#just because I feel the theatrical version is weirdly confusing at times | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

disaster-j · 2 years

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Thinking about it now... Eugene is pretty suspicious too. I mean girl literally left "Black" without anything, idk you'd kiss your boyfriend or smtg, leave him a note? She. just did her makeup in taxi and then cried in Gram's arms?

Even if they were meeting cuz idk they became friends and she was frustrated over her relationship with Black and Gram became her confidant... she literally just got drunk, they didn't even fight or anything the night before, she had no reason to be upset to cry in Gram's arms over her relationship with Black. So what was the whole theatrical crying about?

I don't doubt my man Gram, have no doubts about him whatsoever but I do find Eugene suspicious and especially after you mentioned her not being nice in the novel.

Okay so there's two possibilities for Eugene's character- either her being a more present and developed character means she's not an unnecessary antagonist in the show OR she is just a more present and well developed antagonist. So let's look at her scenes from both perspectives!

So far there are a few things we know about her: she's close to Gram, Black wanted to hide their relationship allegedly to protect her, he broke up with her right before he went and got himself beaten half to death, she seems to still be hung up on him and wants him back.

If we look at that scene with the bias that she must have some kind of ulterior motive, her actions that morning do seem strange. She spent the whole night trying to hook-up with "Black" and trying to get him to agree to get back together. Doesn't wake Black up in the morning, puts on make-up to go see Gram. Cries in his arms dramatically even though seemingly nothing has happened. Surely there's no logical explanation here?

Except that none of her actions are all that weird if you look at it from an unbiased perspective.

Imagine your boyfriend breaks up with you for no legitimate reason and then randomly calls you after avoiding you for a week or two. Shows up to your dance rehearsals, seems to want to talk. So you think okay maybe he wants me back and you happily show up to his place like you're used to and he completely ignores your advances and gets you drunk instead. He won't kiss you or touch you, he's super gruff and distant, way more than normal, and he refuses to give a proper answer about getting back together. You wake up with a hangover thinking well that didn't go as planned maybe he doesn't want me back and get tf out of there. You've slept in your make-up and didn't get a chance to freshen up so you touch up your make-up in the taxi so you don't look like a mess. You go meet up with your friend who asked to see you and you cry on his shoulder bc you're sad and disappointed by how things went with your ex. Sounds like a pretty reasonable thing to me.

The thing is we don't know who Eugene is to Gram but we do know that he cares about her. He was the one texting her the entire time she was seeing Black. He was the one wanting updates and asking to see her after and offering moral support. Isn't it likely that she was close to Gram first and met Black through him? And now their relationship has ended badly so he's trying to be there for his friend because Black seems fine and probably also because he feels guilty for being glad Black is single again.

I'm not saying there's no possibility that she has unsavoury motives but jumping to conclusions the way White does isn't a smart move with a show like this. We have to remember that the characters in the show are wildly different from the book- Kumpha, Dan, Sean, Namo and Todd are all very different from their book versions. We shouldn't assume that her character is an antagonist when all she has done is act upset over her ex being weirdly confusing. BLs have a long-standing tradition of villainising women just for getting in the way of a ship so it is easy to assume she's up to no good. But let's hold back suspicions until she actively does something genuinely suspicious. She was minding her own business until White and Todd dragged her back into Black's messy life.

#not me the series #not me #not me eugene #not me analysis #not me ask #film rachanun #listen #if she turns out to be a bad egg #then I'll admit y'all were right #but let's not act like putting on make up when you leave the house is suspicious #most women feel uncomfortable being in public without make-up #it's super fucking normal

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elindae-writes · 4 years

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Ok, this is all about your headcanons. Is Starscream the oldest/youngest/middle member of his trine? Did he get his trine before or after losing Skyfire? During his time in the Decepticons? How did he meet his trinemates? Was there a cool ceremony? Just tell me everything about Seekers! (Without major spoilers, of course.)

He’s the youngest and he trined Skywarp and Thundercracker after he lost Skyfire and also after he first met Megatron. So they were officially in a trine before they joined the Decepticons. He convinced them to join the ‘Cons and without spoiling too much now bitterly regrets roping them into joining Megatron.

The scenes in which he meets the boys and trines them are going to appear later on, maybe during the Orion Pax arc, so I don’t want to spoil those, but I will gladly indulge your request for cool Seeker facts.

Seekers think in three dimensions and not two due to them being flyers and always having to ascend/descend. This is part of the reason they are so claustrophobic, it’s because they are highly attuned to sensing what’s above them at all times and are therefore hyperaware of when the ceiling is too low.

In Seekercant the word for “grounder” is just “taxi-er” because whenever airplanes are about to take off they taxi around first, so Seekers basically just see grounders as wingless bots who taxi everywhere without taking off.

Seekers are unusual in that they see their alt-modes as their true natural forms and think of their bipedal root-modes as their actual alternate modes. This is weird even by flyer standards.

Seekers used to go on giant migrations. I haven’t entirely thought this out because I’m not sure where they’d actually migrate to--maybe they’d just all instinctively fly up and around Vos without leaving the city, or maybe they’d go off and visit ancient older nesting sites built by ancient Seekers. Either way I just like the imagery of thousands of Seekers blackening the skies with their numbers and then the sad image of Starscream trying to complete a grand Seeker migration all by himself because there is no one else left. But someone still needs to follow the ancient winds, so it’s gotta be him.

Starscream is tiny by Seeker standards and Dreadwing and Skyquake are actually more average-sized. It’s also my headcanon his RID frame used to be his old frame, so when Megs downsized him he got fussy about it because he genuinely felt like a bit of his Seeker heritage got taken away.

There were a bunch of different towers in Vos and they all had their own slightly different cultures. Seekers from one tower would whistle and chirp in Seekercant in slightly different tones than Seekers from another tower, like the way whales from different pods have their own unique dialects. Starscream’s fellow Seekers from his tower were infamous for speaking real fancy-like, I don’t know why but I just picture them as speaking in weirdly complex, vague, and mystical ways like the elves from the Lord of the Rings. Despite there being hundreds of different dialects each Seeker is capable of instinctively recognizing the dialect you’re speaking and can just tell what tower you’re from. There was also a Seeker equivalent of Australia somewhere in Vos and it was completely full of weird and intense Cybertronian animals, it was just like that one weird tower where all of the odd little drones and robots ended up. I just like the idea of Vosian Australian memes.

Starscream was from a really high-ranking family, aka the equivalent of Seeker nobility, and was maybe in line to become or at the very least is closely related to the Winglord. That’s why it was such a scandal when he got the heck out of Dodge and decided to abandon his proud noble military family so that he could go blow stuff up in a lab in Iacon.

Shuttles have their own culture, but are weirdly symbiotic with Seekers. I just like the imagery of throngs of tiny Seekers who wandered around their towers with the occasional giant shuttle just lumbering through. Shuttles adopted Seekers and vice versa. Seekers were extremely touchy about whoever adopts baby Seekerlings and shuttles were the only non-Seekers who were allowed to adopt them. When Starscream moved out of Vos and got himself a roommate in Iacon his family was like “who?? who is dwelling with you, I refuse to allow you to have a non-Seeker roommate, we’d much rather have you dwell alone then dirty yourself by living with an Iaconian--”

And then Starscream just sent over a picture of Skyfire and then his family just said “we will make an exception for him because he looks very polite”

Seekers were infamous across Cybertronian for being--I’m not sure if this is the right word--cryptids? They hate using doors, so if you’re a grounder and your Seeker buddy is bopping by for a visit you’ll just hear a soft tap tap tap by your window and you’dlllook over and see your winged friend waiting for you to open it up and maybe you’d shout something along the lines of “THE DOOR WORKS FINE”

And then your Seeker friend would just flare his wings and get all offended and it would be a whole thing--

Seekers very rarely make non-Seeker friends, but when they do they tend to make friendships for life. That is not foreshadowing, no, not at all. Non-fliers back on Cybertron would even leave their windows unlocked for their Seeker friends--even though the door would work just fine.

Another weird thing about Seekers is that they hate it when people actually see them entering or exiting a room. You’ll just turn around and a Seeker will be there, and then suddenly they won’t be, hence their cryptic reputation around Cybertron. They are infamous for being overdramatic and theatrical, but they just think of everybody else as being underdramatic.

They have no concept of personal space when in bipedal mode. When flying they normally have to fly wide apart in order to avoid collisions (military trines or just trines that are really in-synch are the exception, they normally flew only a few inches apart) so when in bipedal mode they make up for the lack of physical contact during flying by skooching up real close to each other when back on the ground. Seekers are very very good at forming neat and orderly lines. They have a tendency to sandwich confused and surprised grounders who are shocked to have their personal space so suddenly taken up by a bunch of pairs of wings.

Back when Vos was intact there was a big debate going on as to the proper way to teach your Seekerling to fly. There were two schools of thought:

Send your Seekerling to a school with safety nets and attentive instructors and teach the Seekerlings to just hover, then ascend three feet off the ground, then five feet, and then so on.

Or just chuck your Seekerling out of a tower 10,000 feet in the air while shouting “fLAP” and then just hoping for the best. That was how Starscream was taught. It’s also how he taught Eradicons to fly. He’d have them walk up to the edge, he’d go behind and just give them a good kick, and then shout “THIS IS THE VOSIAN WAY”

And then they’d return to the deck of the Nemesis, cold and shaking, and ask “why?”

And then Starscream would whisper back even more gently “it’s t r a d i t i o n”

Whenever Seekerlings were really really tiny, as in only a few weeks or months old, the adult Seekers would transform, then also have their Seekerling transform into a very smol plane, and then they would secure the Seekerling to their back before taking flight. It’s like when that Boeing jet carried space shuttle Endeavour around, but much cuter. Seekers carried their newsparks around on their backs between their wings and their wings would widen in order to create more room. You can actually tell if a Seeker has tended to newsparks by just looking at their back. Starscream babysitted a lot, so he has this modification. I just like the idea of Seekers walking around like possums with like six Seekerlings on their back, they gotta make room, it’s the only way I could think of to accomodate all the kiddos

Seekerlings are like newborn horses. They can get up and run--or in their case, transform and fly--right after being sparked. The moment their systems go online they then immediately fly off and crash somewhere. Seekerling caretakers had it rough.

Seekers had potlucks. Their systems require very fine and refined energon, so they are very good at tasting subtle flavors. In other words, Vos was home to the Cybertronian version of professional chefs. Their energon was famous for being gourmet and it would be served in fine-dining restaurants throughout the rest of Cybertron. But back in Vos they’d just casually serve each other what was essentially gourmet energon during potlucks like it was no big deal. Like imagine going to the neighbor’s potluck and they’re all eating caviar.

Seekers instinctively cluster around each other in multiples of three. Three’s a very a lucky number in their culture and they had a base-six counting system.

Trinebonds are mostly just full of a very intense and platonic brother love, but there were some trines in which you’d have two Seekers adopt a more parental role towards the third, and in some other trines there would be more romance involved, but for the most part they were just bros through and through.

When a Seeker dies the other two feel an agonizing pain, but will eventually re-trine with a new third in an attempt to feel whole again. Seekers who lose both trinemates will tend to have a full-on mental breakdown and will get so stressed that their spark will actually begin to flare erratically, which unfortunately prevents them from re-trining. Seekers who lost both trinemates and yet who managed to pull through the pain and trine again were treated with great respect.

Trined Seekers are capable of sensing what kind of vague mood their two buddies are feeling at any given time. They can detect when their trinemates are in root-mode or alt-mode or when they’re healthy or sick. Seekers will lose the ability to sense their trinebonds when there’s too much distance between them or whenever their trinemates go into a deep coma-like stasis that slows their spark down.

All of the Seekers in a tower would be almost always all distantly related. The Seekers who lived beneath you were your distant cousins on one side of your family and the Seekers who lived above you were your even more distant cousins but like 53 times removed, but still family and therefore still invited to the family potluck!! They’re all like hobbits in that they are obsessed with genealogy and will gladly talk about it for hours on end. Seekers will greet each other by explaining their genealogy. This really confuses grounders.

Some random grounder: “Oh, hi, how are you?”

Starscream, probably: “I AM STARSCREAM SON OF STARFLIGHT SON OF SKYECHO SON OF AIRHALO SON OF SWIFTWING--”

The poor grounder: *softly* “What the fuck”

If you don’t interrupt the Seeker then they will just keep recounting their genealogy on the assumption that you are actually intrigued. This can go for hours. Seekers are mortified when they learn that grounders do not know the names, personalities, likes, dislikes, and favorite childhood snacks of their distant great-great-great-great-great grandfathers.

Orphaned Seekers who didn’t know their genealogy had multiple options: get adopted, then just list off the adopted family’s bloodline, or if they didn’t get adopted then they’d just list off the names of Vos’s mythological heroes and figures, or maybe even just claim Primus as their ancestor (which isn’t even wrong.) This is kind of like how people in ancient times claimed to be descended from gods. The human equivalent of this would be some dude walking up to you and saying “I am Bob, son of Zeus!”

Some Seeker towers had certain naming conventions. Like you’d have one tower full of Seekers who are all named after cloud formations, and another tower full of Seekers named after noises, like “whistle” or “blast,” and you guessed it--maybe even “scream.”

To be honest I’m not sure if I want Starscream to be a very common or very rare name. Vos was made up of ancient warring clans that all united under the first Winglord (he/she took Vos under their “wing” hence the title) and maybe they could’ve been named Starscream? In most human societies everybody and their neighbor always would want to name their kiddos after the current ruler, but in Vos maybe it was very rare and very bold of Seekers to name their child after the current ruler because it would be seen as an attempt to snatch up that ruler’s glory. So to name your Seekerling Starscream would be the Vosian equivalent of naming your son Gaius Julius Caesar. He’s an intense bot so it makes sense that he’d also have a very intense name.

But then again I also like the idea of the Autobots just thinking of Starscream’s name as being weird and rich and odd and e x o t i c but then finding out it’s the Vosian equivalent of John Smith and that there were eight Starscreams on any block at any given time.

Maybe Seekers would change their name whenever they have a big event happen to them, like a trining for example. I think a culture obsessed around airflow would be fine with people changing aspects of their identity like that because then you’re being like the wind, flowing and changing with the same wind that carries you. It’s also my headcanon that this is why Seekers change their frames a lot more. Your frame isn’t you, it contains you, and if you change then it would be really weird not to change the way you look too.

Despite being really lax about some things Seekers can be very very strict and traditional about other things, such as etiquette. If you’re meeting a new Seeker for the first time and you rotate your wings 70 degrees clockwise that means “may the skies of the holy 70th tower of Vos bless you” but if you rotate your wings anti-clockwise it means “I curse your grandfather!” And then Starscream would just gasp in horror and then shout “DO NOT BESMIRCH THE MEMORY OF SKYECHO”

Some Seeker names were common--like, too common. There were a few thousand Skyechoes, Windblasts, and Driftwings who drifted around at any given moment. This made role-call in school very painful. Some caretakers would try to be edgy about it. “Oh, my son isn’t named Driftwing, he’s named Dreadwing!”

Seekers cremated their dead but in the most intense way possible. They took their dead up and just let them burn up in the atmosphere so that they can become one with the sky. This resulted in some pretty spectacular meteor showers.

Same random grounder: “What a beautiful shooting star!”

Starscream, casually: “Oh, that’s my grandpa, SKYECHO SON OF AIRHALO SON OF SWIFTWING--”

Same unfortunate grounder: “wHAT--”

Seekers make noises all the time and are very rarely silent. They hum when content, beep when excited, chirp when riled up, rumble when confused, trill when happy, and so on. Starscream used to be a chatterbox but was forced to repress his chitterings because Megatron would always tell him to shut up. He’s going to trill more and more throughout Unburied, especially around Optimus.

Seeker towers were infamous for their weird architecture. They weren’t designed to ever be wandered around in while in your bipedal mode. No staircases, period. Just extremely tall ceilings and arches with curved corridors everybody flew through with lots of balconies you could land on. There were lots of holes in the wall that they could fly through that led to actual rooms where they would transform and be bipedal (berthrooms, washracks, etc) but then after they slept/ate/partied they were just like “that was fun guys, gotta go” and then just flung themselves out of a hole in the wall over a 1,000 foot drop and then just transformed in midair and flew off. Grounders couldn’t visit the towers due to there being no grounder-friendly infrastructure. Special buildings had to be built near the ground to help accommodate visiting grounders, but you only ever really saw these kinds of grounder-friendly accommodations in towers meant to receive diplomats.

They had bathhouses in their towers, like the ancient Romans but with robots instead of old dudes in togas. Just giant birdbaths basically. Just lots and lots of splashing and chittering.

Seekers preen themselves, their circuitry is delicate and even the slightest of contaminants can cause big problems. That’s why they have such sharp talons---for getting in the small spots. And for stabbing people. That’s a nice bonus, too. They preen each other all the time. There were some regions on their wings that could be preened by anybody, but some other parts of the wings that could only be preened by close friends such as trinemates. So the outer planes of the wing could be preened by just a general buddy, but the actual area where they connect to the back? That’s trinemate-only territory right there. It’s not a sexual thing, just a cultural taboo they had.

When Dreadwing makes his grand debut I think I might have a scene in which him and Starscream are preening each other while angrily bickering, not because they actually like each other, but just because they’re the only Seekers around and Starscream’s had a rock stuck in his wing seam and slag it, Dreadwing is the only bot who knows how to get it out--so it’d just be angry bird bickering and arguing preen time.

“You killed my brother!”

Starscream would then flutter angrily and say something like, “NO, BUMBLEBEE DID, STOP BLAMING ME--please get that rock out of my wing seam k thX--IT WAS THE SCOUT’S FAULT!”

And then Dreadwing would just be like, “Skyquake is dead, and it’s all YOUR FAULT--I also have a rather unfortunate rock located in my wing seam, can you remove that--and it’s because of your cowardice I am now brotherless!”

Seeker talons were actually retractable. Some Seekers would have their talons out literally all the time though, these were Seekers who were high-ranking in the military or who were just on some quest of personal revenge. After the war began they modified their talons to just always be sharp because you don’t want to accidentally retract them when in battle.

I am only just now realizing that this got kind of long, huh. I hope this wasn’t too much!! I might post more Seeker headcanons in the future.

#starscream #unburied #transformers #transformers:prime #headcanons #worldbuilding #seeker culture #fanfiction

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theelliottsmiths · 4 years

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Could you please liveblog the making of Amerika?

Yes

I'm anticipating complaining about the penis zip guy already

Did you know that for a long time as a child I thought the English version was the real version? Cause I did

The bit where they're putting the paint on their faces is weirdly cute even though Richard looks kind of silly

Flake grow out your long hair pleaseee just like. A cute little bob again. I would listen to him talk for hours honestly I like the way he pronounced the words and his tone language doesn't matter

You can always tell by how he holds his face vs his eyes when he's joking "that's what this song is for: to sneak ourselves into their hearts" i feel like they have done that pretty well. For some reason it seems like most of the American fans are from the Midwest but maybe that's just coincidence

Rammstein saying they have no message except "Fleisch, Fleisch" or "ja" or "ich will" I forgot this entire thing is ceaseless dunking and sarcasm

i like the sounds he makes like the. There's a name for them what is it. The noises you make between words for emphasis etc? Those

"America was so fucking annoying we felt the need to call them out on it"

Oli talks a little like he's trying not to yawn. Them saying the war was on while they were in the practice room is strange considering how long the various wars had been going on just from like a born in the late 90s living in 2020 perspective

Ah yes you really were. So subtle. It's very. Clever many double meanings

"sehr gut, Till". :).

The sehnsucht thing tickles me so much he starts off by saying yes it's better to leave things up for interpretation and naturally my brain assumes he means the well thought out probably not true but poetic stuff, right, and then he goes on to say Americans thought sehnsucht was chainsaw and I cannot

The knife also is good.

In a way Amerika as a video is a precursor Ausländer and I like seeing how it compares because its

AS I WAS TYPING THAT OLI SAID THE WORD AUSLÄNDER

Oli does not seem happy to have his words captured At All

I wonder how many people did the Deutschland thing and went straight to saying it's racist without thinking through the reasons behind what they were doing (at least in part criticising American racism) I'm pretty sure l've seen someone complain about it somewhere like it was serious, I think on Reddit around the time the Ausländer Making of came out? Which is why I bring it up

"we wanted to make it clear that it wasn't a love song so these lyrics are perfect" Till: literally just saying this is not a love song

I would like to see them perform a cheer in proper cheerleader costumes instead of the uncomfy stickman Deutschland dance that makes me cringe my skeleton right out of my skin in 2021 please

The juxtaposition of Richards pro-america comments and flakes sarky comments about how nice the urinals are is so reminiscent of that post that's like America where freedom is the choice between thirty kinds of bread that you can't afford to buy

I was going to make a Regan's grave joke but I do prefer to keep that one for Margaret Thatchers grave

I like schneiders hair at this length

Schneiders capacity to oscillate so wildly between being a vacant dumbass and saying intelligent and thought out things is ceaselessly amazing

Saying it's hard because "it's like a punk concert for them" Jörn my guy my dude almost all of them were in punk bands I just checked and this was 2004 Feeling b only broke up in the 90s do you literally just mean Oli (I do not remember if there was any punk going on in the Inchtabokatables) or

Schneider is making it look so easy was he truly just so -_- about feeling b that he can be completely calm in the face drumming that fast? Cause we know usually his fast drumming involves screaming faces and or actual screaming I swear he does and it's just not hearable under the music sidenote he sings along sometimes and if he does it out loud I NEED to hear it

Richard when it's slowed down looks uh. Looks like he's eh. Hm. Is that the real reason people are so into guitarists?

I don't know which part of the sentence Glasses Paul says in that louder voice (schossen? Is he saying that/shot?) but I do like it if I knew more German I would take on way more Rammstein things as echoes you have no idea how much time I spend saying es reicht wenn hier so 'nen fleischfarbenen Draht lang legst which If that's wrong it's exactly what I was told he said so please correct it but it's not my fault unless you consider it my fault for not knowing enough German in which case it is my fault

But anyway yes hes Talking like its a museum tour and in his little glasses and shirt and everything he is totally playing the part of unhinged historian which is the best kind of historian honestly if you're going to be academic in nature you might as well be fucking mental

I want to know what vibes his speech gives off in German because to me he in English and German seems very theatrical in the way he talks? Including how much he rolls his rs it's very... Showy? But maybe not actually?

I forget how many videos Jörn has shot with them honestly

What do you do with this ash sand once your finished with? Some of them had kids I'd have taken it home and pretended it was real moon dust or something

They really go for it when they decide to do something like this and it really is admirable. It's rare they'll half-ass something and even when if feels like their director has they don't themselves

Richard looks very handsome in his space suit before they hang him up

Pretti

He looks like a marionette now nevermind

THIS FUCKER

I just. Do. Not. Enjoy this man I'm sorry to you and the mullet man I'm sure he's great but for fucks SAKE man he

TILL LITERALLY SAYS DONALD SUTHERLAND POINTS TO HIS DICK AND MIMES ZIPPING YOU KNOW WHAT HE'S FUCKING TALKING ABOUT SO WHY DO YOU LOOK SO CONFUSED

YOU TOLD HIM THE STORY YOU KNOW WHY HES SAYING DONALD SUTHERLAND AND POINTING TO HIS PENIS WHY ARE YOU SO GORMLESS

Look. I have nothing against Americans individually B is American Nick is American i love them dearly i know also other Americans a lot of you guys are Americans and I love you lots but here's the thing why are Americans like this

If it's not in English the brain turns off even if the context is obvious it's like when English people see Welsh/English signs and are so anti-welsh that they don't acknowledge that they're also in English and get angry that they don't know where they are

The sweetest little face though!

Softest boy ever besides Rosenrot Till

Till gets bored of the guy and decides to tell a story about a dick it's very him

This is the hair I think of when I think of Till this is the quintessential till haircut no?

God I do dislike this man

Tills voice is so so high here I adore him so completely it's so soft and high and the song is Not

If you're trying to learn how to say L sounds like a German I feel like richard is the easiest one to copy? Unless they're all weirdos and no other German says L sounds like that. Him and flake.

Flakes smile is more cheerful than Paul's there I said it

I know it's not foreshadowing but Jörn foreshadowing Ausländer

Richard talking about America's tendancy to exaggerate is really interesting since that's something the community as a whole seems to agree is a personality trait of his. They didn't fight, they almost broke up. He hates touring and yet he loves touring. Is that why he likes it there or is living there why he's like that?

Can you casually buy ten litres of orange juice? The boys are busy they cannot confirm and Google does not understand what I'm asking

Yeah Richard and Till, get closer

Knife

Schneiders handprint

I forgot about "there was a rumour in the DDR that America didn't exist" what is it with Germany and conspiracies about places not existing I'm there are tears in my eyes I genuinely I never watch this one flake is so fucking funny

Till talking pictures of the others

It's better than I give it credit for in my memory is there anything they've made that is in not a single way entertaining? I feel like no

Thank you for asking for this one it was every fun actually

#me rambling #rammstein #liveblog #amerika #complete liveblog

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grell-writes-stuff · 4 years

Text

A Self Indulgent First Chapter

Enjoy...something

Words: 2,549

Genre: Young Adult / Paranormal

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Slam!

Gasp!

And then the apathetic yell of “Walk it off, Willow!” from Coach Martin. No stopping the game or running over to make sure I’m not deprived of air or dying or something. Just “Walk it off, Willow!”

I suffer for a second with the wind knocked out of my body. My inhaler finds its way from my pocket to my hand, and while I hold the one breath I force myself into and wait for my crap lungs to jump-start again, I contemplate the most-likely-illegal play that landed me flat on my back in the middle of the field. Quarterback Tom Styles’ outstretched elbow connecting with my neck at full speed in his chase for the checkered ball and high school sports glory, clearly confusing his claim-to-fame varsity moves with a pickup game of soccer since I doubt he has the brain cells to remember the rules to two sports at once. And probably a little bit on purpose. Because he’s a dick.

My chest wheezes a little, but at least it’s something, and the weak inhales finally start to catch as a sun-freckled face appears above me and blocks out the light. Ivy offers me her hand.

“Did th-that look a-as bad as it f-felt?” I sputter.

Ivy tilts her head from side-to-side like it’s the scale measuring how uncool I am. “Worse. Very pathetic. You will die alone.” She yanks me to my feet and acts like a support in spite of the height difference.

“P-Please stop making m-me take gym with y-you.”

“Nah. It’s too funny.” She ignores my scowl. “Come on. Let’s get you some water and wait for those shitty lungs to work again.”

She escorts me – hobbling like some eighty-year-old man with spine problems and not just what will soon be a terrible, ugly bruise – toward the bleachers, empty except for the water bottles of our classmates. I’m happy enough to sit on the sidelines, not just while recovering from having all of the air robbed from my chest, but for the rest of gym class, and also forever. Ivy is equally as happy, but only because it prompts the girls’ teacher, Coach Caruthers, to scream in her booming voice:

“Hammond! Back on the field!”

Without missing a beat, Ivy responds, “In the event of moderate injury, students are allowed to have a friend or fellow student for mental, emotional, or physical support. It’s in the code of conduct.”

I don’t know if that’s actually something in our school’s rule book, but Ivy has read the whole thing cover-to-cover for the sole purpose of seeing how many provisions she can disregard without getting into trouble through malicious acts of over-compliance or sheer dumb luck. So, she’s either following the rules to the letter or lying about them. As I sit, I see that Caruthers does not look impressed when Ivy plops onto the bench next to me. The whole reason our gender-segregated phys. ed classes collaborate so often is because they’re full of athletes – and me, the outlier – so more often than not, it’s just an extra practice for the varsity players. Even though Ivy was born with the “good at physical stuff” gene, and talented enough to be a forward on our girls’ soccer team, she prefers to rely on the natural part of her ability and not the practice part to the vexation of literally everyone.

“Hammond!” Caruthers screams. “On the field, or off the team!”

Ivy squirts a stream of water into her mouth and quickly swallows before passing the bottle on to me. “Cool. Who’s replacing me?” she retorts.

I focus on downing some water and breathing evenly again and not on the vein beginning to pop out of Caruthers’ angry-red neck. She can’t say anything back because, well, Kinross High School isn’t huge. Pretty much everyone who can play sports is already playing sports, and as far as Ivy’s tendency to disrespect anyone of authority can go, she’s also crucial to securing victory over visiting teams. Caruthers just grits her teeth and returns to refereeing the game where Tom Styles has once again stolen the ball that got away from him, this time without incapacitating anybody since the one guy with asthma has left the field. (Asshole.) I watch as Abby Jefferson starts to gain on him, and Tom makes the choice to skillfully send the ball flying across the grass to the next open player, Drew Young, the only person in our gym class who does even less than I do.

That’s not for lack of talent either. I’ve seen Drew actually try on the rare occasion, and he could absolutely score a spot on a boys’ sports team. But most games, like today, he receives the pass and kicks the ball along to the next open player – it’s intercepted by one of the girls – and continues pacing the field leisurely. Coach Martin yells at him to get his head in the game, but Drew doesn’t bother. If the activity doesn’t involve selling the pens that he stole from the cheerleaders to the football team, the little weasel has no interest.

The game continues on.

Ivy reclines until her shoulders are touching the bench behind us, tilting her head back and staring at the sky. I have to wonder how comfortable it is.

“My dear Sid,” she theatrically addresses me. She likes to be dramatic sometimes. She thinks it’s funny. “I have a proposal for you.”

“I told you I’m not training a messenger pigeon with you. We only live three houses apart.”

“I’ll wear you down eventually, but no, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.” She looks over at me without breaking her questionable position. “I know what we’re doing tonight. I’ve concocted a perfect plan, you see, for this most All-Hallowed of Eves.”

“You can say ‘Halloween’ like a normal person. It’s okay.”

“Let me bring you back in time,” she continues, ignoring me, “to the Kinross of yore. Just decades after its founding, the Salem Witch Trials came about and our town was no exception to the noose–”

“Salem is two hours away, Ivy,” I interrupt with the fact.

“Shut up. The Salem Witch Trials swept across the state of Massachusetts, migrated into Kinross, and thus the most famous trial of Kinross history was set in motion when one Ann Kelly was accused of being a creature of the occult!”

“Can I get the abridged version of this plan please?” I ask her. “Like, the part that takes place in this century?”

Finally fed up with my interjections, Ivy sighs exaggeratedly and rolls her eyes at me. “Blah, blah, blah, she was hanged, she’s buried in the historical section of Riverview, and we’re going there tonight during the witching hour to see” – she switches to her best spooky voice with elongated, trembling vowels – “her haunted grave.”

“Hard pass.”

That makes her sit upright again with a slouch to her posture. She’s wearing a fabricated pout. “Sid,” she whines.

“Ivy, I’m not sneaking out with you at three in the morning on Halloween to go see a ‘haunted grave.’” She opens her mouth, but I follow up with, “Our parents would kill us. Besides, what’s-her-name probably just angered a bunch of Puritans and got executed because of religious prejudice. That doesn’t mean she was a witch.”

“Well, of course. I think angering Puritans was a mandatory activity back then. But come on, Sid! The legend says she’s a witch, and it’s the perfect Halloween thing! I think we are obligated – if not encouraged by the spirit of Halloween herself – to go see a ghost witch.”

“Does the spirit of Halloween have a gender?”

Ivy pushes past that and waits to catch my eye dead-on. “Bet you a hundred bucks we actually see Ann Kelly’s phantom.”

My lips part to say no just a split second before I register the number. “Wait – a hundred?”

Something cocky has taken up her face, and she recites with inflated confidence, “Ten A-Hams. A Franklin. A thousand Roosevelts.”

“You know what? Fine. I’ll take your money,” I tell her. “You’re on.”

Her grin is smug as we fist-bump on it and close the deal, but I decide that I don’t care so much with the promise of an easy hundred dollars coming my way. Ivy ingests another stream of water, and swallows while her eyes quickly scan the grass to catch up with the game again. Suddenly, a yell flies from her mouth:

“Box him out, Julia! Come on!”

Then she’s up off the bleachers and jogging back out onto the field. As unwilling as Ivy is to make an effort and practice, she’s also equally as competitive, even if this is just a gym class where victory doesn’t really matter. I, on the other hand, take my time on the bench. Struggling to breathe isn’t my idea of fun. I need to stop letting Ivy manipulate me into taking phys. ed. If she keeps it up, she might kill me.

***

I can nearly be qualified as a mess by the time Ivy and I reach our lockers after final period, and she’s humming like she’s got live wires for veins despite just spending an hour burning off energy. Meanwhile, I’m still recovering from my last bout of airlessness after I returned to the field and ran for maybe ten minutes. And I feel gross. The benefit of having P.E. last period is that I don’t have to shower here and can wait until I get home or to Ivy’s. The con is the window of time in between. I usually try to keep the gap as short as possible, and therefore, my time at my locker brief. I think Ivy and I took enough time getting changed after gym to avoid most people – at least the non-athletes.

“Hi, Sidney! Hi, Ivy!”

A mixture of feelings suddenly rockets through me and don’t add up in the end. While my chest is beginning to slowly overclock, and the hallway seems a few degrees warmer and rising steadily, I’m ready to play dead as Naomi Park opens the locker right next to mine on the opposite side of Ivy’s. Her shoulder is a fraction of an inch from touching my arm which is probably too close when I’m still drenched in gym sweat. Ivy greets her politely with ease while my brain is trying to catch up with the mundane situation and not think about how she smells like some kind of flowery perfume and I smell like crap.

“Hey, Naomi,” leaves my mouth and sounds too drawn-out and weirdly cheesy, so I just try to smile to make up for it. That feels awkward too, but she thankfully doesn’t seem to react to that, and her glossy pink lips tilt up without much effort into a perfect grin.

She puts some books on the shelf in her locker. “Any exciting Halloween plans?”

“Nope,” Ivy says immediately, likely because our actual idea involves a wager and might not be entirely legal – it’s a misdemeanor at the least. I just take the hint and don’t add anything to refute her answer.

“You? Any plans? For tonight – Halloween?” I wish that had come out differently. It could have at least sounded coherent.

“Nothing tonight,” Naomi responds. “But Heather’s having a ‘Belated Halloween Bash’ on Saturday while her parents are out of town so I’m ‘required’ to be there.”

“Oh, cool. That’s…cool.”

“I guess so. Heather’s parties get a little boring after a while though. I bet your plans for Saturday are much more fun.”

“Yep. Pints of ice cream, horror movies, and making bets on how long it takes Sid to hurl when the blood starts gushing,” Ivy interjects.

“Ivy.” I mutter the snap of her name so it doesn’t sound as harsh as I want it to. The temperature in the hallway rises astronomically.

Naomi giggles, which hurts. Well, it would if her laugh wasn’t so musical and twinkly. It’s like a damn harp quartet. “Sounds like a good time,” she comments. Her locker door shuts. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Yeah, totally – tomorrow. See ya’, Naomi!” She’s nearly out of earshot down the hall, and I wait until I know she definitely can’t hear anything before I say to Ivy without daring a look at her, with the heat of embarrassment and shame boiling me alive from the inside, “Please say nothing.”

I can hear the grin on her face when she speaks. “You realize she’s just another human being, right?”

“Are you kidding? She’s at the right hand of Heather Loch. She’s popular. I’m shocked she still knows my name.”

Ivy shuts her own locker with a characteristic slam. “Dude, you’re ridiculous. She likes you back. If you just talked to her, and told her that you like her, you would have a girlfriend.”

“Ivy, she thinks I’m a loser.”

“I think you’re a loser and I still like you sometimes.”

I roll my eyes and can’t say anything to that. I don’t care if Ivy thinks I’m lame. It’s not the same. We’ve been together for as long as I can remember, so at this point, she’s locked into this friendship, no matter how easy it would be for her to hang out with the people at Kinross High who are actually popular and liked.

I close my locker and we start walking to the main exit of the building and eventually across the school’s student parking lot. Some groups linger, but most people seem to be dispersing and heading home for the day. Ivy and I walk straight through the lot as always, avoiding the cars pulling out.

I want to avoid the Styles’ Ford Everest – which is so bright red that it’s an assault on the eyes – but we have to walk past it and the clump of popular kids loitering next to it: blonde, perfect, popular Heather Loch, Asshole Quarterback Tom and his not-as-terrible twin, Ed, and my locker neighbour and secret crush, Naomi. The girls are under the guys’ arms like they belong there, popular with popular. There’s usually not much interaction between our pair and their group because I’m pretty sure most of the popular kids either don’t know who I am or just hate me for no reason, but today Tom decides to rub in his full-contact plays on the soccer field.

“Nice moves out there, Pussy Willow!” he shouts clear across the lot. It makes me feel the bruise on my back, still fresh, but I’m past the point of being mad about it. Really, Tom’s just an annoying jerk, and that’s all he’ll ever be.

I try to tap into Ivy-like sarcasm and passiveness. “I get it. Because my last name is Willow, and you’re insulting me. That’s really funny. It’s original.”

He yells something back that includes one of Ivy’s favourite swear words, but we disregard it and turn out of the parking lot in the direction of our houses. Ivy states that we’re going to my place because, in her mind, it’s easier to sneak out of a single-parent household. I don’t try to refute it because arguing with Ivy when she has her mind made up is like talking to a brick wall.

#writing #wip #untitled #my writing #my ocs #ya #young adult #writeblr

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