#justice for original taylor kelly

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women.”

Recently, a Google Alert informed me that I am the subject of deepfake pornography. I wasn’t shocked. For more than a year, I have been the target of a widespread online harassment campaign, and deepfake porn—whose creators, using artificial intelligence, generate explicit video clips that seem to show real people in sexual situations that never actually occurred—has become a prized weapon in the arsenal misogynists use to try to drive women out of public life. The only emotion I felt as I informed my lawyers about the latest violation of my privacy was a profound disappointment in the technology—and in the lawmakers and regulators who have offered no justice to people who appear in porn clips without their consent. Many commentators have been tying themselves in knots over the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence—deepfake videos that tip elections or start wars, job-destroying deployments of ChatGPT and other generative technologies. Yet policy makers have all but ignored an urgent AI problem that is already affecting many lives, including mine.

Last year, I resigned as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, a policy-coordination body that the Biden administration let founder amid criticism mostly from the right. In subsequent months, at least three artificially generated videos that appear to show me engaging in sex acts were uploaded to websites specializing in deepfake porn. The images don’t look much like me; the generative-AI models that spat them out seem to have been trained on my official U.S. government portrait, taken when I was six months pregnant. Whoever created the videos likely used a free “face swap” tool, essentially pasting my photo onto an existing porn video. In some moments, the original performer’s mouth is visible while the deepfake Frankenstein moves and my face flickers. But these videos aren’t meant to be convincing—all of the websites and the individual videos they host are clearly labeled as fakes. Although they may provide cheap thrills for the viewer, their deeper purpose is to humiliate, shame, and objectify women, especially women who have the temerity to speak out. I am somewhat inured to this abuse, after researching and writing about it for years. But for other women, especially those in more conservative or patriarchal environments, appearing in a deepfake-porn video could be profoundly stigmatizing, even career- or life-threatening.

As if to underscore video makers’ compulsion to punish women who speak out, one of the videos to which Google alerted me depicts me with Hillary Clinton and Greta Thunberg. Because of their global celebrity, deepfakes of the former presidential candidate and the climate-change activist are far more numerous and more graphic than those of me. Users can also easily find deepfake-porn videos of the singer Taylor Swift, the actress Emma Watson, and the former Fox News host Megyn Kelly; Democratic officials such as Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the Republicans Nikki Haley and Elise Stefanik; and countless other prominent women. By simply existing as women in public life, we have all become targets, stripped of our accomplishments, our intellect, and our activism and reduced to sex objects for the pleasure of millions of anonymous eyes.

Men, of course, are subject to this abuse far less frequently. In reporting this article, I searched the name Donald Trump on one prominent deepfake-porn website and turned up one video of the former president—and three entire pages of videos depicting his wife, Melania, and daughter Ivanka. A 2019 study from Sensity, a company that monitors synthetic media, estimated that more than 96 percent of deepfakes then in existence were nonconsensual pornography of women. The reasons for this disproportion are interconnected, and are both technical and motivational: The people making these videos are presumably heterosexual men who value their own gratification more than they value women’s personhood. And because AI systems are trained on an internet that abounds with images of women’s bodies, much of the nonconsensual porn that those systems generate is more believable than, say, computer-generated clips of cute animals playing would be.

As I looked into the provenance of the videos in which I appear—I’m a disinformation researcher, after all—I stumbled upon deepfake-porn forums where users are remarkably nonchalant about the invasion of privacy they are perpetrating. Some seem to believe that they have a right to distribute these images—that because they fed a publicly available photo of a woman into an application engineered to make pornography, they have created art or a legitimate work of parody. Others apparently think that simply by labeling their videos and images as fake, they can avoid any legal consequences for their actions. These purveyors assert that their videos are for entertainment and educational purposes only. But by using that description for videos of well-known women being “humiliated” or “pounded”—as the titles of some clips put it—these men reveal a lot about what they find pleasurable and informative.

Ironically, some creators who post in deepfake forums show great concern for their own safety and privacy—in one forum thread that I found, a man is ridiculed for having signed up with a face-swapping app that does not protect user data—but insist that the women they depict do not have those same rights, because they have chosen public career paths. The most chilling page I found lists women who are turning 18 this year; they are removed on their birthdays from “blacklists” that deepfake-forum hosts maintain so they don’t run afoul of laws against child pornography.

Effective laws are exactly what the victims of deepfake porn need. Several states—including Virginia and California—have outlawed the distribution of deepfake porn. But for victims living outside these jurisdictions or seeking justice against perpetrators based elsewhere, these laws have little effect. In my own case, finding out who created these videos is probably not worth the time and money. I could attempt to subpoena platforms for information about the users who uploaded the videos, but even if the sites had those details and shared them with me, if my abusers live out of state—or in a different country—there is little I could do to bring them to justice.

Representative Joseph Morelle of New York is attempting to reduce this jurisdictional loophole by reintroducing the Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act, a proposed amendment to the 2022 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Morelle’s bill would impose a nationwide ban on the distribution of deepfakes without the explicit consent of the people depicted in the image or video. The measure would also provide victims with somewhat easier recourse when they find themselves unwittingly starring in nonconsensual porn.

In the absence of strong federal legislation, the avenues available to me to mitigate the harm caused by the deepfakes of me are not all that encouraging. I can request that Google delist the web addresses of the videos in its search results and—though the legal basis for any demand would be shaky—have my attorneys ask online platforms to take down the videos altogether. But even if those websites comply, the likelihood that the videos will crop up somewhere else is extremely high. Women targeted by deepfake porn are caught in an exhausting, expensive, endless game of whack-a-troll.

The Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act won’t solve the deepfake problem; the internet is forever, and deepfake technology is only becoming more ubiquitous and its output more convincing. Yet especially because AI grows more powerful by the month, adapting the law to an emergent category of misogynistic abuse is all the more essential to protect women’s privacy and safety. As policy makers worry whether AI will destroy the world, I beg them: Let’s first stop the men who are using it to discredit and humiliate women.

Nina Jankowicz is a disinformation expert and the author of How to Be a Woman Online and How to Lose the Information War.

[lo-diehards]

NBC's Law & Order Franchise -- A Franchise in Disarray

NBC's Law & Order franchise (which started with the original series in 1990) has seen numerous changes over the years, but in this post-COVID-19 era of television, some of these new changes are not for the good.

The Law & Order 2022 reboot is lacking what made it's original run legacy television, Special Victims Unit lost a beloved show runner/executive producer (Warren Leight who decided the leave at the end of season 23) and cast member (Kelli Giddish, who was fired at the start of season 24, which later resulted in controversy as details of her firing came to light), and Organized Crime which has had a revolving door of show runners/executive producers since it's inception BEFORE it even made it to air.

I'm going to start in sequential order in which negative change [IN MY OPINION] came into play with this once beloved TV franchise that was once taglined by critics and press as "Must See TV/Most Watched Television"

Please Click the read more tab below to read my thoughts on the brand and what I feel can be done to correct the course of the brand, before it's too late... hang on to your seats!

Law & Order: Organized Crime (2021-present, season 3) - a Disorganized Mess.

The Christopher Meloni led series has had numerous complications behind the scenes since the show's inception pre-production. Chicago P.D.'s Matt Olmstead co-created the show with Dick Wolf (and later Ilene Chaiken) and Olmstead left the production after the pilot ("What Happens in Puglia") to be replaced by Chaiken (of The L Word fame). Law & Order: OC never started with much of a premise and a way to establish itself as it started with Stabler mostly bringing Kathy Stabler's killers (the Wheatley's: portrayed by Dylan McDermott and Tamara Taylor) to justice. And in between that, Stabler and the unit going in and out of undercover assignments. The Organized Crime Control Bureau has never really been fleshed out since the series start; season 3 brought some new detectives into the fold to assist with that but storylines in the serialized series have been all over the place.

While Organized Crime was meant to distance itself from the formula of the Law & Order brand, it doesn't feel like a Law & Order show - it feels more like the Stabler show to where we mostly see Stabler as IMO this almost vigilante cop seeking retribution, in this day and age (and Stabler's because he should definitely be matured from this kind of mindset), it doesn't work. This show lacks "the Law & Order feel" (title cards don't even exist in this show except for one episode, "Gimmie Shelter") and I believe it's why the series doesn't hold audience much as SVU or even the rebooted mothership.

It doesn't help that the show is now on it's 6th show runner, being SVU's David Graziano (who is surrounded by a controversy of his own that seems to be being pushed under the rug and ignored by higher ups at the network and at Wolf Entertainment). Olmstead, Chaiken, Barry O'Brien, Bryan Goluboff from SVU, Sean Jablonski and now Graziano. What ever is going on behind the scenes at OC needs to come to a full stop otherwise this show won't make it to syndication status (5 seasons, 100 episodes). This show has a super talented cast that deserve the best; Danielle Moné Truitt and Ainsley Sieger absolutely shine!

Law & Order (reboot 2022-present, season 2) - more like crash & burn.

Now this show is really pushing my buttons and it's only because of how the stories are being written for this reboot starting from the very first episode. Dick Wolf and the network decided to give the mothership it's very much deserved second chance (it never should have been canceled) and they've managed to put together a stellar cast out of Jeffery Donovan (Burn Notice), Hugh Dancy (Hannibal), Odelya Halevi, and Camryn Manheim. Sam Waterston returned as Jack McCoy and this season Mehcad Brooks (Supergirl, Necessary Roughness) replaced Anthony Anderson who only opted to do one season.

I'm not going to sugar coat this, making Rick Eid (who 'developed' a show that was already developed once back in 1988/1990 when he was still in grade school - it's a reboot where nothing has changed formula wise!) the show runner/EP over this series is a very poor business decision. Eid has had a poor history within the Law & Order franchise itself. He was part of a writing team that Dick Wolf and the network had to intervene and dismiss back in 2007 due to declining ratings on mother ship due to the decline in the quality of the writing at that time, Wolf made him show runner over Law & Order: SVU's 18th season and Eid "had to move on [to Chicago P.D.]", basically for the same reason. The. Same. Reason. It's a case of "Fool me once, fool me twice," we're on the 3rd now.

From the minute "The Right Thing" hit the airwaves, I knew it was 2007/2016 all over again! The reboot storylines are tone-deaf, have massive plot holes, pull directly from the headlines without much deviance, skew to certain political leanings (hard left and right) and is shoved into the faces of viewers, and problems with legal strategy that actually go against the actual law and procedures that wouldn't even wash in an actual courtroom (and yes I am aware it's work of fiction but that is why they have legal advisors on the payroll - or at least I hope).

And the characters? Caricatures. I can't really root for any of them - Samantha Maroun & Jalen Shaw (Halevi & Brooks who are great) are the closet ones who are actually being fleshed out as characters that can be relatable/likable. Cosgrove and Price need work bad! Cosgrove is basically a more hard-core Elliot Stabler with a thick Bronx accent in one episode and then another episode he's a young Lennie Briscoe/Michael Westen from Burn Notice mix; it's not consistent. Most seem to prefer him portraying Cosgrove in a Michael Westen-ish style as opposed to Stabler 2.0 (if that's the case swap Donovan and Meloni).

Nolan Price? I don't know where to start. Who is Nolan Price? I don't know honestly but I can tell you he is NOT a great prosecutor. He's no Mike Cutter, McCoy or even Ben or Peter Stone. Price is written just as inconsistent as Cosgrove is and the cases as they make it to court and trial make Price worse, because it seems ambition and wanting to win is the only thing this character has. "Bias" that just aired showcased Price as a colleague was murdered and he had a personal investment in the case. He should have be recused and maybe even suspended due to his misconduct. And Price's arrogance in this episode, telling Jack McCoy that he let him run with the case because "I'm the best." I love Hugh Dancy and he's a magnificent actor but this writing is hurting this role for him in my view.

And speaking of McCoy, where the hell is he? I understand Sam Waterston can't do what he was doing back in 2007 in the courtroom scenes and he is the district attorney but my goodness, his scenes "lack meat" now, it's all bone. Jack says something pithy about the case, yells a little, and walks out his office/elevator/outside. Eid said in an interview that he wanted McCoy to walk in the shoes of Adam Schiff (Steven Hill), if that's the case Schiff was way more involved in his prosecutors cases and had more say in the direction the cases go. Again, it goes back to the writing.

Unlike on OC, Law & Order could use a show runner change, and it could use it ASAP, because what's airing as quality in this reboot is tarnishing the legacy that the original mothership established.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present, season 24) - what is going on behind the scenes and on screen is especially heinous.

Warren Leight's departure last year was the catalyst, however Kelli Giddish's firing was the irresistible force slamming the immovable object - so to speak. Kelli Giddish was fired in place of Wolf/NBC wanting younger blood (Molly Burnett, Days of our Lives); not even a year prior Wolf/NBC faced a form of backlash after dropping two cast members of color - Demore Barnes and Jamie Gray Hyder - in exchange for one male (Octavio Pisano). Star Mariska Hargitay tried to step in to keep Kelli on the show but she was overruled by Wolf and the network.

Meanwhile something that hasn't been overruled but more overlooked; new show runner David Graziano's prior and current accusations of bullying, misogyny, and toxic behavior on sets and behind the scenes of show's he's worked on, including SVU. Graziano took to his Instagram to try and 'explain' his accusations but he did not deny them. How can you write and supervise any kind of story about women's empowerment, healing after trauma and sexual assault, inclusiveness, and justice as someone who has/is doing personal actions against that very stance? And how can Dick Wolf and NBC over look it? Money talks in short. He's also running OC for the last 3 episodes in this season.

That aside which is problematic of itself, like the mother ship, the storylines on SVU have taken a turn sideways. Season 24 started off pretty solid, it wasn't the best it's been in it's prime and younger years (S3-7, and again S13-17), but it was passable to view. Now? Post-Kelli Giddish it seems like the focus is on Muncy (Burnett), Velasco (Pisano) and the recurring guest cast (Kevin Kane and Jasmine Batchelor); ICE T and Peter Scanavino's screen time is noticeably decreased this season than season's past. And like mothership's storylines, inconsistency is on display in full view.

Under Graziano in his first 6 episodes (Gimmie Shelter is written by Rick Eid and Gwen Sigan as part of the season premiere crossover) were the solid ones, even before Kelli's last episode I felt a change in tone coming into play; and coming off of the season's Bronx trilogy its even more noticeable. It's like it's a mix of Eid's season 18 and some other show that's NOT SVU. The focus has gone off of the survivors, veteran characters, the pursuit of the worst criminal offenders, the pursuit of justice and the unit itself. SVU has gone off of the rails and if they want this show to continue to break records and preserve the legacy that it has both on and off screen, they better make some changes fast. SVU's ratings haven't exactly decreased but all this 'change' could soon have a negative impact on them; SVU's dominate the entire franchise right now as a show that's consistently been on air for 24 years now in a changing TV landscape.

In summary/my suggestion(s): the Law & Order franchise needs to undergo some major changes behind the scenes, starting with the gentlemen running these shows. I don't directly want to call for the dismissal of show runners/executive producers Rick Eid and David Graziano (certainly from SVU) but I do feel this is the start absent them being given a different set of marching orders that they should follow (not likely). The issues I brought up above only touch the surface, I don't want to sound nit-picky but things could and should be better.

This franchise is 33 years old and still going, and it could go longer and further but if there aren't any immediate changes that make an impact and turn things around, and the shows keep going about as they are: this franchise won't be around much longer. "The Story Is Everything" is what Dick Wolf has said about the L&O brand and NBC even used that as a tagline during the prime years on the network 2003-2007. That's where the investment needs to start.

#Law & Order #Law & Order: SVU #Law & Order: Organized Crime #Law & Order: OC #Organized Crime #L&O #SVU #Law & Order: Special Victims Unit #NBC #Mariska Hargitay #Christopher Meloni #Sam Waterstoon #Hugh Dancy #Mehcad Brooks #David Graziano #Rick Eid #Dick Wolf #Peacock

[laresearchette]

Tuesday, November 28, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES? SOUTH TO BLACK POWER (HBO Canada) 10:00pm

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 3

NETFLIX CANADA COMEDY ROYALE (KR) LOVE LIKE A K-DRAMA (JP) ONMYOJI (JP) VERIFIED STAND-UP

2023 FIFA MEN'S U17 WORLD CUP (TSN5) 3:18am: Semifinal (TSN5) 6:48am: Semifinal

NCAA WOMEN’S HOCKEY (TSN5) 5:00pm: Providence vs. Northeastern

NHL HOCKEY (TSN4) 7:00pm: Panthers vs. Leafs (TSN3) 8:00pm: Stars vs. Jets (SNWest) 9:00pm: Knights vs. Oilers (SNPacific) 10:00pm: Ducks vs. Canucks

NBA BASKETBALL (SN1/SNOntario/SNEast) 7:30pm: Raptors vs. Nets (SN Now) 7:30pm: Bulls vs. Celtics (TSN/TSN5) 7:30pm: Bucks vs. Heat (SN1) 10:00pm: Warriors vs. Kings

MARY MAKES IT EASY (CTV Life) 8:00pm: Good Ba(king) Wenceslas

STILL STANDING (CBC) 8:30pm (SEASON FINALE): The forced relocation of the Membertou First Nation 100 years ago sent the community into crisis; thanks to a bold economic plan, they have successfully pulled off a stunning transformation.

COMFORT FOOD WITH SPENCER WATTS (CTV Life) 8:30pm: Spencer makes a few of his family-style faves, including his Moussaka crown, his Italian herb half-chickens with sun-dried tomato cream sauce, and a silky smooth eggnog creme caramel.

THE KILLING KIND (CTV Drama) 9:00pm: Ingrid is forced to re-examine the original Webster legal case she worked on; Ingrid must fight to right the wrongs to ensure that justice is done.

THE LAZARUS PROJECT (Showcase) 9:00pm: The team attempts to track down the time machine that had been used to transport Janet back to 2012; an unexpected visitor from the past comes looking for George.

HALIFAX COMEDY FESTIVAL (CBC) 9:30pm: Featuring Jon Dore, with performances by Yumi Nagashima, Kevin Bozeman, Clare Belford, Peter Anthony, Fiona O'Brien, Pete Johansson, Kelly Taylor and Graham Chittenden.

#cdntv #cancon #canadian tv #canadian tv listings #mary makes it easy #still standing #comfort food with spencer watts #the killing kind #the lazarus project #halifax comedy festival #fifa men's world cup #ncaa hockey #nhl hockey #nba basketball

[eleilinnrallin]

El's Characters By World

This is by world of Standard Residence during the time of their story, not world of origin. Also this is in no particular order because there are Many.

Zeur

Zara-Sonili Riza/Alzi Kemora Kourja/Kor Eritira Kalani Ikantara Kalani Orinona Kalani 'Maro' Arine Aia Ryo-Talan Ryo-Pari Maya-Soni Mark-Kaili Abeni-Saira Kan-Ame Kier-Dahn Alzele-Ame Aryo-Kier Zara-Kaile Lora-Rohi Lora-Daha Lora-Behn Lora-Kaen Lora-Maha Lora-Toline Lora-Mea Lora-Soni Lora-Kacha Lora-Dahn Lora-Sochi Lora-Akria (Believe it or not there are more I just haven't developed them as much yet)

Halliræn

EpisiAleuin/Epsilon Boshanataino/Bo Silviga/Braids Leafer Leem Tat Daquin/Daq Zaqarin/Zaq Jaqis/Jaq Jinfyr/Quack Weshle Lang Saber (This one should have more but Of the Mountains is going through a recast rn)

aE721

November Fire/Ember Liana Bird/Nightowl Chilie Bird/Phoenix Emile Despa/Raider Arlir Brikkmann/Lore Tores Azjhe/Xenon Saver Willon/Xayr Cristin Spark/Chispa Danel Spark/Leo Aurie Smokes/Ghost Esper Platinum/Bot Bekah Sidan/Jet July Flame/Inferno Kassidy Wary/Kassie Aster Smokes/Nose Soul Smokes Este Smokes Timas Smokes Rora Smokes Rina Azjhe (Any further than this and we're getting into very minor side cast)

Kor-DJan

DJune Dimmer Marwon Pollan Tenber Arzuri Jenso Korami Jenso Komi Tansori Jamil Tansori Fang Jeyan (This is a small project that's still growing)

Sonitoóde

Teddy Pearl Jemira/Jimmy Kelly Taniwha Kiaroa Catta Wamian Nansul Kieran Salden Kieran Golden Kieran Bakara Argo Jason Talin Dabbs Admiral General Bannote (This is a small cast and not really growing any time soon)

[Unnamed World 1]

Kenet Bintani Nesia Etani Aroctan Tarani Mairin Eavan Isha (this is a severely undercasted project)

[Unnamed World 2]

Anvil Midi Burst (Begining developing this!)

Norain

Æric Akail XX (Doublecross) Barrier Xiiane Coilen Tavekan Haeberle Kasha Viza Len Nayreh (This is developing and more are being added to the cast)

aE864

Heaven On High/Fallen From On High Innocence Of A Child/Stolen Too Soon Devotion Of A Child/Child Beloved Demon To The Unjust Angel On High Sent From Heaven Justice Of Angels Mercy On High Midnight

aE057

Martin Izzie Taylor Li'l'un Finn Matthew/Math Rashelle Casi Todos/Almost Anything/Alex Elizbet/Pyra Mara Obedience

Interworld

Elrae Earthchild Soul Smokes Ghost Starling Mobius Starling *Vyola Starling *Infinity Starling Eks Starling Heui Sushi Armada Rianna Armada Saltine Armada Kiato Armada Holdon Armada Cria Armada Snuffles Armada Titanium Armada Aluminium Armada Riku Armada Vion Armada Eika Armada Sprout Armada Tiburon Armada/Boo Peek Armada Pari-Zarali Ankai-Sochi Lexicyn Aderyn

Assorted/Small-Cast/Developing

Arena Crown Father Nebrione

Hayzee Woodsend Risen

Willowbee Fate

I probably forgot someone/someones/an entire project so we'll see if this grows any. But for now this is pretty up-to-date!

If anyone wants they can ask about any of the worlds! ^-^ Or any of the characters. (I may get permission from Squish when she gets back online to put AUs on here! ^-^)

*not mine, but close to it

#all my OCs #or not all but close to it #I love these beans

[thevindicativevordan]

Thoughts on the ongoing Cates Hulk run

Since an issue came out this week (I totally forgot until someone reminded me) let's make this the weekly review post. Huge week for me:

Batman: One Bad Day - Riddler - Disappointing. Riddler is on god mode for most of the story and I couldn't suspend my disbelief. The big moment that took me completely out of the book was when an Arkham guard tries to shoot Riddler, misses at point blank range and hits another guard, and then all the other guards decide to shoot each other instead of Riddler. Way too stupid for me to take seriously, especially in a story that is demanding you take it seriously. I guess King using the Morrison interpretation of TKJ's ending here for how Batman deals with Riddler was cool at least. King hadn't found a Riddler origin he loved and he tried to write one to his taste here. I agree with him that most Riddler origins are lame, but this one is hardly better. His dad spanked him because he was an abusive asshole and that drove him to the point of brutally murdering his teacher (who put riddles in his tests) and becoming the Riddler because he couldn't handle his teacher reporting his cheating on a test to his father. Not a sympathetic enough story for me to feel bad for Eddie, nor petty enough to make me despise him, it's trying to be tragic and ends up being meh.

Nightwing #95 - Hey the pacing has finally improved and progression finally happens! Blockbuster learning Dick's identity is the first time this run has even gestured in the direction of actual stakes. Given how heavily this book guest stars the Titans, why not just give the next Titans relaunch to Taylor? His focus on fanservice and character moments would serve that team well.

Batman/Superman #6 - Enjoyable little epilogue that puts the focus on Dick as a detective.

Flash #785 - I fell off of this run after a while, had to cut back and while this was good it didn't feel essential so I dropped it. Picked it back up for Dark Crisis - good thing too because this is definitely essential to the overall plot - and I really enjoy how Adams juggles the Flash Family. Think I might keep reading if finances allow.

Batman: The Knight #8 - Bruce and Anton driving off into the sunset huh?

Black Adam #3 - Great book, after the first issue's weird dialogue for Malik, he's been fine since. I like him and I really hope he doesn't die, but all the signs make me believe he's a dead man walking. Of course Priest's version of a journey through hell is never what it seems. Hallucinations or fact? Not clear and given it's Priest they might not ever be.

DC vs. Vampires: All Out War #2 - Didn't Lex die? Guess we'll find out if that's a fakeout with regard to him being teased as Baron Cinder.

Aquaman & The Flash: Voidsong #3 - Give the next Aquaman relaunch to Kelly and Lanzig because this was by far the most enjoyable Aquaman story I've read since KSD's run ended. Really this book had a more interesting "event" type foe than boring old Pariah, I thought the concept of a Lovecraftian entity that eats motion/the Speed Force was inspired. Loved Vasco's art too, very Jorge Jimenez reminiscent. Wouldn't have thought a movie cash-in book starring two characters that barely interact usually could be this enjoyable, but even though the differences were played up to make the two better contrasts with each other this was an entertaining read all the same.

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #3 - Continues to suck. I'm only buying this trash because I feel like I'm obligated too on account of it might be affecting Conner's status quo. Minute I learn that's not the case this is getting dropped. If you're going to deconstruct an era at least have the decency to know the details of what it is you're deconstructing. Fitzmartin just gets basic continuity wrong, Cassie was the last leader of PAD YJ not Conner, Conner already knew and made peace with the Cassie/Tim kiss, etc. This is CW tier drama in line with her background as a CW writer and I don't enjoy it. Porter's Superboy mini and PKJ's Superfamily team up can't come soon enough.

X-Men #13 - It's an ok superhero book but that's it. If the Children of the Vault coming out doesn't spice things up I may drop it and stick to Immortal and Red.

A.X.E: Death to the Mutants #1 - I am very interested in where this is going. Could this end with the Celestial modifying how Eternal resurrections works?

Hulk #8 - Guess Hulk won the fight? Pretty underwhelming victory however. Cates run has been basic as expected, but I found myself warming up to it more over time. Knew we weren't getting a run with Ewing's brains but long as I got something entertaining enough I could keep reading Hulk. Thus far, while uninspired, I have been entertained. Let's see if that continues once we get Cates Planet Hulk rehash.

Strange #5 - God Clea rules. I love her, I think I love her more than Strange, which is a testament to MacKay's skill because I didn't know squat about Clea until this run. We all saw that reveal coming but it's a good one and changes the direction of the series. If at the end of this there's a proper Dr. Strange relaunch coming they better keep MacKay on it and have him write the Strange/Clea relationship because he's got me invested in it.

#weekly reviews

[itsbuckactually]

still can’t get over how weirdly they’re trying to retcon everything about original season 2 taylor kelly with her reintroduction/this relationship arc. everything else she’s done in the past aside, them deciding in the past few episodes to have her be a truth-driven journalist who chose her career because of a semi-unsolved family tragedy simply does not scan with her past or present choices and behavior at all.

this storyline would make more sense if she was a cop or a private investigator or at LEAST a print reporter?? someone at like mother jones or someone who writes long think-pieces for the marshall project or the justice project or a similar organization, maybe. or basically any kind of investigator.

she’s a tv puff piece reporter. before this current position she was the tv traffic voice in the air you didn’t see or possibly even the radio traffic report girl (they’re kind of unclear on this because she works for her current station in her first appearance but Buck talks about listening to her in the car and they never clarified this at all). she was willing to do ANYTHING not to get good stories but literally just to be the face on the screen. that was a clear and stated goal and she was pleased when hen thought it was sharp of her to use her helicopter accident to get there. you don’t fall into that kind of career. it’s a step on the path to being an anchor somewhere.

if taylor kelly actually cared about ~finding the truth~ because it’s so important she would not be toiling in broadcast journalism trying to find exciting stories at the expense of others (we all remember the Bobby story she wanted to roll with and has literally never apologized for). if she cared about what she SAYS she cares about in anything other than the hyperpersonal context of her own sordid past, and that was REALLY why she became a reporter, she simply would not have the job she does. it’s not the correct variety of reporting for that. she’d likely be some struggling beat writer at a failing paper in her hometown knocking on doors of the retired original investigators from the case. or like I said before, maybe working at a place like mother jones or literally any print outlet that would actually have some kind of focus on ~hard hitting investigative news~

so anyway, the retconning of taylor kelly has been truly hilarious to watch

#text post #911 on fox #911 spoilers  #anti taylor kelly

[zackcollins]

a new hockey stick || tyler heineman

masterlist

Author’s Note: Hilo Piccolo. Somebody said I was feeding “the Tyler Heineman brain rot” when I posted that GIF of him earlier. The brain will be beyond rotted now since this is a whole ass fic about him. If I have a problem, I challenge you to prove it in a court of law. Seeing as this fic isn’t even for my own self-indulgence. I wrote it for @donttelltheelff​ because they told me that I might be making them gain a crush on Tyler. I wrote this for them as a way of nudging them over the precipice. What’re friends for, amirite? Anyways! GIF credit to anotherhockeypage since my GIF of him is a zoomed out shot lmfao

Warnings: Nothing, I don’t think. Feel free to let me know if something needs one though. I’ll happily add it.

Word Count: 1.0k+

Title: Canadian Kid by Brett Kissel

Additional: Gender-neutral reader since the person this was originally for uses they/them pronouns. I have received permission to post it so we’re all set on that front. Anyways! I hope Taylor and everyone else enjoys this! This is my first fic of this kind for this goofball babygirl so I hope I did it justice!! Feedback is welcomed and appreciate because I love knowing what people think of my fics!!

You and Tyler were rushing through Scotiabank Arena in hopes of making it to your seats before the opening face-off. As you rushed along, you were bumping into disgruntled fans and a few employees. You kept trying to apologize but Tyler was dragging you along far too quickly for anything to come of them.

When you finally made it to the section where your seats were located, you glanced over your shoulder towards the ice. You mentally fist-bumped when you noticed that the game hadn’t started yet. You told Tyler as much; Tyler smiled as you both politely squeezed past the people sitting between the end of the row and your seats.

When the two of you were seated, you pulled out your phone and slung your arm over Tyler’s shoulder. You pulled your best friend closer to you as you opened the camera function and held the phone out in front of you.

“Tyler, bro, smile,” you said, casting a glance at you best friend. "This is my first time seeing a hockey game live. I want a picture to commemorate it."

"Sure, bud, whatever you want." Tyler rolled his eyes and chuckled, though he did smile. He even slung his arm around your shoulders and leaned his head against your head. You felt your mouth go dry and your face heat up as you quickly snapped the picture. You hoped that the picture wouldn’t show how flustered Tyler had just made you feel.

Just as you were sliding your phone back into the kangaroo pouch on your Auston Matthews hoodie, you felt someone nudge your shoulder. You looked up and noticed Tyler was pointing towards the ice. When you looked that way, you saw that the Kings and Maple Leafs were lining up for the opening face-off. You smiled as you shifted around anxiously in your seat. Tyler scoffed and shook his head as he looked towards centre ice.

When the referee dropped the puck, you felt your whole body ignite with excitement and nervousness. This was an experience unlike anything you had ever had watching the games on your television at home.

As the play went along, you kept looking over at your best friend to see how he was reacting to all of this. You knew that Tyler had been to plenty of live games before, given the fact that he was also a goalie growing up. He was even wearing his favourite jersey—a Kelly Hrudey his father had handed down to him when he had first started playing Junior A hockey. You weren’t so much as looking at the jersey; you were more so looking to see how Tyler was reacting to the fact that his favourite team—Los Angeles—was playing your favourite team—Toronto—while you were attending your first game. Judging by your best friend’s body language, you could assume that Tyler was about as nervous as you were.

By the time the first commercial break came along, the score was still 0-0 and the shots were 10-4 in favour of Los Angeles. You pulled your phone out again and wanted to ask Tyler for another picture but Tyler nudging your shoulder stopped the words from coming out.

"(Y/N), look," Tyler mumbled.

"Is something wrong?" You put your phone away before you looked in Tyler’s direction and noticed that he was pointing up at the Jumbotron.

You looked where Tyler was pointing and noticed that the Kiss Cam was showing yourself and Tyler inside of the heart frame. You swallowed thickly before looking over at Tyler. Tyler nodded and grabbed your face, smoothing his thumbs across your cheeks. You relaxed a little as you leaned forward, placing your hands on Tyler's shoulders. After taking a deep breath, you closed the remaining distance and connected your lips with your best friend's lips.

The kiss was sweet, albeit brief. When you pulled apart from Tyler, you felt your head spinning from the gravity of the situation. You shook your head once and rubbed your temples a couple of times in hopes of straightening out the feelings in your brain. When that didn't work, you looked at Tyler.

Tyler had a soft smile on his face and was nervously wringing his hands together in his lap. You put one of your hands on top of Tyler's and rubbed his wrists at the pulse points, smiling when you felt Tyler shiver.

"Did…" Tyler started, looking away from you and towards the ice. When you glanced at the ice, you saw Mikheyev and Kerfoot rushing towards the net with Moore as the only man back defending for the Kings. "I… That meant more to me than a stupid Kiss Cam kiss. I've wanted to fucking do that for ages, (Y/N)." Tyler looked at you, his facial expression somewhere between fond and sad.

You brought your other hand up and cupped Tyler's cheek. You gently ran your thumb along it, smiling when he leaned into the touch.

"I feel the same way, bro," you said, squeezing Tyler's wrist with your other hand. "Would this be our first date then?"

Nodding, Tyler smiled softly. "I like that idea a lot."

You smiled as you leaned over and connected your lips with Tyler’s. Tyler smiled into the kiss, bringing his hands up to grab your hoodie strings. As you kissed, Tyler continued to fiddle with the strings like his life depended on it. The more he fiddled with them, the harder it was for you to keep a straight face. Eventually, you had to pull back and chuckle. You swatted Tyler's shoulder and shook your head dismissively.

"Way to ru--"

You went to say something but the sound of the Leafs goal horn and the goal song simultaneously blaring through the arena cut you off. You grinned as you pressed a quick kiss to Tyler's cheek.

"Take that, Tyler," you said, voice dripping with smugness.

Tyler smirked as he leaned forward to whisper into your ear.

"We'll see later which one of us takes it."

#tyler heineman #tyler heineman fic #tyler heineman imagine #toronto blue jays #toronto blue jays fic #toronto blue jays imagine #mlb #mlb fic #mlb imagine #baseball #baseball fic #baseball imagine #not hockey #not mash #robin writes #writing #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #mlb fanfic #mlb fanfiction #tyler heineman fanfic #tyler heineman fanfiction #baseball fanfic #baseball fanfiction #toronto blue jays fanfic #toronto blue jays fanfiction #tyler heineman x reader #tyler heineman/reader #froot loop friends tag

[neverwritewhatyouknow]

The Vampire Diaries : 10 Guest Actors Who Became Hollywood Stars

Current stars of NBC, Netflix, and even Showtime shows all have spent some time in Mystic Falls-- including Lauren Cohan, who can be found starring in the Chicago franchise. Guest stars are a very important part of any television show, and The Vampire Diaries included many actors whose careers continued to rise after their time on this vampiric classic. 

*Spoilers*

10. Erik Stocklin (Stevie) 

Stevie was a werewolf who helped capture and torture Damon Salvatore in order to find a mystical object called the moonstone. He also manages to kill Alaric, before ultimately being killed himself by Elijah. 

Erik Stocklin went on to have large reoccurring roles in shows such as: Mistresses, Stalker, and Good Trouble. He also had a leading role in Haters Back Off! where he met his wife, on scree love interest Colleen Ballinger/Miranda Sings. Stevie was Stocklin’s first television role, and it showed that even right from the start, he could perform at a highly professional level. 

9. Stephen Amell (Brady)

Brady was out for blood (literally). He sought revenge against the Salvatore brothers and ended up using Elena to attempt to break a werewolf curse. He fought, tortured, and plotted, but ended up dead at Stefan's hand. 

While Brady was not Amell’s first role, it was his first on the CW-- where he then went on to became known to the world as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, a very popular character in the CW’s ArrowVerse. Stephen Amell can be seen starring in everything from Vixen, to Supergirl, Batwoman, The Flash, DC's Legend's of Tomorrow, and Arrow.

8. Taylor Kinney (Mason Lockwood)

Mason Lockwood was Tyler Lockwood's uncle. He worked to find the moonstone and was the one to explain to Tyler how the werewolf transformation process works. Though, due to the choices he made, he ended up with his heart torn out. 

After TVD, Kinney appeared in films such as Zero Dark Thirty, Rock the Kasbah, and The Other Woman. Though Taylor Kinney is most notable for his role in the Chicago episodics: Justice, Med, P.D., and Fire. Kinney can be seen as Kelly Severide in over 230 episodes within the franchise. Lockwood was far from Kinney’s first role, but it highlighted Kinney’s ability to portray a confident and intelligent “ladies man” type of character-- much like Severide.  

7. Torrey DeVitto (Dr. Meredith Fell)

Dr. Meredith Fell was the originally the most trusted doctor in Mystic Falls. Fell is known for her less than ethical medical techniques involving vampire blood. After being attacked by The Darkness, she ends up leaving Mystic Falls. 

After The Vampire Diaries, DeVitto reoccured in Army Wives and Pretty Little Liars. DeVitto is most known for her work as Dr. Natalie Manning in over 130 episodes of Chicago P.D., Fire, and Med. Guess those Mystic Falls doctoring skills came in handy.

6. Lauren Cohan (Rose)

Rose was a vampire who was tricked into turning Katherine Pierce into a vampire. She was hunted for centuries and ended up kidnapping Elena in order to barter for freedom. Though when it came down to it, Rose teamed up with the Salvatores to take on the Originals. 

Lauren Cohan went from running from vampires to slaying zombies as Maggie, a leading role, in The Walking Dead. It takes a spectacular amount of talent to be able to jump into a universe full of mythic creatures and Cohan does so with incredible skill. She can also be seen reoccuring in Supernatural and starring in Whiskey Cavalier. Cohan's career is truly “supernatural.” 

5. Hayley Kiyoko (Megan King)

Megan King was Elena and Caroline's roommate at Whitmore. Megan enrolled at the school due to her curiosity regarding her past, but was killed during a party. Though she wasn't physically around for long, Megan served a very important purpose to the central arc of season five.

Kiyoko herself then went on to become a reoccurring character in The Fosters and a series regular in both CSI: Cyber and Five Points. These characters, much like Megan, also have challenging pasts and strong wills. Hayley Kiyoko is also known for being a world famous singer-songwriter.

4. Gracie Gillam (April Young)

April Young was the daughter of a Mystic Falls pastor. After her father's death, she returned to town and began to grow suspicious. After nearly being killed, she was saved and never seen again. April is a prime example that an unlikely friendship in Mystic Falls might just pay off. 

April was Gracie Gillam’s second ever television role. This set a tone for Gillam’s career, as her portrayal of April Young shows that Gilliam is able to undertake a wide range of roles-- from naive and giggly to confident and combative. Within a year of being on TVD, Gilliam was starring in the Disney Channel Original Movie: Teen Beach Movie 1 as Lela. Gracie Gillam can also be seen reoccurring in Z Nation and most recently she starred in the horror movie Superhost. 

3. McKenna Grace (Young Caroline)

Caroline Forbes (Candice King), is a major part of The Vampire Diaries franchise, so it's expected that her character would need to be seen in the past as a child. McKenna Grace portrayed young Caroline in a memorable flashback scene of Caroline with her mother, as the town of Mystic Falls was saying goodbye to their beloved Sherif. Even though Young Caroline was only seen in two episodes, they both tugged at heartstrings. 

Grace is one of the biggest young actresses in Hollywood today. She can be seen in everything from The Young and the Restless, to multiple Disney Channel shows, Fuller House, The Angry Birds Movie, Independence Day, The Haunting of Hill House, Designated Survivor, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and so much more. McKenna Grace is famed throughout Hollywood for her ability to play younger versions of characters with total perfection, while also being able to handle very dramatic and heavy material. Her role in TVD demonstrates both of these very well.

2. Jaz Sinclair (Beatrice Bennett)

Beatrice Bennett was a historic member of the Bennett coven and saved Mystic Falls from hellfire along with sealing the sirens inside the Armory. In Bonnie's time of need, she joined her magic together with all the Bennett witches from the past in order to once again save Mystic Falls.

Sinclair went from being a Bennett witch to a Walker witch, when she starred as Rosalind (Roz) Walker on Netflix's original series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Roz and her friends saved their town from evil countless times as well. Sinclair may have found her niche in portraying strong, magical, powerful characters, as she will soon be seen in a spinoff of Amazon's The Boys as Marie, a young superhero ("supe"). 

1. Samantha Hanratty (Violet Fell)

Violet Fell was an innocent soul turned corrupt. At first, Violet was simply a Mystic Falls high school student, before being sirened, compelled, and transformed into a vampire.

Samantha Hanratty already had an extensive acting career, stemming all the way from childhood, before her time on TVD. Though, Violet Fell was Hanratty’s bridge into more “edgy” character types, much like the roles she played following The Vampire Diaries and presently. Hanratty is currently most known for her role as Teen Misty, an equipment manager for a soccer team stranded in the Canadian wilderness, on the very popular Showtime series Yellowjackets. 

#tvd #the vampire diaries #samantha hanratty #jaz sinclair #gracie gillam #hayley kiyoko #lauren cohan #torrey devitto #taylor kinney #stephen amell #arrowverse #yellowjackets #chilling adventures of sabrina #chicago med #chicago fire #chicago pd #supernatural #spoilers #actors

[anna-justice]

Lost or Found - 24

Summary: As Jay, Hailey, Kim, Adam and Kevin start their junior year in the wake of a tragic summer, the past year of their lives comes back to haunt them. If you enjoyed Pretty Little Liars, this is for you! *UPSTEAD/BURZEK High School AU

...

24 - Evermore  ...

“Your dad should have killed you when he had the chance…”

Hailey whimpered, her eyes clenched shut and beads of sweat appearing on her forehead.

“So you want to play hero one more time?” 

She flinched in her sleep, her heart beating out of her chest, so fast that she thought it was going to explode. 

“That works for me.” 

Hailey shot up, screaming. The last thing she saw was the barrel of a gun. She clawed at her chest, trying to get a good breath. “Hailey?” Someone yelled, and then right after, her Aunt appeared in front of her. “Hailey, it’s okay.” Trudy reached out to grab her hand, but Hailey pulled it back, looking at her with scared eyes. 

It had been a month since she had heard those words muttered aloud, but they plagued her dreams frequently. 

The two weeks following that day, all five of them took turns rotating through the police station. Everyday there were new questions, more people to explain things to, more statements to clarify, it was never ending. Then, it just stopped. There was nothing else they could do, they had to wait for trial. And in the meantime, Erin was placed in a psychiatric hold facility, and her lawyers were defending her actions as a symptom as psychosis.

It bothered them all, that technically she was free, all because they could blame her attempted murder on a psychotic break. Especially when Kelly Severide was looking at time. A few days after, two detectives showed up at Hailey’s house, wanting a full recount of the last five months, and that included the night that she was attacked. When Severide was questioned, he had no alibi and he confessed to strangling Hailey. His excuse was that he was threatened the same way that the rest of them were, only in person. He claimed that he knew Erin was alive the whole time, but she threatened to kill his mom and sister if he didn’t cooperate. 

Unfortunately, the only way to corroborate the story for a jury is to prove Erin mentally competent, meaning she was capable of carrying out her threats. To all involved, even Kelly, it was clear that she knew what she was doing, she was a mastermind, but to everyone on the outside, they were just a bunch of teenagers wrapped up in a murder. 

The girl that everyone thought was Erin still hadn’t been identified, they had to dig up the casket for the second time. The only way they were able to ID it the first time was by the previous fracture and bracelet, but there are a lot of people in the Chicago area that have broken their left wrist. 

So, with no new information and the date for the trial to begin still months away, they all lived life normally. Well, as normal as it could be after everything they went through. And normal for Hailey meant waking up every night screaming. 

Trudy looked at her husband, who was standing in the doorway. They shared a look, a very familiar one. They repeated the same steps every night, like some cruel rehearsed dance. Trudy waited patiently for Hailey to calm down, just seated on the floor next to her. “Hailey, sweetie, you’re safe.” She repeated. 

Every night it was the same, Hailey would snap out of whatever daze she was in and apologize profusely. “I’m sorry, I got scared…” She started.

“Shhh,” Trudy said, placing a hand on her leg, “It’s okay.” 

Hailey nodded, swallowing hard. “I’m good, you all can go back to sleep.” She said, glancing at her uncle. 

Trudy just nodded, she learned many nights ago not to fight her on it, “Alright. Goodnight Hailey, we love you.” She said, squeezing her shoulder. 

“Love you too.” Hailey said, watching them retreat back to their room. They left the door open like they always did, Hailey sighed rolling over and grabbing her phone. She sent a quick text to her boyfriend. 

Hailey:      :(

It was a system that they started a few weeks ago. The first few nights Jay would stay up with her on the phone, or she would call him after Trudy and Randy finally left, but the lack of sleep began to play a part in their relationship. So, they decided that every time Hailey had a nightmare (or Jay, he wasn’t clean of them) they would text the other a frowny face, so that in the morning they would know what the other had gone through the night before without having to talk about it. It has proved to be useful.

Hailey laid down again, willing herself to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. Sleep was too vulnerable, so she laid there awake, just waiting for the sun to rise on (hopefully) a better day. 

…

“What do you mean you haven’t picked out a costume?” Kim asked, as Jay slammed his door shut. Like every morning, they were all crowded around his truck, waiting until the last minute to head to class. The gossip still hadn’t died down, they were still the topic of every conversation, so they avoided it as much as they could. 

Hailey shrugged. “I thought we weren’t dressing up.” She said, looking up at her boyfriend, who nodded in agreement. Halloween was tomorrow, and of course Kim had plans for all of them.

“No, I said we weren’t dressing up as the characters from scooby doo…” Kim said, giving Adam a pointed look. 

Adam held up his hands in surrender, “Like I said, I’m sorry, it’s too soon.” He said, stifling a laugh. 

Kevin rolled his eyes, “Yeah, you all know I’d have to be scooby. And I’m not dressing up like a dog.” He snapped. 

“But Kev,” Adam said, faking a frown. “I thought you were my dawg.” Kevin glared at him, faking a punch as Adam jumped back. 

“Anyway,” Kim started, looking back at Hailey and Jay, and ignoring the antics behind her. “I promised Stella we would all be at her party tomorrow night, you guys will be the only people without a costume.” 

Hailey sighed, “Kim, we will get costumes, I promise.” Kim opened her mouth, but the warning bell cut her off. Hailey smiled, grabbing Jay’s hand. “We’ll see you guys later.” She said, before pulling him away. 

“Please tell me you have costume ideas,” Jay said quietly. 

“Nope.” They rounded the corner, Jay leaning down and stealing a kiss before they entered their classroom. Criminal justice was a little harder to sit through than it was before, but somehow Jay had managed to get his grade up. 

They took their normal seats in the back of the class, waiting for the teacher to begin. “I have an idea,” Jay said, leaning on his hand. 

“Okay?” Hailey said cautiously. 

“I’ll be a firefighter, and you be a Dalmatian.” He said, wiggling his eyebrows. 

Hailey scoffed, “No.” 

“Okay. You be the firefighter and I’ll be the Dalmatian.” He said, smirking.

Hailey shook her head, “Try again.” Jay fake pouted, retreating back to his half of the shared desk. 

Finally, their teacher decided to start class, cutting their conversation off for the time being. After about 30 minutes of notes, he passed out an assignment, leaving them to work on their own. Jay turned to face her, smiling. “I’ve got another idea.” He said, Hailey gave him a pointed look. “Squints and the lifeguard from the sandlot.” 

“Why? So every time someone asks us who we are you get to lay on the ground and make me kiss you?” She questioned. 

“Exactly.” He deadpanned. 

“Jay-”

“Okay, okay.” He said, laughing. He loved it when she got all riled up. “Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, cause you’re so short-”

“Jay!” She said, smacking his bicep. 

He laughed harder, “Okay, in all seriousness...we can be Jack and Rose from the titanic…” He watched Hailey’s face slowly morph into slight agreeance, “And Kev could be the iceberg.” 

“I’m done with you.” Hailey said shortly, stifling her own laugh. 

Jay laughed at his own joke, watching his girlfriend pretend to be aggravated with him. “You love me, you know it.” 

“Unfortunately…” Hailey said under her breath. She took a deep breath, “What about Danny and Sandy from Grease?” 

Jay smirked, “You in leather pants? Perfect.” 

“You’re hopeless.” 

…

The next day, Hailey sat in Kim’s bedroom getting ready. They had about an hour before the boys were supposed to come pick them up. Kim and Adam were going as Romeo and Juliet, while Hailey and Jay had finally settled on Rapunzel and Flynn Rider. Kevin had grouped up with some of the boys from his team, they were going as zombie football players, very original…

“Kim, you’re going to have to do this.” Hailey said, laughing in defeat. 

Kim smiled, taking over for her. She was waiting for her to ask for help, she’d been struggling to french braid her hair for almost twenty minutes. “I got it.” They sat there for a while in silence, Kim carefully laying pieces of blonde hair over the others, she glanced at Hailey in the mirror, noticing the blank look on her face. “How are you doing?”

Hailey’s head snapped up to meet her eyes, she caught her off guard. “Uh,” She shrugged, “I’m okay, I guess…” 

Kim scoffed, shaking her head. “I’ve said that word so many times recently that I’m not even sure it’s a word anymore.” 

“Yeah…” Hailey said, letting her thoughts wander. “I get that.” And she did, it was like she used the word as a shield. It was her response to everything, and she wasn’t okay, not that it was really a secret. None of them were okay, but saying it made it feel like they were. And deception was something worth clinging onto. 

“You know, we never talked about-” 

“We don’t need to.” Hailey said, cutting her off. 

Kim eyed her cautiously, “Okay.” She wanted to talk, but she didn’t feel like she had any right to push Hailey to. Not after what happened. “Done.” She said, a few minutes later, taking a step back to admire her work.

“Thanks,” Hailey said with a genuine smile, picking up the jar of flower clips they had bought that morning. “You think I should just put these everywhere?” 

Kim nodded, “Yeah, I think so.” She reached down, clicking shuffle on a playlist, a random Taylor Swift song playing. They were both done talking. 

An hour later, the two of them were sitting in Kim’s kitchen talking to her mom when Jay and Adam arrived. Adam just let himself in the front door, Jay choked on a laugh as he waltzed in like he owned the place. 

The boys appeared in the kitchen, “Honey, I’m home.” He said, passing Kim and hugging her mom. Kim rolled her eyes as they all laughed, Jay’s hand finding Hailey’s back like it always did. He was so happy, even though life was still crazy, he was ridiculously happy. Watching Hailey smile and Adam joke around like he used to (before they used it as a distraction) was so nice, and familiar and just so damn good. 

Hailey peered up at him, grinning as he pecked her lips. “Alright, let’s get a picture so you all can get out of here.” Claire said, ushering them together. Jay stood next to Adam, both of them holding their girlfriends securely against their waists. They all smiled brightly, relaxing after the click. 

They quickly bid their goodbyes, making their way out to Jay’s truck. Hailey slid easily into the passenger seat, despite her nude heels (that she was already regretting), while Adam and Kim got in the back. They pulled out of the driveway, and somehow Adam ended up with aux cord. Somewhere in between an old Maroon 5 song and the Weekend, Jay’s hand found hers on the center console. 

Hailey looked down at it and smiled. It was a simple thing that they did every single time they rode together, but it really symbolized how much things had changed. Hailey thought back to the day that he kept his eyes trained on the road, back when she cut him off when he tried to apologize. It was only two months ago, but they were different, everything was different, everything was better. 

 Jay followed her gaze to their conjoined hands, mimicking her smile. She didn’t have to say anything, he knew exactly what she was thinking. Part of him wishes he could go back and stay with her then, he felt like they had wasted so much time, but the other part of him knew that they were better for it. Neither of them were ready for what they have now, then. And what they have was worth the wait. 

Finally they reached their destination, Jay having the park pretty far away due to how many people were already there. They got out, Jay rounding the truck to help Hailey down, even though she hadn’t needed it in a long time. The four of them headed towards the decent sized house, they could hear the music thumping from outside. Hailey slipped her hand in Jay’s, gripping his forearm. 

Jay noticed the look of discomfort on her face, leaning down. “Hey, you okay?” He asked, eying her. 

Hailey nodded, holding on a little tighter. “Yeah, just don’t want to get lost in the crowd.” Jay nodded, believing her lie. She couldn’t really explain it, but she had a terrible feeling in her stomach and the thought of being lost in a sea of people made her want to throw up. Even though it was over, Hailey still found herself looking over her shoulder and watching out for her. And even though all of that meant she was nowhere near being in a party mood, she wasn’t going to bring everyone else down, they all needed a fun night. 

They made their way through the crowded makeshift dance floor, and found Kevin in a living area near the back of the house where he was sitting with Stella, Conner, Matt and Sylvie. “Hey guys,” He called, jumping up and clapping Adam’s back. 

Stella stood, hugging Kim tightly, “I’m glad you guys could make it.” 

Kim squeezed her, “Me too.”

Stella backed away, touching Hailey’s arm affectionately and giving her a kind smile that she returned. “I know it’s kind of crazy,” Stella laughed, “If you need something or just a break, the keys to the upstairs doors are hidden right under the doors, just inside the rooms.” She glanced at the obvious couples, winking. “I trust you guys.” 

They all nodded, Kim blushing, a chorus of “great” and “thanks” sounding. The group dispersed, the five of them huddling up. “Obviously Hailey and I are gonna stick together, if we get lost, meet back here at midnight and we’ll head out?” Jay suggested.

“Sounds good,” Kev said, nodding.

Adam agreed too. “That works for me.” 

That works for me…

Hailey flinched at those words, instinctively squeezing her eyes shut. Her breath caught in her throat. The image of a pulled gun flashing through her brain. She grimaced, trying to push the thoughts away. “Hailes…” She took another deep breath, doing everything in her power to keep her fear at bay. “Hailes.” Someone said, harsher, snapping her out of her daze. 

“Yeah?” She asked quickly. 

Kim eyed her cautiously, “I asked if you wanted a water…”

“Oh,” Hailey shook her head, “No, I’m good, thanks though.” She watched as Kim and Adam slowly disappeared into the crowd, her eyebrowed cinched together. 

Jay stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the rest of the room, “Are you sure you’re okay?” He asked, concern clear in his bright green eyes. 

Hailey nodded vigorously, “I’m good, I promise.” She said, his face didn’t change. He didn’t believe her. Hailey reached up, pulling him to her level and attaching their lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck as she deepened it, pulling him even closer. Jay did his best not to get lost in the kiss, but with her it was so hard. She pulled away slowly, peering up at him. “Jay, I’m okay.” Kim was right, it didn’t sound like a word anymore. 

Jay sighed, admitting defeat. “Okay.” He laced their hands together, leaning down and kissing her slowly before guiding her to the dance floor. They stood near the edge, Jay’s hand sitting on her hips as they swayed in sync to the fast music. They danced for a while before some of Jay’s teammates interrupted them. 

Hailey stood securely at his side as they spoke, absently listening to the trashy rap music that was playing loudly throughout the room. “Fuck, shit, bitch…” The sound of a gun being cocked rang through the speakers and Hailey screamed. Suddenly the eyes of everyone around her staring at her. She was frozen in place, forcing the terrible memories away, but she couldn’t. 

“Hailey.” Jay said, but her feet had a mind of their own and she was running towards the staircase, her lungs burning, she couldn’t get in a good breath. “Hailey!” Jay called after her, not even bothering to say goodbye to his team before taking off. 

Hailey booked it up the stairs, dropping to the ground in front of the first door she saw, grasping aimlessly for the key. She slumped against the door, tears streaming down her face as she fought to breathe. Jay booked it towards her, crouching down and finding the key easily. He unlocked the door, then swept his hysterical girlfriend off the floor, carrying her into the room and setting her on the bed. She was still heaving in front of him, and Jay placed two hands on either side of her face. “Hailey, Hailey look at me.” He said, but her eyes stayed trained on his chest. “Baby, you’re safe, look at me, please.” She clenched her eyes shut, more tears falling down her face. When she opened them again, they met his and she launched herself into his arms. 

Jay held her to him, rocking them gently as she cried into his neck. “I-I thought-” She stuttered, sobs wracking her body. 

“I know, I know.” He said, trying to calm her. 

“I thought it was over…” She said, and Jay felt his heart clench in his chest. 

He ran his hand through her braided hair, no doubt destroying it. “It is, it’s all over, you’re safe. We’re safe.” For some reason that made her cry harder, maybe because she hadn’t for the past month, she had been bottling up her feelings to protect herself and everyone else. Because even though she was, she hadn’t felt safe in a long time. 

Hailey pulled away after a long time, utterly exhausted. Jay couldn’t take the look of defeat on her safe, she looked so tired, so broken, that it scared him. How could he not have known how much pain she was in? 

She couldn’t bear to look at him, so she kept her gaze fixed on her lap. He placed his hand on her thigh, and Hailey laid one on top of it. She sniffled, using her free hand to wipe the never ending tears from her eyes. “I’m okay.”

…

The following Monday, Hailey sat in the passenger seat of Jay’s truck. After the events of Saturday night, Jay had no choice but to loop in Trudy and Randall, he had to after he had failed to do so before. They spent the rest of the weekend convincing Hailey to see someone, to talk about everything they had been through. 

It was probably the trauma left over from her parents, but the stigma that therapy made you weak was ingrained in Hailey’s mind, and convincing her to make an appointment was no easy task. 

That’s how they ended up sitting in the parking lot of a private practice right after school, Hailey’s leg bouncing nervously up and down. Jay lifted their intertwined hands off the center console, kissing the back of hers. “I’m going to be here waiting, all I ask is that you go in there and try.” He said, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. 

Hailey smiled softly, nodding. She leaned across the console and kissed him slowly, hoping that she was able to portray just how much love she had for him and trust she had in him through it. Jay pulled away, taking her in. “I love you, Hailey Upton.” 

“I love you, Jay Halstead.” She said. 

“Now, go kick some ass.” He said and she laughed, opening the truck door. She shut it, giving him one last look before walking inside the doors. 

She sat down in one of the waiting room chairs after signing in, a few minutes later an older man with big glasses popped his head out of the back. “Hailey?” 

She stood, “Yes sir.”

The man smiled, “Come with me.” He led her back to an office, gesturing for her to sit on the couch while he sat in the chair across from her. “I’m Dr. Charles, but you can call me Daniel or Dan, or really whatever makes you comfortable.” He explained. 

Hailey nodded, shifting nervously. “So, how does this work?” She asked.

“However you want it to, we can talk or not talk about anything you want.” He said, leaning back in his chair. 

“Okay,” Hailey glanced at the ground, “The-There’s a lot…” 

“That’s okay.” 

Hailey grimaced, finally looking at him. “Where do I start?” She asked.

Dr. Charles smiled. “How about the beginning?”

Hailey sighed, taking a few deep breaths, ready to start confronting all the demons that she had been fighting for so long. 

“Tell me everything.”

...

A/N: This is long but please, please, please read it!!

First, this is the end of this story, but it is not THE end! There will be a sequel and if you want to see a sneak peak, you can find it HERE. I am so so excited to continue exploring this version of these characters, and don’t worry, the next installment will be just as exciting as this one! 

Second, thank you so so so so much to everyone who has shown love to and supported this story. It really means the world to me, you have no idea. This has been such an amazing experience and I have learned so much from writing this, so thank you so much for reading. You guys are truly incredible, and writing has helped me through a tough time in my life. I’m going to say thank you a million time, but thank you, thank you, thank you <3

This story evolved so much lol: in the beginning I had no plan, and then it changed like five times, and we ended up here, so here’s a few things that didn’t make it in.

Nadia was supposed to die in chapter 19, but I decided against it…

I debated Kevin and Stella getting together, don’t hate me for this ahaha

I almost made Kim lose her hearing, but I wasn’t sure I could do the storyline justice with everything else going on

I debated killing Adam (I’M SORRY, i’m sorry…)

And finally (cause you don’t need to know all of my secrets) I ALMOST broke up Upstead at the end

Anyway, there’s some behind the scenes action if you’re interested. 

Back to the point: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUPPORTING ME AND THIS STORY, I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART, and i cannot wait to embark on this next journey together!!

So much love,

Anna

@lissethsrojas @puckluck28 @fuckyeahkillianemma @chilly7188 @thebigapocalypsewolf @karihighman @ruzek-halstead @anotheronechicagobog @snowwhite013 @tracysupton @angelsjedi @carissalizz​

#jay halstead #hailey upton #upstead #upstead au #kim burgess #adam ruzek #burzek au #burzek #kevin atwater #erin lindsay #stella kidd #trudy platt #chicago pd #kelly severide #one chicago #chicago pd au

[bfpnola]

It’s BFP’s first original graphic! Please share, stay safe and spread light. | Compiled by @tayorswift

Click here for over 1,000 free social justice, mental health, and academic resources consistently updated throughout the year. Please share so everyone has equal and equitable access to education and activism!

[ID: the good news

Florida passed Amendment 2, which will raise minimum wage to $15/hour by 2026

South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey all passed an amendment that legalized marijuana

Utah will now be removing gendered language in the Utah Constitution and will replace it with gender-neutral language

California passed Prop 17, which restores voting rights to previously imprisoned citizens

Delaware elected Sarah McBride, the first ever openly trans state senator

Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones are the first ever openly gay black members of congress

Cori Bush is the first ever woman of color to win a seat in Congress in Missouri

Mauree Turner became the first non-binary state lawmaker in America and the first Muslim member of the Oklahoma state house

Oregon has become the first state to decriminalize all drugs (small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs will have lesser punishments, similar to traffic tickets, and no jail time.)

Kim Jackson is the first out LGBTQ+ state senator in Georgia

Shevrin D. Jones is Florida’s first openly LGBTQ+ state senator

Jabari Brisport became New York’s first gay Black member of the house

Arizona flipped blue for the first time in 24 years

Michele Rayner-Goolsby became the first Black LGBTQ+ woman in the Florida Legislature

Voters in Colorado overwhelmingly rejected Prop 115, a state ballot measure that would have banned abortions after a fetus reaches 22 weeks gestational age. In rejecting the initiative, Colorado remains one of the most progressive states in the country on reproductive rights

Arizona will now send two Democrats to the Senate for the first time since 1951, thanks to the win of ex-astronaut Captain Mark Kelly.

Democrats have flipped the senate seat in Colorado, with the win of former Gov. John Hickenlooper

Mississippi is removing the confederate flag from their symbology

Marie Newman, who has been titled ‘a leader of the pro-choice movement’, will now represent Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District in Congress

Nevada became the first state to protect same-sex marriage in its constitution

Immigrant rights activist and former public defender José Garza won the race for District Attorney of Travis County, Texas

Michigan passed Proposal 20-2, which requires police to have a search warrant to access a person’s electronic data and electronic communications.

Washington approved Referendum 90, which requires all school districts to provide age appropriate, comprehensive sex ed at all grade levels

Colorado passed the first paid family/ medical leave program

Mississippi passed an amendment that legalized medical marijuana

Denver overwhelmingly voted to pass Ballot Measure 2J. which lifts the city’s more than 30-year-old ban on pit bulls

New Mexico became the first state to elect all women of color to our House delegation

Vermont elected the state’s first openly transgender legislator, Taylor Small

Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, all won re-election in the House

Nebraska passed a constitutional amendment to the state constitution that closes the loophole of the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment that allowed slavery as a punishment for crimes

Rhode Island passed a measure to rename the state, officially naming it Rhode Island and not The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, due to connections to slavery

Oregon passed measure 109, the first state to legalize psilocybin (mushrooms) for mental heath treatments

Hawai’i elected native Hawaiian Kaiali’i “Kai” Kahele, a Democrat, to the House of Representatives. He is one of 6 Native members of the House who will be sworn in in January

Utah passed legislation that removes language from the state constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments (no more prison labor!)

I know the election is stressful, so I thought maybe we could use some reminders of the good happening in our country right now! These next few days, weeks, or even months, remember to breathe. Things may not be in the best place right now, but even in our darkest times, there will always be light. It just takes a bit of searching for! Everyone please stay safe and continue to spread light and love throughout the world.

End ID.]

#black liberation #black lives matter #blm #election #politics #republican #democrat #liberal #conservative #trump #biden #kamala harris #mike pence #headquarters -> new orleans #florida #south dakota #montana #arizona #new jersey #utah #california #delaware #lgbtq #lgbt #poc #bipoc #black women #rhode island #hawaii #pacific islander

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 5

Sarah Louise

A week or two before this Dust’s deadline, we got our first tour announcement by email in more than a year. It was the first of deluge, as live music looks to be coming back with a vengeance starting this summer and really picking up steam around September. Meanwhile, we celebrate our newly vaxxed (or for our Canadian correspondents half-vaxxed) status with tentative steps outside. Your editor had her first beer at a brew pub in mid-May, and it was stupendous. Also stupendous, the onslaught of new music, which has, if anything, accelerated. This month, contributors include all the regulars plus a few new people: Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Patrick Masterson, Ray Garraty, Tim Clarke, Andrew Forell, Ian Mathers, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw and Chris Liberato. Happy spring, happy normal and happy listening!

Amulets — Blooming (The Flenser)

Blooming by AMULETS

Like a lot of us, Portland-based noise artist Randall Taylor discovered the solace of long walks during the pandemic. His work, which has always used tape degradation to explore the intersection of time, loss and technology, shifted to incorporate another source of decay: the natural world. So, in opening salvo, “Blooming,” alongside blistering onslaughts of eroded guitar sound, it is possible to hear the sounds of a fertile garden — birds, insects, air movement. You can nearly smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on your skin. “The New Normal” explores sounds of creaking, friction-y word and metal, alongside pristine chimes of synthetic tone. It is uneasy, with skittering string-like squeaks and swoops, but also deeply meditative; it shifts from moment to moment from anxiety to provisional acceptance, much as we all did last year, staring out our windows. Overall, the tone is elegiac, gorgeous, but Randall does not hesitate to introduce dissonance. “Heaviest Weight” thunders with frayed bass tones, a weight and a threat in their subliminal pulse. The contrast between that ominous sound and purer, clearer layers of melody, makes for unsettling listening—are we at war or peace, happy or sad, agitated or calm? And yet, perhaps that’s the point, that the past year has been swirl of feelings, boredom alongside anxiety, hope lighting the corners of our listlessness, the smell of flowers pleasing but faintly reminiscent of funerals. Blooming decocts this mix into sound.

Jennifer Kelly

 Astute Palate — S-T (Petty Bunco)

Astute Palate by Astute Palate

Astute Palate is a hastily assembled group of rockers summoned to support David Nance in Philly on a date when he couldn’t bring the David Nance Band. Participants included Richie Records proprietor Richie Charles, Lantern’s Emily Robb, Writhing Squares/Purling Hiss/all around Philadelphia regular Daniel Provenzano on bass and, of course, Nance himself, all huddled together in Robb’s recording studio for a weekend together. None of this origin story does justice, however, to the pure liquid fire of this one-off musical collaboration, dominated by Nance’s viscous, distorted blues-inflected guitar wail, but knocked sideways by brute force drumming, wild hypnotic bass lines and the ritual incantation of Nance (and later Robb) singing. The long “Stall Out” does anything but, rampaging free-range in unbridled Crazy Horse/Allmans-style abandon for close to ten minutes without a single sputter. “A Little Proof” is somehow simultaneously heavier and more country, spinning out the soul-blues jams like a younger, unrulier cousin to MC5. “Treadin’ Schuylkill” gives Provenzano the spotlight, opening with a growling bass solo soon joined by heavy psych guitars (a nod, perhaps, to the illustrious locals in Bardo Pond). If Nance et. al. can pull stuff this fine out in a stray road warrior weekend, what are the rest of you doing with your lives?

Jennifer Kelly

 Axis: Sova — Fractal (God?)

Fractal - EP by Axis: Sova

Axis: Sova is a combo of three Chicago guys plus one drum machine, which had already been inactive for two or three seasons before the initial COVID lockdown. This digital EP is their way of clearing up some business that could no longer remain undone. The title tune, “Fractal USA,” is a remake of a song from the early days, when the “band” was Brett Sova’s solo project, to full-on, no your pants aren’t tight enough rock band. They just needed you to know about the evolution, you see, so go ahead, do some scissor kicks and gurn while they windmill away; you have enough money saved up from not seeing live music to pay the inevitable chiropractor bill. “Caramel” hypothesizes that a Cluster song that’s played twice as loud and twice as long is twice as good; not sure if I agree, but it’s still not bad at all. Maybe you got a little weird after a few months of putting on your best mask for your daily trip to see if the stimulus check was in the mailbox? The Brenda Ray-meets-Old Black mash up, “(Don’t Wanna Have That) Dream,” is proof that while you were alone, you weren’t alone. If you’ve made it this far, you don’t need to have the fourth track described, so let’s just say that it’s longer.

Bill Meyer

Mattie Barbier — Three Spaces (self-released)

three spaces by mattie barbier

While perhaps best known as half of the trombone-centric new music duo RAGE Thormbones, Mattie Barbier is a member of several other combos and a sonic researcher under their own name. Three Spaces, which is a single, album-length sound file, has the air of experimentation about it. “What do I do,” one can imagine Barbier asking themself, “when I can’t play with other people?” Make music at home, and out of what’s at home, is the obvious answer. But doing isn’t the only point here; the outcome also matters, and while what Barbier has accomplished with Three Spaces sounds quite different from the RAGE Thormbones live experience, it registers quite strongly. Barbier has combined long tones and melodic fragments played on euphonium, trombone and reed organ, that were recorded both inside and outside of their home. Carefully layered, the source material combines into a sound rather like a bell’s toll, which over the course of nearly 39 minutes swells and recedes, but never quite decays; it ends with an imposed rather than natural fade-out. The sound is as deep as it is expansive, inviting the listener to let themselves fall ever father into its realm.

Bill Meyer

 Beneath — On Tilt EP (Hemlock Recordings)

On Tilt EP by Beneath

One of the more pleasant surprises this year is the resuscitation of Untold’s Hemlock Recordings imprint. A vital voice in the post-dubstep fracas at the turn of the ‘10s thanks to releases from Hessle Audio’s Pearson Sound (when he was still Ramadanman) and Pangaea, James Blake, FaltyDL and Hodge to name but a handful, the label went dormant following a Ploy 12” in 2017 before the surprise announcement of Londoner Beneath’s On Tilt, which sounds every bit the sensible alliance in practice it looks on paper: These are low-end rumblers with irregular rhythms and spare melodic tics that worm their way into your brain in the best bone-humming fashion (see “Shambling” or “Lesser Circulation” for a good example). Who knows how long the return will last, but for a certain stripe of DMZ-damaged devotee and pretty much no one else, it’ll feel good to have some Hemlock in your life again. Tilt back, pour in.

Patrick Masterson

 Black Spirit— El Sueño De La Razón Produce Monstruos (Infinite Night Records)

More metal comes from South America than Spain, but these Europeans clear the high bar set by Latin America scenesters. The album’s title states that it was inspired by “El Sueño De La Razón Produce Monstruos.” That can testify both to lasting influence of Goya’s art and to the laziness of the current culture which seeks inspiration only from the most popular pictorial art of the past. The track “Ignorance and The Grotesque” perfectly captures the whole mood of the disc: it balances ignorant speeds, undecipherable vocals and grotesque parts with piano interludes and doom-ish atmosphere. It would be better without the grotesque, but that’s probably part of the baggage.

Ray Garraty

 Burial + Blackdown — Shock Power of Love EP (Keysound Recordings)

Shock Power of Love EP by Burial

You might worry, occasionally, that Burial was becoming a victim of diminishing returns. Here, as ever, he uses a narrow palette to create tracks that few can emulate. However, even though the music has its rewards, it doesn’t clear the very high bar that his previous work has set. Thus “Dark Gethsemane” rides a 4/4 beat, angelic murmurs, vinyl crackle and a tightly ratcheted build that morphs into a sermon led by the repeated invocation “We must shock this nation with the power of love.” As his vocal samples become more explicit, the mystery of his music fades. This is all promise and no real resolution. “Space Cadet’ likewise sounds both gorgeous and minor with its soul gospel refrain “Take Me Higher” over an old-school jungle beat. At six plus minutes it would have been enough. It continues another three with an almost cartoonish second movement that lacks the subtlety that characterizes Burial’s best work.

Andrew Forell 

  Colleen — The Tunnel and the Clearing (Thrill Jockey)

The Tunnel and the Clearing by Colleen

While COVID messed with most people’s lives, it was both an endgame and an opportunity for Cécile Schott, the Frenchwoman who records under the name Colleen. She was just coming out of a series of health and personal dislocations, which resulted in her being newly healthy but alone in a new town just as the lockdown came down. Clearly, this was not a time for half measures, so she selected an entirely new instrumental set-up and settled in to make a record that reflected what she’d been through. Out went the viola da gamba and melodica that have figured prominently on her last few albums; in came a Moog synthesizer, a Yamaha organ, a tape echo and a drum machine.  

Colleen’s voice, of course, remains the same. Airy and precise, her delivery doesn’t match the gravity of the experiences her songs describe. But that sense of remove is, perhaps, a reflection of one of adversity’s lessons; if you don’t stay stuck, you can wind up somewhere quite different. Between the keyboards’ cycling melodies and the drum machine’s fizzy beats, the music on The Tunnel and the Clearing imparts a sense of motion that carries her light voice along for the ride, dropping painful sentiments and letting them fall behind.

Bill Meyer  

 Current Joys — Voyager (Secretly Canadian)

Nick Rattigan has been releasing music under the name Current Joys since 2013, and Voyager is his latest offering. It’s a dramatic and often brilliant collection of songs, bringing to mind the urgent rhythmic drive of Spoon, the dour grandeur of The Cure and the unapologetic emotional heft of Bright Eyes or early Arcade Fire. On Voyager’s standout, “American Honey,” a simple strummed backing and Rattigan’s vocal delivery are potent enough, but it’s the string section that proves devastating, cycling around for multiple punches to the gut. While more stripped-back songs such as “Big Star” and “The Spirit or the Curse” offer some respite along the way, Voyager does prove a little unwieldy. With 16 tracks clocking in at nearly an hour, the album’s execution doesn’t quite live up to its ambition. The wonky tom-tom rhythms of “Breaking the Waves” are more distracting than interesting; a serviceable cover of Rowland S. Howard’s “Shivers” feels more like an acknowledgment of influence than a striking interpretation; and the combined six minutes of the two-part instrumental title track may have worked better as shorter interludes. Nevertheless, plenty of Voyager’s tracks demonstrate Rattigan’s knack for a raw, emotive indie-rock tune.

Tim Clarke

 Ducks Ltd — Get Bleak EP (Carpark Records)

Toronto duo Ducks Ltd celebrates signing to Carpark with an expanded re-release of their 2018 debut EP Get Bleak. The pair — Tom Mcgreevy on vocals, rhythm and bass guitars and Evan Lewis on lead guitar — bonded over a shared love of 1980s indie bands. Their intricately constructed guitar interplay carries the DNA of Postcard and C86 over meaty bass lines that evoke Mighty Mighty as much as Orange Juice and McCarthy. The sprightly music belies the miserablism of the lyrics that focus on FOMO, poor decisions, screen induced isolation, the corrosive impact of gentrification and gig economies. Mcgreevy and Lewis don’t wallow, however. Their jaunty jangle is a paean to the joys of jumping about and singing along with those new favorite songs that suddenly mean everything and will stick with you long after the world’s shit slopes your shoulders.

Andrew Forell

 Field Music — Flat White Moon (Memphis Industries)

It’s easy to take Field Music for granted. Since 2005, the Brewis brothers have been making smartly composed and tightly executed guitar pop with obvious debts to The Beatles and XTC, and all their albums have fallen somewhere along the continuum from good to great (my personal favorites are 2010’s Measure and 2012’s Plumb). Album number eight, Flat White Moon, features the usual balance between Peter’s more pensive, bittersweet numbers with greater focus on piano and strings, such as “Orion From the Street” and “When You Last Heard From Linda,” and David’s funkier, more staccato cuts, such as “No Pressure” and “I’m the One Who Wants to Be With You.” Twelve songs, 40 minutes, tunes for days — what’s not to love? If you’ve yet to get acquainted with Field Music, Flat White Moon is as good an introduction as any.

Tim Clarke 

 Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Jacob Felix Heule/Kanoko Nishi-Smith — Non-Dweller (Humbler)

non-dweller by gabby fluke-mogul, Jacob Felix Heule, & Kanoko Nishi-Smith

With Non-Dweller, we have a trio of Bay-Area improvisers who certainly do not reside in one place for very long. There is an agitated freneticism about their interactions here, the performers acting like electrons seeking to release energy and break out of orbit. Each player brings a unique collection of timbres to the party with their implement of choice. Heule is a percussionist by trade yet focuses on extended techniques — mainly friction-based — as he wrests an unholy wail from the maw of his bass drum. Fluke-Mogul’s violin sways between tone generator and noise source. Nishi-Smith is a classically trained pianist who here is bowing and plucking the koto, or Japanese zither. The trio spend most of their time in sparring mode, their energies unleashed with synchrony as if in an elaborate dance. It is clear they have collaborated before. Heule and Nishi-Smith have been at it for over a decade; Fluke-Mogul joined the party in 2019. The most gorgeous moments happen when all three players are focused on friction: Heule slides across his drum, Fluke-Mogul soars with their violin and Nishi-Smith gracefully bows her koto. The energy is focused and particles collide, creating waves of tone. The players wrestle intensity into submission, and the ensuing sonorities are unmissable.

Bryon Hayes

 FMB DZ — War Zone (Fast Money Boyz \ EMPIRE)

Ever since FMB DZ got shot and moved out of Detroit, he has continued to release angry music. (He may not be more productive after the assault, but he’s certainly not less so.) War Zone is his latest effort, along with The Gift 3 and Ape Season, and DZ is back in his paranoiac mode and ready for vengeance. That’s hardly unusual in this type of music but DZ stands out because he’s a bit angrier, a bit more pressing and a bit more gifted than the next man. He doesn’t outdo himself in this tape, but rather mostly follows the blueprint of Ape Season. The standout track is “Spin Again.”

Ray Garraty

 Ian M Fraser — Berserk (Superpang)

Berserk by Ian M Fraser

Ian M Fraser is kind enough to provide details about how he created and edited Berserk, although relatively few listeners are going to really know what “nonlinear feedback systems and waveset synthesis” are, let alone “sensormonitor primitives auditory perception software”. And fewer still will be able to focus on what that might mean while Berserk is actually playing, because the output of those programs and systems is immediately, viscerally clear. If a computer were actually capable of going rabid, feral, well, berserk, the human mind might imagine it sounds something like this. Over four shorter tracks and the relatively epic 8:26 of “The Cannibal,” Fraser either coaxes or allows (or both) his tools into the equivalent of something like what someone who knew very little about both genres might imagine is like a power electronics act playing free jazz or vice versa. It is absolutely viscerally thrilling (albeit probably easier to repeat at this length of 16 minutes than, say, 50) and will do the track the next time you feel like your brain needs a good hard scrub.

Ian Mathers 

  Human Failure — Crown on the Head of a King of Mud (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Crown on the Head of a King of Mud by Human Failure

It’s tough to figure out if the band’s name is meant specifically to apply to D. Cornejo (sole member of Human Failure) or to the general field of human failure, which grows ever more capacious. Whatever the intent, Human Failure makes thoroughly unlovable music, pitched somewhere on the continuum that runs from the primitivist death metal to stenchcore to harsh noise. This reviewer is especially fond (yep, somehow that’s the only word for it) of the title track of this 10” record: “Crown on the Head of a King of Mud” sloughs and slogs along for two minutes, sort of like one of the ripest zombies in Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985), wandering about and slowly falling to pieces in Florida’s tumid heat. Just as that last bit of flesh is poised to slide from bone, the song unexpectedly breaks into a run. Where is it going? What’s the rush? No one knows. Things eventually bottom out into “Disassembling Morality,” a static-and-distortion laden electronic interlude that might squeak and spark for a bit too long — but then “Your Hope Is a Noose” shambles into the frame. That zombie seems to have found some equally noisome and truculent friends. They djent and pogo around for a while, and the song has a lot more fun than seems called for by the band name. Cornejo might be pissed off by the myriad manmade disasters and outright catastrophes that burden the earthball (he’s sure angry as heck about something…). But the record ends up being sort of successful, if deafening, grinding, growling stench is on the agenda. All things considered, why wouldn’t it be?

Jonathan Shaw

 Insub Meta Orchestra — Ten / Sync (Insub)

Ten / Sync by INSUB META ORCHESTRA

Ten / Sync was recorded in September, 2020; not exactly lockdown time, but certainly not out of the pandemic woods. It’s no small task to keep any 50-strong orchestra going, let alone one devoted to experimental music. So, if you already have one, then having it perform during a pandemic is just another challenge among many. So, the Swiss-based orchestra assembled three groups of musicians, numbering 31 in all, and assembled their contributions during post-production. While this did not provide the social experience that IMO’s gatherings usually impart to participants, an outcome that just isn’t the same seems awfully representative of the time, right? And since one Insub Meta Orchestra subspeciality is making music that sounds like it was performed by many fewer players than were actually present, this collection of sustained chords concealing tiny actions and apparently disassembled passages is actually very representative of the ensemble’s music.

Bill Meyer

Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore — Neutral Love (Astral Editions)

Neutral Love by Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore

With her own group, the Elder Ones, and in Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, singer Amirtha Kidambi shows how far you can take a song while still giving the meanings of words and the boundaries of form their dues. But Neutral Love, like her two tapes with Lea Bertucci, explores the territory outside the tower of song. The main structures for this improvised encounter with electric guitarist Matteo Liberatore seem to be a shared agreement to exclude certain options. Song form and overt displays of chops are right out; the patient manipulation of sounds is where it’s at. Liberatore opts mostly for swelling and subsiding resonations, while Kidambi spends a lot of time finding out what’s hiding at the back of her throat, drawing it out, and then tying it into elaborate shapes. Patient and eerie, these four tracks find a place adjacent to Charalambides at their most abstract, and make it their own.

Bill Meyer

 Kosmodemonic — Liminal Light (Transylvanian Recordings)

KOSMODEMONIC - LIMINAL LIGHT by KOSMODEMONIC

NYC outfit Kosmodemonic is among the recent wave of metal bands attempting to effect an organic-sounding synthesis of numerous subgenres: a slurry of sludge, a bit of black metal, a dose of doom, and a hit or two of the lysergic. When it works — as it does on a number of tracks on the band’s long new cassette Liminal Light — it’s an exciting sound. Songs like “Moirai” and “Broken Crown” manage to couple tuneful riffs, dirty tone and a muscular bottom end in ways that feel thumping, groovy and pretty weird. You’ll want to bump your butt around even as you’re looking for something to break. But the tape is pretty long, and the further afield Kosmodemonic gets from that mid-tempo groove, the more middling (and sometimes muddled) the material sounds. “With Majesty” can’t quite find its rhythmic footing in its more technical passages, and the song’s sludgier sections feel like compromises, rather than interesting maneuvers. But the record begins and finishes with really strong songs. Both “Drown in Drone” and “Unnaming Unlearning” embrace scale, letting their big riffs rip. When “Unnaming Unlearning” slips into complex sections of blackened and distorted dissonance, the drama surges. Formal experiment and manipulation of mood fold into each other. The song gets interesting, even as it’s reaching for a peak. And then it ends, suddenly, violently. It’s pretty good. Your impulse is to flip the tape and hear it again, which is just what Kosmodemonic wants you to do. Well played, dudes.

Jonathan Shaw

 Sarah Louise — Earth Bow (Self-Released)

Earth Bow by Sarah Louise

Asheville-based songwriter Sarah Louise wants to be your personal nature interpreter. The titles of her recordings, from her debut Field Guide through Deeper Woods and Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars are like planetary signposts pointing to a more intimate relationship with our planet as a living organism. With each successive release, her music has also become more and more organic sounding, culminating with Earth Bow, in which Louise herself is arms deep in humus, communing with birds and insects. Recordings of creation feature prominently; katydids, spring peeper frogs, a creek and various birds are credited as providing additional singing, augmenting the artist’s own mellifluous voice. For a recording in which the track titles and lyrics are focused on nature and Louise’s experiences therein, there are a lot of digital elements. Her 12-string guitar is prominent in places, but synths are everywhere: in the background, bouncing around like shooting stars, and mimicking the various fauna that they accompany. Yet the earthly and the machine-made are not juxtaposed, they are blended. The vocals, which center the recordings, tie both elements together nicely. Earth Bow is a tasty concoction, in which a variety of ingredients are married in botanical bliss.

Bryon Hayes

 Le Mav — “Supersonic (Feat. Tay Iwar)” (Immaculate Taste)

Nigeria’s alté scene has been bubbling for a couple of years now on the backs of guys like Odunsi (The Engine) and Santi, and Gabriel Obi bka Le Mav is no stranger to the fray, having produced Santi’s “Sparky,” Aylø and a recurring favorite of his, singer Tay Iwar. The two have already collaborated at length (for songs off Iwar’s debut album Gemini in 2019, as well as the entirety of last year’s Gold EP), so the comfort level here is established. It shows: Iwar’s smooth-as vocals match Le Mav’s breezy piano descent and gentle rhythmic shuffle in an easygoing song that matches anything you might hear coming from Miguel, Frank Ocean or the Sun-El Musician orbit. “If it feels right, touch the sky,” Iwar suggests early on. Well, don’t mind if I do.

Patrick Masterson

 Sugar Minott — “I Remember Mama” (Emotional Rescue)

I Remember Mama by Sugar Minott

At some point after Lincoln Barrington Minott had left Kingston and his early dancehall and lovers rock legacy with Studio One and Black Roots behind for cooler climates and the old world of London, he ran into producer Steve Parr at the Wackies offices. Story goes that the two decided to start up Sound Design Studio with the intent to record and mix for ads, film and music — but scant evidence of this idea exists beyond “I Remember Mama,” released on 7” and 12” in 1985 and reissued for the first time since via Stuart Leath and his long-trusted Emotional Rescue imprint. Parr does most of the work on the recording (Andy MacDonald shines on tenor sax and Paul Uden guitar in the original credits), but it’s all about the sweetness Sugar brings to the table: With backing from two accomplished performers in their own right, Janette Sewell and Shola Phillips, Minott’s naturally relaxed delivery shines through on this. “Sound Design” is a dubbier instrumental version that retains Sewell’s and Phillips’ vocals, and Dan Tyler (half of Idjut Boys) provides an even spacier, handclap-laden 11-minute remix, but while both variants are excellent, the boogie of the original is unassailable. Look for the vinyl to hit in July.

Patrick Masterson

 Jessica Ackerley — Morning/mourning (Cacophonous Revival)

Morning/mourning by Jessica Ackerley

It makes sense that Wendy Eisenberg wrote the liner notes to Morning/mourning, since they and Jessica Ackerley are bound by a shared commitment to string-craft. Both have a deep idiomatic foundation in jazz guitar, but neither is willing to be confined by what they’ve learned. In the case of Morning/mourning, that means that patiently paced ruminations upon Derek Bailey-like harmonics sit side by side with frantic but rigorously scripted forays that sound a bit like Jim Hall might if he input the contents of his French press intravenously. This album’s nine tracks observe passings and new beginnings, since Ackerley pulled the recording together while in quarantine, shortly before leaving Manhattan for Honolulu, and titled some of them in tribute to a pair of guitar teachers who were taken by 2020. But in their attention to tone, harmony, velocity and structure, these pieces, like Eisenberg’s records, speak as much to intellect as to emotion.

Bill Meyer

 Nadja & Disrotted — Split (Roman Numeral Records)

It makes a certain kind of sense for Nadja and Disrotted to tackle a split together; although both bands traffic in a particularly foreboding strain of doom metal, they also share a weird sort of comfort. There’s a sense more of horrible things happening around you than to you, like you’re in the eye of the storm or maybe in a bathysphere plunged to crushing depths. There is a precision to the menace, a measured quality to the noise. And they get there when they get there; as Dusted’s Jonathan Shaw pointed out in his review of Disrotted’s Cryongenics, “Pace seems to be the point.” This excellent split doesn’t shy away from these commonalities while still highlighting the distinct timbres of each act, with Nadja settling into and then returning to one of their indelibly titanic bass riffs throughout the 19-minute “From the Lips of a Ghost in the Shadow of a Unicorn's Dream” and Disrotted somehow conjuring the feeling of a massive structure corroding and collapsing on the 15-minute “Pastures for the Benighted”. When the latter slams to a half, one last hit echoing away, the listener may find themselves feeling equally relieved the onslaught is over and kind of missing both sides’ pulverizing embrace.

Ian Mathers 

 Nasimiyu — POTIONS (Figureight)

P O T I O N S by nasimiYu

Nasimiyu’s songs bounce and shimmy with complex rhythms, her background as a dancer and percussionist for Kabells and Sharkmuffin coming through in the intricate interplay of handclaps, breathy beat-boxing, rattling metal implements, all manner of drums and, not least, her lithe, twining vocal lines. “Watercolor” blossoms out of a burst of choral “la”s, each note allowed to flower briefly before behind cut off with a knife-edge; these are organic sounds shaped with mechanical precision. Against this background, Nasimiyu herself enters, her voice fluttery and syncopated, a bit like Neneh Cherry. The mix is full of separate elements, the backing vocals, a synthesizer working as a bass, handclaps, Nasimiyu’s singing, but the song remains light and translucent. “Feelings,” sings Nasimiyu, “I am in my feelings,” and so, for a moment, are we. Nasimiyu is half Kenyan and half Scandinavian-American, and you can hear a bit of East Africa in the surging sweetness of choral singing on “Immigrant Hustle.” But there’s a post-modern gloss over everything, as the singer brings in sonic elements from jazz, electronica, dance, pop and afro-beat. Yet however many layers are added, the sound remains bright and clear, a bead curtain of musical sensation whose elements click faintly as they brush together, but remain essentially separate.

Jennifer Kelly

 Carlos Niño & Friends — More Energy Fields, Current (International Anthem)

More Energy Fields, Current by Carlos Niño & Friends

Multi-instrumentalist and producer Carlos Niño latest album which straddles and largely crosses the line between spiritual jazz and new age ambience features friends from both worlds including Shabaka Hutchings, Jamael Dean, Dntel and Laraaji. Niño, who plays percussion and synthesizer, edited, mixed and produced the album from recordings made in 2019 and 2020 in a variety of settings. The results are largely low-key soundscapes designed to assist meditation on the fields and current of the title. Much evocation of the natural world, chiming eastern influenced percussion and layers of acoustic and synthetic keys that are lovely but tend to lull. It is the slightly disruptive reeds that prick the ears here, Aaron Hall’s plangent tenor on “Now the background is foreground,” Devin Daniels’ alto phrasing on “Together” and Hutchings’ expressive duet with Dean on “Please, wake up.”

Andrew Forell 

 Shane Parish — Disintegrated Satellites (Bandcamp subscription)

Disintegrated Satellites EP by Shane Parish

The normally ultra-productive Shane Parish didn’t put out a lot of music in 2020, and none of what did come out was recorded that year. It turns out that he was busy giving guitar lessons via zoom and moving from North Carolina to Georgia, but we’re well into a new year and he’s back in Bandcamp. This three tune EP doesn’t declare a new direction, of which Parish has had many, so much as an integration of his interests in American folk music and far Eastern tonalities. Simultaneously familiar and alien, but above all propulsive, it serves notice that the time for reflection has passed.

Bill Meyer 

 Séketxe — “Caixão de Luxo” (Chasing Dreams)

The thing that gets your attention about Séketxe is… well, everything: how many of them there are (i.e., how you can’t really tell who’s in the group and who isn’t), how they’re all propellant, a musical bottle rocket bursting out of your speakers, confrontationally in your face on camera — and how much fun it looks like they’re having. Somewhere out there beyond the reaches of kuduro and Mystikal lie the Angolan barks and rasps of this youthful sextet, who trade verses (and a soothing harmony drizzled right across the madness at around 1:40) among one another over an Eddy Tussa sample on a beat by producer about town Smash Midas. What are they on about? My Portuguese is nonexistent, let alone my Luandan slang, but even I can tell that title translates to “luxury casket.” Anyway, it’s bonkers and if you’re looking for a jolt your morning joe doesn’t deliver anymore, Séketxe oughta do it. You’ll never catch me thanking an algorithm, but I guess it’s true the maths can serve it up right every once in a while. Séketxe is the proof.

Patrick Masterson 

 Tōth — You and Me and Everything (Northern Spy)

You And Me And Everything by Tōth

The title of Alex Toth’s solo debut, Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary, alludes to his belief in music as therapy — that there’s an alchemy in the process, yet one that can’t necessarily be depended on to pull you out of an emotional hole when that hole gets too deep. On his new album, You and Me and Everything, all of his recent personal struggles are out in the open. There’s the tale of when he was so fucked up he couldn’t play trumpet at a family funeral (“Turnaround (Cocaine Song)”); there’s leaning on songwriting as a means to process the pain of heartbreak (“Guitars are Better Than Synthesizers for Writing Through Hard Times”); and there’s his ongoing battle with anxiety (“Butterflies”). While such heavy emotional terrain could prove hard-going, Toth approaches everything with a playfulness, a lightness of touch and a gentle haze to the production. Plus, he gets a helping hand from Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), who lends backing vocals to standout “Daffadowndilly,” which taps into the woozy gorgeousness of prime Robert Wyatt.

Tim Clarke 

 Mara Winter — Rise, follow (Discreet Editions)

Rise, follow by Mara Winter

For people with busy performance schedules, 2020 posed a problem; how do you stay busy and creative when you can’t do what you usually do? Mara Winter, an American-born, Swiss-based flute player who specializes in Renaissance-era repertoire and instruments, used it to forge a new creative identity. In partnership with experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Clara de Asís, she began exploring the commonalities between early, composed music and contemporary approaches and developed a platform to disseminate documents of that research into the world. Rise, follow, the inaugural release of Discreet Editions, is an hour-long piece for two Renaissance-style bass flutes played by Winter and Johanna Bartz. The two musicians played long, overlapping tones with contrast attacks, pushing on until they grew so tired from hefting those woodwinds that they just couldn’t play anymore. Effectively the performance unit is a trio, since the two musicians had to accommodate or collaborate with the reverberant acoustics of Basel’s Kartäuserkirche. The church’s echo threw sounds back at the player, turning pure tones into blurred timbres. While the instrumentation is antique, the ideas about sound combination and endurance have more to do with Morton Feldman, Phill Niblock and Aíne O’Dwyer. The result is music that is simultaneously meditative and as heavy as a bench-pressing competition.

Bill Meyer

 Wurld Series — What’s Growing (Melted Ice Cream)

What's Growing by Wurld Series

Some reviewers of What’s Growing, the second album by New Zealand’s Wurld Series, have managed to avoid making Pavement comparisons, but it’s hard to fathom their restraint. Brief opener “Harvester” feels like you’re being dropped mid-solo into a random Wowee Zowee track; the guitar tone on lead single “Nap Gate,” on the other hand, sounds like it's nicked straight from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. And while singer/guitarist Luke Towart doesn’t attempt to match Malkmus’ flamboyance in the vocal delivery department, their voices and wry lyrical observations bear a distinct resemblance to one another. “Caught beneath a dull blade / What a mess that would make” he sings on “Distant Business” before the song reaches its finale where guitar solos blast off from atop other guitar solos in an array of complementary textures. But besides being a ridiculously fun guitar pop record, What’s Growing is also threaded through with a British psych folk vibe replete with Mellotron flute — and the two styles blend seamlessly together thanks to Towart’s partner in crime, producer/drummer Brian Feary (Salad Boys, Dance Asthmatics). So, whether you're looking for a great summer indie rock record or you’ve ever wondered what the Fab Five from Stockton might’ve sounded like if they’d stuck to short songs and had more flutes, this one’s for you.

Chris Liberato

#dust #dusted magazine #amulets #jennifer kelly #astute palate #axis sova #bill meyer #mattie barbier #beneath #patrick masterson #black spirit #ray garraty #burial #blackdown #andrew forell #clandestine blaze #colleen #current joys #tim clarke #ducks ltd. #field music #gabby fluke-mogul #jacob felix heule #kanoko nishi-clark #fmb dz #ian m fraser #ian mathers #human failure #jonathan shaw #insub meta orchestra

[hallmark-movie-fanatics]

New in November - Hallmark Movies Now

Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story (2013)  Starring Michael Shanks, Kathleen Robertson, Matin Cummins, and Locchlyn Munro.  Hallmark Channel 

Smart Cookies (2012)  Starring Jessalyn Gilsig and Bailee Madison.  Hallmark Channel 

Goodnight for Justice (2011)  Starring Luke Perry.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 

Goodnight for Justice: The Measure of a Man (2011)  Starring Luke Perry, Stefanie von Pfetten , and Cameron Bright.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 

Edge of the Garden (2011)  Starring Rob Estes, Sarah Manninen, Kelly Monaco, and David Lewis.  Hallmark Channel 

Caroline? (1990)  Starring Stephanie Zimbalist, Pamela Reed, George Grizzard, Patricia Neal, and Dorthy McGuire.  Hallmark Hall of Fame / CBS 

Finding Love in Mountain View (2020)  Starring Danielle C. Ryan, Myko Olivier, and John-Paul Lavoisier.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 

Ruby Herring Mysteries: Her Last Breath (2019)  Starring Taylor Cole, Stephen Huszar, and John Wesley Shipp.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 

Ruby Herring Mysteries: Prediction Murder (2020)  Starring Taylor Cole, Stephen Huszar, and John Wesley Shipp.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 

At Home in Mitford (2017)  Starring Andie MacDowell and Cameron Mathison.  Hallmark Channel / Summer Nights 

Amazing Winter Romance (2020)  Starring Jessy Schram and Marshall Williams.  Hallmark Channel / Winterfest 

Love Unleashed (2019)  Starring Jen Lilley, Christopher Russell, and Donn Benedicto.  Hallmark Channel 

Love You Like Christmas (2016)  Starring Bonnie Somerville and Brennan Elliott.  Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Christmas 

Magic Stocking (2015)  Starring Bridget Regan and Victor Webster.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries / The Most Wonderful Movies of Christmas 

November 1 

Fir Crazy (2013)  Starring Sarah Lancaster and Eric Johnson.  Hallmark channel / Countdown to Christmas 

Perfect Match (2015)  Starring Danica McKellar and Paul Greene.  Hallmark Channel / June Weddings 

Love Struck Café (2017)  Starring Sarah Jane Morris and Andrew Walker.  Hallmark Channel / Fall Harvest 

Check Inn to Christmas (2019)  Starring Rachel Boston and Wes Brown.  Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Christmas 

Debbie Macomber’s Dashing Through the Snow (2015)  Starring Meghan try and Andrew Walker.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries / The Most Wonderful Movies of Christmas 

A Christmas Duet (2019)  Starring Chaley Rose and Rome Flynn.  Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Christmas 

The Christmas Train (2017)  Starring Dermot Mulroney, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Danny Glover, and Joan Cusack.  Hallmark Hall of Fame / Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Christmas 

November 8 

Journey Back to Christmas (2016)  Starring Candace Cameron Bure, Oliver Hudson, Brooke Nevin, and tom Skerritt.  Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Christmas 

My Best Friend’s Bouquet (2020)  Starring Chaley Rose and Nathan Witte.  Hallmark Channel / Fall Harvest 

November 18 

HMN Original Premiere - Every Time a Bell Rings (2021)  Starring Erin Cahill, Brittany Ishibashi, Ali Leibert, and Wes Brown.  Hallmark Movies Now / Movies & Mistletoes 

November 22 

The Color of Rain (2014)  Starring Lacey Chabert and Warren Christie.  Hallmark Movies & Mysteries 

November 29

The Christmas House (2020)  Starring Robert Buckley, Ana Ayora, Treat Williams, Sharon Lawrence, Jonathan Bennett, and Brad Harder.  Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Christmas 

Dater’s Handbook (2016)  Starring Meghan Markle, Kristoffer Polaha, Jonathan Scarfe, and Christine Chatelain.  Hallmark Channel / Countdown to Valentine’s Day 

#new on hmn #hallmark movies #hallmark movies now

[tomorrowusa]

62 GOP House members voted in favor of anti-Asian hate crimes – as recorded by the Clerk of the House.

Specifically, they voted against S.937 - COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.

This bill requires a designated officer or employee of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to facilitate the expedited review of hate crimes and reports of hate crimes.

DOJ must issue guidance for state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies on establishing online hate crime reporting processes, collecting data disaggregated by protected characteristic (e.g., race or national origin), and expanding education campaigns.Additionally, DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services must issue guidance aimed at raising awareness of hate crimes during the COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic.

The bill establishes grants for states to create state-run hate crimes reporting hotlines. It also authorizes grants for states and local governments to implement the National Incident-Based Reporting System and to conduct law enforcement activities or crime reduction programs to prevent, address, or respond to hate crimes.

Finally, in the case of an individual convicted of a hate crime offense and placed on supervised release, the bill allows a court to order that the individual participate in educational classes or community service as a condition of supervised release.

This bill is a reaction to the surge in anti-AAPI hate crimes inspired by Donald Trump who repeatedly and deliberately used terms like “kung flu” and “China virus” to try to shift public blame away from his own incompetence and negligence onto the Chinese for the massive US infection rate and death toll from COVID-19.

President Biden wasted no time in signing the bill into law as soon as it reached his desk.

It seems that the 62 Republicans were worried that this bill might somehow make the Dear Leader look bad.

Here is a list of the 62 Republicans who voted against the bill. 💩= the biggest Trump cheerleaders.

Robert Aderholt of Alabama

Rick Allen of Georgia

Jodey Arrington of Texas

Brian Babin of Texas

Jim Banks of Indiana

Andy Biggs of Arizona 💩

Dan Bishop of North Carolina

Lauren Boebert of Colorado 💩

Mo Brooks of Alabama 💩

Ted Budd of North Carolina

Tim Burchett of Tennessee  

Kat Cammack of Florida

Jerry Carl of Alabama

Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina 💩

Michael Cloud of Texas

Andrew Clyde of Georgia 💩

Tom Cole of Oklahoma

Warren Davidson of Ohio

Byron Donalds of Florida

Jeff Duncan of South Carolina

Virginia Foxx  of North Carolina

Matt Gaetz of Florida 💩👧

Louie Gohmert of Texas 💩

Bob Good of Virginia 💩

Lance Gooden of Texas

Paul Gosar of Arizona 💩

Mark Green of Tennessee

Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia 💩

Michael Guest of Mississippi

Andy Harris of Maryland

Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee 💩

Kevin Hern of Oklahoma

Yvette Herrell of New Mexico

Jody Hice of Georgia 💩

Clay Higgins of Louisiana

Ronny Jackson of Texas 💩

Mike Johnson of Louisiana  

Jim “Gym” Jordan of Ohio 💩🚽🧻

Trent Kelly of Mississippi

Doug LaMalfa of California

Barry Loudermilk of Georgia

Nancy Mace of South Carolina

Tracey Mann  of Kansas

Thomas Massie of Kentucky

Tom McClintock of California

Mary Miller of Illinois 💩

Alex Mooney  of West Virginia

Barry Moore of Alabama

Ralph Norman of South Carolina

Steven Palazzo of Mississippi

Gary Palmer of Alabama

Scott Perry of Pennsylvania

August Pfluger of Texas

Tom Rice of South Carolina

John Rose of Tennessee

Matt Rosendale of Montana 💩

David Rouzer of North Carolina

Chip Roy of Texas 💩

John Rutherford of Florida

Greg Steube of Florida

Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin

Randy Weber of Texas

In reaction to the anti-AAPI hate crime spike, NYC recently conducted a campaign. One aspect of it involved putting up signs in public places such as this Brooklyn bus shelter.

#republicans #anti-asian hate crimes #us house of representatives #S.937 #covid-19 hate crimes act #asian americans

[news-of-the-day]

1/7/21

Sorry, I was following what happened at the Capitol so closely I'm meager on international news. I'll cover anything I've missed tomorrow.

Capitol Riot (BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, The Hill, NPR, NYT, USA Today, Washington Post)

As congress convened to certify Biden's win, Trump held a rally near the White House at about 10AM. During the speech, he asked his supporters to head to the Capitol Building to make their views known. Thousands then walked down the Mall to do so.

Starting at about 1PM, they began to pierce through the perimeter and at about 2PM they were entering the building. Staff and congresspeople were evacuated from the chambers as the mob walked through the halls, entering both chambers and offices. One woman was shot by law enforcement and died. Three others died after suffering from "medical emergencies."

A few hours later Pence, not Trump, mobilized the National Guard and helped law enforcement remove people from the building. At least 52 were arrested.

Trump did tweet at about 4:15PM a video saying the rioters’ feelings were valid but for everyone to go home. His later tweets talking about fraud and praising the rioters got both Twitter and Facebook to lock his account, with Twitter threatening a permanent ban. Zuckerberg just announced Trump is banned from Facebook.

A pipe bomb was found at the RNC HQ and a suspicious package was found at the DNC HQ, which led to both being evacuated.

Mayor Bowser ordered a curfew that evening. A state of emergency will be in DC until the day after Biden's inauguration.

Congress met again that evening when everything calmed down. 127 Republicans challenged Arizona and Pennsylvania's results, but they were rejected. At about 4AM, Biden's win was certified. Trump issued a statement there will be an orderly transition.

Some members of the White House staff resigned in protest and more are considering it.

There are rumors that members of Trump’s cabinet and Republican leaders are thinking of invoking the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office.

Other news:

Current cases of COVID are ~87.8M, current deaths are ~1.9M. It was the deadliest day for the US with almost 4,000 deaths. (Worldometer)

Raphael Warnock (D) beat Kelly Loeffler (R) in the Georgia senate race, giving the Democrats control of congress and the White House. Loeffler was originally going to protest Biden's win during the certification process but backed down after the riot. (Washington Post)

Biden is planning to nominate Merrick Garland to be Attorney General. If you remember, back in Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2016 when Justice Scalia died, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider him, saying it was too close to the election. (NYT)

Two officers involved in the Breonna Taylor shooting were fired: Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove. (NPR)

#news #capitol hill #capitol riot #trump #stop the steal

[davidmann95]

Superman’s 10 Best of the ‘10s

Good Miracle Monday, folks! The first third Monday of May of a new decade for that matter, and while that means that today in the DC Universe Superman just revealed his secret identity to the world on the latest anniversary of that time he defeated the devil, in ours it puts a capstone on a solid 10 years of his adventures now in the rear view mirror, ripe for reevaluation. And given there’s a nice solid ‘10′ right there I’ll go ahead with the obvious and list my own top ten for Superman comics of the past decade, with links in the titles to those I’ve spoken on in depth before - maybe you’ll find something you overlooked, or at least be reminded of good times.

A plethora of honorable mentions: I’m disqualifying team-ups or analogue character stories, but no list of the great Superman material of the last decade would be complete without bringing up Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #7, Avengers 34.1, Irredeemable, Sideways Annual #1, Supreme: Blue Rose, Justice League: Sixth Dimension, usage of him in Wonder Twins, (somewhat in spite of itself) Superior, from all I’ve heard New Super-Man, DCeased #5, and Batman: Super Friends. And while they couldn’t quite squeeze in, all due praise to the largely entertaining Superman: Unchained, the decades’ great Luthor epic in Superman: The Black Ring, a brilliant accompaniment to Scott Snyder’s work with Lex in Lex Luthor: Year of the Villain, the bonkers joy of the Superman/Luthor feature in Walmart’s Crisis On Infinite Earths tie-in comics, Geoff Johns and John Romita’s last-minute win in their Superman run with their final story 24 Hours, Tom Taylor’s quiet criticism of the very premise he was working with on Injustice and bitter reflection on the changing tides for the character in The Man of Yesterday, the decades’ most consistent Superman ongoing in Bryan Miller and company’s Smallville Season 11, and Superman: American Alien, which probably would have made the top ten but has been dropped like a hot potato by one and all for Reasons. In addition are several stories from Adventures of Superman, a book with enough winners to merit a class of its own: Rob Williams and Chris Weston’s thoughtful Savior, Kyle Killen and Pia Guerra’s haunting The Way These Things Begin, Marc Guggenheim and Joe Bennett’s heart-wrenching Tears For Krypton, Christos Gage and Eduardo Francisco’s melancholy Flowers For Bizarro, Josh Elder and Victor Ibanez’s deeply sappy but deeply effective Dear Superman, Ron Marz and Doc Shaner’s crowdpleasing Only Child, and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro’s super-sweet Mystery Box.

10. Greg Pak/Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics

Oh, what might’ve been. In spite of an all-timer creative team I can’t justify listing this run any higher given how profoundly and comprehensively compromised it is, from the status quo it was working with to the litany of ill-conceived crossovers to regular filler artists to its ignominious non-ending. But with the most visceral, dynamic, and truly humane take on Clark Kent perhaps of all time that still lives up to all Superman entails, and an indisputably iconic instant-classic moment to its name, I can’t justify excluding it either.

9. Action Comics #1000

Arguably the climax to the decade for the character as his original title became the first superhero comic to reach a 1000th issue. While any anthology of this sort is a crapshoot by nature, everyone involved here seemed to understand the enormity of the occasion and stepped up as best they could; while the lack of a Lois Lane story is indefensible, some are inevitably bland, and one or two are more than a bit bizarre, by and large this was a thoroughly charming tribute to the character and his history with a handful of legitimate all-timer short stories.

8. Faster Than A Bullet

Much as Adventures of Superman was rightfully considered an oasis amidst the New 52′s worst excesses post-Morrison and in part pre-Pak, few stories from it seem well-remembered now, and even at the time this third issue inexplicably seemed to draw little attention. Regardless, Matt Kindt and Stephen Segovia’s depiction of an hour in the life of Superman as he saves four planets first thing in the morning without anyone noticing - while clumsy in its efforts at paralleling the main events with a literal subplot of a conversation between Lois and Lex - is one of the best takes I can recall on the scope on which he operates, and ultimately the purpose of Clark Kent.

7. Man and Superman

Seemingly geared on every front against me, built as it was on several ideas of how to handle Superman’s origin I legitimately hate, and by a writer whose work over the years has rarely been to my liking, Marv Wolfman and Claudio Castellini’s Man and Superman somehow came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite takes on Clark Kent’s early days. With a Metropolis and characters within it that feel not only alive but lived-in, it’s shocking that a story written and drawn over ten years before it was actually published prefigured so many future approaches to its subject, and felt so of-the-moment in its depiction of a 20-something scrambling to figure out how to squeeze into his niche in the world when it actually reached stores.

6. Brian Bendis’s run

Controversial in the extreme, and indeed heir to several of Brian Bendis’s longstanding weaknesses as a writer, his work on The Man of Steel, Superman, and Action Comics has nevertheless been defined at least as much by its ambition and intuitive grasp of its lead, as well as fistfuls of some of the best artistic accompaniment in the industry. At turns bombastic space action, disaster flick, spy-fi, oddball crime serial, and family drama, its assorted diversions and legitimate attempts at shaking up the formula - or driving it into new territory altogether, as in the latest, apparently more longterm-minded unmasking of Clark Kent in Truth - have remained anchored and made palatable by an understanding of Superman’s voice, insecurities, and convictions that go virtually unmatched.

5. Strange Visitor

The boldest, most out-of-left-field Superman comic of the past 10 years, Joe Keatinge took the logline of Adventures of Superman to do whatever creators wanted with the character and, rather than getting back to a classic take absent from the mainline titles at the time as most others did, used the opportunity for a wildly expansive exploration of the hero from his second year in action to his far-distant final adventure. Alongside a murderer’s row of artists, Keatinge pulled off one of the few comics purely about how great Superman is that rather than falling prey to hollow self-indulgence actually managed to capture the wonder of its subject.

4. Superman: Up In The Sky

And here’s the other big “Superman’s just the best” comic the decade had to offer that actually pulled it off. Sadly if reasonably best-known for its one true misfire of a chapter, with the increasing antipathy towards Tom King among fans in general likely not helping, what ended up overlooked is that this is a stone-cold classic on moment of arrival. Andy Kubert turns in work that stands alongside the best of his career, Tom King’s style is honed to its cleanest edge by the 12-pager format and subject matter, and the quest they set their lead out on ends up a perfect vehicle to explore Superman’s drive to save others from a multitude of angles. I don’t know what its reputation will end up being in the long-term - I was struck how prosaic and subdued the back cover description was when I got this in hardcover, without any of the fanfare or critic quotes you’d expect from the writer of Mister Miracle and Vision tackling Superman - but while its one big problem prevents me from ranking it higher, this is going to remain an all-timer for me.

3. Jeff Loveness’s stories Help and Glasses

Cheating shamelessly here, but Jeff Loveness’s Help with David Williams and Glasses with Tom Grummett are absolutely two halves of the same coin, a pair of theses on Superman’s enduring relevance as a figure of hope and the core of Lois and Clark’s relationship that end up covering both sides of Superman the icon and Superman the guy. While basically illustrated essays, any sense of detached lecturing is utterly forbidden by the raw emotion on display here that instantly made them some of the most acclaimed Superman stories of the last several years; they’re basically guaranteed to remain in ‘best-of’ collections from now until the end of time.

2. Superman Smashes The Klan

A bitter race for the top spot, but #2 is no shame here; while not quite my favorite Superman story of the past ten years, it’s probably the most perfectly executed. While I don’t think anyone could have quite expected just *how* relevant this would be at the top of the decade, Gene Yang and Gurihiru put together an adventure in the best tradition of the Fleischer shorts and the occasional bystander-centered episodes of Batman: The Animated Series to explore racism’s both overt and subtle infections of society’s norms and institutions, the immigrant experience, and both of its leads’ senses of alienation and justice. Exciting, stirring, and insightful, it’s debuted to largely universal acknowledgement as being the best Superman story in years, and hopefully it’ll be continued to be marketed as such long-term.

1. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics

When it came time to make the hard choice, it came in no small part down to that I don’t think we would have ever seen a major Golden Age Superman revival project like Smashes The Klan in the first place if not for this. Even hampering by that godawful Jim Lee armor, inconsistent (if still generally very good) art, and a fandom that largely misunderstood it on arrival can’t detract from that this is Grant Morrison’s run on a Superman ongoing, a journey through Superman’s development as a character reframed as a coherent arc that takes him from Metropolis’s most beaten-down neighborhoods to the edge of the fifth dimension and the monstrous outermost limits of ‘Superman’ as a concept. It launched discussions of Superman as a corporate icon and his place relative to authority structures that have never entirely vanished, introduced multiple all-time great new villains, and made ‘t-shirt Superman’ a distinct era and mode of operation for the character that I’m skeptical will ever entirely go away. No other work on the character this decade had the bombast, scope, complexity, or ambition of this run, with few able to match its charm or heart. And once again, it was, cannot stress this enough, Grant Morrison on an ongoing Superman book.

#Superman #Miracle Monday #Opinion

[bravadoseries]

Not really stars and stripes related but who would you fancast for the Avengers?

oooh this was fun! thank you!  sorry my reasons r so nerdy lmfao . the american studies major really jumped out 

tony: michael b jordan; i think if tony had been Black it would’ve been more interesting for two reasons which is 1) would have granted representation to Black engineers thru tony and howard bc Black people’s inventions were often overlooked or straight up Stolen for much of american history and 2) i think it magnifies a lot of the tension tony eventually has with the us government because of how direct the impact of state violence has been on Black communities

steve: jin ha; the idea of Asian captain america fascinates me because the us government used military service as a trade-off for citizenship for a lot of ethnic minorities, and a propagandized Asian man attempting to appeal to other Asian Americans/minority Americans before realizing how fucked up the whole thing is and going into the fight himself adds depth beyond U.S. good guys Germany bad guys.  like germany was the bad guys obviously but on the u.s. side i think it was a lot more complex

thor: to be honest i like hemsworth but i think jason mamoa would also really slap?  especially if taika had directed all the thor movies because ragnarok was so distinctly indigenous and if thor had been played by an indigenous actor i think it would have been even more impactful

natasha: devon aoki . thanks so much . i like devon for 2 reasons 1) reparations against scarlett johannson and 2) devon isn’t chinese but exploring the interactions between the ussr and various asian countries would b so cool .... the idea of the second world .... i think that would hit 

clint: joel mchale ?? maybe then he would have had some personality. god bless also fuck jeremy renner on a really real level

bruce: oscar isaac; i think he has the same sort of charm that makes ruffalo’s portrayal not boring the way edward norton’s was boring.  obviously i like ruffalo for bruce lmao but i think oscar isaac has the ability to do well both as bruce and the hulk ???  also generally yeah . i get hot professor vibes and i’m not afraid to admit it.

bucky: rami malek; i just think he has the cheekbones for it

peter parker: keiynan lonsdale; i actually read a long hc a while ago about how peter parker’s story could have easily been not so boring and also much more relevant if the origins had been as a result of uncle ben being wrongfully killed by the nypd; it would emphasize the importance in peter’s eyes of justice being delivered outside of the police and why justice and policing are not the same thing

wanda: alba flores; alba’s actually romani so then the casting would be more ethnically correct; she isn’t jewish and the maximoffs are supposed to be mixed romani/jewish so that is also important to mention, but i could not find any faceclaims

pietro: kendji girac, for the same reason lol. UPDATE: okay so @daaeleira reminded me that the maximoffs are romani and jewish which reminded me of a conversation we had a few years ago; aaron taylor johnson is jewish and i know this is not how twins work but if he was pietro he also is at least representing that part of their background; it’s not ideal but it’s more accurate

carol danvers: kelly marie tran; i think a vietnamese carol danvers would have made the refugee plotline a lot more poignant and powerful, esp. if she had started off as a more conservative character like many vietnamese refugees were before realizing that she should show solidarity w the skrulls 

i think sam, t’challa, fury, and valkyrie were all well casted i am not gonna lie, and i also don’t feel comfortable recasting minorities.  but i did other side characters/love interests bc im answering this instead of writing an essay lol

sharon carter: i love emily but if peggy is jameela jamil i think sharon should be naomi scott

peggy carter: jameela jamil

jane foster: tia carrere; ok i also think if jane was pacifika it would have been excellent bc of how deep the connection is between indigenous pacifika people and astronomy

pepper potts: melissa fumero. she has the energies

coulson: aubrey plaza i just also think she has the energies 

loki: BEN BARNES ??