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justsomekpopstuff · 6 months

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seventeen as d&d characters

NOTE: Remember, these are just my opinion and how I would classify them in D&D. You can have your own perspective, just don't be a hater about it. I also know that my D&D knowledge isn't perfect. Don't judge me! I also have much longer versions of all of these backstories, so some details may be missing.

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Seungcheol: Human Fighter

He is the village leader and sheriff, born into a hardworking family in the mountains. He was raised to always make room for those who need it and to lend a hand when warranted. He is childhood best friends with Jeonghan. He became village leader after his and Jeonghan's village was attacked by an extremist and he fended them off with his dual axes. His bravery was noted by the village, and he vowed to always protect his people, friend and stranger, as long as they were in his village. This means he regularly opens his home to the rest of the group as they go about their worldly travels, being the de-facto leader and older brother of the group.

Jeonghan: Human Rogue

Jeonghan was secretly born out of wedlock to a distant royal family. He was left out in the woods as an infant in the hopes that the elements would take him. However, he was found by a wandering traveler, who brought him to Seungcheol's family village. He is childhood best friends with Seungcheol, and helped defend the village from the cult as well. However, instead of also taking up the "protector" mantle, he decided it was time to make it on his own. He quickly gained the sneaky skills to provide for himself (pick-pocketing, swindling, etc.), which is how he met Joshua. They both caught each other trying to steal out of the tip jar of a local tavern after Joshua finished performing. Jeonghan made himself Joshua's "manager", and the two of them travel and cause chaos together on the open road.

Joshua: Half-Elf Bard/Rogue

Joshua was born to a single mother in a conservative village, who shamed her for having a child without a husband. This lead to him trying to sing her lullabies to cheer her up, and he found that he had a talent for music. His mother would eventually pass, but not before leaving him his favorite instrument that he carries with him - his banjo. Joshua made it out by himself, traveling to villages that unfortunately did not share his love of music. He had a knack for playing songs that the locals deemed "unacceptable", and it would regularly lead to him being chased out of town. He met Jeonghan after a performance where the tavern owner decided to revoke Joshua's wages. Joshua, in retaliation, went to steal from the tip jar, and ended up running in to Jeonghan who had the same idea. They decided to combine their efforts as a duo - Joshua leading people in as a busker, and Jeonghan working his clever swindling magic.

Jun: Elf Rogue/Monk

Jun was sold to a traveling show before he could form memories, and was made to perform as soon as he could walk and talk. The leaders of this show were extreme and unkind, and made Jun's childhood a living hell. Once he grew up, he was kicked out of the show after a "patron" of the traveling show falsely accused Jun of trying to walking them to their death. After being left in the middle of nowhere, Jun had to turn to lies and stealing to get by. This would cause him to get mixed up with some knights who believed him to be a criminal after Jun was caught trying to give some stolen food to the local orphans. As the knights were beating up Jun, Minghao came along and fought off the knights, saving Jun's life. Jun became a devoted student to Minghao, learning how to use his energy and power to do good in the world. They would travel together to villages, bringing justice and peace to each area.

Hoshi: Human Druid

Hoshi was born to a sect of ancient druids that had lived hidden amongst the trees and animals for thousands of years. He grew up with a deep love for animals, and a strong understanding of the power and energy of life and nature. When he got older, he participated in the sect's coming-of-age ceremony where they would be presented with their wild shape form. Hoshi was blessed by the elders and spirits with a tiger wild shape form. However, the village was pacifist, and had no use for his tiger form. So, Hoshi decided to leave his village and set off into the world. However, there were many out in the world who did not accept him due to his connection to the Old Faith and the druids. He would regularly find himself in taverns, drinking the nights away until he would accidentally drunkenly wild shape into a large drunken tiger. This is how he met Seungcheol, who took care of him after he drunkenly wild shaped into a tiger at the tavern in Seungcheol's village. Hoshi was grateful for Seungcheol's kindness, and knew he would have an accepting home with Seungcheol for life.

Wonwoo: Dragonborn Wizard

Wonwoo was hatched deep in the caves of distant misty mountains to dragonborn royalty. He received an extensive education ranging from the ancient texts of the dragons, to the contemporary literature of the time he was born. However, his clan's cave was raided by humans in search of the copper tips of the scales of his people. Wonwoo was hidden, and was the only one left after the raid. Now alone in the world, he made his way out of the cave, wandering the world with a small collection of books. Wonwoo eventually found himself at the gates of a well-renowned wizard college, where the elder wizards welcomed him in due to his intense arcane energy and passion for knowledge. He spent many years learning as much as he could about everything from history to magic, before being sent into the world to research for more. He tried to ignore the weird looks he got for his dragon-like appearance, but sometimes it was difficult to ignore. That was, until he met Seungcheol, who welcomed Wonwoo's thirst for knowledge. Wonwoo would make sure to stop at Seungcheol's regularly on his research quest to empower his magic.

Woozi: Tiefling Sorcerer

Woozi could never quite remember a time in his childhood where he felt safe. Due to he and his family's appearance and abilities, they were often ran out of wherever they lived. His family told him as a child the story of how his family got their abilities - after falling victims to an attempted war on their people, Woozi's ancestors begged the deities for a means of protection, and they were blessed with powers over darkness and shadows. However, this only increased the fear of Woozi's bloodline, thus leaving him to live a life on the run. As an adult, Woozi tried his best to remove the stigma of his looks and powers by using his shadows to entertain, but unfortunately, people will always fear the infernal, no matter how good they are. After being mugged and attacked, Woozi found himself lying in the street, waiting for it all to end, when Seungkwan and Vernon came upon him. They rushed Woozi to Seungcheol's house, where for the first time, Woozi found himself in the presence of love, warmth, and acceptance.

Seokmin: Half-Elf Warlock

Seokmin was born out of wedlock to an elven princess and a human ranger. Unfortunately, due to the stigma of their relationship, Seokmin's mother was locked away to raise Seokmin all by herself. Despite their situation, Seokmin's mother made sure to keep things light, regularly telling him her love story that always made him smile. When she eventually passed, Seokmin found a letter from his father talking about how he found a sword that could only be wielded by the truest member of the elven clan - Excalibur. Seokmin set out to find the sword, and after many years, came across a cave where the sword was hidden. He went to pull the sword out of its celestial sheath when it cut him, unknowingly poisoning him. As he lay dying in the cave, the Messenger of Death appeared before him, saying that Seokmin would be saved if they made a pact - Seokmin would become "the living messenger", tasked with escorting the dead to their families to pay their last respects before leading them into the afterlife. Seokmin accepted the deal, and wielding Excalibur, became "the living messenger". He met Seungcheol while performing his duties, and Seungcheol took Seokmin in to rest after such a difficult task. Seokmin would regularly pay visits to Seungcheol, always greeting him like an old friend.

Mingyu: Half-Orc Barbarian

Mingyu has no real memories of his parents, or his childhood. All he knows is that as early as he could remember, he was the caregiver for his younger sister. It was always just them, wandering on the road, taking odd jobs and relying on the kindness of strangers. They would regularly get odd looks, and even run out of town for being half-orcs, but that didn't stop Mingyu from trying his best to give his sister the world. However, his heart of gold and good intentions didn't always translate well - Mingyu was incredibly clumsy and dense. This would often cause him to get mixed up with the wrong people; and, with his strength and power from all the odd jobs, it was easy for him to be seen as a barbarian. This all came to a head one night, as a now adult Mingyu was working a shift in a dingy old tavern in the middle of a city run by a horrible gang of orcs. He looked up to see an old, ugly orc hitting on his sister, who was sitting innocently at the end of the bar while he worked. The old orc started getting handsy, and before Mingyu could even blink, he was launching himself at the old orc, knocking the creep out cold. There was a deafening silence before the whole tavern burst into cheers - turns out, the orc he just beat the crap out of was the leader of the city, a tyrant. Now, Mingyu was the new leader of the village - and he had NO idea what he was doing. Thankfully, this is when he meets Wonwoo, who had come to the village seeking knowledge of ancient orc rites. Wonwoo told Mingyu of Seungcheol, who would be able to help Mingyu figure out this whole "leadership" thing. From then on, despite still being clumsy and a bit dense, Mingyu knew that he had people in his life there to support him.

Minghao: Elf Monk

All Minghao remembers is the monastery he was raised in. He was told that his birth parents gave him to the monastery as payment for the monk's services to their village. The monks trained him from an early age to use the energy and power stored in his body to protect and commit acts of service for others. However, the monks noticed early on that despite his skill and passion, Minghao had a bit of a…chaotic streak. Minghao had noticed that the monks of his monastery were greedy, and instead of helping everyone regardless of their status, began to only cater their services to those who could pay a hefty price. Minghao, despite being taught to keep silent and be of service, would make his voice heard, telling the monks how terrible they were for focusing on wealth rather than helping those who truly needed it. Those moments usually ended up with him in a wooden solitary cell to “think about his transgressions against the monastery". After one too many times of being put into solitary, MInghao, quite literally, walked out of the monastery in broad daylight, middle fingers up. If he was going to do right by humanity, he was going to do it his way - no more rules and regulations. On his travels, he would regularly find himself taking care of local perverts, tyrants, and bigots, and theatrically and elegantly putting them on their butts with all the skills he had been trained to do since birth. That’s why Minghao finding Jun was near fated to happen. All Minghao saw was two unruly jerks beating up on someone defenseless, so he saved the stranger and dragged him back to his tent to heal him. Minghao’s heart hurt hearing Jun’s story, and he knew in his heart that his next mission was to give Jun the life he deserved. With Jun’s permission, Minghao trained Jun in being a monk, teaching Jun all the skills that he was raised with, including altruism for those who need it most. This would lead to their fated meeting with Seungcheol, and the rest is history.

Seungkwan: Half-Elf Bard

Seungkwan probably has the most…“normal” upbringing. Being raised by his mother in a larger family, there was a lot of love in his home. His mother encouraged him to pursue music after seeing his talent at a very young age. Having older sisters also taught Seungkwan the art of learning and keeping secrets and how to mix that with his musical talents. Seungkwan grew up a very intelligent, observant, and talented secret keeper who used those secrets to fuel his music…and his insults. Seungkwan’s talents didn’t come without some criticism. Many people in his village believed that he was not “masculine” enough due to the fact that he played music and was more expressive than what most considered “manly”. This did not stop Seungkwan - he knew all their secrets. Even though there were times that the comments got to him, some secret-based vicious mockery spells could take care of that. One day, one of Seungkwans’ little “roast” moments went a little too far. He compared someone in the village to the Mothman. Unbeknownst to Seungkwan, the Mothman does not take mockery lightly, and so sent his “faithful” stooge to go and “take care” of Seungkwan. That stooge was Vernon, the chillest human ever. Vernon, instead of doing what Mothman ordered, instead befriended Seungkwan to Mothman’s dismay. Seungkwan and Vernon ended up becoming solid companions. They would regularly travel together, Seungkwan performing on the road as a traveling secret keeper, and Vernon tagging. Every now and again Vernon would be summoned to a different location to take care of something, or someone, by the Mothman, and Seungkwan would wait patiently for him to return. At one point, Vernon blipped out without warning, leaving Seungkwan confused and lost - leading to Seungcheol saving the day and taking him (and eventually Vernon) in. That is how Seungkwan and Vernon decided that should they ever get fully lost or separated, that they could always rely on Seungcheol’s place as a rendezvous.

Vernon: Human Warlock

Vernon, from the time he was born, was the most relaxed person alive - casual, going with the flow of the people around him. He quickly became an enigma in the village, never being really phased by the chaos, and always just being there and rolling with the punches. One day, Vernon was out on a solo walk through the woods when he wandered a little too deep. Vernon eventually found himself staring into the large, red eyes of a dark shadowy figure. The shadowy figure introduced himself as the Mothman, and told Vernon that he could give Vernon everything he desired, as long as Vernon did anything that the Mothman asked. When the Mothman asked if they had a deal, Vernon, expressionless, just said “...’kay”. Mothman, unfortunately, quickly found out that Vernon was the most unpredictable person to ever exist. When the Mothman would summon Vernon to kill people that had insulted the Mothman, he would tell Vernon to “take care” of that person. The lack of specificity would leave Vernon room for interpretation. So, instead of killing people, he would approach the targets and be like “hey, so you said this thing about the Mothman. He’s like, my patron dude, and he’s not cool with that. Could you maybe not do that?” Every one of them would be astounded by the coolness of how Vernon approached them and would be “...sure?”, before Vernon would say “cool, see ya” and leave. Vernon also often forgets that he has magical abilities, and regularly spooks himself when they manifest. Needless to say, instead of being an asset, he was a pain in Mothman’s side. This nonchalant approach to doing the Mothman’s bidding was how Vernon ended up becoming friends with Seungkwan. Vernon would still get summoned, much to the dismay of both Seungkwan and Mothman. However, once everything got settled, and they found Seungcheol, Vernon knew he would never stray too far from those he held dear.

Dino: Half-Elf Monk Fighter

Chan was told by the monks that he was left on the steps of the monastery with a note stating that due to him being born a half-elf, he had to be sealed away so as to not bring shame to his birth family. The monks were heartbroken that his child was abandoned so easily, and so they took him in and raised him as one of their own, treating him like the baby of the family. Despite his age, Chan would always put in the most effort into his training and he became one of the most skilled monks in the monastery. Before he knew it, he was made to be one of the highest ranked patrol monks for the local village, serving as a protector from potential raiders. One night, as the patrol monks were out doing services in the village, the smell of smoke began to waft through the air. Chan ran back to the monastery, but when he arrived, everything was engulfed in flames. He watched as the world they knew became ash. The unwarranted guilt of not being able to protect his family in the monastery, and the village, began to eat away at Chan. Even though he was told that he didn't have to, Chan decided to leave and to continue his training so that something like what had happened would not happen again. Chan found himself walking for miles and miles each day, training his body for endurance and strength. He would practice combat and energy-saving forms, and he would find other local protectors and request to train with them for a period. This is how he ended up finding a place with Seungcheol. Chan had wandered into the village, going up to locals and asking where he could find whoever protects the village. Every single person he asked immediately pointed him to the village sheriff, Seungcheol. Chan quickly asked Seungcheol to train him in whatever way Seungcheol knew how so that Chan could be the ultimate protector. Seungcheol agreed and took Chan under his wing, and began to train him to be a kind and fearless protector. Throughout their time together, Chan began to remember what he felt like at the monastery where he was raised. Seungcheol, to him, brought back memories of the life he once knew - being treated like the baby of the family, but also like an equal with untapped potential. Chan forgot how much comfort he found in an environment like this, and he knew that with Seungcheol, he would have another family for the rest of his life.

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handeaux · 10 months

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Did Lafcadio Hearn Really Hear The Blues In Cincinnati Way Back In 1876?

Many cities claim to be the cradle of the Blues. Saint Louis has a very nice Blues museum, and so does Clarksdale, Mississippi. The Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown, said New Orleans was “the home of the Blues.” Cincinnati has never exerted a serious claim along those lines, but we must ask: Did Lafcadio Hearn discover something like the Blues in Cincinnati as early as 1876?

It is impossible to research Cincinnati history without running into the man who was born on a Grecian island in 1850 as Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn, and who was buried in 1904 as Koizumi Yakumo in Japan. During the decade he wrote for Cincinnati newspapers he was known as Lafcadio Hearn. Abandoned by his parents, shuttled among a collection of uncaring Irish relatives, Hearn was shipped off to America by a cousin plotting to steal his inheritance. He made his way to Cincinnati and while here wrote hundreds of articles, many of them for the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Commercial.

Over a period of months, Hearn wandered through what he called the Levee and what we call the Public Landing to listen to some music. He wrote a lengthy article headlined “Levee Life/Haunts and Pastimes of the Roustabouts/Their Original Songs and Peculiar Dances” published by the Cincinnati Commercial on March 17, 1876. Hearn sets the scene in typical fashion, employing long, languorous sentences emphasizing the strange and unfamiliar aspects of this environment so alien to his white middle-class readers.

“But, on a cool spring evening, when the levee is bathed in moonlight, and the torch-basket lights dance redly upon the water, and the clear air vibrates to the sonorous music of the deep-toned steam-whistle, and the sound of wild banjo thrumming floats out through the open doors of the levee dance-houses, then it is perhaps that one can best observe the peculiarities of this grotesquely-picturesque roustabout life.”

When Hearn says he was on the Levee, he actually meant the neighborhood just east of the Public Landing, known then as Sausage Row, which is now the greenspace along the Serpentine Wall. He also collected songs from the city’s largest African American neighborhood, known as Bucktown. Bucktown was located between Broadway and Culvert streets and between Sixth and Seventh. It is now nothing but parking lots.

Hearn transcribed a selection of lyrics collected from the African American residents of the Cincinnati riverfront. Hearn’s ear immediately recognized that the music he heard down in Bucktown and on the Levee was different from anything his white readers were familiar with. As he said:

“You may hear old Kentucky slave songs chanted nightly on the steamboats, in that wild, half-melancholy key peculiar to the natural music of the African race; and you may see the old slave dances nightly performed to the air of some ancient Virginia-reel in the dance-houses of Sausage Row, or the ‘ball-rooms’ of Bucktown.”

Doesn’t that sound like the Blues? Some of the lyrics Hearn transcribed could be picked up by modern Blues artists and recorded today. For example, Hearn presents a song titled “Ninety-Nine”:

Whar do you get yer whisky? Whar do you get yer rum? I got it down in Bucktown, At Number Ninety-nine.

And another:

I come down the mountain, An' she come down the lane, An' all that I could say to her Was, “Good-by, ‘Liza Jane.”

Hearn would have had no way of knowing at the time, but he recorded songs that are just a step or two from evolving into the classic Blues format. It is regrettable that he did not capture the tunes supporting these lyrics. Yet another near-Blues, a song Hearn said was sung exclusively by women, would have fit perfectly into the repertoire of Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey:

I have a roustabout for my man— Livin ' with a white man for a sham, Oh, leave me alone, Leave me alone, I'd like you much better if you'd leave me alone.

While Hearn does not provide musical notation for the songs, he does describe the instrumentation that accompanied them:

“A well-dressed, neatly-built mulatto picked the banjo, and a somewhat lighter colored musician led the music with a fiddle, which he played remarkably well and with great spirit. A short, stout Negress, illy dressed, with a rather good-natured face and a bed shawl tied about her head, played the bass viol, and that with no inexperienced hand.”

Hearn’s description of an evening in one of the Bucktown saloons sounds like just the sort of environment in which the Blues were born somewhere along the waterways of America. Whatever Hearn found, whether it was the embryonic Blues or a related offshoot that died on the vine we may never know, because Lafcadio Hearn didn’t stick around much longer.

One day, Hearn wrote to his local mentor, an anarchist printer named Henry Watkin, "It is time for a fellow to get out of Cincinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of America." Hearn went off to New Orleans on the way to the West Indies and on to Japan, where he spent the rest of his life.

#lafcadio hearn #cincinnati music #cincinnati blues #african amercan history #riverboat life #bucktown #sausage row

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eccedeus · 3 months

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One could quite easily fall into the misconception that sirens are a purely mythological or ancient creature. In reality, sirens have cunningly adapted to the modern era and regularly emerge in visible yet disguised form, but you can learn to identify them. They manage to hijack the radiowaves and hitlists every decade or so in the shape of one or more white men strumming on a banjo or acoustic guitar and singing poppy folk songs. In fact there may be a siren in your playlist right now

#shitpost #modern mythology #sirens #noah kahan #mumford and sons #simon and garfunkel?#sometimes theres a woman on vocals #of monsters and men

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five-rivers · 2 years

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Danger First Chapter 12

@pocketramblr

Here we go again! This chapter wound up mostly dialogue, but it was fun dialogue, so I have no regrets.

AO3

The first thing that happened after the principal’s demand was surprised silence.

The second thing that happened was Mr. Aizawa jerking straight up out of his sleeping bag and shouting, “Don’t you dare try to poach my students, you rat!”

This caused Izuku to startle hard enough that the remote for the projector flew out of his hands and shattered against a nearby wall. This was nothing to Kaminari’s reaction, which was a flash of electricity that shorted out all the lights in the room.

There was silence again.

Tinny music began to play. Cat! I’m a kitty cat! And I dance, dance, da--

Mr. Aizawa answered his phone with a violent motion accompanied by the sound of a tearing plaster cast. “No!” he growled into the receiver. “So what? It isn’t as if--” He cut off, as if he’d been interrupted. “Fine. You five. Go talk to Nezu. Bring your lunch. The rest of you, go somewhere that hasn’t just had a major electrical accident. Except for you, Kaminari; let’s have a discussion about quirk control.”

Kaminari’s gulp was audible.

“I can’t believe that song is still popular,” said Yoichi. “It was ancient when I was born.”

“Clearly,” said En, “Aizawa is a connoisseur of the classics.”

Banjo stared at them. “What are you talking about?

“I wonder what Principal Nezu is like,” said Uraraka, nervously.

“He’s an upstanding and impressive citizen, according to my brother!” said Iida, his voice pitched a little closer to the breaking point than usual. “Very-” there was a long pause, “-passionate! Dedicated to his work!”

“As a principal should be!” agreed Monoma, his nervousness much more pronounced. “He does make sure UA is the best!”

“He’s nice,” said Izuku, “but kind of scary…”

“You’ve met him?” asked Yaoyorozu.

“Yeah, just before the USJ. I, um, my quirk was really- was really acting up, because, you know.” He hunched his shoulders. “Do you think we’re in trouble?” He’d been trying to focus on Danger Sense while they walked, but it wasn’t giving him a clear signal.

It hadn’t been going off when they’d been putting the presentations together, either, come to think of it. But then, would it? He vaguely recalled some spikes of anxiety when taking the written entrance exam, but he also picked up low-level danger from improperly fastened doorknobs and things like that. Maybe getting scolded by the principal wasn’t enough of a danger to register to him past the ‘background noise.’ He had a quirk now, he had to pay more attention to things.

“Wouldn’t you be the one to know?” asked Monoma, expression one of genuine curiosity.

“Talking to the principal is a lot different from being ambushed by villains,” said Uraraka.

Izuku giggled nervously. “Y-yeah, there’s also the whole being based on how- how anxious I’m feeling, and sometimes a person just feels anxious, right?”

“Ow. Those’re sure some pitying looks.”

“We had no idea Danger Sense was such a difficult quirk,” said Nana.

The vestiges turned their own pitying look on Hikage.

The doors to Nezu’s office opened on their own, before Izuku or any of the others could knock. It was a bit startling, given that they didn’t look like automatic doors, but Izuku didn’t get why his classmates jumped.

Maybe if he hadn’t come earlier, he’d’ve jumped, too, but he’d had different concerns, then, and… Well. Anyway.

“Come in! Come in!” said Principal Nezu, who was practically vibrating behind his desk. “Am I a rabbit, a chipmunk, or a weasel? One thing’s for sure, I’m Principal Nezu! And you five have presented me with a bit of a conundrum.”

“S-sorry,” said Izuku.

“Oh, heavens! It isn’t something to apologize for. As a matter of fact, I am quite pleased with the research you did. Please, sit down, all of you.”

They gingerly pulled chairs from where they were lined up against the walls to ring Nezu’s desk.

“Excellent, excellent. Now. In normal years, I wouldn’t have called you here at all except, perhaps, to congratulate you on work well done - which, mind you, I would like to do anyway. The gathering of intelligence and drawing conclusions from data is an important skill for heroes, particularly investigative heroes, to have. Few students or groups of students have been so accurate. We generally use a degree of randomness when selecting events. This year, however, is different.”

“Because of the attacks,” said Yaoyorozu.

“Quite so. The issue, you see, is that if you can so accurately guess the events--”

“Then so could someone else,” said Izuku before slapping his hands over his mouth. “Sorry,” he mumbled, mortified.

Nezu nodded grimly. “It would seem that in our desire to make the festival more secure, we may have outfoxed ourselves.”

“You’re going to change the events, aren’t you?” asked Monoma with a sort of bitter, defeated twist to his words.

“I’m afraid we must,” said Nezu, apologetically. “But that doesn’t mean I intend to send you back to your classmates empty handed.” He leaned forward, a sliver of sharp tooth exposed between furry lips. “Tell me, how would you solve the sports festival problem?”

They left with an assignment (a formal, polished report on their analysis of the sports festival and the patterns found in it), an answered question (if a support student gave someone else a piece of gear during the event, it was fair game to use), and slightly wobbly legs.

“That was weird,” said Uraraka, “and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Iida, whose wobble was more vocal than physical. “This is a tremendous opportunity!”

“Well, yeah,” said Uraraka, “but I don’t know if I deserve it. I was basically just taking notes on videos. Anyone could have done that.”

“But not anyone did,” said Monoma. “You did.” He sniffed. “Just like any class could make a plan like ours, but clearly few of them ever have.”

“Mm,” said Uraraka. “I really need to show you my presentation. I think it’s more common than we realized. But, like. I know at least Tsu and Jiro are smarter than I am. The only reason I’m getting credit like this is because I live alone so no one can enforce bedtime on me.”

“Even if that were true, you still put the effort in. You’re hardly getting credit for something you didn’t do,” said Monoma.

“Yeah,” said Izuku, nodding fiercely. “And your suggestions were really good!”

“It’s not like he’s going to use any of them, though,” she said, slumping a little. “We’ve drawn a complete blank as far as the events go.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Yaoyorozu. “While we may no longer have any good guesses about the specific events, our conclusions about their general nature still hold true. We will have an elimination event, a teamwork event, and a one-on-one tournament, and they will all be on a relatively open field.”

“That’s true,” said Uraraka, regaining some pep in her step. “We can make plans for the second event teams and stuff.”

“Or even the first event,” mumbled Izuku. “We really do need to see your analysis of what level of cooperation is generally allowed in the first event, Uraraka. Then, depending on the event, we can organize and practice teams optimized for speed or strike capability… Obviously we want some balance rather than one powerful team…”

“Well,” said Nana, as Izuku continued to mumble, “that’s scary. Adorable, but scary.”

“Mostly adorable,” said Yoichi.

“Not really,” said Hikage.

“He sounds like your brother,” said En. “Except with morals and a strange desire to win a high school contest.”

Yoichi blinked at them. “Right. None of you guys knew Hisashi when he was in high school.”

“Oh,” said Banjo, “that sounds like a story.”

Yoichi nodded. “I don’t know all of it, but the aftermath involved a fire truck, an ice cream factory, and the North Carolina National Guard.”

“North Carolina as in--?”

“The state, yes.”

“I thought North Carolina was a country,” said En.

“It is now.”

“Did you just imply that All for One caused the balkanization of the United States?”

“They aren’t really balkanized, they’re still a union,” said Yoich. “They still have a federal government. You know that. We were all with Eighth when he visited.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

They wobbled into Foundational Heroics, and All Might set them to basic combat drills, AKA how to punch someone without breaking your hand. An important skill for the sports festival and life as a hero in general. They were in pairs, switching between hitting a punching bag and acting as a spotter. After that, they spent an hour practicing clearing corners while infiltrating buildings, and, finally, All Might (somewhat pointedly) handed them personalized training and diet plans and set them loose on the weight training gym.

This left them with one course of action.

“Hagakure,” said Ojiro, one of many. “You have to tell us what your workout plan was.”

“Your gains are incredible,” agreed Sato.

“I want to lift Midoriya like a twig, too,” said Kaminari.

“I kind of am a twig.”

“No, no, Strawberry,” said Hagakure, managing to get past Izuku’s guard and ruffle his hair, “you’re pretty solid, just short. But it won’t be free! You guys have to tell us what Nezu wanted with you.”

“...and that’s when we were released to return,” Iida said, finishing his summation.

“Man,” said Ashido, “that’s a bummer. You guys did all that work for nothing.”

“Hm,” said Tsuyu, “did they? Kero. The basic assumptions should still hold true, so we can still strategize.”

“That’s what Midoriya said on the way back,” said Uraraka, who was taping her fingers.

“Y-yeah,” said Izuku, finishing his set and sliding off the bench. “But… there might be a problem.” A big one.

“Like what?” asked Uraraka. She took Izuku’s spot on the bench, hesitated, and then slid off again to remove some of the weights.

“Kacchan.”

“The rude boy from 1-B?” asked Tsuyu.

“When I was thinking about team match ups… Well. Anyone who works with me is going to have to deal with him, too. The thing he cares about most is winning, but if he can steamroll me in the meantime… I’m a liability for any plan we come up with.”

“Midoriya, part of the reason we’re working together is specifically to knock that guy down a peg,” said Tsuyu.

“O-oh,” said Izuku. “I guess… Yeah, it is, isn’t it? I hadn’t really…” What hadn’t he really done? Processed it? Thought about it? Realized what it meant?

What did it mean?

"It means that we're friends, silly!" said Uraraka, giving him a hearty slap on the back before settling back down on the bench.

"And that we find Bakugo's attitude to be unacceptable in someone who aspires to be a hero!" added Iida. A murmur of agreement echoed through the gym.

"Midoriya," said Tokoyami, "should Bakugo seek you out on the field of battle, we will show him true darkness."

"He means we'll beat him up if he tries to pick on you!" explained Dark Shadow.

Izuku felt himself tearing up. "You guys…"

"That's sweet," said Nana, "but it doesn't take care of the tactical issue."

"Shush," said Yoichi. "Let us enjoy the moment."

Izuku rubbed at his eyes with slightly shaking hands.

“We still need a strategy to deal with him,” said Izuku, surprised at how steady his voice was.

“We will need strategies for everything,” said Yaoyorozu, the sentence punctuated by strokes on the rowing machine she was using.

“Oi!” shouted Jiro from the racks on the other side of the room. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not going to remember a dozen different strategies for all sorts of scenarios or whatever! If we don’t know the events, we can’t make a plan to cover everything.”

(A few feet away from her, Todoroki had put on an expression that just screamed 'I'm not listening to this.')

“A conundrum indeed,” intoned Tokoyami.

“One of my martial arts instructors used to say that you can’t plan for your opponent doing anything - you just have to train yourself to act and react in the ways you can,” said Ojiro, helpfully. “Of course, then we had lessons on reading opponents, and that sort of undercut things a little bit…”

“Hey, uh…” Uraraka settled the bar back on the stand with a little oomph. “Maybe we can just… Work out how to work well together? I mean, focus on teamwork first, and then we’ll be able to adapt to, um, whatever our ‘opponent’ throws at us?”

“Ah,” said Yaoyorozu. “Very well put.”

“Ehe,” said Uraraka, scratching the back of her neck. “I try!”

“Did you just call the principal our opponent?” asked Iida, aghast.

“Well, he is, in this case, isn’t he?”

Iida was silent for a long moment. “He is,” he confirmed. Then he sat up on the leg curl machine he’d been using the whole time and buried his face in his hands. Izuku, not knowing what else to do, patted him on the back.

“Oh, hey,” said Kirishima, “did we ever make a decision about, uh… Support and gen ed?”

“Oh! Oh!” said Kaminari, waving his hand with as much energy as remained in his body after an hours-long workout. Which was to say, not much, but still more than Izuku would have thought. “I’ll get Better Purple!”

“Was that his name?” asked Kirishima.

“Nah. I don’t think he actually said his name. Huh.” He stared into the distance. “It could be his name. I mean, we’ve got some weird names here. My name’s basically thunder electricity. Makes you wonder what my parents were thinking.”

“Probably the same thing you’re thinking when you blow out your brain,” said Jiro.

“My feelings are hurt,” said Kaminari. “Terribly hurt. Wounded. Perhaps mortally so. Who gave your tongue such fatal barbs?”

“How are you so bad at your literature homework when your vocabulary is like that?”

“Talent.”

“Um,” said Izuku, raising a timid hand. “I’ll talk to Hatsume, since I kind of know her.”

“I’ll go with you!” volunteered Uraraka. “I want to see what she’s like.”

“Oh ho,” said Hagakure, grasping Uraraka by the shoulders and making her jump. “Scoping out the competition, are we?”

“W-w-what? Haha, no way!”

“Hopefully, she won’t be competition until the last event!” said Izuku. “I really think she will join us, if we can pitch it right.”

“Yeah, Hagakure,” said Tsuyu. “If we’re talking about the last event, people in this class are competition, too.”

“Actually,” said Monoma, if they do a standard tournament-style event for the finals, we’ll be competition in the second event, too. When they do tournaments, they only have sixteen people.” He paused. “We can all agree on trying to take Kacchan out first, though, right? And 1-B,” he added, as an afterthought.

For a moment, Izuku thought their alliance might fall apart. But then there were solemn nods.

“Let’s do a cheer!” said Monoma, leaping onto a treadmill. “For the crushing, humiliating defeat of 1-B and the eternal supremacy of class A!”

“That’s a little too far, actually,” said Yaoyorozu.

Izuku stopped, his heart in his throat, just a few feet down the hall from the support labs and grabbed Uraraka’s wrist.

Perhaps inevitably, the lab doors exploded outward. A girl with a ponytail and a headband with antennas on it jumped up, away from the warped metal, and ran back inside the lab, howling about her reaction while someone else cackled.

The cackle sounded a lot like Hatsume.

“Uh,” said Uraraka. “Is that normal?”

“It… seems so? It happened last time, too.”

Izuku cautiously peered inside. Danger Sense wasn’t going off, but that was no reason to be careless.

Yep. The cackle was definitely Hatsume.

“Uh,” said Izuku. “Hatsume?” He’d have to be louder to be heard over the machinery. “Hatsume! Hello!”

“Oh! Hey! Grappling hook!” The girl greeted, waving. “How’s it going? My baby holding up okay?”

“It was great,” said Izuku, shuffling into the lab. “Really. It saved my life. This is Uraraka, she’s in 1-A with me.”

“Nice!” Hatsume said. “So, whatcha here for? It better not be that you broke my baby.” Suddenly, the crosshairs in Hatsume’s eyes looked really menacing. “Just kidding! But you should bring it in for dedicated maintenance if you used it in battle.”

“I thought our hero costumes were brought in for maintenance automatically,” said Uraraka.

“They are,” said Hatsume, “but that’s like, spot checking and patching, and it’s assigned to random students. If you want to treat my babies right, you need to bring them home to mama. But I guess that’s not what you’re here for?”

“W-well, my class and I,” he gestured at Uraraka, “were wondering if, um, you’d be interested in more exposure for your- your babies. At the sports festival. We sort of have a plan.”

“Huh,” said Hatsume. Then she dragged him and Uraraka off into a small, padded side room. She tossed a box at him, and an identical one at Uraraka. Protective gear. “Put that on and you can pitch your plan to me while we test a few things.” She grinned, wickedly and hefted a… net gun? Izuku hoped it was a net gun. “Progress waits for no one, right?”

Izuku didn’t think that was how the saying went.

(The gun, unfortunately, contained glue.)

Staff meetings, even staff meetings of professional heroes, were infrequently exciting. More often, they were boring. Boring and stressful. Never a good combination. But still better than exciting and stressful. Which was what the meetings since the media break-in had been.

This meeting was not an exception.

“You want us to completely change our plans for the sports festival in under a week?” asked Kan, aghast.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” said Power Loader, who had dropped his face onto the table. “You're not the one who has to reformat the arena and add in all this… stuff.”

“Challenges, for our students!” said Nezu, far too happily.

“You aren’t the one with the biggest job, either, Maijima,” pointed out Cementoss. In contrast to his coworker, Cementoss was sitting up straight, looking at the handout Nezu had given them. “This isn’t too bad.”

“Does Maijima even have to do anything?” asked Yagi. “This look like mostly cement work…”

“The robots and traps.”

“Ah, forgive me,” said Yagi.

"Hey, hey," said Present Mic. "If I'm going to be on the field, now, who's going to do announcements?"

Nezu chittered. "Isn't it obvious? Shouta had already agreed to assist you in the announcement booth."

"Wait," said Shouta, reaching out of his sleeping bag for his packet that he had only scanned. "Wait. You're leaving me there? Alone?"

He was going to die.

Nemuri grinned at him. "What, you aren't scared, are you?"

"Only of the expectation that I'll have to sensationalize and exaggerate the abilities of children I barely know."

"You realize none of us are buying that act, right?"

"We are keeping the third event the same?" asked Yagi, oblivious to or uncaring of Shouta's distress. He was taking notes on a pad of paper to one side.

Nezu sighed. "Unfortunately, yes."

Recovery Girl made an angry little humph.

"As much as we dislike the issues it causes when students become too enthusiastic, it is the most popular and most requested event. Especially this year, our students need the professional connections internships can bring."

"Alright," said Yagi. "Ah, young Aizawa, I almost forgot. Did you still want to have the students pick aliases before the festival? We should do that soon, yes?” He looked up. “Kayama, are you free to help with that this week?"

"Oh, no," said Nemuri. "Shouta, you aren't after that again, are you?"

"I'm after it every year," said Shouta, still going through his packet to find a way out of announcing. Announcing was a job for loud extroverts who could put a positive and dramatic spin on anyone or anything, no matter how illogical.

“Only the hero course students need hero names,” said Nemuri. “For everyone else, they’d only use the names three times, maximum. We’d have to get hundreds of names that are only going to be used practically three times. Come on, All Might, tell him. It isn’t worth it.”

“I tend to side with young Aizawa on this, actually,” said Yagi. “I don’t see any reason to make it easier for villains to target our students, whether or not they’re in the hero class. In fact, in some ways, students who aren’t in the hero course are more at risk than those who are, because they don’t receive combat training beyond a little bit of self defense.” He tilted his head. “Despite the best efforts of heroes everywhere, quirk trafficking is still a major problem.”

“You have to admit, though,” said Kan, “Six hundred and sixty hero names - if the business courses decide to compete - is a lot to deal with. What if there are duplicate names?”

Yagi stared, face painted with a total lack of comprehension. “Well,” he said, “if you think it would be that much of a problem, we could always use class seat numbers.”

“Sorry, what?” asked Nemuri.

“Class numbers. Like, say, young Midoriya for instance. He is seat number 17 of class A, so he could be identified as student A-17.” Yagi shrugged. “Something similar is done at conventions, sometimes, to call up particular attendees.”

How was it that Yagi could say something so logical in such an annoying way?

“What about recognizability?” asked Kan. “We are trying to build up our students’ brands, too. They can do that with their real name, but a number? Not so much.”

Shouta sighed. “Then give the hero course students a chance to pick their names beforehand, and give everyone else the default.”

“Oof,” said Hizashi. “That’d cause a bit of resentment. Maybe give everyone a chance to pick names, and anyone who can’t come up with one, or who makes a duplicate name, gets the default.”

“There’s also always quirk names,” said Yagi, now rolling his pen between his palms. “But I find forcing that on people to be… distasteful, at best. And it has many of the same issues as broadcasting student names.”

Shouta remembered what Yagi had mentioned about All for One and quirk names and suppressed a shiver. Yeah. He could see why he found it distasteful.

“All excellent points!” said Nezu. “However, how we implement this is, at least partially, up to Nemuri.”

Nemuri took off her glasses and made a show of cleaning them. “I can talk to the first year heroics and general education courses, if you can make room for me to speak to them in your classes, but the other classes…” She shrugged. “I’m just not going to have the time to get them done. Assuming we’ll need at least a couple days before the festival to get all the names plugged into the system?”

“That is correct,” said Nezu. “It sounds like we have our answer, then.”

Shouta would like to argue that they hadn’t really agreed on anything, but whatever. It was always going to be up to Nezu in the end.

“The first year heroics and gen ed courses will pick their hero names with Nemuri’s help. For the other classes, whether or not they have dedicated time to pick a name will be decided by their homeroom teacher, and…” Nezu paused dramatically. “An email to that effect has just been sent to all the students.”

“You don’t have a computer with you,” said Yagi.

As if that would stop Nezu.

“Right, so,” said Mr. Aizawa as soon as homeroom started. “We’re doing something different today. A special class.”

The tension in the classroom congealed immediately.

“You’ll be coming up with your hero aliases.”

The congealed atmosphere transmuted into shrapnel as the class exploded. Despite the extensive bandaging, Mr. Aizawa’s hair still went up. Some of the bandages started to float too. That was interesting, maybe he had a split quirk of some kind? A gravity nullifier?

“Midoriya, pay attention,” said Mr. Aizawa. “The aliases you pick today are only temporary, but you should still put in the effort to pick something appropriate--”

“OR ELSE YOU’LL KNOW TRUE HELL!” Ms. Kayama, Midnight, shouted, throwing open the door. “Like this guy, who’s been stuck with what he let a friend fill in on his application for years.”

“Do none of you people know how to enter a room without making it into a production?”

“Come on, we’ve got to give the kids a show. Let ‘em live a little.”

Mr. Aizawa rolled his eyes. “Kayama will be leading a workshop with you today. Hopefully, you’ll have a name picked out by the end of the period, but if not, you have until the end of this week to submit a name, otherwise, you’ll go into the sports festival with a default alias.” He blinked slowly. “Of course, you’d know this if you checked your email before school this morning.”

Ms. Kayama rolled her eyes. "And with those encouraging words from your teacher, I'll start with some guidelines…"

"I bet you wish you had a class like this when you picked your hero name."

"What's wrong with my hero name?" asked En.

"I wasn't talking about yours."

"What's wrong with my name?" asked Nana, crossing her arms and looming ominously over Banjo.

"I wasn't talking about you, either! I was talking about him!"

Yoichi looked away from Izuku's class and blinked. "What hero name?"

"What do you mean what- ohhh." Banjo turned his attention to Third. "That explains so much."

Yoichi squinted suspiciously at Third. "What kind of monstrosity did you saddle me with?"

Third, who had begun to exude copious amounts of imaginary sweat, broke. "At least it's a better hero name than Banjo!"

"Hold up, do you think Banjo is my hero name? Did you pay any attention during my life at all?"

"It isn't much of a given name, either!"

"It's my family name, you Karate Kid ripoff!"

Some of Izuku's classmates picked their hero names quickly and easily. Clearly, they'd already put a lot of thought into them. Others, well…

Some of them had put too much thought into it.

"No," said Ms. Kayama. "You can't have an entire English sentence as your hero name."

"But Mademoiselle Kayama, it is a sentence that describes me perfectly!" protested Aoyama with a spin.

"Maybe trim it down to 'Can't Stop Twinkling?'"

"That's still really long though," said Monoma, not looking up from where he was doodling clocks on his paper. "No one is going to shout that in battle."

"Good point," said Midnight. "But if you're giving out criticisms, you should also propose solutions."

"Uh," said Monoma.

"Oh, oh!" said Kaminari. "How about Twinkling! That would work, right?"

"Hmmmmm," said Aoyama, still standing straight up in front of the classroom with his heels pressed together. Then he waved his board over his head. "I will accept it."

"Great," said Ms. Kayama. "Make sure you fill out and submit the proper paperwork."

"Okay," said Ms. Kayama with a heavy sigh, "new ground rule. Don't name yourself after terrifying movie monsters. You're going to be heroes, not villains."

"Aw, man," said Ashido. She returned to her seat with slumped shoulders. "This sucks. Do you know how hard it is to find anything non-villainous with acid powers? It just doesn't exist!"

"You could reference your appearance instead of your power."

Izuku winced. He wasn't what he'd call an expert on discrimination, but there was some overlap between quirkless discrimination and heteromorphic discrimination. If Ashido didn't bring up her appearance in the first place…

"I know! That's what the alien part was for!" She slid down in her seat. "Alien Queen is totally a cool name…"

Or maybe Izuku was reading too far into it. It happened.

"If you want to retain the movie reference," said Iida, "you could pick the name of the heroine instead of the villain. Ripley also gained acidic blood in later installments of the franchise."

Ashido pulled herself up. "You like the Aliens movies?"

"Is it that surprising? My brother and I enjoy watching vintage horror movies. It is quite educational!"

"I'm not sure how much of an education you can get from them if you hide in the bathroom all the time, kiddo," said Ms. Kayama.

"That-" sputtered Iida. "That was only the once! I was eight!"

"That's not how Tensei tells it."

Iida had changed a very interesting color. "This is highly unprofessional! I must object!"

"It's not bad," said Midnight, appraising. "But are you sure?"

Hagakure shrugged. "I mean, I was going to go with 'Invisible Girl' originally, but then it hit me, I'm not going to be a girl forever. It might feel weird to be called a girl when I'm like l, thirty, you know? Plus, this is funny."

"Still, Invisible Gorilla is�� quite an image."

It sure was. Izuku almost wished he could turn one of Kacchan's insults around like that, but… the idea made him faintly ill. As long as Kacchan was Kacchan, he'd never completely stop being useless Deku, he had accepted that. But having everyone else know about it?

No thank you.

"I'm sure!" said Hagakure. "Anyway, I can always beat up anyone who makes fun of me."

"That would be illegal, in most cases."

"Could! Not will!"

Monoma presented his name with a flourish. "I shall be the undefeatable Phantom Thief!"

Ms. Kayama steepled her hands in front of her lips. "Just to remind everyone, you are in training to be heroes. So, no monsters, villains, or criminals in your names."

"A Phantom Thief isn't a criminal! They are an archetype of a hero that fights for justice!"

"I want you to think carefully about what you just said and come back to me on that." She paused. "With a new name."

"Todoroki, how about you? You've been awfully quiet."

"I'm not picking a name. I'll go with the default."

Despite his best efforts, Izuku couldn't hide from his own troubles picking a name forever.

"I think I need help," he mumbled, half scrunching up a piece of paper from his notebook. "All of my ideas are terrible."

Hagakure twisted in her seat. "They can't be that bad." She snagged the paper off his desk and straightened it out. Izuku cringed. "Midori," she said. "This is just All Might Junior and Small Might crossed out over and over again."

Izuku looked away, blushing and trying to escape from the weight of Hagakure's incredulity and disappointment. Unfortunately, two seats behind Izuku, past the seat that would have belonged to the expelled student, Monoma looked up from his own frantic writing.

(“Strawberry,” said someone, just loud enough for Izuku to hear it.)

"Are you serious?" he asked. "Midoriya, please tell me you aren't serious."

"I- I did say I n-needed help," said Izuku, wilting.

"Admittedly," said En, "that is pretty embarrassing."

"You're so insensitive!" Yoichi shouted at Third, pelting him with random small objects. "Did it ever occur to you that I wouldn't want to be remembered as that?"

"I thought you were dead!"

"I was dead! That doesn't make it better!"

"Somehow not as embarrassing as this, though."

"Eyup," said Banjo.

“Okay,” said Midnight, “let’s ask the class. Any ideas for Midoriya?”

Uraraka stood up, almost knocking her desk over. She caught it with one hand and it began to float. “Strawberry!” she said. “Strawberry. I think that’s a good name. For a hero.” She put the desk back down, her own blush making her as pink as the ovals on her cheeks. “Because strawberries are sweet.”

“Marimo!” said Ashido. “They float, and they’re green.”

“What about Rabbit? Kero. Because of the ears on your costume, and because you can ‘jump’ high.”

“Those are more of an homage to All Might, though,” said Izuku, flustered.

“I think you’d be the fourth green animal themed hero this year,” said Ms. Kayama. “You could make a team.”

“Fourth?”

“Yep, there are a few students in 1-B who jumped the gun and sent in their paperwork last night. Lizardy and Jack Mantis.” She tapped her chin with one finger. “And Long Weizi, if dragons count as animals.”

Huh. Izuku wondered if there might be some correlation between animal type quirks and color--

Wait. Izuku didn’t have an animal type quirk. He just had green hair.

“I have a beautiful name for you,” said Aoyama, prancing across the room. He pointed commandingly at Izuku. “The Green Rabbit of Wonderland!”

“Another incredibly long name,” said Monoma.

“It gets shortened to Rabbit again,” observed Kaminari.

“Just ‘Midori’ would be a cool name,” said Kirishima.

“I like it,” said Hagakure, “it’s cute and it fits with your costume! Or Green Rabbit!”

“It could also be shortened to Wonder,” said Todoroki.

What an unexpected contribution!

“Oh! Because he’s wonderful?” asked Iida, entirely straight-faced.

Todoroki stared at him. Then turned his gaze on Izuku, who was trying to avoid spontaneous combustion. “No,” he said finally, and looked away again.

Also, had he just been staring into space like that since he filled out his paperwork? Not even reading or drawing or anything?

Todoroki was a bit strange, wasn’t he?

Something tugged on Izuku’s pant leg and he just managed to suppress the jump that would have sent him flying across the classroom when he saw Dark Shadow under his desk.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” Izuku repeated, faintly.

“Fumi wanted me to give you this,” she said, passing him a folded square of paper before retreating to the space under Tokoyami’s desk.

Izuku, shaking, unfolded the note.

Midoriya, my companion in darkness, it began in miniscule letters, I would like to offer my thoughts regarding your choice of pseudonym. Firstly, let us consider your ability to detect ill omens, a power much maligned even in ancient myth, with those who would give warnings either ignored or blamed for misfortune--

The (actually quite insightful and interesting) note was deceptively long, and Izuku scanned through it to the end.

--therefore, taking both parts of your quirk and your position in the class, I would recommend the names Augur, Augury, or Auspex, all terms which refer to the art of prophecy via the observation of the flights of birds.

Izuku looked up from the note and gave Tokoyami a shaky thumbs up. Tokoyami returned the gesture with a grave nod.

“Anything appeal to you, Midoriya?” asked Ms. Kayama, kindly.

“Y-yeah!” said Izuku. “They’re all wonderful! It’s just, I mean, it’s so hard to choose.”

“Well,” said Ms. Kayama, “you aren’t the only one with that problem. Remember, you have until the end of the week to fill out the paperwork and get it turned in. If you miss the date, you’ll have to use the default name.”

Honestly, A-17 didn’t sound all that bad.

The school day went normally after that. As normally as any day at UA could be, anyway. They zoomed through their normal classes, got another day of sparring and conditioning in heroics, and then it was the end of the day.

For Izuku, this meant quirk counseling.

But he had a few minutes, so he went to the bathroom and checked a book on quirk analysis out of the library (he’d been trying to find this edition forever!). On the way back, he checked his phone, and apparently Kaminari had informed the group chat that ‘better purple’ had agreed to come to the ‘Saturday sports festival cram session,’ which, perhaps inevitably, led to an argument about whether or not they could even have a cram session for a sports festival, or if it would better to just refer to it as training.

He wondered if a constant state of bemusement was just something that came with having friends, or if strange arguments were part of some intricate ritual he had no foreknowledge of. It could also be both, he supposed.

“Good,” said Mr. Aizawa, “you’re here. Find a spot to sit in. I have some worksheets for you on my desk.”

Izuku picked up the worksheets and read the first one. “How does using my quirk make me feel?”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Aizawa. “It sounds silly, but we’ve got to start somewhere. And these are the basics.” He sighed. “We will be getting into the whole ‘supposed to be superstrength’ thing eventually, but for now… No matter how weird of a quirk it is, it’s still a quirk.”

“R-right,” said Izuku, planting himself in the nearest seat and whipping out a new pen. “I’ll fill these in right away!”

“You’re not going to finish them all in one si-- Slow down, Midoriya, you-- Are you sure you don’t have a speed quirk?”

Izuku paused, baffled by the question. “Yes? Unless one of the early users had a speed quirk…”

“I wish,” said Yoichi, “that would have been so cool. And so much better than some of the users we did get.” The last was directed at Third. “I bet a speed quirk user would have lied to his successors about his friend’s name, death, and personality.”

“I was trying to make you look cool! Let it go already!”

As nice of a distraction as quirk counseling was, it didn’t solve the two very large problems looming over him. The sports festival and his hero name.

(He sighed heavily and let his entire weight hang from the subway overhead handgrip. Maybe he could figure out how to do pull ups of some kind from this?)

Arguably, the sports festival was the bigger problem, but no matter how nervous he was about it, how stressed he was about failing and dragging down his friends, they did have a plan to deal with it. He was already doing everything he could.

On the other hand, his hero name was all on him, and despite his classmate’s suggestions, he felt like he was caught in a whirlpool, about to be sucked under. A bad choice here could torpedo his future. It could expose him to vicious mockery. He knew what he was talking about! He’d seen Native get ripped apart for appropriation, and X-Less… Yeah. The internet was a scary place.

He hopped off the subway and started the jog home.

Even vigilantes from the Dawn of Quirks weren’t immune! The same forums that whispered about the quirk boogeyman in reverent tones always made time to poke fun at the apocryphal vigilante who went by Dumas. Yes, his namesake was a brilliant author, yes, it was pronounced du-mah, but that didn’t stop people from writing it as, well.

Dumb ass.

Come to think of it, wasn’t Alexandre Dumas the one who wrote the Three Musketeers? That was where the saying ‘one for all and all for one’ came from, wasn’t it?

Huh.

Could it be that…?

Nah. No way.

But back to the name. Izuku could ask his mother what she thought, but as a mom she was obligated to say that she’d like anything he chose unless it was really bad, so that would have limited utility. There weren’t really other people he could ask, except…

“Mom,” he called into the apartment, “I’m home!”

“Oh, good,” she said, emerging from her office. “How was your day at school?”

“It was good! We’re supposed to pick our hero names this week and, well, I’m a little stuck.”

His mother made a sympathetic noise. “Do you have any options?”

“Yeah. My classmates helped me come up with some. It’s just… hard to pick one.”

“Mhm,” said his mother. “I can understand that, but don’t let worries about offending someone keep you from picking what you want.”

Oh, no. Izuku hadn’t even considered that aspect. He swallowed.

“Actually,” he said, “I was wondering, do you think I could call Dad tonight even though it isn’t a scheduled day?”

“Of course,” said Inko. “Your father always wants to talk to you, you know that. But remember, the time difference means that he might not be awake to answer the phone. I’ll go find the number he gave us for the hotel he’s in now.”

“Right,” said Izuku with a small nod. Then he grimaced and tried to clean his ear out with his pinky. Growing up with Kacchan meant that he sometimes had a little bit of tinnitus, and he was used to it, even if it was annoying.

It was funny, though. Today it sounded almost like a bunch of people screaming in horror in the back of his head.

If any of you want to weigh in on Midoriya's hero name, please feel free to do so!

#danger first #danger first au #bnha #boku no hero academia #fanfic

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notabled-noodle · 2 years

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alright thank u i am going to Talk now

(prefacing this with. uh. you might already know this stuff. i dont really know whats supposed to be common knowledge and what isn't, but like. i enjoy talking abt this anyway)

so lately i've been thinking about fantasy, because that's what's on my brain all the time ever since i was like 8. Specifically though I am thinking about the fact that "fantasy" as a genre is not very different from soft sci fi

"soft" sci fi describes sci fi where the science isn't explained to you; it's just Science. Science that isn't actually possible usually falls under this category. they might put in explanation of a few things, give you an idea of what's going on, give you vocabulary, etc, but you probably will not actually be able to understand the science (because, as mentioned, it's usually impossible. it's fake science). So, like, Star Wars is soft sci fi, because... the force does things. it does cool force things. pay no attention to how the force works, it just Does.

"hard" sci fi is a subcategory of sci fi that's concerned with accuracy & logic. the science is Real Science. iirc the martian is hard sci fi, or pretty close. Most of the science in it is, like, feasible. It's calculations & estimations as to what would actually be possible, messed around with a bit to keep in the story structure.

You can obviously argue that hard sci fi is different from fantasy, because science that follows accuracy, plausibility, rules, & logic is inherently different from magic that is fundamentally still built on the impossible. But soft sci fi and fantasy are basically the same thing. Star Wars is a fantasy film series. There's a reason SFF (science fiction & fantasy) is a name for a category. The difference between a lot of sci fi and fantasy is literally just execution; you can have a story about corrupt overlords using their Cool Death Power to hurt the people, but if the overlords are mystical aliens and the people are cyborgs, and it's sci fi. You put it in an ancient world where the overlords are wizards and their people are the fae, it's fantasy. The magic/alien power doesn't have to change at all--it's running on the same concept.

Sci fi and fantasy are therefore often separated by, like, vibes? that & themes, since what sci fi deals with tends to be far different from what fantasy deals with. but fundamentally, the line is drawn in sand, and imo more people should explore the line between sci fi and fantasy. (spellhacker by MK england did it pretty well; there is both a sciencey futuristic world with themes of corruption & a plot that hinges on magic/the magic system.)

aaa sorry for such a long ramble but. yeah ;-; i like this stuff

separation of genre categories is actually one of my favourite things to think about — with books, movies, and music… mostly because there’s definitely times when it doesn’t make sense completely.

I hadn’t heard the term “soft sci-fi” before but that makes sense as a category (I assume that Doctor Who also falls into it?)

it’s kind of similar to how country music and pop music blend into each other super regularly. listening to country radio can be a lottery — is this song going to be something that could be played in a club? or is it going to include the harmonica and banjo?

anyway, yeah! genre is weird! humans like to put things into categories even when there are a bunch of blurred lines!

#asks

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brookstonalmanac · 2 years

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Holidays 6.21

Holidays

Atheist Solidarity Day

Baby Boomer Recognition Day

Banjo Lesson Day

Bill Murray Day

Create a New National Day Day

Day of the Martyrs (Togo)

Father’s Day (Egypt, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Syria, UAE)

Ferris Wheel Day

Flag Burning Day

Go Skateboarding Day

Het Meetjesland Day (Belgium)

Independence Day (Greenland; assumed self-rule, 2009)

International Flower Day

International Music Day (f.k.a. World Music Day)

International T-Shirt Day

International Yoga Day (UN)

LP Day

Martyrs' Day (Togo)

National Aboriginal Day (a.k.a. First Nations Day; Canada)

National Arizona Day

National ASK Day

National Create a New National Holiday Day

National Day of the Gong

National Dog Party Day

National Heroes’ Day (Bermuda)

National Seashell Day

National Selfie Day

New Hampshire Statehood Day (#9; 1788)

Obscenity Day

Reaping Machine Day

Solstice [1st Day of Summer in Northern Hemisphere] (a.k.a. ...

Acophony (G’BroagFran of Anti-Music; Church of the SubGenius)

Alban Hefin (a.k.a. Litha or Midsummer; Celtic, Pagan) [4 of 8 Festivals of the Natural Year]

Aimless Wandering Day

Anne and Samantha Day

Aymara New Year (Año Nuevo Aymara; Bolivia)

Cuckoo Warning Day (it will be a wet summer if the cuckoo is heard today)

Daylight Appreciation Day

Day of Private Reflection

Day of the Martyrs (Togo)

Feast of the Great Spirit (Native American)

Fête de la Musique

Finally Summer Day/Finally Winter Day

Hump Day (Tasmania)

Indigenous New Year (We Tripantu; Año Nuevo Indígena; Chile)

Into Raymi (Incan Sun God Festival; Sacsayhuamán Andes Mountain Natives)

Jaanipäev (Estonia)

Jāņi (Latvia)

Juhannus Day (Finland)

Kupala (fertility rite)

Kupala Night (Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Russia)

Litha (Wiccan/Pagan; northern hemisphere)

Midnight Sun Festival (Nome, Alaska)

Midsomarsblog (Norse celebration of fishing, trading & raiding)

Midsummer

Midsummer Baal (Celtic)

National Celluma Light Therapy Day

National Daylight Appreciation Day

National Day of Greenland

National Energy Shopping Day

Polar Bear Swim (Nome, Alaska)

Saint Jonas' Festival (Lithuania)

Solsticio de Invierno (Bolivia)

Sommar Börjar (Sweden)

Tall Girl Appreciation Day

Tiregān (Iran)

Wadjet (Ancient Egypt)

We Tripantu (winter solstice festival in the southern hemisphere; Chile)

Wianki (Poland)

Willkakuti (Andean-Amazonic New Year; Aymara)

World Humanist Day

World Peace and Prayer Day

Yule (Wiccan/Pagan; southern hemisphere)

Stock Up On Antiperspirant Day

T-Shirt Day

Ulloortuneq (Greenland)

World Giraffe Day

World Handshake Day

World Humanist Day

World Hydrography Day

World Music Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Gin and Tonic Season begins

Johnnie Walker Day

Lambrusco Day

National Smoothie Day

Peaches and Cream Day

Third Tuesday in June

National Cherry Tart Day [3rd Tuesday]

Royal Ascot begins (UK) [3rd Tuesday]

Feast Days

Aaron of Brittany (Christian; Saint)

Alban of Mainz (Christian; Saint)

Aloysius Gonzaga (Christian; Saint)

Engelmund of Velsen (Christian; Saint)

Eusebius of Samosata (Christian; Saint)

St. Henry (Positivist; Saint)

Joseph Smith Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Leufredus (a.k.a. Keufroi; Christian; Saint)

Martin of Tongres (Christian; Saint)

Meen (a.k.a. Mevenus or Melanus; Christian; Saint)

Onesimos Nesib (Lutheran)

Ralph (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Sakimake (先負 Japan) [Bad luck in the morning, good luck in the afternoon.]

Umu Limnu (Evil Day; Babylonian Calendar; 29 of 60)

Premieres

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, by Richard Wagner (Opera; 1868)

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, by Elton John and Kiki Dee (Song; 1976)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Animated Disney Film; 1996)

Minority Report (Film; 2002)

Mr. Tambourine Man, by The Byrds (Album; 1965)

Monsters University (Animated Pixar Film; 2013)

The Parent Trap (Film; 1961)

Toy Story 4 (Animated Pixar Film; 2019)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Film; 1966)

World War Z (Film; 2013)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 172 of 2022; 193 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 25 of 2022

Celtic Tree Calendar: Duir (Oak) [Day 12 of 28]

Chinese: Month 5 (Púyuè), Day 23 (Yi-Si)

Chinese Year of the: Tiger (until January 22, 2023)

Hebrew: 22 Sivan 5782

Islamic: 21 Dhu al-Qada 1443

J Cal: 22 Sol; Sunday [22 of 30]

Julian: 8 June 2022

Moon: 44% Waning Crescent

Positivist: 4 Charlemagne (7th Month) [St. Henry]

Runic Half Month: Dag (Day) [Day 10 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 1 of 90)

Zodiac: Cancer (Day 1 of 30)

Calendar Changes

Cancer (The Crab) begins [Zodiac Sign 4; thru 7.22]

Summer [Season 3 of 4]

#Holidays

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jackalsinthekitchen · 7 months

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pop report #5: endless summer edition (9/16/23)

a sundazed glance at Billboard’s top 20 from two weeks ago – bitch, I said what I said

Summer’s over, the heat from the proverbial kitchen and literal sun still burning the other cheek I feebly turned to both. Per tradition, we’re bidding the season goodbye with a smattering of typical plaints that it wasn’t long enough, or felt like it didn’t happen. But here in Texas, it’s in full swing by early May, with not much mystery over what we’re in for beyond what degree (Fahrenheit) of punishing. So yeah – we’re pretty sure it happened. Yet again, we thought we were ready for it, and yet again, it went a little harder on us than it needed to. Whatever else went down, that lucky old sun made it cruel enough to justify a now-ancient Taylor chorus shooting up the pop charts. Like anything else that shoots up the pop charts these days, reasons why were imperfectly clear. One more testament to the inimitable inhabitability of the One True Pop Star’s catchy canon, perhaps? My summer wasn’t my fave; I can still feel it from here.

I’ve barely touched this new blog o’ mine, which I dreamt of putting up for years – the present you ogle at through the shop window for ages only to take it home and unwrap it, and see all that built-up desire instantly brown with oxidization. While Jackals! still doesn’t have a hook, for the first four weeks of 2023, at a rate of productivity that was ultimately to no one’s benefit, I looked at the pop charts and decided to think out loud about what they meant. But the thing is, in a year when people are thinking about it more out loud than usual, nobody seems to know exactly what they mean. There are analyses trenchant and muddled, and scattered rebuttals to both, strewn throughout comments sections we’ll never read. I’m too bored to even try to recap what I think I know about how these numbers are measured. Even my late best friend’s agitated analyses resisted my comprehension. Why dull the aesthetic with the statistical?

Suffice it to say, there are so many theories about “gaming the system” floating around, it feels a bit like last election year. Most of the people on my radar are in some way convinced that one Oliver Anthony Music’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” won its surprise Billboard victory through nefarious right-wing interference – comparable, you hear, to that Jim Caviezel movie about (fighting) child trafficking, where people bought out whole theatres just to stick it to Brandon. It’s not about the music, they say, it’s about waving a righteous-anger rag, and the rallying cry might as well be coming from any red-faced red-haired Bible-belt boy with a banjo who caught the Qanon virus at très-unmasked family get-togethers. A more neutral friend points out that “Rich Men North of Richmond” hung in at a basically ungameable top 3 place on Spotify for a bit. It was all great industry all around: for MAGAfolk, thinkpiecers, Billy Bragg.

Times change fast, though, so even if a few people are still reeling from them, the Billboard chart – much less Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, where Anthony has vanished – has moved on to its latest single-star infiltration. That star is Queen Zillennial Olivia Rodrigo, whose guts are is filled with readymade hits, and who may portend a long-awaited pendulum swing back to a more rockist zeitgeist. But because it still literally does not matter what I do here, I wanna warm up these lazy fingers some by casting an eye back to two weeks ago, a whole world away, when the charts looked a bit more like they did in the middle of swelter season. At the ground floor of that top 20 was the indefatigable fatigue-pop of “Anti-Hero”, my most favorite song, which does not seem to have engendered a self-reflection revolution here on earth. But hey, maybe people are just keeping quiet about it. Even Taylor is going through some shit.

#19 is “Thinkin’ Bout Me”, by Morgan Wallen, the, uh, hot-button country artist about whom many folks certainly have thoughts. I haven’t heard this song as of this point in this paragraph, and I suspect it’s not as good as Frank Ocean’s pillow-pop classic “Thinkin’ Bout You”, which is the next song you get when you type “thinkin bout” in the search bar. Mr. Wallen, a reformed butt-rocker, has a harder edge than many of his southern-pop peers, and an excellent article I linked to earlier in this piece, written by a (non-right-wing) writer who’s spent just a little more time with young Wallen’s proudly endless albums than I have, suggests his lyrics even bespeak hip-hop (gasp!) influences. Perhaps this explains some words he enjoys using. The beat of this one is ripped unaltered from hip-hop; the lyrics might pass too, if rapped, though not in what I perhaps unfairly call “truck nuts voice”. Wallen is feeling upset, and entitled, about a recent breakup in this enduring hit, not helping his case by singing the song like an asshole. (More on this later.)

Country really is in its butt-rock era, in a sense – the guitars are amped-up and grinding, the (male) vox are growly and real-ass proud about it. “Need a Favor”, by something called Jelly Roll that’s miles away from Morton, was cited recently in an AA meeting I attended by someone it caught unsuspecting on the radio. We’re a very talk-to-God crowd in AA, and contra Wallen, there’s a humility in this song that’s not matched at all by its sound, but which pushes its stridence into something resembling passion. I’ve just found out via Google/Wikipedia that Jelly Roll is apparently an “American rapper”. He looks like a heavier Post Malone – also an “American rapper” even though everything he puts out sounds just like a pop song – and has a narrative about being incarcerated many times, which also lends some poignant complexity to his hit’s hook. Verdict: annoying if you’re in the wrong mood, but not necessarily bad for your health.

Next in my discovery journey is finding out who the War & Treaty are – they’re a Black husband and wife who weave country and rock into more traditionally Black styles like soul and blues. It makes sense that they’d team up with Zach Bryan, one of the better and, dare I say it, more soulful heavy country hitters hanging out in the high end of these charts. “Hey Driver”, which doesn’t trouble you with electric guitars or even drums at the top, is really stirring. The juxtaposition of tW&T’s full-bodied harmonies against Bryan’s voice, which crumbles once it hits the air, is gorgeous, and the lyrics boast a complexity rarely troubled with on most of these hits. It’s all sincerity, but for the most part, I feel like it earns it. Though the Billboard charts continue to exhibit a kind of separate-but-equal mélange of genres, this sort of crossover still feels rare – even if so much pop, R&B and country takes production cues from hip-hop.

At #16 (we’re at #16 btw) is the ever-restless, currently-somewhat-exhausted Miley Cyrus, whose tired but empowered “Flowers” is already one of pop’s great breakup anthems and stands as one of the songs of last summer. I spent some time in Ms. Cyrus’ canon last spring for a piece I’m proud of, but it didn’t dispel the impression I’ve always had that behind that fabulous voice and insouciant demeanor is not a very clear artistic vision. Cyrus swings from new tack to new tack, and unless she’s put a truly fantastic single together – she does this every so often – there’s always a trace of “unconvincing” there for me. “Used to Be Young” is scarcely different. A piano ballad, something she seems to personally favor, it has an air of reflective weariness (cf. “Malibu”) and light penitence (perhaps for She is Coming?). The media was rarely kind to her, but the hurt only comes out in her songs. The hook is solid, if a little programmatic (“you say I used to be wild, I say I used to be young”), and the music narrowly avoids sappiness with an atmospheric, beaty arrangement. And the fact is, when she starts to belt, she thins out her competition.

“Religiously” by Bailey Zimmerman – I would’ve typed “Blake” based on his face and sound if I hadn’t looked twice – is another revved-up, growly country song about having been deserted, and unlike Mr. Wallen, Zimmy doesn’t wink at you that she was super wrong to leave. The chorus – “I ain’t got the only woman who was there for me/religiously” – skirts patriarchal discomfort, but the lucky among us have had a deeply patient, unwaveringly supportive partner, so the regret is broadly relatable. The religious content is also rather muted – not like this is worship music or anything, though I guess it could pass if it were cornier – weaving the spiritual and secular in a seemingly seamless way. But it’s not not corny. It’s not clear if BZ has a sense of humor, and while his voice has some nice gristle to it (a la ZB), like most of country’s current heavy hitters, the music sounds straight from the factory (a factory with mandolins).

Lil Durk (feat. J. Cole)’s “All My Life”, #14, is also corny, but not enough to drag it down. The slow unfurl of its polysyllabic ruminations (there’s an element of hip-hop the rest of pop would do well to absorb), the classic-Kanye style kids’-choir hook, the simple, gorgeous chord progression: this is a song that aims to make you cry, and more or less earns it. Cole’s climactic middle section about slain young rappers is the highlight, of course; never were more brilliant pop stars cut down too soon than in the modern rap era. But the whole thing has a humility and sense of dynamics that arrests you the whole way through, even the verses you’re not following perfectly between choruses. There is a problem here, though – the single’s sweet sugar was harvested and glazed over by none other than Dr. Luke, one of music’s accused whose charges seemed credible enough to strip him of his license to practice. Can’t Ke$ha count on us?

#13 is “Flowers”, and #12 one of three fantastic hits from the indisputable movie of the summer. Barbie was fainter for me than I wanted, though I’m not sure how much more subversive – it’s quite subversive! – it could’ve been while still nailing the something-for-everyone thing. And anyway, what do I know? I’m just a Ken (or perhaps an Allan). “Barbie World”, the #12 in question two weeks ago – remember, this is all two weeks ago, I make the rules here – is the weakest of the trio. It’s a trap-haze interpolation of the old Aqua hit, a great song which nevertheless felt so aggressively hyper back in the ‘90s, it could hit like a form of torture in the wrong mood. Nicki Minaj, my original 2010s hero, hasn’t helped herself personally for a bit, but her effortless, earth-scorching command, even at a low temperature, is a perfect vessel for the universal empowerment this theme and its film intend – “all of the Barbies is pretty” indeed. #6 on this chart is Dua Lipa’s mint-condition, made-to-order disco anthem “Dance the Night”, the sort of banger that feels like it’s been around forever. The last Barbie hit, Billie Eilish’s startlingly canny “What Was I Made For”, a ballad that astounds a little harder every time it languidly unfolds, hung in at #22.

Oliver Anthony Music had dropped just outside the top 10 at this time. Part of my picking an earlier chart is that I wanted to write about him; that said, I don’t know that a single song has had more written about it in the recent past, and all in one week. Much was made of Anthony(whose beard conceals his build)’s irritation with people who use taxpayer-funded welfare to buy cheap treats. In fact, his fatphobia is the clearest toxicity in the lyrics, though the reference to “minors on an island somewhere” – as if the U.S. government did a thing to keep Jeffrey Epstein from hurting people – codes conspiracy theorist. But all the carping about his fishy success belies the fact that the song sounds great. Mr. Music’s voice is searing and powerful, the stark banjo and the outdoor ambience a production coup, and if it wasn’t so clear he was coming at this from the wrong place (though to be fair, he’s abjured any party affiliation), it would speak to the great open secret of U.S. politics, which is that bullshit pay is everybody’s problem, and these wedge issues, however serious, are there to distract us from uniting against our oppressors. As Billy Bragg put it in his pitch-perfect rebuttal, “join a union”. We’ve just been reminded strikes still work.

Having already touched on #6, I’ll breeze through 10 to 7. 10 is Rema & Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down”, an Afrobeat-graced pop hit with a vibe much resemblant of Bad Bunny and other recent Latin pop. Gomez’s post-Waverly Place penchant for coming on like she’s absolutely done with everything and is too tired to be bothered anymore suits the single’s quiet storm perfectly. “Vampire” is Olivia’s current piano-kissoff coup, and you already know how much it doesn’t suck. Gunna’s “Fukumean” gets stuck in my head here and there – well, just the “Fukumean” part – and I always subsequently wonder what it sounds like on the radio, where you still can’t quite say exactly what the fukumean. The music feels generic if peppy; the lyrics are conventional hip-hop aggro-bravado. SZA’s “Snooze” is no snooze, but also no “Kill Bill”.

I went through a breakup this summer, right around the time Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” blew up. His music is insistently catchy and melodically brawny, so for a short time “no way it was our last night” was sort of a pet chorus in my head. But this deteriorated quickly, paying attention to the rest of the lyrics – said night was booze-fueled, not the most relatable or charming thing for a grateful recovering alcoholic, and once again, Wallen’s greasy cockiness is an automatic turn-off. There’s very little indication that his ex wants to stick around, much less that Wallen, whose cultural function is primarily as a “cancelled” superstar half of the country is propping up in retaliation, has done a lot of self-interrogation about it. The song really does sound great, and its hook is invincible, but once again, it isn’t exactly good for you.

The late-breaking triumph of Taylor’s “Cruel Summer” would also leave a bad taste if the song weren’t one of her best. I say this because of the recent scenario in which our new pop hero Olivia Rodrigo had to pay Swift, whose business acumen seems genuinely frightening, for a touch of inspiration from this song (a chanted section…?) that could be ungenerously interpreted as some sort of theft for which some sort of repayment is in order. Their lawyers worked it out, but bad blood feels inevitable; Swift famously supported Rodrigo in a deliberately maternal way when “Drivers License” (sorry, “drivers license”) hit, but it’s not impossible to imagine that zillionaire cipher feeling a twinge of jealousy from which a few petty things might result. Rodrigo’s evasive responses in interviews seem to give credit to this suspicion.

Into the top #3, and here sits one of my favorite curios, Luke Combs’ musically beefed-up but lyrically unaltered cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. Combs absolutely has truck nuts voice, and I’m still not clear what people who prefer that voice above all others do when he drops the line about his time as a checkout girl. It’s hard to pinpoint anything nefarious here; Combs has just sent an influx of money into the bank account of a more-or-less forgotten Black female singer-songwriter – though that song endures, and is now living in the high reaches of the charts, because it’s fucking fantastic. But then, I haven’t read any thinkpieces about it, and I’m getting about as tired of writing as you are of reading, so we’ll move on.

My boy Zach Bryan and our girl Kacey Musgraves are (well, were) at #2 with their gently broken collab “I Remember Everything”. With its soft bass-drum pound, quiet strumming, slowly sawn violins and swaths of echo, it sounds a bit like mists floating grimly over fields (antebellum, perhaps? Nah, not for Kacey). Here are two of our deftest, most openhearted country stars, and, finally, a country breakup hit with not a kernel of corn, setting its scene through pure suggestion instead of beating you over the head with a big new cliché in a sack full of old ones. Its magic dispels a little the closer you look, but it really works. So does the unflappable Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red”, noted by chartwatchers as the first rap hit atop the hot 100 in a hot minute. As with “Dance the Night”, once DC rolls in over the music, the song feels classic and eternal. Not unlike Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By”, the source of its sample – a 60-year-old hit of such intense and incongruous fragility, it’s astonishing how well they worked it in. In the Spotify age, all pop is eternal. To that end, any summer whose soundtrack is woven into your soul is endless.

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dustedmagazine · 8 months

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P.G. Six — Murmurs and Whispers (Drag City)

Photo by Mayuko Fujino

Murmurs & Whispers by P.G. Six

Time isn’t exactly a straight line, nor is it really a circle, but I like to think of it as a meandering river that bends back on itself occasionally, so that where you’ve been and where you’re going are not so far apart. You can see them both from where you’re standing. That’s likely the case for P.G. Six, the cofounder of Tower Recordings and current guitar slinger at large for Garcia Peoples, Wet Tuna and the Weeping Bong Band, among others. It was just last spring that his early aughts freak folk landmark Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites got the reissue treatment. (Said I, “Its lysergic takes on ancient tunes make you realize just how freaky the folk genre is, even before you start to fool with it.”) Now a dozen years on from his last solo album and after a long wander through more electrified zones, the artist is back at it his origins, softly, folkily and mostly on harp.

The harp in question is a Triplett Celtic 34-Stringer, an instrument of uncommon luminous resonance, whose rounded notes hang like soap bubbles in the quiet between verses. Its tone is entirely different from the more usual folk instruments, higher and more pristine than a guitar, less percussive than a banjo, without the trebly agitation of a mandolin. It gives these songs the Renaissance simplicity of folk music at its beginnings, before the addition of hollers, yelps and twangs.

Consider, for instance, the plainspoken dialogue in “Tell Me Death,” a Sharron Krauss song that asks the reaper why he keeps picking on her. P.G. Six frames the tune in exquisite purity, a well moderated tenor inquiring about lost parents, a wife and child, with the harp as the sole decorative element throwing off crystalline showers of sharp, pretty notes. Or try the lilting grace of “Just Begun,” whose tootling interludes wed recorder and harp in a solemn, slow-stepped dance.

Not that it’s all harp, all the time. “I Have Known Love” intersperses folky guitar between heavenly flurries, “Barley Wine” detours through shadowy picked blues, and “Meandering” lets the guitar loose in a meditative instrumental.

In most of the tracks, P.G. Six sings in a resonant, unruffled tenor, as calming a tone as you could wish for. Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudson stop in for subtle harmonies and counterparts, but the whole record is as pure and transparent as water. It finds its own path through the marshy thickets of P.G. Six’s influences and imaginings, winding back to the beginning before flowing back, fresh as ever, in a new direction.

Jennifer Kelly

#p.g. six #murmurs and whispers #drag city #jennifer kelly #albumreview #dusted magazine #harp #freak folk #folk

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thepermanentrainpress · 8 months

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SHADOWFAX: ORPHEUS

Orpheus – Shadowfax Release Date: April 1st, 2023

Track Listing:

1. Ferns 2. Stars and Shells 3. Salome 4. Slumbering Man 5. The Inferno 6. Darkness Fell 7. The Vagrant

Shadowfax’s Orpheus is whimsical folklore. Shaped by ancient metaphors and calming melodies, the album burrows and nestles its way into your heart. It holds your hand as you wander through a forest at the mercy of the elements.

Vancouver-based Shadowfax has a fresh, crisp sound, existing in the same vein as alternative folk bands like Lord Huron and Of Monsters and Men. At the same time, the band doesn’t shy away from non-traditional instruments including pedal steel, banjo, trumpet, and theremin. These instruments help differentiate Shadowfax’s sound which, at times, ventures into jazz and country territory.

The first song of the album, “Ferns,” comforts listeners with sweet, warm fiddle and rich imagery: “Lay me down in the shady grove where the nesting starlings go / I'll make no sound, but I'll take ample care that the wild ferns may grow.” Jeremy Fornier-Hanlon’s delicate indie vocals contrast with country flares. Slow, melancholic tones emerge in “Stars and Shells.” Cascading prose adds drama, while harmonious singing folds listeners into a gentle embrace. Natural lyrics paint a lush landscape: “As the wind kissed the air and the sun / And I landed on clouds and I started to run / And the rain and the trees all combined into one.”

“Salome” binds a spell with dazzling trumpet, keyboard, and electric guitar. Cheeky microphone vocals recount a seductress’ visit to town: “Well she danced into our town just like a storm in late July / She had some heat, was oh so sweet / You know she caught a couple eyes.” Spunky percussion feeds a festive but tense energy, reminiscent of Hozier’s “Dinner & Diatribes.” Deep, sorrowful strings accompany rustic layers in “Slumbering Man.” The song stiches an impressive orchestral patchwork with blocks of despair and beauty. Words mark the passage of generations: “While the breeze blew softly you slept through the years / And young hearts went bankrupt from borrowing tears / And the lake dried to nothing, where life had once sprung / The old were once young.”

“The Inferno” cries for the climate: “Fragile life so fleeting, forestry receding / We lit the match, now watch it all turn black / Ancient trees are falling, industry is calling.” Its meaningful message secured with plucky acoustic and edgier electric guitar. Musical notes soar and wrestle with morality. Peaceful and soothing sounds blossom in “Darkness Fell,” a track dealing with rage, aggression, and the perpetration of harm: “With raging darkness in your hand and careless evil in your heart / You cut a swathe from town to town and tore young families apart.” This duality shifts into a softer place near the end, confronting inner wounds with caressive drums and melodies full of twang. The collection ends with “The Vagrant,” a bittersweet send-off. Steady sunset strings pluck away to reflective lyrics: “Well I'm a road-weary wanderer and I'm out for to roam / And it may not seem much but this road is my home.”

Cinematic, creative, and everlasting on the ears, Orpheus by Shawdowfax is an album worthy of adoration. Cohesive, clear, and skilled instrumentals immediately command respect. The songwriting is a feast for the mind, nurturing stunning scenery and emphasizing shared, interconnected relationships.

Written by: Jenna Keeble

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moldytundra · 1 year

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Tinariwen - “Anemouhagh”

Tinariwen, the legendary, Grammy-winning Tuareg collective will release their new album, Amatssou, on May 19th, 2023.

Amatssou by Tinariwen

Later this month, Tinariwen will embark on their first US tour since 2019, beginning on May 27th at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music and including stops in Los Angeles, New York and more. A list of full dates are below and tickets are on sale now. For decades, Tinariwen have remained ambassadors for the Tuareg people, a way of life in tune with the natural world, which is under threat as never before. Throughout Amatssou — the legendary collective’s ninth studio album — Tinariwen set out to explore the shared sensibilities between their trademark desert blues and the vibrant country music of rural America. Recorded in Djanet, an oasis in the desert of southern Algeria located in Tassili N’Ajjer National Park, with additional production on two tracks by Daniel Lanois (Brian Eno, U2, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Peter Gabriel, Willie Nelson), Amatssou finds Tinariwen’s signature snaking guitar lines and hypnotic grooves seamlessly co-existing alongside banjos, fiddles and pedal steel. Though Tuareg culture is as old as that of ancient Greece or Rome, the songs of Amatssou speak to the current and often tough reality of Tuareg life today. Unsurprisingly, there are impassioned references to Mali’s ongoing political and social turmoil. Full of poetic allegory, the lyrics call for unity and freedom. There are songs of struggle and resistance with oblique references to the recent desperate political upheavals in Mali and the increasing power of the Salafists. Tinariwen’s message has never sounded more urgent and compelling than it does on Amatssou.

Tinariwen Tour Dates Sat. May 27 - Chicago, IL @ Old Town School of Folk Music Tue. May 30 - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom Wed. May 31 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox Fri. June 2 - Berkeley, CA @ UC Theater Sat. June 3 - Los Angeles, CA @ Fonda Theater Mon. June 5 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall Tue. June 6 - Boston, MA @ Sinclair Wed. June 7 - Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre Sat. June 10 - Hilvarenbeek, NL @ Best Kept Secret Festival Mon. June 12 - Rubigen, CH @ Muhle Hunziken Wed. June 14 - Florence, IT @Ultravox Thu. June 15 - Milan, IT @ Triennale Garden Fri. June 16 - Turin, IT @ Hiroshima Mon Amour Sun. June 18 - Dublin, IE @ Body & Soul Festival Thu. June 22 - Berlin, DE @ Festsaal Kreuzberg Sat. June 24 - Glastonbury, UK @ Glastonbury Festival Mon. 26 - Lille, FR @ Splendid Wed. June 28 - Paris, FR @ Salle Pleyel Thu. June 29 - Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique Sat. July 1 - Roskilde, DK @ Roskilde Festival Sun. July 2 - Stockholm, SE @ Slaktkyran Tue. July 4 - Oslo, NO @ Rockefeller Fri. July 7 - Bilbao, ES @ BBK Live Festival Tue. July 11 - Arles, FR @ Les Suds Arles Thu. July 13 - London, UK @ Somerset House Sat. July 15 - Bristol, UK @ SWX Mon. July 17 - Glasgow, UK @ St Lukes Wed. July 19 - Bermingham, UK @ Institute 2 Sat. July 22 - Cheshire, UK @ Bluedot Festival Tue. 25 - Vigo, SP @ Terraceo Festival Sat. July 29 - Luxey, FR @ Musicalarue Festival

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#tinariwen #new release #music #tuareg #chicago

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astrangewoman · 1 year

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there is a stark difference between Appalachia, the mountain range—reaching from Georgia to Maine—and Appalachia, the region. I am birthed from the hills of The Appalachia, proper—pronounced “apple-at-cha”—the region where the mountains carry flameless, blue smoke and the woods house things our parents don’t speak of in too much detail. where the ground feels ancient and magic runs in our veins and grannies know things that others can’t explain. I am from the Appalachia that has been wrecked by poverty, frozen in time, and nevertheless survived. where the super-wealthy and celebrities come to visit and gawk at the state of our houses and roads like we’re tourist attractions on the way to their 5-star resorts just next door. I am proud of Her people, the hillbillies and the real rednecks, and will never tolerate any who punch down on people who are clawing their way up, who are just trying to make it in a society that casts judgmental glares and makes fun of our voices and perpetuate harmful and shameful stereotypes to keep us “in our place.” I am Appalachia. I am a mountain of a woman. I sing the songs of the hills and valleys and I am one with Her when I am lost among the trees and streams. I carry the blood of the old gods in my veins, the ones who carved the mountains before Pangea split apart, separating us from the Scottish Highlands. this Appalachia is my home: where our cemeteries hum with energy and our hair stands on end with keen awareness, in the dark, in the night. where every hill and holler has a different dialect and a language entirely its own, and yet we all understand. where we all pluck the banjos loaded up in our throats, orchestrating the melody of our collective twang.

#personal #appalachia #southern appalachia #home #apple-at-cha

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concerthopperblog · 2 years

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The Best of Americanafest 2022

Even if Concert Hopper sent every writer we had, there's no way we'd be able to see everything there is going on at Americanafest. The long-running Nashville festival isn't held in one location like most fests but in clubs, parks, and bars across Nashville. Throw in over 300 bands and you're looking at a sisyphean task for any journalist. So this is in no way a comprehensive list, just the best things I saw in the tiny fraction I was able to catch over four days.

Best of the Fest- Tami Neilson After the fireball that was her Kingmaker album, there was always a good chance of Tami Neilson bringing the best set of Americanafest. What I got exceeded any expectations I could have had. Flanked by her brother Jay and teenage guitarist Grace Bowers, Neilson delivered a full run of songs from that album as well as a few favorites in a dynamic display of feminist fury. Neilson's genius is that she tackles these heavy topics with so much joy, never becoming “preachy” or trite, but throwing a joke or a smile that can de-fang the patriarchy and disarm her audience simultaneously. It's appropriate that Neilson played the last slot Saturday night, closing out the festival, because Americanafest was a Tami Neilson concert with four days of really good opening acts.

Best Place to See Star-Struck Musicians- Taj Mahal and Friends It's always fun to see famous musicians struck dumb in the face of a music god. That was the beauty of the opening night “Taj Mahal and Friends” set at Basement East. You'd think veteran artists like Jim Lauderdale, Keb Mo, Will Hoge, and Kaia Kater would be immune to starry eyes but performing with a legend as accomplished as blues/jazz/folk/Americana/calypso/a dozen other genres artist Taj Mahal, all seemed about to pinch themselves to make sure they weren't dreaming. All the guest shuffling could be chaotic at times but Taj held court with such humor the crowd never became bored.

Best. History. Teacher. Ever- Jake Blount Did you ever have that one teacher who had so much passion for his subject, he made it come alive for you? That's Jake Blount. A talented vocalist and banjo player, Blount is also one of music's more accomplished historians in the field of black string music and his set at The Basement was the world's coolest history lesson. Playing songs from his forthcoming album, The New Faith, Blount showed a bit of the album's concept, an apocalyptic future rent by global warming, all through old, sometimes ancient, gospel and black string ballads.

Best Diversity- Queer Roots and 8th Fire Sessions Americanafest dedicated itself to diversity long before it became cool for festivals to do so. This year, they crossed two more underrepresented groups off the list with the Queer Roots Party at The Groove and the 8th Fire Sessions from Ishkode Records at Dee's. Queer Country has existed for decades, with Lavender Country paving the way in the '70s, but this was the first true showcase of queer country artists. With dynamite acts like Secret Emchy Society, Crys Matthews, and Ever More Nest, the party proved that Queer Country was merely good music that happened to be performed by gay artists. It shouldn't even have to be a genre but, with mainstream country shying away from anything not white, male, and straight, it is and it's glorious. It was as fun a party as I've been to at Americanafest in years.

If Queer Country has been underrepresented, indigenous roots music has been almost forgotten. If you think about it, you can't get much more “roots” than the music performed by a group of people who were in North America long before a bunch of people from Europe became the continent's first illegal aliens. The 8th Fire Sessions presented by Ishkode Records featured acts like Digging Roots and Amanda Rheaume who brought their message of systemic persecution wrapped in some of the best pure Americana musical talent I've seen in years. Grass dancer Trenton Wheeler also put on a memorable display for the audience.

Best Dressed- Henry Wagons While conflicts kept me from seeing Henry Wagons' full set at City Winery, I was able to see him sit in for one song at Exit/In with Tami Neilson, filling in Willie Nelson's vocals on “Beyond the Stars.” I've seen Wagons previously at both Americanafest and Bonnaroo so I knew he was one of Australia's best comedic musicians. It therefore, came as no surprise that he showed up at Tami Neilson's set dressed in a shirt than can only be described as something Porter Waggoner would wear if he started using Earth, Wind, and Fire's tailor.

Best Satire- Will Hoge Americana is home to some of music's best satire. The thing that drew me to the genre in the first place was my professor in a satire class bringing John Prine's “Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” so I've got a soft spot for artists who can use humor to shine a light on the world's wrongs. With his song “Whose God Is This?,” Will Hoge weaves a tale of a bar (tended by John the Baptist, natch) full of the world's gods who socialize amiably until a gun-toting god with a red hat and a superiority complex saunters in, leading to an attempt to find someone to take him home. The capper is an attempt to “grab” Lilith that ends with the god laid out and vowing to “go back to where they worship me in the good ole' USA).

Rookie of the Year- Miko Marks Some of my favorite Americanafest performances over the years have been artist I didn't know who played in the same venue as the one I came to see. So when I ventured to the WMOT Day Stage to watch BJ Barham of American Aquarium, I was not surprised to discover my favorite set of the day came from Miko Marks. A mix of soul, country, and pure rock and roll, Marks and her band had an energy that flowed over the crowd. Catching her set is going to put a dent in my bank account as, upon getting home, I immediately followed her on Bandcamp and will be purchasing her music next Bandcamp Friday.

Best Unofficial Americanafest Performance- Anana Kaye and Irakli Gabriel Because 4 days of 300 bands isn't enough for some people, many venues in Nashville put on “unofficial” Americanafest parties throughout the week. One was the “Get Fried” Fish Fry at Dee's where I finally got to see Anana Kaye and Irakli Gabriel. Their collaboration album with the late David Olney, Whispers and Sighs, was my favorite album of 2020 and one that has kept a spot on my turntable since. Kaye and Gabriel did not disappoint, with the set highlight being a performance of the Rolling Stones-esque satire “Last Days of Rome,” with Kaye ably filling in the spoken-word breakdown supplied by Olney in the original.

Best Group Sing- A Tribute to 1972 Group “tribute” concerts risk becoming an edition of celebrity karaoke, only mildly entertaining in seeing famous people cover other famous people. That's been my problem with all but one of the Bonnaroo Superjams I saw. It wasn't a problem with Americanafest's Tribute to 1972, the sets all connected by a superb band. Highlights included an energetic sing-along of David Bowie's “All the Young Dudes” by Jon Latham and a surprisingly metal Foghat breakdown by Lauren Morrow.

Enjoy a selection of pictures from this year’s Americanafest and be sure to check out the full gallery on our Facebook page!

#americanafest #americana music #festivals #nashville #tennessee #photography #festival review #music festival review #americana #music #live music #concerthopper #2022

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asleepinawell · 3 years

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a concise summary of my experience with nier replicant so far

#I think most of these are obvious #the one that might not be...what do you need a tree for on a sunny day #😎#nier #nier replicant #niermp #mp #tempestgaming #devola with a banjo is galaxy brain actually #song of ancients on the banjo #or a kazoo #I made it a screenshot since a lot of devices are hostile to emoji #I was going to add some stuff for gardening but none of you are mature enough to handle a literal usage of the eggplant #nor am I tbh #I actually haven't gotten to emil yet because I'm still fishing but he's there in my heart

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bump1nthen1ght · 3 years

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Meet Cute (GN!Reader/Mothman)

Pairing: GenderNeutral!Reader/Male!Mothman

Genre: Cryptids

Warnings: Car accidents, descriptions of bruisings and pain

Word Count: 2564 words

Summary: After an incident, You find yourself in the care of a rather strange savior.

Request: Hey, long time fan, but I could never think of anything to request! I was wondering if cryptids were considered monsters here? Would you be willing to write a meet-cute with Mothman? Maybe something along the lines of them saving the reader from a disaster and sparks fly, and boy, if that's not a pun: like a moth to a flame. Mothman can be man or gender neutral, and I'd like the reader to be gender neutral! But everything is to your discretion! Have fun~! And thank you~!

He doesn’t usually do this.

As he cradles your neck, feeling the microfibers of human hair at the base of your skull and your thrumming heartbeat, it feels as if you could shatter apart in his talons. Your pupils flutter behind your eyelids, the pain of the collison definitely affecting you, even in your near-unconscious state. He sets you down on the scraps of thrown away jackets and ratty down-comforters, paying extra attention to your head and side, where splotches of purple and yellow already bloom up your ribcage. You easily fall into the warmth of the pile, snuggling into the fabric.

He sighs, anxiety decreasing as your body relaxes. Having already checked you, he thinks you should last a night before needing to go to a human hospital, just to double-check. He perches by you, tuning the ancient radio to a subtle night-time station, and waits.

Your chest flutters rhythmically, peacefully. Your features seem to shine in the firelight, catching the shadows and giving the appearance of a Baroque painting. So serene for someone just hit by a car.

He sighs.

He just hopes you won’t freak out.

-------

You wake up in a jerk, immediately filled with regret as your right side screams in pain. You clench your teeth, hand immediately checking your ribs as the memories of last night come flooding back.

You had been walking back home after a night out with your friends. You weren’t drunk, barely even tipsy, but had decided to walk the short path to your tiny house anyway. It was quick, just a 5 minute jaunt by the side of the highway and away from the bar. Just enough time for some asshole to swerve off the side of the road, send you flying, and take off without a care for the deer they assumed they just killed.

It takes a little while longer for you to process that you are definitely not in a hospital right now; Not even in your own house, or any house for that matter. A dying fire crackles nearby, the rising sun beams peaking through makeshift curtains attached to a structure of branches. You sit in a small pallet of fabric, right next to a collection of newspapers and old cctvs.

It’s ramshackle, sure, but well-loved. It doesn’t look like a permanent residence, but is lived-in nonetheless.

“Are you feeling alright?”

A calm tenor breaks the silence, causing you to shoot your eyes away from your surroundings and to focus on the person across from you.

Well, person probably isn’t the right word.

His eyes, even in the morning light, flash with red. They’re huge, set deeply into his face with very indistinguishable features. His neck is nestled into a large amount of fluff, reminiscent of winter scarf, that extends back into his large wings, which are tucked behind him. The antennas that flicker on top of his head are distinctly insect-like, but his long, muscular body and hands are more mammalian. Not human, but more similar to an animal. His hands are long and near-spindly, each finger ended with a long claw.

All these features should come together into an uncanny-valley, terror-inducing nightmare. But there’s something about his voice, the way he sits, so cautious yet concerned, that says the contrary.

“U-Uh...I think so.” You shift your body, a lightning bolt of pain shoots through your ribs and you wince. “I’ve felt better, though.” You tentatively lean down and touch your side, trying to check for a fracture without hurting yourself even more.

The creature stands up, wings still closed and kept to his back, and walks over to you.

“Would you mind if I checked your injuries? I have some experience with collisions such as yours.”

After a second, you nod. He steps closer to you, still moving at a micro-speed, and his hands slowly begin to wander up your side. You suck in a breath, but are more afraid of the potential pain than him. His slow, southern drawl reminds you of old movies and your grandpa, radiating comfort with almost every word. Plus, whatever he was, he had shown you more compassion than the human asshole who had hit you last night, so you felt a little more relaxed having him this close.

Nevertheless, he treats you gingerly, fingers just grazing your bruised side. You wince as his index finger finds a particularly dark bruise, and the creature quickly pulls back.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, it just-fuck that hurt.”

The creature nods but doesn’t move to touch you again.

“Does it hurt when you breathe deeply?”

You shake your head. You had been taking calming breaths to assuage the anxiety of waking up in what might be a monster’s den.

The monster hums, a light chittering sound, like several wind chimes all at once. He reaches over to a small, nearly-rotted, medicine bag in the corner and pulls out an ancient-looking jar of pain cream. He gingerly slides it towards you. “You may try this, it might relieve the pain for a while. Although you should probably see a human doctor to see if you’ve sustained any serious damage to your ribcage.”

You uncork the cream and tentatively dab a bit on your fingers, looking up with a shaky smile to your savior.

“Uh, t-thank you. For everything-”

Growl

Your hand jerks to your stomach, face going flush as you accidentally brush against your swollen side. The creature perks up.

“I believe I have some human food. Would you like some?”

Sucking in a quick breath, trying to hide the tiny pain and your embarrassment, you nod.

The creature stands up, fumbling with the remains of a kitchen cabinet. From his hunched posture, you’d guess this tiny shelter isn’t big enough for his full height. With his long fingers, he reaches and flicks on the radio. The sounds of a local station’s jingle filters through the air as he grabs a can of beans from a shelf.

You slowly begin to rub in the medication to your side, occasionally looking up at your savior as he flutters around his den. Despite his extended limbs and large body, every movement is very similar to that of a human’s; He moves around the make-shift kitchen like a doting partner, a thought which brings a small blush to your face.

The illusion is shattered when he tears the top of the can clean off, cutting through the metal like a hot knife through butter. As he turns to rekindle the fire and start your breakfast, you quickly look back to your wound, trying to hide your curiosity.

The creature lazily stirs your breakfast as a song begins playing on the radio. The strumming bass is perfect for the morning haze, the low drawl of the singer rhythmic and relaxing. You notice the creature bobbing his head, humming along to the tune. His voice sounds slightly distorted, squeaking like the crackle of tv static. You find you quite like it.

The silence returns, filled only by the radio and the crackling fire. The creature's disposition is amicable, but you're still not sure how to initiate small talk.

“Um, thank you, again. For everything. You really saved my ass.”

The creature gestures with their hand as if to say “No problem.”

“I saw that man hit you with that car and take off. As you were hidden from the road, I thought it best I intervene.” The creature pulls off the now-cooked beans and grabs a spoon, handing the can to you. You take it eagerly, another rumble growling from your stomach. You hadn’t realized how hungry you were, foregoing all table manners to scarf down the breakfast.

“If I am being honest, I don’t typically interact with humans in such a….direct manner.”

“Ah, I guess that,” You eyes do another survey of his gangly, inhuman appearance, “makes sense.”

The creature nods, grabbing an apple before sitting across the fire from you. You can tell he is tense, probably waiting with baited breath for you to come to your senses and scream. There is a small part of you that wants too, desperately, but you silence it with a large mouthful of beans. The apple is tossed back and forth between the creatures hands, his eyes locked on the fire. The curiosity of how he eats things sneaks its way into your thought process. “Do you have a name?”

The creature perks, pausing it’s movements and looking at you with its large, red eyes.

“.....I’ve heard humans call me Mothman. I think it is quite accurate.”

You nod, swallowing down another bite of beans. “Do you...like that name?”

The creature doesn’t respond, eyes still piercing into your heart. His face has a small micro-expression, but you’re not sure you can read it. “Because my brother always said first impressions are the perfect time to reinvent yourself, so I could call you something else if you wanted?”

The creature's eyes flicker, in a movement you think is slight shock, before his eyes roll back to the fire. The small light of the fire flatters the dark black of his fur (You think it’s fur?) and only accentuate his large eyes, flashing and reflecting like rubies. In his relaxed position, he sort of looks….handsome.

“You may call me Mothman. Thank you for asking.”

You nod, letting the strumming banjo of a new song on the radio fill the void. The bouncy beat has you unconsciously bobbing your head as you scoop a spoonful.

“I love this song.” You mutter, lamenting how you're almost out of food to stuff your mouth with.

Mothman hums in agreement. “Me as well, this station is my favorite.”

Given your empty bean can, you take the leap into a conversation.

“Do you have a favorite kind of music genre?”

Mothman fiddles with the stem of his apple, brow (if it can even be called that) furrowing.

“I guess I never thought of what my favorite would be. I mostly listen to whatever the radio plays, enjoyable or not. Though,” Mothman points his thumb to the radio, “I love the sound this instrument makes, though I am unsure what it is called. It’s almost like….”

Mothman’s voice begins to make a squeaking trill, one extremely similar to that of plucked strings, although much sharper and shorter.

“Oh, you mean the banjo? Uh, the one that goes like-” You try your best to imitate the chords of the banjo, unconsciously moving your fingers to imitate playing. It’s not nearly as musical as Mothmans’, but his eyes widen and he nods excitedly.

“Yes! Yes, that sound is very pleasant. I’d say any music with that in it is my favorite.”

“Ah, country, that’s a really popular one around here. Have you ever heard ‘Goodbye Earl’ by The Chicks?”

Mothman shakes his head. Your face drops in surprise.

“Oh, it’s so good, it’s about-” As you lean over to give a long spiel about the song, another bolt of pain shoots up your side, forcing you to bite your cheek so as to not cry out. You keel over your legs, clutching your rib cage.

Right, car accident.

In a second, Mothman is next to you, tentatively laying a hand on your shoulder. His fingertips just barely brush your skin, yet you can still feel a slight fuzziness, the same that covers his whole body.

“You might want to see a human doctor, soon.” You suck in through your teeth, slowly adjusting yourself back upwards. “Yeah, yeah, that’s probably a smart idea.

“I can take you as far as the end of the highway, if you’d like to call a friend or a cab.”

You nod, not trusting your voice to stay steady. Mothman’s other hand slowly moves to your other hip, only applying a modicum of pressure.

“May I help you stand up?” He almost-whispers, a hot breath of air blowing across the side of your neck as he speaks. A shiver runs down your spine as his large fingers play gently against your skin, covering a good portion of your pelvis. You’re thankful you can explain away any blush with the pain. You nod once more.

The two of you stand up gingerly, Mothman almost extending to his full height and brushing the blanket-ceiling with his antennae. You take a couple of small steps, the pain in your side taking the occasional moment to sting you.

Your eyes squint as you exit the encampment, sun already fully risen and in your face.

“If at any point you feel uncomfortable or in pain, let me know.”

You turn your head towards Mothman, but before you can ask any questions he sweeps you up in a bridal carry and extends his wings in one motion. From the corner of your eyes you can see dark red patterns that swirl on them, invisible until caught by the sunlight. Your hands instinctively lace around his neck, fingers tucking into the soft fluff of his neck. Mothman gives you a quick nod and what you think is an assuring smile

Without a word, you two take off.

----------

You two fly low to the ground, Mothman expertly maneuvering through the trees and underbrush as he glides along the highway. You’re sure if you were to drive by, he’d look like a flickering shadow in the woods, nothing more.

He sets you down by the edge of town, just out of sight of the semi-busy main street. You basically collapse to your feet, heart pounding with adrenaline and mind wracked with “Holy fuck, I just flew with the goddamn Mothman.”

“This is where I must depart. Do you think you can find suitable transportation to the hospital from here?”

You nod, still trying to wrestle your vocabulary from ‘What the fuck, Holy shit, Oh my god.’

Mothman gives you another smile and comforting nod, patting you on the shoulder.

“Very good. Good luck on your travels. Oh, and try not to be hit by any cars, alright?”

With a playful glare from you, Mothman begins to unfurl his wings and ready himself to fly back into the woods, buut before he can-

“Wait! Uh….” Mothman halts, wings still wide open. Your mouth and mind stagger, not even sure what you wanted to say. “I have some old country cassettes back at my place. If I found my mom’s old WalkMan I could….show them to you? Some time, maybe? Give you a chance to be your own radio DJ?”

Mothman’s face remains relatively neutral, but the way his antennae unfurl and his wings slightly perk upwards betrays his interest. It’s extremely adorable, like a little kid who hears the word ‘ice cream.’

“Yes, I think I would love that.”

“A-Awesome.” You breath out, not realizing how long you had held it in. “Same place, maybe next Saturday? Though hopefully I won’t be thrown in there by a car this time.”

Mothman lets out a series of squeaks, which you assume is his laugh. He gives you a thumbs up. “Cool, it’s a date.”

With the last word, you walk away, still hobbling with your probably-fractured rib, a large smile on your face.

As Mothman flies away, the cold wind of a West Virginia morning blowing across his body, he can’t deny the certain warmth that radiates from his chest.

I have a date.

#my writing #mothman #monster x reader #monster romance #gender neutral reader #reader insert #mothman x reader #fluff #cryptids

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