#no new york experience is ever complete without em | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

royallyprincesslilly · 3 years

Text

Title: Something Blue {1}

Chris Evans x Reader

Warning: Cursing, Angst, Plot

Words: 3.9k

Summary: Nah!

Note: Please enjoy. As always, thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed this, please, LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG! ❤️❤️

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

***Interactive***

~~~~~~~~~~~

“What time does your flight land?”

You glanced at your watch while balancing your phone and your seventh glass of champagne.

“Seven. We haven’t even taken off yet, Eve. Oh god, I should have just taken the bus. You know what? It’s not too late.” You gulped down the remainder of your champagne then began gathering your things.

“No, no. sit your ass down. A bus will double your travel time, and you’re already late. You should have been here this morning,” Eve whined over the Facetime call.

She was right. You were only stuck in this predicament because you had to take one more meeting wanting to maximize the time you were in New York instead of stopping when you should have to catch the right bus.

“I hate flying, Eve,” you whined.

It had always been this way, and it hadn’t changed. At this point, you doubted it ever would.

“I get that, but you’re my maid of honor. You have to be here. You’ve already missed the welcome brunch and the bonding games. You have to make dinner.”

Sighing, you dropped back into the seat. Your fate was sealed. “Okay,” you whispered.

“It’ll be fine. It’s one hour and sixteen minutes. You’ll be fine.”

Closing your eyes, you took slow, deep breathes and tried to focus on happy, positive thoughts.

“At least you’re in first class where you can have all the champagne you want. Take advantage. I have to go.”

With that, the conversation ended. You still tried to focus on your breathing and not the fact you were in a containment cell that was designed like a plane that would fly thousands of feet into the air. You also tried not to think of the fact that at any moment, this flying containment cell could fall out of the sky, having you plummet to your death. Groaning, you squeezed the armrest.

“Can I get you anything else, ma’am?”

Even the chirpy sound of the flight attendant’s voice was irritating. You took a deep breath but didn’t open your eyes.

“Champagne, a whole lot of champagne, please.”

“A glass?”

“Just bring the bottle. I’ll pay. I don’t care.”

As you waited for her to come back with the champagne, you tried to imagine yourself on a tropical island somewhere. You tried to envision the feel of the sun, the scent of the salty sea, and even the taste of the Mai Tai you would be holding. You were successful, but only barely.

“Here you are one bottle of champagne. Just for you.”

You opened your eyes to glare at the flight attendant. You could hear the shade and judgment in her voice, and you were not in the mood. What your eyes met; she was the first to look away. You were not the one. Once she’d place the bottle in front of you, she scurried away. Wasting no time, you brought it to your head. A bottle for one meant you could take it to the head. Lost in the world of the champagne bliss, you savored the liquid as if it were your sustenance. The only way you could get through this flight was to be in a state of detachment.

“Eh-em.”

Glancing up with the bottle still in your mouth, you nearly dropped it seeing Chris Evans standing before you. He slanted his mouth in an awkward smile as he pointed. His lips moved, but you didn’t hear one word. He was beautiful. Every time you scrolled through Instagram, there were countless pictures and fangirls fawning all over his looks. You made a note that he was appealing to the eyes but wasn’t all that. You stood wholly corrected. His lips stopped moving, and the look on his face went from awkwardness to confusion.

“Hello?”

“Huh, sorry, what?”

He pointed again to the seat you were sitting in, then spoke.

“I believe that is my seat.”

“I feel like that is my line that I should be saying to you,” you blurted out without thinking.

His eyebrow shot up, making you close your eyes in embarrassment. Oh god, you thought. He cleared his throat, making you look back at him. The slanted smile was now an amused smirk.

“What I mean is um—this seat?”

He lifted the ticket in his hands to show you. There it was in black and white the seat you were in was, in fact, his. You knew it wasn’t yours, but there was no way you could get through this flight being at the window. You’d surely lose your shit.

“Okay, look, I’m not going to pretend like I didn’t know. I did. The thing is, I hate flying. I am terrible at it, and if I sit there, I’ll die.”

“Die?”

“Yes. It won’t be pretty. I’ll probably cry the entire flight. You don’t look like the kind of guy who can sit by while a woman cries. Do you think you can find it in your heart to--.”

He held his hand up, stopping what you were going to say next. “It’s okay. I’ll take the window, and you and your champagne can remain where you are.”

Relief filled you. Pushing the table to its upright position, you slightly stood so he could pass. As he did, you heard him mumble, “You’re lucky you’re as beautiful as you are.”

It was low, and you decided that you must have been hearing things. There was no way he said that. As he squeezed by, the scent of Kenneth Cole Black caught your nostrils, making you bite your bottom lip. Another thing that caught your eye was the way his ass looked in his dark denim jeans. It looked so damn appetizing that you couldn’t tear your eyes away. He was fine. When you looked up at him, his eyes were on you. You’d be caught.

Groaning, you looked away and sat back down to take another gulp of champagne. Beside you, he got comfortable while you scrolled through your phone. The same judgy flight attendant came over again.

“Hi there.” From the sound of her voice, you could tell she was in flirtatious mode. When you looked at her, your suspicions were confirmed. She was twirling the fancily folded scarf around her neck with a broad smile on her face.

“Hi.”

“My name is Amber; I'll be your attendant for the flight.”

She emphasized “your,” making you snort. Glancing to Chris, he gave you another raised brow. Turning back to your phone, you pretended to ignore the conversation, but you were not. You needed entertainment.

“Can I get you anything? Water? Tea? Coffee? Champagne? Magazines? Candy? Me?”

Your jaw dropped. She took it all the way there.

“I mean meat, we have plenty of meat. Not to say you don’t have meat. I’m sure you have plenty of meat.”

With that, her eyes dropped to his crotch, and that was when your snort escaped you. There was no playing it off, so you didn’t bother; you just kept your head down.

“Thank you, Amber. I’ll take a beer, please.”

“Any brand?”

“It doesn’t matter, you pick.”

She turned and walked off, giggling to herself. Shaking your head, you took another mouthful of bubbly and fought the urge to tease him about it. You didn’t know this man. The silence stretched for a few minutes until Amber returned with two bottles of beer. He thanked her and went back to the book he was reading.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for choosing this flight tonight. This is the nonstop to Boston, Massachusetts. The flight will be approximately one hour and twenty minutes. It is supposed to be a smooth trip, but we are flying into a little bit of rain in the Boston area, so we might experience a bit of turbulence. You’re in good hands. Enjoy your flight.”

You looked around the cabin. No one seemed alarmed at the mention of turbulence.

“Unfuckinbeliable. Everyone is so calm.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

Looking at him, you realized then you’d spoken loud enough for him to hear.

“Uh…turbulence. Do you know what that means? It means bumpy and shit.”

Chris pinched his lips and closed his book. “He also said we’re in good hands.”

“That is what he has to say. What would you do if your captain said we’d have some turbulence but prayers up because shit will get bad?”

This time he smirked. “You really don’t like flying, huh.”

“Are you mocking me?”

He held his hands up in defense. “Not at all. Have a drink,” he said, pointing to your champagne bottle.

Not needing to be told twice, you took a hearty gulp.

“You’ll be fine. If it gets bad, I’ll be right here. I’ll talk to you.”

He looked kind and gentle. You didn’t doubt he was a stand-up guy. Nodding, you leaned back and took several deep breathes and prayed.

As the plane pulled out and rolled down the tarmac, you squeezed the armrest so hard your hand hurt. When it accelerated, you took a deep breath and held it. Even when your lungs burned, and the possibility of blacking out became real, you didn’t release it. When you felt a hand on top of yours, you snapped your head to the left and saw his hand on yours. Your eyes met, and you saw he was signaling you to breathe.

“Breathe.”

Gasping for air, he kept his hand over yours.

“It’s okay. Look into my eyes. Everything is fine. Slow in, slow out. do it with me.”

Following his lead, you did as he did. Your stomach fell, and you knew the plane was pulling up.

“Keep looking at me. Listen to my voice. You’re fine. Breathe.”

Doing your best, you followed his instructions. Slowly you got lost in those hypnotizing blue eyes. They were so gorgeous you lost track of everything else. Soon his words faltered, and the two of you just sat there staring at each other. Soon you heard a bell that broke whatever trance the two of you were under.

“There. You did it. I’m Chris.”

His smile was soft, and it blew you away. Yep, you’d done it all right, you thought.

“Y/N,” you whispered.

The flight continued with you downing the bottle of champagne, flipping channels on the inflight tv, shaking like your life depended on it, and working. Neither of you spoke again though occasionally you felt his eyes on you. A little more than halfway into the flight the lights flickered until they completely shut off, only leaving on the overhead lights. That was when an alarm blared, and the plane began to shake.

“Oh, fuck!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, remember that turbulence I warned of. We’re going through it as we’re nearing Boston’s airport. Fasten your seatbelts and hang tight. We’ll be right out of this.”

“Liar!”

“Calm down; it’s okay. Just breathe,” Chris suggested.

“Calm down? Breathe? What the fuck? How do I do that? We’re about to plummet to our deaths.”

“We will not,” Amber shouted above you.

“Shut up, Amber!”

“I have to get out of here. We gotta go!”

As you made a move to get up, Chris gripped the buckle of your seatbelt. The warmth of his hand was right at your crotch. Looking at him, you found him on his knees before you.

“Calm down. We’re not plummeting. It’s just some shaking.”

He grabbed the oxygen mask that had dropped down from overhead and held it to your mouth. “Deep breaths.”

Pushing it off, you declined. “You breathe. Oh my god, we’re gonna die. I’m gonna die. I can’t believe this. I haven’t even make a name for myself yet. I’m so fucking close.”

“You still have time,” Chris interjected.

Ignoring him, you continued. “No, I won’t; we’re going to die. I’m going to die without crossing Fiji off my bucket list or a weekend in Palm Springs. I’m gonna die being the last single friend, the last single one in my family. I’m going to die a single spinster!”

“Uh--.”

“I’m gonna die without ever getting a tattoo. I’ve pushed it back so many times. I’m gonna die without ever having dressed up really fancy and having a pretty woman moment. I’m gonna die, and I haven’t had a dance moment like Dirty Dancing, or a scene like in Love and Basketball where some guy plays me for my heart. I’m gonna die without even have fallen in love.”

“You’ve never been in love?”

The judgment in his voice had you looking at him. “Don’t judge me!”

“Sorry.”

“I’m gonna die without going to the most expensive restaurant ordering all the expensive things then running out on the bill. Or going on a date with someone who’s picked my outfit and showers me with roses all night. Or drinking too much and getting on a bar to dance and sing in front of complete strangers.”

So many things were running through your head. You’d truly lived a sheltered life, and it wasn’t on purpose.

“Or know what it feels like to get a little blue box from Tiffany’s that has an amazing ring inside. Or have someone write me the most amazing love letter.”

The plane roughly jerked, sending you lurching forward and Chris bracing you to push you back. Everyone then screamed loudly. Gasping, you bugged your eyes, panic, and terror filling you. “I’m gonna die never having had sex in a public place, or in a car, or on a beach. I’m gonna die with never having had an entire full day of just hardcore sex. Oh my god, I think I suck at head too. My ex told me that I couldn’t suck a dick to save my life and that I was stuck up for not swallowing. Oh god, I’ve never swallowed. It’s disgusting. I hear guys love that. You don’t do you?”

His mouth opened, but before he spoke, you continued blurting more out. Oh god, I’m gonna be single forever. My ex was right; I’m unlovable and cold, and that I will never let anyone in because I’m too scared to feel real things that aren’t fairytale. Oh god, I’m gonna die alone. Fuck, I’m gonna die, and I’ve never had an orgasm!”

As soon as the turbulence started, it stopped. Slowly the cabin went back to normal, but neither of you moved. Chris sat there, speechless. Slowly your senses came back to you and realization of what just happened and all you’d just blurted out.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let me apologize. That was worse than we’d expected, but just as promised, we’ve made it through unscathed. We’ll begin our descent into Boston Logan International Airport. Please remain seated and fasten your seatbelts. Thank you for flying with us,” the captain’s voice rang out over the plane’s system.

Unscathed? That must have been a fucking joke, you thought.

Without one word, Chris got up and took his seat. He then leaned back, resting his head on the headrest. You could have died and for a slight moment wished the plane had gone down if it would have spared you this humiliation.

Fifteen agonizing minutes later, with the plane parked and disembarking beginning, you leaped up, grabbed your carry one, and hightailed it out of there without a look back. You had one goal and one goal alone, to get as far from Chris Evans as possible.

After claiming your bags, you found the driver and watched Boston scenery pass you by. Though nearly an hour had passed since you massive faux pas on the plane, you still couldn’t get it out of your head. That had to go down as the most embarrassing moment of your life. As you went over it time and time again, you felt worse and worse. You didn’t know what was worse, unleashing all of that personal information to a complete stranger, or unleashing all that personal information to Chris Evans. He probably thought you were some pathetic ice queen who was a lousy lay.

“Oh god, I told him I don’t give good head,” you rushed out before you collapsed on the back of the seat, ready for the lord to take you now.

Thirty minutes later, the driver pulled into the lavish property that sprawled on and on. Though it was night, you could still see the rolling hills and open lawns. It was amazing, and you knew that if it was this amazing at night, it must have been breathtaking in the daytime. Once the car pulled around the drive, the staff came out to meet you collect your luggage. You thanked them, and the driver then made your way inside. The lobby was gorgeous and bathed in white marble.

“Welcome. Checking in?”

“Yes, Y/F/N & Y/L/N.”

The well-dressed receptionist typed your name into the computer, and seconds later, he smiled.

“Yes, Ms. Y/L/N, welcome. You’re here for the Gordon-Wessington wedding. We’re delighted to have you with us. I see the rest of your party have arrived, all but one. I’ve been instructed to show you right to your room. Please follow George, and he will take you right to it.”

“Thank you.”

Turning, you saw a smiling man with kind eyes and a head full of red hair. “Right this way, ma’am.”

You followed him across the lobby to the elevator bank and stepped onto the first available. The ride up to the second floor was a quick one. As you walked down the long hall, you took in the artwork on the wall. They were all pleasing to the eye and gave you the feel of comfort but elegance. Whoever decorated the place did a good job.

“Here you are, ma’am,” George announced before he unlocked the door with an actual key rather than a card.

As you stepped in, your jaw dropped at the huge bay window before you. You stepped into the living area of the suite and smiled when you saw the little luxuries the staff had afforded you. There was a welcome basket on the table before you that was filled with fruit, cheese, meats, and alcohol bottles. You made a mental note to pop one once George left to sip as you changed. To the right was another basket of a variety of chocolates all from Godiva.

“Is everything to your liking?”

“Yes, thank you so much, George.”

You dug into your purse and took out a twenty and handed it to him. George bowed his head, then made his exit. Finally, alone you looked around the room that would be your home away from home for the next ten days. Eve was the one who’d made all the arrangements for this weeklong getaway, all in prep for her wedding. Parker told her no expense was too much, and by looking around the suite, you could tell she’d run with it.

When you made it into the bedroom and sat on the bed, the room phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Finally! My god, what the hell took you so long?”

Rolling your eyes at Eve’s voice, you hooked the phone between your ear and shoulder and then began undressing.

“The fucking plane almost fell out of the goddamn sky!”

“What!”

You explained to her precisely what you’d been through the last two or so hours. When you got to the part about spilling every single internal thought you’d had since you were eighteen to Chris Evans, you expected some sympathy or even heartfelt words. Instead, she busted out laughing so obnoxiously loud that you hung up on her ass. You did not need to be laughed at right now. You were already embarrassed enough.

Jumping into the shower, you did your best to push it all out of your mind. It no longer mattered. You couldn’t do anything to change it. So, what if you’d told him all those things. He probably already forgot them and you. It didn’t matter. You continued to repeat it, hoping that the more you said it, the truer it would be.

When you stepped out, you quickly applied your makeup and did your hair, opting for an updo that would complement the strapless dress you planned on wearing. When you heard your phone chime, you knew it was Eve. Rushing to it, you checked her messages.

MSG Eve: Hurry up. We’ve made it to the dining room. Everyone is packing in.

MSG: I’m coming. Putting on my shoes now. Five minutes.

You spent the next five minutes trying to choose the right shoes and clutch that would tie it all together. You had to walk a fine line of not upstaging the bride but still trying to appear like a snack. You felt anything but right now due to earlier events, but you were going to push through.

When you finally made it out of your room and onto the elevator, it was five minutes past when you’d told Eve you’d be down. As you walked through the lobby and down the corridor to the designated dining room, you tried to go as quickly as possible. Thanks to the banner outside the dining room that read “Gordon-Wessington Wedding,” you knew you were in the right place. Stepping into the dining room, you gave the room a once over, trying to find Eve and your friends.

All the way across the room, you saw Capri and Angela. They waved you over with wide smiles on their faces. Maneuvering around the tables, chairs, and guests, you made your way to them. As you passed guests, you warmly smiled and welcomed them. It was part of your maid of honor duties, after all.

“Aah, finally,” Angela said, throwing her arms around you almost at the same time Capri did.

“I’m here.”

“And you came dressed to kill!”

Smiling, you spun around to give them the full view. The two of them whistled, feeding your ego.

“Wow, looks like you are going to be turning heads tonight. All of Parker’s friends are here, including his elusive best man,” Capri mentioned.

“Oh my god, Y/N, finally.”

Spinning, you saw Eve dressed in her figure-hugging white dress that showed just what a catch she was. Parker was one lucky guy.

“I’m sorry. I’m here, though.”

“You should be sorry,” Eve said as she hugged you.

“Hi, Parker.” You quickly kissed his cheek.

“Okay, we’re all here except Parker’s best man,” Eve announced.

“He’s cutting it close, don’t you think?”

Everyone gave you a look that said shut up, no doubt because you’d just gotten there yourself. Raising your hands in defeat, you rolled your eyes.

“I can’t believe he’s late. He’s never late,” Parker said.

“I’m here. I’m here,” came a voice from all the way across the dining room.

Feeling a hand on your back, you turned to look at Capri and Angela.

“You still have your tag.” The two of them tugged at the tag at the back of your dress until finally, it was off. Feeling the front of your dress slip down, you turned to Capri and Angela and readjusted the dress's bust, hoping it would stay in place.

“Finally, bro, this is pretty close.”

“Sorry, interviews in New York went over, couldn’t be helped. I’d never miss your wedding, though.”

“Now you can meet Eve’s other best friend, her maid of honor. Y/N, this is my best friend and best man, Chris.”

Spinning with a smile on your face, it immediately dropped, seeing Chris Evans standing before you yet again.

“Fuck my life.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

***If you want to be tagged please SEND AN ASK SO IT WILL BE EASIER FOR ME TO KEEP TRACK OF. Thank you for reading!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tag List:

@chaneajoyyy @sonjashuterbugjohnson @caramara3 @southerngracela @cyntgefel01 @vannahvannahhh @lorainnebabyy @patzammit @yourwonderbelle @pennywisesmistress @theblulife @kelbabyblue @bugngiz @kikimiyazaki @toniilaney @areubeingserved @chaos-crusader @thinkxlovexloud @cocothewriter @periodtcevans @bellaamor88 @mack-jay @titty-teetee @pananegra @wellthirsted @sup3rn0va13 @nova3312 @hello-therree @valkyriesnymph @squeackygee @niyashell @allmonstersxarehuman @zsuzstyina @peggy-potts @amelatonin @lvlyab @sullyosully @taylorveebee @renesmeeharelds @capslut2014 @ilovehatembj @thelittlemoistcarrot @sarcastic-sunshines @a-dizzle777 @taylorveebee @jesseswartzwelder @90sinspiredgirl @allnamesicouldthinkofweretaken @choices97 @jd-now-jq @actorinfluence @chrisgalore @rynabarnesrogers @ab-baybay @motivation-idontknowher @lo-cheu @builtalongthewaysi @momobaby227@drsunshine97 @cleothegoldfish

@thatrandomhetaliachick @missdeerstalker15 @queenbetter @ilovehatembj @briellableu @zaddysqueen7 @melaninhawtie @simplyyamberr @ashanti-notthesinger @chezdricks @euh-say-what-now @afraiddreamingandloving @ajspencer1892 @wakanda-inspired @chillavesss @theunsweetenedtruth @geeksareunique @aykanna @hanasamara @profilia @ollieveracity @autumn242 @missyperle @forbeautyandlife @kreolemami @songtoyou @designerwriterchic @firedolphin04 @academic-glowup @periodtcevans @nova3312 @naturalthrone22 @squeackygeecapslut2014 @queen-audsalena

@unknownmystery22 @thatcrazymarvelfan @mizcaptainwidow @angrybirdcr @cherrystainedlipsbaby @marvelfansworld @fanfictionaffair @kemkem101 @blowmymbackout @almostpurelysmut @blackgurlkillinit @simply-heaven@impossiblegiantrebelbasketball @renfrewscorner @choices97 @phreshouttherunwaaayy @heladoom @alyxkbrl @thejeneralvicinity @littlepreciousangel @evemej@queensevansackles @rosey1981 @laketaj24 @munteanhore @minton131 @trillistb @night-of-the-living-shred @chrisevansfanfic @scoop93535 @miss-jackson500 @purplehairgawdess @ollieveracity @maddeningmayhem @what-is-your-plan-today @tantricevans @evermcfearless @richonne4life @dumbchick @toni9 @briellableu @amennariee @rynabarnesrogers-reading @chrissbabybunny @brwnsugababe @queenshikongo3 @sadishdelray @what-is-your-plan-today @islanddgal @reignandrain @liquorlaughslove @doublesidedscoobysnacks @thefuckingluxury @surmya1907 @maeleeme @queenoftheworldisdead @coolbakeryprunetoad @naturalthrone22 @wonderlandfandomkingdom @starlite-starbrite @offrostandstarlight @zeedaye @partypoison00

@imthatbitchsworld @soul–notforsale @toni9 @someone-really-bored @venustrap04 @chrisevansdaddycap @kittykatlow @live-laugh-love-ki @asiaaisa77 @melanicia @fistmetonystark @storiestoldbyjazz @xsweetdellzx @jennmurawski13 @livinglifeformemyselfandi @crowngold @krrose3 @allnamesicouldthinkofweretaken @lost- ssoull @give-me-a-million-dollars-pls @shar74nett @cltex84 @badbitchhtown @petty-bitch-akira @cxmfort @unknownmystery22 @raveviolet @madixii @imthewarmpenguininthemiddle @ak329 @bernie-k @nina1800 @almosttherebutnot @smediumsmeatbae @nervousninjatheorist @lo-cheu @creole-mami @acciolove724 @shipatheart @captainchrisstan @ramp-it-up @bforbbgirl @i-just-like-fanfics @brownskinafro @jhayes6984 @badbo1-evans @msblkfire84 @jovanaprime @poshgirl2 @marvelatthis30 @littlepreciousangel @youremysuperstar @alookintohersoul @cleopatra-knowles @parkker-barrnes @zeelmol

***There are a few that are bold that I tried to tag but your @ wasn’t coming up. I’m not sure why. Please check that you are taggable. I’m sorry.***

#something blue fic #chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x black reader #black fanfiction #slow burn fanfic

505 notes · View notes

starkeristheendgame · 3 years

Text

Hunter!Tony x Demon!Peter AU

Hunter!Tony binds Demon!Peter to himself in order to find the monster that murdered his late fiancée. Lead down roads he’d never imagined himself taking, Tony discovers that maybe revenge isn’t the only thing he’s hungry for.

“Is being a pervert part of the hiring process or are you just getting your money’s worth?”

Tony couldn’t see it, but he knew regardless that those plush lips would be pushed into a pout and those arched brows would be furrowed into a petulant scowl.

“If you’ve got me running around like your little errand boy, the least you could do is be nice to me,” a high, sweet voice simpered back. The face that belonged to it was just as youthful when it appeared in the mirror over his shoulder, watching him button his shirt with vested interest.

Tony didn’t deign to dignify it with a reply, staring down the pretty little monster until it let out a sigh.

“Fine. I have your lead. Arkansas, a seedy little dive known as the Dog Den.”

Something hot and rabid twisted in his gut and he had to pause his motions, hands trembling almost imperceptibly. It felt a lot like rage and a little bit like hope.

“Are you sure?”

Eyes the colour of fresh honey rolled so hard he could almost hear the muscles stretching. “No. I asked a magic eight-ball.”

He twisted with a snarl, reaching out. The ring on his finger pulsed with a molten orange glow and between slender wrists a chain that shimmered transparently flared to life, forming a delicate set of shackles no wider than if he’d wound a necklace there.

He curled a finger in the glowing links, dragging the Demon close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in those dark eyes.

“I’m sure,” it repeated, softer, quieter, holding his gaze with wariness, but not fear.

He let the chain drop after a moment, grunting as he turned around and finished buttoning up his shirt. When he twisted to reach for the jacket the lithe figure was sprawled out on his bed, artfully arranged as the Demon flipped through a magazine Tony knew hadn’t been in his own bags.

“You know,” the Demon piped up again as he tucked in his shirt, “maybe if you smiled a little more, the ugly things in the dark wouldn’t try to kill you as much.”

“Shut up.”

“Not possible.”

“I’ll make it possible.”

“Oh, you always promise me a good time and never deliver.”

Despite himself, Tony found he had to wrestle fiercely with a smile. “Peter.”

That heady, dangerous gaze pinned itself to him again. He met it evenly, ignoring the thrum of his pulse. The Demon really couldn’t have picked a prettier vessel to take over, a smudge of parasitic darkness inside the prettiest packaging.

That pink little mouth opened like it was considering another witty retort, then closed. Instead the Demon - Peter, merely hummed and went back to flicking through his magazine, disinterestedly glossing over half-naked women and gossip scandals.

It was almost disconcerting. To look at the pretty little slip of a thing sprawled out on his bed like some rented whore and to know that behind that pretty face was a being of Hell’s creation. Something twisted and dark, a corrupted soul festering behind a distracting smokescreen.

Peter Parker was the sort of face Tony would’ve fallen for like a rock, if he hadn’t been the one to summon the Demon to the surface.

Perhaps that’s why the Demon had chosen such a nice outfit. A desperate bid not to get ganked the moment he crawled out of Hell.

“You’re thinking too loudly,” Peter sighed, turning a page idly. He’d rolled over onto his stomach now, jaw propped in his palm.

“You can’t read minds. Don’t get comfortable, we’re leaving soon,” he grunted in reply, shrugging on a jacket.

“Can’t I just meet you there?” the Demon whined, looking up with (literally) sinful puppy eyes.

“No.”

He left it at that, flat and unforgiving, as he had to be. In another life he’d have fallen for that soft whine and that pleading look. Might’ve taken his shirt right off and crawled onto the bed, put that open mouth to good use.

But this was not that life, and that pretty face was stolen.

He checked all his things then reached out, plucking the gossip rag from Peter’s hands and throwing it in the trash. “Meet me at the car.”

“I was reading that,” Peter huffed indignantly, glowering up at him before he disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a dip in the bedspread and the scent of copper.

He was sprawled in the backseat when Tony made his out to the 1970 Challenger he called his own, a set of stylish shades covering his eyes, fluffy hair unkempt and arms folded behind his head.

“Feet off the upholstery,” he huffed as he turned the key, swinging the car out of the parking lot and onto the road with a loud rumble of the engine.

“I know for a fact you sleep in this car and my shoes are clean,” Peter answered primly, angling his head towards the open window and the warmth of the morning sun.

Arkansas was a three day drive. They spent the first in almost complete silence, although the Demon did sulk when they stopped for gas and Tony declined to buy him anything. Rather than waste money on another motel he pulled onto a quiet patch of land behind a thicket of trees, settling across the bench seat with a sigh.

“Fuck off and come back in the morning.”

“Eloquent as ever,” Peter griped, leaning over the seat, arms folded and chin atop them. He looked laughably angelic in the darkness, all soft edges, voice quiet enough that a mouse wouldn’t flee it.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispered, and when Tony cracked open an eye to repeat his command, he was gone.

Gone, until he thumped his fist on the window at the ass-crack of dawn, looking chipper and cheerful, Starbucks cup in hand. “Up and at ‘em, sunshine! The monsters aren’t gonna hunt themselves!”

Tony considered stabbing him there and then, but Peter was unfortunately an asset he couldn’t afford to lose. Invaluable, as much as it stroked the Demon’s ego. He settled for glaring, baring past the Demon as he stomped off to relieve himself.

The next two nights went much the same, although Peter got chattier the more bored he became. Fiddled with the radio, disappeared for moments only to return holding an ‘interesting’ leaf or rock, scooped up from the side of the road Tony had just driven past.

Arkansas was crisp and bright and dewy in the mid-weeks of spring. It was so different from the New York of his youth, with it’s towering glass jungle and concrete pillars. It was a visceral reaction to think of the scent of flowers and clean air in Sicily, of pink lipstick smudged on his jaw, a laugh fading slowly, overtaken by the rumble of the engine.

Countryside became a smattering of industrialisation, bars and houses, garages and stores. He wanted to keep on going, chase that tail until he caught it and tore it off, but he knew better than to rush in half-blind.

He had to eat something proper. Had to rest. Had to learn everything he could from the paltry little stack of papers that Peter had given him, printed out at a library miles and miles back in the time it had taken Tony to piss and buy a bottle of water at a gas station.

Food, first.

The diner was like every other. Gaudy and cheap with food that was more grease than nutrition. Peter’s nose scrunched the moment they entered and he looked nonplussed when they were guided to a booth.

The Demon made a big show of pulling out a pack of wipes from the pocket of his fitted jacket, scrubbing the table as the waitress listed off the day’s specials. Tony rolled his eyes before ordering coffee and a slap-up breakfast, about to dismiss the waitress when Peter cut in with a saccharine smile.

“Bacon too, please. Crispy. And a milkshake. Thanks a bunch, darling.”

She arched her brows but made no comment, glancing at Tony before leaving. Then it was Tony’s turn to stare and quirk his brow, watching the Demon shrug lightly.

“What? I get cravings.”

Peter fiddled with a napkin as they waited, as Tony read through the sheets of paper. Folding it over and over into a little crane that he perched atop the salt shaker.

“Where did you even learn origami?” Tony grunted, watching it sway before it stabilised. Peter’s gaze flicked up to him and there was something unexpected there. A hollowness, heavily guarded but flickering in the gold of his irises even so.

“Even the worst of the worst need hobbies, hunter,” he uttered softly, and then their food arrived and they were lost to the silence that overcame those sating their hunger. Peter ate with an almost childlike manner, easily distracted, toying with his straw before each sip. He even swung his legs a little and drummed his fingertips on the table top.

The perfect performance.

He looked away.

Peter was unusually quiet after that, subdued as they made their way to a motel relatively close to the Dog Den. He didn’t even pester the receptionist or try to embarrass Tony by pretending to be some sort of rent boy as he purchased a key, eyeing the Demon consideringly.

When Tony slipped beneath the sheets Peter disappeared without argument, offering only a mock salute before he flickered and was gone, leaving nothing but a wisp of dark smoke.

He wondered where the Demon went. Back to Hell? Some run-down library to read through the night? An empty motel room to pilfer their cable connection?

The disconcertion over Peter’s silence left him the next day, when he commanded Peter to steer clear as he got dressed to hit their lead.

“You can’t go alone,” Peter announced, frowning.

“I can and I am. You’ll just attract attention,” Tony pointed out, shrugging on another flannel and tucking the flask of holy water against his belt.

“And if you die?” Peter shot back. It surprised his brows into lifting as he met the Demon’s gaze, tipping his head.

“Then you’ll be free of your bindings and there’ll be one less hunter ganking your friends. What’s the problem?”

Peter’s mouth opened, then closed, as if he was only suddenly remembering that he wasn’t in this little dynamic duo willingly.

“I get the Challenger if you die,” the Demon said instead, turning away from.

And maybe Tony should’ve thought more about that demand, because the only thing he could think of as he lay bleeding in the middle of the woods several long hours later was that Peter would most definitely get the car all scratched up and dirty.

Demons had no respect for vehicle maintenance.

He coughed wetly and grunted, pressing a hand to his bleeding chest. They wouldn’t, he supposed. Demons could just fly everywhere.

Peter had adamantly argued it was not teleportation.

He breathed out a sigh and shifted fumbling for his wallet. His fingers smeared blood against the white edges of the crumpled photograph in there and he stared at his wife’s smile, frozen in time and taken just days before a Demon on a murder kick had burnt her soul up from within her, along with their unborn daughter.

“I’d say see you soon, but. W’both know m’goin’ to Hell, not where you are,” he told her image softly, giving it a weary, slow smile.

“Hell would ask for a refund,” came a familiar voice, and moments later there were warm hands on his jaw, tilting his head up. “You stupid bastard. I told you not to go alone. I could feel there was someone stronger in this town!”

Peter’s eyes were wide and round, plump lower lip between his teeth as he dropped his gaze, eyeing where Tony was slowly leaking his insides all over his outsides. “Shit,” the Demon breathed softly.

Tony made an agreeable sound. Shit was about right. He’d run head first into the messy, gruesome end that almost every hunter found themselves at. The end of the road; the final curtain; bleeding out somewhere at the hands of something twisted and ugly and evil.

“Guess you get th’car,” he rasped, aiming for humorous. It fell short when he blanched and more hot fluid slid down his throat and his chest, pooling at his navel.

“Shut up,” Peter growled at him, letting go of his head to pull up his shirt. His fingertips were light, but it still felt like fire. Hot and licking over everything he touched. “God, you’re so fucking stupid. I told you to take me. I told you I should go.”

“C’n you save th’gloatin’ ‘till I’m dead?” he asked, frowning. Most hunters probably didn’t get this much conversation on their deathbeds.

Peter shot him a positively scathing look, pressing down hard on the wound. It made agony flare up his torso, smothering his pathetic yell of pain into a weak, thready rasp.

“This is gonna hurt us both,” the Demon muttered, looking inexplicably angry as he settled his palms flat atop the worst of the wound. A muted sound was all Tony could manage, watching the Demon with hazy confusion.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Or at least, Tony didn’t notice it happening.

But then a strange, new type of pain began to lance through him, battling against the numbing burn of his torn organs. It crept through his veins and branched out, a tingling, almost electric sensation that had him tensing as best as his broken body would let him.

He opened his mouth and if he’d had the energy left for it he’d have reeled in surprise when Peter leaned forwards, slotting their mouths together firmly.

The Demon’s lips were soft and plush, with the faintest trace of soda. His lips were warm, too, just a breath above what would be normal for a person.

Tony almost didn’t know what he should be recoiling at the most; kissing a Demon, or kissing what was for all intents and purposes a sixteen year old.

Peter didn’t try to do anything else and Tony realised in the timeframe that he’d been internally broiling over the situation, breathing had become easier.

The fire was dulling to a simmer; a slow ember that still ached but no longer made him feel like he had one foot in the gates of Hell. His breath hitched and Peter pulled back slowly, keeling to one side slightly and almost falling over as he drew away.

His eyes were pools of inkblack, shiny and void as the Demon sucked in his own rattled breath, pulling shaking hands away from Tony’s torso.

He let his gaze fall slowly to his chest. He was still covered in blood, but the flesh there looked smooth and unmarred. Where he was once carved open like a pot hole there was once again closed off muscle and flesh.

He looked up in surprise. Peter was on his knees, hands braced on his thighs as he rode out the strain of wrangling his leashed powers. His eyes were slowly returning to the human hue, red-rimmed as if he’d been crying, plump lips downturned.

Tony licked his own, jerked straight back into the sensation of Peter’s mouth on his.

“Why?” he demanded roughly, bringing a hand to subconsciously touch his chest.

Peter shot him a sidelong look, the effect slightly dampened by the way he looked vaguely sick.

“A thank you might be nice,” the Demon sneered at him, huffing a twisted curl from his eyes as Tony pushed himself to his feet, ungainly and uncoordinated. Bracing himself on a tree, Tony stared down at the Demon.

At Peter, who’d saved his life. Against all he stood to benefit from Tony’s death, against all that he’d done his best to kill him when he first discovered he’d been shackled to Tony.

Coughing, Tony did his best to pull his shredded shirt closed before he made a rough gesture. “Get up. You’ll have to take us back to the motel. My car’s still at the bar.” Smashed up or stolen, he realised with a pang of sadness and anger.

“Oh no, lover-boy. You’ve been keeping me at half-mast all year. One night of fun has done me in for the night. I’m limp - get your own ride into town.”

Tony glowered, but all his frowning and snapping proved fruitless. Peter’s powers had been bound tight for almost a year and he really was burnt out, looking every inch as young as his vessel as he wobbled to his feet. The most he managed them was a few meters down the road when he tried.

It took them until sunrise to come close enough to the town that Tony could hotwire a car from the side of the road, ditching it a reasonable way from the motel and wiping it down with a clean patch of his shirt to get rid of his fingerprints.

He wasn’t bothered about Peter’s. Peter had mentioned having this particular vessel for over fifty years - his prints would be written off as a glitch on the system.

He went straight for the shower, scrubbing his skin pink as he tried to sleuth off the memory of being cut open, of dying alone in the dark and the cold, certain that this was his one-way ticket downstairs.

Brushed his teeth; trying to rid himself of the guilt that came with realising that the kiss had been pleasant, to a degree. Soft, pink skin, the sweetness of a soda consumed while Tony had been-

He shut off the water.

When he stepped out, Peter was actually curled up in the bed, looking almost infantile with the covers pulled up to his jaw. He seemed only half-awake, barely stirring when Tony entered the room. He was pulling on a new shirt when Peter spoke, voice sleepy and quiet.

“My Uncle taught me.”

Tony paused, glancing over his shoulder.

“Origami,” Peter clarified softly. “You asked me. At the diner. Where I’d learned origami. My Uncle taught me when I was thirteen.”

Pulling on a pair of sweatpants, Tony took a light seat on the edge of the bed, each of them facing a separate wall. He was quiet for a little while, digesting the information.

“Thank you for saving me,” he grunted after a moment, uncomfortable with the intimacy of the words. It wasn’t anything he’d ever thought he’d say to a Demon. Peter had gotten him out of scrapes and healed up wounds before, but always under command and never anything so serious.

Desperate to rein back some control, he slid under the sheets and stared up at the ceiling. “If you ever kiss me again, I’ll use thread soaked in holy water and sew your mouth shut.”

Irritatingly, Peter snorted. “That was hardly a kiss.”

“You’re in a snot-nosed brat’s body, what would you know about kissing?” Tony shot back, brows pinching into a frown.

“This,” Peter huffed at him, rolling over and on top of him.

Tony blamed the fact that he didn’t pull away on simply being too tired to.

80 notes · View notes

nikki-writes-stuff · 4 years

Text

Chaser - Part One

Pairing: Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) x Reader, Gang Leader!Din Djarin x Bartender!Reader

Summary: No one knows his name, and no one knows his face, but the man who leads one of the most powerful gangs in New York from behind an infamous mask is still feared throughout the city. You, on the other hand, are just a waitress at the club he owns, someone who’s only just barely dipped her toe into the treacherous water of New York’s underworld. But that doesn’t stop your boss from taking a liking to you, and if you weren’t so terrified of all that his attentions could mean for you, maybe you would notice that fear isn’t the only emotion your employer stirs up within you.

A/N: Hello, everyone! I hope y’all enjoy this - the very first part to the very first fic I’ve ever written about The Mandalorian! Any and all feedback is appreciated - this is my first time writing for Din Djarinn, and even though my love for him is as deep and powerful as the Mississippi, I had some trouble finding his vibe while I was writing this. Let me know if I’m on the right track! (Also, if your name happens to be Rachelle, I apologize in advance. Please just...skip over a certain couple of lines in this story. You’ll know what I’m talking about towards the end.)

You could feel the throbbing of a quick, staccato bassline in your chest; you always could while you were working. The Boss liked the keep the music loud, and for good reason. It was the same reason why smoking was not only permitted but actively encouraged – the thick smoke and thumping music made it all the more difficult to hear and to see what happened in the dark corners of Club Razor Crest. Here, there were only two rules – don’t start shit, and keep your mask on. As long as they followed those two basic principles, the Boss’s patrons were welcome to conduct whatever business they saw fit in the crushed velvet booths and intentionally shadowed halls of his underworld playground.

With the tips of your red, glossy fingernails, you adjusted your mask now, pulling the plastic away from your heated skin by just a centimeter or two. You could have groaned from how good it felt to have cool, fresh air rush in to caress your sweaty forehead; after a week of working at the club, you’d definitely learned why anonymity was so important in a place like this, but you still dreaded putting the blasted thing on in the evenings before your shift.

Greta, one of the other girls who worked there, strutted past you, looking light as a feather as she waltzed around in her eight-inch heels with a tray of drinks balanced above her head. You, by contrast, knew that you had to look as clumsy as a newborn deer in your own stilettos; just like the mask, they were a mandatory part of your uniform that you still hadn’t gotten used to, and though Greta and the other girls had promised you that the constant pain in your feet would soon start to fade, your soles still ached painfully with every shift of your weight.

“Mask on,” your coworker whispered to you in passing. “Boss is here.”

You’d been just about to explain that you weren’t taking it off, that you’d just needed some air, but the words died on your lips when you heard the last part of her warning. Your spine straightened of its own accord, and the hand on your mask promptly fell down to hang by your waist. Scanning the space, you tried to make out the infamous man you’d heard so much about through the dim lighting and hazy air.

“Where?” you asked, but either she ignored you or just didn’t hear, because she kept on walking to her table without sparing you so much as another glance.

You gulped before stiffly making your way to the bar, slipping past the ‘Employees Only’ gate before gathering together the four glasses you’d need for your table’s order. You let your hands and body go on autopilot as you set about assembling their drinks; typically, the waitresses would just drop off their order slips to one of the bartenders and wait for them to make it, but you’d mentioned at your job interview that you had some bartending experience and didn’t mind helping out with the cocktail mixing.

From there, the head bartender, Quill, had sat at the bar and watched you make him an old fashioned right in the middle of your interview. With trembling hands, you’d done so, feeling the older man’s eyes on you all the while as he stroked his bushy white mustache. After one sip of it, he’d nodded his head, and you’d felt relief wash through you as he threw back the rest of the drink.

“You start on Monday,” was all he’d said.

Now, as you grabbed some triple sec from the top shelf, you caught a glimpse of him watching you out of the corner of your eye, and you turned to give him a smile. Quill had been working at Club Razor Crest for as long as anyone could remember, and he was the only person inside the building who didn’t wear a mask; evidently, him and the owner went way back. He was quiet – gruff, even – but for some reason you liked the grumpy older man. And, if you were correctly reading the gleam in his eyes as he looked at you from behind his thick, bushy white eyebrows, you thought that he’d taken a liking to you, too. Or, at least, to your old-fashioneds.

“How’s it going, Quill?” you asked, focusing once again on the long island iced tea you were making. “Busy night?”

You were expecting nothing more than a grunt in response; that was all most people got from him, and ever since he’d hired you, you hadn’t heard anything else, either. But instead, he opened his mouth to speak, only talking loud enough for you to just barely be able to hear him over the music.

“After you finish those drinks, leave ‘em here,” he instructed. “Boss just arrived with some of his friends, and he requested you to serve ‘em.”

You nearly dropped the bottle of rum in your hands, one that was worth more than an entire week’s worth of pay, and your hands scrambled to get a firmer grip on it. Shakily setting it down on the counter, you turned to Quill with wide eyes, your lips parted in shock.

“The Boss requested me to serve them?” Your voice was so high-pitched that it cracked as you said ‘me’, and you cleared your throat before trying once again. “Why does he want me? I’ve never even met him before.”

At that, Quill let out a sigh and turned to you, pursing his lips together until they almost disappeared under his large, unkempt mustache.

“…He likes old-fashioneds,” he shrugged, the corner of his lips jumping up so quickly that you almost missed the half-smile he’d given you. That would have been enough to perturb you for the rest of the evening; you hadn’t seen him smile at anyone after an entire week of working there – not even customers. But, as it was, nothing could cool the anxiety welling up in you as you finished making the rest of your drinks.

“I wonder where he heard about them,” you remarked, and you thought you caught Quill glance at you sheepishly in your peripheral vision.

Your eyes flitted over the room, looking for his booth; someone had said something to you on your first day about the table he kept reserved for himself and his ‘guests’, but you’d forgotten its location completely after the whirlwind of your first day at this new, bizarre job.

After finishing the four drinks and setting them on a tray, you turned towards Quill to ask where the Boss would be sitting. But, an idea stirred in your mind, and on impulse you grabbed a small glass before scanning the selection of bourbons and whiskeys the bar had to offer. Biting your lip, you felt eyes on the back of your head as you perused the different brands, but after settling on a good blend of the two, you turned around to find no one looking at you. Quill was busy taking some drunk guy’s order, and the other patrons at the bar were too busy with their own drinks or conversations to pay you any mind.

With a sigh, you shook off the strange feeling and assembled the rest of what you’d need for an old fashioned, hands moving on autopilot as you heard your dad’s voice in your ear. Make sure you only use enough bitters to saturate the sugar, you recalled him teaching you. Between four and six dashes should do the trick unless someone requests something different. Mix it with the sugar until it forms a slurry, and always add the ice in large chunks so it doesn’t get too watered down. Never overmix it once you add the spirits, just a few stirs before putting in a strip of lemon and orange peel.

Your fingers felt sticky as you snapped the citrus peels in half, spraying just a hint of their sweet oils overtop of the cocktail before rubbing them over the glass’s rim. After dropping them into the drink and mixing it one more time, you turned to see Quill watching you with one eyebrow raised.

“What? You said he likes old-fashioneds,” you shrugged. “Um… could you point me in the direction of his booth?”

Once more, he pursed his lips before pointing towards the far right corner of the room.

“It’s the only circular booth we have,” you heard him mutter as you walked away. “Can’t miss it.”

Making sure to thank him over your shoulder, you straightened your back and made your way through the main room of the club. There wasn’t any dancefloor, nor was there a DJ, but in the center of the space, there was a large, ornate fountain. Water no longer ran through it, but fairy lights had been wrapped around its tall structure, throwing shadows and low, scattered light around the entire room. Tables were centered around it, but typically only the low-ranking or occasional civilian patrons sat at them; the booths were almost always occupied by those who had a deal to make, those who had private (which almost always meant dangerous) matters to discuss, or those who were doing something that was, nine times out of ten, incredibly illegal. You’d walked by tables covered in lines of white powder before, their occupants knowing better than to worry about someone seeing and stopping them.

So long as no fights broke out and everyone stayed anonymous, everyone kept to their own business, and the paycheck was too good for you to worry about the moral connotations of working in such a place. No one had so much as laid a finger on you, and no one would, not while you were under the employment of the infamous leader of the Mandalorians.

After rounding the other side of the fountain, you finally saw the booth Quill had been talking about. It was raised up on a small platform, just high enough to be able to see the rest of the club clearly. Its table was, indeed, in the shape of a circle, and a large booth wrapped around three quarters of its diameter. Seated at it were four men and one woman; three of the men and she were wearing masks similar to your own, but while yours only covered your forehead and the upper half of your nose, theirs descended down their cheeks to their jawline, covering the entirety of their face except for their mouths and chins.

As it was, you would have found them extremely intimidating, but now, you didn’t even spare them a second glance. Because your eyes were fixed firmly on the Boss, and you were certain that you could feel his fixed onto you.

No one had told you that his mask covered his entire head, and as you stood there, in shock, you wondered why the fuck no one had thought to warn you about it before. It looked as if it were made out of thin but quality plastic, and various scratches and scrapes covered its grey surface. A voice in the back of your mind whispered that it looked like the goth version of Jim Carrey from The Mask, and you had to fight down a manic giggle as your eyes followed the bottom edge of it, which ran along his jawline, below his ears, and then, presumably, around the back of his head right below his hairline.

The front of the mask was what threw you off the most, though. Instead of having any features carved into it to simulate where a mouth or nose should be, there was only a T-shaped panel of what looked to be black glass. Or was it tinted clear plastic? You felt yourself lean forward, unconsciously squinting to see if you could make out any features beneath it.

You heard someone close by clear their throat, and heat flooded your cheeks as you suddenly realized that you’d been standing there for God-knows how long, just staring at one of the most powerful men in the city. No, staring at his mask.

“I-I,” you stammered, looking down at the floor in horror. It was then that you saw the glass that you were still holding, and you sucked in a breath before looking up again.

“Sorry about that, sir,” you apologized, clearing your throat. You leaned forward, setting the drink down in the center of the table. “Quill mentioned that you liked old-fashioneds, so I took the liberty of-“

You cut yourself off, eyes widening as you realized your second mistake. You looked down at the drink and then up to the Boss’s mask, right at where his mouth would be if he weren’t wearing something that covered it completely. Therefore making it impossible to drink what you’d just offered him.

The horror from just a moment ago paled in comparison to what you felt now as you watched him slowly reach forward, the leather of his black gloves squeaking as he picked up the drink you’d brought for him. His head tilted to the side as he examined it, twisting the glass around between his fingers before setting it down again.

“Lemon and orange, huh?”

You jumped when you heard the voice that came from inside the mask; it was clearer than you’d expected it to sound, but it also had a filtered edge to it. Your guess what that there was some sort of microphone-like device inside of it that projected his voice so it wouldn’t be muffled while he spoke.

“U-um, yes sir,” you nodded, lacing your fingers together and resisting the nervous urge to wring your hands. “That’s how my father taught me how to make them. It adds more of a refreshing aftertaste. Or so I’ve found.”

He let out a short hum, pushing the glass towards the woman seated beside him.

“Was her father right?”

You saw her eyebrows jump up under her mask, but without hesitation she did as instructed, taking a sip of the amber cocktail. Without realizing it, you held your breath as she swallowed, running her tongue along the front of her teeth for a moment as she studied the aftertaste.

“It’s good,” she decided after a moment. “Actually, hold on. That’s really good. Damn. Don’t tell Quill, but I like yours even better than his.”

Relief surged through you, and a smile came to your lips as you let the air rush out of your lungs.

“I promise not to tell him; thank you very much, ma’am,” you nodded, jolting when she let out a loud bark of laughter.

“Ma’am? Pfft.” She turned to the Boss, nudging her shoulder against his as she drained the rest of her drink in one gulp. “Hear that, Mando? She called me ma’am.”

“A decision I’m sure she won’t make again,” he remarked dryly, not even turning towards her as she placed the empty glass at the edge of the table.

“Well. Either way, if you can do that with a drink I don’t even usually like, I’d love to see what you can do with a long island,” the woman grinned. “Think you can do that for me?”

“I actually just made one a few minutes ago,” you informed her; under normal circumstances, you would have felt offended by her question, but something in her smile told you that she didn’t mean it seriously. “What can I get for the rest of you guys?”

From there, you tried your best to recover gracefully from your little bout of foot-in-mouth syndrome. Pulling your small notebook out of the hidden pocket in your dress, you wrote down the rest of their drink orders, noticing that two of the men asked for old-fashioneds. From there, the last of the Boss’s party ordered a whiskey sour, and when you’d turned to ask if he’d like anything as well, he’d simply shaken his head no.

After letting them know you’d be back in just a few minutes, you turned and all but fled to the bar, hands balled up into fists as you approached Quill from behind.

“Why would you tell me,” you demanded, “that he requested me because he wanted to try one of my old-fashioneds if he can’t even drink with that mask on?! Why did you just let me bring that drink over, like an enormous buffoon-“

The older bartender turned around to face you, and you took a step backwards when you saw the wide grin stretched across his face. His shoulders were shaking with barely-controlled laughter, and you watched, stunned, as he fought to gain control over his expression again.

“You were the one who assumed that he wanted to try your drink,” he corrected you, busying himself with salting the rim of a margherita glass. “I never said anything like that, just that he enjoyed them.”

You sputtered in disbelief, throwing your hands up in exasperation before starting on your drink orders.

“So it was just some kind of hazing thing, then, was it?” you asked, not able to deny that you felt a twinge of fondness stir in you after seeing his typical stoic demeanor slip.

Quill snorted, cutting his eyes over to you as you worked side by side with him.

“You think I’d bother with that sorta thing?” You turned to see him watching you with amusement still glittering in his eyes. “Just needed some entertainment to get through the rest of this shift.”

A smile tugged at your lips, and you shook your head with a chuckle before returning to the whiskey sour starting to take shape in front of you.

“Well, laugh it up, cuz I’ll have you know I looked like a complete idiot in front of him.”

“I promise you he’s used to that, kid. Don’t worry about it; as long as you get your work done, he won’t pay you a second glance.”

Feeling mildly comforted by his words, you started on the woman’s drink, eyes darting up towards his table. Now that you knew where it was, you could just barely make out the flash of his shiny helmet through the smoke that had settled around the room. Goosebumps ran up and down your arms as, once again, you felt as if you were being watched, and you hastily turned your attention back to drink making.

When all four of them were assembled, you placed them on a tray before stepping out onto the floor once more. You were hyper-aware of the drinks as you balanced them while you walked, and you kept your eyes fixed on only your tray and the ground in front of you. You were not going to spill any of them; you’d already made enough of a fool of yourself, and you were determined not to add a third strike to your record with the Boss.

And, so, you didn’t catch the way his mask had followed your every movement as you crossed towards his table, nor did you notice the knowing smirk the woman beside him was wearing as she glanced between the two of you. You were blissfully unaware of any undue attention to yourself as you passed out each of the drinks respectively before tucking your tray under your arm and turning to the table with a smile.

“Can I get anything else for you guys?” You kept your tone light and friendly, even though you were mentally begging them to not need anything else.

“Just send Quill over; tell him I need to speak with him,” the Boss said. “Cover the bar for him until he gets back.”

“Yes, sir,” you hurriedly assured him.

Biting your lip, you hurried back to the bar and relayed the message to Quill, who just rolled his eyes and set down the glass he’d been polishing.

“Why he can’t walk over on his own two legs is beyond me,” you heard him grumble under his breath.

From there, the rest of your shift went by pretty normally; you made drinks and polished glasses until Quill came back to the bar a few minutes later, once more only answering you with grunts and noncommittal shrugs. He’d waved you off after you’d asked what he wanted, telling you to return to your section but to keep your eyes on the Boss’s table in case they needed anything.

Which they hadn’t. After returning to take their glasses, they’d declined your offer to get them any refills, and when you went to check on them ten minutes after that, they were gone. From there, you only had an hour left until your shift ended at its usual time – 3:30 am. You could have hugged the girl from the morning shift who came to relieve you – as it was, you’d thanked her so profusely for taking over your section that she’d looked worried for you.

“Um… Have a rough night?” she’d asked, eyebrows pinching together under her mask.

“You have no idea,” you sighed, heading towards the back room. “See you around!”

But your walk to the back came to an abrupt halt when Quill called you over, having to shout your name twice before you heard him over the music. Frowning, you walked over to him, leaning against the bar.

“What’s up?”

“Boss wants you to bring an old fashioned to his office,” he grunted, wiping his hands off on a towel. “Something about not getting to try the last one you made.”

You felt the color drain from your face, and you gulped, nodding quickly before making your way around to the other side of the bar.

“Um… Well, I was just about to go home; it was the end of my shift five minutes ago. Could I ask someone else to bring it to him?”

“Boss asked for you specifically,” he shrugged. “It’s on you if you wanna go against his request.”

Well. Shit. You’d made mistakes in your time, but you couldn’t see yourself ever being dumb enough to deny the kingpin of, arguably, the most powerful gang in Brooklyn.

“I…see. Um. Where exactly is his office?”

“Smart choice.”

After making your thousandth old fashioned of the evening, Quill gave you instructions to the office, and though you were still a bit lost on what to do at the end of the third hallway he mentioned, you had a pretty good idea as to where it was located. And so you set out, holding the drink in a white-knuckled fist as you made your way through the twists and turns of the old building.

A few minutes of wandering later found you standing in front of a door made out of solid, dark wood, and a bronze plaque on its surface read Management – Please knock.

“Well,” you whispered under your breath, “here goes nothing.”

You raised your hand and rapped your knuckles against the door, trying to stamp down the butterflies in your gut as you waited for a response. Several seconds passed by, and you bit your lip as you looked around the hallway you were in; the door to the Boss’s office was the only one on this short hallway, but someone had taken the time to put a potted plant next to the door. You smiled, reaching out with one of your fingers to brush against one of its leaves, and it was in that moment that the door rushed open.

You snatched your hand back, as if the plant had burned you, and looked up to see the Boss standing on its other side. After swallowing thickly, you plastered a smile on your face and straightened your posture.

“Hello, sir,” you greeted, holding out his drink. “I brought that old fashioned for you.”

Without a word, the masked man turned on his heel and walked back into the room, gesturing for you to follow him inside.

“Close the door on the way in.”

You paused, heart pounding as you took a step into his office; the two of you were the only ones there. Glancing behind you to the door, your eyes lingered for a second on its handle, wondering what the smartest thing to do here was. If you said no, then he could do so much worse than just fire you. But if you did as he said, well… Anything could happen to you behind that closed door, and how likely was it that the loud club outside would be able to hear you scream?

“Jesus Christ, I’m not gonna shoot you.”

You jumped so hard that you almost spilled his drink, but hearing his voice spurred you to quickly grab the handle and shut the door without another moment’s thought. You turned back to face him the same moment it slammed shut with a bang, and you winced at how loud of a sound it made.

Smooth.

“S-sorry, sir,” you stuttered, hesitantly walking towards him. You held out the glass, looking up at where you hoped his eyes were beneath his helmet. “I hope it lives up to the hype. The drink, that is.”

His shoulders twitched upwards with a short huff of laughter before taking the glass from your hand, the tips of his gloved fingers brushing against yours. You felt heat rise in your cheeks as your eyes fell from his mask, taking in for the first time what he was wearing.

In the low light of the club, you’d thought his suit was black, but now you could see that it was actually a dark forest green instead. The button-down shirt beneath it was white, and the top two buttons of it were undone, showing off a patch of tan skin just below his collarbone. For some second, your eyes lingered on it, inexplicably fascinated by the only bit of skin visible on the man in front of you.

Directly behind the Boss was a large desk cluttered with notebooks, folders, and stacks of various papers and envelopes, and you watched as your employer cleared off a small space to set his glass down on. You were finally able to break out of your bizarre thoughts about his clavicle once he turned back to face you, and you silently hoped that he hadn’t caught you staring at him again.

“Turn around.”

You blinked once, and then twice, before speaking.

“I, um… I don’t understand, sir-“

“Turn around,” he repeated, twirling his finger in the air. “Face the other way.”

Not fully understanding the purpose of such an order, you bit your lip, reminding yourself that he’d told you earlier that he wasn’t going to shoot you. Slowly, you obeyed him, lacing your fingers together and squeezing them tightly. You were now looking right at the door you’d walked in from, the one you were so tempted to walk through right now.

For a moment, the room was quiet save for the sound of your breathing, and you nearly shrieked when you heard his voice from what had to be just inches behind you.

“Don’t look back,” he commanded. “If you know what’s good for you.”

Letting out a shaky breath, you nodded, noticing a trembling strand of hair out of the corner of your eyes. In fact, your entire body was trembling ever so slightly, and you took a deep breath to try and calm the frantic beating of your heart.

Needing to ground yourself, you looked around at your surroundings, focusing on them instead of what your boss could possibly have in store for you. The walls and floors were a sandy concrete, just like the rest of the club, but there were various personal touches dotted around the space that your eyes lingered on. On either side of the door, there were huge bookcases filled with, yes, books, but also binders and folders and trinkets you wouldn’t have thought a mobster would keep in his office. Things like the small, carved figurine of a horse he had resting next to a copy of Webster’s Dictionary, or the small vase of roses he had balanced on top of a pile of magazines.

After looking over the bookshelves, your eyes scanned the furniture dotted around the room. To your left, there was a black leather couch on top of what had to be a genuine Persian rug. To your right, facing the couch, a loveseat was shoved up against the wall, and hanging above it was a huge mirror in a gilded, ornate frame. As you turned to look at yourself in it, you realized that you could catch a bit of his reflection as well, and you startled when you saw that his hands were on the back of his mask, unsnapping a clasp that held it in place. With a silent gasp, you turned to face forward again, eyes wide.

You held your breath when you heard him pick the glass up again, and it suddenly made sense why he’d asked you to turn around – he just wanted to try the drink without you seeing his face. Your shoulders slumped with relief; you didn’t care if he hated how it tasted. You were just thrilled that he hadn’t brought you back to punish you for staring at him earlier.

There was a long pause as he drank it, and you had to stop yourself from shifting your weight or appearing too restless as you waited for his verdict.

“…Cara was right,” you finally heard, and you gasped at the sound of his pure, unfiltered voice. “Your old-fashioneds are better than Quill’s.”

“Thank you, sir,” you breathed, still recovering from the shock at how rich, how deep, his voice was. “I promise not to tell him.”

“Oh, he already knows,” he assured you. “He told me himself after you got hired.”

Your eyebrows shot up, and you couldn’t fight back a quiet chuckle.

“Quill’s just full of surprises tonight,” you mused.

“Hm. I saw him laughing at you earlier at the bar,” your boss went on, and you heard him pause before something shifted and clicked behind you. “You can turn around again.”

His voice was, once again, the same processed, slightly staticky one you’d heard before, and as you turned around, there was a pang of disappointment in your chest when you saw the mask staring back at you once again.

“People usually have to work here for at least a year before they see him so much as smile,” he went on, turning the glass between his hands as the ice inside clinked together. “And here you are, not even a week in.”

“Well… it’s probably just because I’ve been helping him out behind the bar,” you explained. “I don’t think any of the other girls mix their own-“

“No, it’s not that,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “He has other bartenders to help him with that, and he hates them just as much as he hates the rest of the workers here. But not you.”

You didn’t know what to say, and so you said nothing, wracking your brain for anything – a thank you, an apology, a party trick – anything that could make the air feel less awkward than it had suddenly become. But, eventually, your boss broke the silence, though you never would have guessed what he’d been about to say.

“You’re not a server anymore,” he declared. “I want you behind the bar full-time now. You can replace, uh…” He tapped his fingers against the lip of the glass, and you saw his head tilt upwards as he thought. “…Rayanne? Rachel?”

“Rachelle?” you supplied weakly.

“I was close enough. You can replace her,” he continued. “She can be demoted to a server to take your place, and you’re promoted to bartender to take hers.”

“B-but, sir, I,” you stammered, adjusting your mask as you took a step towards him, “I can’t just steal Rachelle’s job; she’s been working here for three years-“

“And Cara still hates her long islands,” he once again cut you off. “I’ll have Quill email you a new schedule.”

Your mouth was open, but no words came out as you stared at the blank slate where his face should be; this wasn’t really such a bad thing, right? You’d gotten the position honestly, and Rachelle had never been particularly nice to you, anyways.

“…Thank you, sir,” you finally said. “I… I appreciate this opportunity.”

“Mm. How much do you wanna make?”

You pressed your lips together, your nose scrunching up as you mentally did the math.

“Um… Does $13 an hour work?”

Your employer snorted, shaking his head before taking a step towards you. You froze as he reached for your wrist, being surprisingly gentle as he brought your hand up between the two of you, and as you looked up, you knew that his eyes were boring into yours, even if you couldn’t see them. You found that you couldn’t look away as he pressed his empty glass into your hands, making sure your fingers were wrapped securely around it before pushing his hands into his pockets.

“Remind me,” he exhorted, “to never let you negotiate a deal for me.”

You blinked rapidly as he backed away, brain still fizzling a bit from how close he’d just been to you. The spicy scent of his cologne still lingered in your nostrils as he turned back to his desk, and it was only when he leaned against it and inclined his head towards you that your mind caught up with what he’d just said. What had been wrong with $13 an hour? Was it too low or too high? Had you just screwed yourself?

“Um…”

You watched his chest rise and fall with a sigh, but you could have sworn you heard a smile in his voice as he spoke next.

“Report to Quill tomorrow at the beginning of your shift,” he instructed. “You’re getting $15 an hour; he can tell you more about your benefits.”

Too low, then. You paused, not knowing what to say, and, he tiled his head towards the side as he waited for your response.

“…Did you just say benefits?”

This time, it was a full-blown laugh that you managed to coax out of him, and a tentative, hopeful grin spread over your lips as you watched him nod his head.

“Yes, I did,” he confirmed. “Now go home; get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, sir…”

With that, you turned around, opened the door, and floated down the hall to the break room. In fact, after grabbing your things and getting in your car, you floated the entire way home. It was only when you reached for your steering wheel that you realized you were still clutching his glass in your left hand, but you didn’t bother bringing it back; what was one missing glass out of the hundreds, if not thousands, the club already owned?

_____________________

Din sat at his desk for a while after that, half-heartedly doing the least glamorous part of his job – paperwork. Over the years, he’d done a number of horrible things to even worse people, but he still hadn’t hated any of it – the arson, the beatings, the murder – nearly as much as he hated paperwork. But tonight, he was grateful for the easy, mindless task; he wouldn’t be able to focus on much else, not with you on his mind.

The door to his office suddenly opened, but he didn’t bother glancing up to see who it was; Cara had already gone home with some pretty young thing she’d picked up at the bar, and there was only one other person who would dare come in without knocking.

“I gave her a promotion,” he said, not looking up from the check he was writing. “You’ve got yourself a new bartender. Thought you’d like not having to deal with Rachel showing up late anymore.”

“…I’ve been telling you to replace Rachelle for three years,” was his only answer.

Din looked up, watching as his old friend slowly lowered himself into his favorite armchair, groaning with the strain it put on his knees; he’d always had trouble with his joints.

“…Really,” he finally hummed, turning back to the check and scrawling his signature (which was just a wiggly line that resembled more of a curly fry than it did an actual name, but that only helped him in his efforts to remain nameless) across the bottom right corner of it. “Didn’t realize it’d been that long.”

“Because you blew me off and told me to quit complaining anytime I mentioned it,” he fired back. “Why now, all of a sudden? Why her?”

“Look, do you want me to keep Rachel?”

Quill opened his mouth to speak, but he cut him off before he could, already knowing what he would say.

“Rachelle – whatever her fucking name is,” he grumbled. “You get my point.”

“It still doesn’t answer my question.”

Something in the older man’s tone made Din pause, slowly setting his pen down before turning to Quill once again.

“What’s it to you?” he countered. “You got something against working with the new girl?”

“No,” the bartender sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And you know it. Just…remember what happened the last time you took a special interest-“

“Out.”

His friend sighed, standing up with a grunt and taking a step towards him.

“Now, Din, don’t get me wrong-“

“I said…”

He stood from his desk, pressing his palms flat against its surface and leaning towards the older man.

“Out.”

Quill bowed his head, the wrinkles on his face deepening as he frowned, but he didn’t feel anything but contempt as he nodded and turned towards the door. Slowly, Din lowered himself down into his chair once more, but his muscles tensed when he saw his old friend pause on the way out.

“I’m just as much worried for you as I am for her, you know,” he murmured. “It would kill me to see you go through…that again.”

The old man shook his head, looking back at him over his shoulder.

“It would kill me,” he whispered.

With that, he stepped out and shut the door behind him, leaving Din with nothing but bad memories and the taste of bourbon and lemon peel lingering on his tongue.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian imagine #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin imagine #din djarin x you #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader

204 notes · View notes

howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

Text

Road Dogs: Metallica on Tour

Metallica‘s first ever gig took place at Radio City in Anaheim, California in March 1982. Their set list included primarily covers with only two original songs, “Hit the Lights” and “Fight Fire with Fire.” They did Savage’s ‘Let It Loose,’ Blitzkrieg’s ‘Blitzkrieg,’ Sweet Savage’s ‘Killing Time’ and four Diamond Head tracks. For diehard fans, this original lineup did not include Cliff Burton as of yet, but instead Ron McGovney. They eventually asked him to leave the group because the guitarist did not contribute anything of value. Another good reason came in the fact that Dave Mustaine fought with him repeatedly. James Hetfield would later say this about that show. “There were a lot of people there, maybe 200, because we had all my school friends and all Lars’ and Ron’s and Dave’s buddies. I was really nervous and a little uncomfortable without a guitar, and then during the first song Dave broke a string. It seemed to take him an eternity to change it and I was standing there really embarrassed. We were really disappointed afterwards. But there were never as many people at the following shows as there were at that first one.”

Metallica’s second and third show took place at the Whiskey a Gogo in Los Angeles. This venue would be where Hetfield and Lars Ulrich first heard future bassist Cliff Burton and his band Trauma. More recently, Ulrich revealed diary entries related to Metallica’s appearances there. "No sound check. Sound was awful. Played great myself, but the band as a whole sucked. Went down OK." The group opened for Saxon, who the drummer had met six months prior after sneaking backstage during one of their shows. After the concert, the monitor engineer asked Ulrich if he had ever heard of Diamondhead. “Of course, we have, we just played a bunch of their songs!" As it turned out, the crew member was only joking about Diamond Head. He would later go on to work for Metallica in the same position for 22 years.

On April 16, 1983 Metallica played its first show with new guitarist Kirk Hammett at the Showplace in Dover, New Jersey. They had begun recording their debut album Kill ‘Em All in Rochester, New York at that time. The set list included all original material that would land on that first album making up nine songs. Hammett had replaced Dave Mustaine, who held quite a bit of ill will towards him for years claiming in 1985 that Kirk ripped off all his guitar riffs, which got him noticed in the metal community. In defense of Hammett, he was simply trying not to make waves in his new group as Ulrich and Hetfield had definitely decided not to cut any contributions from Mustaine.

On March 5, 1983 Metallica played its first show with Cliff Burton at The Stone in San Francisco, who had replaced Ron McGovney. In 2018, a recording of the show came to light online, which you can listen to on YouTube. The lineup still included Dave Mustain as well taking place a month before the other band members would fire him. They performed 12 songs that night essentially previewing everything to be included on their debut album. At that time, James Hetfield was still struggling over whether he should sing lead. On the recording, you can tell why this became the case as his voice sounds incredibly scratchy with absolutely no technique whatsoever. The show also became memorable as a Cliff Burton debuted the future track, “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth).”

Cliff Burton played his last show was Metallica in Stockholm, Sweden in September 1986 before his tragic passing. A few years ago, Metallica released a boxed set of rarities for their album, Master of Puppets, which included a recording of that final show. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett talked about their memories of that last concert with Cliff. Ulrich noted, “We played the show in Stockholm, and it went incredibly well. I think it may have been a rare case where we actually played an additional song that wasn’t on the set list, because the show was so good. That’s not something we did a lot then or now. So there was a good vibe.” Hammett would say this in the same interview, “It was significant because it was the first show where James played guitar again (Wrist Injury). He strapped on a guitar and was able to play the encore; I think it was “Blitzkrieg” or something. But I remember the five of us, including John Marshall, being really stoked James was back and playing and looking like was gonna make a pretty healthy recovery. I distinctly remember that show being good, and the feeling when we got offstage was really great and positive and forward-looking. Like, “Great, James is back in and it won’t be long ’til we’re back to our old selves again.”

In November 1986, Jason Newsted would play his first show with Metallica at the Country Club in Reseda, California. He did so in front of a sparse crowd because it had been a secret show for the group Metal Church. Newsted had played with the band for only a short time during rehearsals for the next album. James Hetfield introduced Newsted for the very first time in this way. “Welcome to the very, very secret Metallica gig that every fucker knows about! Here’s the new fucker right over here man, this is the guy… Jason Newsted, we fucking love him, man, so make him feel at home, alright? I want to have some fun tonight.” Their set list would consist of 14 songs from their first three album releases.

In the summer of 1992, Metallica decided to perform a few dates with Guns ‘N Roses. The hype for these shows represented the tour of the year, but the show in Montreal turned into a tragic affair. A pyrotechnic accident occurred as they performed “Fade To Black” causing second and third degree burns on half of singer James Hetfield's body. He recalled the incident, “I'm burnt – all my arm, my hand completely, down to the bone. The side of my face, hair's gone. Part of my back. ... I watched the skin just rising, things going wrong." Jason Newsted would remember that Hetfield looked like the Toxic Avenger from his vantage point. The group immediately cut the show short, so the singer could receive medical attention. He would later say that during the trip to the hospital a road crew member bumped his burnt hand leading him to punch the guy in his “nuts.” For fans still at the show, things only got worse as Guns ‘N Roses delayed getting on stage for two hours. Axl Rose probably only sang for 20 minutes before cutting his night short. GNR Had known what had happened to Hetfield, but they still phoned it in anyway. After that, 2000 people rioted in protest followed by several arrests. This night would lead to great animosity between the two groups for years continuing to this day, but it should be noted that Metallica acted professionally completing the tour with an injured Hetfield. Slash of Guns N’ Roses would later talk about the tour being a financial disaster for them. “Metallica was earning the exact same paycheck as we were every night but while they pocketed the whole thing, we were blowing 80 percent both on union dues for all of the overtime we cost ourselves going on late and on these stupid theme parties. It was just bad." Axl had spent extravagantly on backstage parties in an effort to impress members of Metallica.

In April 1999, Metallica recorded two performances on successive nights with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra led by Michael Kamen. The idea for such a concert had first come up when they worked with the composer on the Black Album song, “Nothing Else Matters.” He had approached them about such a collaboration, but never heard anything until years later receiving a phone call from Lars Ulrich. They filmed the live show at Berkeley Community Theater in San Francisco as Kamen had written additional material to supplement Metallica’s arrangements. The band also released two new songs specifically for the show, “No Leaf Clover” and “Human.” According to James Hetfield, This idea of combining heavy metal and classical music was originally an idea brought up by Cliff Burton, who had a strong background in both. One can see this throughout Metallica’s songwriting in their early years as the bassist relied on melody and instrumental qualities found in classical compositions like his favorite one, Johan Sebastian Bach. S&M would be released as a concert film and an album, with the latter reaching number one on the Billboard 200 chart.

In 1991, Metallica would play a concert in Russia that has become the stuff of legends because 1.6 million people watched it in person. The highlight of the show came when they played “Enter Sandman” as one could see Russian military personnel rocking out just as hard as anybody else. One must note that they were not the only band there that day as other artists included the Black Crowes, Queensryche, Motley Crue, and AC/DC. The Monsters of Rock Festival would only occur this one year in what would become the former Soviet Union. Motley Crue had played one of the early versions of the festival in 1984, but ironically Metallica had surpassed them as a more popular headliner by this time.

In August 2020, Metallica became the first rock act to perform a pre-recorded concert for Encore Live’s drive-in series. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, live concerts were canceled all over the world, so artists like Blake Shelton and Garth Brooks participated in this drive-in movie concert experience. Tickets to view this at your local drive-in cost $115 for up to six people per car. The show took place at an undisclosed location near their home in San Rafael, California.

9 notes · View notes

to-read-or-not-to-read3088 · 3 years

Text

70+ disabled, neurodiverse and chronically ill authors COLLAB

This post is in collaboration with several other bloggers whose links are included here:

Artie Carden

Anniek

Hi! It’s been a while since I posted anything, but this post has been a month in the making. I have twenty books by twenty authors for my part in this collaboration, and you can check out the other parts of the collab with the links at the top of the post.

I haven’t read some of these books but almost all of them are on my to be read pile, and I did extensive research to make sure I got this right, but please let me know if there are any mistakes or if anything needs to be corrected.

1. Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

📷

Meet Cute Diary follows Noah Ramirez who thinks he’s an expert on romance. He must be for his blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem. All the stories are fake. What started off as the fantasies of a trans boy who was afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe. Noah’s world unravels when a troll exposes the blog as fiction, and the only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. That’s when Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place. Drew is willing to fake date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realises that dating in real life isn’t the same as finding love on the page.

The author, Emery Lee, is a kid lit author, artist and YouTuber hailing from a mixed racial background. After graduating with a degree in creative writing, e’s gone on to author novels, short stories and webcomics. When away from reading and writing, you’ll likely find em engaged in art or snuggling with cute dogs.

Emery Lee is nonbinary, and uses e/em pronouns, and e’s debut book, Meet Cute Diary, features a side character who is also nonbinary (and asexual!). Emery is also neurodivergent, and frequently speaks about what its like being a writer with adhd on twitter.

Meet Cute Diary is a book I only discovered last month, when it was published, but I’m excited to read it. It has representation of all kinds, and I love any book that has even a little mention of an asexual character because its so rare to see.

2. Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

📷

At Niveus Private Academy money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because an anonymous texter calling themselves Aces, is bringing two students’ dark secrets to light. Devon, a talented musician, buries himself in rehearsals, but he can’t escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Chiamaka, head girl, isn’t afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power. Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they’re planning much more than a high school game.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, is the author of the instant New York Times and IndieBound bestseller, Ace of Spades, billed as ‘Get out meets Gossip Girl’. Entertainment Weekly has called it “this summer’s hottest YA debut”. She was born and raised in Croydon, South London, and Faridah moved to the Scottish Highlands for her undergraduate degree where she completed a BA in English Literature. She has established and runs and mentorship scheme for unagented writers of colour, helping them on their journey to get published. Faridah has also written for NME, The Bookseller, Readers Digest and gal-dem.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s book is one that I pre-ordered months in advance, after discovering that I actually really liked this sub-genre of YA, and although I still haven’t read it yet (sorry!), I’m still super excited to dive into it. From what I hear, it has some gay rep, which we all know by now is something I seek out in my books.

3. Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal

📷

Priya has worked hard to pursue her pre med dreams at Stanford, but a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease during her sophomore year sends her straight back to her loving but overbearing family in New Jersey and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses. When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something very out of character; she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the creature that’s shut in the basement. With Brigid nowhere in sight, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be werewolf – and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid’s unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.

Kristen O’Neal is a freelance writer who’s written for sites like Buzzfeed Reader, Christianity Today, Birth.Movies.Death, LitHub and Electric Literature. She writes about faith, culture, and unexplained phenomena. Her debut novel, Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is based on her own experiences with being chronically ill. Kristen has two autoimmune disorders and “a number of other problems and issues” with her body. According to her website, she is doing much better than she used to, but still has flares somewhat regularly.

I cannot describe the feeling of seeing a published book with the best group chat name I have ever seen. Oof ouch my bones is absolutely something that I would be part of if it really existed, because its just such a mood, and funny at the same time. I pre ordered this book too, but like all the others, I still haven’t gotten around to reading it. I’m super excited about it though and cannot recommend it enough.

4. Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

📷

Will Tavares is the dream summer fling – he’s fun, affectionate, kind – but just when Ollie thinks he’s found his Happily Ever After, summer vacation ends, and Will stops texting Ollie back. Now Ollie is one prince short of his fairy tale ending, and to complicate the fairy tale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country. Which he minds a little less when he realises it’s the same school Will goes to…except Ollie finds out that the sweet, comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted – and to be honest, a jerk. Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn’t ready for a relationship, especially since this new, bro-y jock version of Will seems to go from hot to cold every other week. But then Will starts “coincidentally” popping up in every area of Ollie’s life, from music class to the lunch table, and Ollie finds his resolve weakening. The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again. Right? Right.

Sophie Gonzales was born and raised in Whyalla, South Australia, where the Outback Meets the Sea. She now lives in Melbourne, where there’s no outback in sight. Sophie’s been writing since the age of five, when her mother decided to help her type out one of the stories she had come up with in the bathtub. They ran into artistic differences when five-year-old Sophie insisted that everybody die in the end, while her mother wanted the characters to simply go out for a milkshake. Since then, Sophie has been completing her novels without a transcript. Sophie Gonzales tweets about her experiences with ADHD on her twitter.

Only mostly devasted is one of the few books on this list that I’ve read. I read the whole thing in one sitting because I just couldn’t put it down, which is weird because I normally don’t read contemporary at all. I have recommended this book to literally everyone I know, and even bought my best friend a copy to convince her to read it.

5. The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd Jones

📷

Seventeen-year-old Aderyn ("Ryn") only cares about two things: her family, and her family's graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meagre existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don't always stay dead. The risen corpses are known as "bone houses," and legend says that they're the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good? Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the long-hidden truths about themselves.

Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. After graduating from Western Oregon University with an English degree, she enrolled in the publishing program at Rosemont College just outside of Philadelphia. She currently resides in Northern California.

Another book on my to be read pile that I’m super excited to read, but still haven’t gotten around to. This one features disability rep, but because I haven’t read it, I don’t know much more, sorry guys.

6. Mooncakes by Susanne Walker and Wendy Xu

📷Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town. One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home. Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

Suzanne Walker is a Chicago-based writer and editor. She is co-creator of the Hugo-nominated graphic novel Mooncakes (2019, Lion Forge/Oni Press). Her short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld and Uncanny Magazine, and she has published nonfiction articles with Uncanny Magazine, StarTrek.com, Women Write About Comics, and the anthology Barriers and Belonging: Personal Narratives of Disability. She has spoken at numerous conventions on a variety of topics ranging from disability representation in sci-fi/fantasy to comics collaboration.

Wendy Xu is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and comics artist. She is co-creator of and currently draws the webcomic Mooncakes. Her work has been featured on Tor.com, as part of the Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibit permanently housed at the Chinese Historical Society of America, and in Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology. She occasionally teaches at the Asian American Writers Workshop and currently works as an assistant editor curating young adult and children’s books.

Suzanne Walker suffers from hearing loss, something that she wrote into her graphic novel, Mooncakes, making Nova hard of hearing. I read this in a few years ago as an advance reader copy for Netgalley and it was honestly one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. The main characters are Chinese American, queer AND magic, which is an amazing combination of representation.

7. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

📷

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone… A convict with a thirst for revenge A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager A runaway with a privileged past A spy known as the Wraith A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Leigh Bardugo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, the Six of Crows Duology, The Language of Thorns, and King of Scars—with more to come. Her short stories can be found in multiple anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. Her other works include Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Ninth House (Goodreads Choice Winner for Best Fantasy 2019) which is being developed for television by Amazon Studios.

Leigh grew up in Southern California and graduated from Yale University. These days she lives and writes in Los Angeles.

In the acknowledgements section of Six of Crows, Bardugo reveals she suffers from osteonecrosis and sometimes needs to use a cane; this was a source of inspiration for one of the story's six protagonists, master thief and gang boss Kaz Brekker, who uses a cane.

I read Six of Crows a few years ago and I really loved it. I’m not going to pretend I managed to finish the whole Grishaverse series, because I haven’t even gotten close yet, but it really showed Kaz’s struggles with his disability, and his mental health. This is part of a duology, and the duology is part of a large series of books with another duology and trilogy, but Six of Crows can be read without reading the others.

8. Hyperbole and A Half by Allie Brosh

📷

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So, I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

Allie is an American blogger, writer and comic artist best known for her blog in the form of a webcomic Hyperbole and a Half. Brosh started Hyperbole in 2009 and told stories from her life in a mix of text and intentionally crude illustrations. She has published two books telling stories in the same style, both of which have been New York Times bestsellers. Brosh lives with severe depression and ADHD, and her comics on depression have won praise from fans and mental health professionals.

Another book on my tbr that I just haven’t gotten around to but really want to.

9. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

📷

What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just must find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions...

Patrick Ness, an award-winning novelist, has written for England’s Radio 4 and Sunday Telegraph and is a literary critic for The Guardian. He has written many books, including the Chaos Walking Trilogy, The Crash of Hennington, Topics About Which I Know Nothing, and A Monster Calls. He has won numerous awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and the Costa Children’s Book Award. Born in Virginia, he currently lives in London.

Patrick Ness has written about OCD and anxiety in at least two of his books, inspired by his own experiences with the two disorders and how it affects him (The Rest of Us Just Live Here & Release)

10. Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire

📷

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children No Solicitations No Visitors No Quests Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter. No matter the cost.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

Seanan McGuire has an invisible disability due to herniated disks in her spine. She is slowly coming to terms with this, and talks about it occasionally on her twitter, and about the struggles she faces.

I loved this book, and so did my best friend. We both read it in one sitting and talked nonstop about it afterwards. Although short, its filled with amazing characters, plot, and representation (asexual character!!)

11. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honour they could hope for...and the most demeaning. This year, there's a ninth. And instead 📷of paper, she's made of fire. In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after -- the girl with the golden eyes whose rumoured beauty has piqued the king's interest. Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, she does the unthinkable -- she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.

Natasha Ngan is a writer and yoga teacher. She grew up between Malaysia, where the Chinese side of her family is from, and the UK. This multicultural upbringing continues to influence her writing, and she is passionate about bringing diverse stories to teens. Ngan studied Geography at the University of Cambridge before working as a social media consultant and fashion blogger. She lives in France with her partner, where they recently moved from Paris to be closer to the sea. Her novel Girls of Paper and Fire was a New York Times bestseller. Natasha has a heart condition, and talks about her struggles with her health, and gives updates on her health and her books on twitter.

I’ve heard a lot about this book, but for trigger warning reasons it sadly isn’t on my to be read list. Everything I’ve heard about it says its an amazing book though, and the cover is beautiful.

12. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

📷

Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself. Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favourite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.

Jen Wilde is the YA author of QUEENS OF GEEK, THE BRIGHTSIDERS and GOING OFF SCRIPT. She writes unapologetically queer stories about geeks, rockstars, and fangirls who smash the patriarchy in their own unique ways. Her books have been praised in Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Vulture and Bustle. Originally from Australia, Jen now lives in NYC where she spends her time writing, drinking too much coffee and binging reality TV.

Researching for this collab was the first time this book popped up on my radar as something I might be interested in reading. Jen Wilde, the author, is herself autistic and suffers from anxiety, which gives the narrative “authenticity that is lacking in similar books” according to socialjusticebooks.org.

13. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

📷

Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love—she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So, she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful. Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly’s totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie’s new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny and flirtatious and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, she’ll get her first kiss and she’ll get her twin back. There’s only one problem: Molly’s co-worker Reid. He’s an awkward Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?

Becky Albertalli is the author of the acclaimed novels Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (film: Love, Simon), The Upside of Unrequited, and Leah on the Offbeat. She is also the co-author of What If It's Us with Adam Silvera. A former clinical psychologist who specialized in working with children and teens, Becky lives with her family in Atlanta.

Becky Albertalli has generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), and has spoken about it in several interviews, which you can find online. She has also written several characters in her books who also suffer with anxiety. Her first book, Simon vs the Homosapien’s Agenda (or Love, Simon), is the only book of hers that I have read so far, and I loved it. It was the first contemporary book that I read and actually enjoyed.

14. Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

📷

Cyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. Cyra’s current gift gives her pain and power—something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows. Akos is the son of a farmer and an oracle from the frozen nation-planet of Thuvhe. Protected by his unusual currentgift, Akos is generous in spirit, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive—no matter what the cost. Then Akos is thrust into Cyra's world, and the enmity between their countries and families seems insurmountable. Will they help each other to survive, or will they destroy one another?

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Four: A Divergent Collection), the Carve the Mark duology (Carve the Mark, the Fates Divide), The End and Other Beginnings collection of short fiction, and many short stories and essays. Her first book for adult audiences, Chosen Ones, is out now. She lives in Chicago.

Veronica Roth suffers from anxiety, like a lot of the authors on this list, and talks about it in interviews. A quote from one: "I've had an anxiety disorder my whole life, so I've been to therapy on and off throughout, before books and after books. I went back and tried to talk through some of the things I was feeling and experiencing, and it was helpful."

I’ve never read any of her books, not even the hugely famous Divergent trilogy, though they’ve been on my radar for years. I’d love to get into her books at some point, but it might take me a few years.

15. How to be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe

📷An urgent, funny, shocking, and impassioned memoir by the winner of the Spectrum Art Prize 2018, How To Be Autistic by Charlotte Amelia Poe presents the rarely shown point of view of someone living with autism. Poe’s voice is confident, moving and often funny, as they reveal to us a very personal account of autism, mental illness, gender and sexual identity. As we follow Charlotte’s journey through school and college, we become as awestruck by their extraordinary passion for life as by the enormous privations that they must undergo to live it. From food and fandom to body modification and comic conventions, Charlotte’s experiences through the torments of schooldays and young adulthood leave us with a riot of conflicting emotions: horror, empathy, despair, laugh-out-loud amusement and, most of all, respect. For Charlotte, autism is a fundamental aspect of their identity and art. They address the reader in a voice that is direct, sharply clever and ironic. They witness their own behaviour with a wry humour as they sympathise with those who care for them, yet all the while challenging the neurotypical narratives of autism as something to be ‘fixed’. This is an exuberant, inspiring, life-changing insight into autism from a viewpoint almost entirely missing from public discussion. ‘I wanted to show the side of autism that you don’t find in books and on Facebook. My story is about survival, fear and, finally, hope. There will be parts that make you want to cover your eyes, but I beg you to read on, because if I can change just one person’s perceptions, if I can help one person with autism feel like they’re less alone, then this will all be worth it.’ Charlotte Amelia Poe is a self-taught artist and writer living in Lowestoft, Suffolk. They also work with video and won the inaugural Spectrum Art Prize with the film they submitted, 'How to Be Autistic’. Myriad published Charlotte's memoir, How to Be Autistic, in September 2019.

Another book I didn’t know about until researching for this post, but I really want to read it because I haven’t read many books about autism, and practically none of them were actually written by someone who actually is autistic. Charlotte uses they/them pronouns.

16. Ask me about my Uterus by Abby Norman

📷

For any woman who has experienced illness, chronic pain, or endometriosis comes an inspiring memoir advocating for recognition of women's health issues In the fall of 2010, Abby Norman's strong dancer's body dropped forty pounds and grey hairs began to sprout from her temples. She was repeatedly hospitalized in excruciating pain, but the doctors insisted it was a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Unable to get out of bed, much less attend class, Norman dropped out of college and embarked on what would become a years-long journey to discover what was wrong with her. It wasn't until she took matters into her own hands--securing a job in a hospital and educating herself over lunchtime reading in the medical library--that she found an accurate diagnosis of endometriosis. In Ask Me About My Uterus, Norman describes what it was like to have her pain dismissed, to be told it was all in her head, only to be taken seriously when she was accompanied by a boyfriend who confirmed that her sexual performance was, indeed, compromised. Putting her own trials into a broader historical, sociocultural, and political context, Norman shows that women's bodies have long been the battleground of a never-ending war for power, control, medical knowledge, and truth. It's time to refute the belief that being a woman is a pre-existing condition.

Abby Norman’s debut book, ASK ME ABOUT MY UTERUS: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain, was published by Bold Type Books (Hachette Book Group) in 2018, with advance praise from Gillian Anderson, Lindsey Fitzharris, Jenny Lawson, and Padma Lakshmi.

The book was praised by The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, Book Riot, Toronto Star, ELLE, Health Magazine, Undark Magazine, BUST Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Ms. Magazine, BBC Radio 5, and other international media outlets.

In 2019, the paperback edition was published in the U.S. and the Korean translation in Seoul (Momento Publishing/Duran Kim Agency).

Her work has been featured in Harper’s, Medium, The Independent, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere. Interviews and profiles have been seen and heard, including NPR/WNYC, BBC, Anchor.fm, The New York Times, Playboy, Forbes, Glamour, Women’s Health, and Bitch Magazine.

Abby Norman suffers from endometriosis, which was a large part of why she wrote her book, and why she advocates so hard for fellow patients at conferences such as Stanford University’s Stanford Medicine X and the Endometriosis Foundation of America’s medical conference and Patient Day. She is

Abby has served on technical expert panels including the National Partnership for Women and Families’ CORE Network (Yale University), the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid, The Society for Women’s Health Research (SWHR), and Health Affairs.

In 2019, Abby contributed to a paper addressing research gaps and unmet needs in endometriosis published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

This book is definitely one I will be adding to my to be read list, as someone who (unfortunately) also has a uterus, it is important to be informed. And Abby sounds like such a badass who wrote a whole book about her chronic illness to help others with the same condition.

17. Stim: Autistic Anthology by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

📷

Around one in one hundred people in the UK are autistic, yet there remains a fundamental misunderstanding of what autism is. It is rare that autistic people get to share their own experiences, show how creative and talented and passionate they are, how different they are from media stereotypes. This insightful and eye-opening collection of essays, fiction and visual art showcases the immense talents of some of the UK's most exciting writers and artists - who just happen to be on the spectrum. Here they reclaim the power to speak for themselves and redefine what it means to be autistic. Stim invites the reader into the lives, experiences, minds of the eighteen contributors, and asks them to recognise the hurdles of being autistic in a non-autistic world and to uncover the empathy and understanding necessary to continue to champion brilliant yet unheard voices.

Lizzie (Hux) Huxley-Jones is an autistic author and editor based in London. They are the editor of Stim, an anthology of autistic authors and artists, which was published by Unbound in April 2020 to coincide with World Autism Awareness Week. They are also the author of the children’s biography Sir David Attenborough: A Life Story. They can be found editing at independent micropublisher 3 of Cups Press, and they also advise writers as a freelance sensitivity reader and consultant. In their past career lives, they have been a research diver, a children’s bookseller and digital communications specialist.

I wasn’t even aware that there was an anthology out there by an autistic author, about autism, but now that I do I need to read it.

18. Chimera by Jaecyn Bonê

📷

Creatures unlike you've imagined before! Welcome to a world where myths and legends collide to create a new breed of monster. Savage and soulful, these monstrosities combine to form the mighty Chimera. In this anthology, talented writers weave 10 tales of fantastical beasts. Featuring stories by: Matt Bliss Jaecyn Boné Alexis L. Carroll Chris Durston Dewi Hargreaves Stephen Howard Samuel Logan Vincent Metzo Braden Rohl Michelle Tang

Jaecyn is a queer, non-binary, disabled Asian-American writer and digital artist fascinated by faeries.

Most of their writing involves wlw romance and faery-inspired creatures. Their first novel, Farzana's Spite is a 10-year-old work in progress and the first novel in The Faerth series. Other works include The Killing Song (novel) and Colour Unknown (short), both of which are also part of the Faerth universe.

Jaecyn's art can be described as a neorealistic pop art style with cel shading. They began their digital art journey with a 5-year-old refurbished iPad using their finger as a stylus and immediately fell in love. They do digital download commissions as well as sell prints of their artwork.

Jaecyn is the Co-Editor in Chief of the Limeoncello Magazine, an online Own Voices literary magazine which debuted its first issue on March 21st, 2021.

When not writing, drawing, or chasing after their two children, they can be found either gardening or practicing their ukulele.

None of Jaecyn Boné’s books are published yet as they are still in the stage of querying, but they contributed to the above anthology, along with nine other authors. I had no idea that this anthology existed, and now I’ll be closely following this author to see when their books get published!

19. Forest of Souls by Lori M Lee

Sirscha Ashwyn comes from nothing, but she’s intent on becoming something. After years of training to become the queen’s next royal spy, her plans are derailed when shamans attack 📷and kill her best friend Saengo. And then Sirscha, somehow, restores Saengo to life. Unveiled as the first soul guide in living memory, Sirscha is summoned to the domain of the Spider King. For centuries, he has used his influence over the Dead Wood—an ancient forest possessed by souls—to enforce peace between the kingdoms. Now, with the trees growing wild and untamed, only a soul guide can restrain them. As war looms, Sirscha must master her newly awakened abilities before the trees shatter the brittle peace, or worse, claim Saengo, the friend she would die for.

Lori M. Lee is the author of speculative novels and short stories. Her books include PAHUA AND THE SOUL STEALER (Disney/Rick Riordan Presents), FOREST OF SOULS and the sequel BROKEN WEB (Page Street), and more. She’s also a contributor to the anthologies A THOUSAND BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS and COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES. She considers herself a unicorn fan, enjoys marathoning TV shows, and loves to write about magic, manipulation, and family.

Lori struggles with anxiety, and the common symptoms like fatigue but she doesn’t let this stop her writing amazing books. I read Forest of Souls earlier this year, and it was seriously one of the best books I’ve ever read. I loved the magic, the characters, the world building. Everything about it, including the plot twist ending that had me losing my mind at 2am, was just so unlike anything I had read in any other fantasy before.

20. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A Brown

📷

For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom. But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition. When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a course to destroy each other. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death?

Roseanne “Rosie” A. Brown was born in Kumasi, Ghana and immigrated to the wild jungles of central Maryland as a child. Writing was her first love, and she knew from a young age that she wanted to use the power of writing—creative and otherwise—to connect the different cultures she called home. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a Bachelor’s in Journalism and was also a teaching assistant for the school’s Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her journalistic work has been featured by Voice of America among other outlets.

On the publishing side of things, she has worked as an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing. Rosie was a 2017 Pitch Wars mentee and 2018 Pitch Wars mentor. Rosie currently lives outside Washington D.C., where in her free time she can usually be found wandering the woods, making memes, or thinking about Star Wars.

Roseanne is another author that struggles with anxiety and wrote one of her two main characters with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), despite it being a fantasy. I don’t even think I can name a fantasy that had a character with anxiety represented so well. This was a book I read around the same time as Forest of Souls, and I loved it. The cover was beautiful, the characters were brilliant, and I just loved the world building, the magic, and the plot. It was just different to the usual fantasy books I read, and I enjoyed the variation so much I’ve had the sequel pre ordered almost a year in advance.

So, this was my 20 books by 20 chronically ill, disabled or neurodiverse authors list. Blurbs and synopsis were compiled between Goodreads and author websites, and bios were found either on Goodreads, author websites or on amazon author pages. All the information about their chronic illnesses, disabilities or neurodivergence was found online, where they had either explicitly said it or written about it, but if I have something wrong, please let me know so I can fix it!

If you have any other suggestions or know any other books and authors that should be on this list, please let me know and I’ll do my best to add it to the list as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading 😊

#bookblr #reviews #recs #books

2 notes · View notes

thetriggeredhappy · 4 years

Note

can i request kiss number 9 with demoman and soldier? its fitting bc they literally had a WAR! but its over now right

(spongebob narrator voice) ah, yes. the original crossfaction romance. (warnings for nothing)

#9: “War’s End” kiss.

“TAVISH!”

“JANE!”

The speed they collided at, there right at the dead center of the control point, was such that they were both sent careening to the ground, rolling over a few times until they finally collided with a wooden barrier, somehow managing to cling to each other through the chaos and the dust. When Demo sat up and peered down at Soldier, his eye was brighter than Soldier had maybe ever seen it, his grin wide and giddy.

“You got the news too, then?” he demanded, about to bubble over and burst any moment like one of his little chemistry experiments.

“Yes! We are all honorably discharged until the next time of conflict!” Soldier crowed, helmet knocked back enough for Demo to see his thrill paralleled. “I planned on going and making a purple heart! But first I wanted to tell you! We did it, private! We won!”

“Sir yes feckin’ sir we did!” Demo agreed, laughing loud and unashamed, scooping Soldier up to hold him close. “Lordy, I never thought I’d see the day, let alone before either of us got grey hairs, aye lad?”

“I have several follow-up questions!” Soldier declared. “Such as, one: do I get to keep my helmet? Two: do I get to keep my shovel?”

“Don’t see why the hell not,” Demo shrugged, pulling back and moving a hand up to tilt the helmet in question back into place cheerfully, which Soldier grinned wider at. “Didn’t get asked for ‘em back, did we?”

“Three: do I get to keep Lieutenant Bites?”

“Lad, the raccoons never belonged to anyone to start with, reckon they won’t be missed,” he assured.

“Four: what now?”

Demo frowned after a moment. “What do you mean, what now?” he asked, a little confused.

He was familiar with the fact that Soldier’s moods often changed on a dime, switching up almost too quick to keep up with at times. Somewhere between one moment and the next, he’d shifted from overjoyed to concerned. He hummed for a second as he thought over his next words. “If we are not at war with each other, how will we see each other?” he asked, clearly confused.

“If we don’t have to fight, we can see each other all we want,” Demo said, keeping his tone light.

“Where? I have been told that I have an hour to pack up and leave the base before it and anything inside are destroyed,” he said matter-of-factly. “I am pretty sure that includes the dumpsters. I have no back up plan.”

Demo frowned. “Well, where’d you live before that?” he asked.

“I lived with Merasmus! He was a terrible roommate. He kept trying to kill me. And he never washed his dishes,” Soldier said, expression flattening at the memory.

“Before that,” Demo clarified.

Soldier was silent, jaw set in a way that very much implied he would continue to be silent for an extended period of time.

“Just, whereabouts did you come from?” Demo clarified further.

“Midwest,” he said shortly.

“It—what state, Janey dear?”

“Ohio. I am not going back to Ohio,” Soldier said firmly, and Demo was a little startled by the amount of ferocity in his tone, more than he generally used with Demo when they were off the job.

“Alright,” Demo said gently, squeezing his shoulder in a soothing motion and deciding it was probably a good idea to drop the topic altogether, “alright. Well, I’d need to talk to the old mum, but I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t much like the raccoons, or... your disposition in general,” he said, trying his best to word it politely.

“There are no allies for the raccoons of Company B,” Soldier said grimly.

“Right. So since living back with her isn’t exactly an option... we could really live anywhere,” Demo decided, shrugging. “Anywhere you’d like.”

“I would like to live in the United States of America!” Soldier declared.

“Fair enough. Contiguous?”

“Yes,” Soldier confirmed.

“Inland or coastal?”

He thought about it for a moment. “We must be prepared for assault by sea! So coastal.”

“East or West?”

“I do not care! As long as we do not live in California. I do not like the people in California.”

“Hippies?” Demo asked, grinning, already knowing the answer.

“Of course!”

“We’ll try East Coast, then. Hey, maybe New York, that’s where the Statue of Liberty is, aye?” Demo asked, elbowing Soldier. “Or maybe we’ll just go on a trip there to see it rather than staying long, that’s a bit close to Massachusetts, and lord knows Scout will tan my hide if I live that close and never pop in for a visit, aye? Maybe just go live south. How about Florida? Awful peaceful in parts of Florida.”

“Affirmative! As long as you and I also live close together,” Soldier said, very serious about his stipulation.

“How’s about we live in the same house?” Demo proposed, smile going a little sheepish as he realized what a question he’d just jumped Soldier with.

“Hmm,” Soldier hummed, considering the question carefully. “Do you promise to wash the dishes?”

“Absolutely,” Demo confirmed.

“And to not try and kill me with magic?”

“Only if we have a safeword,” Demo said, doing the elaborate head tilt he needed to do to wink without people getting confused.

Soldier laughed, loud and unashamed, and Demo couldn’t help his own chuckle rising up in reply. “Then you have a deal, private! Do you promise we can still fight sometimes?”

“Only for fun, and only as a joke,” Demo said, a little more serious all of a sudden. “And no weapons allowed. Besides that, we won’t have to. We don’t have to fight anymore, Jane. Never again.”

Soldier looked up at him, a slack to his jaw that suggested he was staring in wonder, the prospect clearly completely new to him. After a moment, he broke out into a grin, searching hard for what to say next. “Does that mean I get to kiss you now?” he asked, clearly excited.

Demo laughed. “As often as you want,” he declared, and Soldier didn’t waste a single second, leaning in to seal the deal, eager to sign on to enlist in whatever the rest of their lives would be. As long as it was him and Tavish.

#demosolly #boots n bombs #boots & bombs #tf2 #team fortress 2 #shut up me #everybody talks #my fanfiction #i love these two dearly even if i never know how to nail down their character voices

124 notes · View notes

flvcr · 4 years

Text

— ( harry styles, twenty-five, cismale, he/him ) did you see ETIENNE FLUOR walking down main street earlier? you know who i’m talking about, they’re a POTTER / HOCKEY PLAYER. everybody in town says that they’re IDEALISTIC & INTUITIVE, but have a tendency to be UNPREDICTABLE & DESTRUCTIVE too. ETIENNE has been in town for THREE years. c'mon, they’re always requesting RUNNIN’ WITH THE DEVIL BY VAN HALEN at karaoke nights. well, i’m sure you’ll see them soon! @westmerestarters

hiya! i am kt &+ underneath the read more is a LOT of info about my bb, etienne. ** insert clown emoji but make ‘em yee-haw ** if you’d like to plot you can reach me on here or at space cowboy#8536 on discord !! <33 v excited to interact with y’all and your bbs !!

𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖘

name: etienne ‘ marcel ‘ fluor.

nicknames: goes by marcel, only allowing very few people to call him etienne.

gender / pronouns : cismale / he, him.

age: twenty-five.

birthday: june 27th.

zodiac: cancer !!

orientation: pansexual / panromantic.

occupation: hockey player ( currently injured ) // potter ( for fun ) !!

languages spoken: french, english & italian.

𝖎𝖓𝖘𝖕𝖎𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

- PINTEREST - featuring his wardrobe, his home, his aesthetic, some character inspo and olive, his german shepard pup !!

- SPOTIFY PLAYLIST - what he is currently listening to !!

personality type: INFJ-T / THE ADVOCATE

moral alignment: chaotic good

style-wise: etienne is v stylish, but isn’t overly flashy by any means. he’s intuitive in the sense of what works and what doesn’t. willing to explore the latest wardrobe craze, but also just likes what he likes and likely won’t venture out unless pressed by another to do so. post coming soon for his wardrobe !!! they say that the cancer man’s clothing is selected to reflect “ sophistication over flash “ but kdgjn i’ll let ya’ll be the judge of that. he’s v much harry inspired clothing wardrobe, but also tones it down with some casual looks, especially when it comes to getting his hands dirty in creative aspects !! but can be a bit on the flashier side as well, especially w/ hockey press and what not !!

𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖌𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉

etienne ‘ marcel ’ fluor was born in montpellier, france to two lovely parents, theodore and estelle fluor ( both born in england themselves ) . he is the youngest of his siblings, having one older brother and an older sister, all of them being roughly two years apart. at the age of eight, his family relocated to montreal, canada as a result of a promotion his mother received, which at such a young age, etienne had no qualms with, despite his siblings’ uneasiness. upon moving to a new country at a young age, etienne truly found himself via escaping into various books and movies. often attempting to write his own and would force encourage his siblings to act his skits/plays out for his parents enjoyment. he continues to be very close with his parents and siblings - recently he taught his parents how to use facetime, so catch him face timing his family on sunday nights.

growing up, etienne also enjoyed playing all types of sports ( his parents signing him up hoping that he’d make friends as a result, which he did ). when it came down to it, athletic abilities-wise, there truly wasn’t anything that he wasn’t ‘ good ’ at, and that’s simply because he’s always been such a competitive individual / as well as a perfectionist. that competitive/perfectionist energy caused him to go home and practice a skill or trick for hours in order to be able to come back the next day and whoop everyone’s asses. overall, he’s very athletic, found alternating between various sports offered not only at school, but as well as through local clubs. ultimately, his love and appreciation for hockey swayed him and soon enough it became his sole focus. due to his perfectionist tendencies, etienne is very dedicated to his craft, he will spend hours practicing specific tricks and skills in order to be the best at what he does, which transcends past hockey and into, really, every aspect of his life.

throughout highschool ; etienne was a v dedicated student. although he’s a bit reckless and loved to goof off, he was always acing classes and applying himself. he genuinely cares for others, you could’ve seen his ass volunteering at a soup kitchen with his mom on sundays and what not, as well as take part in various clubs and sports ! just SOFT and sporty things. during this time, he joined the ontario hockey league and from there was eventually scouted out and recruited to the pittsburgh penguins as a defenseman at the age of eighteen - forgoing his parents desire for him to attend a university. although he enjoyed his time with pittsburgh, he was excited when the idea of being traded came up - eager to explore a new city and immerse himself in a new area.

trigger warning - injury, dislocation ( just in case !!!! ) however, he really didn’t enjoy new york ( hehe ), so he relocated to westmere soon after his initial arrival to nyc - finding a lot of comfort in living in a less populated area. he would commute during the hockey season to nyc, which to him wasn’t very far away, so this is where he’s been residing for the last three years !! however, in the last couple of weeks while training for the upcoming season my lil bb injured himself - not to get into tooooo much detail, i’ll just leave it at shoulder dislocation / joint separation due to a hard hit !! basically he’s out for this upcoming season, already having surgery completed, he’s currently healing for the next couple of months, allowing himself to fully experience that westmere fall !!!

overall, etienne can come off as a bit reserved, and distant whether that be a result of his untrusting nature of others, or simply unfamiliarity. it takes a bit of time before he feels comfortable to share his true opinion / commentary / only doing so when he feels secure to do so. he’s not necessarily unfriendly, just a bit distant / lost in his thoughts. which varies, as with most ppl ofc, upon person to person and his level of comfortability among them. despite his often lack of conversation, he abhors an uncomfortable silence to settle and will fill it with nonsense to simply avoid the feeling altogether. so, if you ever want to catch him rambling, just making him uncomfortable dkjfngdf. he definitely approaches most things with a bit of ‘ tough love ‘ . he doesn’t mind getting into a quarrel or two if he knows its worth the outcome he’s envisioned. etienne will tell others when they are fucking up, and if they are throwing a punch as a result - catch him leaning into it, which explains his bout of reckless antics. he can come off as a know it all, when it comes to advice giving, but more so because he thinks he’s really good at analyzing others and situations they are in, not necessarily because he’s lived through them himself, he’s just rather intuitive and able to empathize quite easily with others despite his verbal admittance of it. when it comes down to this binches reckless bits, he just feels so intensely that he ends up numbing himself in the aftermath of it all ( especially bc he’s definitely not sharing those feelings with the people around him ), therefore he’s willing to put himself into harms way in order to get a bit of that - happiness / pain, it doesn’t matter to him as long as he no longer feels overwhelmed by numbness. so, if ya see him with some scrapes and stitches ~ mind ya business. but he’ll likely try to drag somebody else into it, and make it seem like it was their idea. but if he is truly comfortable with somebody, he walks a fine line of won’t stop talking, especially if it’s an interest of his, and comfortable silence.

_________________________

𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖞 & 𝖍𝖆𝖇𝖎𝖙𝖘

he is a CANCER, therefore in this essay i will..... kidding but here’s some fun cancer info i saw that applies to my bb !! at first he appears to be wistful, sarcastic ( maybe a lil crabby ) , shy, distant and mysterious. this personality remains if he isn’t completely comfortable around somebody. but overall, that’s just his facade, his ‘smokescreen’ of sorts to scare off the world from his outwards persona. underneath that layer ( makes me think of shrek metaphor with onions // don’t mind me ), BUT he’s gentle, kind and affectionate ( if you manage to make it to that level * bell dings * ) !!! overall, etienne is a sensitive soul, a bit emotional although he’d rather d*e than show that to others. likely will internalize anything that can hurt his feelings / a low blow and will do something chaotic as a result later on bc of it. very polite, and a little worldly, he is truly the epitome of old-school gentlemanly manners. chivalry coming as a second nature to him !!

that was getting ramble-y, so continuing HERE. but when it comes to romance, as per the cancer man, the concept of love is a mystery, one that etienne is trying to attain. however, his shyness and innate distrust of others make it difficult for him to allow himself to fall in love. his guard is always up when it comes to his emotions, and it’ll take a bit of prodding before he’s willing to speak up on what’s desired from him. he’s v picky when it comes to finding the “ partner of his dreams “ - but he’s def willing to throw himself into the romance of the situation, i.e. buying flowers, riding white horses, and slaying metaphorical dragons. the traditional side means that he will shower his partner with thoughtful gifts, wine and dine them in the best restaurants, and try to grant their every wish. he will take the garbage out, fix that wobbly shelf, navigate on road trips, and kill more so trap and release bugs for his partner, and most important of all he will do it all without being asked. his loyalty and keen attention to the needs and wants of his potential partner. so basically, more so willing to showcase through actions than speak on it. it’s the little things, right ??!?!?! he def cherishes not just the act of being in a relationship, but what it means to become one with another person in mind, body, and soul.

prides himself on being able to make a mean cup of coffee, likely the worst person to watch a movie with bc he knows exactly how it’s going to end after only watching five minutes of it, he has a godawful sense of direction, will walk in circles for fifteen minutes before even raising a question about it/noticing ( but he refuses to acknowledge it. )

his house, car, workspace, junk drawer, closet….you name it - it’s organized, practically sparkling. often times arranged by color, and / or style. nothing is ever out of place, and if it is - there’s trouble brewing. but, more than anything, if he’s visiting somebody’s place and it’s messy, he will spend a solid thirty minutes picking everything up before doing whatever it is that was intended.

likes : reading, flowers, handwritten notes/letters, deep cleaning, baking, working on his pottery, watching the history channel and true crime docs and playing / watching hockey !!

dislikes : artichoke, clutter, sandals ( fkjgh ), unrealistic plotlines in movies &+ burnt coffee.

habits : likely has a severe caffeine addiction, although he’s now normalized having six cups of coffee throughout his day. he’s an early riser, no matter how little the amount of sleep he’s received, he’s always the first to rise - for his early morning runs !!

strengths: creative, insightful, inspiring, convincing, determined and passionate, decisive, altruistic, intuitive !!

weaknesses: sensitive, extremely private, perfectionist, low-key always needs to have a cause / purpose, can burn out easily !!

overall : etienne truly strives to be kind, and genuinely wants for everyone to get along. treat people with kindness and the like. he has the best of intentions, but often times that can get a bit muddled with the way he goes about things due to his bit of chaotic energy / as well as his often points of getting lost in his thoughts. he won’t realize he’s been quiet for the last three hours unless it’s mentioned to him. he will do anything to lighten a dark mood, and will sacrifice / throw himself under the bus if its needed. however, he also is the type to cause the dark mood depending on the day. wahoo! his more reckless antics increase when he’s feeling a bit emotional !! but he’ll likely try and convince somebody to propose the idea so it’s not on him.

𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖔𝖒 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘

he lives with sebastian !! with his commuting to nyc for the hockey season, he wanted somebody to be able to take care of his house / garden and what not, and thus, seb arrived.

he’s v into making ceramics, cups / bowls / vases / etc !! what began as a fun hobby to distract himself in the offseason became something that he truly enjoys. ( laughing about that scene in ghost BUT DKJFNG OKAY ) although he’s pretty low-key about it, you can catch him at the farmers market selling his creations !! some pictures of his work can be found on his pinterest board !!

he is a vegetarian ! he has been since his freshman year of high school and has no plans on eating seafood/meat ever again.

he loves fancy wine ~ he’s cultured.

he can play the drums !!

he collects vintage matchbooks and the stickers off of various fruits ( he puts them in a little notebook - can be found on his bookshelf ).

saves handwritten notes and letters from pals.

he loves to garden !!!! he has a specified rose shearing hat.

HE WANTS TO JOIN A BOOKCLUB PLEASE !!!!!!!! or at least have some casual moments of silence with another reading. plz and tysm.

to make things a bit simple, he has all of harry’s tattoos !! might add more along the way !! stay tuned, folks !!

𝖜𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖓𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘

i am so up for anything!! please accept this ramble of ideas thrown below. if you have any other ideas, lmk !!!! <3333 :’-) down to start from scratch and PLOT PLOT PLOT !

( 2 / 2 ) - BFFZ : the z for an added emphasis dkfjgnd. somebody who likely has a key to etienne’s house, they can enjoy one anothers company as well as the bouts of comfortable silence. you know how best friends are but kdjfngd still !! whether they are likeminded or polar opposites that just flow ~~ down for anything !! even a trio of sorts ?!

( 1 / 1 ) - RIDE OR DIE / CHAOTIC COMPANION : it would be wrong to say one is the more likely the bad influence over the other, although etienne may just be. these two find themselves bounding into, well hell, ( i guess??? ) together. playing on one anothers impulsiveness and if one ends up in the back of a police car, the other is handcuffed to them. and yet despite the length of their potential injuries, they find themselves thinking of something crazier to subject them to the next time around.

( 1 / 1 ) - GUARDIAN ANGEL / GOOD INFLUENCE : with etienne being a bit chaotic in nature, he needs somebody that is likely going to steer him clear from all the ideas that’ll bring him to the brink of disaster. he’s impulsive and in that desperate attempt to feel again, he’s very likely to bring a bit of mayhem upon himself. so while they may be worrying and attempting to talk his ideas down, he’s trying to get them to go along with his plan. it may be rare that he actually takes their advice, but when he does it seems to be for the best.

( 1 / 1 ) - PARTY FRIEND : these two know how to have a good time together. despite the amount of alcohol they are throwing back and the shenanigans they find themselves in as a result, this is a time where they also find themselves confiding in one another. if you look at their camera rolls, it’s likely they have tons of embarrassing and unflattering videos and pics of one another, in between their sob-worthy confessionals and venting/rants. these two trust one another, and although they love getting wreckT together, they find themselves discussing very raw and personal details. likely the only person etienne confides in, simply bc he’s completely plastered.

( 1 / 1 ) - SIBLING-LIKE RELATIONSHIP : these two have a love/hate relationship, very sibling like filled with pranks, competition, teasing and playful banter. however, when it comes down to it they have so much love and respect for one another. they know that no matter what happens they will always have one anothers back and be supportive of the other. truly a pure content filled relationship.

okay quick mention, ENEMY PLOTS ?!?!?!?!?!? i would live for one. i can’t imagine etienne being hardcore nasty, but i’d like to see whatever version comes out for this. so let’s get it djfngjakdfg maybe they just hold different viewpoints on the world and what not and clash, anything really !!! v open !!

( 1 / 1 ) - MENTOR - etienne needs a bit of structured or unstructured guidance, all depending on what their deemed mentor is wanting to impart on him, a bit of wisdom or slight chaos. kdjfgn he’ll take anything !!

RANDOM LITTLE IDEAS : maybe they’ve heard of one another in town, but haven’t quite met yet! or maybe they see each other around all the time, but have yet to introduce themselves to one another but low-key maybe in some online forum for the town together ?! who knows some fun things kdjnfg i AM OPEN !

ooh maybe a slowburn of sorts ?! something spicy to wreck HIS and my life with. dkfjgn we can base this off of chemistry !!! :’-)

#( & ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ . )#westmereintro

9 notes · View notes

rj019 · 4 years

Text

The characters don't belong to me. All credits to Marvel or Disney or Stan Lee idk.

So this is my first ever Tumblr Post (人*´∀｀)｡*ﾟ+

Hope you guys will like it.. I'm new to this & I might make some mistakes so I hope you guys can understand and help me throughout my journey (◍•ᴗ•◍)

_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_

Title : Genius, YouTuber, Artist, Musician and Spider-Man

Fandom : MCU

Pairing : Starker(tony stark x peter parker)

Rating : Mature (NSFW, Sexual Content)

Prompt : Social Media

Summary :

Tony started crushing on a guy who is 5 years younger than him... And You all know who that is 😉 one and only Peter Parker.

And Peter has a very famous Youtube channel since he was 6. But he always wears mask in his videos to hide his face. He often mentions his crush on Tony Stark since he was 12 in his videos.

" CHAPTER - 0 "

The notes below are for the things that happened till Peter is 20 from when I'll actually start the story. I didn't wanted to get it all mixed up. So I wrote these so you guys can understand the AU better and how everything came to be and not get confused. It explains everything about Pete's social media, everyone's ages and which part of MCU is included and which is not, and the changes in the whole storyline. So these are must read it if you want to read the actual chapters. (☆▽☆)

Notes :

Tony is 25 year old in this and Pete is 20 and they're both certified geniuses. And they are both Bisexual.

Tony's perants are alive. Pete's uncle Ben is also alive.

Howard is a good parent and husband in this fic and he himself is a Bi so congrats!! No homophobia 🤗

Howard made Tony CEO of the company when he was 22 and only took semi retirement and only went to company once in a while to keep an eye on things. Tony graduated from MIT when he was 17 and then he started helping with company 😀

So Avengers and S. H. I. E. L. D. does exist in this AU but sheild isn't publicly known nor does anyone knows Avengers' real identity that includes Tony's😉 but that was just until New York battle.

Howard and Maria obviously knew about Tony being Iron Man. Tony told them after he came from Afghanistan and created the armor. There was no way to keep it hidden from them. Like all the parents they were reluctant to accept it as it will endanger his life but the accepted it at last.

Tony was kidnapped when he was 19 and when he went to Afganistan for his first ever deal without his father. And bla bla happened and he became Ironman and then he told his father about the Arc reactor tech and told him that there are many other things that can get their company to it's peak and asked him to stop the weapon business and Howard aslo thought about it cause after all he almost lost his one and only son (told ya he is good parent it this one) and then you know what happened 🙃

Howard is alive so no Obadiah Stane.. So no IM 1 events after he came from Afghanistan happened. They hid the fact that tony has arc reactor in his chest though. And world only knew that Iron Man is getting help from SI because of the arc reactor technology in the armor but they could never expect that it's Tony Stark himself. ( yeah yeah I know not very convincing but bear with it cause its a fiction right😅)

Papper, Rhodey and Tony are best friends from childhood cause their parents are friends. So he tell them about IM too. Papper works with him at SI as secretary for few years but when Tony turns 24, He suggest his father to make her CEO and he will be working and providing for Techs and important business deals. And Howard knows his son very well and that doing office stuff ain't getting to Tony plus his IM activities. And Papper was already doing more than half of his paper and meeting work so he makes Papper CEO. And yep Papper and Tony did try relationship but it just didn't clicked so they are still friends and no awkward feelings.

From IM 2, he did get palladium poisoning but he hid it from his family and friends. He did parties and drinking (but without the armor ofcourse) and Rhodey got really angry at his behaviour and recklessness and told him that he will beat him up with his own armour. And then Nat and Fury came and all that injection stuff.. after that he told his father about it and they worked together and made the new element and saved him. After that he apologized to everyone and told the truth and even made Rhodey War Machine suit and Rhodey helped him with it at Expo. Race incident doesn't happen. But Vanko still tried to get revenge by helping Hammer. So Stark expo incident still happened with drones only, not the War Machine armour.

I'll say IM 3 doesn't happen cause we don't have that much time you know fitting all IM parts and then 2 avangers part just within 6 years is impossible 😅

So after that NY invasion happened and Avangers got formed. People didn't know who they atually were just their alter egos and that also not everyone. People were really shocked and afraid after the battle so the government decided to make shield publicly known. Not all the information but just lil bit parts here and there to ensure everyone that there were people and organisation who were ready for something big like this. But it was still not enough to make people safe.

So then Avengers decided that they'll reveal their identities so people will know that there is a group of people who are there and capable enough to save them from something like this and it worked. They did got positive response. But it was uproar it the world. And they had to deal with media and fans. When the world got to know about Tony Stark being Iron Man, SI's PR department was in chaos.

All Avengers are around 24 to 30 except for Wanda and Pietro. They are 21. But they got into team after Ultron and yep Pietro survived.

Events of Captain America and CA : Winter Soldier did happen except for Bucky killing Tony's perants part. And they are both 30. Clint doesn't have secret wife and children (sorry Laura and kids) cause he is 25. Nat is 24. Papper and Rhodes are 27. Thor looks like 28 but is 1500 as we all know. Loki looks like he is 26 and yepp he was mind controlled by Chitauri but he was at Asgard during Age Of Ultron. Sam is 23. Scott is 25 and he is divorced and has a daughter. He is in relationship. Hope is 24. Bruce is 29. (These are their ages at the starting of the 1st chapter, from when I'll actually start writing the story.)

In NY invasion only original 6 were included in Avengers Initiative and after that they lived together too, at the Stark tower which was turned into Avengers Tower. Later Shield recruited others and they trained and did mission together but didn't live with the original 6.

Then Age Of Ultron happened and Vision Wanda and Pietro also joined. At that time they decided to move to the compound Tony built for them in upstate so everyone can live there.

And time period between these all events is smaller than in movies cause you now 6 years time period ain't that long to fit 'em all.

No CW or IW or Endgame happened.

Mary & Richard unfortunately had to die in plane crash 😅 when Pete was 5 so his uncle and aunt looked after him from then.

When Peter was struggling to recover from his parents death, May got an idea to help him *tada* a youtube channel to distract him because she knew Pete liked to watch things on YT. Pete was a genius and he was great at art too and he is an obvious cinnamon roll so she knew it will be a success and Pete will be distracted too. But she didn't want her nephew's face all over the internet if he gets popular and then can't have normal life so she helped him make his videos with him wearing a mask. So here's where Pete's YouTube journey started 🤭

Peter being an adorable and telented and a genius he is, he got famous on YT over the years and got millions of subscribers and views. He even made accounts on other social medias like Insta and Twitter stuff releted to his YT when he was 12 and it was success too he posted his art and photography their. ( His art and videos do contain his fanboying stuff and crushing on Tony Stark🤭)

And yes Pete is Spider-Man. He became SM when he was 13. Same radioactive spider at oscorp stuff but without Ben dying.

Ben has his own business which is good enough to have stable and cozy life with his wife and nephew. May is house wife and she likes to do volenteer work oftenly. They have two story house with a garden and a backyard. Nither too big nor too small.

Ben has always taught Pete about responsibility and righteousness. (With great powers comes great responsibilities.) So when Peter got his powers he decided to help people by being Spider-Man and looking out for little guy. After sometime he told Ben and May about it and they were at first hesitant but then they got over it and were proud of him and supported him.

After a year, it was getting too much at the same time... being at school, managing social media and YT channel, being Spider-Man and all.

Ben and May wanted him to have normal life so even if he was a genius and could graduate early, they still wanted him to complete high school and make friends. But let's be genuine nothing in life is gonna be normal so he told them about his plan to graduate early from both school and college. And he loved his YT and social media cause it helped him so he didn't wanted to stop that and to stop being SM is out of the picture. Ben and May understood him so they allowed him.

He took this opportunity to tell his only 2 and closest friends Ned and MJ about him being SM. He trusts them alot and they didn't disappoint him and even helped him with keeping his secret identity.

So he graduated from high school early, got full scholarship to MIT.

He was fifteen when he saw Iron Man first. He and Ned became fans but Tony was still his idol and his crush. He also started making fanarts about Iron Man on his account. He liked Dr.Banner's work too. He was only 20 when he wrote his thesis about gamma radiation and his books are awesome and he has 7 PhDs by the age of 25.

Peter earned a good amount from his YT channel and he still had money his perants left so he made one of the vacant room in the house his lab after he became SM and he makes videos in his lab after that about his inventions and experiments but ofcourse nothing regarding SM. He and Ned even made a cool SM suit with AI which they named Karen. (The one from the Homecoming) He got his AI inspiration from his Idol's AI called JARVIS. (Tony made JARVIS when he was at MIT and then used him for the company and his lab and he gave an interview about it. That's how Pete knows about it. Tony used Friday for his suits and IM releted activities after he became IM but then after AOU he used Friday for everything.)

Pete's YouTube videos are about everything and anything he loves to do since he was young. When he was young it was about his lil childish science experiments with help of Ben (ofcourse till he could it on his own) or his art or baking and cooking stuff with May and all but they all always wore the different different matching masks while making videos. When he became friends with Ned and MJ, he asked them to be there too. As he got older he started showing his genius brain cells in his experiments and invention. Same goes for his art, it started getting more and more detailed and he also got interested in composing music and songs and he eurned more followers. He even made his accounts unhackable so no one try to find out who he is after he became SM. He had so many happy moments with his family and friends while making his videos, that is why he kept his YT and accounts.

Shield doesn't know who the Spider-Man is. Pete found out about them cause he sensed someone (agents) following him during one of his patrols when he was 14. So he and Ned looked into it and his mind was blown when he found the organisation and all government behind it.

He wanted to know why they were after him cause he only helped people. So they hacked into Shield. He found out that they wanted to recruit him for something called Avangers Initiative and there he saw some other people's and superheroes' information too. (He didn't look into it because he knew that if he didn't anyone want to know his identity, they must not too and he had no right. ) But he knew it was not a good idea to join it cause then he will have to work for them do their missions and he didn't wanted to do that. He wanted to look out for little guy and help whoever, he can wherever he can. Plus he would have to reveal his identity and when they'll know he is so young, they'll try to stop him from being SM plus people close to him will get in danger. And they might even want to experiment on him so it was a big fat NO.

After that he took every cautious step to protect his identity and his aunt, uncle and his friends. He made a security system for their house and made a smart bracelet to communicate or send signal to each other if they were in danger. They all had one including himself. It looked simple and no one could tell it was actually for that.

When Newyork invasion happened, he was not there. He was at MIT for his PhD. He was so damn worried about Ben, May, Ned and MJ. The moment he heard the news he left for NY but by the time he got there the fight had been finished. So he directly went to check on May and Ben. He found them safe and was revealed. Then he called Ned and MJ to check on them and their families and found everyone was ok. After that he told May and Ben that he will go out and help people from the aftermath of the battle.

He stayed in NY for 2 weeks. In which he found out about the Avengers. He and Ned were shocked at the name and that it was the same Avengers Initiative stuff they read when they hacked into the sheild and Peter felt a pinch of guilt but it disappeared when he learnt that Avengers revealed their identities. He was in no condition to reveal his identity.

He was shocked when he learnt Avengers' identities especially Iron Man. He was like "how could I not understand that it had to be Tony.. there were all those connection like SI and no one is such a genius to make that kind of Tech except for his idol. He fell in love with Tony even more but he just thought it was some kind of superhero worship and teenage crush.

After that Ned and him being the 'nerds' as MJ calls them they are, they become fanboys and started to find out more thing about Avengers. Pete started to post more fanarts of them and he even made the reaction video of how he feels about Tony Stark being Iron Man and Bruce Banner being Hulk. Both his favourite scientists. He even made a song for Avengers. Which was total hit so he made more songs in the future.

Pete graduated from MIT even earlier than his Idol Tony Stark at the age of 16. He got his PHD in Biochemical Engineering at 17 and he wanted to get more Phds in Robotics, Nenotech Engeneering study and Astrophysics. (Which he did within next 2 years.) (Pete was 16 when NY invasion happened and 19 when Ultron happened)

And then Ultron happened, it was all over the news and all but Avangers once again saved the world. Pete was happy and revealed that there were Avengers to save them from world ending dangers but there gotta be someone down on the street too. Someone to help people from criminal and other dangers which may seem little in their or government's eye like Rhino, Doc Oct, Green Goblin, lizard, electro and many more with whom he fought. And he felt that his decision to not join Avengers Initiative was right. Though Shield was still eager to find out who he is like he will let them.

And then Homecoming happened except the part with Tony. ( But Peter doesn't go to homecoming because he graduated from high school )

As for the Ferry incident he saved everyone. He held the both part of ferry with his web and his strength ( Pete is very very strong in this fic ) till his latest Nenotech bot he invented arrived and held the ferry together and mend it. (Like Iron Man did. Just that it were bots who fixed the last part too. Where Tony flys around it and mend it.)

Peter had figured out the arc reactor technology a year and half ago but he didn't wanted any one to know cause it will attract the attention of many people and he didn't wanted that. That is also the reason he doesn't use his Nenotech suit he made. ( IW one ) But now that he has used his nenobots and his tech which was even better and cheaper, he knew for sure that it's going to fireback but he thought he'll take care of it later when he is not busy trying to capture a curtain alian tech loaded weapon selling Vulture.

Next day he had asked Karen to keep and eye over everything and at night Karen informed him about some movements at some abandoned warehouse. Then the whole warehouse dropping and plane crashing thing happened. He saved the Mr.stark's tech and averages stuff and weapons.

But now he will even have more attention but he then ask Karen to clear CCTV footage around the beach so no one knows about him leaving from the scene. He can only hope now. He'll have to lay low for now and even more careful.

_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_:_

Hope you guys will like it. I have thought so much for this fic. It's going to be exciting writing this.

16 notes · View notes

alovevigilante · 3 years

Text

Me: Ok. I’ve made an executive decision on behalf of all of us...

Me also: are you an executive?

Me: yes.

Me also: at what company?

Me: ours. Yours and mine.

Me 3: and mine too!

Me: yes, at threes company, ok? Will you just listen to me? (The other me’s sit, silent) thank you. Now, we have all come to terms with the fact that we’re 46 and still not sure where the hell we fit in in society, let alone a career to help aid it, right?

Other me’s: yes, Agreed, (hub hub etc...)

Me: ok, good. Well, not good, but yes, we all concur. Now, we, collectively, are a fucking mess, so I propose this: we start from scratch. At zero point, ok? Ok! Great!

Me also: um, question?

Me: yes?

Me also: I don’t mean to be a contrarian or anything, but we’ve been here on earth now for 46 years, and we’ve experienced a butt ton. So, how do you just scrap it all, and have that be something that’s widely accepted by society as a whole?

Me 3: yeah! Cause I saw this one “I love Lucy” where she couldn’t even audition for a tv show without having some experience.

Me: yeah, but we’re completely walking away from the entertainment industry...

Me also: yeah, but what are we going to do? Walk into a different profession, let’s say, being an astrophysicist, and they say, “hey lady, where are your degrees and your on the job training, & oh, I see here on your non resume that you have never even taken a physics class. Were you in a coma for 50 years or something?” And then we’ll look like an asshole.

Me: good point. So, since we can’t start at a zero point, how do we make life ok from where we’re at if we’re feeling lost and confused about what to do next?

Me 3: I dunno.

Me also: well, maybe we can mediate.

Me: eh. You feel like that?

Me 3: not particularly. Me also?

Me also: I was hoping one of you would do it for me...

Me: no.

Me 3: no.

Me also: fine. Any other ideas?

Me: well... how about thinking about shit.

Me also: that’s what got us in this mess to begin with!

George Carlin: hello ladies! May I be of some assistance here?

Me 3: why not? We’re plum out of ideas...

George: ok, well, let’s simplify a bit, Kari, singular, let’s chat.

Kari: hey George.

George: love the pic you choose to rep me.

Kari: yeah. You’re being a lil Italian when you talk with the garlic clove shaped hand you got going there. 🤌 🧄 🇮🇹

George: Yeah. I’m diggin it. But you know, in your mind, I’m one of the reasons you’re here in this ass place.

Kari: you are? how do you figure?

George: people don’t like the fact that you write on behalf of the deceased.

Kari: well, Tim burton did it in beetle juice and a lot of folks love him..

George: ok Kari, can I be Frank... Sinatra-like with you?

Kari: I dunno, can you?

George: yeah. Just pretend I’m sporting a fedora, a cigarette in one hand, and throwing my jacket back over my shoulder with the other looking at you coyly.

Kari: ok... if you want to... but is the cigarette in his pocket? Cause if it’s lit, that shits gonna hurt his Netherlands eventually....

George: (like Sinatra) no. Now listen up, baby, it’s not normal to write on behalf of a dead person that was not a character, and that whom was once alive. People get touchy about it. We have friends still alive that knew us and probably don’t dig it.

Kari: I see.

George: so it seems like we’re at a crossroads here. What do you want to do about it?

Kari: do about what?

George: your writing! It’s freakin everyone out! Kari, look, you know how normal Hollywood is, ok? They are all normal, non creative, in the box gladly thinker kinda people...

Kari: they are?

George: yes!!! Come on, keillor, get with the program! You are too far fetched for these folks! They want normalcy, and sameness, and only all the shit that’s ever been shat!

Kari: George, are we talking about Hollywood California, here? Or Hollywood podunk nah? Because Hollywood California is where all the creatives go to create!

George: right! And guess what, Kari Keillor! You are not welcomed in Hollywood, California! They have a sign up with your picture on it at the airport that says, “beware! No to this woman! Too much with the weirdness! She writes dead people!”

Kari: I write live people too... hey, do I have a cowboy hat and a mustache on for my mugshot on that sign?

George: nice one Cookie Monster! Well, Keillor why not?! You may as well, because this story has as much validity as any other story you make up and make worse in your head cause you’re sensitive about of your writing...

Kari: you’re the one that said all that shit! You planted it in my head!!!

George: so I did, but remember, I’m a facet of you. So, decide. Is there any validity to what I/you said?

Kari: how the hell should I know?! I haven’t been in lax recently...

George: right! So you never know until you try talking to some people.

Kari: I’ll call the airport... Listen, George, I’ll be perfectly Frank Sinatra with you now, ok.?

Don rickles: no mere woman can be like ole blue eyes...

Kari: Shut your misogynistic, ass-kissing pie hole, Pickles.

Pickles rickles: oh fuck... she does it to me every time...

Frank Sinatra:, you tell him, baby!

Kari: I’m 46. (Back to George Carlin) Anyway, look George, I have had a few successful people from my entertainment past either shun or block me for no apparent reason, so I’m pretty sure that I’m not well received again, for whatever reason... probably because I wrote the truth about a second city class I took when I was 16, about the current state of snl which I am completely unfamiliar with because I do not watch it, and the way comedy has changed or not over the last many years. Come to think of it, maybe it was because I love frank oz, and frank was mad cause I wrote that belushi John was teasing him and calling him an asshole, another ironic statement because clearly frank oz, NOT an asshole, was many of the muppets for years, and Frank is one of my idols! (Not a true central religious figure to me, but someone I admire a lot...)

Frank Sinatra: who loves ya, baby??

Kari: (to Frank) kojak. (Back to herself) Or it could be because i called bill murray, the beloved patron saint of comedy, an asshole like me, yes, I said like ME, out of jest and irony, because yes, he cared about the kid in meatballs making friends, ok?! That’s probably it. & yes, i was kinda stoned when I wrote it, and also yes, I still can’t figure out why the movie was ducking named “meatballs”, cause there wasn’t an Italian to be seen in it! Ok?! And come to think of it bill as Peter venkman in ghostbusters 2, written in part, by him I think but let’s just say yes cause it supports my point, called all of New York City and it’s tri state area, all 3 million people, miserable assholes, and they took a head count, & they still (probably mostly) all love him! & that shit was good (I love that movie so much) and it was made in 1989, and that was a long ass time ago, ok? And some of those people, have procreated since then, and again, they all love bill Murray and now those “miserable asshole’s” kids, ALSO love Bill now! Double the miserable assholes! Why?! Because he’s funny, and much like me when I’m being tongue and cheek, he didn’t mean for people to take the shit he says seriously! See for yourself! https://youtu.be/t1gkRAWvxOs (1:15 on)

youtube

So yes!!! I just think people are not into that kind of talk from me and me alone, even though it wasn’t coming from a mean or spiteful place. It was coming from a place of love for my craft, and of both frank oz, and bill Murray. The rest, as I say once again... I dunno....

George: Kari, frank just told you he loves you, and you blatantly ignored him...

Kari: no, he asked who loved me. He didn’t say he loved me.

George: Keillor, stop being so mean to the dead crooners, ok?

Kari: pickles isn’t a crooner! He’s a ye olde well paid curmudgeon who made fun of everyone like a jerk fach.

George: um, Kari...

Kari: no, ok? No! The difference between me and pickles, besides everything under the sun other than the fact we’re both human, is the fact that I am pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of the way we are set up as society, and wanting to heal it within myself to make it a more palatable world for me and my family and friends and acquaintances to live in. And pickles thought making fun of people was ok. What royal lineage did pickles come from that he’s able to rip on everyone the way he did? And even if he was of a royal bloodline so fucking what?! And dude got paid to be mean! And normal people made him rich and famous! And how did that become prevalent, let alone celebrated in this world?! Roast em! Yes! Hilarious.

Dean Martin: oh noooo... hey, listen pally...

Kari: dean, don’t get me started, ok? Cause I like you, I really do, but you know how I feel about that shit... Listen, Dean, you left a legacy here that was mostly great, but in my opinion needs a lil tweaking. Instead of “roasts” which people do to this day, and I can’t see how it can make the honoree feel anything other than like major ass, we should have “toasts” (copyright Kari keillor 3/19/21 actually before this date but I never published publicly...)

Pickles rickles: toasts?!? What is THAT supposed to mean?!

Kari: it means, my curious lil ornery pickles, that instead of roasting someone and being a mean rotter egg to them, you can “toast” them. Cheers to you, honoree, we salute you, in a hilarious way, by being honest about you but not vicious, viper like, and cruel. It’s where everyone laughs together cause it’s not a character assassination, instead of ripping on someone. It’s being funny, and yes, in a KIND and uplifting way. Where you actually celebrate the person being honored. Now, will that take a lil more brain power then the go-to usual jerk fach? Yes. But, it’s a challenge I hope everyone will accept for the good of all of us. Cause I guarantee that no one walks out of a roast feeling great. And if they do, cause they thought they killed or whatever, they probably did. And not in a good way. And that, again, is ass. No one wins. It’s a short lived feeling, the feeling of “one upping” a person. It never makes you feel better about you in the long run.

Dean: I see. I think I’ll go work on my volare now...

Kari: see?!? Now THAT I like! It’s not at anyone’s expense!

George: oh shit.... kari.... Why do you give a fuck about all this?

Kari: you know why George? Cause this has become our accepted collective energy! The haves and the have nots! Take away your money and what have you got?! Who are you, without the people who have made you who you are?! People, make other people in the 3D reality we live in. So take away everyone’s cash money, homes, clothes, and all the cars, and all the shit, and what do ya got? A bunch of naked humans starring at our different body bits, ok?! We’re All the f’n same. So think about it. What are we each individually contributing energetically to the whole of us? What message are we sending the next generations In our every day lives? I’ll tell you what message. Whatever we feel about ourselves individually both good and bad. THAT’S what energy we all give, and receive from one another. That’s what we’re teaching the kids. They model themselves after how we feel, and how we choose to think, and how we decide to act toward others. So let’s all collectively recognize that, and how we treat other human beings and wake up first inside ourselves then beyond ourselves so we can all make the whole, better.

I am not an asshole or a human joke or any other kind of joke. I’m not going to cry over the fact that I’m not accepted by people who’s energies don’t match mine. And by the by, no one is a joke, no matter who they are, or what their socioeconomic standing is. So I don’t wear an ascot and a smoking jacket, and a neck full of gold chains and chest hair, holding a whiskey on the rocks with an umbrella in it saying “see that?! be somebody!” ok?! I’m not Steve Martin in the jerk, ok? https://youtu.be/tBfXTyzaUfQ

youtube

I’m not even close to Hollywood! I live in the Midwest! I’m Kariwood, ok? And I’m not even kari wood, I’m no woods, ok? cause I’m pretty much never in the woods or the outdoors for that matter, so much so that I just purchased a sweatshirt that says, “indoorsy” on it, ok? True story! So yeah. Cause one time I was in Wisconsin in the woods, and I was thinking, “look at me! I’m in the woods! Weird, no?!” (Cause never in the woods, but I thought, I’ll give it a shot! What’s the worst that can happen?) And guess what? Despite my shower the night before, I felt something on the base of my skull the next morning, and I picked out a really nasty, creepy and scary tick. And it was alive, and disgusting, and wiggly. And I started screaming. And I am still freaked out to this day about it. And that happened at least 17 years ago. And I didn’t like it. So that’s how “non woods-y” I am... I’m not even a fan of woodsy the owl, ok?

So I don’t know how I feel about all that. All this to say that I am definitely not Hollywood, but yes, I am included, as a “somebody”. I may not be an award winning, keillor, but I am still somebody, and I may not be rich and famous, but yes, I am somebody, and I may have been on one trajectory and now I do t know what the heck I am now, ok? It’s true, and yes, I’ve posted this before and I’ll keep posting it until everyone in me gets on board with it, yes! I am still somebody because yes, dear me, we are all this: somebody! : https://youtu.be/tu0lNcrZjG8

youtube

George: hard to argue with that.

Kari: eh. You know what I am, George?

George: yes, Kari. I know what you are. But do you?

Kari: well, I feel, like I’m one of those kids on Sesame Street sometimes, looking up at and intently listening to Jesse Jackson, wondering how to get from small to big, and from where I am, to the success that he reps, you know? The importance of being admired by many. Having a big platform to play on. A huge soapbox to stand on, you know?

George: yes. I get it, Kari, I really do. And we’ve all been there. But everyone’s story about themselves, is different. How we all got to where we are, was our own personal trajectory that we designed with our beliefs. And our thoughts. There’s no set pattern or manual to follow. The only energy you must follow, is your passion and your joy, aka the love. That’s it. So, if you want to be, and decide to be, you ARE Hollywood,. Because Hollywood isn’t a specific person or group of people, it’s a place, and an energy. Hollywood is what you make it to be with how you view it. You don’t have to “be” Hollywood to be in Hollywood...

Kari: you said I wasn’t allowed in Hollywood..

George: you may not be. All I’m saying, is that you are whatever you decide you are. The end.

Kari: well, am I or not? Cause I don’t want to go and be turned away. Besides, I love visiting olvera st.

George: Its a fine street, it is. Great margaritas... listen Kari, you cannot achieve anything in this life that you don’t truly believe is in the realm of your possibility. So yes! You can be, and pretty much are are Hollywood keillor, even if it’s in the Midwest in your own home.. You are creative, and love the arts, and are nutsy, and ballsy, and you may hold the title as being the first person to ever separate the two, and bring them back together in a scote sack, ok? So keep writing, and be yourself.

Kari: I dunno. But what I do know is this: I did it again...

George: did what?

Kari: reactivated all the shit memories and feelings from the past that I’ve felt about my career, allowing myself to relive all those fun feels of inadequacy and upset alllll over again.

George: aww, it’s happened to the best of us. Listen Kari, you are, in my humble not so humble opinion, since I’m still you, a loving person. So you reflect that way; with humor, and yes, absurdist, surreal comedy.

Kari: well, I’ll try.

George: You already do. Your credentials are superfluous. Your love and support of you no matter what you do moving forward is what you’ll feel when you choose to, and it’s available anytime you want to feel it. And when you feel that, it really doesn’t matter what you do.

Kari: ok, well, thanks George. It’s nice to know I have you around.

George: Kari, you were once told that you are golden, no?

Kari: well, I was told that I’ll be golden at some point moving forward doing whatever it is I choose to do.

George: right. So, when are you going to decide to experience that?

Kari: hopefully soon.

George: Kari, why do you chop to talk to and write about us “passed over folk”?

Kari: I dunno. I guess it’s cause I love and miss you guys in theory, even though I didn’t know you personally. And I like to re-experience your energy, as I appreciated and admired it. It helps me feel better.

George: you’re now golden.

Scene.

Appendices: if you choose to perform this scene, good luck. I’d like you to do it all in one breath, if you are a more advanced, and professional actor. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💕💕💕💕

#choose love #love matters #love manifestation #self reflection #self love #self care #self esteem #selfworth #self development #self improvement #self definition #self image #love yourself #george carlin #a love vigilante

1 note · View note

goingoverthegardenwall · 5 years

Text

Chapter 8: Babes in the Wood

In this last hurrah of explicit homages to animation of the past, the most obvious discussion point is Merrie Melodies and its ilk: Babes in the Wood is essentially a full-episode reference to the bouncing musical shorts of yore, where everything can sing’n’dance and the villain is a blustery bozo who’s defeated with a sight gag. If we expand to children’s entertainment in general, as we did with Greg’s Beatrix Potter episode, then The Wizard of Oz is our logical next step: the song welcoming him to Cloud City owes everything to Dorothy’s introduction to Munchkinland, complete with the fact that our hero has just entered a dream.

And look, there’s nothing wrong with talking about the obvious. But as we near the end, I think it’s a little more interesting to instead explore the very beginning. So let’s go back to a newspaper cartoonist in New York—the one who inspired fellow New York newspaper cartoonist John Randolph Bray to become an animator, which in turn led fellow New York newspaper cartoonist Max Fleischer to become an animator, because it turns out that just like the birth of superhero comics a few decades later, the birth of American animation hinged on print artists who dreamed big in the city that never sleeps.

A boy named Zenas was born in Michigan on September 26, 1871. Or maybe he was born there in 1869. Or maybe he was born in Canada in 1867. He said one thing, and a biographer said another, and census data says another, and I wasn’t there. It’s similarly unclear when or why he started going by his middle name, but by the time he took his first job at age 21 (or 19 or 17) as a billboard and poster artist in Chicago, he was calling himself Winsor McCay. They sure did know how to name ‘em in the 19th century.

McCay began his newspaper career as a freelancer, but moved to New York in 1903 to work for the New York Herald, where he wrote a variety of comics before hitting it big with Little Sammy Sneeze. McCay’s art was always brilliant, but his gag work was formulaic to a fault: the joke for Sammy Sneeze was always the same, he would sneeze and ruin everything right before the last panel. That devotion to formula would continue in his second big comic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, where a fantastical events would occur for ever-changing characters before the lead woke up in the last panel, revealing it was a dream.

That second formula was the basis of McCay’s masterpiece. Already a successful cartoonist in the two short years since he’d moved to New York, his fame skyrocketed with Little Nemo in Slumberland, which used the same “wake up at the end” formula but with recurring characters and a running story. He toyed with the medium like none had before, playing with panel arrangement and innovating the portrayal of motion in comics, and his art skills only improved with this full-color strip. His success led to the vaudeville circuit, where he turned the act of drawing into a performance, and this combination of stage entertainment and his continuing comic work led him to seek new ways to dazzle the crowds.

By 1910, the earliest animated shorts had already started to emerge, and McCay was inspired by pioneers like James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl to try animating the characters of Little Nemo. Under Blackton’s direction, McCay singlehandedly drew around four thousand fully colored frames to produce his first animated cartoon, presented at the tail end of a filmed short about said cartoon in 1911. As mentioned, animated shorts were already a thing. But none of them looked anything like this. (If you’re concerned that there might be racist caricatures in it, don’t worry, there definitely are, McCay had a lot of strengths but overcoming garbage prejudices was not one of them).

The sheer quality of his work, continuing with the legendary Gertie the Dinosaur, directly led to the invention of the rotoscope as a means to mass-produce cartoons of similar finesse. The influence of Winsor McCay over animation as we know it is hard to overstate (and let’s stress again that this was his side gig, and he was just as influential over comic art): as crazy as it sounds, it’s safe to say that Over the Garden Wall would not exist if not for a story about the whimsical adventures of a little boy who traveled across a land of dreams from his bed.

“Where’s Greg, Wirt?”

Babes in the Wood is delightful and goofy and lighthearted exactly once.

In the same way our fourth-to-last episode mirrored our fourth, this third-to-last episode mirrors our third: Chapters 4 and 7 focus on Wirt, but 3 and 8 are Greg’s. It’s not simply a matter of who the main character is, but what these episodes are about: Greg’s love of fun clashing with his drive to help others. Both times he's spurred by the desire to help others to go off on his own, both times he gets distracted by whimsical wonders involving funny animals and physical humor, and both times he ends up deciding to help out anyway. But despite switching his goal from making the whole world a better place to just helping his brother, the stakes are actually far higher now, so the fun has to be that much more fun if we want the full horror of the ending to sink in.

There’s no tonal shift in the series that’s more devastating than Greg falling prey to the Beast after nearly ten minutes of goofiness in Cloud City. It turns a moment of welcome relief from the growing tension of Wirt’s despair into a dagger in the heart, and the knife is twisted when we learn in our next episode what the Unknown truly is.

That despair is evident well before Wirt explicitly gives up. We get our second opening in a row featuring Beatrice in a hopeless search, and things aren’t much better for the boys. All sense of progression from the first episode feels lost, with Wirt reverting to mumbling poetry and Greg reverting to Rock Facts. Their boat is an outhouse and Greg uses a guitar as an oar, because (if you’ll pardon my French) they’re up shit creek without a paddle. When they land, Greg’s victorious bugle is a ridiculous sign of hope, but he soon drops it in the same way he abandons the guitar: in Schooltown Follies he takes instruments to help others, but this time he loses them.

Wirt’s frustration with Greg threatened to boil over in The Ringing of the Bell, only to be cooled when the Woodsman interrupts them. This time there’s no such interruption, so after Greg’s total failure to read the room gets to be too much, his brother finally snaps. It crucially isn’t entirely unjustified, as Greg’s antics might be funny to us but have not been appreciated by Wirt, and despite Greg’s age excusing his lack of emotional intelligence, it’s still gotta be frustrating for a teen to deal with that behavior nonstop. And Wirt’s “tirade” reflects his depression, because he doesn’t even seem that angry: he doesn’t shout or rave, he’s just openly irritated as he argues that they’ll be lost forever. This is apathy and fatigue, because he’s lost the energy to be furious.

But the most chilling part of the exchange isn’t Wirt cruelly blaming Greg for their mess, or abandoning their search. It’s when, after Wirt asks if they can give up, Greg responds with a chipper “You can do anything if you set your mind to it!”, a sentiment that the Beast will fiendishly repeat verbatim while tricking Greg. It’s such a generic positive expression that Greg hangs a lampshade on it, but it shows the darker side of the power our minds have over our well-being. Sure, it’s a great lesson that focus and dedication can help us achieve our dreams, but if we use that focus and dedication towards self-destructive behavior, there’s no limit to how badly we can hurt ourselves.

After a goofy sort of prayer (incorporating lines from the classic Trick or Treat poem, which will become super relevant an episode from now), Greg is whisked away by so-creepy-it’s-funny cherubim to the score of a so-overwrought-it’s-funny song. His flight aboard the bed/cart pulled by a donkey across the sky feels legitimately magical, but we soon switch to the surreal world of 1930′s songs and physics.

Cloud City is such a stark contrast to the tone of the episode so far that it instantly feels delightful, and such a stark contrast to the tone of the entire series that it lends a special sort of wonder to Greg’s dreamland. References to old cartoons are everywhere in Over the Garden Wall, and before we delve into the tension of our last two episodes, we get one last gigantic celebration of the past with a sequence straight from the golden age of animation.

The transition alone is enough to make this scene hilarious, but the actual jokes help quite a bit: Greg’s growing impatience with the numerous Wizard of Oz reception committees is my favorite gag of the night. Everything is cute to the point of being cloying, including our three angels that look and sound an awful lot like Greg, and the parade that he leads seems like such a fun and peaceful affair after so much time wandering alone. It’s easy to get as roped into it as Greg when we first watch it. But considering the events of our next episode, the scene destroys me every time I rewatch it, because there’s a very specific place Greg is being welcomed to.

Babes in the Wood gets a lot less cute when it becomes clear that it’s a welcoming committee for a dying child. Greg and Wirt are drowning, and this is the episode where the shock wears off and the cold sets in and the younger and weaker of the two looks into a bright light. Greg’s near-death experience is hammered in when we get to The Unknown, but for now it’s being rationalized in a way that brings him comfort.

The cold is Greg’s enemy, and the same childish tone is used to show that he’s willing to fight for his life: thus, the North Wind segment is ironically more hopeful to me than the parade’s warm welcome of death. This third song sounds enough like a Randy Newman number that I’m honestly still convinced it’s an uncredited Randy Newman performance, and it jolts us back to reality for a moment as we see the effect this bitter wind has on our babes in the woods. The boys are starting to freeze, and we again see Beatrice searching for them, getting so close before an owl that looks remarkably like the one we saw in our first episode scares her off. The episode doesn’t want to lose us completely to the sky, and this grounding helps keep the stakes clear as we complete Greg’s dream.

The Popeye-esque battle between Greg and Ol’ Windbag is a hoot, between the latter’s grumbling anger and the former rolling up his sleeve to get back into the brawl. Its conclusion is hidden from us, so we have no idea how Greg gets him in a bottle, but that fits right in with the weird logic of this throwback and allows us to meet the Queen of the Clouds.

I ought to bring up the theory that everything we see here is an illusion created by the Beast, even though I don’t really subscribe to it myself. The most obvious “hint” is that this sequence directly leads to Greg deciding to join the Beast with an off-screen promise, but we also have the old man in the welcoming march wearing an outfit just like Wirt’s and holding a lantern, perhaps a reference to the Beast’s intended fate for Greg’s brother. Plus there’s lines in the songs that seem like they’re luring Greg in, especially the assurance that the wonders of Cloud City “ain’t gonna lie,” which sounds a lot like what a liar would say. Both the Queen of the Clouds and the Beast pointedly call him Gregory instead of Greg, but so does Old Lady Mrs. Daniels (and Wirt when introducing him in Songs of the Dark Lantern).

While it’s a neat enough idea, I think the Queen of Clouds is pretty clearly on Greg’s side for real: she seems upset at his fate in a way that doesn’t make much sense for an ally of the Beast. I also think it’s more meaningful for Greg to truly have the choice between happiness and responsibility, between the possible peace of rest and the definite struggle of life, and for him to choose the latter right as his brother is giving in. But I’ve got no beef with folks whose interpretation of the show is enhanced by this theory, so believe what you want to believe about this ambiguous situation.

Either way, we cut back to Wirt instead of Greg when the dream ends, and he’s still annoyed as he’s trying to sleep. Greg’s strange new seriousness is already cause for concern, and asking Wirt to take care of the frog is even more alarming, but even that doesn’t compare the horror of realizing where he’s actually going. Or rather, with whom.

This is another reason why I think the Queen is an ally: while it’s obviously dangerous for Greg to go with the Beast, that’s what it takes for Wirt to snap out of his funk. It’s a hell of a gambit, but as soon as he starts to awaken, he’s immediately concerned for Greg’s safety despite whatever anger or resentment he had, sparing no time or thought to the branches creeping over him as he runs after his brother.

The quiet distortion as we follow his frantic search is soon met by the Beast’s song, but even as he blames himself for Greg’s plight, Wirt is no longer content to wallow in despair. Because it turns out that these brothers are more similar than they seem, and neither is truly capable of letting the other suffer. In the folk tale for which this episode is named, two children abandoned in the woods eventually die and are covered in leaves by small birds (with some versions seeing them enter heaven), but as we’ll see in our next episode, this isn’t a folk tale.

The thrumming noise intensifies as Wirt slips on the ice, then we add visual distortion as he plummets into the freezing water. He’s saved, but this isn’t water that sees him reborn: the distortion finally breaks as Beatrice asks the episode’s terrible question, and we’re left in the cold.

Every even-numbered episode of Over the Garden Wall, perhaps by virtue of airing twice per night, ends in a mood-setting cliffhanger that grows tenser and tenser with every iteration (or at least it does until the end). First we got a leaf symbolically caught in a fence, then the Beast’s introduction, then the fallout of Adelaide, and now the capture of Greg. Getting trapped has always been a threat for these roving heroes, but the greatest threat of all, that of Wirt trapping himself, has been handled. Things look bleaker than they ever have, but despite the glee of Greg’s dream contrasting with the harshness of reality, Wirt’s ability to climb out of the pit of despair keeps hope alive: even in absence, Greg’s influence looms large.

Rock Factsheet

Dinosaurs had big ears, but everyone forgot because dinosaur ears don’t have bones.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

Most of these were mentioned in the main analysis, but it’s great that we hear Wirt’s description of Into the Unknown right before the episode itself shows us what happened.

#babes in the wood #over the garden wall #otgw #steven universally #winsor mccay #little nemo in slumberland

116 notes · View notes

chaoticfruitcake · 4 years

Text

70 Horrible Questions

I didn’t write the questions but I’m bored so here I’m answering all of them. Now you guys will know me more intimately than my search history does :)

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents? - Yeah I do, my parents are really wonderful and supportive. I’m lucky to have ‘em :)

02: Who did you last say “I love you” to? - My sister :D

03: Do you regret anything? - I wish I hadn’t come out so soon. I had to, because somehow it got out and random people in my grade knew so :/

04: Are you insecure? - Yes, with a lot of things. But a big part of that comes from social anxiety ;-;

05: What is your relationship status? - lmfao i’m single. the gays are in hiding (at least from me)

06: How do you want to die? - Painlessly, preferably a quick-acting poison slipped in my wine glass by a scorned ex-lover, or something along those lines

07: What did you last eat? - A Snickers bar

08: Played any sports? - I was on the basketball team in sixth grade but I broke my arm right after the season started so I only played in 3 games.

09: Do you bite your nails? - I haven’t in 10 days, actually! It started when I was 5 because I was (still am) terribly anxious

10: When was your last physical fight? - Probably like a few months ago with my sister.

11: Do you like someone? - I have had the misfortune of being crush-less since I broke up with my ex, in January.

12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours? - Yes. More than once, usually around exam season :)

13: Do you hate anyone at the moment? - I don’t generally hate people, except for that guy who called me a faggot and dyke and other horrible things in ninth grade, and his buddies.

14: Do you miss someone? - I miss all my friends. Lockdown sucks.

15: Have any pets? - A shih tzu - pomeranian mix pup! his name is Pepper (Pepperoni for short)

16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment? - Tired and quite hungry. Tad bit numb.

17: Ever made out in the bathroom? - Technically yes, once and very briefly. Strange experience.

18: Are you scared of spiders? - Not afraid, but I certainly am not a fan

19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? - Perhaps, I’d like to be a sapphic flapper in ‘20s New York

20: Where was the last place you snogged someone? - The aforementioned bathroom.

21: What are your plans for this weekend? - Work, and hopefully read a bit.

22: Do you want to have kids? How many? - I don’t know, but if I do I’d like to adopt. And only one.

23: Do you have piercings? How many? - Both my ears are double-pierced, so 4. I’d like 3 more tho, one more on each ear, and a helix.

24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)? - I love Biology, and Global Politics. I’m great at English too, but I’m not as interested in it.

25: Do you miss anyone from your past? - My grandfather, he passed away when I was six.

26: What are you craving right now? - A large double-cheese pepperoni pizza with a tumbler of ice-cold Coke Zero.

27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart? - Not that I know of, except for that boy in seventh grade who was terrible at hiding his crush on the closeted queer girl.

28: Have you ever been cheated on? - Nope.

29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? - If I did she never told me.

30: What’s irritating you right now? - The fact that I cannot see my friends for months and my senior year might end without me even setting foot in school.

31: Does somebody love you? - Romantically? lmfao no. Platonically? My lovely friends do, a lot <3.

32: What is your favourite color? - I have 2: lavender and light teal

33: Do you have trust issues? - Yes. For (mostly) valid reasons. I don’t like feelings and trust usually entails feelings.

34: Who/what was your last dream about? - One was me and my friends hanging out in the foyer at school during a free period. There’s a flash of me pinning a girl against a wall and making out with her but I don’t remember that one very well.

35: Who was the last person you cried in front of? - My mom, I had a terrible panic attack. I only cry when I get panic attacks.

36: Do you give out second chances too easily? - I don’t think so, I haven’t really had to though.

37: Is it easier to forgive or forget? - Forget probably, I move on from things pretty fast. I have too much anxiety to really be mad at people for long though.

38: Is this year the best year of your life? - The pandemic is obviously terrible, and I’ve had quite a few horrid experiences, but overall it’s been pretty good. I wouldn’t say it’s better or worse than any year before. And I’m hoping it keeps getting better.

39: How old were you when you had your first kiss? - Technically 15, in that bathroom. But I don’t really count that one. So I haven’t had my first kiss yet.

40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked? - Absolutely not. No thank you.

51: Favourite food? - Pepperoni pizza and Dum Ghosht mutton biryani.

52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason? - I don’t think so really, that there’s a plan for everything. I think things usually work out, but not because of fate but because people work to fix things.

53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night? - I was listening to my sapphic playlist; the last song was Housewife Spliffin’ by Ängie

54: Is cheating ever okay? - Maybe in very specific circumstances. Like a comatose spouse, I guess.

55: Are you mean? - Only to a very special few. Though apparently I give off intimidating vibes to people who don’t know me.

56: How many people have you fist fought? - I guess 2: my sister, and this one girl in middle school.

57: Do you believe in true love? - I like to think that it’s real.

58: Favourite weather? - Thunderstorms! I love thunderstorms so much

59: Do you like the snow? - I live in the part of India where it never snows so I’ve only seen snow a few times. But it was very nice :)

60: Do you wanna get married? - Yes, I think so.

61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? - Um, yeah in *certain* situations (ahem). Though I prefer babe.

62: What makes you happy? - A lot of things. Running this blog, my dog, my friends, pizza, chocolate milkshakes, oversized sweaters, pretty girls and forehead kisses. A lot more too.

63: Would you change your name? - Not unless I needed to mask my identity.

64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed? - She’s a really good friend of mine so it would be a bit awkward, heh.

65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? - burst into laughter, i’m sorry but he’s like a brother to me and i’m too gay for him.

66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around? - Yeah, and I love him so much <3

67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to? - That best friend

68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? - One of my other best friends, she’s helped me through so much <3

69: Do you believe in soulmates? - Not exactly. I think it is possible to feel a bond with someone so strong that it’s like you were meant to be together, but it doesn’t make sense to me that there’s only person for each of us. I think that if soulmates are real, we get more than one.

70: Is there anyone you would die for? - My dog, my best friends, my sister and my parents.

#now you know too much #about me #was this a mistake #i dont care #q and a

2 notes · View notes

introvertguide · 4 years

Text

Singin’ in the Rain (1952); AFI #5

The next movie on the AFI list is perhaps the most popular musical in American Film, Singin in the Rain (1952). This film is far and away the highest ranked musical on the AFI list. It is a comedy set in early Hollywood when movies switched from silent to having sound. A lot of actors were suddenly exposed as talentless with a pretty face and the old vaudeville performers suddenly regained popularity. A film that didn’t hold any punches as to the difficulty Hollywood had with understanding this new aspect of movie media, this is definitely worth checking out. I want to go over story details before addressing the behind-the-scenes aspects, so...

SPOILER WARNING! THIS DESCRIPTION COMPLETELY SPOILS THE STORY SO WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST!

At the premiere of his latest film, The Royal Rascal, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) tells a gathered crowd an exaggerated version of his life story, including his motto: "Dignity, always dignity." His words are humorously contradicted by flashbacks showing him alongside his best friend Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) working all the undignified jobs involved with acting. He is with his shallow leading lady Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), who turns out be very screachy and stupid. The new movie is a hit and Don leaves with Cosmo to the producer after party when the car breaks down and Don is recognized. To escape from his fans, Don jumps into a passing car driven by Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds). She drops him off, but not before claiming to be a stage actress and sneering at his "undignified" accomplishments as a movie star.

At a party, the head of the studio, R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell), shows a short demonstration of a talking picture, but his guests are unimpressed. To Don's amusement, Kathy pops out of a mock cake right in front of him, revealing herself to be a chorus girl. Furious at Don's teasing, she throws a real cake at him, only to accidentally hit Lina in the face. She runs away. Don is smitten with Kathy and searches for her for weeks. While filming a love scene, Lina tells him that she had Kathy fired. Don finally finds Kathy working in another Monumental Pictures production. She confesses to having been a fan of his all along.

After a rival studio has an enormous hit with its first talking picture, the 1927 film The Jazz Singer, R.F. decides he has no choice but to convert the next Lockwood and Lamont film, The Dueling Cavalier, into a talkie. The production is beset with difficulties, including Lina's grating voice and strong New York accent. An exasperated diction coach tries to teach her how to speak properly, but to no avail. Don is also given diction lessons which turns in a great tap number with Cosmo to Moses Supposes. The Dueling Cavalier's preview screening is a disaster; the actors are barely audible thanks to the awkward placing of the microphones, Don repeats the line "I love you" to Lina over and over, to the audience's derisive laughter, and in the middle of the film, the sound goes out of synchronization, with hilarious results as Lina shakes her head while the villain's deep voice says, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" and the villain nods his head while Lina's squeaky soprano says, "No! No! No!"

Don, Kathy, and Cosmo come up with the idea to turn The Dueling Cavalier into a musical called The Dancing Cavalier, complete with a modern musical number called "Broadway Melody". The three are disheartened when they realize Lina's terrible voice remains a problem, but Cosmo, inspired by a scene in The Dueling Cavalier where Lina's voice was out of sync, suggests that they dub Lina's voice with Kathy's. R.F. approves the idea but tells them not to inform Lina about the dubbing. When Lina finds out, she is infuriated. She becomes even angrier when she discovers that R.F. intends to give Kathy a screen credit and a big publicity buildup afterward. Lina threatens to sue R.F. unless he orders Kathy to continue working uncredited as Lina's voice. R.F. reluctantly agrees to her demands, as a clause in her contract states that the studio is responsible for media coverage of her and she can sue if she is not happy with it.

The premiere of The Dancing Cavalier is a tremendous success. When the audience clamors for Lina to sing live, Don, Cosmo, and R.F. tell her to lip sync into the microphone while Kathy, concealed behind the curtain, sings into a second one. While Lina is "singing", Don, Cosmo, and R.F. gleefully raise the curtain, revealing the fakery. Lina flees. A distressed Kathy tries to run away as well, but Don proudly announces to the audience that she's "the real star" of the film. Later, Kathy and Don kiss in front of a billboard for their new film, Singin' in the Rain.

I really enjoy the movie, but I have to admit a couple things that I have noticed over the years on different viewings. One thing is that the acting is not very good. It is all very hokey and I like to believe that this was done on purpose, but I have seen other productions from these actors and the acting from all three is pretty similar. Another thing is that the pitch for the “modern number” that turns out to be the Broadway Melody was just shoved in for timing reasons and it comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. I noticed that Rita Morena is in this film and she is a complete triple threat, but a 19-year-old Debbie Reynolds got the lead.

There are some very well known behind the scenes trivia notes that are pretty general knowledge to American movie fans, but I will go over a couple things. The Singin’ in the Rain number was set up but Gene Kelly was very sick with a fever so he did a practice take and went home. They continued filming the next couple of days but most of what is in the movie came from that initial sick take with fill shots from the other takes.

Debbie Reynolds was not a dancer or a singer, but a gymnast. She had to be taught how to dance and you can see in her face how hard she is trying. Strangely, the speaking that she put in for Lina Lamont was actually the actress Jean Hagen (who played Lamont and was nominated for best supporting actress) who did not have that high pitch voice but a deep smoky voice. The singing that was dubbed over was not Reynolds either, but a professional singer named Betty Noyes.

The film had a lot of difficulties as takes had to be redone because the crew did not really know what they were doing. There were episodes where the mic was poorly placed on the actor’s body (Debbie Reynolds) and there was difficulty getting clean takes, including an episode when the mic picked up her heartbeat. Donald O’Connor had to do the Make Em’ Laugh number twice because the cinematographer left the lens aperture open and the film fogged over. A lot of numbers actually had to be redone because of a fire.

None of the other actors in this film ever reported working with Gene Kelly as a positive experience. Kelly had a very high standard and a very specific style which could be difficult as Reynolds was not a dancer. Kelly also had just come off of filming the previous year’s best picture, An American in Paris, and really wanted the movie to do just as well. He was mean to Reynolds and made her cry. He also had her do the Good Morning number over and over until vessels broke in her feet and she started to bleed all over the stage. O’Connor did not like the way the Kelly pushed around the other actors and referred to Kelly as an aggressive control freak. Gene Kelly admitted later to being far too hard on his fellow actors during this filming and both O’Connor and Reynolds forgave him suggesting it was a learning experience. It still sounds like pretty awful working conditions to me (edited)

Only two of the songs in the film were original for the movie, Moses Supposes and Make Em Laugh, although the former was based on a children’s rhyme and the latter was very similar to Be A Clown by Irving Berlin. This was actually the seventh movie that had Singin’ in the Rain as a feature song. It seemed like an homage to the popularity of the Follies in the 1920′s, using all of the popular notes of the year to commemorate the past.

So should this film be on the AFI List? Absolutely, although I don’t know if I would have put it in the top 5. It is a lot of fun, it is very well known, it is still mentioned frequently in current popular media, and the actors really put a lot into the production. However, I wouldn’t put it above movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. That is a little much. And would I recommend it? Of course! This movie is a lot of fun and one of those movies that the pace pulls you through without ever needing to check the time. The dancing is fabulous and the show of the misunderstanding of sound in movies by the characters is truly hilarious. It is 100% certified fresh an Rotten Tomatoes and I completely agree.

#singin in the rain #Gene Kelly #debbie reynolds #donald o'connor #musical #afi movies #make em laugh #film review #rotten tomatoes #comedy #silent film #50s #hollywood golden age #introvert #introverts

26 notes · View notes

kazablanka96 · 5 years

Note

Do you have any pwp stucky fic recs? I've been looking for some on ao3 for a while but I haven't been able to find any good pwp fics with good writing, good mature scenes and development, they're just so corny, like gimme some good plot man! x.x

Hi anon! ❤️

First of all, I wouldn’t describe a fic corny because no matter what, they are someone’s hard work and effort and there’s always something to love in everything. That being said, I understand different people have different tastes, so I searched in my stash of fic and my goal in the end was to find you ones that were more focused on the plot and character development than that on the smut part of the story. Almost all of them are E rated (and too long), so you know the good stuff are coming.

I am so sorry if these weren’t what you were asking for, but you can always send in another ask and I’d be more than happy to do another search with a different criteria in mind. And if anyone knows of a different fic the anon, or anyone really, can benefit from, please drop it in the notes!

All the fics are under the cut because they are over 50 and that’s a long post.

These Streets ‘verse: The trials and tribulations of Police Officer Steve Rogers and his experiences with the locals in his precinct, as well as his involvement with the stupidly handsome roughneck from the ‘hood, Bucky Barnes.

The Firing Line: When Steve’s dad is diagnosed with cancer, Steve returns to his childhood home to support his mom – a small town called Gold Cliff, Colorado. Ten years before, he left Gold Cliff behind him, left his no-longer-best-friend Bucky Barnes behind him, with the intention of never seeing him ever again. But Bucky Barnes crash-lands back into his life nonetheless, long-haired and one-armed and haunted, keeping secrets from day one.

Institutions of Love and Incarceration: The Winter Soldier has been sentenced to life without parol. His entire world had been condensed to a hot, cramped cell that he hasn’t seen the outside of in the four years since his apprehension. It’s hell. He has no means of escape, no means of terminating his suffering, and no means of distraction…that is, until he’s assigned a new guard. Steve Rogers is assigned the Winter Soldier as his singular charge.

There Is No Shortage of Blood: The long slow recovery of Bucky Barnes after his escape from HYDRA. (And the longer, slower recovery of his sex life.)

Choices We’re Given: Steve Rogers is a good man and a good agent. There’s really no excuse for the assassin in his bed.

Put It on Repeat, It Stays the Same: Steve and Bucky have a one night stand that turns into a friends with benefits situation. A weekend snowed in at Bucky’s apartment brings to light how much that really doesn’t suit either one of them.

What Gladiators Fight For: A new gladiator is brought to Ludus Stark. Steve Rogers is a disgraced soldier, who refused to fight for Rome.He doesn’t want his actions decided by others anymore, and accepts death until Bucky changes his mind. Steve fights to stop Bucky being sold back to his previous master, and Tony exploits the bond blossoming between them. He makes a bargain with Steve, if he fights and wins, Bucky will spend the night with Steve in his cell.Steve wins every fight, until the finale in the Colosseum. Hes not fighting for Bucky, but his Freedom, but is Freedom worth it without Bucky by his side.

If I Was There: Steve is lonely and the number on his phone-screen is unfamiliar. He’s not the social type, not even close, yet there’s something about the man on the other side that makes him interested. He doesn’t hang up until two hours later.-Wrong number AU in which phone sex is the answer and the question is irrelevant.

the Steve Rogers problem: Bucky doesn’t consider his Steve Rogers problem as a problem so much as the solution he hadn’t realized he was hoping for to help him through the transition from the Bucky Barnes he’d been before his accident to the new, shiny version of himself.No, the problem isn’t with Captain America and The Howling Commandos fandom.The problem is the amount of porn Bucky managed to write and draw about Captain America before finding out that he’s less than one degree of separation away from Steve Rogers. ‘Less than’ as in he’s sitting across the table from him.

Prince Charming: Bucky Barnes leads quite the charmed life. He has a thriving tattoo shop, a son he adores, the world’s best dogs, and a great group of friends — almost all of whom are in relationships. And maybe he’d been the one nudging them towards each other, but there’s nothing wrong with a little match-making. The world could use more romance.As for him personally, well, he doesn’t need anyone for the long haul. Not when every girl he meets is someone who he thinks would be perfect for someone else.But then Steve Rogers comes into his shop looking for some ink, and maybe that’s the problem right there. Maybe what he’s looking for in a relationship isn’t a girl at all.

Heaven and That Other Thing: Bucky Barnes is the owner of a cat sanctuary in Brooklyn, an ordinary guy by the Avengers’ low standards, and a growing problem for America’s favourite captain. Steve Rogers is publicly straight, endlessly bored, and has a habit of not fully thinking through his decisions when Bucky is around.

Keep Your Enemies Close: Pierce was an intelligent man. If the Asset was going to start remembering Rogers, it was best to give him an assignment other than the simple, point and shoot. The Asset’s Mission: Pretend he was James “Bucky” Barnes, best friend to Steve Rogers. He was to evaluate Rogers and see if Rogers could be used by HYDRA…or be put down if the Asset thought otherwise.The Asset now has to pretend to be Bucky Barnes, unknowing that he is in fact the man that Steve has been searching for all along. Pierce instructed the Asset to gain trust, observe, and report. How far is the Asset supposed to go to avoid his cover being blown? He guesses he’s just going to have to find out…

Of Broken Dreams and Mended Hearts: When the House of Barnes is left in massive debt after the death of George Barnes, their oldest son and heir, Bucky, is forced to sacrifice his own hopes and dreams by entering an arranged married to Steve Rogers. Steve seems kind enough, has a prominent job in the government, and was even voted Society’s Best Catch. But the House Rogers is significantly higher in status than Bucky’s family, which means Bucky is marrying up in Society, and marrying up doesn’t only come with rewards, it also comes with certain…expectations and losses–some of which Bucky might be willing to do anything to avoid. And those opportunities might come his way.Unless, of course, he actually starts falling in love with his new husband…

A Myriad of Misdecisions: “My parents thought I was working for an insurance company in New York when really I was joining the CIA so I just sort of never mentioned when I met you on an assassination-gone-wrong and now we’ve been married for five years and they still don’t know you exist, this has gotten wildly out of hand and you won’t stop laughing about it”

Catfish: Steve Rogers is a famous movie star, known for his role as Captain America. Bucky Barnes is a bored law student who drinks too much wine. Bucky gets on match.com to boost his confidence. What he doesn’t expect is a guy using Steve Rogers’ pictures on a dating profile. Bucky decides to mess with the guy. After all, what idiot uses Steve Rogers’ pictures on a dating site?Not like it’s really him, right?

Give ‘Em Hope: Dr. Steve Rogers likes to think that if his patients have hope- their chances of survival will increase. Bucky Barnes has a 20% chance of survival and a desperate yearning to experience life. Against Steve’s better judgment, he develops a relationship with his patient. It’s illegal. It’s wrong. But it’s giving Bucky the hope to keep going, so Steve’s going to keep giving it, because he wants Bucky to survive.He needs him to.

A Love I Never Had: Detective Steve Rogers is not a cop if he’s dead. A Modern Frankenstein AU; or, the Modern Prometheus

After Hours: Steve wishes Bucky wouldn’t look at him the way he does – a deliberate gaze, subtly digging his top teeth into that pouty bottom lip; following his every move like a lion watches a gazelle. It’s been going on for months, perhaps longer… Steve talks, and Bucky listens. Well, that’s the point – Bucky’s supposed to be listening. Steve’s just doing his job, after all… No harm in that.The problem is that it’s no innocent gesture, the way Bucky will have the top of his pen tracing the outline of his mouth… It’s also not innocent at all when Steve turns to look out at the sea of heads while he’s speaking and catches the quickest glimpse of the brunet sneaking a peek at his ass. And Bucky doesn’t even pretend to be bashful about it. He just meets Steve’s eyes and smirks – just the tiniest hint of a thing.

The Match Game: Steve meets and promptly falls for Bucky Barnes, new resident in his apartment building. The one who makes him feel like he only wants to be with one person, forever. He just doesn’t know how to make that happen. Lucky for him, he has friends who… tease him mercilessly. And then help. A lot. Steve gets a lot of opportunities to get to know his new neighbor and thinks everything is going great, until Bucky reveals to him his own long-term relationship ended badly, and he doesn’t want another…but he might be up for a friends-with-benefits deal.

G.I. Joes and 2AM Diners: They look nothing like what they used to. Time and life have completely changed them. But as they sit there in silence, eating two halves of one cupcake, letting Brooklyn remind there where they came from, and enjoying a sky full of stars… They are those same little boys, somewhere deep down. For just a second, you’d be able to see them again.And Bucky thinks to himself that maybe it’s little moments like these – fleeting as they may be – that remind him why life is still worth living.

Screaming Words (Left Unspoken): Living as a fugitive is hard. Living as a man who has to wake the love of his life from cryo is harder. Why? The codes in Bucky’s brain don’t have a fix yet, but Steve has worse news to deliver. Bucky’s dying slowly from self-destruct protocols inside him. Now, it’s a race against time to save Bucky once and for all.And maybe finally tell Bucky that Steve’s been in love with him since he was a sixteen-year-old kid in Brooklyn. Oh and not get extradited by the UN from Wakanda. That’d also be great.

Winter Gorgon: For as long as Steve could remember, all he ever wanted to do was what was right. So when he hears about his father’s old regiment being held as POW’s by the Nazis, he’s determined to put what Doctor Erskine gave him to good use and goes AWOL to rescue them.But the 107th isn’t all he finds there. Deep in the labs is a very unusual prisoner; one with snakes in his hair and a mask nailed to his face. Despite the man’s monstrous visage, Steve can’t in good conscience leave him to the enemy. That one act of mercy will change his life, the course of the war, and even the future of the world.

That Would Be Enough: Bucky Barnes, a Columbia University graduate with a Masters Degree in Education, is in his fourth year of teaching AP US History at Shield Academy, a private school in the very heart of the Connecticut valley in the bucolic town of Barkstead. He also helps run the Russian Club with his colleague and best friend, Natasha Romanov. He’s got amazing friends, three nephews he adores, and a beautiful little apartment. The only thing Bucky would change about his life? His luck in love. It’s been two years since Bucky ended an emotionally abusive relationship and he’s just now starting to feel that his heart has healed enough to try dating again. Then, a new Art History and English teacher arrives with tattoos he doesn’t like talking about, a body like a Greek god, and some secrets of his own, and Bucky knows he’s done for. Cue pining, sass, and a ton of Hamilton references.

Heat of the Night: Steve is a cop. Bucky is the kept boyfriend of the super rich bad guy. Bucky doesn’t really have any information because his sole job is to look good when they go out. But he gets Steve’s card and he calls him and Steve meets him for lunch and coffee and dinner and Steve knows this could be a bad thing. He knows Bucky could be a trap. But the way he talks, how he smiles at Steve, laughs like it’s a sound he’s not used to making…Steve thinks he could be worth it. Steve thinks he could be worth everything

The North Star: “You got plans to retire, Cap? Find a nice little beach in the Indies and a good supply of rum? Couple of pretty girls in grass skirts to dance for you.”.“Sam,” Steve mumbles, covering his face with his hand.“I’m sorry, a couple of pretty boys?” Sam grins wickedly.“Sam!” Steve looks scandalised, which gets him nothing but laughter from his Quartermaster. “You’re fired. Go throw yourself overboard this instant.”

Lemon Meringue Lies: Being a server at a high-end restaurant is working out well for Steve. All he has to do now is convince Bucky he’s good enough to work as chef in the same restaurant. Meanwhile, Bucky has his own issues to deal with. Namely: trying his damndest to dig them out of poverty, make sure Steve’s health is on the up and up, and not acknowledging his very longstanding desire for his best friend that is slowly eating him up inside.

Steve Rogers. Cheerfully Slutty: Steve Rogers. Cheerfully Slutty. But not going to take your shit about it. Bucky Barnes. Voted most likely to fall in love first.

Sorry, Not Sorry: All Steve Rogers ever wanted was to do what’s right. So when he drops in to volunteer at the Brooklyn VA Outpatient Center, he’s surprised to learn some veterans actually resent Captain America and everything he represents. One veteran in particular is determined to make sure Steve understands just how much he dislikes him.

Lucky Seven: Captain America trashes his motorcycle a lot. Tony says he’ll fix it, then never gets around to it and just buys him a new one. Steve, the Depression-era kid, can’t stand the waste and goes looking for somewhere near him in Brooklyn where he can get his bike fixed. That’s how he finds Red Star Bike Repair, and the hot Russian-immigrant bike racer who runs it: all long hair and muscles and tattoos. And for the first time since he woke from the ice, Steve feels a connection to someone; a comfort in the other man’s silences and his space, an attraction in his sheer skill at racing. But James Barnes isn’t exactly who he seems…

Above the Rain and Roses: But tonight, Steve is visiting The Armory. An exclusive club where unattached Doms can go and enjoy themselves with a good sub for the night. Not exactly the place Steve expects to find his one true love.Then again, fate might have other plans, and one sub might get in way over his head making assumptions about this Dom.

A Marriage of Ice and Fire: Steve Rogers hates James Barnes. The feeling’s mutual; their families have been at war for longer than they’ve been alive. But King Odin has had enough. He orders the two of them wed to end the fighting.It’s not enough that they have to look at each other’s faces without spitting; the King has declared the year’s tournament in their honor. They’ll have to lead the events together. They’ll be wed in front of everyone.

The Commander’s Omega: Steve Rogers is struck by a persistent headache as the dawn rises over DC.So are—simultaneously—Natasha Romanov in the Muscovite night, James Barnes in the dull grey of a Berlin afternoon, Tony Stark stumbling out of his Afghan cave, Bruce Banner in the crushing heat of the Nevada desert, Clint Barton squinting up at the Vegas lights, Loki Laufeyson under the Scandinavian sun, and Prince T'Challa amidst the West African rainforest.Surely it’s nothing but an odd coincidence.

Oh Can’t You See, You Belong To Me: Bucky Barnes has recently moved to New York and things are looking up. He’s got a great new job working for Tony Stark, he has a nice apartment, and his boyfriend Peter is fun. He just needs some friends. Unfortunately Steve Rogers doesn’t seem to want to be just friends.

Echoes In Our Minds: Steve Rogers is struck by a persistent headache as the dawn rises over DC.So are—simultaneously—Natasha Romanov in the Muscovite night, James Barnes in the dull grey of a Berlin afternoon, Tony Stark stumbling out of his Afghan cave, Bruce Banner in the crushing heat of the Nevada desert, Clint Barton squinting up at the Vegas lights, Loki Laufeyson under the Scandinavian sun, and Prince T'Challa amidst the West African rainforest.Surely it’s nothing but an odd coincidence.

Leg Day: The one where Sam is Bucky’s long-suffering roommate, Bucky is a hot mess of a millennial, and Hot Steve spends far too much time on the Lat Pull-Down machine.

Give a Little, Take a Little: Bucky’s nearly thirty and has never been spanked. For most people, this wouldn’t be a pressing concern. Bucky is not most people.

Trained on You: Bucky Barnes is disabled veteran who’s trying to learn how to live his life now without his left arm. His best friend Natasha pushes him to build up the strength and confidence he’d lost along with his limb at the Rally Health and Wellness Center with the help of top notch trainer/physical therapist Sam Wilson.Bucky knew it’d be hard work. What he didn’t realize was just how difficult it’d be to concentrate on his own rehabilitation at the innocuous, easygoing gym. But after he first lays eyes on new trainer and walking wet dream Steve Rogers, it’s all he can do not to fall face first on the treadmill.Working out had never gotten Bucky so worked up before. Go hard or go home? Yeah, he’s definitely going home hard.

Where There’s Smoke: Steve is a Brooklyn firefighter who is about to be saddled with a new, rookie crewmate. James Barnes is that rookie, just looking for a fresh start at a new station. Steve’s friends think they know what’s best for him…start dating his new crewmate. Steve thinks they’re crazy…or possibly right. But events from James’s recent past may pose a threat to any designs they have on each other.

Under the Bridges of Fame: For better or for worse (usually worse), Steve Rogers has been the most famous guy in the room for a while. And though newsreels have given way to YouTube, people’s reactions haven’t changed much in seventy-some years. Steve’s become an expert at keeping his head down and getting on with his life.A head-on collision on a busy street sends books flying and sweeps Steve off his feet. The point of impact has a name: James. A charming mess of long hair, thick glasses, and a crooked, not-quite-smile. If he recognizes Steve, he chooses not to comment, placing him firmly in Steve’s good graces. As far as Steve can tell, they might be Bogie and Bacall all over again, save for the group of idiots with selfie sticks who surround them. But for once, the request isn’t for Steve.Which begs the question: if James is James, then who the hell is Bucky?

Keep Making Trouble ‘Till You Find What You Love: “No no no, hear me out,” Bucky says. “You wanna get back at them, right? Imagine the following: We date, fall madly in love, then have the most horrendous breakup in history and make them deal with that. They’ll feel terrible because they set us up, and we get to eat free ice cream and see their faces when we eventually tell them we pulled one over them,” Bucky finishes with a smug grin. “That’s a terrible plan,” Steve says.

Trust Enough: So they exchange numbers, and then Steve says he should go, and Bucky agrees, and they kind of stare at each other for a bit more, then Steve actually does go, but not before taking Bucky’s hand and squeezing it warmly in a way that makes Bucky want to shiver all over. Then Steve is gone, and Bucky is standing alone in the alley, grinning to himself. Right up until the moment he remembers that Steve thinks Bucky is an escort he’s just hired. Well fuck.

Took my love, took it down: The problem, Bucky thinks now that he has most of his memories back, is that his whole entire world has always revolved around Steve Rogers. Steve has been always been half of Bucky’s identity. Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ best friend. Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ wingman. Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers’ teammate. And now, well, now Steve had other people to fill those positions.

These underdog hearts: It starts in October: the sun is shining, the leaves are falling, and Steve Rogers is Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Push It Real Good: The way Steve had to steel himself to ask the question made Bucky a little wary. “Will you be my partner for a Lamaze class?“For a few long moments, Bucky just blinked at him, not knowing which question to ask first. Finally he went with the biggest question on his mind. “What?”

I just met you (and this is crazy): After Steve gets outed by a grainy cell phone picture, it takes the media less than 24 hours to discover Captain America’s secret relationship with James Barnes: classical musician, teen heartthrob, and son of a former president.The only problem? Steve has never met James Barnes in his life.

We Never Had a Choice (But I Choose You): When Bucky Barnes is abducted by political activists, the circumstances are simple enough. Desperation breeds all sorts of terrible decisions, after all, and Bucky’s captor is clearly woefully out of his depth. Maybe, just maybe, he can talk his way to freedom, but the more Bucky learns about the circumstances of his capture, the more complicated things seem to get. On the run and forced to trust the man who abducted him, Bucky comes to realize that kidnapping is the least of his worries.

Someone To Watch Over Me: One cold, winter’s night, Steve Rogers, retired Special Forces operative, finds an unconscious young man in the woods surrounding his property. In the morning, the stranger wakes up and Steve is left with plenty of questions about the beautiful young man with guileless eyes and a sheepish smile, who speaks with self-deprecating humor as though there isn’t a bruise on his face and restraint marks on his wrist.

A Hatemance For The Ages: This is what happens when you find your soulmate… and instead of birds singing and roses blooming, you discover they’re an insufferable jerk. But an insufferable jerk that you low-key really want to bang, if nothing else because MAYBE THEN THEY WOULD SHUT UP.

Home Is Wherever I’m With You: This is what happens when you buy a house to flip having only seen the online images: you get more than you bargained for. Bucky Barnes brings all the tools to handle a dilapidated home, but he’s hardly prepared for a smart-mouthed child (with poor aim), a crying baby, and the hottest dad he’s ever seen in his life living right next door.

Sugar Sweet: College Student Bucky finds himself immediately attracted to Steve. He knows that Steve’s a bit older than him, and that Steve himself is put off by the age difference… But that doesn’t stop Bucky from wanting to climb him like a tree. AKA a Sugar Daddy AU that no one was asking for.

Parallels: At the end of “Captain America: Winter Soldier,” Steve fell from the helicarrier into the water. He wakes up, however, in an alternate universe where he and Bucky are dating.

Parallels 2: Bucky wakes up from cryo in a parallel universe - in which he works at a coffeeshop and Steve is his favorite customer.

… and I know the ask clearly asked for E rated fics, but those are some PG-13 ones with some solid plot and development, or at least for me, that I think worth mentioning:

It’s No Coincidence: The kids immediately scream, “Trick-or-Treat” before they see who opens the door.The strange resident looks between the two kids, then at the adults, and his eyes widen in horror.“It’s October already? “Okay, Bucky thinks.This guy is probably high.

A Working Romance: Eddie just wants to make a good documentary about good, normal people. Tony Stark just wants to manage his branch and make his dad proud. Bucky Barnes just wants to sell paper without pining over the receptionist. Steve Rogers just wants to draw superheroes and marry Peggy Carter. Sam Wilson just wants Bucky and Steve to get their act together.AKA The Office AU no one asked for.

Leave Me On The Mountain: Bucky is certain that he’s about to die, cold and lost in this mountain forest. But just as he thinks that the wolves have him, someone finds him and takes him in.

Thawing: Heroin. It’s a helluva drug.

The Necrofloranomicon: Bucky didn’t want much. Just to keep his head down, to sell his scavenged flowers in peace, and to stay off Shield’s radar. His life would have been a lot easier if his flowers weren’t dead and if being a necromancer wasn’t illegal, but easy or not, he was getting by. Steve didn’t want much, either. He was happy working for Shield, he had good friends, and overall his life was going just about the way he wanted it. Problem was, being happy with your life was generally an invitation for fate to throw a spanner in the works—and in Steve’s specific case, it was going to be a spanner named Bucky.(A love story about flowers, trust, and magic and the choices we make about doing what’s right.)

… aaaand that’s it folks! Sorry for the long post, and again, if anyone has a fic or seven to rec, please write it in the notes for us all to enjoy!

#stucky #stucky fic rec #stucky fic #stucky au #Steve Rogers #Bucky Barnes #answered

66 notes · View notes

tisthenightofthewitch · 5 years

Text

GHOST'S TOBIAS FORGE ON FILM PLANS, COPIA'S FUTURE, "DARKER, HEAVIER" NEXT ALBUM

Bandleader also talks Metallica, Mercyful Fate, why a Ghost biopic would be "like premature ejaculation"

The Gospel of Cardinal Copia began barely a year ago, his birth as the new frontman of Ghost neither virginal nor particularly miraculous. But there he stands, a religious man of style and mystery: left eye icy blue and blazing, dressed in fine liturgical threads, leading a band of Nameless Ghouls in silver masks through songs of plague and vermin, love and death.

In the eleven months since the beatific release of Ghost's epic fourth album, Prequelle, much has happened in the world of this wildly theatrical metal act from Sweden. The first of these events was the reveal of Tobias Forge as the living, breathing mastermind behind the masks and papal vestments. Though he's never explicitly stated as such, it's widely understood that it's been Forge all along behind the mic, disguised in corpse paint and/or latex masks, first as a series of consecutive demonic popes called Papa Emeritus (Nos. I-III), before reemerging in 2018 as the grimly debonair Cardi Copia.

Prequelle was a medieval concept album that became a hit, spreading the word of Ghost to a growing congregation, in the U.S. reaching No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, and the Top 10 across most of Europe. An American tour filled theaters and last year delivered Ghost to select arenas in Los Angeles, New York and Montreal. It was all a preamble to Ghost's upcoming Ultimate Tour Named Death, a true arena tour of North America, where the band will deliver a fully realized, theatrical rock show of stained glass and fireballs this fall, beginning Sept. 13th in Bakersfield. (Ghost is also openingfor Metallica this summer on a "WorldWired" European stadium tour.)

"For some reason and luckily for me, I have never really crumbled in front of challenges — maybe going to the dentist," Forge tells Revolver. "I've always got a kick out of doing challenging things. More than anything, it just forces me to go further."

youtube

As a lifelong devotee of Queen and Kiss, Forge is a true believer in the power of rock's epic sweep. Taking Ghost to its fullest potential as operatic spectacle is the ultimate fantasy-come-true for Forge, who birthed the band with few expectations a decade ago with a trio of satanic metal tracks.

"There were definitely moments where I had to walk into the arena in the morning and pinch myself a little bit: All these trucks are ours? All this is just for us?" Forge says of his experiences at the handful of headline arena shows Ghost performed last year in America. "I've always wanted to do this since I was a child. I've envisioned it so many times that I don't know really where the dream ended and it sort of went into reality."

Out of costume and out of character, Forge is a friendly and contemplative figure, a seemingly humble rocker and family man behind Ghost's larger than life image. And there is much still to be done as he heads into this final leg of Ghost's Prequelle cycle. To accompany the tour, he's just completed a new series of online video "webisodes" that dive deeper into the mystery of Copia through Gothic intrigue and comedy.

"There are a few episodes coming in the future that might bring some clarity as to who this fucker is," Forge says of Copia, without offering details. "My hope is that he gets to become Papa Emeritus IV. That is the goal. It just takes time and it takes effort. And that is what he's proving now."

youtube

The videos are an essential part of the band's mythology, and now Forge is close to realizing his ambition to create the first feature-length Ghost movie. If all goes well, the film will be shot before the end of the year.

"If it wasn't for the fact that I ended up finally being a musician, the one thing I really, really want to do in my life is cinema," Forge says. "Any chance I can have to do that, I'm definitely grabbing it."

There had been discussions about this over the years. As an especially visual band, with its own cavalcade of insane characters, the potential was obvious, but things often got stuck on the form a movie might take. "Most films about bands are biographical, and I see no reason to tell our story yet," says Forge, who still considers Ghost to be in its early years. "It's a little bit like premature ejaculation. You have to have a career first and then you can tell the real story, so that was never an option. And when you yank away that, what do you have? Well, that would be a fictional story."

He's confident that the story of the film has now been figured out, and would partly take place around a live concert. Figuring out the location, budget, etc. will make all the difference.

"The cog wheels are turning on that one," he says. "We're just trying to figure out a lot of the practicalities. Making a film is a big endeavor. Another problem that I have had over the course of my career is that I don't have a shit-ton of time. I am also a father of two kids and I'm married. I try to not to break my back. I've been so close so many times to overworking and I said yes to everything just because I was so keen on not losing momentum. I've learned over the years that it's really important not to do everything at once."

Beyond the film and the final leg of this tour, Forge is contemplating what comes next when he returns to the studio in 2020 to begin work on a new Ghost album. He's leaning toward a harder, riffier sound this time. He'll start in January and finish that summer.

"I want to make a different record from Prequelle. I want it to feel different," says Forge, being careful with his words to avoid misleading fans. "If I dare to say heavier, people think that it's going to be Mercyful Fate all the way ... but I definitely have a darker, heavier record in mind."

Prequelle, he says now, was "a little ballad heavy." The next one will lean more in the imposing direction of 2015's Meliora without repeating the same ideas. He's worked to make each album different, starting with 2010's gloomy, metallic debut, Opus Eponymous.

While the sound and message of Ghost remains rooted in the initial ideas he first had when he wrote the riff to "Stand by Him" as a mostly unknown metal player in Sweden, years before first trying on the pope attire. He's also made a point of evolving as a lyricist.

"I have always pushed myself to write the songs that we don't have instead of going back — it maybe would've been a smart move to just try to replicate Opus," he explains. "I can regurgitate. I grew up with metal. It's in my DNA, so I can formulate death-metal lyrics easily. But I try not to repeat myself on that.

"I like to make the Metallica comparison — where Kill 'Em All is a little bit more crude, on Ride the Lightning they started writing about more real things. It had more depth," he adds. "I'm not going change everything and just talk about politics, but I believe that if you have people's attention, you have responsibility to weigh with your words a little. Sometimes that is hard. I find that harder than the musical challenges."

Even so, the unexpected opportunity to take his vision of Ghost to ever larger scope across multiple albums and now onstage at arena-scale is a challenge he welcomes.

"I try to remind myself every day that it's pretty mind-blowing that we got to this spot. You need to try to appreciate 100 percent and do the best every day and nurture," Forge says, then adds with a laugh, "At the risk of sounding a little religious, this is a gift that you've been given."

All rights owned by Revolver Magazine

#The Band Ghost #Ghost Band #Cardinal Copia #Tobias Forge

183 notes · View notes

hitchfender · 5 years

Text

@wishforwishes and i were discussing this ages ago, and i’ve finally worked up the courage to do my official ranking of 1989 (deluxe). without further ado:

1. out of the woods 2. style 3. you are in love 4. welcome to new york 5. shake it off 6. blank space 7. wonderland 8. wildest dreams 9. this love 10. how you get the girl 11. i wish you would 12. i know places 13. all you had to do was stay 14. new romantics 15. clean 16. bad blood

to complete this list, i listened to the album in order and wrote a paragraph with my impressions of each track; then i went back and ranked them. i worked very hard on it, and it turned out very long, so it’s all under a read more! please send opinions and reactions ❤️ love u

welcome to new york - honestly, this song is just so fun. the beat drops smooth and satisfying, and when she yells “new york!” just before the bridge it feels like a shout of freedom. the track is lyrically thin, but that doesn’t mean the lyrics are bad, and i think taylor communicated everything she wanted to with them; this first song invites us into the album, and sets us up for a pop-flavoured story of “real love that drives you crazy.”

blank space - this is taylor at her most sardonic and self-aware, tongue firmly planted in her cheek as she sings about bad boys and loving the game. some of her imagery falls flat, and that repetitive drumbeat grates after a few verses, but man, that tongue click was a stroke of genius: bringing the listeners into her world with insolence and irony.

style - this guitar knocks me off my feet every time. here’s where she makes her 80s influences most keenly felt, and where she brings that imagery she’s so famous for to the foreground. she paints her experience with a combination of broad strokes and achingly specific detail, and when it’s over you feel drained and renewed, like at the end of a long drive through beautiful, dangerous terrain.

out of the woods - i don’t know what to say about this one that i haven’t already said, so here it is again. reading the lyrics this song feels almost manic, the chorus losing its meaning and becoming a frenetic howl, the stories she’s telling disassociated and too-sharp, like shards of memories. once you get to the bridge, it starts to sound that way, too - she switches from the more complicitous “we” to an accusatory “you,” and she starts making demands - yet even in this moment of fear and anger there’s tenderness: a sunrise and shared tears. when she seizes her agency with that “oh, i remember” i feel some primal emotion lodge itself like a bullet in my chest.

all you had to do was stay - although i like the way she transitions from vindictive to tender and back again (“you were all i wanted / but not like this / not like this”), the lyrics feel a bit repetitive and the upbeat mood detracts from the meaning she’s trying to express.

shake it off - RIGHTS for these trumpets. and the giggle. some of the vocabulary feels a little forced (hella good hair?), and the production is oddly gapped - there are breaks in the ambient sound that force you to focus on her singing, but this isn’t her best vocal work... but, like, i think i’m concentrating on the wrong thing here. this is a song about letting go of the hate, literally intended for you to lose your mind to in your room at 3 am. i can’t fault the concept.

i wish you would - this start sounds a lot like the opening of style, actually, and these spaced-out electronic drums are straight off ootw. fascinating. moving on: this sounds like a diary entry, which is extremely taylor, but it makes the song come off a bit disconnected. love that line about “a crooked love in a straight line down,” but by the end i’m left with no distinct emotional impression. also literally forgot about it when i was trying to rank the songs.

bad blood - (i know it’s not on the album but i can’t not critique the kendrick verses. “pov of you and me, similar iraq”: L. i like the nod to backstreet freestyle tho.) anyway i feel like i would be more fuck-feminism about this whole thing if it slapped harder, but as it is i’m falling asleep a bit. album version especially. sorry ms swift!

wildest dreams - that’s more fucking like it. this is probably in my top 10 of her songs, from any album. every line of this! the imagery! the dreamy vibes! the way the bridge hits and she lets loose all of that fierceness she’s been holding back (”burn it down”)! i love how the sunset line parallels her own red and rosy makeup, and the dreamy feeling that conveys. also one time i had sex to this song and it was exactly as transcendent as you’d imagine, so.

how you get the girl - i’ll admit i’m not a massive fan of taylor’s favoured “ah” exclamations, but i’ll let em slide because this song goes off. hygtg accomplishes what ayhtdws set out to do: contrasting message and tone with just the right amount of attitude. i love the narrative in this one, too - she tells a clear story with subtle changes to the verses and the chorus. also the sudden vulnerability in her voice when she sings “i don’t want you to go” is like a shock of cold water. masterful.

this love - i can never decide how i feel about this track. the chorus looks almost ridiculous on paper - “this love is good / this love is bad”, seriously? - but god, she sells it, and just like in ootw the ohhs help to create that dreamlike atmosphere. the water metaphors mirror the seagulls on the album cover, by the way, which: mind.

i know places - right off the bat this piano and the way the drums come in late remind me of kanye’s “runaway” - a mirrored version of it, maybe. "runaway” is a warning - he’s laying himself bare, telling his lover he doesn’t plan on changing, exhorting her to run while she can. taylor’s version is a statement of fierce intent: it’s about isolating yourself from the world, making the almost violent choice to remain with your lover despite everything else. they’re songs about escape, but not escapism. anyway i like this song because it’s about harry styles.

clean - this one is boring somehow. like i get it, water metaphors, but the ah-ahs are getting on my nerves again and “hung my head as i lost the war” seems a bit self-consciously understated. maybe i just haven’t felt the specific feeling she’s writing about yet, but until i do this one will remain low on my list.

wonderland - she’s trying to get across this fierce “us against the world” thing, but there’s not enough of taylor’s specialty: those razor-sharp details that make her music feel both universal and infinitely personal. wonderland is all vague allusions to green eyes and getting lost together, full of sound and fury but not signifying much. i am into the i-am-a-woman-and-i-am-fucking-crazy thing, but i need a bit more from her.

you are in love - am i strong enough for this? we’ll see. this track’s got it all -lyrics clean as anything from her earlier discography, backed by those synths that are 80s without feeling like pastiche. i’m obsessed with the dynamics; her choice to use or remove the backing vocals emphasises her own voice, brings out its flaws and makes the song (though it’s quite production-heavy) feel raw. she makes use of her favourite trick, little snatches of memories creating a pointillist picture, but the most affecting line comes (as with so many of her best songs) in the bridge: “you understand now ... why i’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words.” it’s the only time she mentions herself on this self-effacing track, and the effect is immediate and startling - suddenly we’re in taylor’s shoes, watching a beautiful relationship unfold from the outside, and after a full album of songs about a fragile, doomed love affair, that line lends “you are in love” new depth.

new romantics - i have whiplash but WE’RE ALL BORED! taylor once again proves she’s never read the scarlet letter. come to think of it, a whole lot of these lyrics don’t make sense, so... yup, just googled and max martin and shellback cowrote this one. side effect: it sounds great, and the words are secondary. the old taylor pops out on the bridge to remind us of her broken-heart fantasies (“please leave me stranded”), but it sounds more like parody than ever - maybe that’s growth? a bit like blank space, this track is glaringly self-aware, like she’s daring her critics to condemn her for the foibles she already knows about, and delights in. i don’t hold it against her. god knows she’s earned a little indulgence.

tagging @roseringharrie @complicatedbabyhoneyfreak @faithmp3 @carefisher @dyketaylorswift @harrysdimples @rainbowfragrance13 (hi and welcome!) @harrystylesep @winoharry @archer-wilde @haaaaaaarrry because at some point we’ve liked each other’s taylor swift posts and/or you’ve been very nice while i yelled incoherently about her. love you all more than words and stream lover xoxoxo

#taylor swift #this legitimately... took months (and months of back and forth) which is my fault entirely #love you ian can't wait to hear what you think!!!

17 notes · View notes