cash changing hands.  And only “We want to generate TV ratings from normal people who hate arty shit we usually reward”-style award nominations no doubt await (aka the Black Panther slot).  
What a stupid time to be alive... Its always been a stupid time to be alive because we’re not a really brilliant species, but I mean... moral panics over super-clown movies which are poised to make hundreds of millions of dollars where the moral panic isn’t just “oh my god it’s a billboard you can see from outer space about how we stopped funding our education system”... Boy...
I mean, I don’t think everyone was in bad faith, necessarily-- like if I were a lady who had to worry about incels coming and blowing away my yoga class or whatever, everytime I’m downward-facing my dogs, I’d probably be kinda not super-hot for a Joker movie either, like the world needs one more thing zooming-up the limp-dicks of this world. Or I mean, just generally, on the one hand, you want to talk about the world, right, because you live there or whatever?  But on the other hand, it’s that thing you learn if you write about comics, especially-- being the guy talking about the thing just helps the thing, no matter what you say about it. I don’t know-- I never figured out how to square that circle.  Like, I don’t know that I’m the audience for a lot of the moral panic, but it’s not like it was unreasonable for people to be like “can’t we just not”... 
It just fucking got pretty wild in the last few days though-- because it got sucked into a second entirely different jetstream.  You had the “Art is the exact same thing as an instruction manual for stupid people” elitism that kinda kicked off by that awful Mother Jones editor, or people who just want to childproof the entire world because they desperately think that’s a necessary response to living in a horror world (which I don’t think I sign up for but I can see my “we are all damned anyway and deserve to die” position not winning a lot of adherents)... but then thanks to the weird-ass marketing strategy (positioning Joker explicitly as a weapon in the Great American Culture War...?  That’s how they sold Lady Ghostbusters, “come see this movie to send a message”, but it was just weird seeing a Reverse-Ghostbust)... it got sucked into the constant thriving secondary hum on the internet of unfunny people who are super-online and who have a constant axe to grind about comedy, because they don’t get jokes, don’t understand why people laugh at them or anything, and they’re narcissists who think we’re all actually laughing at them when we laugh at jokes because they’re so fucking insecure about their outsized-perception of themselves especially as victims?  
At some point it just wound its way where a lot of people going “The Hangover wasn’t funny to begin with, even though it was one of the highest grossing R-Rated comedies ever made, because we’re all evolved now”-- arguing that movie’s half-billion dollars of revenue generated all magically rendered meaningless cause the director said some stupid-ass jackass shit...?  Yeah, good luck with that.  “Did you know the Hangover had Mike Tyson in it???  The internet’s going to win this fight against one of the biggest comedy hits of my lifetime, ten years later-- how dare people have laughed, according to me, someone who sounds totally normal and cool and fun to be around?  I’m going to buy two tickets to the next movie by the Thor guy-- he’s making anti-hate satires-- why can’t you all be like a guy who makes fucking Thor movies?”  Maybe I’m wrong, I’m on the side I’m on, but I just don’t think the internet’s going to win this nonstop war against jokes, no matter how many anti-hate satires the Thor guy’s got in him!  (Anti-hate satire... go fuck yourself...)
And then the other side of things you had people who are like “nothing ever matters wheeee” where you just have to ignore, like, just the completely stupid world we’re stuck in full of absolute shitheads who obviously have us all surrounded and just are nontop dripping abject fucking brain-deadening bullshit into their ear, day after day, like Chinese Water Torture that these cretins are lining up to take part in, just salivating for to help make the world that much dumber and shittier, happy New York Comicon everybody!  We really need Joker when there are 10 hour Youtube videos of guys complaining about a lady working the counter at Wendy’s who turned down their extra-large bottle of perfume they bought her or I don’t even know what the fuck’s going on with Youtube, nevermind games-- we really needed to make that avalanche of stupid any scarier or stupider..?  I mean, “shit in, shit out” seems kinda like a reasonable proposition to me.  You can’t feed people shit all day and then be like “why does this place smell?”  It’s all the shit!  I call it my Carl’s Jr. theory of human civilization. 
But I mean, you look at the massive loneliness in the world, and even a cursory examination of what’s happening with men in this country statistically, at the same time as all kinds of people are getting stepped onby economic pressures and then you layer on climate change on top of everything else which kinda has to put some kinda dampener on human optimism generally, even if crazy people want to pretend it’s not happening... And then you’re going to tell people not to want entertainment that goes to a dark place, or that the movie they should see instead is Ad Astra (which was just Star Wars for men who hate their penises)??? “You should spend more time contemplating how being a man is bad, like Brad Pitt in Ad Astra.”  A lot of people online (and not just Republicans) just seem angry and isolated and disconnected and sad, and I just don’t think “what if we tried to not have art or entertainment that speaks to that and instead gave them a DVD of Booksmart instead” is just even remotely realistic, or even worth contemplating, from a how-people-function standpoint.  People who get upset about art being a valve, like ... I don’t understand how they comprehend the history of art in the 20th century, let alone modern day stuff... 
Is there going to be a violent cost to it?  I don’t know-- you go look at Falling Down’s wikipedia page and they mention a guy who shot up some folks whose favorite movie was Falling Down.  But... I think there’s a gap between knowing that and then judging Falling Down for it, or that being a relevant data point when talking about Falling Down, that I don’t go over that gap and other people do.  Maybe it’s my age or my own selfishness, I don’t know...   
I don’t know.  As usual, maybe I don’t know what I think.  Anyways, it’s at least nice that it’s finally out and we just have to wait and see what the next bullshit-ass bullshit that causes some moral panic is going to be.  There was cancelling Stephen Colbert because a hashtag inventor told people he hated Asians or some shit.  There was people saying Isle of Dogs hated the Japanese.  Bruce Lee’s daughter yelling at Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- that was cute, I guess; I guess Bruce Lee’s no longer a public figure who we can comment on and re-purpose as artists have been doing since Warhol or before, because Bruce Lee came in his wife one time, good to know.  I can’t remember all the panics with stand-up comedians, all that stuff, whoof.  There was that time people got angry cause a guy on Youtube didn’t want to see the Lady Ghostbuster movie-- that’s not even an exaggeration there was like one youtube guy everyone got mad at.  I don’t know.  We’ve reached evil super-clowns.  I don’t know how much stupider things can get, only that they will get infinitely, infinitely, infinitey stupider until the sun melts us because we’re definitely not surviving climate change, this isn’t a species built to last...
Anyways, felt like rambling.  
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berniesrevolution · 6 years
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There are still perfect moments. Not too many of them, but they happen. In my last one, I was sitting on a balcony in the quiet part of the French Quarter, eating a pistachio muffin and sipping an iced coffee. I was with an old friend, and we were talking excitedly about things we had read. There was a breeze, and we could see boats going by on the Mississippi River. In the distance, we heard the sound of a trumpeter playing on a streetcorner. I was wearing a comfortable shirt, it was spring, and there were flowers around. Music, food, sunshine, friendship, plants, old architecture, proximity to a body of water, and intelligent but unpretentious conversation: to me, these are all the elements needed for total peace and satisfaction.
I’m sure you have your own list of ingredients for a personal paradise. (Some people like snow, they tell me.) They rarely come together all at once, and when they do, it’s usually only for a moment. But what a moment! Kurt Vonnegut has a lovely quote that describes these sorts of times: “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’” Unfortunately, that isn’t what I usually murmur. Because underneath the feeling of bliss there is always a certain amount of frustration and anxiety. And what I end up murmuring is: “Since this is so nice, what is humanity doing with itself?”
The perfect moments do not end up being entirely perfect, then. They end up being exasperating, because I can’t help but be angry that such nice experiences are possible, yet aren’t ubiquitous. On a planet capable of being so extraordinarily beautiful and pleasant, why are so many things so absolutely rotten for so many people? The ingredients of the good life are not complicated. It’s a trumpet, a muffin, a river, and a nice day, basically. And yet we have a world filled with border walls, solitary confinement, drone strikes, gang violence, car accidents, student debt, preventable diseases, Walmarts, and Donald Trump. There’s so much loneliness, so much misfortune. So many children who never see a friendly face, so many old people who wait each day for a visit. In the U.S. alone, 40,000 people get desperate enough to take their lives every year. No, that’s wrong: 40,000 people succeed in taking their lives; for every suicide there are 25 suicide attempts, and God knows how many other people who hover on the brink. How could things go so horribly wrong when they seem so easy to make right?
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Illustrations by Christopher Matthews
It’s very difficult to be comfortable in one’s personal “perfect moments,” when one realizes just how many people don’t even get many bearable moments, let alone perfect ones. And in some respects, one person’s pleasures are built on other people’s discomforts. The street musician playing the trumpet is underpaid and struggles to pay for the basics (I’ve talked to him about it), because tourists treat him as part of the scenery. I buy my muffins at the coffee shop around the corner, where the workers probably don’t make too much more than the Louisiana minimum wage of $7.25/hr when it takes about $20/hr to afford a decent apartment here. Some of the world’s most delicious food is made in this small city, but it’s made by people who toil and sweat and suffer and get very little thanks for it. (This is not to mention all the animals that die so that we can feast on them.) It seems almost grotesque to talk of perfect moments, because to perceive them that way requires insulating ourselves and ignoring everything around us. The French Quarter, for instance, is visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year, who come to stroll under the oaks of Esplanade Avenue and look at the fabulous Spanish colonial architecture. When you’re rumbling along in the St. Charles streetcar, looking at the antebellum mansions and smelling the magnolias, you can genuinely think you’re in a kind of Eden. But this is also a city where ⅓ of people are in poverty, where 150 people are murdered every year, and where the incarceration rate is the highest of any state in the country (which is, in turn, higher than any country in the world). What looks like a city of charm and luxury is actually a city of drastic racial and economic inequality, built by slaves and sustained by injustice.
It’s certainly enough to put you off your muffin. But I don’t think becoming aware of reality means that we have to lessen our enjoyment of the world’s wonders. That way lies an unhelpful negativity: “Isn’t this garden beautiful?” “I guess it is if you don’t think about how all the time spent making it could have been spent trying to end mass incarceration.” Instead, I think it’s possible to pair feelings of joy/appreciation with corresponding feelings of realism/responsibility, and we can view perfect moments not as an ignorant indulgence, but as a vision of the kind of experience that we ought to make accessible to everybody. They’re little glimpses of what we should be fighting for, and it’s actually important to have reminders of what the good life might consist of, and to have reassurances that it’s not actually fantastical to think we can achieve heaven on earth. We already have heaven on earth, it’s that we only have it fleetingly, and it’s not available to everybody.
Basin Street is a street Where the folks, they all meet In New Orleans, the land of dreams You’ll never know how nice it seems Or just how much it really means
—Louis Armstrong, “Basin Street Blues” (1928)
It’s important to use present-day experiences as source material for dreams of social transformation, because nowadays, it can be difficult to imagine a future that is substantially different from the present, except in ways that are horrific. It’s not that nobody can imagine things changing. It’s that the two possibilities seem to be either “like this, only more so” and “civilizational annihilation.” Granted, you still hear one or two moonbeams insisting that “a better world is possible.” But even that is a phrase rather than a vision, a chant meant to reassure us that we haven’t given in yet. The most creative imaginings of possible futures are bleak. Several times, this magazine has published articles on the regrettable trend toward dystopian film and fiction, which even the Star Trek franchise has succumbed to. The observation “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” is tragically accurate.
The future wasn’t always like this. Once, long ago, people devised extraordinary utopias. From the original one—Thomas More’s 16th century satire—to the Victorian-era visions of H.G. Wells and William Morris, to the feminist science fiction novels that dared to dream of a world without men, in times past there were countless available tomorrows, only some of them depressing. George Scialabba, in his lecture “Slouching Towards Utopia,” notes the strange contrast between the popular literature of the 19th century and that of our own time. The bestselling books of the 1800s were exhortations to moral progress, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, and Edward Bellamy’s utopian Looking Backward. (By contrast, over the last century, Scialabba says, it was probably The Da Vinci Code, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Hite Report.) The success of Bellamy’s novel is particularly noteworthy. As a novel, there’s not much to it: a Bostonian falls asleep and awakens in the year 2000, where he is shown around a future socialist society. But Bellamy goes into detail about the operations of future-Boston, presenting a world in which labor is minimal, goods are distributed equally among all, crime is treated as a medical issue, and everyone retires at age 45.
(Continue Reading)
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A THEORY: Linear Timeline of reputation
This is going to be a very long read; but it may just include unlocking the 15 Taylor's from the LWYMMD MV so read on if you dare…
 (OK it totally includes the theory, please read and tell me what you think!)
An Introduction:
I've been a casual fan of Taylor Swift since she started. Loved all her radio singles, listened to her albums (at my leisure upon release), and admired her platform and brand image. I guess I became a huge fan after 1989, but around the release of reputation, I realized just how much this woman's music has been there throughout my life and decided to fully stan her. As I fell down the rabbit hole of  learning everything I could about TS as an artist, I became completely enamored with her wits & charms. However, the more I learned to love about her, the more I could feel just a slight inauthenticity; I was constantly thinking of the hypocrisy of how she "never names who her songs about" yet she created this scavenger hunt with her liner notes that seemed to point in an obvious direction of one of her "ex-boyfriends." It didn't align with how she presented herself in every other aspect. Then, I felldowntherabbithole for real and found all of the incredibly documented and organized realm of the Kaylor's, and everything was literally in screaming color.
reputation made even more sense with fresh Kaylor eyes and once I read this Taylor Swift quote: 
reputation, in my mind, is an album that is very linear in it’s timeline. Meaning that it kind of starts out where I was when I first started making the record. The album ends more where I am now in my life. So this is more towards the end of the album, it’s called ‘Call It What You Want.’
my mind became OBSESSED with cracking this code. I had combed through all the kaylor blogs and while I had read everything I could, I still couldn't place it within any timeline. Then, Delicate came out and the code started to crack; I could peek inside and make sense of something, but was still unsure what it was. I put together a loose concept which had some plot holes, but it was when I remembered to revisit the 15 Taylor theory that everything completely revealed itself.
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  I would like to start with a disclaimer: I have never, ever actively participated more than lurking or even posted anything on Tumblr. I would like to fully acknowledge that there is a huge, fat chance none of this makes sense to anyone but me, but my husband was really getting fed up with me talking about it and I just needed to share. THANK YOUS to the Kaylor blogs I frequented with incredible analysis and POV of Tay in the media and her music-  @all-my-possessions​ @howyougetthenerd​  @jennyboom21 @karlitakloss​ @kaydar​ @kaylorrepdetective​ @larrienation​ @out-of-the-klosset​ @paradisekisses  @tallcurlygirl​ @taytaysbeard​ @that-curly-haired-lesbian @thoseflashinggreeneyes​ @whaler13bg​ to name a few. (Sorry, tumblr is not letting me tag a few of you.)
 A lot of the information I am providing is not new and connects the dots from the amazing posts from this community. I tried as best as I could to cite all relevant posts - you can definitely let me know if I've made any errors. Please feel free to edit//contribute//comment because I have a feeling that a more seasoned eye would be able to expound on so many more clues and easter eggs!
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Let the Games Begin!
Overall Concept/Themes
There are truly some insightful analysis of the overarching themes and concepts of the album already. Secrecy, partners in crime, forbidden love… In general there's a complex theme of Duality to the album; conflicting feelings, Brand vs Self, bad vs good, truth vs reputation etc. I think it's most important to note is that any analysis that views these tracks differently than listed below, can still be correct. Our Queen is a lyrical master plus there's that added layer of intentional dualities in her story telling; there's always at least 3 different meanings to her songs and that's one of the reasons we admire her wordsmith ways.
 The Timeline!!!
 …Ready For It?  - So It Goes… 2012* - 2014
This has long been inferred in every side of the fandom to indicate this is Part 1 of the Story, implied by the ellipses as the beginning and end of the track names. All the timelines I've previously read started at either the introduction of  1989 or even later beginning with 2016/2017 events, but it didn't make sense applied to the album as a whole. Once Delicate MV came out, I began to notice that all of the nods to RED in all these MV's were not just for nostalgia. She is literally telling us that this part of the story was about the end of RED era leading into 1989 - not quite 1989 era just yet. ;)
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*2012 is an estimate based on the beginning of the Delicate video; it's possible that TS & KK met before Swiftgron was officially over but who will ever know? Karlie's buzz cut was December 2011 (x). The first half of the album is difficult to theorize specific dates within this period because we really have no idea when KK & TS met.
LWYMMD - New Year's Day 2014 - 2017 (NYD)
I gotta tell you - immediately after reading this, go watch LWYMMD. It was (is?) literally hiding there in plain sight; it's a GENIUS video walking you through EXACTLY what she did (you could say from a satirical standpoint more how the media/GP thought she did) to prepare for this era! When she refers to the "Old Taylor," she's using the term in the exact way her fans have been using: to refer to Country Taylor. She is officially Pop; Look What We Made Her Do when RED, a pop-country album, "a patchwork of songs," didn't win the Grammy. She went full POP princess. This post in particular helped me remember that these songs are not fresh in regards to her life even though they are brand new to us. Part 2 of the story more clearly follows the events of the 1989 era through just before rep's release.
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Track by Track // 15 Taylors
…Ready For It?  Intro
I believe this is an introduction of what's to come, an overview of the story. Yes, she's definitely asking herself if she's ready to come out of the closet (x/x), if Karlie is ready to glass closet (x), is her beard ready for the consequences(x), and most specifically, are we, her fans, the GP, are we ready for her to come out and live her truth unapologetically? It's her laying the groundwork to prepare for 1989; her literally coming up with the concept for the whole era which is why we see the references to her 1989 MV's in the glass room. This post  cites the connection to the Dykes on Bikes; are we ready to accept Taylor to not only come out, but be a strong voice and activist of the LGBTQ+ community?
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End Game April 2013 - June 2014
I KNOW Taylor is singing to KK about them first meeting - and I KNOW we think they just met before VSFS 2013 (even though there are rumors that say they met sooner…) But, hear me out because this lines up way too easily with the information we get from the MV (x/x). Remind yourself… Who opened for Taylor's RED tour? That’s right, our favorite ginger. It's a nice additional nod with the callback of Everything Has Changed duet with Ed Sheeran. Miami (shoutout to my hometown even though I have no inkling to its significance) tour dates were 04/10/13, London was  02/01/14 (Did she really show us their first  NYE together?!), and Tokyo was 06/01/14.
Irrelevant now but important for later (LWYMMD): And I bury hatchets, but I keep maps of where I put ‘em. This post highlights a cool interpretation of the line that applies to this whole post!
I’ve been doing some digging to try and somehow link Miami in this mix, and this is pure speculation but I feel like Future represents her bearding with Harry Styles. Karlie’s “buzz cut” was in December 2012, and shortly thereafter she was in Miami for a photo shoot. 1/4/12 marks the official break up of Haylor in the US Virgin Islands… it’s a stretch and I’m totally grasping at straws but they are geographically close and it’s all I got for now.
   "Me, I was a robber first time that (s)he saw me…"
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I Did Something Bad early 2013
So, I have to admit… IDSB and DBM were the two songs I was having the most trouble placing within the linear timeline; my initial thought was this must have been a metaphor for her confessing her "sins" a.k.a. bearding, to Karlie when they first started dating. This was the song that clicked once I looked through the lenses of the 15 Taylors and reaffirmed my thoughts with the visuals of this Taylor on the cross in LWYMMD. In digging a little deeper, I found a Vanity Fair article - one of the only cover stories found online about TS during 2013. I'm not as confident about my perspective on the linear timeline with this track, however I feel like it's a good start especially considering the next holy church track.
In regards to the "light me up" lyric, and clear visual reference in the …RFI MV as well as the crucifixion of Taylor in LWYMMD, I thought this answer she gave the   73 Questions With Taylor Swift | Vogue video was also interesting to note. The question was what is the one thing she wishes she would have known at age 19 (8:03)?
"Hey, you're going to date just like a normal 20-something should be allowed to, but you're going to be a national lightning rod for slut-shaming."
I'll leave this quote from the April 2013 Vanity Fair interview right here:
"But nobody calls them the kinds of names that get thrown at Swift. “They’re ‘playboys,’ ” Swift says wryly. “They’re ‘having fun.’ ”
By the way, in the Vanity Fair article there's an "authorized source" giving insight to what "really happened" to Haylor aka probably lies.
 Every lie I tell them, they tell me three
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Don't Blame Me early - mid 2014
I can really only hypothesize through the lyrics and the Taylor line up that this may be a reference to how the RED "media" circus (as quoted from the VF article cited above) literally made her do crazy things - maybe how her past experiences had caused her to react a certain way in an undefined relationship, maybe how the media circus in general had her guarding her heart, and of course the religious context of the song leads me to believe of course it is connected in that aspect to the confessing of her actions in the previous track. Big Sur trip also falls within this timeline. (x/x/x) 
I once was poison ivy, but now I'm your daisy…
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Delicate 2013 - 2014
I think this one has so many beautiful analysis with the music video that syncs perfectly with this time line with no need for additional explanation, and I think it's especially apparent why this Taylor represents TraKK 5 in the line up. (x/x)
It's interesting that Fearless Taylor and Red Taylor were the ones actually fighting on Taylor Mountain in the LWYMMD MV; this may be a reference to her insecurities and headspace during the RED media circus//break up anxieties fighting contrasting to her want to just dance in her best dress Fearless with KK with no inhibitions.
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Dancing in my best dress, fearless 
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LWYMMD End of 2014
Has anyone noticed the crows in the beginning? It literally hit me as I was finishing this post - a group of crows is called a murder.
We see her Driving a new Maserati (well, car with significant meaning) down a dead end street and then crashes into the pole. (x) She literally killed the "Old Taylor" to get the Grammy - as well as set up clever disguises as red herrings* so that we missed the most obvious clue that this is about the release of 1989. I think even cleverer, how she walks away from the crash unscathed at the end of the MV to imply she rose up from the dead, she does it all the time (with each era release). (x/x/x/x)
*Red herring: something, especially a clue, that is or is intended to be misleading or distracting. In reference to the post regarding hatchets in End Game, she's definitely sending us on the hunt… remember that post above I asked you to note?
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 Then of course another hint to the timeline is in the lyrics and MV (look at the date of the tweet...)
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I've got a list of names and yours is in red underlined 
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So It Goes… October/November 2014
This was definitely the most challenging to figure out, but there's definitely two clear ideas that are represented here - the linear timeline alludes to the HOT KINKY SEX our girls probably had after VSFS '14 (x/x/x) and the death of her 'innocence.' Coincidentally, I had read Slaughterhouse Five for the first time earlier last year and lurking around the Reddit TS  community where they spent so much time trying to figure out how they could circle this back to Vonnegut. Unluckily for them, it is the most heteronormative//homophobic community where even Kaylor posts are censored/deleted/ridiculed etc so they weren't ever going to get it. This song represents a toxic relationship with CH in their eyes, and I can see that perspective… another Salute to the American Queen of Wordplay.
 Anyway, here is a quote from a NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/books/review/and-so-it-goes.html)
That is, the constant repetition of “So it goes” makes readers ask themselves about the meaning of death (or its lack of meaning) and the incalculable human costs of war.
The 2009 VMA's Taylor is the epitome of everything her art, brand and music spoke to prior to 1989; and with the Pop princess she was no longer the relatable girl next door. She had gone full big-city, celebrity friends, glitz and glam - feeling so Gatsby for that whole year. With 1989, represented by the LWYMMD music video, that image was shattered, it was the death of her reputation but the true beginning of laying the groundwork for her and KK's future and she truly felt alive. 
Not to mention a song about kinky sex is a huge step away from that image.
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So it goes...
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And so it goes, now Part 1 of our story is done.
Gorgeous Met Ball 2015
Part 2 moves into the 1989 era starting with the Met Gala. (x/x) I read a great analysis using the lyrics to prove why this song is not about someone you just met because of the intense conflicting feelings. (I have scoured Tumblr to find it and link it but can't rediscover it… sorry I explained I've been a noob and a lurker and I never liked or reblogged anything, I'll update with a link if I ever find it again!) That made me reevaluate my original thoughts of this track being Enchanted 2.0 and representing her meeting Karlie for the first time. This was the first public event Kaylor attended together; it must have been strong conflicting feelings of joy & giddiness of the relationship quickly overtaken by nerves, fear, and anger that she would be found out and/or couldn’t show any outward PDA towards KK at the event. I would imagine there was a lot of drinking that night to cope, thus the “drunk” perspective.
 PS she probably didn’t go home alone that night (DING)😉
 'Cause you're so gorgeous it actually hurts
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Getaway Car May - August 2016
There are great analysis looking at this song from two main POV's- 1. the bearding CH-TH circus(x/x) and 2. a reflection of Swiftgron in hindsight (x). For the sake of the timeline/15 taylor line up, it was too coincidental that this was the Taylor snapping at the beards in I <3 TS shirts and  from that perspective, fits perfectly into the linear timeline. It is suspect  that TS went against her management in anger of how the "break up" with CH unfolded, and so it would make sense to be a little apologetic towards TH -- the one beard aftermath she may have regretted but that is just pure speculation.
And a circus ain't a love story, and now we're both sorry
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  *I JUST NOTICED! She POPS HER LEG for the 7th boyfriend in line - AKA CH. She is SO EXTRA!
King of My Heart August 2016
The below quote and Taylor line up don't need further explanation. 
"I think it’s very interesting when people talk about their love stories. Like when you guys blog about, “my and my husband, me and my boyfriend” or just anyone talking about how they fell in love. 
There seem to be these very definitive phases. It doesn’t matter how long that phase lasts. There seems to be a moment where you know it transitioned to the next phase. People will be like, “Oh my God, we were friends for six years and there was this moment and we knew and then it changed. Then there was a moment and it got even deeper. Then there was a moment and we knew” or like “I saw this person and there was this moment and we knew.” Everyone has a different story with how they connect with someone else and what i find interesting is the moment where it switches. You always hope that switch is going to move forward and not backwards because it can happen either way. I always wanted to structure the song where each individual section of the song sounded like a move forward in the relationship but still being listenable. So I wanted the verse to seem like it’s own phase of a relationship, the pre-chorus to sound like it’s own phase of a relationship, and the chorus to sound like it’s own phase of a relationship. I wanted them to all have their own identity but seem like they were getting deeper and more fast paced as the song went on. So finally I was able to achieve that in a song.”
 Here’s a couple of my favorite analysis regarding this song. (x/x)
 Up on the roof with a school girl crush
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 Dancing With Our Hands Tied Mid - End 2016
This analysis  really explains the lyrics and matches the allusion of the Zombie Taylor to make it seem like it is a hindsight song about Swiftgron; however Out of the Woods is the last MV of 1989 era released the end of 2015 (aside from New Romantics your video) and this can perhaps be expressing the death of Taylor’s 1989 reputation after the slew of public feuds. It can also be interpreted as a hindsight song in regards to Kissgate in 12/2014(x/x); how she had found herself coming into 1989, but was a zombie version of that because she had to beard with CH and TH and it perhaps made her feel dead inside. Maybe she’s implying that she would have just taken the fall from grace then put herself through another (particularly long and grueling) fake relationship.
I had a bad feeling
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Dress October 2016
Not only is Dress pretty frequently analysed, it's also the most obvious and blatant within the theory.  I thought it was very cute that this was represented by the Ballerina in the line up as a not so subtle nod to Karlie. October 2016 was the infamous Golden Tattoos at Drake's birthday party. (x/x/x)  
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Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo. 
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Sorry I couldn’t help myself with this gif :P
TIWWCHNT November 2016
Originally, I thought this was the easiest one- yes, the Snake Queen is sipping and serving tea on her infamous feuds however it just didn't fit in the more transparent timeline of the second half. There's been a few posts that hint the track may be a slight diss to her fans. Once it hit me she was alluding to herself as our (the fans) American *dream* Queen, I realized: this song is not a slight diss - it is harshly directed to us, all of us. Hear me out: Just like KOMH is about a love that reflects back on different periods in life, this track also calls to a couple different conflicts with the relationship of TS and her fans. She's never enough for either aspect of the fandom.
I thought it was curious that she would have the "ET TU BRUTE" (x)  as a reference to Kanye because let's be honest, she probably never trusted him after 2009 and rightfully so. "Et tu, Brute?" is a Shakespeare reference and a phrase that is now used to describe a friend stabbing you in the back. This would be more applicable to us, her fans. V1:
It was so nice throwing big parties
Jumping to the pool from the balcony
Everyone swimming in a champagne sea
And there are no rules when you show up here
Bass beat rattling the chandelier
Feeling so Gatsby for that whole year
This easily refers to 12/2014 - Kissgate. Feeling so gatsby for that whole year; throwing big parties. She had to close the gate before she was outed prematurely by the fans watching her during the concert.  We were the last ones she ever expected having to protect herself from; she had been so open, glass-closeting, but the fans took it too far and crossed the line of her privacy. She was surprised by the network that had expanded to track her every move. A couple years pass, V2:
It was so nice being friends again
There I was giving you a second chance
Think back to the election of 2016; Taylor being back in the media and more open again with her life wasn't enough at this point. America had reached a boiling point and everyone had to pick a side; even Taylor's most dedicated fans were constantly expressing their disappointment at her so she changed her priorities and went into hiding.
 As @paradisekisses once posted, “Not everything is about Kanye.”
 Salute to you, our American Queen of Red Herrings
 Because you break them, I had to take them away.
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Call It What You Want End of 2016
The lyrics all harken to 1989 (x) and this is when her reputation has never been worse (again), but she’s stronger this time and it didn’t break her as much as post RED era. Not to mention, she’s madly in love and found her end game so nothing else really matters to her; her priorities have been shifted and she knows what truly matters in her life. 
Call her what you want, she is Karlie's Partner in Crime.  it's an obvious call to the gold cage, hostage to my feelings; she will jail herself once more with this ((hopefully)) last beard and that will be the official death of  (2.0? 6.0?) Old Taylor. The best part is the BTS video showing how much fun she was actually having in the gold cage. There are beautiful analysis of this song (x/x/x/x/x)   , and to me it's just the most real/pure love song. Love isn't just about all the good times, it's how your partner and you navigate the bad. Sometimes the worst moments in life show us just how strong our relationships are and bring us closer together.
Karlie what you want, call her what you want to (I can't unhear this in the background now <3)
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New Year's Day January 1, 2017
This Taylor is hidden from us because she will probably never be as open with the GP, media, or her fans ever again. Who knows what to come in the future, but she actively tells us "don't read the last page" and to "hold onto the memories." Ugh, this is making me tear up --  I just officially joined the fandom!! Don’t tell me this is it already... (x/x/x) 
This post highlighted the importance of the sunshine necklace with Taylor's obvious sarcasm in the BTS in saying “It’s really important to wear subtle jewelry in music videos, I’ve learned.” (If anyone can forward the gif I’d love to add it to the post :))
Sidenote: technically, isn't this another closet she's in during the rep era?
Wear you like a necklace…
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And I will hold on to you...
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I had so much fun putting this together and being inspired by all the amazing perspectives the Kaylor fandom has been churning! Hope you like it :) Let me know your thoughts!
630 notes · View notes
humansunshineao3 · 6 years
Text
Fighting the Good Fight [Ch. 8]
Alec Lightwood just wants to run his Institute in peace.
This is the story that could’ve unfolded if Jace didn’t exist.
Rating: Mature
Pairings: Magnus/Alec, Clary/Izzy
Tags: Jace doesn’t exist, transgender alec lightwood, retelling of the TV show, Internalized Transphobia, Panic Attacks, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fluff, Lightwood Siblings Feels, Izzy and Alec are parabatai, Family Dynamics, homophobia
AUTHOR’S NOTE: TRIGGER WARNINGS
HOMOPHOBIA: The fallout from Clizzy's kiss is rough, as you probably all would've guessed. Maryse is a nightmare about it, but Alec calls her out.
EMOTIONAL ABUSE/MANIPULATION: Maryse manipulates/guilt trips Alec into things he doesn't really want to do. It's not fun, but keep in mind Alec does get a happy ending!
TRANSPHOBIA: Maryse is very flippant about Alec's surgery and dismissive of Alec's feelings on the matter. Lydia """"""accepts"""""" Alec but insists that he must get "all the surgery" before she'll consider him her husband/fiance.
INTERNALISED TRANSPHOBIA?: Alec refers to himself as 'not a real man', but he uses air quotes around it - he's being sarcastic/satirical. However, later, Magnus walks in on him wearing a sports bra and he refers to himself as 'not decent' because he's ashamed of his chest etc.
DEPICTIONS OF GRIEF: Simon dies, and Clary is obviously grieving.
RACISM: Lydia is racist. She calls downworlders 'demonic beings' and ignores Luke's concerns and expertise whenever possible. Alec calls her out on it, and Magnus calls her family ancestry out on it... It's iconic.
Previous Chapter 
Episode 8: Bad Blood
Everyone in the room was staring at Izzy and Clary, utterly silent. Alec cringed at the sound of their lips smacking together, not daring to glance at his mother, who had stopped dead in the doorway. After a long, tense moment, the two women in the centre of the room seemed to come back to themselves, and broke apart.
“What did I just do?” Izzy whispered, her wide eyes fixed on Clary’s.
Clary pressed her lips together, her expression warm and relieved. It took her a minute, but Alec saw the realisation dawn on her face as she looked around at the shadowhunters staring at them. “Oh come on,” she laughed nervously, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “It’s the 21st Century.”
Izzy squeezed her eyes shut, and Alec, as freaked out as he was, couldn’t stop himself from leaping over the rail he’d been leaning on and crossing to her side. Izzy’s fingers had turned white from how hard she was gripping onto Clary’s hand, and Alec took her elbow.
“Hey,” he said softly, “I’m proud of you.” He didn’t know what the fuck they were going to do to fix the rage he could sense rolling off their mother over by the door, but he knew that Izzy needed to hear his voice, right now.
“Should I not have…?” Clary asked, the euphoria she’d felt at the kiss totally gone.
“Everyone, get back to work.” Maryse’s voice made all three of them tense, and the shadowhunters who’d been watching and whispering dispersed.
Izzy and Alec looked at each other for a long, long moment, squeezing each others’ hands, and then glanced at the doorway.
Maryse was gone.
“Fucking hell,” Izzy murmured, letting Alec go and pulling Clary into a hug.
Clary rubbed her back, looking over Izzy’s shoulder at Alec with a frown. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure this out.”
“I’ll go and talk her down,” Alec promised, though he could feel the anxiety blooming hot in his chest as Izzy let Clary go and turned to look at him. “I’ll fix this. You… This was the right thing. This is good.”
Izzy sighed, putting her hand on his chest. “Don’t promise her anything stupid. You don’t owe her a deal. This is my mess to fix.”
“I’ll check in on you later, yeah?” He nodded, unable to lie to her. He knew full well that the minute Izzy had kissed Clary in front of everyone, she’d inadvertently sealed his fate.
Maryse was in the office, and Alec felt ill at the memory of what had happened the last time he’d spoken to his mother, and the last time he was in this room. He didn’t knock, squaring his shoulders as he walked into the room. Maryse was looking out the window, hands knotted tightly together behind her back. Alec perched on the edge of the desk.
“Clary could be a good political match for Izzy if we bring down Valentine.” Alec stated. “Clary is a Fairchild. If she is the one to bring in Valentine she will be one of the most influential people in the Clave overnight. Izzy could do worse.”
“Have you forgotten,” Maryse said coldly, “that Miss Fairchild is a woman?”
Alec sighed, looking up at the bookshelves. It was easier, with the two of them looking away from each other. He could be businesslike, not let his feelings get in the way. “Yes, she is. Which means that Izzy and Clary’s partnership could go down in history. Izzy Lightwood will be remembered forever as the first openly sapphic shadowhunter. You always wanted a place in history.”
“Do you hear yourself, Alexander?!” Maryse sounded almost hysterical. “How on Earth are the Lightwoods meant to go on if Isabelle shacks up with a woman and you transition? Max will be our only hope, if we can hold on that long…”
“We don’t need to pop out babies to matter, mother. Izzy is worth more than her goddamn womb.” Alec insisted, “besides, they could adopt. Get a donor. Whatever. We have options. What we should be focussing on, what you should be focussing on, is making sure that Izzy is happy.”
Maryse shook her head. “Do you think Isabelle will be happy when she’s shut out of Clave missions? Do you think she’ll be happy to lose her career?”
“Oh, come on.” Alec snapped, getting to his feet and walking around the desk to look his mother in the eye. This was long overdue. “Stop pretending that this outrage is for our benefit. You are freaked out at the thought of your precious little girl being queer, just like you can barely look at your fucked up eldest whenever he reminds you that he has a goddamn vagina. Isn’t that right? Come on, mother, admit it.” He taunted, raising his chin. “You hate the sight of us.”
To her credit, Maryse looked horrified at Alec’s words, gripping his shoulders tightly. “I could never hate the sight of either of you. Ever. I’m scared, Alec. The two of you scare me. What you mean. My whole life, all I’ve been focussed on is getting you and Isabelle institutes of your own to run. And I just don’t know how that is going to happen with the two of you both so determined to ruin yourselves. You don’t know the Clave like I do, Alec. The second that your father and I are gone, they will cut you off. We are the only things standing between you and a deruning, do you understand that? They will use any excuse to get rid of the two of you.”
“Why?” Alec demanded, “why are they so threatened by us? We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Shadowhunter numbers are dwindling, year on year. If people like you see you and Izzy as examples, if more and more shadowhunters start getting into same sex relationships and transitioning, what do you think will happen to the birth rate of shadowhunters? This isn’t just about you and Izzy. The Clave will see it as a threat to the future of our race.” Maryse explained, rubbing up and down Alec’s arms. “If we were mundanes, I would support the two of you with my whole heart. But we don’t have that luxury, Alexander. You have to marry someone. You have to. Soon.”
Alec had to admit, he hadn’t thought of that. It was a horrific, heartless suggestion; that the Clave wanted to keep queer people in the closet, but… He could understand. Shadowhunters were needed to protect mundanes. They needed the numbers. The whole point of being a shadowhunter was that you put your own selfish desires aside for the greater good.
Izzy deserved to have happiness. Alec would have to protect her, work hard, climb to the top, to keep her safe from the Clave. He couldn’t bear to think of her living a lie.
“Who do you have in mind?” Alec asked quietly, taking a step back away from his mother.
Maryse inhaled sharply through her nose, and closed her eyes, letting the relief wash over her. She knew Alec would see sense. “We have a few possibilities. For now, focus on getting the Mortal Cup while your father and I vet the girls. The moment the Cup is in Clave hands, we’ll schedule your top surgery, and…”
“I’m only getting surgery if you let a warlock do it.” Alec told her, “I know you don’t think it’s possible, but I am not risking getting turned into a forsaken in a surgery I’m not even sure I want. That’s the deal. I’ll get top surgery if you find a warlock to do it. I’ll think some more about bottom surgery, look into my options. I promise.”
Maryse pursed her lips, but she could see that Alec wasn’t going to budge on it. “I’ll reach out to Ragnor Fell in Idris and see if he knows of any warlocks with medical training. You’ll feel so much better once you get your breasts removed, Alec, you’ll be so happy. You’ll be healed in no time and then we can start introducing you to some young women in Idris. I heard that the Lovelace girl is looking for a suitor, perhaps…”
Alec tuned out his mother and the excited light in her eyes, trying to focus on not vomiting. Trying to focus on breathing nice and slow. He couldn’t afford to lose his mind again and end up at-
Magnus’.
Alec’s breath caught in his throat, and he felt tears welling hotly in his eyes. He had to stay away from Magnus, he had to make sure he didn’t make another mistake. He had to focus on surgery, his duty, marrying a girl. The moment he had the cup, or the moment his mother knew he had the cup. He’d give himself a few days, to prepare. To mourn the life he could’ve had if he wasn’t a Lightwood.
“I’m late for training,” Alec said, his voice sounding far away to his own ears, and left the room on autopilot.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I’m so glad we got away from that crowd, all those people…” Izzy murmured, tugging Clary into her room, “it’s so intense.”
Clary swallowed hard, sitting on the edge of Izzy’s bed. “You don’t regret it, do you?”
“Everything happened so fast,” Izzy sat down next to her, putting her head on Clary’s shoulder. “I didn’t have time to think. I thought that the demons had you, I thought for sure you were hurt, and then you were there, and looking at me like…”
“Like I care for you?” Clary asked, smiling into Izzy’s hair.
Izzy hummed. “Exactly. I just forgot about everything else; I knew I had to kiss you.”
“Well,” Clary laughed gently, “at least you skipped the awkward coming out dinner.”
Izzy snorted, her arm looping around Clary’s waist as Clary’s hand landed in her hair. “That’s one way to look at it. My parents are going to be furious. And Alec…”
“Hey,” Clary nudged her, ducking her head to make eye contact, “let’s worry about that later, okay? We have the mortal cup, we’re both crazy about each other… Life is good. Sure, maybe tomorrow will suck, but we’ll get through it. Promise.”
“Promise is a strong word, Fray. I’ll hold you to it.” Izzy said, her eyes soft with affection.
Clary held up her pinky finger. Izzy raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s a pinky swear. You lock your pinky fingers together and then promise on it. Damn, don’t shadowhunters have childhoods?”
“Barely,” Izzy smiled, twisting her pinky finger around Clary’s.
“I swear that we will get through whatever bullshit your parents throw at us, and we’ll make sure Alec doesn’t break his back bending over backwards for them.”
“That’s a big ask,” Izzy sighed, snuggling into the crook of Clary’s neck, “he’s got the world’s biggest martyr complex.”
“He’ll be alright.” Clary offered, her voice soft. Izzy’s hair was so soft between her fingers, the dark curls twisting around her knuckles as she slowly raked them through the long strands. Izzy hummed happily, sated and sleepy all of a sudden. “Hey, you want to lie down?”
“Yeah, you’re sending me to sleep.” Izzy laughed softly, pulling away to scoot up the bed, landing with her head on the pillows.
Clary followed, unclipping her bra under her shirt and tugging it out through her sleeve before lying down. “It’s been a long day. We’ll meet up with Alec tomorrow morning and decide what to do with the cup, but for now, we should get some sleep.”
“I’m not gonna argue with that,” Izzy murmured, shifting closer to the other woman and slinging her arm around Clary’s waist. “I hope you’re a cuddly sleeper.”
“I can cope with it for you,” Clary smirked, knowing full well she was going to gently roll away the moment Izzy fell asleep. They lay facing each other, Clary’s fingers drawing gentle circles up and down Izzy’s back as Izzy stroked the soft skin of Clary’s waist where her shirt had ridden up. Their feet were tangled together, and Clary sighed out loud at the calm that washed over her. Perhaps she’d been a tad touch-starved.
Izzy was wide awake, now. She’d been so ready to fall asleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how soft Clary’s skin was, how pretty she looked with her eyes closed. Her eyelashes were so long, brushing against her cheeks. Izzy was struck with the absurd urge to squish the other woman’s face between her hands, and she smiled slightly, burrowing her nose into Clary’s cheek, her arm tightening around the other woman’s middle.
“God, you really are a cuddler,” Clary teased, the flat of her hand warm against Izzy’s back.
“Deal with it, Fray, you pinkie promised to never leave me.”
“That’s not exactly what the pinky promise was, Iz,” Clary snorted, brushing her lips against Izzy’s forehead.
“Well, you’re stuck with me, so suck it up.”
Clary laughed, hitching her leg over Izzy’s thigh. “Alright, alright. I’ll deal.” It wasn’t that it was unpleasant, being this close to Izzy, but Clary knew it would be difficult to sleep with Izzy’s body heat radiating into her.
It was worth it to hear the long, happy hum that Izzy let out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I think we should give the Cup to the Clave. We could use a fake to lure Valentine.” Izzy suggested the next morning, hands on her hips. “It’s too dangerous to dangle the real thing in front of him; if he got hold of it, it’d be the end of the downworld for sure.”
Clary shook her head. “If he realises it’s a fake before we get away from him, he’ll kill us all for sure. He’s no idiot, is he?”
“I’d rather him kill us than the entire downworld.” Izzy shrugged, “it would be a low price to pay.”
“No-one’s dying.” Alec insisted, staring at the screen that monitored the wards around the institute. “I hate to say it, but for now, I agree with Clary. The cup should be kept here, secretly. If no-one knows it’s here, it can’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“But you don’t think we should use it, do you?” Izzy asked, unable to believe what she was hearing.
Alec pressed his lips into a hard line. “I haven’t decided yet. All I know is that Clary has to bring in Valentine.”
“Why me?” Clary frowned.
“Because if you bring in Valentine, the Clave will consider you a hero, and you and Izzy will have an easier time of it. You and Izzy need to take the credit for this mission.”
“What about you? You need the favour with the Clave more than us if you’re going to date Magnus.” Izzy pointed out. Alec looked sharply at her.
“Forget Magnus. I can take him or leave him; you two need to be protected.” Alec insisted, running his hand through his hair.
“Uhhh… No. That’s bullshit.” Izzy argued. “You care about Magnus like I care about Clary. If I get my happy ending, you’re getting yours too.”
Alec groaned softly, shaking his head. “That’s not how this works, Iz. Something has to give, we have to compromise somewhere.”
“Hey,” Clary interrupted, catching Izzy’s elbow before she could launch into a tirade, “we’ll figure out what to do about our personal lives later. For now, we have to decide whether we’re going to go after Valentine by ourselves or involve the Clave.”
Before either Lightwood could open their mouth to argue their point of view, a claxon started going off in the ops centre. Alec looked back at the monitor.
“A demon-blooded creature tried to cross the wards.” He noticed, grabbing his bow. “Let’s go and check it out.”
Izzy and Clary followed him, taking angel blades off the weapons rack as they went. The three of them descended the stairs at the front of the institute, weapons raised and ready, their bodies coiled tight with tension. Izzy spotted him first, the vampire from the Hotel DuMort who’d let Simon go. He was standing in the shadows, carrying something big. Izzy wordlessly nudged Alec and Clary and pointed to his silhouette.
“Don’t shoot!” The vampire called, “I have something you want.”
Alec frowned, and lowered his bow slowly. “Come into the light.” He ordered, and the three of them watched as the vampire walked into the path, under the glow of the streetlamp.
He was carrying a body.
“I didn’t kill him!” The vampire insisted, walking towards them. Izzy growled under her breath, but Alec put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Is it a mundane?”
“It’s Simon!” Clary screamed, her stomach dropping to her feet. The angel blade she’d been brandishing clattered to the floor as she sprinted towards the vampire, her green eyes wide with shock as she took in the pale stillness of her oldest friend, cradled in the vampire’s arms. “No… No… This isn’t real…”
“Clary,” Izzy said her name like a prayer, going to the redhead’s side. “I’m sorry.”
Alec hung back, regarding the vampire suspiciously. “Why did you bring him here?”
“I knew the mundane was important to the shadowhunters. And I want to expose Camille as the monster she is. My name’s Raphael Santiago. You need to arrest Camille.” Raphael insisted, “your pet mundane is not the first she’s killed.”
“Alright, let’s… Let’s get him inside,” Alec breathed, avoiding looking at Clary, who was sobbing into Izzy’s shoulder. “We’ll put him in the morgue; no-one will look there. Mr Santiago, if you could join us. You’re going to need to answer some questions.”
Raphael nodded, handing Simon off to Alec. “I’ll co-operate fully with your investigation.”
“Come on, Clary, let’s go inside,” Izzy coaxed Clary off her shoulder, squeezing her hand as they followed Raphael and Alec through the side door and down to the morgue.
Alec was used to death. As acting head of the institute, he’d seen a lot of it, investigated dozens of murders, but he couldn’t deny that he felt a stirring of genuine sadness at Simon’s passing. He glanced down at the mundane’s face as he placed him gently on the table, Clary rushing forward with a cardboard box to support his head. Simon had been kind to him, even when Alec pushed him away. He’d been a little clueless and sometimes got in the way, sure, but Alec had to admit to himself that he’d miss his anxious chattering.
Of course, Simon’s behaviour over the last couple of weeks made sense now. He must have gotten hooked on vampire venom when he was held at the Hotel DuMort. They should have noticed.
“People will be wondering what we found outside the perimeter,” Alec said quietly as Clary started stroking Simon’s hair. “I’ll go and tell them that we didn’t find anything. Nobody will come down here, you’ll have your privacy. Izzy, can you take a statement from Mr Santiago?”
Izzy nodded, and Alec headed back upstairs, his heart heavy. He’d failed Simon.
“I may be a vampire,” Raphael drawled, looking around the morgue, “but I was raised a good Catholic. The mundane deserves justice.” He crossed himself over Simon’s body, and Izzy rubbed Clary’s back.
“The vampires breached the Accords. This could be grounds for war if the Clave finds out.” She told Raphael, her eyes narrow.
Raphael regarded her coolly. “The vampires were not behind this. It was Camille. I have witnesses that will attest to that. She attacked Simon on her own; we thought that he was going to be a simple hostage. She was the one who bit him and got him hooked on venom.”
“Of course you would say that,” Izzy’s chest was heaving with emotion, “you don’t want to be implicated.”
“I could have gotten rid of the body and you’d never have found him. But instead I brought him here. The mundane was annoying, but he was brave. Even had the guts to try and stab me,” Raphael smiled faintly at the memory. “Like I said, he deserves justice, and I don’t want trouble with the shadowhunters.”
Izzy pursed her lips. Raphael had a point, but she also had a feeling that there was more in it for Raphael than justice.
“I warned him to stay away, but it was too late. Camille had given him a taste of her blood and he kept coming back for more. It was only a matter of time before she killed him.”
Clary looked up from Simon’s face with tears in her eyes. “The only reason he ever got a taste of Camille’s blood was because you brought him to her. You kidnapped him, you brought him to Hotel DuMort, you delivered him to a fucking sadistic vampire bitch with a knack for killing people and you think you’re totally blameless?!” She shouted, half-bent over Simon’s body. “You’re almost as bad as she is.”
“I never meant for this to happen. The mundane’s death will be on my conscience for…”
“His name is Simon!” Clary yelled, casting her eyes back down to his body. “Simon… please come back, please…”
“There is…” Raphael took a seat a nearby bench, his hands on his knees, “a way.”
Clary raised her head. “A way for him to come back?”
“Clary, no… Don’t listen to him,” Izzy urged, shaking her head.
“No, I have to! Can we bring Simon back?”
Raphael nodded. “He’s a fledgling. He drank Camille’s blood, so he’s in a state of transition. He could be resurrected. All we’d have to do is bury him and wait for him to emerge.”
Clary swallowed hard. “So I could have Simon back?” Her heart began to race, and she swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. “Alive and breathing.”
“Clary, no, he wouldn’t be the same. He’d be a vampire,” Izzy explained. He wouldn’t be alive or breathing. It would be awful for him, he’d be out of control, unable to think past the bloodlust. He wouldn’t be your friend anymore.”
Raphael snorted. “You people really believe everything the Clave tells you, don’t you? Simon would be overwhelmed for a few days, but with the support of the clan he would be his annoying, nerdy self in a week.”
“You don’t know that!” Izzy retorted, “you can’t possibly know that.”
“I’m sorry, which one of us has actually been turned and which one of us has read about it in books?” Raphael spat. When Izzy didn’t respond, he turned his attention back to Clary. “It’s almost sunrise, so I have to go. Simon must be turned into a vampire tonight or staked through the heart to put him to rest.”
Clary swallowed hard, sniffing back tears. “And if I do neither?”
“His soul will be trapped for eternity.” Raphael answered, getting to his feet. “You have until sunrise to decide what to do with Simon. Whatever you decide, I hope that you will be sure to arrest Camille for his murder.”
Izzy breathed in slowly. “We’re not interested.”
“No, we are. Izzy, let me think about this.” Clary insisted, looking over her shoulder at the other woman. “This is my best friend, he’s my responsibility. It’s because of me that he’s dead, it’s my choice.”
Izzy sighed in resignation, and nodded. She knew that she’d feel the exact same way if it were Alec, at the end of the day.
“Here’s my number,” Raphael handed Clary a business card, “let me know what you decide to do.”
The moment Clary nodded he was gone, only a soft breeze left behind where he’d sprinted away. Clary breathed out a shaky sigh, and looked back down to Simon’s face. What would he want?
“Clary, I have to go talk to my parents, but I can make an excuse if you need me here,” Izzy told her gently. She’d ignored the text for the past ten minutes, but now that Raphael was gone she didn’t feel as unable to leave Clary’s side.
“Go,” Clary said quietly, “I want some time alone with him anyway.”
Izzy squeezed her shoulder, pressing a kiss to her hair, before making her way up the stairs to the offices. Alec had texted her telling her that their parents wanted to discuss something with them. As if today could get any worse.
The three of them were already sitting in awkward silence when Izzy made it to the office. Alec was sitting on the couch, and their parents were stood together behind the desk. Izzy nodded in apology to the two of them before quickly taking a seat next to Alec.
“Now that everyone’s here,” Robert eyed Izzy warily, “we have some things to discuss. Isabelle, your mother told me what happened with Miss Fairchild.”
Izzy swallowed hard, reaching for Alec’s hand. He took it and squeezed it tightly. “I care about her.”
“That much is obvious,” Robert nodded, eyes on the desk in front of him. “But you have to understand the implications for the rest of us if you decide to pursue a relationship with her. If you do go ahead and choose to be with Miss Fairchild, then the four of us have to depend on Max to give us a political union. Now, that would mean-”
“Clary is from a pure shadowhunter family; why is she not a viable political match?” Izzy demanded, though she knew the answer.
“Because a viable political match is not viable if you cannot produce an heir.” Robert answered patiently. “Now, it is not the act of homosexuality that worries me, I’m not homophobic. I just-”
Alec and Izzy both snorted, glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes.
“Listen to your father,” Maryse told them severely. “As I explained to Alec yesterday, the Clave will not accept couples that cannot produce children purely because we need the numbers to survive. Now, luckily for you and the rest of us, Alec has agreed to an arranged marriage.”
“You did what?!” Izzy exclaimed, ripping her hand out of Alec’s. “You promised me you wouldn’t promise them anything stupid!”
Alec grimaced. “Technically I didn’t.”
“Alec, you can’t. Are you fucking insane?!”
“This is Alec’s decision,” Robert pointed out, “and he made it for all of us. I for one am proud of his self-sacrifice in this matter. It won’t be easy for you, kid, I get that. I know you have a lot of anxiety about surgery, but I’m sure that you’ll be happier in the long run.”
Alec kept his head down, not willing to look any of them in the eye. He heard Izzy sniffle next to him, and his chest tightened.
“You’re going to force your son into dangerous surgery he doesn’t want, marry someone he doesn’t love, and you have the audacity to say that he’ll be happier for it? Fuck the fuck off, Dad.” Izzy stood up, her eyes teary but determined. “You disgust me. The both of you disgust me. You don’t know either of us, not really. You don’t give a shit whether we’re happy or not. You just want to cling onto power. That’s all that any of this is about. The only reason you ever accepted Alec was because it was good for the family image to have a firstborn son to carry on the family name, because that matters more than anyone’s wellbeing. Honestly, I would rather get deruned and kicked out of this fucking institute than watch Alec throw his life away on some prissy Idris society girl. I won’t fucking do it, I won’t!”
“I want to, Iz.” Alec said quietly. “I want to do this.”
Izzy deflated a little, looking down at her brother. “You don’t mean that.”
“All I ever wanted was to be normal.” Alec pressed his lips together. “I just want to run an institute. I want a career, and a family. I want those things. And I can have them. We’re going to find a warlock doctor to operate so the risks will be minimal, and… I promise, I’m okay with doing this for you, for all of us. It’s my duty. It’s my honour to fulfill it.” Alec reached for her hand. “It’s okay. I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I didn’t want to do it.”
Izzy’s lower lip wobbled. “But Magnus…”
“Who’s Magnus?” Maryse demanded, but the siblings ignored her.
“It never could have worked. It’s okay. I’m sure that I’ll get along great with whoever I end up marrying. We’ll have a solid relationship that isn’t all dramatic and romantic, it’ll work for me. So please, calm down. I’m fine.” Alec smiled weakly. “I need your support in this, Iz.”
Part of Izzy wanted to slap some sense into him, but the bigger part wanted to bury her face in his chest and cry and thank him for sacrificing his happiness for hers. She could never, ever repay him for what he was about to do for her; the least she could do was be there for him on the next steps of this fucked up journey he was taking. She took his face in her hands. “I love you so much, Alec. You know that, right?”
Alec nodded, his smile a little more genuine, and stood up to gave her a hug.
Maryse and Robert looked at each other, relieved that Alec had managed to talk their daughter round. “There is one more thing,” Robert told the two of them, which made them pull away from each other and sit back down on the couch. “The Clave is concerned that Miss Fairchild is corrupting the professionalism of our institute. After they heard about the display in the ops centre, they decided to send an envoy.”
“They’ll be coming to observe us, how we operate, and to take over the investigation into Valentine. Mostly they’re coming to scrutinise our leadership, so you two need to make sure not to do anything to cause the Clave to doubt us.” Maryse insisted.
Alec squeezed his eyes shut. Of course. As if the past few days hadn’t been shitty enough. Of course the Clave would send an envoy when they’ve got a vampire fledgling hidden in their morgue.
“When are they coming?” Alec asked tonelessly.
“Any time in the next couple of days,” Robert answered, straightening his tie. “Alec, I know I don’t have to remind you not to out yourself while they’re here. Only a few people in the Clave know about you, and the less people in Idris gossiping about you, the better your chance of finding a marriage.”
Izzy glared at their father as he walked out of the room, clamping her jaws shut so she wouldn’t yell again. Alec looked dead inside; he needed her attention more. “It’s gonna be okay, Alec. We’ll get through this.”
“Yeah,” Alec sighed heavily, standing up from the couch. “It can’t possibly get any worse, after all.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Clary, please, please, answer the phone. I can't take it anymore, I have to go to Camille. Something's happening to me, I feel like I'm losing my mind. I need to know. Camille could have answers. I don't know what else to do. Please, please pick up the phone."
Clary sniffed back another round of tears as the message finished, and she looked back down at Simon's body. "I'm so sorry, Simon. This is all my fault. If I'd never gotten involved with the shadowhunters, you'd never have met Camille." She shook her head, rubbing her knuckles into her eyes. "I have to bring you back. I can't... I can't let you go, I need you. Your Mom needs you. I have to bring you back. You understand, right? This wasn't your time, it's not right. It's not fair."
She paused, like she was expecting someone to answer. There was no-one else in the room; Clary was sitting there alone, clutching Simon's cool hand. She took a shaky breath, and nodded to herself.
"Yeah, I'm gonna bring you back. I have to."
Izzy would have a lot to say about it, Clary knew, but she couldn't do anything else. She slipped Raphael's business card out of her pocket and sent him a message, telling him to meet her in the nearby cemetery at sundown, and to bring a shovel. He texted back mere moments later to tell her she had made the right decision.
She didn’t bother replying to Raphael, and instead called the one person she knew would stand by her side no matter what.
“Clary?” Luke answered on the second ring, as dependable as always. “Are you alright? Is there a problem with the Cup?”
Clary swallowed hard, trying not to let the pressure in her eyes build into tears again. “Luke, something terrible has happened. Simon’s… H-he’s dead. Simon’s dead!” She whimpered, pressing her hand to her mouth.
There was a shocked silence on the other end of the phone. “I’m so sorry, Clary.” Luke said, after a moment. “How did it happen?”
“Camille from the Hotel DuMort got him addicted to her blood. He went looking for a fix and she killed him. In cold blood.”
Luke let out a snarl that was definitely not human in origin. “There have been rumours about her for years. You want me to have the wolves bring her in?”
“I just… I need to talk to you about becoming a downworlder.” Clary said quietly, “you’re the only one I know who’s been through it.”
“You’re thinking of burying Simon and letting him turn?” Luke guessed. He sighed when Clary didn’t answer. “It’s hard. He could lose his family. But… If he has you… Then I think that he could do it. If it wasn’t for the friendship of your Mom, I never would have made it as a wolf. But thanks to her, I did okay.”
“You did more than okay, Luke,” Clary sniffled, smiling sadly. “You’re the alpha.”
Luke chuckled. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“So you think I should turn him?”
“I think that if you do turn him, it should be because it’s what Simon would want. Not what makes it easier for you.” Luke answered. “Uh, I have to go… The wolves are restless, I think there’s something encroaching on our territory… I’ll meet you later, alright?”
“Yeah, okay,” Clary said softly, before hanging up the phone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Hey, Max, where do you think you're going?" Alec spotted Max skulking around the edge of the ops room, looking guilty.
Max turned to look at him, a sheepish look on his face. "I want to use a real weapon for training. I'm sick of those stupid wooden daggers, they're rubbish."
"When Izzy says you're ready, you can use real weapons, but until then you have to listen to what we tell you." Alec pointed out, squatting down so he was eye level with his brother. "I did the exact same thing as you when I was a kid, stole a weapon to practise with, and look..." Alec held up his hand, showing Max a faint scar on his palm.
"Did it hurt?" Max asked.
"Oh, yeah. A lot. Had to have stitches and everything." Alec told him, and Max grimaced, taking a small dagger out of his pocket and putting the hilt in Alec's hand. Alec smiled, and ruffled Max's hair.
They both looked up as they heard a portal forming in the doorway, and Alec's stomach dropped to his feet as Valentine sauntered out with a faint smile on his face. Shoving Max behind him, Alec unglamoured his bow and fired an arrow right at Valentine's face.
To Alec and Max's horror, Valentine caught it in midair effortlessly.
As Alec notched another one, Valentine pulled out his stele and slipped it across a glamour rune. Alec dropped his arms as the silhouette of Valentine obscured and was replaced by a severe-looking blonde woman, dressed in a practical gray business suit.
"I'm Lydia Branwell," she announced, "envoy from the Clave."
Alec and Max looked at each other, their eyebrows raised in matching expressions of shock. Lydia walked towards them and held out her hand towards Alec. "Yes, welcome to the New York Institute. We didn't expect you until tomorrow. That was… Quite the entrance."
"I wanted to test your reactions," Lydia answered, shaking Alec's hand. "You must be Alexander Lightwood."
"Yes, sorry, that's me. My parents are in the office, I can take you if you'd like."
“No need, I’m here,” Maryse spoke up, walking down the steps towards them. Izzy was hot on her heels, still looking emotionally drained from the events of the day.
“Maryse, the Clave has instructed me to take temporary control of this Institute, just until we can ascertain what exactly has gone wrong here.” Lydia explained placidly, and Alec swallowed hard, exchanging a worried look with Izzy.
“Well, how on Earth are you supposed to assess our leadership if we are no longer the leaders?” Maryse demanded, folding her arms.
Lydia made herself welcome, walking across the ops centre to look at the various screens showing demon activity and shadowhunter movements, pointing her stele at the monitors every now and then. “You can take any issues up with the Clave. I’m just here to assess what I see. And in order to do that, I’ll need full clearance.” She looked around, frowning as she noticed a very notable absence. “Where is Clarissa Fairchild? I was under the impression that Alexander had been tasked with monitoring her.”
Alec tilted his head to the side. “It’s Alec, and at present she’s in the field. Training with the rest of our interns. I was headed out to go and check on them when you arrived.”
Lydia scoffed, walking towards Alec slowly. “You’re telling me that you’ve allowed Clarissa Fairchild, Valentine’s daughter, out and about on the streets of New York?”
“Isn’t she also your cousin?” Izzy pointed out scathingly.
Lydia turned to look over her shoulder at the other woman. “Distant cousin,” she sneered. “Get her back here as soon as possible. She will not be allowed outside of the institute as long as I’m in command.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Maryse assured her, “Miss Fairchild is in good hands.”
“Oh, I hope so, for your sake.” Lydia replied coldly.
Alec’s phone buzzed in his back pocket, making him jump a little. Everyone who ever texted him was in the room, except Magnus. He fished his phone out of his pocket, surprised to see a message from Luke. His eyebrows creased as he read the message, and he jogged over to the monitor.
“Here’s something you should see,” he murmured, bringing up the satellite imaging over the docks. “Something has attacked the Jade Wolf, where the New York pack live. Luke Garroway and his wolves managed to take it down, but they have no idea what it is. Most likely it’s one of Valentine’s experiments.” Alec flicked the photos Luke had sent him from his phone to the screen in front of them. The humanoid was grey and bled green viscous fluid, and was very clearly dead.
“The werewolves’ headquarters? You’re in contact with Lucian Greymark?” Maryse looked utterly confused.
“It’s inappropriate for a wolf to have direct contact with a shadowhunter. Mr Greymark should have reported this to the Clave.” Lydia pointed out.
“And it would’ve taken the Clave a week to send someone,” Alec snapped. “It’s my job to protect the mundanes and downworlders of this city from demonic beings, and that’s what I’m going to do. Has the Clave got a problem with that, Miss Branwell?”
Lydia’s eyebrow quirked. “Downworlders are demonic beings.”
Alec laughed, shaking his head. “Oh, great, just what we need, another heavy handed racist running this place looking for another heavy handed racist.”
“Alec-” Maryse warned.
“No! I’m going to take a look at this thing. You can come with me or not, I don’t give a shit. I’m doing my job, and if the Clave and Little Miss Valentine here have a problem with it, you can kiss my fucking ass. See you.” Alec turned on his heel, leaving Izzy, Maryse and Lydia staring after him in disbelief.
After a moment, Lydia trotted after him, catching up with him at the door. “I’m not a racist, you know.”
Alec said nothing, just looked up at the sky as he slowed his pace to allow Lydia to walk beside him without jogging.
“I admire your values but you have to follow protocol, that’s what got you in trouble with the Clave.” Lydia pointed out.
“Yeah, that’s why the Clave hates me. Because of my passion and unorthodox methods.” Alec muttered sarcastically.
Lydia frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alec’s eyebrow quirked. “You really don’t know?”
“Oh, you mean because your parents used to be in the Circle?” Lydia asked grimly. “I’m sure they don’t judge you based on-”
“Wait.” Alec stopped in his tracks. “My parents used to be in the Circle?!”
Lydia’s eyes widened, and she looked at Alec apologetically. “Did they conceal that from you?”
“I… They were in the Circle?” Alec had always known that his parents had a certain level of disdain for downworlders, but he didn’t think it was any worse than any other shadowhunter family… Apparently he was wrong.
“Yes, but they turned against Valentine before he fell. They were double agents at the end of the uprising, so they were spared of punishment.” Lydia explained, “they were… I suppose you could argue that they also helped bring Valentine down.”
It all made sense now, Alec realised. The pressure, the way that Maryse and Robert had sought to make sure that all three of their children kept their noses squeaky clean, why they were so keen to make Alec into the perfect heir… They wanted redemption. They wanted Alec to make people forget their dark past.
They were using him to cover up their mistakes.
“It doesn’t change how I feel about the Lightwoods,” Lydia insisted, taking his elbow. Alec pulled it out of her grasp, his nose wrinkling a little. “Your family has always had a strong alliance with mine. They’ve been a powerful force in the shadow world, and praised for their devotion. I admire that.”
“Devotion?” Alec laughed. “Some devotion.” The two of them stared at each other for a moment, and Alec glowered, looking away with a cough. “It shouldn’t have surprised me. It figures, really.”
“Anyway,” Lydia murmured as Alec started walking off again, grappling for a change in subject, “ I can see why all the girls in Idris are clamouring to meet you. You’re very… Tall. And brooding. I’m told that’s what girls are supposed to like.”
“And you don’t?” Alec asked, eyes flicking around the shipping containers as they passed into the docks. For all they knew, another one of those monsters could still be lurking around.
Lydia shrugged. “I’ve already had my love story. And I hear yours is just beginning…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Alec had honestly never been so uncomfortable in his life.
“You’re looking for a wife. Or did I hear wrong?”
Shit.
“Uhhhhh…”
Lydia smiled, tangling her fingers together behind her back. “Let me guess. Not your idea?”
“Not even close,” Alec snorted.
“My parents tried to set me up too. Luckily I actually loved the guy they chose.” She explained. “But… He passed away last year. We were going to run the Lisbon Institute together, but then it was all ripped away. My love… My dream job...”
“I’m sorry,” Alec answered, the silence between them growing heavy. “Is the marriage thing the only rumour about me in Idris?” He pressed tentatively, watching his feet as they walked along.
“It’s the only one I’ve heard. Why?”
Alec pursed his lips, glancing over at her. “You sure you want to know?”
Lydia shrugged, though curiosity was evident in the way her eyes were darting to his face and away, over and over again. “I’m not here to judge you personally, just your leadership skills.”
“We’ll see,” Alec muttered, stopping and folding his arms. “I’m transgender. I don’t have a dick. I have boobs. I’m,” he raised his fingers in quotation marks, “not a real man.”
“Oh…” Lydia looked puzzled, her eyes sweeping down and back up Alec’s body. “I see.”
“My parents are pressuring me into surgery and marriage so I can be a useful heir,” Alec looked away from her, the confusion on her face making him anxious. “They don’t want to tell my future wife about it. It feels like lying. Well, it is lying, by omission. But then no-one would want me like this, so… What can you do?”
“That’s not true,” Lydia said quietly. Alec looked back at her, raising his eyebrow. “It wouldn’t bother me. And… Not every shadowhunter woman is particularly bothered about having children, so… You never know.”
Alec frowned. “Why are you trying to spare my feelings?”
“I know I made a bad first impression but I’m really quite liberal,” Lydia sniffed, shrugging a little as she started walking once more. “I figure what people do in private is none of my business. You’re a good shadowhunter, devoted to your family, and… You look like a man to me. So… What’s the difference?”
Alec watched her for a moment, rooted to the ground with a nauseating mixture of shock and unease. After a moment of inexplicable fear, he remembered himself, and rushed after her into the Jade Wolf. Luke was looking at Lydia with open distrust, but he relaxed a little as he saw Alec come through the door. Lydia was already bent over the creature on the floor, apparently having ignored the werewolves hovering uneasily in their own space.
“Hi, Luke. We came as quickly as we could.” Alec shook the alpha’s hand, nodding briefly to him before joining Lydia at the creature’s side.
“Honestly I didn’t expect you until tomorrow. Thanks for coming, Alec.” Luke answered. “It looks like a forsaken, but-”
“It definitely used to be a human, and it has runes. It’s a forsaken.” Lydia assessed, and Luke gave Alec a meaningful look.
“As I was saying, it was a lot stronger than your average forsaken. It took five wolves to take that thing down. And it seemed to be after something, it seemed focussed, like it had a plan. Why would a forsaken wander in here by itself? Not like it fancied some Moo Shu… This is Valentine’s work, no doubt. I think he’s after me. I used to be his parabatai, until he literally fed me to the wolves. Would make sense for him to want to get rid of me now that he’s gaining power again.”
Lydia hummed, not looking up at Luke as he spoke. “We’ll take the body back to the institute, do a full autopsy.”
“Hold up.” Luke put his hand out, and Lydia finally raised her eyes to look at him, “I get that I called you… Well, I called Alec… But what I didn’t want is someone to come down here and just take over. I’m trying to catch Valentine, this body could help the pack find him.”
“Coming in and taking over is kind of Lydia’s thing,” Alec told him, the two men quirking eyebrows meaningfully at each other as Lydia’s gaze swept over the body on the floor.
“I know I come across as abrasive!” Lydia said crisply, “but we all want to catch Valentine, and we have better resources than you do here in this… Restaurant. We’re all on the same side, here.” She made eye contact with Luke for the first time since she walked in. “Can we agree on that?”
Alec nodded at Luke. “We have an expert forensic pathologist, highly trained in all the creatures of the shadow world. We’ll tell you what we find.”
“If it doesn’t compromise the security of the Institute,” Lydia amended quickly, and Alec sighed.
Luke pursed his lips. “Fine. You win.”
Back at the institute, Alec and Lydia heaved the forsaken corpse onto the examiner’s table. Lydia bent over it, looked at it more closely. “We need to make sure magic wasn’t used to create this,” she told Alec, “are you on good terms with the nearest High Warlock, as you are with the werewolf alpha?”
Alec pursed his lips. “I know a High Warlock. I’m not sure if he’s the closest one, but he maintains our wards and has helped us in our efforts to bring down Valentine. He’s trustworthy.”
“As trustworthy as warlocks ever are,” Lydia sighed, straightening up. “Go on, who is he?”
“Mag-” Alec swallowed hard. He sensed it was a bad idea to bring Magnus here, with Lydia overseeing everything, but Magnus really was the best warlock Alec knew of who’d come on short notice. “Magnus Bane.”
Lydia hummed, a smile appearing on her face. “You know, I must admit, I admire Bane’s work. My ancestor was there when Bane created the portal. It’s a treasured family story.”
“Oh. Wow, I had no idea Magnus created the portal.”
“You’re on first name terms? So you know him well, then?” Lydia asked, tilting her head to the side curiously.
“Yes, yes, sort of… Magnus is very, um… Quite magical.” A beat of silence passed between them, and Alec glanced at Lydia’s expression, feeling his cheeks heat. “You know, he’s very good… At magic. Very impressive.”
“So I’ve heard…” Lydia said slowly, her eyes slightly narrow as she looked Alec up and down, like she had when he told her that he was transgender. “Anyway… Send him a fire message. While I’m sure your sister is a very capable pathologist, I imagine Mr Bane will be able to see things that she won’t.”
Alec nodded, grateful for the excuse to get the hell out of there.
He needed to work some shit out, preferably on a punching bag.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Magnus was disappointed when he portalled to the institute and Alec wasn’t there to greet him. He’d been hoping, since the fire message bore Alec’s signature, that it was Alec who wanted to see him, but instead a short, slightly evil-looking blonde person advanced on him with their hand stuck out. Magnus almost leapt straight back into his portal and went home.
“I’m Lydia Branwell, envoy from the Clave,” they told him, and Magnus quirked an eyebrow at her, tentatively taking her hand. “We have a corpse for you to look at.”
“Right…” Magnus said slowly, the name Branwell ringing a bell, but then most shadowhunter family names did. “I assume I’m going to be paid for my expertise?”
He was not doing this for free unless Alexander was involved.
“Of course, of course!” Lydia insisted, “the Clave would never take your services for granted, Mr Bane.”
Magnus fought the urge to scoff. “Of course not,” he answered smoothly, allowing Lydia to lead the way to the autopsy room.
“I just wanted to say, your work on the portal was incredible, it changed the shadow world forever. My ancestor was actually there when you-”
“Oh, yes. Cecil Branwell. Yes… That’s why your name is familiar...” Magnus nodded, “if I recall, he attempted to take credit for it,” he mused, “and only agreed to put my name in the history books because I threatened to curse his firstborn…”
He smirked at the look of horror on Lydia’s face.
“I’m joking, Miss Branwell. I never threatened to curse his firstborn.” He assured her, and she laughed nervously.
“I was going to say…”
“I actually just threatened to expose his admittedly impressive collection of werewolf porn.” Magnus hummed, leaving Lydia standing shocked outside the laboratory as he glided inside.
He was happy to see Isabelle standing there all dressed up in her lab clothes, but he couldn’t help the pang of sadness that Alec was nowhere to be seen.
“Magnus!” Izzy smiled, a scalpel already in her hand, “looking sharp, as always.”
“I could say the same to you, my dear,” Magnus smiled, rolling up his sleeves. “Now what do we have here?”
Izzy frowned, looking back down at the forsaken. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it’s some form of forsaken. Someone did something extra to it, but I can’t figure out what. Think you can help?”
“I can certainly try,” Magnus nodded. The corpse certainly looked like a forsaken at first glance, and Magnus hummed as he waved his hands over it, assessing it with magical probes.
“I waited until you came before I cut anything up,” Izzy told him, “I didn’t know if it would affect your assessment. I can’t wait to get my hands on that thing.”
Magnus smirked, “speaking of which, how is Alexander?”
Izzy snorted, and elbowed him gently in the ribs. “He’s… Honourable to the point of stupidity. You know what he’s like.”
“That sounds about right,” Magnus nodded. “He hasn’t been answering my texts.”
“He’s had a lot on his mind…” Izzy answered diplomatically, not wanting Magnus to hear Alec’s surgery news from her.
“It’s just so hard to tell if Alexander’s even interested.” Magnus sighed, “I mean… I can’t fathom why he wouldn’t be…”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but my brother is not exactly warm and fuzzy,” Izzy pointed out, “just give him time. He’ll come through, I’m sure of it. There’s just too much going on in his head right now. Maybe… You should go and find him, when we’re done here.”
Magnus finished up his magic, and grabbed a pen from the counter. “I’m done. Work your own magic,” he smiled. “But yes, I was planning to. I haven’t seen him since he practically ran out of the loft the other day. He seemed stressed.”
“Stress is his middle name these days. Alexander Stress Lightwood.”
“Then perhaps a few dozen well-worded compliments from me would lift his mood.” Magnus reasoned, and Izzy smiled over her shoulder at him as he wrote his notes.
“I know they would.” She looked back at where she was cutting into the forsaken’s rib cage. “Don’t give up on him, Magnus. He’s a knucklehead, but I think that he could make you really happy, you know? He has a big heart.”
Magnus’ eyes warmed where they were fixed on the page before him. “Oh, don’t worry, Isabelle. I’m no quitter. Speaking of which… I’m going to deliver the preliminary findings to the rightful head of this institute. Any ideas where I might find him?”
“He said he needed to punch something, so try his bedroom. He doesn’t like to work out in the training room.” Izzy told Magnus, apparently distracted by something interesting in the body. Magnus hummed, and made his way out of the laboratory. Thankfully, Miss Branwell had disappeared.
It was easy to find Alec’s room; a simple spell to sense the auras of people in the building and Magnus could feel Alec’s energy, vibrating with… Conflict? Unease? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, and it made Magnus quicken his steps ever so slightly. He could rhythmic dull bangs coming from behind the closed door of Alec’s quarters, and knocked three times, his report tucked under his arm. The bangs stopped, and Alec called for him to come in.
Evidently he didn’t expect Magnus to be the one looking for him, and he yelped loudly when he caught sight of the other man, wrenching his arms across his body. “Magnus! What are you..?!”
Magnus was frozen for a moment, eyes going wide at the sight of Alec glistening with sweat, wearing baggy workout trousers and a white sports bra translucent with perspiration, his bare arms pumped from the punchbag, his abs framing a delicious-looking happy trail that slipped down...
Remembering himself, he spun around so his back was to Alec, and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be… So hot. I mean… Sweaty. I mean… Working out.”
Smooth.
“I should be wearing a shirt, it’s my fault, I’m… Not decent.” Alec muttered, grabbing for a t-shirt and yanking it over his head.
“There’s nothing indecent about you, Alexander,” Magnus insisted, still facing the wall.
Alec smiled a little at that, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pants. “You can turn around now.”
“For the record,” Magnus said sheepishly as he turned around, “you’re seriously, seriously lovely to look at. I’d even go so far as to use the word dreamy.”
“Did you come here just to compliment me?” Alec teased, unwrapping the boxing tape from his hands.
Magnus grinned. “Well, yes. But also to deliver this report on the preliminary autopsy findings to the head of the institute. I’m always the absolute height of professionalism.”
“Oh, of course,” Alec snorted, looking at the folder in Magnus’ hands, “but I’m not the head of the institute. And I never will be.”
Magnus’ eyes trailed down to Alec’s arms again, watching as a bead of sweat slipped down the inside of his bicep.
“Magnus, it’s like…” Alec sighed, and Magnus looked back up at his face. “It’s like my whole life has been a lie. Everything I’ve ever known about my family, about my heritage, about my duty, it’s… Gone. Just like that. And now I don’t know what to do. Who am I supposed to be pleasing?”
Magnus frowned. “Alexander, you’re supposed to be pleasing yourself. No-one can live your life for you.”
“I’ve done everything for my parents, for the Clave, to honour them. And… They’ve let me down, Magnus. Again and again. I’ve done everything that they’ve asked.”
“Maybe…” Magnus smiled gently at the younger man, “maybe you should start living for yourself. Do what’s in your heart.”
Alec sighed, running his hand through his sweaty hair. “You know… You’re right. Why are you always right? It’s annoying.”
Magnus smirked, patting Alec’s shoulder. Damn, that was muscled, he thought, inhaling sharply, “comes with 400 years of life experience.”
Alec chuckled, and folded his arms. He wanted to say something more, something… He felt like he knew what he had to do, and he knew that Magnus wasn’t going to like it, but right now he wasn’t confident enough in his decision to explain himself to the other man, so he just kept quiet, enjoying the soft look on Magnus’ face.
“I should go,” Magnus announced, “people might talk if America’s sluttiest warlock hangs around in Alexander Lightwood’s bedroom for too long…”
“Don’t say that about yourself,” Alec replied, eyes fond, and Magnus shrugged.
“I own my sluttiness. I’m never going to apologise for enjoying sex,” he insisted, “besides, it’s fun to mess with shadowhunters’ fragile sensibilities. You should’ve seen the look on Miss Branwell’s face when I told her that her ancestor was a racist prick.”
Alec grinned. “Man, I wish I’d been there to see that.”
“It was poetic, really.”
Alec bit his lip, taking the report from Magnus’ hands. “Thanks for stopping by, Magnus. You always know what to say. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime you need to talk, Alec. I’m here. You know that.” Magnus nodded, letting himself out of the room.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clary felt sick watching Luke carry Simon through the graveyard. Simon was like a son to Luke, and Clary knew that no-one would understand Simon’s struggle when he rose like Luke would. While Clary was confident that Simon would want this, that he wouldn��t want to be ripped away from his family and friends like that, she still felt a sense of dread at having to explain to him exactly how he’d been brought back to life, and the consequences of her decision.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Raphael told her as they approached him. “Not only will Simon get another chance at life, he’ll help us to imprison a very dangerous vampire.”
“Save your political agenda, vampire,” Luke spat, putting Simon gently down on the ground and taking the shovel from Clary, “Simon deserves more respect than that.”
Clary nodded, running her thumb over Simon’s prayer shawl. “He deserves forever. And we’re going to give it to him.”
Luke straightened up as he heard a vibration in the air, and Raphael rushed to Simon’s side as Camille stopped a few dozen feet away from them. Clary pulled out her angel blade with her free hand, glowering at the woman who’d murdered Simon. Camille didn’t look half as dangerous as she actually was; she was slight, skinny even, with impractical stiletto shoes and a slinky red cocktail dress. The only thing that made her different to any rich bitch living in SoHo was the pair of gleaming white fangs brushing her lower lip.
“What do you want?” Clary demanded.
Camille sneered at Simon’s body. “I want my property back.”
“Your property?!” Clary snarled, rage broiling inside her and pushing her to walk purposefully towards Camille, angel blade outstretched. “He was a living, breathing human being and you took him from me.”
“If you’ll just hand him over, I’ll be on my way.” Camille sighed, barely sparing Clary or her weapon a glance. Luke hurried to hold Clary back, tugging her back towards Simon.
“Let me at her, Luke, I swear to God, I’m going to rip her hair out,” Clary growled, struggling against Luke’s iron grip.
“She will snap your neck before you could get close.” Luke insisted.
“You’re not laying a hand on him.” Raphael told Camille, “he’s going to make sure that the Clave puts you away for good.”
Camille pursed her lips. “Fine. I tried to do this the nice way.”
With a snap of her fingers, dozens of vampires appeared out of the shadows, surrounding them on all sides. Clary sniffed and raised her chin, unphased. If she was going to be ripped apart by vampires, so be it. She’d rather that than leave Simon’s body to be dumped somewhere where it would never be found.
“I’m glad you brought everyone here to witness your demise,” Raphael taunted, “Camille killed this mundane. She brought the shadowhunters to our door. She’s been breaking the Accords for too long, now. She will lead us to ruin. We can get rid of her. I have all the proof I need, right here.”
Camille laughed, though her eyes betrayed a hint of fear. “Are you trying to overthrow me?”
“If you kill Luke and I to get to Simon, the shadowhunters and the wolves will destroy you.” Clary pointed out to the assembled vampires, which made a few of them look at each other with uncertain expressions. “You will be obliterated by the Clave, if you aren’t ripped apart by Luke’s pack first.”
The vampires all moved at once, Raphael included, and closed in on Camille.
“Don’t listen to them! Raphael doesn’t know the first thing about leading; he’s a child. And as for the shadowhunter and her little lapdog…”
“You will destroy us in pursuit of your own selfish desires,” Raphael growled.
“We can fix this! If we just get rid of the body, this mundane means nothing!” Camille insisted.
Clary clenched her jaw, moving so quickly that Luke didn’t have time to grab her before she was standing in front of Camille. “Simon means nothing? Over my dead body.” Her fist sailed through the air and landed with a satisfying crunch on Camille’s nose, sending her reeling back into the crowd of vampires. Apparently, that show of strength from Clary was enough for them, and they surrounded Camille with a loud hissing sound, restraining her and dragging her back to Hotel DuMort as a team.
Raphael stayed behind, much to Clary’s surprise. He picked up one of the shovels and helped Luke dig Simon’s grave. While they worked, Clary knelt down next to Simon and put his prayer shawl on his chest.
“When your grandfather gave you this at your bar mitzvah, you told me how much it meant to you. It was the symbol of the day you became a man. Simon…” She wiped her nose in her sleeve, feeling the tears pooling in her eyes again. “No matter what happens, no matter what you are or what you become, you will always be that man to me.”
She held Simon’s hand until Raphael and Luke were done, and as Raphael lowered Simon’s body into the ground, Clary clung to Luke, burying her face in his chest.
“He’ll be alright, kiddo. He’s got us. He’ll always have us.” Luke soothed, stroking her hair. “Come on, we need to cover him over before dawn.”
Clary nodded, sniffing back her tears, and grabbed one of the shovels.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once Alec had showered, he put on his binder and his lucky denim shirt (Magnus had seemed to like it the first night they met, so Alec figured it made him look good), and headed to the office, where he knew Lydia would still be working. He had to give her Magnus’ report before Izzy’s came in. She seemed somewhat surprised to see him, but gestured to the chair opposite her.
“I have Magnus Bane’s findings. He found no trace of magic being used to create the forsaken. Izzy’s still working on it in the lab, I believe she’s waiting for blood test results.” He told her, handing her the report. He chose to stay standing, tangling his hands together behind his back as Lydia flicked through Magnus’ report.
“Seems strange that Mr Bane would deliver it to you rather than me...Though I’m not surprised, he took an instant dislike to me, this afternoon.” Lydia commented, a hint of bitterness in her voice.
Alec raised his eyebrows, shrugging a little. He’d never seen Magnus be unfriendly, so he could only assume Lydia had put her foot in her mouth somehow. “I also wanted to talk to you about a… Proposition.”
Lydia put aside the file. “A proposition?”
“Yes,” Alec answered, taking a deep breath as he thought of where to begin. “I feel that our problems are compatible. You need a husband in order to fulfil your dream of running an institute, and I need a strong political partner in order to restore my family’s authority in Idris. If we… Became allies, we could run this institute the way we saw fit. You could make sure that the Clave are happy, and I could get shit done. I know we have slightly different ideas, but we could iron out those differences.”
“Alec… Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Lydia asked, tilting her head to the side.
Alec nodded. “What do you think?”
“You want to marry me?”
Alec couldn’t stop his nose from wrinkling. “I want an ally. I want to be clear. This would not be a romantic or sexual… Thing. This is purely business. I have no interest in women, and I know you said you’ve done the love thing already, so… We’d just be… Allies. Partners.”
Lydia thought about it for less than a second. “Understood. I think we could make it work.”
“So…?”
Lydia smiled. “I guess we’re getting married.”
Alec blew out a long breath. “Right. My parents will be so proud.”
“I feel we should keep it to ourselves until I okay this with the Clave. Of course, you’ll have to have all the surgery before the wedding, so you’ll… You know… Be the husband.”
Alec’s eye twitched, though he didn’t respond. Lydia got up from her desk and took his hands in hers.
“Alec, I promise you, I will do my best to be a good wife.”
“Right…” Alec swallowed hard, realising he’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. “Anyway, see you… Around.”
He got the hell out of there before he could do something stupid like cry or vomit.
“Hey, Alec…” Hodge caught him in the hallway, stopping him with a hand in the crook of his elbow.. “You alright?”
Alec sniffed hard, looking at the wall. “Yeah, just… Need some air.”
“You want to spar with me? I’m getting bored using those dummies.” He offered, eyes darting over Alec’s face, trying to assess what exactly the younger man was feeling.
Alec sighed. If he went back to his room, he might do something stupid like call Magnus. He needed to keep busy, keep his mind off the fact that he’d just ruined any chance at happiness he had in one fell swoop. “Sure,” he answered after a moment’s pause. He met Hodge’s eyes, and it struck him that he felt absolutely no attraction to him whatsoever anymore. For a long time, Alec had felt vaguely uncomfortable around the weapons master, getting a little hot in the face when Hodge touched him casually, struggling to hold eye contact just in case Hodge saw the barest hint of affection in them. Now, though, the only man Alec could see himself holding was Magnus. Perhaps he’d never really been interested in Hodge; perhaps he’d simply been curious as to what it would be like to be admired by a man.
It was wonderful, he’d learned.
It was just a shame that nothing could ever come of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the cemetery, Luke, Raphael and Clary sat in silence next to Simon’s grave. Clary was deep in thought, lost in all the memories that she’d shared with Simon, praying that she’d get to make more in the future. Simon was her oldest and most loyal friend, the one that had protected her all their lives, and who she’d failed to protect. If Simon came back, she promise herself, she would never put Valentine and the shadowhunters before him, not ever again.
“You know what my favourite memory is, of you and Simon?” Luke asked, staring up at the moon. It was two days from full, and he could feel it under his skin.
Clary hummed a questioning tone.
Luke smiled, shaking his head a little. “It’s that time when you were… Oh, maybe twelve? And you came barrelling into the apartment, terrified because you realised halfway home that Simon had forgotten to pay for his bottle of soda. He genuinely thought he was going to jail, and you were determined to come clean to me so I could protect you. I remember looking into Simon’s face, and his glasses were two sizes too big for him, and he looked like he wanted to vomit from pure guilt and fear.” Luke chuckled, shaking his head. “And when I told you it was no big deal, you both immediately started insisting that stealing was wrong, and that Simon had to pay for what he’d done. Neither of you would calm down until me and your Mom promised to take you back to the shop to give them some money.”
“And Simon gave the shop-keeper his whole $5 allowance.” Clary said quietly, tears welling hot in her eyes.
“Yeah,” Luke sighed. “I’ve never known a boy so patient, so loving, and so good. You know, before you came out, I thought for sure someday you and Simon would be together. I remember thinking when you went to homecoming together in your first year of high school, that Simon was the only boy I’d ever trust with my little girl.”
Clary smiled, and reached over to squeeze Luke’s hand. “He’s the best.”
“Yeah. His strength is easy to underestimate, Clary, but it’s there. He’s like steel.” Luke insisted, scooting closer to her. “You know where that strength comes from?”
“His determination?”
“His love. His love for us, our love for him, his mom’s love… That’s what’s going to bring him out of that hole.” Luke told her. “The shadowhunters, the Lightwoods and the others, they’re going to try to convince you that emotions complicate life. That they make life harder. And that might be true, I don’t know. But love is what our family is made of, and it’s why we’ve survived all these years with Valentine breathing down our necks. You can’t let go of that love, okay?”
Clary nodded, laying her head on Luke’s shoulder. “I promise I won’t let them change me.”
“Good,” Luke grumbled, kissing the top of her head.
The two of them stiffened as they felt a faint trembling under their feet, and Raphael moved quickly, grabbing the blood bags he’d brought with him as Simon’s hand burst through the soil. Luke and Clary got to their feet, Luke dragging Clary back a few feet.
“He’s going to be hungry,” Luke explained as she gave him a defensive look. “Let Raphael at him first.”
It took only a few seconds for Simon to climb out of the ground, his new strength helping him shove the loose earth aside. An inhuman hissing sound burst from his lips as he raised his head to look at them, and Raphael snapped the seal off a bag and threw it to him.Simon snatched it up, draining it in three long gulps. Clary watched with horror as her best friend greedily drank his way through four bags of blood, Luke holding her back with a hand on her shoulder.
“Drink up,” Raphael soothed, tossing the fifth bag. Simon drank it a lot more slowly, looking around curiously once it was empty.
“Clary,” Simon said, eyes wide. “What-What’s happening?”
Clary glanced at Luke, who let her go, and she took a couple of steps towards Simon. “You um,” Clary said quietly, “you died.”
“What? No, I… I’m not dead, though.” Simon pointed out, the words a little slurred around the fangs that had grown during his transformation. “What was I drinking? I-it… Is that blood?!” He yelped, scrambling away from the empty bags. “Oh my g-” He choked.
“You can’t say it right now,” Raphael told him, “but you’ll learn. There’s a lot you’ll need to learn. But your clan are here for you. As are your family.”
“Yeah, we’re here for you, Simon. All of us,” Luke insisted.
Simon sobbed dryly, trying over and over to say ‘oh my god’, like that could prove somehow that all of this was a bad dream. Eventually, he pounded the earth with his fists, and looked up at the three people watching him.
“Am I a vampire?” Simon asked, eyes shining with tears.
Clary whimpered, and nodded.
“Clary, tell me this isn’t real, tell me this is a joke, this can’t be happening!” Simon begged, digging his fingers into his own grave.
“I’m sorry, Simon, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Clary cried, stepping closer to him.
Simon squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m a monster.”
“That’s not true,” Luke said gently. “You’re still the same. I promise.”
“You’re the same Simon I’ve known my entire life,” Clary nodded, “the same guy who loves sci-fi, who can recite every line from every Nicolas Cage movie… Who… Who… Once felt so guilty for accidentally stealing a bottle of soda that you paid the clerk back five times over. You’re still the same.”
Simon shook his head. “No, no, I’m not, I’m not. Look at me!” His fingers were molded around his fangs, whimpering at the feel of them, intrusive in his mouth. “Look at me…”
Clary lunged forward, falling to her knees in front of him. “Simon, I will always love you. No matter what.”
“No. No. Please…” Simon fell backwards, stumbling to his feet. “Stay away from me! Stay away…”
With a stiff breeze, Simon disappeared into the night.
“I’ll look after him,” Raphael promised, nodding at Clary before taking off after the young fledgling.
“What did I do?” Clary breathed, pressing her hands into the blood-wet dirt of Simon’s grave as Luke knelt down next to her. “What did I do?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Izzy tapped her pen against the desk, her narrowed eyes staring at the computer screen in front of her. Sighing, she stood and made her way over to the microscope, checking for the fourth time. It was definitely angel blood in the forsaken’s system.
“Why would you have angel blood?” She asked the corpse, looking over her shoulder.
What was the point of injecting angel blood into a human? Was Valentine trying to make a shadowhunter? He’d know that wouldn’t work, he was a scientist, he’d have at least that basic knowledge. So what could angel blood do that demon blood couldn’t?
Izzy’s eyes went wide as she put the pieces together. Demon blood couldn’t get through the wards of the institute, but angel blood could. The other forsaken had gone after Luke, Valentine’s old parabatai. So there could be a second forsaken going after Hodge, Valentine’s second in command… And it would need angel blood to get through the wards!
Before she could even finish the train of thought, Izzy had run out of the laboratory, yelling at people to get out of her way as she desperately sprinted through the corridors. Hodge would be in the training room, she guessed, working.
As she rounded the corner, what she saw chilled her blood.
Alec was on the floor, not moving, as Hodge fought the second forsaken with a couple of knives. Just as Izzy grabbed for a sword of her own, Hodge got the upper hand, and broke the forsaken’s neck with an unmistakable crunch. Dropping the sword, Izzy ran to her brother’s side.
“Alec? Alec, are you okay?” She asked, relieved to see that his eyes were already open.
“Yeah, I think so,” Alec croaked, hissing in pain as he sat up. “He clipped me on the head, but I think my arm’s worse.”
Sure enough, there was blood seeping through his shirt where the forsaken’s mace had pierced Alec’s shoulder. He clutched at the wound, his jaw clenching at the wave of pain that wracked his body.
“It came out of nowhere,” Hodge panted, “how did it get through the wards?”
“It had angel blood,” Izzy told them. “Valentine found a loophole. He sent the forsaken to kill off people who’d betrayed him. I think its mission was to kill you.”
Hodge and Alec looked at each other, wondering if Hodge was the only target, or whether Maryse and Robert were also on Valentine’s hit list.
Only time would tell.
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thekillerssluts · 7 years
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Arcade Fire’s Win Butler Responds to Criticism of the Band’s Much-Maligned, ‘Misunderstood’ Everything Now Rollout
Ever since Arcade Fire roared out of Montreal in 2004 with the release of its instant-classic debut album, Funeral, the band has built a critically and popularly successful career as purveyors of emotionally earnest, musically galvanizing rock. So it struck some observers as a little discordant when, in advance of its recent Everything Now album, the band undertook a decidedly un-earnest prerelease campaign, flooding the internet for a brief time with, among other things, satirical music criticism, bogus marketing tie-ins, and fake-news stories.
The critical response to the campaign was not kind, and the album, too, was met with some of the toughest reviews of the band’s career. Front man Win Butler has suggested that skeptical critics — of both the promotional high jinks and the album itself — may be missing the point. For the first time in its career, a band with an undeniable gift for connection seems, both intentionally and not, to have crossed a lot of wires. Speaking from the tour bus on the way to a concert in Boston, Butler explained the thinking behind the Everything Now campaign, and his reaction to what he sees as the confusion surrounding the album.
I’ve seen you refer to the Everything Now campaign as an “experiment.” So what was the purpose of that experiment? And now from the vantage point of seeing the album out in the world for a few weeks, do you think the experiment was successful? A big question for us was “How do you release a record post–Donald Trump?” Since we were making a record called Everything Now, and it would be coming out after that election, it felt like a real moment to try and address subjects like fake news and how the media works. The other part of it is that when you make a record in this modern context, it instantly gets refracted in the media. There’s all this side content, this trail that follows everything. So we thought that maybe we’d just make all that content, as opposed to just making the art. That stuff was going to get made anyway, so why not make it ourselves?
Those are sort of more practical explanations. What ideas and theories were you testing? It’s a little bit like when you go to the doctor and they put dye in your bloodstream — we just wanted to see where fake-news articles about the band would go. The media is built for clicks now, and we were trying to see firsthand how it all works. I feel like I now understand on a much deeper level why Trump got elected. Negativity is what travels. So we learned more about how the internet functions, and how it’s an insane feedback loop. It’s like, we just played a show in London that was one of the best shows we’ve ever played there. It was honestly so fucking exciting. And at the show we sold a T-shirt where we put an ironic Everything Now logo on top of Kylie Jenner’s face. It was visually punk as hell. We knew doing that would get a lot of press pickup but every single news outlet in the world covered it. Somehow there’s a story in that, but there’s not really a story in Band Is Really Amazing at Music and Plays a Live Show and People Cry Because It’s So Beautiful. So it was really interesting to us to see what got picked up about Arcade Fire. That idea plays into what we were doing as well: We were providing the ammunition for people who wanted to write negative things about the band: Here you go! Here’s something to be outraged about!
Is it possible, just on a personal level, that you give too much emotional weight to negative coverage of the band? What you just said about providing ammunition makes it seem like Everything Now was being released with a preemptive feeling of defensiveness. But I think it’s fair to say that, on balance, Arcade Fire have been hugely successful with critics and audiences. I understand that criticism. The success we’ve had is one in a million. But there’s an overall level of meanness online — I think it was worth pointing out the disingenuousness of that stuff. I remember when Lana Del Rey played Saturday Night Live. Say what you will about her, but she’s a real fucking artist, and the media reaction to that performance was like people were trying to ruin her career. Did they really want to ruin this person? Or did that stance play better online? Like I said, so much of it seems very disingenuous. And I’m not just talking shit about music journalists now. I know how lucky the band has been. But publications are tightening their belts and people have to churn out more stuff, and the media landscape has changed — it’s turned into a fucking meat grinder. The Everything Now campaign was happening in the context of all that and coming out of an election where we essentially elected Mussolini as president of the United States. It would’ve been hard for us to just be like, “So this is our new record!” I wouldn’t know how to not try and address what’s going on in the world.
Did the marketing campaign negatively color how people heard the new music? I don’t know. I think some things were misunderstood. From my perspective, the album is musically one of the best things we’ve ever done. It’s also one of the most earnest. People have called it a cynical record, but I don’t think any honest attempt to listen to the music really supports that reading. So it’s hard for me to square that with the negative reception —which hasn’t been the case in Europe, where they took the campaign much differently. Obviously the French are not going to have as much of a problem understanding a meta news campaign; you don’t have to explain any of this to a French journalist. Everything we’ve done has been pretty obvious if you read past the headlines of the stories, which is something else we’ve learned people don’t really do. The other reality of it, for me, is that fans are enjoying the album and listening to it. So again, it’s hard to square what’s been written about Everything Now with my experience of Everything Now.
I can’t imagine there was a lot of backslapping and handshaking after you guys saw that fake-news stories you put out were picked up as real. Has it been at all emotionally satisfying to test your idea that the media is broken? It wasn’t triumphant, but these aren’t exactly triumphant times. We’re not in a particularly feel-good mood. It’s extremely dire and extremely dark right now. When things are this shitty, sometimes nihilism is a good response. It’s like the punk-rock movement in the U.K.— the Sex Pistols cursing on TV. It’s not overtly political, but in the context of the politics of those times, it’s just “fuck this fucking shit.” We weren’t excited about making people feel weird. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a valid thing to do.
It seems like you have a clear sense of your intentions for the Everything Now campaign. Does other people’s being less clear suggest that maybe the band’s execution wasn’t as sharp as it could’ve been? Or that maybe the tone was coming off more snide than you’d hoped? Maybe there was a certain amount of naïveté on our behalf about how things would be received. I guess at the very core of it, we were hoping that, at least among our fans, we could contribute to a conversation about thinking about what you read, not taking things at face value, critical thinking. Maybe certain parts of that got away from us.
Like what? The thing that really got away from us in the most fascinating way was when we played a show in Brooklyn. There was this kind of big story about how we demanded there be a dress code, which was completely false and was something that could’ve been corroborated by a simple phone call or email to our publicist. But instead of that, there was this sea of outrage: “How dare they do this!” There was even an article written in Canada slagging the band about the dress code after it was clear that we had nothing to do with any dress code. A journalist writing about something after it was proven fake was not something we’d anticipated happening. But I can’t say I was surprised, because that’s where the culture’s at now. Fake news becomes something that real news has to respond to. It’s totally insane. From my perspective though, the Everything Now fake-news campaign lasted about a week and a half, and let a lot of people know that there was a new Arcade Fire album coming out. So I’m not really sweating a lot of this.
Does the response to the campaign — and what I imagine was the difficulty of putting it together — make you at all want to go the Radiohead route and basically just let the music do all the talking from now on? We only did something like five interviews for Reflektor. This is by far the longest interview I’ve given for this album.
Maybe you didn’t give a lot of interviews for Reflektor, but you promoted it with a special on network TV. The band wasn’t exactly shy about letting people know it had an album out. But the thing is, it’s bad to me when a record comes out and people are like, “Oh my god the new Radiohead record! Yes!” — then it’s gone the next day. It might as well not have existed. Remember when Radiohead played the MTV Beach House for Pablo Honey? You watch that video and you can tell the band was in hell. That was some stupid-ass shit, but you know what? That’s where I learned about Radiohead. They suffered through that, but they did it because they wanted people to hear their music. Before OK Computer, they toured the U.S. opening for Alanis Morrissette — most British bands weren’t doing stuff like that, but Radiohead wanted Americans to know about their music. Now, 20 years later, they’re still here. We want people to hear our music too. I don’t think we’d go out and open for Taylor Swift, but we want people to hear our music, too.
Would you have done anything differently with the rollout? Or put another way, has any of the critical feedback you’ve gotten rang true? Any criticism anybody else has had of the band — I’ve already had my own way, way harsher criticisms. Honestly, we’re talking about two weeks in the lifespan of this album. You listen to some of the albums Leonard Cohen made in the ’80s, and they have cheesiest-sounding keyboards, but those are such essential records. They’ve stood the test of time. If the songs are good enough and interesting enough, the music lasts. Time will tell if Everything Now holds up — everything else is ephemeral. And if ultimately the biggest regret of my career is that some people think maybe we made a misstep with an album rollout, I can certainly live with that.
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sweetlifetownsville · 5 years
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Doing A Little With A Lot: Move Over Jesus, Your Loaves And Fishes Stunt Ain't In It Against The Townsville Bulletin.
The good old Astonisher showed its going to be more of the same in 2019, sleight of hand, selective reporting and all manner of insulting idiocy same old, same including a spectacular miss this weekend not a word about one of Townsville most long standing favourite eateries bites the dust Michels On Palmer Street is no more. Bancroft boo-boo Channel 7 embraces fake news: so lacking in a sense of the ridiculous, theyre about to disappear up their own ummm kazoo. And the President turns on the pester-power: Trump throws the biggest and longest tanty in living memory ruining the holiday season for thousands of his own people. But first For those many people who have been inquiring about Mark Donnellys funeral in Cairns, it will be at 2pm Wednesday Jan 9th, at St Francis Church, Mayer Street, Cairns. Vale, mate Moving On Its climate change on Bentleys mind. Our toonist is originally a Croweater from Adelaide, and he was amazed to see the jam packed crowds on Adelaide beaches in a TV report about the ghastly weather theyre having over there. The Pie also recalls that during his time in the City of Churches, beach-going was an occasional thing and attracted only sparse crowds to the sandy shores. But Bentley believes climate change is rapidly altering time honoured Aussie pastimes, and soon, getting an all-over tan will be a thing of the past.
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Speaking of Things Of The Past
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This now sadly includes the much loved Michels restaurant in Palmer Street, which served its last mean on December 22nd. This is how the unexpected news was broken on FB.
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It will be sorely missed by many, including The Pie, who just hung out for the lunch-time beef and burgundy pie. Ironic that the one time our local paper had the opportunity to use the word iconic almost correctly, it has completely missed this information which would be of far more interest than the iconic Sizzlers leaving town. (More on that shortly). Well That Didnt Take Long Did It? The Townsville Bulletin set the tone for the year on the very first day of 2019, Tuesday January 1, with a rib-tickling own goal with this front page.
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Wow, all those people turning up for a pic, where did they all come from? Well, at least half of them from nowhere. Heres how this little piece of patronizing chicanery went down. First, a couple of weeks ago, this appeared on the Astonishers FB page.
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Boy, be on the front page! And didnt that get them flocking in for their 15 minutes of fame not. Just 41 people made themselves available, including the Cowboys mascot and as many of the Bulletins staff who could be spared to avoid the embarrassment of attracting almost bugger interest.
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Then the front page appeared, a cheesy tedious old trope of people spelling out the year. Many people more than 41, it would seem. But hang on, lets have a closer look.
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Whats all this? This is what all this is.
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fair to say that all those excited people were beside themselves behind themselves, and then in front of themselves. Now a while back, the flagship of News Corpse tabloids, Sydneys Daily Telegraph got a clip arround its corporate ears for photo-shopping pics of politicians in unflattering historical situations. As if we needed to be told that Kevin Rudd was a nazi! Pretending to be chastised, management decreed that in future, just so no one was misled, all photoshopped images in all News publications would carry the legend digitally altered.Someone at the Astonisher overlooked this, clearly wishing the few readers it has left would believe it was so widely popular that it had attracted a throng of NY well-wishers. but it seems someone suddenly realised that some arsesole like The Magpie maybe would tumble to the lie, so thinking they could squirm out of it, they really blew their foot off by belatedly posting this on their FB page. The Pie has asked before, and now asks again are they all bloody drunk down there? BTW, the relevant FB page is said to have attracted 4500 views which at a guess that would be comprised of 4458 editorial and advertising staff and their family and friends frantically revisiting the FB as often as they could. At least that was the drill when The Pie was taking Ruperts shilling. But Wait, Theres More The firsts for the year kept coming thick and fast. This story had people wondering if the paper had a cut-price Tardis operating
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and that resulted in the first correction of the year.
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Although it is quite possible that Messagebank Walker, send out last years media release, and true to form, the reporter just wrote it up with a thought of what it was actually saying. f they would know the difference. Another media release that went into the paper untouched and of course unquestioned could have been headlined Mission Impossible.
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Hahahahaah gasp snurffle dont you just love the combination of casual impertinence and immeasurable benchmark of making Townsville Australias first mentally healthy city. This is pure Labor crackpottery at its best, and a great excuse to wring out a few more public dollars for pointless jobs for the boys and girls. Mentally healthy City steering committee? National leader in this field? Pray tell, just how is this going to be measured oh, wait, I know soon it will be announced that we have achieved the title of Australias mentally healthiest city, but we cant be told why or any details because of both privacy and Commercial in Confidence reasons. What an out and out rort. The Townsville City Council has no business stumping up a single cent for this totally obscure nonsense. And youve just gotta love that this call for a mentally healthy city is coming from one of the greatest rates-gouging, anxiety-creating, booze-binge inducing ineptocracies of posturing inadequates one couldnt create as fiction.
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And all publicised in a paper that has long abrogated its traditional responsibilities in the interests bargain-basement kiddy journalism and a quick advertising quid (and hows that working for you, eh?) Yet Another Jarring Juxtaposition And it would appear that either no one checks advertising content against news content to avoid this sort of blundering idiocy.
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But never mind, iditor Jenna Cairney knows how to thunder away about the really important issues affecting us during the week, it was oh, dear it was people who oh, The Pie cannot bear to utter the words, read it for yourself.
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Now normally, itd be kind to let this slide, but its hard to ignore when the iditorial completely contradicts its own ramblings by actually quoting one of the few believable people who work for the paper, fisherman Eddie Riddle, who said sometimes, believe it nor not, people just catch no crabs. Crab pot theft happens less than people would have you believe.Clearly those people who would have you believe that it is rife include the iditor and the beat-up reporter of the original story. Then There Is This From comments during the week. The Magpie From the alleged files: THE TOWNSVILLE BULLETIN ALLEGEDLY ACCUSES THE POLICE OF PLANTING EVIDENCE.
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So they allegedly found a shotgun, unequivocally meaning there is some doubt in terms of English, the paper means the cops could be lying and they didnt find a shotgun or else, leaving open the possibility that they planted it there and didnt find it. FFS they either did or did not find a shotgun, and if it comes down to who to believe the Bulletin or the police its no contest. The coppers should complain. And anyway, saying they found the weapon is not legally dangerous and so attract an allegedly , since no names or details of the arrested man are published. During the coming year, The Pie will be running an alleged file from the Astonisher, along with an iconic file the paper has already made a sterling start on that one. This from comments on Friday. The Magpie January 4, 2019 at 11:24 am(Edit) Had a bit of an amused warble and added this to The Pies iconic list.
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Iconic is something that is immediately recognisable, usually unique, and with which one readily associates with a name, place or occupation. The Eiffel Tower is iconic, as is the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Kabba in Mecca, the Golden gate Bridge, and closer to home, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Now alas with this local departure, down south, all the front bar chat and dinner party braying will be along the lines of Townsville? Wasnt that the Sizzler place until a while back? Oh, the shame. Keeping an eye on legendary, too. A Bigger Laugh From The Big Bash Crickets bumbling sandpaper cheat Cameron Bancroft returned to the crease this week in the Big Bash league, and the commentators were so busy tip-toeing around that elephant in the room, they managed to miss a wonderful howler made by their producer.
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The commentators, all ex-sporting boofs, so not much could be expected of them, unquestioningly rabbited on about Bancrofts personal attainments, especially that last one. Returned to Tame Impala as their kazoo player? They didn;t dare question the truth of the matter, but they did have a rare old yukity-yuk about it. The producer had unwittingly copied and pasted this bit of nonsense lifted from a story that was doing the rounds, and had originated guess where? The Betoota Advocate, Australias funniest satirical paper. And for the record, Bancroft has never been in the band Tame Impaler, which has never featured a kazoo player anyway. The Pie is wondering, given Bancrofts infamous South African venture, if Bunnings might not offer sponsorship. And Now Off To The Week In Trumpistan and its wall-eyed child President.
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. Thats it forn this week, and the silly season is coming to a close (not that you could tell at any time from our august organ of Flinders Street West), and some very interesting snippets have been dropping into the Nest for future examination. Wer will start on them next wee, but comments are running around the clock, so have your say. And any support by way of donation for the efforts over the coming year will as always be greatly appreciated. He how to donate button is below. http://www.townsvillemagpie.com.au/doing-a-little-with-a-lot-move-over-jesus-your-loaves-and-fishes-stunt-aint-in-it-against-the-townsville-bulletin/
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Day 10 - Black Mirror [Series]
Do you ever feel fabulously grateful for something crappy that happened to you, because it eventually led to something good? This is one of my favourite things in the world. I had one of these moments a few weeks ago. A co-worker had been motivating us all week to spend a crazy Friday night out. For totally work-unrelated reasons, I had been feeling pretty depressed lately and most of my evenings were spent alone in my apartment (mostly re-watching bad Youtube videos, probably in order to make sure that I still didn’t like them), so I looked forward to this night out. Getting anywhere close to drunk was off the table because I had made some damn good resolutions, but I was kind of hoping that we’d meet wonderfully weird people, and find a place where the decoration would make me laugh even more than the huge portrait of Angela Merkel that took up all the space of the ladies’ restroom door in a Germany-themed bar I once went to. Enjoying the city lights and probably dancing - to some terrible 2000’s music that would remind me of the awkward teenage parties I usually wasn’t invited to anyway – sounded like a nice sequel to this.
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In case you wonder: The weird Angela Merkel bar is actually called the Black Forest Society, and it’s located in Lyon, France. They have nice, original, good-resolutions-incompatible cocktails made with Black Forest Gin and fancy liquors and cocoa, sometimes served in kitschy recipients. A bit expensive, but still a nice experience. Oh, and they have bretzels as well.
Unfortunately, they had all lost their motivation sparkle by the time Friday came. Some of them wanted to get up early tomorrow, some had other plans, some were tired. I ended up being the only one who actually wanted to go. I had booked my train tickets to my parents’ for the next morning, so it became clear that this would be another lonely night in my flat. I soon found myself texting my co-worker, whining about how bored I was and asking her if she could think of something nice for me to read or watch.  She suggested me to try Black Mirror if I wanted food for thought about modern society. Black Mirror is a series of one-hour standalone episodes. That, my friends, is already a pretty great point for people like me who try to watch a zillion series at once - and inevitably end up forgetting what the hell the hot smart gay intern’s name is because 1) all these character names adding up can be rather confusing 2) they find time for an episode of the show every two months or so. Standalone episodes have that great habit of rightly assuming that, just like Jon Snow, the viewer knows nothing. Each one has its own cast, setting, and reality, which basically makes them short movies. What they all have in common in Black Mirror is the theme of new technologies and their unexpected consequences.
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By the way: Connor Walsh. The hot smart gay intern from How to get away with murder is Connor Walsh. He’s one of the main characters for the Seven’s sake, how could you even forget?
As you may have noticed, the theme is pretty broad, which allows for a number of variations. Some episodes are built around a specific fictional technology – what would happen, for instance, if everyone had a chimp implant that recorded everything they did, saw or heard, and allowed them to replay the entire memory, either in front of their eyes or on a screen? The Entire History of You is centered around that possibility. In an alternative reality where this technology allows personal data storage to go even further than it currently does – and anyone who once cringed in front of an n-th attempt from Facebook to revive awkward 8-year-old memories to celebrate a virtual friendship birthday will probably argue that this has already gone way too far – memories are never faded, let alone erased. Every recording is potentially an evidence to the jealous protagonist, who suspects his wife to have cheated on him with her ex and gets more and more paranoid as he keeps replaying potentially incriminating memories. The chilling Be right back, on the other hand, introduces us to realistic androids simulating the deceased using their previous communication data. Martha, a grieving young woman whose husband died in a car crash, reluctantly begins to communicate with an artificial intelligence accurately imitating her late partner – humour, interests, reactions, everything is calculated to sound like him. The digital ghost is convincing and Martha soon finds herself in love with him, until she gets frustrated with his inability to express emotions accurately, and his lack of the traits that were not expressed by her deceased husband in his digital life. The resulting story is truly haunting – no pun intended -, and is both a heart-wrenching exploration of grief and a starting point to an authentic riot of questions in the viewer’s mind, the most interesting probably being “What spares the human from a thinking machine anticipating its reaction to every situation, and able to be loved by the ones who knew the person behind?”.
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The Entire History of You - Nah, you told me your relationship had lasted one week, not one month, LOOK, I HAVE PROOF. *Memory replays*
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Hi digital ghost, I guess.
My favourite episodes, however, are those set in dehumanized, acerbic, cynical dystopias, built and revealed slowly over the course of the episode. In the thought-provoking Fifteen million merits, citizens only go out of their confined sleeping boxes to cycle endlessly on exercise bikes to power their screen-covered surroundings and generate Merits, a currency that allows them to skip the untimely, inopportune, sometimes obscene advertisements that keep interrupting their activities to sell them nothing but virtual items such as accessories for their avatars. Sleep. Cycle. Skip ad – if you can afford it. Interact briefly with one or two avatars. Repeat. The protagonist progressively becomes aware of the vacuity of this existence and craves realness since he got a glimpse of it in the singing voice of one of his co-cyclers, but even the only perceived escapes usually turn out to be smoking mirrors. Another great episode, Nosedive, is set in a colourful, alternative reality where people rate one another using their phones. Ratings determine their employability, access to services and overall value in society – some neighbourhoods are exclusively reserved to people with high ratings, and a low rating will make you lose your job. This leads people to obsess over their ratings and calculate every single social interaction, hoping to get the favours of high-rated people in order to raise their score and finally be able to get the discount they need to rent a house. Satires about social media society probably aren’t uncommon, but this one has that cynical feel created by the sharp contrast between the pink-and-pastel visuals and the hypocritical, chained social interactions that take place under a social media eye constantly ready to pull people under if they dare speak their minds or complain about anything. Nosedive gets even scarier when you think back about it and realise that the terrifying society described over the episode already exists, although in a less visible way. Social media does play a huge role in our personal and professional lives – who never thought of posting something on the social media just to impress someone? Who never heard a story of someone who got in trouble at work, or didn’t get hired, because of social media material? Who never got stuck into a conversation about what a common acquaintance posted on social media the day before? Who never paid at least a little attention to the number of likes they got on their Facebook post? And about the whole rating thing – I’m pretty sure you’re already familiar with “We’ll go to that restaurant, it’s really well-rated on Tripadvisor” or “If you liked it, please don’t forget to rate us”. And actually, apps that rate people are already a thing.
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Fifteen million merits and Nosedive - Different atmospheres, different alternate realities, same feeling of suffocating fakeness.
This is where Black Mirror generally gets brilliant: Although the alternate realities depicted in the show are usually noticeably different from ours, the viewer always ends up seeing a reflection of their own society. The scenarios X-ray aspects of our modern world and disguise them in a satirical, clever, accurate way that makes you think back about Black Mirror episodes long after you watched them. The questions raised by the series go way beyond the usual “You should all turn off your phones, get real again and go for a walk in the forest with your neighbour, social media turned you into narcissist brainless zombies” rhetoric. The variety of scenarios, from political satire to intimate drama, make sure you keep being surprised and never get bored. However, you will probably get uneasy pretty often – and I’m not saying that because the first episode revolves around the Prime Minister being ordered to have sex with a pig in order to save a princess from being killed. A cuddly blanket, a nice cup of tea, your favourite biscuits and a pair of arms/loving cat/soft toy (depending on what you have in store) are probably advised during, or after, a Black Mirror episode. Not providing yourself with that equipment and watching it right before going to bed will be at your own risk – I promise you don’t want your nightmares to turn into technologically advanced dystopias. Old school monsters are easier to run from.
And also: This is the tenth post of this Tumblr, which definitely deserves to be celebrated with the song that kind of inspired it. As hinted in the Crypt of the Necrodancer post, it’s the famous standard “My favorite things” (except I usually write it, like everything on that Tumblr, with the British spelling – I’m neither British nor American, and I’m trying hard to avoid cliché-ridden justifications such as “because it makes my blog posts smell like my beloved Twinings tea”). Just like that enthusiastic blog of mine, it’s an enumeration of amazing things. Let’s face it, “whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens” probably sound much better than “sad novels, weird computer games, robot exhibits and sci-fi-ish series”, but I promise I love kittens and soft mittens as well. I just don’t have enough material to write about them. Anyway, I thought you may enjoy this cover by Pomplamoose as much as I do.
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rassasassalin · 6 years
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Might as well christen this place where I can overthink some rasslin’.  Good a night as any for it.  Gonna be taking notes as I go through Raw, and will publish under a readmore when done.  Really long, mostly just steam of conscious.  Might do a summarized thoughts later.  But probably not.  Summaries are my mortal enemies.
!!!  Dean vs Joe!  That should be a fun match!  Love Joe, love Dean, and their styles should clash pretty well.  Also, I love Joe’s theme.  And Joe talking.  He’s so damn good on the mike.  He’s got a wonderful cadence, and he’s like, the perfectly articulate heel.  So good.
I like the Roman drinks orange juice after he brushes his teeth sign.  It’s good.  I mean, it’s hella gross, but I like those kind of signs.  Good stuff.
The Roman chant is interesting.  I haven’t really heard a crowd chant for a face in a while.  Although I think it’s still arguable whether or not Roman is a face.  Still.  Good to have a crowd chanting for one.  Part of the problem, I find, with today’s rassling, nobody chants for the faces to come out and fix problems, because there is no real Top Face that, you know, does face things.
Congrats to the dude who’s wife bough him tickets.
Yeah, no duh it’s a trap, why’d Ro go out there on his own, that’s silly.  Clearly Joe and Sheazaro made some kind of alliance last week, come on boys.  Also of course look at the fight in Dean, he’s always been the one in the Shield that gets the shit kicked out of him the worst, he’s a pain magnet, that’s part of why we love him so much.
Was feeling pretty happy from that promo about Bliss and Banks fighting the first women’s match over in Abu Dhabi, but then they cut to the ring and I see a sign saying that the Browns will be the Superbowl Champs and I’ve been laughing ever since fuck me, keep living the dream my friend, keep living that dream.
Seriously tho, I’ve loved Mickey James for forever, what a legend, what an underrated gem, I hate that she’s being wasted right now.
So... I didn’t watch Tough Enough since like... idk, the third “season”, I guess you could say, and I never watch Total Divas, but... maybe I’m totally wrong, but Mandy Rose feels a lot like- just from ring attire and attitude-, a golden version of Eva Marie?  And I’m not particularly interested in that.  Like watching Paige wrestle, I’ve enjoyed Sonya from what I’ve seen from her on Main and on NXT- always down for some female Bruisers, y’know?- but Mandy just seems... Idk.  Been there, done that, seen that character a hundred times.  Unless she’s going to pull a Marlena with a... Velveteen Dream?  He’s the only openly sensual sort of rassler in the WWE right now that could follow that old spirit of Goldust- and he definitely doesn’t need a handler of any kind, to be honest.  But like, outside of that?  Don’t care.  Got the feeling she’s going to be the weak link/first one to betray Paige’s lil group.
...Omg.  Matt.  Matt, babe.  God, I wanted him to break so bad, but I just... I mean, I’m laughing, but I don’t really see this turning out well for either him or Bray?  It could be good, if treated carefully, but I just don’t trust anyone on creative to do Bray right anymore.  Which is a fucking shame, because he makes a fantastic cult leader, he was so charasmatic and scary and then they took away his fucking cult and just what is even the point?  Like even the fact that he never wins anything, I could mostly ignore or more not really care if even after a loss he was still like this looming, evil shadow ready to consume any and all that come in his path but-  Look, point I’m trying to make here is that Bray is actually supposed to be a serious character, even if they don’t make him a properly scary character anymore, and putting him up against a comedy act- and Br/Woken Matt is a comedy act, a fantastic satire, simply the best, I love him....  I don’t know.  Maybe if I knew that Matt and Bray were actually coming up with their storyline.  That’d be cool, but...  I’ll try to be optimistic, but it’ll be hard.
...The breaking the Woken, ehehehe, fuck you Impact.
Fuck my life it looks like someone is cutting their own youtube backstage promo against clips from Bray, I’m laughing and crying and- WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU KNOW ABIGAIL AND YOU GUYS HUNG OUT IN BABYLON I MEAN BABY-LAWN?  Nevermind youtube promos, this is like two kids on the playground playing imaginairy war and Bray just pulled out what he thought was his trump card and Matt’s all flip turning it upside down and now Bray’ll cry to the nearest adult that Matt’s not playing the game right, he’s not allowed to change Abigail’s backstory.
God, Bray, no, don’t make me choose, I love you both- broken warriors???  Wyatt swarm????  Could we have a whole battle royal sort of thing????????  Because I’m down, I’m so down- Stop making me laugh at your laughing you fucking dweebs I’m crying, I’m actually literally crying.
Booker looks so done with everything, poor Book.
Oh.  Ohhhhh, okay, here we go, Cruiser Weights now, what are they going to- oh no, not this thing with Nia, I’m just.  I love Nia.  I don’t hate Enzo, but there’s no reason for- DREW!  oh, they acknowledged Swann.  Real quick, there we go.
...Drew’s lil’ elbow.  His oooohing.  HE’S WILLING TO FIGHT NIA!  I LOVE THIS MAN.
What do you mean Finn’s fighting Curtis?  But his neck is like, super broken guys?  No, really, come on, this isn’t fair, poor Axel.  I love that guy.  SHut the hell up Cole, he SO needs that neck brace, he got beat the heck up by the Shield, he’s hurt.  Lookit Curtis and Bo.  Look at those happy babies.  Even Finn’s happy.  This is all I need in life.
!!!!!!!!!  Curtis, no!  You need- oh, sucker punch, nice.  Noice.  Now this might be a fight.  Wow, Curtis is coming in hard and fast, I like it.  Oh no!!!  His neck again!  Poor Curtis.  Looks like it’s his curse to have to be in a neck brace for the rest of his career.  I too, hope he’s okay, Corey.
Worried about the way they keep talking about Sheamus.  I’ve been hearing things about him might having to retire soon, and now I’m super bummed because I actually really like that big Red Headed goof.  I’m gonna miss him if he does have to leave soon.  Wonder if they’ll actually give him the big singles belt one last time.  Hmmm...  Anyways... yeah, not sure I trust the whole Partners Barred from Ringside thing.  Wouldn’t hold my breath for there being no interference.
OKAY.  I’ve not seen THAT one before.  Just toss the man by the knee over your shoulder Sheamus, that’s fine, it’s cool, doesn’t make me hurt at all.  Hella nice submission, tho.  Love me some submissions.
And THAT’s why big men don’t tend to go up on the top rope.  Should listen to our beloved Gulak.  No Fly Zone for Hosses.
Alright, I hated that knee when Rollins started to use it, and it’s still not the greatest finisher I’ve ever seen him do, but at least now he looks pretty confident while doing it.  Makes a hell of a difference.
Hehehe, did asking if Dean had a strategy.  Cmon, Renee, you should know your man better than that.  Heh, thanks for the pep talk babe.
Ah, yes, and here we have a commercial for Tribute for the Troops, which I’mma watch and cry like a bitch during.  Fantastic.  And on the Base where I was born, too.  Even Better.  Looks like it’ll have some amazing matches.  And maybe Machine Gun Kelly will get attacked by KO again?  I’d enjoy that.
DREW!!!!!  MISTER T!!!!!!  HE’S SO FUCKING CUTE I LOVE HIM LOOK AT HIM CALL EVERYONE BY THEIR LAST NAMES!
“Winner of the Gulak Match”- Micheal Cole, 2017
Alrighty, Swann mentioned again.
OH MY GOD DREW YOU FUCKING CUTIE SWIVEL CHAIRING AROUND SO HE CAN’T EVEN SEE MUSTAFA CLAPPING AT HIM.  Drew “There’s a lotta money working with Enzo but I’m going to casually not say how much” Gulak.  YOU HEARD IT HERE, PEOPLE ON THE STREET TALKING ABOUT HOW GREAT DREW IS.  Drew IS honorable-ish.  The chances are very slim that he’s gonna be the one that ends up stabbing Zo in the back.  Much more likely that it’s the other way around.  ORrrrrrrrrrr that the other boys on the Zo Train will turn on Zo, and Gulak will be the only one that stands by him, a true and loyal friend despite the fact that they’re such an unlikely friendship.
Never stop asking Drew whether or not he’ll fight Enzo.  He is so bad at blatantly changing the subject and I love it, he is legit a horrible politician he’s so bad at two-facing it’s beautiful and amazing.
This just in, Davari just killed Neese with a beautiful spinning discus.  I love that move.  Great move.  Rest in peace, Tony Abs.
I don’t know if the other cruiserweights are inspired by him, but I am super inspired by Drew.  I love him.  Stop badgering the man Cole.  Friends can fight each other and it doesn’t necessarily mean an end to a friendship.  Not... all the time.
Man, Musafa has such pretty moves.  Gorgeous.  I love him.  Shut up Drew, it’s not disgusting.  Don’t actually shut up, I love you.  Oh, and look at Davari taking a play out of Drews- opps, nope, Cedric not letting that happen again- AHAHA “He’s not flying he’s falling!  He’s using gravity to his advantage!”  I wish we coulda seen Drew’s face when he said that.
So... I’m thinking it’ll be Cedric vs Gulak?  Yep.  Yep, it’s Ced- oh no, oh Drew, oh his face, he looks like he’s realized that he’s in trouble.  He totally is.  There’s gonna be some retribution coming Gulak’s way.  He might still win via some duplicitous means- I’m thinking probably Enzo helping Drew get the win so that he gets what he think’s’ll be an easy win against his lackey.  Fuck me, I love Drew Gulak, what a fantastic character, what a beautiful man.
Aaaaaand Roman vs Cesaro next.  Gonna be a slobberknocker.
BUT FIRST DREW AGAIN!!!  MORE DREW!!! YAY!!!!  “Friendly Trashtalk”-  Woah, woah woah woah, how dare you Enzo!?!  Be friends with that poor boy!  YOU SHUT UP ABOUT HIS POWERPOINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
NIA IS BEST WOMAN, LOVE HER, LOVES THE POWERPOINTS, ALSO DREW IS SO FUCKING CUTE “hai nia...!”  Seriously though if they’re going where I think they’re going with Nia and Enzo, I am NOT looking forward to it.  Enzo, right now, isn’t Eddie, and Nia ain’t Chyna.  Love Nia, I really really do, but they haven’t given her enough character to BE a Chyna.  And Eddie and Chyna was a long, slow build, you know?  They worked their way into it.  You can’t just throw an oddball couple together all the time and expect it to work.  Not without any lead up.  Fucking give us hints and glimpses and work up to it.  Don’t just throw it in my face all at once and go “Here you go, isn’t this a glorious couple!?”  No.  It’s outta no where, makes no sense, there’s no chemistry, please stop.
Man, I love me some Uppercuts. And some clotheslines.  These big boys are gonna beat the shit outta each other and it’s great.  Roman doing what Roman does best- hitting people hard.  And some joint manipulation from Cesaro.  Noice.  Awwww.... that’s not nice, Cesaro.  I’m sure like, probably more than half of that crowd likes Roman.  Yeah, I’m hearing what sounds like some kids chanting let’s go Roman.  Which, I mean, you know you’re at least doing something right if you got the kiddos cheering for you.  Annnnnd, Imma have to take a break watching this because the fujiwara hold always looks super gross and I never wanna see someone’s arm actually break.  Cat has perfect timing and has decided to lay on my face.  Thanks, Cat.  Duuuuuuuude, why you gonna- yeah, see, your arm’s already damaged, don’t try to punch someone with it you big ol handsome dingus.  He’s still got a spearrrrr fuccccck that was naaaaasty I hate it when they throw each other at the ring poooooooost aaaand... yep, okay, just gonna nosell there for a second, alright, I get it.
Man... Cesaro might actually win this.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense for him to win this, storyline, but he might.  Aw... man, I miss the swing, feels like I haven’t seen it in forever.
What the hell was that, why was the ref trying to separate them?  I get so confused nowadays.  Used to be we  could trust that if a ref did something like that, it’d be kayfabe stuff.  Now refs aren’t allowed to be part of the stories, so...  Eh.  I miss when we had like, heel ref shenanigans.  Whatever, guess I’m just old.  Not a bad fight, though, in the end.  Even if that ref spot was really weird.
Seriously tho, okay, when did Lesner even come into this rivalry between Kane and Braun???  That’s so random.  Wouldn’t be against Braun taking that fucking title off of Brock so he can just go the hell away again.  Can’t stand him, hated him when he was fighting in the UFC, hate him fighting now.  Best thing about Lesner is that Heymen’s his mouthpiece, and even that is still awful because Paul being Brock’s advocate means that he’s not advocating for more deserving talent.
Yay, Asuka match where she’ll kill someone in the ring!  And then’ll she’ll get surrounded  by- oh no, someone else killed Alicia first.  Yep, okay, so there’s finally going to be a showdown.  They’ve been teasing this for a while.  They’ll probably actually attack this time.  But if they really wanted to swerve, they’d show that Asuka is actually the one in charge of Absolution, all along.  That’d be great.  Not going to happen, but I’d really love Asuka being, like, in charge of a cutthroat female gang.  That’s go serious potential.  Asuaka would make a great mob boss.
Three on one, whatever Booker, it’s still Asuka.  Yeah, see, they wouldn’t let her just-  Ooooooh, Nia!  Nice.  Super nice.  Love it.  And even Foxy!  That’s sweet, lookit her being all savage.  Ehehe, fucking Nia just standing there like yeah, you forgot to take out me, that was a mistake.
Hey look!  It’s a Kurt segment that doesn’t start out with him looking at his phone!  And Jason being mature!!!  I don’t trust it.  They’re gonna turn this boy heel.  Yeah, okay, there we go.  That’s more what I was expecting.  Duuuude, don’t tease me with an Angle Joe match.  I miss those.  Those were fantastic, and I know that you’re not going to give them to me.
I hope Deans feeling a bit better now.  Last couple of times I’ve seen him fighting he’s seemed kinda foggy and outta it.  I worry about him.
AHAHA- Aj’s been Nice?  He put a man threw a car window.  I mean, that man was a McMahon, and I kind of loved it, but still?  Pretty sure even after his face turn he’s pretty solidly on the limbo between the good and bad list this year.
If Jason costs Ambrose this match Imma not be happy.  I’m really looking forward to this match.  Joe will actually let Dean be, you know, creative with his brawling.  And that’s where Deano’s best, when he’s allowed to be unorthadox.  And Yeah, yeah, Ambrose is definitely looking more all there.  ‘S’good.  Man, I’d kinda love for Joe and Ambrose to get in a match where Joe finishes him off in a coquina clutch and Dean doesn’t tap, he just passes the fuck out.  That’s such a glorious face move, refusing to give up even as your body gives up on you.
Loving the way Ambrose is bounding off the middle rope, tha’s beautiful- oh!  A slap!  Nice!  That’s a beautiful mistake.
Jason’s enjoying the match.  Good.  Me too.  JASON, NO.  YOU STAY WHERE YOU ARE.  STOP WALKING.  Oooooh, good save there, Ambrose.  That’s my boy.  Dude.  Dude, no, Jason, don’t- what in the world is going on here?  Fuck me, Jason is going to cost Dean the- fuuuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkk, DAMMIT JASON.  Yeah, yeah, okay, now you’re in trouble.  I DIDN”T MEAN THAT I WANTED AMBROSE TO SLEEP IN THIS MATCH, ARGH!!!!
So, uh, Deano vs Jason next week?  Or for the next year?  Because let’s face it, Ambrose holds a grudge foreveeeeer.
Hey, Titus!!!! Apollo!!!!  And... Dana... yay...  Oh!  The good brothers!  I wish that I could say Nerds with such vim and vigor.  It’s a serious gift.
Also yay, no one got killed as Braun made his way to the ring???
Okay, come on, we all know Zayn and Owens ain’t getting fired, Daniel is going to get Shane out of the picture and take over the role as ref so it’s actually fair.  Or like, idk, Hunter or Steph are going to come out and fuck someone over.. Maybe Randy will turn, because, you know, he’s got a connection to Trips and also he’s been a face for like forever in Viper years and also we’ve got that unresolved stuff with Hunter giving the Universal Championship to Kevin, soooo....  Either way, someone getting screwed, and I’m pretty damn sure it ain’t going to be out canadian boyos.
Eheheheh, reinforcing the ring.  I hope they break it in two.  I love that shit.   So much fun.  Because I’m apparently still a baby.
Ummm... Pretty sure Kane’s most monstrous moments involved his various kidnappings of pretty ladies.  Or the time he tried to kill his Paul Bearer.  But you know, what do I know, I’ve just been literally watching Kane since he first premiered AS Kane.  Sure, yeah, most “monstrous” thing he’s ever done was thrown a man in a trash collector.  Yep.  That’s it.
A countout???  Boooooo...  Also... who’s going to go fight Brock now?  Someone’s gonna get Kayfabe murdered until there’s only one left to fight Bork.
Okay, they seriously need to stop with the whole fucking with people’s throats thing.  I don’t like it, it worries me, and also they make choking gagging noises which sets off my own gag reflex which is not fun.
oh hey, look, Braun became insta-face by bringing out a table.  I love how easy to please wrestling fans are sometimes.  Kane?  You okay?  That trip looked nasty.
OOOOOH!!!!  BRAUN HAS INHERITED THE MONSTER SIT UP MOVE!!!!  THAT’S SUPER EXCITING!!!!  That looks like a passing of the torch to me.  I like it.  I like where that could be heading.  Yes, good, good end to Raw.
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sweetlifetownsville · 5 years
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Doing A Little With A Lot: Move Over Jesus, Your Loaves And Fishes Stunt Ain't In It Against The Townsville Bulletin.
The good old Astonisher showed its going to be more of the same in 2019, sleight of hand, selective reporting and all manner of insulting idiocy same old, same including a spectacular miss this weekend not a word about one of Townsville most long standing favourite eateries bites the dust Michels On Palmer Street is no more. Bancroft boo-boo Channel 7 embraces fake news: so lacking in a sense of the ridiculous, theyre about to disappear up their own ummm kazoo. And the President turns on the pester-power: Trump throws the biggest and longest tanty in living memory ruining the holiday season for thousands of his own people. But first For those many people who have been inquiring about Mark Donnellys funeral in Cairns, it will be at 2pm Wednesday Jan 9th, at St Francis Church, Mayer Street, Cairns. Vale, mate Moving On Its climate change on Bentleys mind. Our toonist is originally a Croweater from Adelaide, and he was amazed to see the jam packed crowds on Adelaide beaches in a TV report about the ghastly weather theyre having over there. The Pie also recalls that during his time in the City of Churches, beach-going was an occasional thing and attracted only sparse crowds to the sandy shores. But Bentley believes climate change is rapidly altering time honoured Aussie pastimes, and soon, getting an all-over tan will be a thing of the past.
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Speaking of Things Of The Past
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This now sadly includes the much loved Michels restaurant in Palmer Street, which served its last mean on December 22nd. This is how the unexpected news was broken on FB.
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It will be sorely missed by many, including The Pie, who just hung out for the lunch-time beef and burgundy pie. Ironic that the one time our local paper had the opportunity to use the word iconic almost correctly, it has completely missed this information which would be of far more interest than the iconic Sizzlers leaving town. (More on that shortly). Well That Didnt Take Long Did It? The Townsville Bulletin set the tone for the year on the very first day of 2019, Tuesday January 1, with a rib-tickling own goal with this front page.
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Wow, all those people turning up for a pic, where did they all come from? Well, at least half of them from nowhere. Heres how this little piece of patronizing chicanery went down. First, a couple of weeks ago, this appeared on the Astonishers FB page.
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Boy, be on the front page! And didnt that get them flocking in for their 15 minutes of fame not. Just 41 people made themselves available, including the Cowboys mascot and as many of the Bulletins staff who could be spared to avoid the embarrassment of attracting almost bugger interest.
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Then the front page appeared, a cheesy tedious old trope of people spelling out the year. Many people more than 41, it would seem. But hang on, lets have a closer look.
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Whats all this? This is what all this is.
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fair to say that all those excited people were beside themselves behind themselves, and then in front of themselves. Now a while back, the flagship of News Corpse tabloids, Sydneys Daily Telegraph got a clip arround its corporate ears for photo-shopping pics of politicians in unflattering historical situations. As if we needed to be told that Kevin Rudd was a nazi! Pretending to be chastised, management decreed that in future, just so no one was misled, all photoshopped images in all News publications would carry the legend digitally altered.Someone at the Astonisher overlooked this, clearly wishing the few readers it has left would believe it was so widely popular that it had attracted a throng of NY well-wishers. but it seems someone suddenly realised that some arsesole like The Magpie maybe would tumble to the lie, so thinking they could squirm out of it, they really blew their foot off by belatedly posting this on their FB page. The Pie has asked before, and now asks again are they all bloody drunk down there? BTW, the relevant FB page is said to have attracted 4500 views which at a guess that would be comprised of 4458 editorial and advertising staff and their family and friends frantically revisiting the FB as often as they could. At least that was the drill when The Pie was taking Ruperts shilling. But Wait, Theres More The firsts for the year kept coming thick and fast. This story had people wondering if the paper had a cut-price Tardis operating
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and that resulted in the first correction of the year.
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Although it is quite possible that Messagebank Walker, send out last years media release, and true to form, the reporter just wrote it up with a thought of what it was actually saying. f they would know the difference. Another media release that went into the paper untouched and of course unquestioned could have been headlined Mission Impossible.
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Hahahahaah gasp snurffle dont you just love the combination of casual impertinence and immeasurable benchmark of making Townsville Australias first mentally healthy city. This is pure Labor crackpottery at its best, and a great excuse to wring out a few more public dollars for pointless jobs for the boys and girls. Mentally healthy City steering committee? National leader in this field? Pray tell, just how is this going to be measured oh, wait, I know soon it will be announced that we have achieved the title of Australias mentally healthiest city, but we cant be told why or any details because of both privacy and Commercial in Confidence reasons. What an out and out rort. The Townsville City Council has no business stumping up a single cent for this totally obscure nonsense. And youve just gotta love that this call for a mentally healthy city is coming from one of the greatest rates-gouging, anxiety-creating, booze-binge inducing ineptocracies of posturing inadequates one couldnt create as fiction.
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And all publicised in a paper that has long abrogated its traditional responsibilities in the interests bargain-basement kiddy journalism and a quick advertising quid (and hows that working for you, eh?) Yet Another Jarring Juxtaposition And it would appear that either no one checks advertising content against news content to avoid this sort of blundering idiocy.
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But never mind, iditor Jenna Cairney knows how to thunder away about the really important issues affecting us during the week, it was oh, dear it was people who oh, The Pie cannot bear to utter the words, read it for yourself.
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Now normally, itd be kind to let this slide, but its hard to ignore when the iditorial completely contradicts its own ramblings by actually quoting one of the few believable people who work for the paper, fisherman Eddie Riddle, who said sometimes, believe it nor not, people just catch no crabs. Crab pot theft happens less than people would have you believe.Clearly those people who would have you believe that it is rife include the iditor and the beat-up reporter of the original story. Then There Is This From comments during the week. The Magpie From the alleged files: THE TOWNSVILLE BULLETIN ALLEGEDLY ACCUSES THE POLICE OF PLANTING EVIDENCE.
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So they allegedly found a shotgun, unequivocally meaning there is some doubt in terms of English, the paper means the cops could be lying and they didnt find a shotgun or else, leaving open the possibility that they planted it there and didnt find it. FFS they either did or did not find a shotgun, and if it comes down to who to believe the Bulletin or the police its no contest. The coppers should complain. And anyway, saying they found the weapon is not legally dangerous and so attract an allegedly , since no names or details of the arrested man are published. During the coming year, The Pie will be running an alleged file from the Astonisher, along with an iconic file the paper has already made a sterling start on that one. This from comments on Friday. The Magpie January 4, 2019 at 11:24 am(Edit) Had a bit of an amused warble and added this to The Pies iconic list.
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Iconic is something that is immediately recognisable, usually unique, and with which one readily associates with a name, place or occupation. The Eiffel Tower is iconic, as is the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Kabba in Mecca, the Golden gate Bridge, and closer to home, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Now alas with this local departure, down south, all the front bar chat and dinner party braying will be along the lines of Townsville? Wasnt that the Sizzler place until a while back? Oh, the shame. Keeping an eye on legendary, too. A Bigger Laugh From The Big Bash Crickets bumbling sandpaper cheat Cameron Bancroft returned to the crease this week in the Big Bash league, and the commentators were so busy tip-toeing around that elephant in the room, they managed to miss a wonderful howler made by their producer.
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The commentators, all ex-sporting boofs, so not much could be expected of them, unquestioningly rabbited on about Bancrofts personal attainments, especially that last one. Returned to Tame Impala as their kazoo player? They didn;t dare question the truth of the matter, but they did have a rare old yukity-yuk about it. The producer had unwittingly copied and pasted this bit of nonsense lifted from a story that was doing the rounds, and had originated guess where? The Betoota Advocate, Australias funniest satirical paper. And for the record, Bancroft has never been in the band Tame Impaler, which has never featured a kazoo player anyway. The Pie is wondering, given Bancrofts infamous South African venture, if Bunnings might not offer sponsorship. And Now Off To The Week In Trumpistan and its wall-eyed child President.
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. Thats it forn this week, and the silly season is coming to a close (not that you could tell at any time from our august organ of Flinders Street West), and some very interesting snippets have been dropping into the Nest for future examination. Wer will start on them next wee, but comments are running around the clock, so have your say. And any support by way of donation for the efforts over the coming year will as always be greatly appreciated. He how to donate button is below. http://www.townsvillemagpie.com.au/doing-a-little-with-a-lot-move-over-jesus-your-loaves-and-fishes-stunt-aint-in-it-against-the-townsville-bulletin/
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