#this is the magazine that later became Cool-b!

[suzuran777]

BL game magazine Binetsu Ouji (微熱王子) issue 1 - 12. Vol 1-9 pictures from the Retromags website

#binetsu ouji #retro magazines #nitrochiral #togainunochi #gakuen heaven #sukisho #this is the magazine that later became Cool-b!

[melticss]

-not my art!

side kick

bakugo x reader

contains nsfw! -sex, cunnilingus, slut shaming, size kink

-as villain bakugos sidekick, your around him a lot. getting trapped in a situation that sprouted from a dangerous mission, you both confess your feelings for eachother, or atleast.. show them.

reader is female, if you want to me recreate this with male or nb let me know! <3

please ignore how bad my grammar is 💀 i didn’t pay attention in elementary school tbfh. also not proof read 👨‍🦯

———————————————————————

it was early in the morning, as you sat in your office. watching the tv from your desk chair, the news showed up. showing that endeavor was in the hospital, and that a villain that all might had come across and supposedly “killed” was back in japan. you set your coffee down, your eyes widened. you grabbed your keys and headed down to katsukis office.

*bang-bang-bang..bang* you knocked on his door, not wanting to barge in, and find something unexpected. “what?” katsuki groaned. “did you see the news? he’s back!” you shouted “i don’t fucking watch the news y/n.” he remarked. “well, he’s not dead, and he’s back.”

katsuki had befriended a guy in his 3rd year, a guy that had always seemed sketchy, but never paid to much attention to. he later became a villain with katsuki, but betrayed him. he had stolen all the money that katsuki made, and used it to attempt to kill all might, but he “failed”. the reason katsuki wasn’t planning to kill all might yet, was because he didn’t have a team.

“your fucking joking.” katsuki said, opening the door with a deadpan look plastered on his face. “i wish katsuki, but he took advantage of all mights retirement and thought this meant he could kill endeavor. “we are not letting him take my fucking spotlight” he said, waking down the hallway to his room. “katsuki! we don’t have a plan yet!” you yelled, still in your pjs.

“we aren’t wasting anytime y/n.” he said with a tinge of annoyance. “well let me get ready atleast!” you said worried. “whatever y/n, don’t take too long.” you sprinted down to your room, throwing on your suit. you snap on your gloves as you walk into his room, expecting that he would be ready.

you open the door, to pre occupied to knock, stressing about the situation. “katsuki i-“ you get cut off with the sight of your assistant in nothing but his boxers, his abs reflecting the rising sunset. a orange hue decorating his hair as his veiny hans pick up his shirt. before you even get the time to look down, he yells

“y/n! you dumbass. i always tell you to knock!” you stand there, dumbfounded. out of pure shock that a man this handsome wouldn’t be on a play girl magazine. you stare at his body, his furrowed brows turn into a sarcastic smirk. “do you really like what you see that much, y/n? you try to muster up what to say, as your heart pounds.

“i-i just didn’t expect it” you say trying to act cool. “didn’t expect what?” he says walking towards you, putting his hand on the wall next to you, slamming to the left of your head as he towered over you. you look over at the clock, “w-we need to leave soon, b-before he does something else-“ he kisses you, your heart skips a beat, your stomach gets warm.

you lean into him, grabbing the back of his neck, pulling him in. sense he’s almost 6’4, he has to bend his neck, so he just picks you up so he can pull you closer. “i guess i should’ve realized the way you would clench your thighs together whenever you saw me shirtless, i should’ve known you had a thing for me.” he said smirking.

“well your always staring at my ass so, i think we are fair.” you say sarcastic. he sets you down on his bed, crawling on top of you. “what can i say, you have a nice ass yn, but you also stare at my bulge when i wear sweatpants, so i don’t think we are quite even yet dumbass” he says before pinning you down, and kissing you so passionately you loose your breath.

his lips are sweet, a taste of carmel and cherries decorated them. his arms on either side of you. seeing the veins bulge and his muscles perfectly defined with the orange sunlight made you squirm. his hair messy, his chest sweaty. his hot breath running over your body, he moves up, pressing his bulge into you.

he’s harder than you thought he was- “may i?” he says, tugging on your shirt. you nod, puppy eyes staring at his crimsons. he pulls off your shirt, then your tight leggings. he pulled you close, now both in your underwear, pressing his warm body against yours. something you never realized, katsuki was affectionate. you wonder if he’s really just a big softie.

he plants soft kisses on your neck, then biting softly. you dig your nails into his back, making him groan. “i wouldn’t be mad if you made me bleed, sweetheart” your stomach got tingly at the nickname. you kiss his collarbone, inhaling his intoxicating warm scent. you buried you face in his neck, as you wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling his hips down to rest on yours.

he looks down at you, his abnormally long k-9 tooth biting down on his bottom lip. “so fucking pretty, m’fucking pretty angel” he says, in a raspy whisper. he leans into kiss you, unhooking your bra, and throwing it somewhere into his room. he moves his hand down, the callous rough hands dragging down to your panties, hooking his finger on them and pulling them off.

he leans back, taking in the view. “such’ a pretty fucking pussy.” he says smirking. you whine in response, squirming your hips in embarrassment of your pussy exposed. he brings his thumb down, dragging it through your slit, your pussy making lewd noises. he rubs your clit, pleasure shooting through you. you whine in response.

he grabs your feet, throwing them over his shoulder. “hope you don’t mind if i eat this pussy?” he says leaning down, his hot breath rushing over you. you shake your head, grabbing his hair. your cheeks glowing redder every minute. he grabs your ass, pulling you in and flattening his tongue against your sensitive pussy.

his tongue is rough, and unforgiving. his tounge rubs your clit, drawing circles in it. he spells the letters, k a t s u k i, smirking. he flicks your clit, the swollen nub twitching. he sucks on your pussy, your labia swelling, he lets go with a pop.

your legs twitch and shake, feeling his warm tounge and hands making you quiver. the knot in your stomach getting tighter. you pull his hair, making him groan and vibrate your pussy. he looks up at you, his vulgar red eyes piercing you. you moan lewdly, rolling your eyes back.

the knot becomes undone, you shake and twitch. he rides you through it, kissing your pussy lips delicately, stroking your twitching thigh. “atta girl, that’s a good girl” he says in a raspy voice. he sits up, his bulge bigger and thicker than you could imagine. wet stains at the tip of his dick, decorating his dark grey boxers.

“do you want my cock, slut?” he says smirking. you nod, cheeks burning as cold air runs over your wet pussy. “i couldn’t hear you?” he says rubbing your clit. “y-yes!” you whimper. “what was that pretty girl? i couldn’t hear you over the sounds of your pussy getting wetter.” he says rubbing his clothed cock on your thigh.

“yes! i want your cock!” you greedily whine. “that’s my girl, you know how to obey like a good girl.” he says, taking his cock out of his boxers, the red vulgar tip dripping, the veins bulging, and metal piercing decorating his under gland shining. (frenum piercing)

“you like what you see?” you nod, practically drooling at the sight. he grabs the base, guiding his tip through your slit. rubbing your clit with his tip, his pre dripping down you. you quiver, he’s bigger than you thought, atleast 7-8 inches. but what surprised you was the girth, he’s big almost too big.

“i-it’s really b-big” you whine. “you’ll be fine-“ he says looking away. “a-and if it hurts to bad tell me.” he says before looking back at you, “but your such a slut i think you can take it.” he says, his vulgar words making you quiver. he leans down, arms on either side of you. he looks down, positioning himself. he looks back up, “you ready angel?” you nod. he pushes in, your pussy squelching. you whine, his girth stretching you, it burns deep inside. you grab onto his arm, and place one hand on his chest.

“s-suki!” you moan. he kisses your neck passionately. “breathe baby.” he says, his voice soothing and raspy. he pushes farther, until his tip kisses your cervix. your eyes roll back, his dick hits every spot. “shhshhh, atta girl.” he says pushing the stray hair pieces behind your ear. he rolls his hips, the burn subsides. his dick grinds your g-spot, making your legs twitch around his waist. leaving a creamy white ring 1-2 inches from the base, there’s no way you could take all of his cock.

his hip buck faster, hitting every spot that no one else could. the familiar knot getting tighter as you dig your nails into his back, he groans loudly, raspy and whiney. “fuck~ i’m cumming”he says, burying his face in your neck. as his dick twitches, hitting your g-spot every movement. “cum with me angel.” he groans.

he slams his hips, white creamy ropes shoot at your cervix, making you twitch and grab onto him, euphoria overrides you as your knot unravels.

“good fucking girl.”

#bakugo katuski #bakugo smut #villain bakugou #mha fanfiction #mha smut #bakugo fanfic #katsuki bakugo fanart #katsuki bakugo imagine #katsuki bakugo x y/n #bnha bakugo katsuki #bakugou x you #bakugou imagine #bakugo #katsukibakugou #female writers #fanfic #bnha smut

[ausetkmt]

Eternal Soul

On the heels of her best-selling debut, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, fifteen-year-old Aaliyah was rocked by a sex scandal that would have crushed a lesser talent. But breaking ties with her label and former producer and paramour R. Kelly afforded the teenage singer to create a new musical life for herself. She joined forces with production/songwriting duo Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who crafted a set of funky and futuristic soul tracks that took audiences and stale R&B radio by storm. Aaliyah showed strength and resilience—and effortless cool—and went on to garner multiplatinum sales, becoming a huge star. But her comeback was short-lived. At twenty-two, just as she released her third album and started an acting career, Aaliyah lost her life in a plane crash. However, icons never die, and her musical legacy endures.

published online Wednesday, December 9, 2020 Originally published in Issue 59, Summer 2014 By Michael A. Gonzales

It was the last weekend before Labor Day 2001, and the sidewalks of New York City were brimming with Saturday-night folks looking for fun. While a decade before the Meatpacking District was literally just that—with refrigerated trucks parked in front of dingy warehouses and the cobblestone streets sticky with animal blood—by the new millennium, those same blocks had transformed into a chic section of town overflowing with boutiques, restaurants, and clubs blasting the songs of summer that included P. Diddy’s Black-rock single “Bad Boy for Life” and Destiny’s Child’s pop-tart anthem “Bootylicious.” 

As I was passing one trendy spot, pop sensation Aaliyah’s latest single, “We Need a Resolution,” blared from the speakers. With a voice that was shy and sexy, the mesmerizing track was the first from her self-titled third album, released a month before. Produced by frequent collaborator Timbaland—whose signature cyberfunk explorations into sound put an electrifying mojo on Black radio in the mid-’90s beginning with Aaliyah’s sophomore album, 1996’s One in a Million—her cool, broken-hearted soprano blended perfectly with the heat generated from his funky, futurist machine dreams. 

Like Rachael, the emotional android in Blade Runner, Aaliyah became a cyborg chanteuse, a digital diva for a new generation of soul children. With the music being stuck in a rut of stylistic nostalgia and neo-soul mania, One in a Million made R&B’s potential feel limitless again, as it pulled listeners into the future. 

Coming a year before Björk’s equally brilliant 1995 album Post, Aaliyah’s debut, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, came from a teenage girl from the D who brought the rhythmic weirdness first. 

In 1995, Aaliyah Dana Haughton met Timbaland when she was sixteen after leaving her first label, Jive Records, amid much controversy of an illicit marriage to her then twenty-seven-year-old producer R. Kelly, who’d written most of the material on Age. Although both sides denied the allegations, a marriage license was later published in Vibe magazine. 

While the “pied piper of R&B”—as Kelly proclaimed himself—had gained much fame since the release of his multiplatinum 12 Play album in late 1993, and was given a pass by the press and his fans, Aaliyah was portrayed as a Lolita seductress. When her picture was shown at the 1995 Soul Train Awards (she wasn’t in attendance), audience members booed. 

Years later, allegations of Kelly’s alleged sexual misconduct continue to overshadow his music, including an infamous golden-shower sex tape, a housekeeper who sued him for sexual harassment, and rumors of millions doled out to settle “dozens” of “harrowing lawsuits” brought by scores of underage girls the musician reportedly sexually abused.

Although Age was a platinum-seller for Jive, the label allowed Aaliyah to be released from her contract. Her management company, Blackground, owned and operated by her mother’s brother, Barry Hankerson, who also managed R. Kelly, signed her with Atlantic Records. At the urging of Atlantic vice-president of A&R Craig Kallman (who in 2014 is the label’s chairman), Tim (aka Timbaland) flew to Aaliyah’s hometown of Detroit, Michigan, with fellow producer, songwriter, arranger, and rapper Missy Elliott.

Initially, Aaliyah’s second album was supposed to be helmed by the jiggy prince of production Puff Daddy (P. Diddy) and his trademarked, sample-heavy touch with the Hitmen team (Chucky Thompson, Deric Angelettie, Ron Lawrence, Stevie J., and others), but it never happened. 

“I went to Puff’s studio in Trinidad for a week,” Aaliyah said in 1996. “We started working together, but we couldn’t finish the songs on time. I had to leave, because I had to go to Atlanta to record with Jermaine Dupri.” 

Setting up shop in Detroit at Vanguard Studios, which was owned and operated by producer/guitarist Michael J. Powell, who’d overseen Aaliyah’s demo material when she was twelve, Tim and Missy went to work. “The first song we recorded was the title track [‘One in a Million’],” Timbaland told me in 1999. “From our first session, I was blown away by how talented she was.” While Missy later claimed that “If Your Girl Only Knew” was the song recorded during their first session, what remains undisputed was the closeness the trio felt during that time. 

The Black noise duo christened the beautiful Brooklyn-born, Detroit-reared singer “Baby Girl,” and they became inseparable. Staying at Vanguard for a week, the three of them later flew, according to Missy Elliot, on “a little, little plane,” to Pyramid Studios in Ithaca, New York, to finish their work. The end results were the six groundbreaking tracks and two interludes from her second disc, One in a Million. 

Legendary engineer Jimmy Douglass (who worked on countless Atlantic R&B classics) connected with them in Ithaca. “Aaliyah was coming off such a big debut,” he says, “so it would’ve been all right for her to be bratty, but she wasn’t. She was such a nice human being. Aaliyah was very quiet, but when she sang, she sounded great. I was impressed.”

In July 1996, a month before One in a Million was released, I interviewed Aaliyah at the Sea Grill, a restaurant at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Having first met her two years before, I realized that Aaliyah was always a sweetheart, yet very guarded. After a sex scandal that might’ve squashed a lesser talent, she was obviously resilient. She answered questions thoroughly but tried not to disclose too much about R. Kelly or the alleged marriage. 

“I faced the adversity,” Aaliyah said. “I could’ve broken down, I could’ve gone and hid in the closet and said, ‘I’m not going to do this anymore.’ But I love singing, and I wasn’t going to let that mess stop me. I got a lot of support from my fans and that inspired me to put that behind me, be a stronger person, and put my all into making One in a Million.” 

Sitting next to her equally beautiful mother, Aaliyah was radiant, coy, and confident as she talked about Tim and Missy’s production skills. “At first, Tim and Missy were skeptical if I would like their work, but I thought it was tight, just ridiculous,” she said. “Their sound was different and unique, and that’s what appealed to me. 

“Before we got together, I talked to them on the phone and told them what I wanted. I said, ‘You guys know I have a street image, but there is a sexiness to it, and I want my songs to complement that’; I told them that before I even met them. Once I said that, I didn’t have to say anything else. Everything they brought me was the bomb.”

Besides Tim and Missy, she also worked with producers Kay Gee (Naughty by Nature), Daryl Simmons (L.A. Reid and Babyface), and Vincent Herbert (Toni Braxton), who laced her dope remake of Marvin Gaye’s classic “Got to Give It Up,” which featured a smooth Slick Rick rap. Aaliyah explained how the remake came about: “I wanted some real party songs, so when my uncle played me that [original track], I thought of how I could make it different. Slick Rick [who’d been in jail] was on work release at the time, so Vincent got him on the song. 

“I don’t know how Marvin Gaye fans will react, but I hope they like it,” she continued. “I always think it’s a great compliment when people remake songs. I hope one day after I’m not here that people will cover my songs.”
Aaliyah’s uncle and manager Barry Hankerson was the person most responsible for making his niece a star. “Barry was bringing Aaliyah to the studio to record when she was twelve years old,” remembers producer and Vanguard owner Michael J. Powell via telephone from his home in Detroit. “At the time, Barry was trying to get Aaliyah a deal with MCA, and he came to me to make her demos.” 

Powell was a Chicago native whose studio, Vanguard, was a place that made sophisticated soul. Best known for the lush retro-nuevo production on Anita Baker’s incredible Rapture album in 1986, Powell has also worked with Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Gladys Knight, who was married to Barry Hankerson from 1974 to 1978. “As a producer, Michael is a very patient person with great ears,” says Bill Banfield, composer and professor at the Berklee College of Music. A friend of Powell’s, he has also recorded with him. “Vanguard was the second generation of Motown with a live band, polished arrangements, and Detroit soul.” 

Powell, who is still working in Detroit, recalls working with the singer back before her debut: “That was the time before Aaliyah went to work with R. Kelly, and she sang in a full, powerful voice that was like Whitney Houston’s. We recorded a few covers—‘The Greatest Love of All,’ ‘Over the Rainbow,’ and ‘My Funny Valentine,’ which she had sung on Star Search. She could handle big ballads, and she had great range. I have heard her do things the public have never heard. She was a natural.”

One of Aaliyah’s first professional gigs was singing with her aunt Gladys Knight in Las Vegas. “We performed at Bally’s five nights a week with a little break in between,” Aaliyah said in 1994. “Singer David Peaston [whom Hankerson also managed] opened the show, and then Gladys would bring me out to sing ‘Home’ with her, and then we did ‘Believe in Yourself.’ I loved it; for me, it was like being on tour.” 

In 1996, while Aaliyah cited “One in a Million” as her favorite song, the label chose to release “If Your Girl Only Knew” as the first single. However, having debuted in 1994 with the more traditional soul stylings of R. Kelly writing and producing Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, not everyone was pleased with the singer’s new direction. 

That album broke ground with its experimental tempos and drum programming and hip-hop soul songwriting. Jason King

“Me and Tim were so excited, because this was the first production we were doing outside of DeVante’s camp,” Missy explained. In addition to Jodeci and their famed producer DeVante Swing, the aforementioned camp of young upstarts included Sista (Missy’s rap quartet), Ginuwine, Magoo, Playa, and Tweet. “We were only supposed to do one record, but Craig [Kallman] kept asking us for one more; but, when they played [the singles] ‘If Your Girl Only Knew’ and ‘One in a Million’ for radio programmers, they were afraid to embrace it. They said the beats were too different and it wouldn’t fit in with their playlist. They wanted something that sounded like Puffy.” 

Still, when a few braver souls started playing the record, it just took off. “That album broke ground with its experimental tempos and drum programming and hip-hop soul songwriting,” says Jason King, cultural critic, musician, and the director of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

By 2001, Aaliyah released a handful of Timbaland-produced, soundtrack-supported singles that pushed the experimental sound even further—including the Grammy-nominated scorchers “Are You That Somebody?” from 1998’s Dr. Dolittle and “Try Again” from her costarring vehicle Romeo Must Die in 2000. As pop critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in 2001 in the New York Times, “ ‘Try Again’ helped smuggle the innovative techniques of electronic dance music onto the pop charts, establishing Aaliyah as pop’s most futuristic star.”

The lyrics of both songs were penned by former Playa member Static Major, who also wrote “We Need a Resolution.” Like Missy and Timbaland, the songwriter was once a protégé of Jodeci producer DeVante Swing. Engineer Jimmy Douglass, who has worked side by side with Timbaland on every production since the early days, says of the late songwriter, who died in 2008 from myasthenia gravis: “Static was like a brother to Tim, and he knew exactly how to write to Tim’s music. The first record they did together was Ginuwine’s ‘Pony,’ and that led to their [musical] history.

“We recorded ‘Are You That Somebody?’ at Capitol Records’ studio in Los Angeles,” Douglass recalls, “and it was a soup-to-nuts session, which means we did the entire song in one session. Wrote it, tracked it, and mixed it from 11:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m.; the next to last thing we added was the sound of the baby, and the very last time was Tim saying, ‘Dirty South.’ It was a union studio, so they weren’t used to working overnight; we were trying to finish that song as quick as possible.”

Douglass also engineered the “Try Again” sessions, which began with Static writing a song that was inspirational. Recorded in New York City at Sound on Sound Studios, “Try Again,” as Douglass recalls, “was originally written to inspire young people, but Barry [Hankerson] heard it and told them, ‘It’s got to be about love.’ The melody and hook were the same, so Static changed the lyrics and it became a love song.” 

In addition, Aaliyah had begun an acting career that was taking off. Cast in the Joel Silver–produced kung-fu crime flick Romeo Must Die as well as the Anne Rice vampire thriller Queen of the Damned and the Matrix sequels, Aaliyah hadn’t released a full-length album in the five years. “I wanted to take a break after One in a Million to just relax, think about how I wanted to approach the next album,” she told journalist Elon Johnson that April. “Then, when I was ready to start back up, Romeo happened, and so I had to take another break and do that film and then do the soundtrack, then promote it. The break turned into a longer break than I anticipated.”

Back in the Meatpacking District that August night in 2001, I gathered with friends at the then-popular club APT where DJ Chairman Mao spun old-school hip-hop and soul as high-heeled girls sipped crimson-colored cosmopolitans. 

Two hours later, a strange vibe could be felt in the wood-paneled room as folks began looking strangely at their Blackberries, pagers, and cell phones. Standing beside me, a female friend suddenly blurted, “Oh my God, it says here that Aaliyah died in a plane crash.” Seconds later, along with other women in the room, she began to weep. 

The accident occurred when she and her team were returning to Miami, Florida, from the Bahamas, where she shot the video for “Rock the Boat,” the third single from Aaliyah, her third album finally released in 2001. Their small twin-engine Cessna plane was several hundred pounds overweight and crashed after takeoff, exploding on impact. The pilot was found to have had cocaine and alcohol in his system and had falsified data in order to receive his FAA license.

At the age of twenty-two, Aaliyah Dana Haughton became the latest pop star to enter that rock-and-soul heaven that the Righteous Brothers sang about so many years before. Glancing around at the crying females, most no older than Aaliyah herself, it became obvious to me that she was much more than a star—she was one of them. 

Harlem resident and former Jive Records executive Jeff Sledge, who had known the songstress since she was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, had returned from the movies with his fiancée when he heard the news. “It was supposed to be hip-hop night on Hot 97, but they were playing a mix of Aaliyah songs instead,” he recalls thirteen years later. “And then [DJ] Red Alert announced that she had died. I was stunned.” 

Of course, he wasn’t the only one. For days, the world mourned the young star with television specials, radio interviews with her contemporaries and friends, and a candlelight vigil in front of her alma mater, the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts. Furthermore, her stunning movie-star features were plastered on the covers of newspapers and magazines. 

Although she had the looks of a femme fatale, she was a sweet girl who’d been forced to grow up much too fast and died too young. However, as we all know, icons never die, because the images are forever. In her short lifetime, Aaliyah must’ve had her picture taken a million times, made countless videos, and created music that is still relevant to fans as well as to fellow pop idols Beyoncé, Drake, Chris Brown, Rihanna, and others. 

“There are so many artists trying to re-create the Aaliyah vibe in their music,” says singer Courtney Noelle, who was in seventh grade when the Black pop princess died. Growing up on the East Side of Pittsburgh, Noelle made up dances to “One in a Million” while watching the video constantly. “Aaliyah was so relatable and cool; she wasn’t over-sexualized, so we didn’t worry about Mom disapproving,” Noelle continues. “She sang, danced, and acted, but she did it all so effortlessly. She was just so beautiful and graceful.” 

While One in a Million was a landmark, the adolescent wonderfulness of Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number is often overlooked when Aaliyah’s small canon of work is examined. Of course, as Jason King points out, “Age has been marred by their troubling marriage and the [statutory] rape/pedophilia allegations that would come later. I don’t think we can now hear Age, particularly given the title, without taking the issue of teenage rape into account. So when I’m listening to Age, I’m struggling to try to listen to it out of context, but mostly I’m hearing R. Kelly as an alleged predator presenting to us his sonic and musical vision of how he wanted Aaliyah to exist in the commercial marketplace.” 

Still, for me, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number connects with many memories of the ’90s soul years that gave us debuts from Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, D’Angelo, Faith Evans, Maxwell, Erykah Badu, and the era’s most successful singer, writer, and producer, Robert Sylvester Kelly.

In 1991, R. Kelly and Public Announcement signed to Jive Records a few years before Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys took them mainstream. Better known for being the home of top-tier hip-hop acts A Tribe Called Quest, Boogie Down Productions, Schoolly D, and E-40, the Jive label was put into the business of soul by the success of Kelly’s post–New Jack Swing sound on Born into the 90’s and 12 Play.

“Barry Hankerson had been talking about his niece Aaliyah since she was twelve, but [label owner Clive Calder] thought she was too young,” says A&R man Jeff Sledge, who began working at the label in 1992. “When she turned fourteen, Clive agreed, but only under the condition that R. Kelly produced the whole album. Musically, it just made sense.”

For Robert Kelly, 1993 was a hell of a year. A bittersweet twelve months that included a substantial development in his R&B sound, the death of his beloved mother, Joanne, and the success of his album 12 Play, which was praised by critics and fans alike. It was also the year he began working on the material that would eventually become Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number. 

Although R. Kelly attempted to uphold his Chi-Town swagger after the death of his mother, the man was a mental mess. There were bizarre reports of the singer locking himself in hotel bathrooms during press days, blowing off Rolling Stone photo shoots, and sleeping in the closet. “His mother was the sweetest lady,” Jeff Sledge says. “When she died, he had a nervous breakdown. During that time, he was also making Age, so Aaliyah was always around to comfort him. After his mother’s passing, all he felt he had left in life was his music and working with Aaliyah.” 

R. Kelly’s love for music began when he was a fifteen-year-old student at Chicago’s Kenwood Academy where he encountered famed music instructor Lena McLin. The niece of gospel innovator Thomas A. Dorsey, she taught her students opera, gospel, jazz, and soul. As a child growing up during the Depression, she lived with Reverend Dorsey and played in church. While other girls wanted dolls, Lena McLin wanted sheet music. 

McLin taught R. Kelly everything she knew about the keyboards, pushing him by anointing her student “the next Stevie Wonder.” Encouraging the poor lanky boy from the South Side to put down his basketball and sit at the piano, she started him writing songs as well as teaching him discipline. “He didn’t have much,” McLin explained to me in 1995 in a Chinese restaurant in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. “He came from a terrible ghetto and sometimes wouldn’t have the clothes the other kids had, but I had a vision of what he was going to be. The Lord told me he was a genius, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer.” 

So, what exactly is a genius? “A genius lives in the present day, has studied the past, and preconceived the future,” explained McLin. “Robert’s mission is to bring back the real essence, the real creativity, the real soul to the music.” Although Robert dropped out of Kenwood when he was seventeen, he already had five hundred completed songs in his portfolio, according to McLin. “Well, I don’t think it was five hundred, but it was a lot,” R. Kelly told me in 1995 while mastering his third album at the Chicago Recording Company (CRC). Founded in 1975, it is billed as the largest studio in the Midwest. The studio became R. Kelly’s main sound factory in the early years. 

For R. Kelly, the state-of-the-art room became the rhythmic cathedral where he would expand on the musical legacy of Windy City soul—his city where the Chi-Lites once doo-wopped on street corners, Leroy Hutson made gangster-lean tracks for Curtom, and a young rapper named Common was recording his Resurrection album somewhere across town. 

“Miss McLin started me writing every day,” Kelly said. “I’d write a song and she’d tell me it was the most beautiful song she’d ever heard. She also started me messin’ around with the piano. I just wanted to make her happy.” Growing up in the notorious Ida B. Wells Homes, Kelly found those streets a lot more dangerous than the days of Cooley High. 

“I had a lot of ups and downs, lots of lessons, and trials and tribulations,” Kelly said. Avoiding the gangs, he spent much time at a neighbor Willie Pearl’s house playing her keyboards. One of the first songs he wrote, “Orphanage,” was inspired by a television program. Singing in L stations throughout the city, he waited for strangers to drop change in his chitlin bucket. 

Kelly was discovered by house-music pioneer and former Trax Records employee DJ Wayne Williams. After seeing him perform original material at a friend’s barbecue, Williams had to convince his new bosses at Jive Records to sign him: “I was constantly telling them that R. Kelly was the shit, but it took Barry Weiss, the president of the label, coming to Chicago, before they finally said yes. Jive had full confidence in him and gave R. Kelly creative freedom.” While Kelly’s debut, Born into the 90’s, sounded as though it was jacked wholesale from the Teddy Riley/Aaron Hall school of Harlem boogie, by the time 12 Play came out in 1993, the brother had perfected a baby-makin’ style on tracks “Bump N’ Grind,” “Your Body’s Callin’,” and the epic erotica of “It Seems Like You’re Ready.” 

Additionally, the album’s more danceable tracks, “Summer Bunnies” and “I Like the Crotch on You,” showed his dance-floor diversity. Still, whether the tempo, Kelly’s lyrics were often sexually explicit, filled with lustful references and obvious double entendres. “He grabbed the brass ring by stepping fully into the role of hypersexual super-stud,” Jason King says. “That’s an archetype in Black music that stretches very far back and that Isaac Hayes took to new heights in the early 1970s. Songs on 12 Play were very much musical analogues of the celebration of Black, freaky, and carnal culture in the 1990s.” 

Soon afterwards, Kelly began applying his newly developed, smoothed-out, seductive sounds to singles for Hi-Five (“Quality Time”) and Changing Faces (“G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T.”), and was more than ready to tackle a full-album project for his manager’s niece. “With the flair and energy he puts into his music, we can feel it,” McLin said. “Even when working on songs for others, he touches all the talent he comes in contact with; Robert’s mission is to bring soul music back.” Inspired by an extensive list of vocalists, musicians, and producers including Quincy Jones, Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield, and Tyrone Davis, he turned himself into an R&B auteur on the Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number project. 

R. Kelly was determined to become a one-man Holland-Dozier-Holland with a splash of Phil Spector eccentricity to keep things interesting. “Age was solely an R. Kelly production intended to not only introduce us to Aaliyah, but to show off R. Kelly’s polymath awesomeness,” says King. “It’s hip-hop soul in the way that Mary J. Blige, Xscape, and SWV fused those genres. But, Aaliyah embodied the hip-hop soul merger in a different way. She had the sweet, soothing, and slightly reserved soprano more associated with Diana Ross, Minnie Riperton, or Janet Jackson. I don’t think any producer understood what contemporary R&B audiences wanted to hear and pushed them further in the 1990s more than R. Kelly.”

In the summer of 1993, with Aaliyah on break from the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, she spent her entire vacation holed up inside the CRC. “The first song we recorded was ‘Old School,’ which I loved, because it had an Isley Brothers flair,” Aaliyah said. “That song didn’t take long to do, maybe two days. At first, I had to get comfortable, but I had been around Robert, so it was cool. Both Robert and I are perfectionists, and if you listen to the music, there is a lot of passion in it.”

Like Batman, one of his favorite comic book characters, R. Kelly worked best at night. “Most people are asleep, so it’s just the moon, the stars, the quiet, and the music.” Subsequently, the nights spent with the underage singer led to Kelly’s first accusations of statutory rape when an alleged affair began between them. Although there was a twelve-year age difference, the affair supposedly led to marriage, which paved the way for scandal and an annulment. While R. Kelly and Aaliyah always denied these accusations, the man who wrote the title track to Age tellingly said, “I write from everyday experiences and what moves me; that, to me, is a true writer. I love all forms of music. Everything that comes into my mind and hits my heart, I write it and record it. I love songs that mean something, and have some kind of truthfulness to them.”

Photographer Terrence A. Reese (aka Tar), who shot the album covers for 12 Play and Age, recalls that during the shoot “Aaliyah relied on Robert to teach her. He was like Berry Gordy to her Diana Ross. The following day was her fifteenth birthday, and she was also going to film the ‘Back & Forth’ video, so they were working on the dances and styling. You could see the attraction between R. Kelly and her.”

Turning back the hands of time to Good Friday, 1994, I was on a flight from New York City to Detroit to interview Aaliyah. Hired by Jive Records publicist Lesley Pitts, who was also my girlfriend, I was assigned to write the budding singer’s bio. Having worked with TLC and Toni Braxton on their debuts, Lesley was excited about the teenager’s pop potential.

Aaliyah’s first single, “Back & Forth,” was already being played on the radio and video channels. Unlike the broken-glass balladry of Mary J. Blige, which was hard as the Yonkers ghetto she hailed from, Aaliyah’s voice had a soft strength that reminded me of the Black pop women (Dionne Warwick, Marilyn McCoo, and Barbara McNair) I’d grown up listening to in the ’70s.

For weeks, Lesley had been bragging that this new kid was going to be large; after hearing a few tracks, including “At Your Best (You Are Love),” her lovely cover of the Isley Brothers’ ballad, I was hooked. “I like to groove to artists like Parliament or the Isley Brothers, because that was when music was really real,” Aaliyah said later that day. “I just think the Isley Brothers are so unique.” 

After my jet landed in the Motor City, I took a short cab ride to the Sheraton Hotel and within minutes was sitting in the dining room with Aaliyah, her mother Diane, and Lesley. Dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, Aaliyah wore her shades, but soon took them off as she became more comfortable with me. “When I was younger, I used to go around the house singing with my mother,” Aaliyah said, her voice poised and proper. 

Coming from a middle-class family, she was a product of nice schools and an artistic yearning that was encouraged with classes. “I’m a big fan of Johnny Mathis, so I used to sing ‘Chances Are’ with my mom. Luther Vandross was another favorite. I was so drawn to singing, because I could get away from everything, and I just loved it.” 

Uncle Barry first introduced Aaliyah to R. Kelly when she was twelve. “He was just completing Born into the 90’s, and I sang for him,” she smiled, her voice lightening. “I sang for him, and he liked what he heard. Still, we didn’t start working on the album until a few years later.” 

Arriving first in January of ’93, when there was snow on the ground, Aaliyah returned in the summer, and their relationship clicked in the studio. “We vibed off of one another, and that’s how the songs was built,” she said. “He would vibe with me on what the lyrics should be. He’d tell me what to sing, and I’d sing it. That’s how the whole album was done. We put in a lot of hours; as far as the music, we’d be in there all night making sure it was perfect. There were times when I was tired, but I knew I had to push on if I wanted to come off.” 

When the two weren’t recording, they’d be in the studio watching horror movies. “Silence of the Lambs was my favorite,” she said. “The studio can be hectic, so sometimes we went to McDonald’s.” 

While some of the Kelly’s double entendres could be embarrassing, Aaliyah defended “Back & Forth,” a song whose title hints of sex. “It’s not a song about love or whatever; it’s about going to a party and having fun. I have songs about love, crushes, or whatever, but that song is about dancing. This album is about teens and what they go through.” One of the more forward crush records was the sensually upbeat “No One Knows How to Love Me Quite Like You Do.” Aaliyah smiled when I asked about it and said, “Every girl looks for that one person who is going to love them right. That song is saying, when it comes down to it, I like how you satisfy me.”

Months before Age was released on May 24, 1994, the stylish Millicent Shelton–directed clip for “Back & Forth” was shot at Aaliyah’s performing arts school in Detroit, where teens were recruited to be in various scenes. “That was my first video, but Millicent made me comfortable.” Between takes, she listened to the music of Tupac, Wu-Tang, and Gang Starr. “They all rap on an intellectual level.”

In the studio, she was a sponge who later spoke about her aspirations to produce and write: “When we were recording ‘Down With the Clique,’ I watched how Robert [Kelly] laid the drums and everything. He taught me to play the piano a bit, and I’m also trying to learn the mixing board, though it looks complicated. The studio is my first love.”

After wrapping the interview, Lesley and I went upstairs to our hotel room. Once inside, I turned to her and bluntly stated, “I know this sounds crazy, but I get the feeling R. Kelly is sleeping with that girl.” 

Looking at me as though I was losing my mind, Lesley was appalled. “Why would you say something like that?”

“It’s just a feeling I get.”

“Well, it’s not true, so don’t say that,” she scolded, more protective publicist than loving girlfriend. Of course, a few months later, the entire sordid story became yet another tale in the Babylon that is the music industry that eats its young. 

In 2013, journalist Jim DeRogatis, who broke the R. Kelly sex scandal in 2002, told the Village Voice, “I had Aaliyah’s mother cry on my shoulder and say her daughter’s life was ruined. Aaliyah’s life was never the same after that.”

Six days after the disaster that ended Aaliyah’s life as well as the lives of the pilot and seven members of her team, I sat in my Brooklyn apartment watching footage from Aaliyah’s funeral on Entertainment Tonight. There were images of the white horse-drawn carriage that carried her casket from Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel to St. Ignatius Loyola Church on East Eighty-Third Street in Manhattan.

After the funeral, in front of thousands of fans, twenty-two doves representing the years of her life were released in front of the church as her mother Diane, father Michael, older brother Rashad, Uncle Barry, and fiancé Damon Dash cried. The only person missing, for obvious reasons, was R. Kelly.

Six years before—just a year removed from his notorious split with Aaliyah—R. Kelly sat inside his studio at CRC telling me about producing for other artists, including Michael Jackson (“You Are Not Alone”) and Kelly Price (“Friend of Mine”). “I have many styles,” he said. “I’m more than just the 12 Play guy. I don’t write one kind of thing.”

Looking at him closely, I asked, “If there was just one person you could work with right now, who would it be?” Without hesitation, he held his head high and shamelessly answered, “Aaliyah.”

#aaliyah #Aaliyah's musical legacy endures

[polyphoniclandscapes2]

I Didn’t Have Any Choice But to Become an Artist

Basement NY, club in Queens 

I love to dance and have ever since I was little. Growing up in the Bronx, I was on step teams and in different Boys and Girls Club events, always involved in dancing. I was even a choreographer. All kinds of dancing, but mostly hip-hop. As far back as high school.

High school was in the Bronx. I went to a school that doesn’t exist anymore: Foreign Language Academy of Global Studies in the South Bronx. It was just a small magnet school of six hundred students. I knew everyone and everyone knew me, and it was kind of awesome. Talk about safe spaces. It was a great experience. Actually, my high school experience was really exceptional, as a queer person, because that’s not common. Not so common in the Bronx, either.

I was one of four or five out people. And we ran that school. As a teenager, I was a gay boy, but always hyper feminine. Probably even more so back then. I was able to really be myself in school. The staff at school was really cool. My first altercation was when some kid bullied me. I put him in his place—publicly. After that, everyone had respect for me, and that made me feel really confident.

I was a singer, too. I sang a lot. I was always in chorus in school and at Boys and Girls Club. I took drum. I know how to play the drums. I took violin in high school, but none of that really stuck. Not really a church music person. I was a tenor. Since I was a little kid, I had singing groups. We did R&B, wrote our own songs, too. I always had this this kind of ringleader vibe. Always getting everyone involved in stuff.

In high school I didn’t really go out. We were such nerds, honestly. I would play hooky to go to the queer section at Barnes and Noble to read books and talk about them, and then go to the piers. I never had a fake ID. It wasn’t until I was in college that I started going out. There was so much nightlife in New York back then. I would go to Splash and Krash and these big clubs that don’t exist anymore—Limelight and Avalon, those kinds of places. That was my real introduction to techno and queerness.

That was before I found the ballroom scene. Even though I became very intrigued by ballroom music, I didn’t consider that techno then. It was more house music and disco. There were obviously techno aspects to it, but I didn't make the connection back then. It wasn’t until the clubs that I really found techno and danced for hours to it. Krash was a mix of house and techno, or anything Junior Vasquez was playing. The nightlife scene was richer back then, I feel. It seemed that way. There would be drag performances but by trans women. All of this stuff would be put all into one big, jam-packed night.

I went to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. That was crazy. It was definitely culture shock to come from the city—an inner-city kid—where I was mostly surrounded by people of color, to then go really far upstate. It was this affluent school. Sorority girls, that kind of world. I arrived as this queer, black person. Of course, everyone loved me.

I was really lucky in my educational experiences to have such welcoming places. I initially studied Psychology. But I ended up graduating some ten years later in Creative Writing with a Gender Studies minor. I started Gender Studies freshman year, and that’s when I dropped out and started transitioning. So that helped me then.

I started transitioning the summer I became twenty-one. I came back to the city. My family wasn’t happy. I was kicked out, and stayed with different friends. That went on for years, actually. I ended up discovering my cousin. She was queer. We met randomly in the Village. I ended up living with her sometime later. And so that was kind of cool for a while. Then it was just the dark, dark side of being trans, having to do survival sex work. Survival took over my life. I didn’t have time to worry about aspirations or goals even though I still had them.

What I wanted to do was a magazine of my own, called Gag Mag. I wanted it to be a queer entertainment magazine. I interviewed Nome Ruiz from Jessica Six. I was a big fan of hers. There was just so much talent back then, but there was not as much coverage or notoriety that came with queer artists. I was always trying to bring attention to that. I didn’t know that I would become an artist.

Then there was another kind of party in Brooklyn: GHE20GOTH1K and Cherry Bomb and Juliana Huxtable’s parties, like Windows. There just wasn’t as much grassroots queerness to it. Coming from the big club scene, I didn’t even know about those parties. Those were two totally different worlds even though they’re both queer and definitely had techno-related music. The big club scene had bouncers. All very corporate, white gay, although Krash and Splash were Latinx.

I think my prime going out period started around 2010. The Brooklyn queer of color scene was really going off. That’s when I was interning for Venus X, who hosted GHE20GOTH1K. That was kind of a weird position. She needed someone to help her do music research on Facebook. I love music, I love techno, and I love the ballroom scene. What was really special about GHE20GOTH1K was the blending of those worlds. Whereas at the clubs there would be the queens in the back voguing to techno, but they weren’t necessarily bringing in that ballroom music of Mike Q or LSDXOXO. All those DJs that started merging techno, house, and ballroom sounds were really getting their start from GHE20GOTH1K. I found that amazing. That was something that I had always wanted to marry in this way.

New York was a center for that, although ballroom music itself comes from so many places—Baltimore club music, for example. Bounce music is in there. That’s just a cultural thing with people of color: booty, booty, booty! Ballroom music developed in the tristate area and then spread out: that marrying of bitch beats, house music, and artists like Kevin Aviance just saying cunty things over tracks.

Those things merged, at least for me, in the New York scene. I love playing bitch beats and I love playing vogue tracks and I love playing techno. It’s all of that merging, and I’m from New York, so I guess I guess it’s a New York thing. But it’s all over the place now. Lots of awesome tracks that I love are produced by people from all over and not necessarily even involved in the ballroom scene or anything. But they still make great music, right?

So I had dropped out of college and gone back to New York to transition. And there’s that survival period there. But then I went back and finished college. Before even starting to do sex work I was arrested and accused of being a prostitute. I eventually ended up winning all this money in a lawsuit. So that was a new beginning for me, financially. I didn’t have to do sex work anymore. It made sense to go back to school, because I had a free ride.

I made a new generation of friends at St. Lawrence. There were more queer people, and also other trans people at school. That was a new experience for me. As a queer person at St. Lawrence, I had already left a mark that paved the way for other people who were going to school there, who had even heard of me from when I’d been there before. So that was cool. It’s so weird being this trailblazer. Everyone kind of looks up to you in this particular way. They expect this strong, confident, headstrong person. It’s exhausting. Being ahead of the curve can break you down over time. Even though you’re paving the way for other people, you’re losing pieces of yourself. You’re being ravaged by the world. It’s always been this weird thing. The people who have felt that I made space possible for them end up being people who care for me the most because they have the strength now.

After I graduated, I moved to California, and that opened up a whole world. I went to California for someone who’s now an ex. I knew him here in New York when I was in a dark spiral. We were basically just stuck together in some weird way. Then I went to school to get myself together and he went to rehab in California because he’s from there. He supposedly got his shit together; I got my shit together. And then, together in California, neither of us had our shit together. And it just wasn’t what it was supposed to be. But I ended up making awesome friends and having an amazing life there. I was working for nonprofits with trans people and queer people, and became kind of iconic in my own right, just being a light and whatnot for people. I loved my job. I loved working with the trans community. I had so much freedom and it afforded me the money and interactions with people to start throwing parties.

That was the start of the New World Dysorder party. Before we started that were throwing parties with a friend who had access to a warehouse. This was with Burning Man type people out there. Moving to California introduced me to a whole other kind of world revolving around techno, around drum and bass and house music and raves, actual raves. Coming from New York, raves weren’t really happening then. New York was about clubs.

New World Dysorder started around 2015 or 2016. One of my roommates would just hear me listening to beats and stuff and said, “Oh my God, you would love my friend Mitch, aka K’hole Kardashian. He loves that kind of music.” Finding someone who knew ballroom music so far away from New York was a big deal for me, especially being out there and being from New York and not really knowing anyone. It was very underground.

I was just a host, you know, a face for the party, but I really wanted to learn to DJ and produce. One of my friends and cofounders of New World Dysorder, Erica Mar, was a DJ and producer. She gave me my start. She was producing witch house music back then, which I loved. I still love it, honestly. I love all kinds of music. You’d be surprised. Bored Lord was friends with Mitch and she would give me pointers. I was already a fan of Bored Lord as well. Before she was DJing as she is now, she was doing vocal music and performing.

New World Dysorder and Club Chai started developing at the same time. Both were about genre-bending music. Club Chai was started by two Bay Area natives who also thought it was important to center queer and trans people. To me, and to us, it was just queer music. Taking club sounds back. Prior to Juliana Huxtable, Venus X, and the Brooklyn scene, there were not many trans people, femmes, women at the forefront of these spaces in nightlife. Especially as trans people, we were supposed to stay in the bubble of being an “attraction.” I wanted to change that. Even though trans women were a big part of San Francisco nightlife, they were often performers, or working the door, or hosts. Similarly in New York, trans women were just these sexualized dolls used for decoration.

There was this one place called Asia SF. They had bachelor and bachelorette parties there. I tried out to dance on stage there—a buck’s a buck. They said I was too tall. It was just unfortunate to me that we had to allow these places to reduce us to being an attraction, like, “you wouldn't believe it, but this is a man!” or whatever.

Those places were basically chaser clubs. There was another one called Divas. I would go there since I had friends who worked there. It was just a place where trans people could make money, whether they were bartending, coming in and doing outreach, doing sex work, or working as dancers. I remember I was drunk one time and just ran through that place, yelling at all the chasers.

California was where I started DJing. We even had parties at Divas. I’d always wanted to do one at Asia SF, actually. San Francisco was in love with us. It was a magical coming together of friends. You see that in lots of different places, but I never had that in New York, with friends coming together and being creative and making something, and then actually doing it. Trans people coming together. We had the time, we had the energy, the resources, the connections, and we made something amazing happen. It was inspired by GHE20GOTH1K and everything that was happening in New York, but it had its own California flair. I think we created something new that also inspired other scenes.

And then I ended up back in New York. Nothing’s ever completely my choice. I’m just rolling with the punches, literally. We were visiting New York—me, Cali Rose, and Bella Bags, formerly known as London Jade. We had just thrown a party at the House of Yes in Bushwick. That party was chill, but the bouncers were rude to many of the guests. The bill ended up with so many big names on it. They made us feel like we weren’t enough. They wanted us to have another big name and another, all this kind of stuff. And I thought, “we're all big names in our own right, you know?” We would draw, especially back then. Their attitude was a slap in the face.

I got attacked after that party. We on our way to go to unter or something. We were walking past Happyfun Hideaway [a local queer bar] and I tried to go into this liquor store around the corner. I guess it was after the Puerto Rican Day Parade, so people were just drunk and messy, and these guys attacked us. I was in the hospital, and the doctor said that after the surgery, I’d need to come in for checkups. I stayed in New York rather than going back to California. I was supposed to continue on a tour, but that got cut short. I ended up here for six months, recovering. I could not afford to pay for my rent in California. I was back in New York, and I’ve been back ever since.

That was 2017 or 2018. Then we started doing New World Dysorder here at Bossa Nova Civic Club, but it wasn’t the same. It was still great, but the parties in California that we had in the beginning were amazing. It was the start of something. I feel it never quite got to the level that it should have in New York, but I do feel it made a difference. And I feel, more importantly than anything, that there was community formed around it and friendships made. And it inspired other people to create other parties. But it’s hard being a queer, black, trans person and doing this stuff. Especially in New York. It is so competitive here. It’s just hard. It’s hard to keep going.

I started producing around the same time as New World Dysorder was taking off. I would mess around with Traktor, just looping tracks and making different kinds of patterns. Friends would say, “that's a remix!” I would think to myself, oh, okay, that’s a remix. Then it was a matter of having that confidence and going from there. I learned Ableton. Bored Lord, Cali Rose, Mitch, and I would have these workshop days that were just us hanging out, smoking weed, messing around on CDJs—while one of us is on a CD JSR Versa, the other would be messing around on a computer with Ableton.

The Bay Area scene was psychedelic. That was the context where I was first learning Ableton, also with this guy 23 Odd Cats. He’s a DJ that I know from California. He’s more Burning Man and psytrance, drum and bass style. I was on ketamine, and he showed me Ableton and I’m like “wow, I get it.” And even to this day, there are things I know that I don’t necessarily remember learning.

Particularly in California, the rave scene was psychedelic. Ketamine and Molly and hippy-flipping (Molly and mushrooms). Mushrooms are a huge part of the culture of raves and music there. In New York, back in my day, in the gay clubs it was just cocaine and alcohol, over and over. Maybe ecstasy, sometimes. In California, there was definitely a more accountable approach with drugs. The DanceSafe people, for instance, making sure people drink water. Especially because of Burning Man and the desert, a lot revolved around keeping people safe while they’re having fun. I feel that in New York, it’s harder to do that.

In New York, we’re in a more oppressive environment. There’s not the freedom to be sloppy off in in the hills somewhere, rolling around on Molly. But I do feel with more substances being legalized, or available as treatments, attitudes change. It’s so great that you can smoke weed now in New York. I’ve been arrested for doing that here. It’s changing the perception of drug use, its role in the scene. With ketamine, there are studies of its uses, like for depression, that are maybe making it a little more acceptable for people to use.

I don’t necessarily condone that either, you know, people just willy-nilly doing stuff. It can be dangerous, but I do think that drugs have influenced techno music. There’s a connection between minimal techno and ketamine. Once I was in Pittsburgh with some folks from the Honcho party, and we were listening to a woman who does this amazing minimal techno. You could hear every little detail. Music is very mathematical, right? With ketamine, you really tune in to this mathematical side. You can feel the physics. A certain precision.

There’s always been stoner music. I love The Doors and stuff like that. I’m down for a trippy stoner vibe. Growing up, a blunt and voguing went well together, too. We smoked a lot. And then we’d vogue and we'd listen to Kevin Jay Z Prodigy, and even in the song he says, “pass the blunt Miss Thing, girl!” It’s definitely in the music, and the culture, but that’s a whole other conversation.

BXTCH SL​Ä​P by Jasmine Infiniti, cover

BXTCH SLÄP (2020) was not my first project. I released SiS (2018) and Art and Performance (2019) and some other things. BXTCH SLÄP was my first really well received one. Over that period, I had a lot of notoriety. We were doing New World Dysorder all over the world. I was traveling a lot for the first time. That was very much a new experience and a very hard experience. Everyone is like, “you're traveling and oh my god, so lucky!” I am lucky and it is amazing, but it’s hard as a black trans person. Many people’s understanding of traveling is just the most glamorous aspects of it. As a black trans person, I've been detained, I’ve been denied entry into places. Going to countries can be like going to clubs. The bouncers of the country are like, “It's a private event.”

Being in the airport so much with my computer, I would just work and work on my music using Ableton. I start making things while traveling—working on most of BXTCH SLÄP at the same time I put out the Sis ep with Club Chai. Art and Performance was kind of a test run of me publishing my own tracks. BXTCH SLÄP was made the year before the pandemic. I wasn’t going to release it just yet, but then pandemic hit. People were talking about Covid, but I was just focused on working on my album. I didn’t know what was going on in the world.

I was planning on going to Mexico. Then I got really sick, but apparently not with Covid. I couldn’t go to Mexico, so I just put my album out and then it blew up. There was so much love and so much support for it. A lot of people have told me that it helped get them through the lockdown, and I’m always touched by that. It’s also been surreal because even now, I can’t believe people have actually listened to it. Since it came out during the early isolation of the pandemic, it never really hit me.

It seemed to resonate with people’s mood during the lockdown even though I made it before the pandemic. There was this vibe I felt even before. I’ve always wanted to express these darker vibes. I look at music as a sculptor might. I get the materials and just have this lump of sounds sitting there, and then I chisel away at it until it starts to sound like something. I say it's techno, but I’m not sure that it’s actually techno. What is techno? That’s a question. But maybe what my music does is define what it could be, or what else it could be. Genres can be limiting.

Maybe it wasn’t a “dark” album so much as a realist one. That’s just the mood, right? Here I am in my demon hole again. There’s a track called “Demonhole.” That was some movie my roommate and I were watching while I was working on this track in my headphones. That whole album is melancholic. But also, there's some driving, angry kind of loudness to it—this repetition. Plus, a certain amount of pure rage, but shaped into something.

I've never played piano or anything. I learned drums and the violin, but that was random. I do have these melodic moments, but I’m obviously not classically trained. I don’t really know how to execute proper chord progressions. I’m continuing to learn. I think it’s important as a queer, black person to not be so bound by the rules that are set, because even just as queer people, the rules weren’t made for us. We have to find our own way.

I feel I’ve just been finding my own way in the music. I love these ethereal feelings, like you’re in cave or somewhere where there are magical sounds going on. Or in a graveyard or something. It’s funny, I had never actually been to some of the places I imagined the tracks could be the soundtrack for. I have ended up visiting some of them since, once things opened up and I was touring again. Glasgow Necropolis, for instance.

In my next projects, I hope that I get to have some visuals to go along with some of the tracks that reflect the mood and vibe, because I do consider myself an artist in that way. Everything up until now, including BXTCH SLÄP, has been me testing the waters and just taking a chance, but I feel it has been building up to something bigger and better. I just need to be in a good place to be able to work.

Everything that I’ve done, or every choice that I’ve made, has been in the thick of it. Nothing has ever actually been a plan. It all works out, but how can queer, black, trans people make plans in this world? Everything can just be taken away at a moment's notice. Look at the pandemic, look at how that affected everyone’s plans. But especially when you’re queer and black and trans, sometimes it’s just about making it through the day.

I’ve gone through all these weird phases where I’m free, and I’m happy, and I don’t care. But then, being popular and well known—everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to let you know their opinion. It’s okay, but being a black, queer, trans person and being notable is a weird position to straddle. For example, I need to access queer services and stuff, too. And then when I do, they'll know who I am. You don’t get to be incognito in the waiting room. I used to be punk and not care about what I might be wearing or how I look in certain pictures and stuff. That comes back to haunt me.

There’s pressure when you’re iconic. But where's my hair stylist? For public appearances, I'm having to rely on me and my limited wardrobe, but then also have to respond to this demand for even just pictures of me. There was even a time during the pandemic, there were a lot of people asking to photograph me and I don't even have my lashes done.

The pressure around how you look effects how you get treated. If bouncers don’t know that I’m the DJ, and I just come in a hoodie and a sweatshirt, they ask, “why aren’t you dressed up?” How people perceive me obviously has something to do with not being the stereotypical ideal of what a trans woman in nightlife is supposed to be. You’re supposed to be this glammed up thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not me.

The dolls set incredibly high standards for each other. And then I’m just coming in my Docs and whatever. I have a different purpose. I feel it’s good in a lot of ways because it’s pushing this idea that not everyone has to come glammed up all the time. That makes space for other people to feel comfortable. And I’ve been told that.

Pressure is still a hard thing deal with, though. Especially being a black, trans woman. Sometimes I'll go to these venues and the bouncers may not necessarily know who I am. They’ll treat me how they are used to treating someone like me. They’ll be rude as hell. It can be black masculinity versus queer, trans, black femininity, just that kind of bumping heads that was always being talked about even in the Black Lives Matter movement. How unaccepting the black community can be of its own people if they’re queer, especially if they're trans, and especially if they are queer and trans, and in ways that aren’t cis normative. When you don’t pass for what is acceptable, you really get a lot of shit for it.

I’ve been thinking, as we all have, about the shooting that happened recently at Club Q in Colorado Springs. Before that, there was the shooting at Pulse nightclub. An arsonist burned down Rash in New York when it was just building up to be something. Queer spaces are under attack in this way. I don’t know how to word this, but we party despite all the signals from society. We’re still out here, making space, having fun, being creative. Doing what we need for our sanity, our freedom.

Trans visibility was important and a lot of good came from it, but even while it was happening, there were a lot of weird authenticity issues. It was definitely an important to kind of shift just in the ideologies revolving around clubs, and around trans people in the club. People joke that if you're trans, you're either a DJ, a sex worker, or a hairdresser. Three options only. Visibility was about just expanding upon what our capabilities are perceived as being. But there were a lot of unforeseen and weird problems and appropriations that came from it, and of course the tokenizing of people.

Alongside expanding the culture is expanding the music. I always think it’s so funny how exclusive people are. I love genre bending. That was what I loved about Club Chai. I love almost all kinds of music. It really just depends on my mood and my vibe, even in my DJ sets. I’ll bring in stuff that doesn’t necessarily always work, but at least I take the plunge.

I love hip-hop, obviously, from growing up in the Bronx, even Cam’ron and real hood stuff. But I also love jazz. The other night I went to Blue Note with some old friends. I listened to jazz with my grandpa. Almost any black music I was exposed to growing up. It’s always going to be a part of me. But then, especially as I got older, especially in college, I wasn’t trying to study while listening to R&B or hip-hop.

Me and my friend Candy would listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees. I love old-school punk stuff. Back in the day, when I was really getting into music, I started with earmilk.com and some Tumblr site called post-punk. That was me discovering new music outside of my norms, which were ballroom, hip-hop, and R&B. A lot of this other stuff was exotic to me. Especially stuff coming from the UK.

Here's a random story from when I was in college the first time, being this queer, black boy on campus. There was this black guy, who was probably gay, and he was a DJ who said, “oh, hey, next time I see you, I got something for you.” He gave me a CD. And it was all these old-school house tracks and bitch beats, close to techno but definitely more house-y, from the same time that techno was being developed by the big names, by the boys, the cis straight men. That’s why the bitch beats and stuff were happening, I feel, because it was the same vibe that the bros were doing with this added queer layer, and with Kevin Aviance or Harmonica Sunbeam doing something over it. Usually it was chanting, which was also in the ballrooms. Queer people, specifically queer people of color, were taking this music and putting their own touch on it.

That’s been the motif, especially with New World Dysorder, that was the combination that started it. Now the power is in my hands to form something. To add to this great fabric of queer nightlife. We can throw a party here and there and make a couple of bucks, but moving forward, I want there to be a good foundation for a business that someone can take over that employs trans people. Give people a break from doing sex work or whatever. Just give people different or additional avenues to make money.

The ballroom scene was so separate from nightlife, but Venus X and her party really started to bring it together more intentionally. That was the start of a new genre for me. One of my big faves, LSDXOXO, came out of that. I saw it happening, saw it before it happened. I was just this weirdo from the Bronx that never really fit in, even, you know, to the Bronx stereotype, didn’t always fit into the ballroom stereotype, either, or even the nightlife stereotype. I didn’t have any choice but to become an artist.

#Music #Gender #Transgender #Black Studies #Queer Art & Theory #Drugs & Psychedelia

[psychedelicpotato]

How Can They Be So Sweet?

Note: This article on the band Switchblade Symphony was written from four separate phone interviews with band members, and originally published in IndustrialnatioN magazine, Issue #15, June 1997 with the byline Kelly B. Ashkettle.

It’s 8:00 a.m. in her San Francisco apartment, and Susan Wallace is telling me about her world. Her black cat, Jezebel, is at her side, and the walls of her room are covered with photographs of early film and vaudeville stars. “You can look in their faces, and you see so much depth….” she says. “I feel really connected with the past. More so than the future. I surround myself with old things.”

The first piano she ever played was an antique, which she began to visit on holidays at her grandmother’s house when she was five years old. “My family would all be upstairs, and I would want to be in the basement,” she recalls. “And I would just be with the piano and my grandfather’s golf clubs and my mom’s toys from when she was little and a really old sewing machine…and I just felt really comfortable and safe there.”

Some twenty-odd years later, she’s still playing, as the keyboardist for Switchblade Symphony, and that little girl who felt part of another time is still very much a part of her and of the music she writes. “Everything is based on when I was little,” she says.

“Everything is based on when I was little.” — Susan

Switchblade Symphony’s singer, Tina Root, also brings a very child-like quality to their music, but her persona is more that of a wide-eyed babydoll than that of a mournful waif. “It’s more of a naive thing,” she says. “People are always amazed with my behavior and my ability to remain in denial and think that everybody is so nice and I can trust anybody and the world is cool and beautiful.”

“How can they be so sweet?” asks a line in “Sweet,” from the band’s debut album, Serpentine Gallery. It’s a compelling question because it’s asked amidst a description of madness, and the band itself is compelling because it balances similar contrasts. There is sensuality to Tina and Susan’s child-likeness, and more than a hint of dementia. They’re also beginning to discover an angry side.

For many, Switchblade Symphony represent the perfect balance between gothic and industrial music. Their 1995 album is one of the best-selling freshman acts on Cleopatra — ever. Susan says that after they toured with Christian Death in the fall of 1996, their album sales tripled. During that tour, they got rave reviews across the country for the energy and emotion of their live performances, and success was great enough to warrant a headlining tour with Sunshine Blind just eight months later.

Switchblade Symphony was born in 1990, when Tina decided that she’d like to be able to take classical elements of music, like a symphony, and cut them up with a switchblade to introduce harder vocal styles, guitars, and drums to create a sound that is both beautiful and hard. She met Susan through mutual friends who knew they were both looking for someone with whom to make music, and the pair became close almost instantly.

At first it was just the two of them: Tina singing and Susan playing keyboards. They often added a slide show and a ballerina to their live performances to increase the visual appeal. After a couple years, they were joined by a guitarist, Robin Jacobs, and a drummer, Justin Clayton, both of whom eventually left the band. After Justin left, they added Eric Gebow, the current live drummer, but the band was officially just Tina, Susan, and Robin. That’s when they were signed to Cleopatra.

Serpentine Gallery was released in September, 1995. In June of 1996, Robin left the band and was replaced by George Earth as the live guitarist. Neither George nor Eric are officially part of the band, but the foursome have reached a level of closeness that makes this surprising.

“I didn’t really start to give a certain amount of creative input until George was involved,” Eric tells me. “I don’t really know why that is. I think George was kind of the catalyst for that.”

It was an early April afternoon, and in the previous two days, the four of them had written two new songs for Switchblade Symphony’s upcoming album. “The four of us just sat down from scratch and just jammed for 45 minutes,” Susan says. “And it just — it had that feeling. All of us were connected.”

“When I first joined,” Eric says, “My feeling was, ‘Well, I’m just here to sort of recreate — to try to do live what they do.’ Tina and Susan have a very specific vibe and relationship just between themselves, and that is still the central part of the band. But I think now there’s more input from George and I responding to that energy that they have between the two of them.”

Tina and Susan have sometimes said that when they met they were opposites, and then they blended into one person. “After close examination, it’s more like the left side and the right side of the brain,” George explains. “But I’m not going to tell you which is which!”

“We were opposites, but at the same time, we were a lot alike,” Susan says. “She’s very nurturing and loving and light-hearted. Not that I’m not. She’s more so. I don’t know how to explain it…”

Tina adds, “I would say that she makes more calculated decisions, you know, more well thought-out. Which is extremely important with our band so that we’re able to get things done. I’m a little crazier. You know — irresponsible,” she says, with a merry laugh. “But I try. I’m more spontaneous. So we balance each other out.”

Switchblade Symphony’s new album is scheduled for a fall release, and has a working title of Bread and Jam for Frances, which comes from a storybook and tape Susan used to listen to as a child — although George isn’t sure whether it will be used because of copyright problems. As all four Switchbladers attest, it’s going to be significantly different from Serpentine Gallery.

The starting point is the sampler that Susan bought after the completion of Serpentine Gallery. Rather than relying on a drum machine, she’s doing a lot of sampling and looping real drums and guitars — usually from Eric and George’s playing. “The last record didn’t have a tremendous amount of sonic space in it….” Eric says. “Samplers are great…because you can still get this very driving sort of rhythm or sound, but because it’s sampled from another source and it’s not created, and it’s not simply in a drum machine or an electronic source, it instantly has a broader spectrum of sound happening.”

“It sounds a lot more experimental,” Susan says. “There’s one song that is very short. It’s kind of like a ‘Bloody Knuckles’ piece…that’s just more like a traditional, classical piece. And then we have some where we bring other elements into it, and some where Tina’s singing opera, and stuff like that.”

Tina says she’s aiming for more sophistication on this album. She’s used the four track she has at home to write vocal parts that she couldn’t do otherwise. “I can sing really, really soft and use a lot of different dynamics and a lot of character voices that I wouldn’t be able to achieve with the mic control that we have at the present time in our practice studio,” she explains.

On one song, she uses what she calls a “geisha girl” voice. She demonstrates by making her voice very high and stilted, and explains that she was inspired by a friend who bought a tape of a Chinese woman singing like that. “Other than that,” she says, “I’ve been using a lot more breath. More airy sounds and more warm tones, though I still totally go back into my other voices.”

“A good singer is somebody who has enough courage to let their soul come out of their mouth when they open it.” — Tina

When Tina was in the sixth grade, her family moved to Montana. She didn’t have many musical resources there. While all her present friends were going through their heavy metal stage, she had only a handful of new wave records. Sometimes she’ll make up for it now, by rocking out to Metallica or AC/DC. George calls her a “hard rock chick,” and she lets out a peal of laughter when she hears this. “Yeah, I like rock and roll,” she says. “I think it’s really sensual and rough, and I like that a lot.”

She’d like to be able to explore anger more in her music. “I don’t get as angry as I should unless I’m performing or creating,” she says. “So, I think when I let myself be angry, I’m jacked. I’m like, ‘Okay, I deserve to be angry. I don’t have to be nice. I can be mean. So that’s why I think it’s a positive thing. Venting is a good thing.”

Tina started taking voice lessons in high school, but found it frustrating because different teachers told her different things, and because they always wanted her to sing in her “correct voice.” She’d begun to sing for a band, and her voice teacher didn’t like the “character voices” she was using to achieve different moods.

She played bass and sang backup in a punk band for a while. At shows, the crowd would yell, “Let the girl sing!” which annoyed the lead singer, especially since she was dating him at the time. Later, after she moved to Seattle, she sang briefly for a band called Ash, who went on to open up for bands like The Screaming Trees. After that, she moved to San Francisco and met Susan.

“I really think that what makes a good singer,” Tina says, “is you know, obviously you have to have some sort of talent, but I really believe that it’s more somebody who has enough courage to let their soul come out of their mouth when they open it.”

She generally prefers female singers to male ones. “I think that women have an easier time tapping into that [emotion] than men,” she says, “just because of the way that society has put pressure on men to remain macho.”

She enjoys the harsh industrial music that bands like Battery pair with female vocals. “I think they complement each other really well,” she says. However, she doesn’t really consider Switchblade Symphony industrial. “I wouldn’t consider it industrial,” she says, “because industrial is more of a mechanical harshness, or more of a sterile harshness. The harshness that we have, I think, is much more emotional. Not in a better or a worse way, but more emotional and less machine oriented.”

Eric has described the new album as more “ambient,” but he’s quick to point out that he’s not using the word in the industry sense of slow, chilled-out techno, but rather to refer to a greater depth and a more precise placement of the elements of sound.

“Most of the stuff that we’re recording is pretty danceable,” Susan says. “I kind of habitually go for this mid-tempo kind of groove. I just like it. I feel comfortable with it. And it’s kind of forced for me to write something different. Although there’s going to be one song that’s pretty fast in there, pretty into it, because it’s really aggressive sounding in the beat. Right now, it’s called ‘Turtle Face.’ ”

As aggressive as “Clown,” the most “industrial” song on Serpentine Gallery? “It doesn’t sound quite as angry,” she replies. “Clown still has kind of that heavy beat, even though it’s kind of mid-tempo, and this song’s more dark techno sounding, but it’s really fast.”

Later, she muses that she hopes Switchblade Symphony’s fans will like the new album. “I hope no one’s disappointed,” she says. “I hope they get into it, because it is different. I think it’s better. It’s stronger. It’s heavier. The quality and depth are more apparent to me.”

Switchblade Symphony have reached pretty much the pinnacle of success in the gothic community. Ask a random goth to recommend a handful of bands as an introduction to the genre, and you’re likely to get a list that includes Bauhaus, the Sisters of Mercy, Rosetta Stone, and — these days — Switchblade Symphony. Not bad for a band with only one album released a mere year and a half ago.

They definitely appreciate their gothic fan base. “We’re all quite fortunate that the gothic scene has taken us under its wing,” Tina says. “I find that the gothic scene has a lot of class. They’re very well read. The scene is really into fine art. They appreciate their art, and they’re extremely loyal…. Oh, and they’re excellent dancers. I could just watch them on the dance floor forever. I love the way they dance and express…it’s almost like they’re singing. I look at them all as little front people, because of the gestures and everything. It’s so cool!”

“One of the good things about the gothic thing is that we feel close to all the fans,” George says, referring to the “warmness” their gothic fans have shown them. “But we’re hoping to grow, and we’re hoping that the fans will grow with us, and that it’s not negating the previous audience, but trying to include some more audience as well.”

Eric also appreciates the willingness of the gothic scene to help out the band, but he doesn’t feel connected to it at all except through Switchblade Symphony. One thing that impressed him about Tina and Susan before he ever played with them was their lack of pretension. “There’s a difference between being dark or being emotional and just downright being pretentious and overstated,” he says. “I never felt when I saw them that it was being overstated…and that was one thing I was attracted to them for. It seemed very real to me. It’s really true — when you see Tina perform, it’s very much how she is as a person. She’s very playful and has a great sense of humor. So that element mixed in with the music gives it that vibe and sort of branches it out a bit.”

“One of the good things about the gothic thing is that we feel close to all the fans. But we’re hoping to grow, and we’re hoping that the fans will grow with us.” — George

Eric has made a career out of being the live drummer for different bands. He’s previously toured with singer-songwriter Paula Cole, and later, the “Velvet Undergroundish” Angel Corpus Christi. Besides Switchblade Symphony, he currently plays with an experimental band called Laughingstock and a “dark country” band that includes David Phillips — a pedal steel player who’s played on one of Tom Waits’ albums. “I get bored really easily,” he says. “That’s not to say that any situation is boring in itself, it’s just that I need a lot of different things going on to keep myself happy.”

“[Eric] adds an element that you just can’t replace with a drum machine,” Susan says. “He’s got so much emotion and feeling that he puts into his drumming, and he uses incredible dynamics. He’ll take the top of a pot, and he’ll put it on the snare and he’ll hit it with a mallet, and he’ll make these really strange, cool sounds that you can’t even imagine. He’s pretty amazing.”

George has known he wanted to be a musician since he was a small child. His family is Greek, and his mother took him to live in Greece for a year when he was young. “They would bring me to the clubs,” he says, “and I would always go and bug the drummer or the keyboardist or something. Interestingly, not ever the guitar players, but they usually don’t want to be bugged by kids. So I have all these pictures of like, me with drum sticks, and I’m like three years old.”

He started playing guitar when he was seven, and has played in bands since his freshman year of high school. He studied electronic music and recording at a junior college for a few years, but like Eric, playing in bands has always been his main focus. He was once in a world music-influenced band called World Entertainment War on MCA records. He, too, toured with Angel Corpus Christi before joining Switchblade Symphony on their 1996 tour. He and Eric had been jamming together for several years before Eric recruited him to replace Robin.

“George is a different guitar player than Robin,” Eric comments, as he considers ways in which the new album will differ from the old one. “Robin is a great guitar player, but George is a bit more eclectic than Robin was. His sense of parts to play sort of comes out of a different approach.”

Robin recently joined The Razor Skyline, a Seattle gothic-industrial band with female vocals. Switchblade Symphony have played with them before, but they haven’t seen them since Robin joined the band. “It made me feel better when I found out that Robin was…back on the route of being a musician and being in a band and playing shows, just because that was kind of like a weird thing hanging over my head,” George says. He got an e-mail from Robin out of the blue one day, and says they’re now on good terms.

By the time this sees print, Switchblade Symphony will already be on tour. They can’t wait. “Not that I don’t like being here,” Susan says. “But I don’t like feeling grounded. When I’m here, I feel a little bit trapped….. I like to be able to go and do my thing, and just experience life, and I feel like I can’t do that as much, just being confined to one place.”

Despite their success, none of them have reached the point where they can quit their day jobs. In between touring, George has been working in a video store, Eric has been working in a cafe, and Susan has been filing papers and answering phones. “Right now it feels like I have three full time jobs,” Susan tells me, from the sanctity of her photograph-covered bedroom. Her window looks out on the classic Victorian building where Nicholas Cage lives. She tries not to bother him, but once she and Tina were playing loud music and he stuck his head out the window and asked them to turn it down.

She’s running on two hours of sleep and three cups of coffee, and after she finishes talking to me, she has to dye her hair so that it’s freshly pink and no longer has that orangey “washed out, puke color”; do laundry, go to work, try to make a record, and rehearse to get ready to go on tour. “I basically have no free time, really,” she says. “Things like…I have no toothpaste! I’m like, going to the store for cat litter and wine only.” And she cannot wait to get on the road again.

“I learned so much from when we toured last year,” she says. “Just being in all these different areas. Even just talking to somebody for five minutes. It’s like, ‘They live here. This is their life. When I’m gone, they’ll still be here, and they’re living their life and they’re doing their thing, and they’re dating this person…. And there are so many people that have so much to offer.”

Susan, Tina, George, and Eric have a good chemistry that adds a lot of fun to road tripping. “We have to get along,” Eric says. “and we’re fortunate that we do get along really well, considering the lack of sleep and stuff we have to deal with when touring.”

He and George have gone so far as to say that Tina and Susan like to treat them like dolls. “We’re their little playtoys. Their source of amusement,” he says. “I wear headphones when I play, and [Susan] wanted me to attach these braids of hair on each side of the headphones. I have no idea why. I think it’s just to make me look ridiculous.”

George says, “I just remember, like, the first two weeks of the [last] tour, Susan insisting on being able to paint Eric’s toenails. And it was this whole big thing of him saying, ‘No! I have to do a lot of foot maintenance before I have my toenails painted!’

“Tina and I get a lot of satisfaction out of playing with people,” Susan says. “Not playing with them in a bad way, but we like to make George put his hair in ponytails or make Eric make funny faces or whatever, and they let us do it, and it’s fun. We totally love them and feel really close to them and loyal to them.”

“There’s a difference between being dark or being emotional and just downright being pretentious and overstated.” — Eric

As Switchblade Symphony is recording their new album and preparing to go on tour, their new EP is being pressed. It’s called Scrapbook, and it’s a collection of remixes, material from their out-of-print demos (Fable and Elegy), a live track, and a radio interview. “We were trying to get a CD out for spring, but that didn’t happen,” Susan says. “But we wanted to have something for people who wanted those things, who have been listening to us for so long but couldn’t get that material.” Scrapbook will contain all the songs from Fable and Elegy that did not appear on Serpentine Gallery. They’re initially printing only 1,000 copies and planning to sell them only at shows.

As they’re getting ready to tour, the buzz is almost audible. “A pretty phenomenal amount of growth happened right after I started playing the first tour,” George says. “All this stuff started happening, and Switchblade kind of got bumped up a few levels.”

For all four of them, the next step is to expand their fanbase, and they all hope to transcend the genres in which they’ve been confined. “We feel like we have more to offer than just that one particular niche [of being a gothic band],” George says. Between all of us, there’s a whole variety of musical influences.” Understandably enough, they’d like to be able to make a living solely from their music. They’re sensitive, however, to the problem that belongs uniquely to bands laboring in alternative genres: fans losing respect for artists who become successful enough to be “mainstream.”

“‘Oh, they’re not cool anymore. I’m too cool for them, because people who I don’t think are cool like them,’ ” mimics Susan. “Yeah, well, everybody does that. I would be a total liar if I said I didn’t. It’s something that you feel like you have with the band, like, ‘I know who these people are. I turned my friends on to them. They’d never heard them before, and I’ve been listening to them for five years.’ And all of a sudden, this person is like, ‘Ah, have you heard that new band?’ ”

“There is kind of a possessiveness, in a way,” Susan continues. “That you want to keep it that special. But these things happen. As long as we don’t get swallowed up in it….. I always like it when someone says, ‘Well, I don’t care if they’re popular. I still like them anyway.’ I always think that’s really cool.”

“I don’t want anybody to misunderstand me — I don’t want to sell out,” Tina says. “I’m not into that at all. I just want to affect people…. I want everybody to realize that no matter what you look like, we’re all still people, and we can relate to each other. And music, to me, is the biggest form of communication.”

#switchblade symphony #susan wallace #tina root #article #music #goth music

[overlooked-tracks]

Black Music Month: Kendrick Lamar’s ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ 10 Years Later with Producer Sounwave

The following article has been posted on June 12, 2022 at 07:29AM:

An Overlooked Tracks News Finding: Here’s an article you might have overlooked. Having a partnership with NewsAPI, we try to catch music entertainment news for you to view, read and possibly enjoy. We will continue to find what’s available in the world of music entertainment, concert information and music releases. But obviously you – the listener and reader are the biggest source for news in your area, so if you can share with us. For right now, look at what we found for you:

“From The Billboard Magazine Website – Black Music Month: Kendrick Lamar’s ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ 10 Years Later with Producer Sounwave”

In honor of Black Music Month, Billboard‘s R&B/hip-hop team will be celebrating four prestigious albums: Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool, Brandy’s Full Moon and the Soul Food Soundtrack. For the first installment of the series, Billboard spoke with Grammy-winning producer Sounwave on the creation and impact of Lamar’s major label debut good kid, m.A.A.d city, which became the first hip-hop studio album to spend over 500 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

If you asked Sounwave whether he knew what the impact of good kid, m.A.A.d city would be on his own life — better yet the hip-hop genre — he’d say he didn’t. In fact, he would literally say, “To me, it was just part of our lives.”

Black Music Month: Kendrick Lamar’s ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ 10 Years Later with Producer Sounwave

Looking back, the Compton native remembers playing beat after beat for a group of rap hopefuls, at a makeshift studio in Gardena, CA. At the time, Sounwave was around 16 years old, and recalls a soft-spoken, hooded teenage MC entering the space, and asking the budding producer to throw on an instrumental. Spoiler alert: It was Lamar. After entering the booth, Lamar fired off rhymes for 45 minutes straight, Sounwave’s beat tirelessly looping beneath the 18-year-old budding rapper’s spellbinding hooks, verses and melodies. “I was like, whoever this kid is, he’s the next one,” he recalls.

Seventeen years later, the pair remain inseparable — understandably so, after giving life to six culture-defining offerings that reverberated throughout the world: Section.80, Good Kid, To Pimp A Butterfly, DAMN., Black Panther The Album Music From And Inspired By, and most recently, this year’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. And while DAMN. won the Pulitzer and To Pimp a Butterfly the Grammy, it really all began with good kid, ten years ago, in the backyard of Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith’s Carson, CA home.

Between friends, family, music legends and up-and-comers alike, a group of Los Angeles dreamers created a Compton epic — rightfully described as a “short film” — capturing Lamar’s unforgiving world so authentically, that it felt almost invasive to consume. Tales of trauma, salvation, love and sin mingle together, with Lamar’s approach in each bar transfixing, and altering the course of how hip-hop albums were conceptualized and created. With good kid, Lamar proved that a hip-hop album could still be commercially successful without the sacrifice of impact and vulnerability.

Below, Sounwave shares some of his memories behind the making of one of the greatest rap albums of the 21st century.

So you were one of the OG Top Dawg Entertainment signees, how did that happen?

I was close friends with Punch — this was back in 2005 — [and] he popped into my room and saw me making beats on MTV Music Generator, a video game on PlayStation. I played him a beat and he said, “You have something. I gotta take you to my cousin.” At the time I didn’t know his cousin was Top Dawg. We pull up, his whole backyard was turned into a home studio. As a 16-year-old, I had never seen anything like this. He gave me the opportunity to do a remix for an artist he was working with, and I took it super seriously. I went home and threw every resource I ever had in my music career on this one remix to impress him, so I could get back into the studio. And I’ve been rocking with them ever since.

Is that how you met Kendrick?

I have to go back even further on that. Before the TDE thing happened, I was at this hole-in-the-wall studio in Gardena. This guy had all the local rappers there, and I was the only producer. He was like, “I got this kid from Compton, he’s supposed to be one of the best rappers out there.” He comes in, hoodie over his head. Didn’t talk to nobody. [He goes] straight to the booth and says, “Throw on a beat,” so I play the first beat I had. He rapped for about 45 minutes and killed everybody in that room. He’s giving hooks, melodies, rapping bars — he’s showing out. I’m like, “Oh, shoot, this is the one.”

A few weeks later, Kendrick and I decide to go separate ways from the person who put everything together at the studio. Everyone else signed with them, we were the only two who didn’t. Whole time I’m searching for him–there’s no Instagram, so you just have to know people. A year later, I’m back in Top’s studio. Soon as I walk in, [someone] is rapping for 35 minutes with the beat looped, nonstop. I can’t see in the booth. I’m like, “Who is in here? This dude is amazing.” Sure enough, [Kendrick] walks out, same hoodie over his head. I was like, “Yo, I’ve been looking for you!” He’s like, “Yo, I’ve been looking for you!” We been that close ever since. It was fate.

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Thank you very much from the media staff of Overlooked Tracks.

Accept Overlooked Tracks & YouTube Content

Fast forward to good kid, were the tracks you worked on made specifically for this project?

The original good kid, m.A.A.d city was made two years before the one that everyone heard. It was 80% produced by me, just random ideas we had that weren’t fully developed songs. But he had most of the same concept that’s on the [released] version. He always had the [good kid] concept in his head, that was always going to be his first major album. After Section.80, we had a little bit of clout and more resources. So we were able to reach out to people like Pharrell, and of course, Dr. Dre. We could actually live out our musical fantasies, if you will, and explore. Most of the production was tailor-made for Kendrick. There were a few that would be producers coming in like, “Hey, I got something,” and it actually worked.

What made you guys scrap the first version?

We’re big on feeling — and bottom line, it just didn’t feel right. We didn’t feel we were living up to what we can fully do. For example, the skits that we had on the original were just kid voices we thought could fit because their voice sounded good. But if you listen to the album that’s out now, those are literally his homies who live the same stories he’s telling. He literally stuck a mic in the middle of the studio and started talking. That’s why it feels so authentic, like you’re actually in that seat with them.

That leads into something else I was curious about, if you had to describe the energy in that room with one word, what would you use?

Hungry. We knew the goal. We knew the opportunities that were in front of us. We had Dr. Dre in one room, Terrace Martin in the next room — all these people we admire and love gathered just to make this one album a special thing. So that motivated us to go as far as we can with this.

How many songs did you work on? The internet says three.

It’s probably listed as three, but not knowing the rules back then, I didn’t give myself credit for the songs I would add to. If I didn’t produce it, I didn’t tell anybody. Like, people don’t know I did the 808s on “Poetic Justice” — stuff like that — because it’s not listed.

If you had to give a percentage of how many songs you contributed to in some capacity, what would you say?

About 40 percent.

One of your biggest contributions was “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe.” Did you know you were creating a track people were going to bump for the next decade? 

No clue. I had no idea. Honestly, I thought it was a great album filler. Like, “This is an amazing B-side record, the core fans will love it.” I did not know it was gonna take off how it did.

Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.

YouTube privacy policy

If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh. Thank you very much from the media staff of Overlooked Tracks.

Accept Overlooked Tracks & YouTube Content

I don’t know if there will ever be a time where you go to a function, and that song doesn’t play.

And that still blows my mind to this day. I can even go even further — the perfectionist that I am, I still listen to that beat and cringe because there’s certain things that I wish I could have did better.

Are there any moments being in the studio during the making of good kid that stick out to you most?

The main thing I can think of — because I still laugh about it to this day — is when we figured out how sharp and perfect Dr. Dre’s ears were. He was mixing “Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter’s Daughter.” It was me, [Kendrick] and [Derek] Ali in the room, and Dr. Dre stepped out for a second. We were listening to it, and Ali shifted one little hi hat, probably by accident. We didn’t hear it, we were just like, “Yeah, this sounds real good!”

Dr. Dre walks in and he’s listening to it like, “Who touched something?” Everybody looked at each other like, “Yo, what?”

Read More Music Headllines

and can be found on the Overlooked Tracks website: https://ift.tt/qsVZfW4. Check out more music news from Overlooked Tracks! Music Headline News, Producer, Project, Signees

#Music #Musicislife #musica #MusicLover #podcast #podcaster

[kyuuppi]

“You lie to your best friend/crush that you have an OnlyFans just to see their reaction”

Ft. Sugawara; Nishinoya; Tsukishima; Oikawa; Kenma

Pt. 2

A/N: My bias is so obvious here LOL

KARASUNO

↳ Sugawara

➣  You are over at his house, the two of you idly watching a sitcom while browsing your phones and chatting in between; it’s comfortable, as times with Sugawara usually are.

➣  Every time Suga leans in to show you a funny meme on his phone or throws his head back in laughter at a joke from the show, you find your heart skipping a beat.

➣  He is beautiful, basically an angel in your eyes, but he is also your best friend and you don’t think he has any interest in you like that. Not in the way you do. 

➣  That’s how you get the idea to test his feelings. 

➣  Being the troublemaker you are (how else would you and Suga get along so well?) you decide to shake things up by casually mentioning you’re interested in starting an OnlyFans and asking if he thinks its a good idea. 

➣  You expect either of two reactions: either he’ll be as supportive as usual, possibly advising you to be cautious with strangers online like the mother hen he is, proving he only sees you as a friend—or he’ll tell you not to, possible evidence that likes you.

➣  The response you receive is not quite what you were expecting...

➣  Once the words leave your lips his head immediately whips around in your direction, light brown eyes looking at you with a serious expression on his face, something you’d never really seen before. It makes you uncomfortable and you begin to regret all of your life decisions.

➣  Suddenly though, he is leaning into you, his arms coming up to trap you against the couch as you try to back away. Your eyes are as wide as saucers and face completely flushed as he continues to stare you down before speaking.

➣  “Even though I’m your best friend, I’m still a man, you know. You’re being awfully cruel right now.”

➣ You audibly gulp, suddenly feeling light-headed but he keeps speaking, close enough that you can feel his hot breath fan across your cheeks.

➣ “Asking me to watch the person I like show off in front of thousands of other men? Even I have my limits.”

➣ And that marks the day of you and Sugawara’s first kiss. ♡

↳ Nishinoya

➣  Your best friend, Nishinoya Yuu, is notoriously unabashed with his affections. 

➣ The two of you have an interesting relationship—Noya has no qualms with expressing how pretty he thinks you are, borderline flirting with you at times, and you frequently return the favor. 

➣  But you don’t take any of it seriously, of course, regardless of how much you secretly wish it were real. Everyone at Karasuno knows about Noya’s undying dedication to the volleyball club manager, Shimizu Kiyoko, and he confesses his love to her at least twice a day. 

➣ Unbeknownst to you those professions became less and less frequent after he met you and now most of Karasuno thinks the two of you are basically dating

➣ The two of you are at the mall, a frequent hang out place where Noya can look at volleyball gear and you can browse manga at the bookstore, when you get the idea to prank your friend.

➣ “Hey, Noya? I’ve been thinking about finding a way to make more money but I don’t have time for a part-time job so I decided to make an OnlyFans—I already have a few subscribers.”

➣ Nishinoya nearly trips and falls flat on his face. You would have laughed if it weren’t for how he immediately grabs at your shoulders, staring at you with a mix of anger and fear. 

➣ “Absolutely not! No one should be allowed to see your beautiful body like that but me!”

➣ You immediately fluster at his loud declaration, acutely aware of how other customers in the mall are giving the two of your strange looks as they walk by. 

➣ “B-but Noya, we aren’t even dating—”

➣ “Then let’s start dating!” 

➣ And what are you gonna do? Say no?

↳ Tsukishima

➣ Being friends with Tsukishima could be frustrating at times—a sentiment you and Yamaguchi frequently discuss when the blond isn’t around. 

➣ Tsukishima likes to think most things are beneath him and he’s too cool to find enjoyment in activities most other friends enjoy, ranging from mini golf to video games. The man seems content to waste his life away studying and listening to music if it weren’t for you and Yamaguchi forcing him out of his room. 

➣ Naturally, something like a prank war would be something Tsukishima would want no part of—not that that has ever stopped you. 

➣ Usually, your pranks are failures. Either Tsukishima easily figures out what you’re doing before it can happen or he doesn’t give you the satisfaction of a reaction, chastising you for wasting your time pulling pranks when you have a failing grade in mathematics you’ll later beg him to help you study for.

➣ He still helps you though, he’s whipped

➣ Your newest prank however, you feel exceptionally confident in. Not only is it simple to pull off, only relying on your acting kills, but it also might answer your curiosity on whether you have a chance in getting your dearest Tsukki to see you as more than just a friend.

➣ The day you decide to do it the three of you are hanging out in Tsukishima’s bedroom as usual, you working on the math homework Tsukishima forced you to study while he reads a book and Yamaguchi sits in the corner reading a book.

➣ You had already discussed your plans with Yama beforehand, to which his expression looked suspiciously devious, like he knew something you didn’t know, as he proclaimed his support. 

➣ You hear Tsukishima turning a page and decide to speak up. 

➣ “Hey, Tsukki, have you heard of OnlyFans?”

➣ You hold back a snicker as you see Tsukishima visibly tense, his eyes widening behind his glasses for a moment before he relaxes. From the corner of your eyes you can see Yamaguchi smirking behind his comic, watching the blond closely. 

➣ “...yeah, I’ve heard of it,” Tsukishima simply replies. 

➣ “I’ve been thinking about making more money but I don’t have time for a part-time job so my friend suggested it. She said I could make over ten thousand yen a month.”

➣ “I think only the really attractive ones make that much.”

➣ You gasp, thoroughly offended, and Yamaguchi looks mildly annoyed by his friend’s response, already opening his mouth to chastise him for being so mean—but before he can say anything, Tsukishima is speaking again, still looking down at the book in his lap. 

➣ “Don’t do it though.” 

➣ “Why not?” You pout, refusing to look up at him when you speak. 

➣ “...I don’t want the person I like to do those types of things.” 

➣ You nearly choke on your own saliva, head darting up to stare at him in disbelief. Yamaguchi, for some reason, only smiles softly, looking unsurprised by the admission. 

➣ “W-what? You...like me?”

➣ “Oi, shouldn’t you be studying? One more F and you’re gonna flunk out of the class, dummy.”

➣ You’re slightly disappointed by the change of subject but when you notice the soft pink on Tsukishima’s cheeks you can’t help but to smile the whole time you finish your homework.

AOBA JOUSAI

↳ Oikawa

➣ Oikawa is a busy guy.

➣ You were well aware of that before the two of you happened to be paired up for an assignment and got to know each other, eventually becoming close friends. 

➣ Between volleyball practices, tournaments, magazine interviews, and appeasing a passionate fan club, Oikawa rarely has time for himself, let alone another person. 

➣ Despite all of that, you could tell he always made sure to spend time with you, dedicating a few weekends a month to hanging out, just the two of you, and constantly texting you in the times the two of you couldn’t physically be together. 

➣ From an outsider’s perspective, it was almost like the two of you were dating. 

➣ But alas, you know the sad reality is that Oikawa is most certainly not your boyfriend and you have no idea if he has any interest in your like that…

➣ ...Which is why you decide to try to make him jealous one day to push him towards confessing his feelings, if they exist. 

➣ The two of you are at a café, sipping lattes and gossiping about other students when you bring it up. 

➣ “Y’know...I’ve been thinking of making an OnlyFans.”

➣ To your surprise, Oikawa’s eyes seem to light up, his lips curving into a smile of excitement. 

➣ “Wow, really? Maybe I should make one too!”

➣ Oikawa immediately pulls out his cell phone and the color drains from your face as you realize your plan has completely backfired. 

➣ “My fans are going to love this—hey do you think we can do a collab? The two of us in one pic would make us top creators for sure.”

➣ You can only nod numbly with a fake smile at Oikawa’s enthusiasm.

➣ Oh god, you’ve created a monster…

NEKOMA

↳ Kozume

➣ Unless you’re Kuroo, becoming friends with Kenma is a nearly impossible feat. Actually making him want to spend time with you alone, even more so. 

➣ But somehow, you managed to work your way into Kenma’s tightly knit social circle more like a two point line segment of him and Kuroo and your evenings after his volleyball practice are usually spent in one of your bedrooms, playing Splatoon and Animal Crossing until your Switches die or your parents force you to come home for dinner—whichever comes first. 

➣ You love spending time with Kenma, his quiet presence somehow making you feel comfortable—but over time those feelings of ease have shifted into something more akin to nervousness and excitement as you’ve come to develop a crush on the setter.

➣ Every moment with him, watching the small smiles tug at his lips when he wins a match or his cute, frustrated pout when he can’t figure out how to defeat a boss makes your heart flutter and it’s becoming more and more painful to idly sit by without expressing your feelings.

➣ A direct confession, especially to a boy with nearly 0 social skills, is scary, so you want to be sure your feelings are returned before you even attempt to share them. 

➣ Thus, you’ve decided to take Kuroo’s advice.

➣ “Push him into a corner. Kenma will only act when he thinks he has to.” 

➣ You take a deep breath to steel your nerves before you speak, eying him sneakily from behind your Switch. 

➣ “Gamer girls and boys are kind of trendy these days; I’m thinking about starting an OnlyFans to make money to buy more games.”

➣ The only visible response you receive is a slow blink as Kenma continues to play his game, fingers tapping furiously on the keys. 

➣ “Ah...I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

➣ “Why not?”

➣ There are a few moments of silence between you two, the room only filled with the SFX of your games as Kenma seems to finish his round. You recognize the victory music as Kenma pauses to finally raise his gaze to meet your own. 

➣ “It's your body so I can’t tell you what to do but...I would feel really jealous of all your subscribers.”

➣ And just like that, Kenma returns his attention to the video game, unpausing and starting a new match, blissfully unaware of you struggling to calm your racing heart and flushed cheeks. 

#haikyuu #sugawara koushi #nishinoya yuu #tsukishima kei #oikawa tooru #kozume kenma #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu headcanons #karasuno #aoba johsai #nekoma #sugawara x reader #nishinoya x reader #tsukishima x reader #oikawa x reader #kenma x reader #sugawara hcs #nishinoya hcs #tsukishima hcs #oikawa hcs #kenma hcs #haikyuu hcs

[raifenlf]

Why Loki’s Sylvie Is A Mary Sue

So I am firmly in the camp that Sylvie on the Loki series was/is a Mary Sue.  The last episode made me feel better and like maybe the show was doing a thing where they were faking you out that she was a Mary Sue only to show she was actually sort of a bad guy and I liked that.  But all the recent interviews make me think the show wants to go back to her being a Mary Sue.

But I feel like when I call her out for being a Mary Sue people tell me what are you talking about, she’s not a Mary Sue, bad things happen to her, etc.  But that doesn’t actually make her not a Mary Sue.  

Also, before we start, I know some people find Mary Sue sexist.  But I personally use the term for guys and girls. I don’t use the term to belittle women.  I use the term to criticize a poorly written character.

And I know Mary Sue is often used to describe fanfic characters.  But to me, this series is kind of like a fanfic because the writers took a character who had been in canon MCU material for ten years and then created characters around that character.  So, I kind of review it like I would a fanfic.  It’s very different than if the writers had created a brand new show with all of their own new characters.

Anyway, if you are not totally familiar with the Mary Sue term, then check this out:

I know the term Mary Sue probably means different things to different people.  But I have always used these guidelines when I write my own fanfic to make sure my characters never come off as a Mary Sue.

This article really gives you a full scale of what a Mary Sue is.  If you start reading it, you’ll immediately see why Sylvie is.  But I’m going to take out the parts that most fit Sylvie just to highlight why I believe she is a Mary Sue.  I apologize for this being so long.

Mary Sue Character Traits

Personality

Erm... what personality? The typical Mary Sue doesn't have one per se, because she isn't meant to be a character; rather, she's an entity by which the author makes cool stuff happen.

I feel like that is Sylvie in a nutshell.  She doesn’t have a personality.  I feel like even though she ate screentime, I still don’t really know her at all.  The writers love to say she’s badass.  That’s not a personality.  

Sometimes when I am writing stories for fun and creating new characters, I like to take surveys as my fictional characters.  Like the kind of surveys you’d see in a magazine, like personality types, what’s your dating style, etc.  I figure if I don’t know what my character would do in any of those situations, then I need to keep working on my character.  And if I was trying to fill out a survey pretending I was Sylvie I would have no idea what to answer because she doesn’t have a personality.  She’s just “cool”.

What little personality a Mary Sue has isn't as important as how other characters react to it. No matter how shy or socially awkward Mary Sue is supposed to be, other characters will be inexplicably drawn to her

This is so Sylvie.  Loki falls in love with her...why, exactly?  He falls in love with her in the big Nexus event moment...why?  Because she had a tough childhood?  Mobius spends like two seconds with her in a car and goes from hating her to saying she’s his favorite Loki.  For. No. Particular. Reason.

She's extremely persuasive; everyone finds her opinions to be better than their own

She enchants Hunter B-15 and then immediately Hunter B-15 makes it her whole entire life mission to back Sylvie up.  

And occasionally she'll be a complete asshole...This can manifest itself in several ways...The author wants to write a badass but doesn't know how. This leads to a character who mistreats everyone around her and is never called out on her abrasive, casually abusive behavior.

Sylvie talked down to Loki and treated him like garbage for all of episode three, but it was never portrayed as a bad thing and we never got any impression Sylvie later felt bad for the way she treated Loki

The author doesn't know how to hold back the character, meaning that she will succeed at practically everything. This means that when she encounters rules or authority figures who would otherwise prevent her from doing what she wants to do, she rolls right through them (and they praise her for her "boldness" in defying regulations). If a bad guy is violent and aggressive, she can beat him by being more violent and aggressive (with all that entails). It's impossible for her to go overboard because she's protected by Protagonist-Centered Morality.

Sylvie is shown as a kid to immediately be able to grab a Tempad and run away.  And she can kick ass way better than Loki, for no known reason.  She is always able to fight back against the TVA when they attack her.  And she can kill lots of innocent TVA agents but it’s okay because TVA bad, Sylvie good.

Skills

She will always be superior to the canon characters, regardless of what canon has established they can do or whether it makes any sense.

Whose skill was needed to defeat Alioth?  Sylvie’s.  Of course.  Sylvie needed to teach Loki her skills in order for him to succeed (!).  And again, she is literally called the superior Loki.

Relatedly, there's no effort to her skills. She never actually trains or learns anything to become more powerful; she just wins the Super Power Lottery, or is a freakish natural learner, or is just Inexplicably Awesome

We’re told Sylvie literally taught herself magic.  She literally taught herself to enchant people.  That. Makes. No. Sense.  Like, I have so many questions.  Like, why would it even occur to her to teach herself that?  And how????????????  This is really lazy writing.

Canon Character Relationships

Mary Sue is often designed to hook up with another character, often as a form of Wish Fulfillment. This isn't that bad in and of itself (okay, it is kinda weird), but Mary Sue accomplishes this without any sense of realism. She just grabs her lover's attention straight away, and their relationship will never face any obstacles or tension; it's true love from the start and nothing else. The biggest giveaway is if the love interest is explicitly the author's favorite character, and she essentially "cures" him of all the angst that ails him (at the expense of his characterization).

Yeah, so...this one should be pretty obvious to anyone who watched the show.  Loki literally falls in love with Sylvie immediately, and then he suddenly turns from “villain” to “hero” just because of loving her.  And this was definitely at the expense of his characterization.  And Loki just knows he falls in love with her.  There’s not even any moments of hmm what do I feel for this person?  It’s just true love, immediately.

She will be related to a canon character in some way. This (marginally) helps explain such phenomena as her being a Copy Cat Sue and other characters accepting her so easily.

Sylvie is a Loki variant.  They use this to help explain why Loki is drawn to her and why their falling in love immediately “makes sense”.

Most characters give her more heed than they normally would. The good guys never stop praising her

Seriously, it was so over the top and OOC for Loki to gush over her.  He literally tells her she’s amazing.  They don’t even make it subtle.

Characters' previously established personalities change in reaction to her. Proud, arrogant gimps suddenly acknowledge her superiority in everything. Reckless youths will listen to all her advice. Responsible leaders will defer to her instead. Villains will obsess with her to the detriment of all else. Extremely competent characters will become stumbling buffoons who require her help to do anything. Sweet, mild-mannered characters whom the author doesn't like turn evil and insult her. They all become unnaturally focused on her in some way.

Again, Loki’s whole personality changed in reaction to her.  He became a buffoon who needed her help to enchant the Alioth because of course he couldn’t do anything without her!  Hunter B-15 goes from doing whatever the TVA said to fighting the TVA just because of Sylvie.

Story Elements

Mary Sue is without exception a single-person Spotlight-Stealing Squad. The entire story hinges on her existence; if you removed her, there would be no story. 

Sylvie undoubtedly drove the whole story this season.  It all became about HER meeting the TVA heads because of HER trauma.  Loki’s life was only saved at the beginning because the TVA was trying to capture HER.  And SHE was the one who started the whole multiverse (!).

Mary Sue is The Chosen One, even if the setting already has one. There are many ways she can accomplish this: she can be a Sailor Earth type who "shares" the position with the canon hero; she may be vaguely "destined to help the destined one fulfill their destiny" (i.e. do all the work except the final blow so that the prophecy is still technically correct); or the canon hero may be revealed to be a Fake Ultimate Hero all along. Being the Chosen One doesn't necessarily involve her being a God-Mode Sue, especially as authors become aware of the phenomenon and try to avoid it, but it does make her critically important to the world and allows her to continue stealing the spotlight without the "god mode" label.

HWR wanted Sylvie to come with Loki in the end, like she was chosen all along right alongside Loki.  Like one of the most important characters in the entire MCU is now this character who we only met a few episodes ago.

Most Sues have an unusually Dark and Troubled Past. It's often used to create a Sympathetic Sue, but any type of Sue can have one

They tell us, over and over, how hard Sylvie’s life was because she was kidnapped by the TVA in order to create sympathy for her.

She almost never does anything wrong. In the rare instance that she does, it's usually; (a) a way for the author to disclaim her being a Mary Sue by introducing a single imperfection (that has no bearing on anything anyway), and (b) designed to show her smarts by making her feel instant remorse, and she'll be Easily Forgiven anyway:

So this one hopefully will not come true, as a lot can change between now and when the show is taped. But if the show goes on the way the behind the scenes team is talking, Sylvie immediately felt remorse for betraying Loki, and Loki has already forgiven her and is desperately looking for her.  Ugh.

Alternatively, she is more than capable of doing something wrong, be it in general moral terms or something that goes against whatever code she abides by, and she maybe even frequently does so, but don't expect the other characters or the narrative to ever acknowledge or comment on it in any real capacity. If the other characters do call her out, expect them to be treated like they're the problem for daring to criticize her at all.

Mobius calls her out for killing people, but Sylvie immediately says he’s a bad person and then Mobius agrees, because, of course.

She will often suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome; i.e., she has a trait or backstory that sets her apart from her group or race.

She is the only female Loki, thus making her the special one among all the Lokis in episode five.

Presentation

In visual media, the camera just can't stop staring at her.

The camera would follow her in fight scenes rather than Loki.

Mary Sue Tropes

Okay, so there are specific Mary Sue tropes that Sylvie is.  One of those is Copy Cat Sue, which I think was referenced before.

Copy Cat Sue

A lot of fanfic writers...start to write something because of their passion for this character, but they find something about the character that doesn't mesh well. Maybe they're the wrong gender or are otherwise not close enough to the author's expectations...In any case, rather than put them through the Possession Sue process, they just get a Clone-O-Matic™ and out pops a Copy Cat Sue...the character might be intended as a replacement for the canon character, but without whatever icky traits the author hates. They'll then rob the spotlight, prove the canon character to be unworthy of his/her position, and either relegate the character to obsolescence or, perhaps, even remove them entirely.

Sylvie is basically a clone of Loki, she is a variant.  But she absolutely robbed the spotlight of Loki’s, and they literally call her the superior Loki.  I mean, they are literally not even being subtle about this.  And there was a feeling by myself (and a lot of other viewers) that Sylvie might ultimately replace Loki in the MCU. 

Black Hole Sue

Much like a black hole, this is a Mary Sue who "sucks in" the plot and characters to her. Characters will behave outside their personalities, logic will be defied, and rules will be broken for her sake.

Sylvie really does suck up all the plot and Loki definitely behaves outside of his personality just to fit the Sylvie show.

Jerk Sue

A Mary Sue who is mean or maybe even cruel, but are still treated as an ideal person.

Once again, Sylvie is basically a jerk all of episode three, but you’ve got Loki falling over himself to call her amazing in just the next episode.

Relationship Sue

A Mary Sue who exists to be the perfect mate for a specific character...this character has everything in the plot conspiring to enforce this One True Pairing...in Fanfiction, they are the perfect beloved of a canon character.

They literally have Mobius speculate that Loki falling in love with Sylvie is so extraordinary that it causes an entire Nexus event, that’s how huge this One True Pairing is (!).  And Sylvie is the love interest of Loki, the only character who had been around before the beginning of the series

TLDR: Sylvie has all the tropes of a classic Mary Sue character.  So calling Sylvie a Mary Sue isn’t being sexist or just randomly hating on the character.  If you use common Mary Sue characteristics to examine the character, she just has too many of these characteristics to ignore.

#loki negativity #antisylvie #loki critical #loki criticism #antisylkie

[defdaily]

BEAUTY+ Magazine May 2021 issue featuring JAY B: The Second Act

Translated by defdaily

Among the past, present, and future, which do you think about the most?

The present. I believe that the present is the most important. The future makes you worry constantly, and the past makes you regret constantly so I try not to think about them. Now, I try to make decisions I won’t regret.

Do you think about your current state and things you want to do?

I contemplate a lot about the state of my emotions or what to do in my current situation. Ever since I was young I thought it’d be good to live like the flowing water, tranquilly. You know how water changes its state based on its surroundings. I want to be someone in the free water-like flow.

Has your life until now been like free-flowing water?

My life itself may seem spectacular, but I think the flow of my life itself has been. There was a lot I was lacking in since debuting with GOT7 but I tried my best to show a colour suitable for GOT7. I changed myself according to the container I was in, and instead of being stagnant in one place, I think I flowed here well.

You seem to be careful with choosing an agency. What factors are you contemplating about?

I think about whether I will suit the company. It might be tiring for others to see because I’m so meticulous, and I may seem selfish but I think that I should be selfish right now. My future depends on it as well as the future of the company I will be going to. I think I will have to be selfish for both sides to produce good results.

The members showed their natural sides in the Encore music video. Looking back to 7 years of GOT7’s activities, what is the most memorable moment?

Since we’re performing artists, I remember a lot of moments on stage. 2-3 years ago in Thailand we performed our solo tracks for 7 days and then performed OUT all together as a group. I think a lot about how we were all so excited to perform. I think of those times we were together as seven.

What kind of team was GOT7? Judging as a leader?

The direction of GOT7 I thought of was a fun and free-spirited team. Since Look came out, I’ve been telling the company that we “shouldn’t try too hard to set the mood or look cool. Songs with a style like Look will be our strength.” I don’t think things turned out the way I thought they would. But as you can see from our last album’s song ‘Breath,’ it feels like we went in circles and came back to our original spot. There is some regret about how it would've been good to go more in that direction, then we could’ve shown a more solidified colour. But as a result, it’s a fact that we became a team capable of pulling off various colors.

Did you make those suggestions thinking about the members, because you thought it was what set you guys apart from other groups?

I talked a lot with my members. It seemed like they had the most fun with bright, fun, and chill performances. With performances like that, we think about harmony rather than how each of us can look cool. It leaves a greater impression on the fans when we are visibly having fun.

It seems like the public has also watched over the growth of JAY B. Starting as a bboy to a main vocalist, and writing many remarkable K-pop songs. You also played a huge role in establishing GOT7’s colour. What led you to grow and develop in that way?

I thought that if I felt like I wasn’t growing, then I should quit music.

Does liking it not serve as a reason?

Because it’s my job. Being able to do what you like as a job is something to be grateful for. But if my skills don’t meet the standards and if there is no growth despite my efforts, it’s only right to do it as a hobby. I didn’t think that there was no growth when listening to my music. I thought it could work if I tried a bit more.

What was a song you feel like you reached a new level?

‘Teenager’ and ‘PAGE.’ I think the team’s color was completed with those songs. It helped me realize that I had the potential to write such songs. At first, I was persistent with sticking to my musical color. Later, I changed my thoughts and decided I should write songs suitable for GOT7. It’s something I should obviously do as a member of the team. I think that’s where ‘Teenager’ and ‘PAGE’ lined up very well.

The album 7 for 7 containing ‘Teenager’ was a turning point for GOT7. Through that album, we got the feeling that you guys found your color and most importantly, the quality of the songs written by the members was great. What happened during that time?

I think that’s when our potential exploded (laughs). GOT7 had three turning points. The first was ‘Stop Stop It.’ We heard the song and thought “Wow, this is it.” But the outfits were a bit regretful. The music and the visuals didn’t really match. We wore overalls (laughs). The second turning point was when the Flight Log trilogy was released, and the third was ‘Teenager’ of 7 for 7. That song later led to ‘Look’ and we got to sing ‘PAGE’ and ‘THURSDAY.’ Then we suddenly tried to change our direction to ‘ECLIPSE’ and ‘You Calling My Name’ but eventually ended up back to ‘Breath.’

When you listen to ‘Look’ or ‘PAGE’, do you feel like GOT7’s musical colour reflects your own preference and style? And you’ve made many GOT7 songs with ØFFSHORE crew.

It’s hard to say it wasn’t reflected. But according to my standards, they are songs I wanted to write for the team. I talked a lot with the crew about what (kind of song) should GOT7 do and what would suit GOT7. ‘Look’ was a song that was released because the mood suited GOT7 well. After that it was ‘PAGE’ and ‘THURSDAY’. Our colour was included naturally.

The 8 members of ØFFSHORE are consistently releasing albums. How is that taking place?

We talk about what we feel and decide on a theme whenever we want to release an album. When we decide on a theme, each person would write songs relating to the theme, we select songs and release an album. The themes usually come up as we are talking casually about life. For example <Scene 1> contains the process of leaving on a trip until coming back. Rather than the lyrics, the moods of the songs are like that. When you start the trip you listen to fun songs then (we) get a little calmer as the trip comes to an end. I organised the order of the songs for <Scene 2>. When talking with friends, you usually start by talking about work then you talk about life, the future and then you end up talking about love and relationships. I organised it as that kind of story. There is no specific goal. We spend the revenue from albums on production for the next album. Because everyone in the group are people who make music, there are things that were settled music-wise through these promotions.

You must have been influenced by your friends a lot not only musically, right?

Yes, of course. Regarding life too. I listen to what my older brothers/friends and my parents have to say. I think about the stories of the people who experienced it first once again. One older friend said “We are not doing this for a huge goal, don’t get stressed and let’s just make music.” When I was pondering about how to do better, I heard that and it hit me. Should I say, those words painted my life with colour. I felt like working with energy and strength didn't suit me at the time.

Is it true that you have made 3 albums? Do you only work on songs every day?

Yes. I usually stay in the studio when I can't do my hobby. And since the people I meet are friends who do music too. I don’t know if I can release an album but I’m preparing and working on it.

What kind of albums are they?

In the past, I made powerful “performance-type” songs, but for this album the mood is calmer and the sound is minimal. There is an acoustic feel too. There is a soft tender album, a sad album and a melancholic album too.

Where did the desperation come from?

The desperation of life. I can’t talk about it in detail but there was a topic I really wanted to talk about when I made the album. It could become an album that people frown upon. But, for the music I do alone, I thought I should include honest stories that match my situation.

Did you write about the pain and difficulties you’ve felt all this time? On the surface, you seem to be a recognised leader of a successful idol group, but you must have faced difficulties.

Yes. It’s one part of my life too. Looking back, the difficulties were caused by my own tendencies rather than external factors.

Is it because of the perfectionism you push onto yourself? It seems like the uncertainty and fear contributed to creating your current self.

Yes, I’ve never thought of myself as a perfectionist but people around me often tell me so. They must have a reason for saying that so I ended up acknowledging it myself. I was really ambitious with GOT7 too so I felt a lot of disappointment and stress. I work hard because I know if I don’t, it’ll come back to me as regret. It’s okay to look back to times when I didn’t know well enough and think, “I should’ve done this, I was naive.” What I hate is doing just enough because of reasons like lack of stamina despite knowing what I need to do and knowing that I’m not yet satisfied.

Until now, you’ve made music with the name Def. and through the JUS2 comeback, you also let us hear dreamlike songs from a baritone. Escaping from the category of idol, you now need to create a new identity – is there a kind of music you would like to do fresh?

It’s hard to say it rashly now but, whatever I do, I want to do it properly and solidly. I do prefer a relaxed and easygoing mood, but when it comes to music genres, R&B, hip hop, urban and pop will definitely be the groundwork. However, I do hope that my image will not be fixed to one (genre). It’s no fun to keep doing the same kind of music. And I’m sure there are times when I’ll have to become a little wilder. It’d be great if (I had) a free image. I also hope it’s an image that I won’t be embarrassed of. After coming to a new company and releasing an album, if it doesn’t do well, I think it would be right for me to leave.

Aren’t you fearing failure too much? How would it be possible to achieve what you wish in one go?

Of course, I’m scared. I’m very afraid of failure. Naturally, it won’t be possible to succeed in one shot, but I do have the standard of my Maginot line*. That is what I am referring to. I am usually the type that thinks of the negative things first. It’s not good to be unprepared for the worst-case scenario.

*Maginot line – taken from the fortifications that created the French line of defence, now coming to mean “a defensive barrier or strategy that inspires a false sense of security”

You’ve said that GOT7 has not disbanded, however since all the members are under new companies, coming back together as GOT7 will not be an easy thing to achieve. What kind of method are you thinking of?

I’ve talked a lot with the members. It’s our goal to write one song each month for GOT7. If it’s 1 year, then that’s 12 songs. All our members write songs, so if each one of us does that, then we can accumulate a lot of songs. Everyone is in different companies which will have their own situations, so I can’t make promises for certain, but our goal is to release one album every year. It would be great for that to happen, and I personally think that it should happen. Because that is the minimum courtesy we should show to our fans. It would be even better if we could have a stage.

It would be a new concept.

We heard that the release of our song ‘Encore’ was in an unprecedented manner, and this made my sense of duty and responsibility bigger. Because the steps we take in the future could influence the direction that others may take in the future too. I thought it was the end, but it’s only just the beginning,

Amongst your many hobbies, is there anything you would like to recommend?

Camping. Activities such as setting up tents and cooking really make you think. Even just sitting down in a chair surrounded by nature is really great. Waking up to the sounds of birds singing is amazing; the sound of water running too. Recently, I bought a folding furnace and create my own little fire space. It could be seen as something embarrassing but while having the fire there, if negative thoughts come up, I write it down and then burn it in the fire. If you think that camping may be tiring, glamping would be good too.

Since the name of the magazine is Beauty+, I wanted to ask, is there something that you thought was beautiful recently?

People passed by me laughing and making some noise, and as I saw that, I thought that laughter was something really beautiful. I realised why smiling and laughing is a beautiful thing. It’s not just laughing or smiling, but the emotions that encompass that are really so beautiful. Everything natural is beautiful.

Translated by defdaily.

#def. #jaebeom #lim jaebeom #defdaily:trans #got7 jb #interviewtrans #defdaily #jay b

[ofbooksandaesthetics]

Battle of the Bands

Attack on Titan/ Shingeki no Kyojin 

Levi/Reader

Modern Band AU

Summary: As the guitarist of The 104th, you are invited to play with your favourite band The Scouts. 

Warnings: slight profanity but not much 

Author’s note: I listened to Queen of White Lies by Orion Experience 10 times in one bus journey and couldn’t help but imagine Jean singing it about Mikasa. And voila! This imagine was born :) 

From a young age, you’d always been obsessed with music. From your dad playing jazz on a lazy Sunday afternoon to your mum playing R&B as she cleaned, you had always been surrounded by it. It followed you everywhere so it was no surprise when you were gifted a guitar for your 9th birthday. 

You spent hours each day practising fingerpicking, then moving onto chords and then fully-fledged songs. As you grew so did tastes - and your guitar collection. 

Before moving into the 6th grade, your family moved for a new job, leaving you without friends and having to start a new life in the city of Trost. The one thing that was ever consistent was the strings of your guitar and the beats from the speakers, which became your solace in the coming weeks. And said beats caught the attention of your new next-door neighbour. 

Jean Kirstein was also massively into music, and when he walked past your house he could hear the amp blaring from your open window. He became enthralled and would often leave his window open to catch even just a few notes. 

The Saturday before school started, Jean was forced by his mother to introduce himself to you (she said you had to have at least one friend before starting school) and by doing so Mrs Kirstein caused a life long friendship to bloom. He was forced into your house by your mother and lead upstairs to your room. He was greeted by band posters, from MCR to The Beatles, and an acoustic and electric guitar hanging on the wall side by side. But what caught his gaze was the massive “SCOUTS” poster above your bed. 

“WOW! That’s so cool, you like The Scouts!” He exclaimed as he entered your room, causing you to jump from your magazine and stare at the brown-haired boy invading your space.

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” You shouted, giving your mum a quizzical glare as she smiled at the boy's excitement. Your voice seemed to pull the boy out of his oasis and he met your eyes with a blush and a shrug.

“I’m Jean. My mum sent me, we live next door.” Before you could introduce yourself, he had already started to speak again “I’ve heard you playing your guitar. You’re really good!” 

At this your mum left the two of you two it, only returning 3 hours later to find you both on the floor, with you playing whilst Jean sang along. Noticing the time, Jean jumped up remembering his mum warning to be back by dinnertime. 

“It’s been great meeting you! If you want I can meet you outside on Monday and I’ll introduce you to my friends. They’d love to hear you play too! Connie’s really into the drums and Marco has been learning bass.”

Hearing this your eyes lit up and your mum’s heart warmed at the idea of you finally enjoying your new life.

“That sounds great, I’ll see you then!” You called as your mum lead him out.

                                         4 YEARS LATER

The years passed quickly and it didn’t take you long to forget the pain of your old life and become enamoured with your new friends. Jean did indeed introduce to his friends Connie, Sasha and Marco, and it didn’t take long for you to become the best of friends. The five of you would all meet Connie’s garage, sometimes just chatting but more often than not bringing along your instruments for a jam session. Four years went by of you playing lead guitar, Marco jamming on bass, Connie smashing on percussion and Jean accompanying with his gruff drawl, whilst Sasha sat atop of the counter, sadly not having any musical talents other than occasional tamborining. And the four years went by easily until Sasha let out a suggestion.

“You guys should start a band. Like a proper one, with gigs and shit” She declared, soon after stuffing her mouth with a cake Mrs Springer had brought in. 

“See at least someone appreciates my musical talents” quipped Jean with a quirk of his eyebrows, causing you all to laugh. 

“I’ve got to admit, I’m down! We’ve been playing for years, we even played at last years prom.” Seeing no reason against the idea, you voiced your opinion. 

“Yeah but that was prom. We know all of them anyway, if we did gigs it would be to strangers and critics and stuff” Huffed Connie. 

“Yeah, and potential talent scouts! Imagine if we got signed! What do you think Marco?” Jean turned to face he freckled boy awaiting his response. 

“I guess it could be fun.” He said, tilting his head to the side and turning to Connie. “I think we should” 

With a consensus of four out of five, all eyes were set on Connie, pleading him to agree. He spluttered, not expecting you all to be serious. After a moment of staring at you all incredulously, he finally gave in.

“Fine! But if we got told we’re shit it’s on you guys” He sighed, but was drowned out by all your cheers. 

                       2 YEARS LATER

After that day, you had all put in the effort to perfecting your craft and coming up with your own songs. You and Jean would have weekly sleepovers, pulling all-nighters to get the perfect verses. And it wasn’t long until you booked your first gig, which was a success. Nearly the whole grade had turned up to support you, and you soon became a local legend. And in honour of them, you had named your band The 104th, due to being the 104th grade since your school was founded. 

Your increased fame, got you gigs outside of Trost, on larger stages than the small bars you were used to. You had released your first album and we’re having a small jam session, when Sasha’s, who had taken up the role as manager, phone rang. You all carried on with your conversation until Sasha quickly stood up and ran across the room, her voice getting slightly louder, causing you all to stare at her.

“OMG! That sounds great, we can be there for the soundcheck in less than an hour. Thank you so much, for this opportunity. We appreciate it! Thank you, bye!” She exclaimed with wide eyes as her smile grew and grew. After ending the call she whipped around, before letting out a screech 

“OI, OI! What’s going on?” Asked Connie, as he walked up to Sasha flicking her forehead as she squealed again. 

“GUESS WHO’S OPENING FOR THE SCOUTS?!” She all but screamed whilst running to the front of the garage and throwing your jackets at you all. Realising what she meant you stood in a state of shock before opening your mouth. 

“What do you mean? Opening for The Scouts. As in THE SCOUTS? They’re playing tonight, we can’t open for them.” You justified, meeting Jean’s stunned gaze. 

You two had always imagined what it would be like to meet your legends, let alone open for them. After your initial meeting, the two of you had gone on for hours about your favourite songs by the band and sang along to them. You had even let him in on your crush on the lead guitarist, Levi Ackerman, for heaven’s sake. As good as an opportunity this was, you were a nervous wreck. It was one thing to play on the same stage that your favourite band had stepped on, but to play with them and meet them. That was a thing of its own. 

You were knocked from your thoughts by a shoe to your head, and as you focused back in you watched Connie running around like a headless chicken. Attempting to back up his drum kit, he panicked until Sasha assured him there’d be one there for him. The rest of you seemed to kick into action and you ran about gathering your equipment before rushing home to grab gig-worthy clothes. You all met up back at Connie’s house before all piling into Jean’s minivan. Connie and Sasha were as loud as always but you, Jean and Marco seemed to still be too shocked to talk.

As you rolled up to the venue, you saw a queue of about 20 Scout super fans lined up three hours before the gig even started. You wondered how many were your fans, as Sasha had sent out announcements on every social media site possible after you guys left. You hauled your guitar case out of the van before following behind Sasha into the main doors of the venue. The crew were rushing about everywhere, and if you weren’t already used to the atmosphere you were sure you’d pass out. As you walked into the main hall, your eyes fell to the band on top of the stage. All five of you froze, in the realisation that you were in the same room as your childhood heroes. Putting your kit down, you watched as Hange Zoe lazily sat on her drum set, tapping out a quiet beat, as the lead singer Erwin, counted in the beat. Miche Zacharias swayed his hips as he set out the bassline, and Levi almost languidly strummed his electric guitar. 

The five of you were pulled behind the stage before you could watch their practice start but you could still hear it as they performed their soundcheck. Experienced in the world of gigs, the four of you prepped your instruments, tuning them in case they had been messed up in the hurry of your departure. And by the time you’d finished the Scouts were walking towards you. Hange greeted you first. 

“HI! OMG, we’ve heard so much about you guys. You guys are practically famous around here!” She blurted out, her excitement surprising you all. Connie seemed to be frozen as his inspiration complimented you guys. Miche let out a greeting and moved on to sit down. Leaving Erwin and Levi in front of you. Erwin stepped forward and placed out his hand, shaking and greeting you all individually. Now there was just Levi left. 

Your eyes met his and you couldn’t help but blush, as he gave a small nod. Appreciative of the small gesture, you calmed slightly until Jean ruined it

“HI! We love you guys so much. Y/N even has a crush on Levi!” He blurted, his face turning bright red after realising what he had said. You gasped and without thinking smacked him across the head. 

“WHAT THE HELL’S WRONG WITH YOU? WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?” But before you could apologise and defend yourself to Levi and Erwin, you were escorted to the stage for your own soundcheck. Glaring at Jean, you got in position, and were done in half an hour. 

After the soundcheck, you were given time to rest, giving you all time to calm down, after the more than lively introduction. You eventually forgave Jean for his outburst but not without consequences. He would be carrying your gear for the next year’s worth of gigs.

You hadn't yet gained back the confidence to talk Levi but had spoken to the other members of The Scouts. Miche and Erwin told you about how their touring band had ditched them last minute and how they needed another opening band pronto. You were astonished to find out that Hange herself had requested you guys, but it filled your heart with warmth knowing someone as famous as her held your small-town band in high regards. 

Everyone could sense your apprehension to talking to Levi but we’re all shocked when the quiet man joined you whilst getting a drink. You almost blushed when you noticed him next to you but pushed the feeling down and smiled at him. Although Jean had embarrassed you beyond belief, there was no reason to push away your childhood dream and miss the opportunity to talk to him. 

“You know you we’re what inspired me to start learning the guitar?” You said. Levi didn’t reply but you decided his silence wasn’t in annoyance. “My parents were always super into music anyway but when I heard your guys' debut album it pushed me towards the guitar.” You watched him finish making his tea and leave but before he sat down, he turned his head over his shoulder. 

“I’m glad to hear it” He replied, turning again and leaving. You smiled, happy that he didn’t think you were a complete freak. 

                      2 HOURS LATER 

The time had finally arrived. From the side of the stage, you could see a sea of people filling the venue and could hear the symphony of chatter. The boys were stood next to you, panting with nerves. You had never performed to such a large crowd before. You took a sharp breath before turning to them. 

“Come on boys! We’ve done this before and we’ll do it again. This is just another small step before we get our own main stage like this!” Your small pep talk seemed to calm the boys and caught the attention of Erwin and Levi who were waiting to watch your performance from the side-lines. You smiled at the two but we’re now filled with dread as you realised they would be watching. You threw that fear away and gave Marco a side hug as you fixed your strap, and then followed Jean to the stage. 

The lights blinded you but once your vision cleared you all but gasped at the sheer amount of sweaty bodies in front of you. You beamed brightly and gave a wink to a figure in the balcony. At least you could seem confident even if you were dying inside.  

The beat of the drum surrounded you and Marco’s strumming blared out from the amps. You started plucking at your guitar and forgot about the crowd. Jean’s gravely word floated out into the dark room, and it was easy to forget you were on a stage and instead it felt like you were back in Connie’s house. As the song reached the chorus, you and Marco joined in, accompanying Jean. Eventually, you loosened up to a point where all three of you were able to dance slightly to the beat during the bridge. This seemed to get the crowd going even more and you let out a laugh, completely forgetting your inhibitions. [I imagined them performing Queen of White Lies]

Once the song finished, Jean introduced himself, and you prepared yourself for another half an hour of playing and dancing. But it passed quickly and before you knew it you we’re all sat on the sofa. Connie was still flushed chugging on his 3rd bottle of water whilst the rest of you leant back with smiles upon your faces. Your attention was piqued as The Scouts took the stage and you all shouted words of encouragement to them. This brought a smile to their faces, including a small smirk on Levi’s. You all rushed to the sidelines to watch and we’re in awe as you saw the four of them play as if they were reading each other's minds. It was as if they were symbiotic, each knowing what to do without even the slightest hesitation. 

Even though you tried to focus on all of them, your focus always came back to Levi. You watched how his brow rested into a scowl as he neared a faster part of the song and how he threw his head back when lost in the moment. Your eyes widened when he took his shirt off after four songs, which Jean noticed, and started to nudge you for. Time seemed to go by so quickly that you barely noticed them finish their final song. They waved to the crowd as they left but stayed in the wings as the crowd screamed for an encore. Erwin still seemed to smile and nudged Levi towards the five of you. 

“Do you guys want to join us for the encore?” He asked gruffly, his eyes set on you. You looked at the rest of the band and you all nodded before you verbally replied. 

“Of course! What song are you thinking?” 

“Nirvana - Love Buzz? You guys know it?” Miche asked, wiping some water from his chin. You all nodded in unison and before you know it you were all kitted up and back on stage. 

The crowd went wild seeing both The Scouts and The 104th back on stage and you couldn’t help but smile as you found Levi stood next to you. You guys let loose on the song and you even attempted to have a little contest with Levi during the guitar solo for dominance. This gained a smile for the man, and you guys finished the song in no time. 

Leaving the stage for the last time, you gave out a clumsy bow before running off stage. You guys went to get changed and pack up your gear but before you could get in the van the Scouts we’re back in front of you. Erwin took the lead yet again. 

“We loved having you guys on stage with us! And after some thinking, we’d love it if you replaced our old band with us on the rest of the tour.” 

At this Jean slammed the van door and stared at Erwin in shock. The five of you looked at each other in shock. The silence was eventually broken by Connie, who let out a scream as he ran around the van, followed by Sasha letting out profanities. The rest of you gushed and thanked the other band profusely not knowing how to appropriately respond. After formally Sasha accepted the other, Hange launched into giving out hugs, whilst Miche and Erwin gave out handshakes. Levi ignored the rest of your bandmates and made his way to you.

“I look forward to more guitar battles.” Levi remarked as dryly as ever but with a small smirk playing on his lips. Luckily this time, the others were too distracted and you were able to reply with some confidence. 

“You mean to look forward to losing right?” you quipped, knowing this would be the start of something great. 

#aot au #snk imagines #aot imagines #attack on titan imagine #shinegki no kyojin imagine #levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi imagine #levi ackerman imagine #aot au imagine #aot x reader #snk x reader #snk #aot

[theladyofdeath]

The Ranch {20}

An A Court of Thorns and Roses, Nesta x Cassian, Modern AU, fanfiction.

Collaboration: @snelbz​ x @tacmc​

Summary: Nesta had spent years in Paris, living her dream and drowning in riches as a gourmet chef, capturing the hearts of the city and its people. But, after her father passes away unexpectedly and leaves his cozy, countryside B&B to his oldest daughter, Nesta is moving back home to the tiny town of Velaris, where the ranch, her sisters, and her father’s unfulfilled dream, awaits.

Sidenote: Being posted between two blogs, it is too chaotic to keep up with a tags list, so all chapters will be tagged with “#TheRanchNessian” & “#SharaCollab”.

The Ranch Masterlist

Nesta awoke with a gasp, her hands instinctively reaching for her baby, for her precious, baby girl.

But her arms were tied behind her back.

She looked around, trying to figure out where she was, what time it was, if she recognized anything. And she thought she must be dreaming.

Because she was in the little house on the neighboring property. In Armand and Collette’s home. She could see the sun getting ready to rise over the hills.

She was alone, no one else in sight, but it was obvious who was behind it all. She instantly began crying, silently, knowing who was behind it all, knowing that Cassian was raising hell trying to find her in her absence.

“Hello?” She called.

But there was nothing. No response, no footsteps, nothing.

Nesta tried breaking out of her bonds, but there was no use, they were too tight. The infant within her womb moved, and Nesta let loose a breath of relief. If nothing else, baby girl was okay.

She regretted ever letting Tomas into her life, regretted letting him know anything about her, including that damned property.

She tried to stop the sob that tore from her, but she feared, not for herself, but for her daughter. She didn’t know who to pray to, didn’t know if she should scream or cry or start saying her last rights.

“Tomas, please,” she finally called. “Just let me go and I promise I won’t do anything. I won’t say anything, just…” She sobbed again. “Please don’t hurt my baby.”

The silence was almost worse than if he would have responded.

After a few minutes of no response, a wholly new fear washed over Nesta. Tomas wasn’t here. Yes, he would be coming back, he was the only one, aside from Cassian who knew this house belonged to her. But he wasn’t here and she didn’t know when he’d be back.

Nesta knew it wouldn’t do anything, knew that no one was around to hear her, but she was unable to stop herself as she threw her head back and screamed at the top of her lungs.

——

Azriel was awake at four-thirty like he was every day. He’d made some calls the night before, arranged for some contacts he knew in the ranching community to come take care of Cassian and Nesta’s place, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t getting up early for a reason.

He slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Elain, and got ready, before making his way downstairs. He found Cassian standing at the kitchen island, a mug of black coffee on his left side, a glass of whiskey on his right.

“I can’t decide which to drink,” he breathed, and Az had never heard his brother’s voice so empty.

“Hey,” he said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to find her.”

Cass swallowed hard, but nodded. Azriel pulled him into a hug and Cassian didn’t try to hide the tears that ran down his cheeks as he embraced his brother. Their family had always been there for each other, lending strength when the other needed it.

They just never imagined they’d need it so desperately.

After a minute, Cass decided on drinking both, tossing the whiskey back and leaning back against the island as he drank his coffee. “Rhys is on his way. He’s been awake since three.”

Azriel looked at the digital clock over the stove and raised an eyebrow. “What’s he been doing to just now be on the way?”

He knew the likely answer involved Feyre, but he couldn’t imagine that they’d be focusing on that at a time like this.

“Same as me,” Cassian said, reaching into the back of his waistband, pulling out the warm metal and removing the magazine before he set the gun on the counter. “Making sure that if we see him, he won’t get away this time.”

Azriel hesitated. Yes, he wanted to make sure Nesta and the baby were safe.  It was all he could think about. But what Cassian wanted so desperately to do would only make the situation worse.

“Cass-.”

“No,” he said, voice low. “I know what you’re going to say, so save your breath. When I see him, he’s a fucking dead man.”

“He’ll be locked up, Cass. She’ll be safe, the baby will be safe, you don’t have to-.”

“He fucking took her!” Cassian yelled, his voice echoing throughout the house. Azriel didn’t say a word, wasn’t surprised by his brother’s anger, his frustration. “He deserves a lot worse than a few years behind bars, Az!”

“Yeah, he does,” Azriel said, quietly. “But, so do you, and if you shoot him and he dies, there’s a real good chance you’ll miss quite a bit of your daughter's life.” 

Cassian’s jaw locked and he looked away as another tear fell from his hazel eyes.

“Stay armed,” Azriel said. “Use it in self-defense, if it comes to it, but use it wisely. Not out of anger.”

The stairs creaked from the other room and the two men fell quiet as Elain stepped around the corner. Her eyes were red, her cheeks still wet. There wasn’t a jealous bone in Azriel’s body as she walked to Cassian and wrapped her arms around him.

His large frame crumbled in a way Azriel hadn’t seen in years, hadn’t seen since they were children and his mother had died. Regardless of Elain’s arms holding him, his knees hit the floor and he was unable to stop the full-body sob that tore from him. He could hear Elain’s quiet sobs, too, could see her back shaking.

Without a word, Azriel stepped out into the crisp, early day and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his truck. He didn’t smoke anymore, had quit years ago, but his nerves were shot and he needed something to take the edge off. He sat down on the porch and lit it, taking a drag in and blowing it out. He wasn’t sure where the smoke stopped and his breath in the cold air began.

A black truck rumbled down the street and parked behind his own and when Rhys jumped out, Azriel could still see that same anger from last night simmering in his violet eyes. When they saw Az though, they guttered slightly. “I thought you quit.”

He put the cigarette back to his lips and pulled. “Figured no one would care if I made an exception today.”

Rhys nodded and made to step around his brother, but Azriel caught his hoodie sleeve. “Just...give them a minute.”

Rhys looked to the door, knowing what he meant. He inclined his head to the truck, where Az could see a head of golden brown hair in the front seat. “Feyre is… She’s a fucking mess.”

“Elain did well, for most of the night,” Azriel admitted, ashing his cigarette. “But just a few minutes ago, she came downstairs and Cass was awake…”

Rhys nodded, sitting next to Az. They were pissed. They were scared. But the fear that the two of them felt was nothing to that of Cassian, Elain, and Feyre.

“I don’t need to have the gun talk with you, too, right?” Az asked, glancing down to where Rhys’ pistol was holstered at his side, and flicked the cigarette butt into the flower bed. Elain would be pissed at him for that, but he’d deal with that later. “No,” Rhys said, shaking his head. “I’m not an idiot. I told him I was bringing my gun, just in case. He gave me the same shit about giving Mandray what he deserves that I’m sure he gave you.”

Azriel nodded, eyes weary. “He’s never been able to control his anger on the little things, much less…”

Rhysand just nodded in understanding as he checked the time. “I say if the cops don’t call us back with any news in the next thirty minutes, we just go searching alone.”

“I say we go now,” Azriel agreed, then gestured over his shoulder to the house. “As soon as they’re ready.” 

Cassian must’ve sensed it, because he appeared in the doorway a minute later, Elain at his heels, zipping up her hoodie. 

Azriel stood, and they all stood in silence for a few seconds before Cassian, without saying a word, padded down the front steps and into the cool, eerie, early morning.

————

Nesta wasn’t sure at what point she’d passed out. She wasn’t sure if she’d passed out while she’d be screaming or if it was while she was sobbing or praying or she’d just fallen asleep while she waited and waited for the end.

Whether that was the end of this ordeal or the end of her life or the end of her baby’s, she didn’t know.

She wasn’t sure what had woken her either. Her baby was moving, but no more or less than normal, and she didn’t hear anyone else in the cottage with her.

But as she slowly blinked, trying to pull herself back into consciousness, she felt an ache from within her abdomen.

Nesta sat up, pulling on her restraints as she softly gasped and tried to resituate to stop the throbbing from inside her. But then she heard the soft dripping and felt the wetness beneath her.

Trying to keep her breathing even, Nesta glanced down at herself, down at the floor. She couldn’t even try to convince herself that she’d wet herself, she knew exactly what was happening, especially as a sharp pain from inside took her breath away.

“No, no, no,” she cried, looking around, for something, anything, whatever she could use or do to get herself free, get herself out of here.

Because her water had broken.

Nesta was in labor.

And her baby was coming.

She began to panic, so much more than she had before. She would not give birth in such a hellhole. That damned place would not be the first place her baby sees.

Once again, she tried to break those bonds, but nothing worked. She screamed and screamed and screamed until her voice became raw, broken.

She sobbed.

She called for Cassian.

She prayed to whoever was listening that it would all be over soon.

But it didn’t matter.

She was completely, utterly alone.

A distant pain in her abdomen came again, and although it wasn’t bad, she knew it to be a contraction. 

“Not yet, baby girl,” she breathed, sobbed, begged. “Not yet, please.”

A door slammed from somewhere in the house and everything inside her went stil, even the precious life trying so hard to enter the world. She breathed, “No, gods, please no…”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs from the garage and the door behind her opened.

“Look at that,” he crooned, the voice raising the hair on the back of her neck. “Either you pissed yourself or you’re about to have our little girl.”

Our little girl.

“You’re insane,” she gasped, another contraction made her look at the clock above the mantle.

He stepped around until he was looking down at her.

The brutal gash along his face was red and angry, the stitches still fresh. She knew the wound she’d given him on the arm was likely in the same shape. He clearly hadn’t gone to a hospital, the stitches weren’t nearly as neat as they should have been. No, Nesta knew who owed Tomas a favor from years ago, a favor that she’d hoped Tomas had forgotten about.

“I hope you didn’t pull Isaac Hale into this,” she breathed. “He’s a good man, a good vet.”

Tomas head tilted to the side, his eyes showing just how unhinged he’d become. “Would he be as good of a vet if I hadn’t driven his little girlfriend to the clinic in Adriata to have that abortion all those years ago? How’s Claire doing anyways?”

Nesta spit in his face.

She shouldn’t have been surprised when his hand cracked against her cheek. She cried out and he gripped her face in his hand. “How long have you been in labor?”

“Fuck off, Tomas,” she growled, trying to pull from him. He just squeezed tighter.

“When did your water break, Nes?”

The nickname, so familiar, sounded wrong coming from him. She looked back to the clock. “I don’t know. When I woke up, I was having contractions.”

He tilted her head back so she was looking at him. “And that was what? An hour ago, two hours ago?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Forty-eight minutes ago.”

He smiled and it was the most terrifying thing Nesta had ever seen. “Good girl.” He turned and headed behind her into the kitchen. She could hear him opening and closing drawers as he said, “To answer my own question from earlier, by the way, Claire’s doing great. Did you know she’s a nurse?” Nesta felt her blood go cold. “She’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. Turns out she owed me that favor, too.”

She was dreaming.

She had to be.

This was absurd, insane, and no possible way it could be her current reality. No, she had to be dreaming, dreaming of her paranoia, dreaming of ghosts from the past.

And yet, as that pain in her abdomen came again, increased, she knew that this was very much real.

“When Cassian finds me, he’ll kill you,” she breathed, her tears still streaming down her face, silently. “He’ll put a bullet in your head and he won’t hesitate.”

“You always did like threats,” Tomas crooned from where he stood behind the kitchen wall. She couldn't imagine what he was digging around for, didn’t want to know. “Too bad I never took you seriously. Didn’t then, don’t now. I’m not afraid of Cassian Nazari.”

You should be, she wanted to hiss, but remained silent. Instead, she caught herself wondering where her fiancé was, and when the fuck he would find her.

Because he had to.

She couldn’t go out like this.

Their baby couldn’t come into the world like this. 

In Tomas’ absence, she closed her eyes and took deep, calming breaths. Stressing and panic would only speed up the process of labor, and she wanted to string it out as long as possible. As difficult as it was, for her daughter’s sake, she did her breathing exercises to the best of her ability. With her eyes closed, she imagined Cassian’s face smiling brightly at her from across the pasture, on horseback.

She imagined him painting the nursery, imagined him picking up the little baby shoes Nesta had bought and tearing up at the sight of them. She imagined the way he looked when he made love to her, imagined his voice whispering those three little words that set her soul on fire every time they came from his beautiful lips.

Tomas began to hum from the other room, the sound the most ominous thing Nesta had ever heard. It only became worse as he came back into the living room, softly singing the words.

Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

Nesta couldn’t stop the sob, couldn’t stop the tears that fell as she opened her eyes and looked at what he was holding in his hands. Towels. Handfuls and handfuls of towels.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing, daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

He gripped Nesta’s arm and pulled her engagement ring from her finger. She sobbed, unable to stop him as he walked away, screaming at him to stop. His steps softened as he headed into the kitchen and the garbage disposal turned on.

And then she heard the sound of metal on metal, grinding and snapping.

“What the fuck do you want Tomas?” she cried, the pain in her stomach increasing with every wave. “Please, just let me go. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you. You know I have money, I can-.”

He appeared in front of her again, for just long enough that she anticipated the stinging against her cheek this time, she just wasn’t expecting to taste blood. “Are you trying to put a price on our relationship, Nesta? After everything I’ve done for us?”

A door opened down the hall, from the direction of the front door and a small voice said, “Hello? It- It’s Claire.”

Tomas’ smile turned Nesta’s blood to ice. “It’s time to meet our daughter.”

____

Cassian had asked everyone in town.

No one had seen Nesta.

Or Tomas. 

It made no sense. They had to be somewhere, there were only so many places to go in this little town. Even then, no one had even seen Tomas’ truck, which means they most likely hadn’t left town.

At least, that’s what Cassian kept telling himself.

It was nearing noon and they had been at it, their little group split up all over town, for over six hours. He’d looked everywhere. Even the places he thought were impossible for him to be hiding, he’d looked. The others had, too, desperately. Azriel, Rhys, Feyre, and Elain. And yet, absolutely nothing. 

The feeling of hopelessness that had settled into the pit of his stomach was overwhelming. 

Once he made it back to the ranch, Cassian figured maybe he was thinking about it a little too hard. The main house was empty of guests now, as he and Nesta had made it their home for their baby, which means they had hardly spent any time in the little houses out back. But when he inspected the cabin and the little modern house at the end of the dirt path, there was no sign of them. 

Beau had been with him all day, helping him search for Nesta. With his keen sense of smell, Cassian knew he’d be helpful. With no luck, though, Beau spent most of the day whining at Nesta’s absence, fully aware that something had gone horribly wrong.

His phone rang and it was out of his pocket and held up to his ear before the end of the first ring. “Hello?”

“Isaac Hale gave a horse named Mandrake sixty-two stitches this morning.” He couldn’t recognize the voice on the other side of the phone.

He looked at the number, seeing it had come in from a blocked number. He frantically asked, “Who is this?”

“Mandrake,” the voice said slowly. “Sixty-two stitches.”

“I don’t understand-.”

The line went dead.

His phone rang again, but it was Rhys this time. “Hello?”

“Any luck?” He asked, voice empty, but hopeful.

He sighed, “No, but I just got the weirdest phone call.”

“About Isaac Hale giving some random horse stitches?” Rhys asked.

Cassian froze mid-stride. “Mandrake?”

“No,” Rhys breathed. “Dos More.”

Cassian’s phone began to vibrate in his hand. He looked at his phone and saw that Azriel was calling him. He told Rhys, “I think we need to pay Isaac Hale a visit. Now.”

________

Claire was sniffling as she unpacked the bag of medical supplies she’d raided from Isaac’s veterinary office that morning.

Nesta breathed, tugging on the restraints holding her to the bed, terrified for Tomas to hear her, “Claire, please. Get me out of here.”

Her eyes wouldn’t meet Nesta’s as she whispered, “I can’t, he’s- Nesta, he’ll kill me. He’ll kill Isaac.”

Nesta opened her mouth to reply, but she gasped as the most excruciating of all her contractions so far took her breath away.

She felt hands on the waistband of her leggings, still covered in Tomas’ blood and soaked from her water breaking, and tried to jerk away. “No!”

Claire said, “I need to check and see what you’re dilated to. You’ve been in labor for hours and if I don’t make sure she’s sitting right, she could suffocate.”

Nesta’s face paled and she saw a moment of hesitance on Claire’s face as she glanced over her shoulder, hearing Tomas’ footsteps head towards the garage, then the door opened and closed.

He was leaving again. She didn’t know why, but he was leaving.

“Please, we need to run,” Nesta begged, knowing this could be their only shot.

Claire began tugging her leggings down. “Nesta, if we leave right now, you will bleed out in the woods. There is nothing around this place for miles.”

“My ranch,” she breathed. “My ranch shares a property line, we can make it.”

Claire pulled a pair of gloves on and came around to her side, pressing a hand against her belly and checking her cervix. “No, we can’t,” she said, a worried look on her face. “You’re about at a seven. You’re going to have to start pushing soon.”

Nesta sobbed, and she didn’t care what she looked like, what she sounded like. All that shit was long gone.

All she cared about now was her baby girl.

And making sure Tomas Mandray would pay.

“Claire,” she whispered.

Claire froze, although she didn’t meet Nesta’s gaze.

“Just…” Nesta began, her sobs shaking her body. “Just make sure she’s okay, alright? Make sure Cassian takes care of her, okay?”

Tears were flowing freely down Claire’s cheeks. “Nesta-.”

“If I die, if I don’t make it out of this,” Nesta cried, quietly, “make sure Cassian gets her, please.”

She knew it was a request that Claire probably couldn’t fulfill, but she nodded, nonetheless. “I will. I’m so sorry, Nesta.”

“I know,” Nesta breathed, and Claire took Nesta’s hand, and they sat still for a moment in the silence. She couldn’t stop the scream that tore from her as another contraction, much stronger and much sooner than she was expecting hit her. Claire’s eyes jumped from Nesta’s to their clasped hands, where Nesta was bound to the bed. “Please,” she whispered, seeing the thought in Claire’s eyes. “Please, I won’t run. I’ll stay here. Just please…” Nesta didn’t bother to try and stop the sob. “Don’t make me have my baby tied to the bed. At least give me that.”

Claire hesitated for only a second more before she quickly loosened the knots around Nesta’s wrists.

Nesta sat up a bit, pulling her knees up, and putting her weight into her hands. She felt like she needed to hold her breath, but knew she shouldn’t. She was trying to remember anything and everything she’d learned in that stupid birthing class they’d gone to.

“Do you feel like you need to push?” Claire asked. Nesta had her eyes closed, but she was focusing hard on her breathing. She nodded. Claire said, “Nesta.” She opened her eyes and looked at her, not trying to mask the fear on her face. “That means it's time to push.”

--------

Cassian pushed through the glass doors of Isaac’s Veterinary clinic, locking eyes with the man himself at the front desk. His skin went deathly white the moment he saw Cassian, which confirmed that they needed to have a conversation.

“Where is she,” he hissed, voice low, the moment he reached the desk.

Isaac looked around, even though there was no one else in the small reception area with him. “Cassian-.”

“Where. Is. She.” He repeated, gripping Isaac’s collar.

Isaac just shook his head. “He’s got Claire, and he’s dangerous, Cass-.”

“If you don’t tell me what you know, I’ll smash your head against this desk and I won’t feel bad about it,” Cassian snapped.

Isaac's eyes grew weary. “Please-.”

“She’s carrying my child,” Cassian said, his voice breaking.

Cassian could see the internal conflict going on through Isaac’s eyes. For a moment, Cassian thought he’d have to torture the poor veterinarian, the young man that they’d known their entire lives, but then, in the quietest of voices, Isaac said, “She’s on your land. In a little beaten down cabin.”

She’s on your land.

The cottage.

She had been right there, and he’d never even thought about it. Of course Tomas knew about the cabin, but he probably assumed Cassian didn’t.

Fuck.

He didn’t even realize he’d said the word aloud, much less yelled it until one of the patients across the room looked in their direction.

Cassian was halfway out the door when Isaac called his name. He turned back, seeing a broken man. He repeated, “He’s got Claire, too. Get her, please.”

Cassian nodded once and was out the door.

Rhys and Azriel were waiting in Rhys’ truck, Elain and Feyre with them.  Feyre scooted into the middle seat as Cassian climbed back into the passenger side. “Home, go the fuck home.”

“What?” Rhys asked, violet eyes wide. “What do you-?”

Cassian was already dialing the number of the detective that had been assigned to their case. “Those French people she knew, the property next door.”

All four of them stared at her. She hadn’t told them. She hadn’t told her fucking famliy about the people she’d met, the bond she grew with them.

Which means they had no fucking clue where the cottage was.

“Just drive to the fucking ranch!” he yelled, putting the phone to his ear, his hands shaking, his mind whirling. 

Rhysand didn’t hesitate as he put the truck in reverse and pulled out of the parking space. 

The ride was quiet, and even though it was only a five minute drive, Cassian felt like it took a lifetime. All that time, she was so close. He felt like a horrible person, not even thinking about her being right next door. 

“Drive faster,” Cassian hissed.

“I’m driving as fast as I can without running us off the road,” Rhysand snapped.

Tensions were high.

They were so close, now.

They just had to get to her. 

“Go past our drive,” Cass said, pointing ahead. “Just go straight to theirs.”

Rhys did as he was told, but Feyre said, “Cass, I can’t think of any other driveway on this road. It just dead ends at the river.”

He knew that was the case, but he had no idea how to figure out where it was.

Actually, he could think of one.

“Get to the house,” he breathed. “We have to catch the horses.”

-------------

The pain was so all consuming, so absolutely mind numbing, that Nesta wasn’t sure how the world managed to repopulate as long as it did before modern medicine and epidurals. She screamed, holding onto the footboard while Claire crouched, her hands held out beneath her.

“You’re almost there, Nesta,” she said, keeping her voice calm, even. It was clear that she was in her element, even in the situation they were currently in. “I need you to take a deep breath, let it out and push one more time.”

She nodded and did as she was told, for what felt like the thousandth time, and ended up sobbing again.

She cried, “I can’t. I can’t anymore.”

It had been nearly an hour since she started pushing, and though Claire was keeping herself collected, she urged Nesta, “You have to push, she’s almost here, Nes. I can see her head, She can’t stay where she is.”

Nesta shook her head, her hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, her tear stained cheeks. She needed Cassian, she needed her rock. But he wasn’t here, couldn’t be here.

Claire gave her a couple more seconds to breathe and said, “Come on, squat back down, and give me one more big, push, the biggest one you’ve got in you, okay?”

Nesta closed her eyes, thinking of Cassian as she breathed in and out, trying to calm herself. She took a deep breath in and braced down as hard as she could. She could feel her nails splitting against the wooden bed frame.

The world went silent for a moment. Her eyes were shut, but all she could see was bright, white light, all she could feel was warmth and comfort and peace. Nesta wondered if she might be dead, if she’d somehow gotten lucky in all of this and spared from Tomas' cruelty.

But then the most amazing sound she’d ever heard had her opening her eyes, bringing her back to the real world.

She heard her baby crying.

Nesta was crying, too. And Claire, even as she held the screaming infant in a bloody towel, had tears streaming down her face.

She cut the umbilical cord, helping Nesta back on the bed.

She handed Nesta her daughter, as well as a clean, wet towel, and said, “Lie back, I have to stitch you up.”

She did as she was told, trying not to think about what was happening as she carefully cleaned her baby’s face up. “Hello, beautiful girl,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry your daddy’s not here to meet you. He’ll be here soon.”

Her voice was becoming weaker and weaker and Claire said, “Nesta, I need you to keep talking to me. You have to stay awake, okay? Everything went awesome, better than some of the births I do every day in the hospital, but I need you to stay awake.”

She nodded, trying to do as she was told.

When Claire finished, she helped Nesta into what could only be described as a glorified adult diaper, pulling the oversized hoodie she wore over it, and helped her lay back on the bed. “I’m going to get her cleaned up,” she said, holding her arms out for the baby.

Nesta’s arms tightened around her daughter, suddenly afraid to trust Claire.

“I promise, I’m just going to clean her off and I’ll bring her right back.” Nesta could see the sincerity in Claire’s eyes, at least she hoped she did as she handed her daughter to her.

Claire hurried out of the room and Nesta heard the sink in the bathroom turn on. The water ran for a solid three or four minutes before it turned off and she returned, the baby wrapped in a soft, white sheet.

She handed the baby back to Nesta, sitting on the bed at her feet. “What’s her name?”

“Sloan,” she breathed, gazing down at the perfect little thing she had somehow managed to bring into the world. “Ilsa Sloan Nazari.”

The tuft of dark hair on her head, it was the same color as Cassian’s, just as her skin was the same rich tan. But when Nesta brushed a finger over her soft cheek, and her eyes fluttered open, those were her own stormy eyes surrounded in dark, long lashes.

They could hear heavy, quick footsteps coming up from the garage and Nesta’s arms tightened around her daughter. Claire stood, turning and standing between Nesta and the hall. When the door finally burst open, Tomas was on his phone, yelling at someone, but Nesta couldn’t figure out who. He’d left the door to the garage open as he hurried up to the second floor of the cottage, going to get the gods knew what.

“Claire,” Nesta said, tears already running down her cheeks. She turned and Nesta was already pressing Sloan into her arms. “You promised. Get out, get to the woods, and run away from the setting sun. You’ll get to my property. Just get her to her father, please.”

Claire was already shaking her head before Nesta finished speaking, but she clutched the baby to her chest. “Nesta, no, I can’t-.

“You can, and you promised,” Nesta said, her voice breaking as she began to sob again. “Get her out of here. I don’t care what he does to me, just go before he comes back.”

For a brief moment, Nesta was worried she wouldn’t honor her earlier word, but then she was off, sprinting out the open door to the garage. Nesta got to her feet, hissing in pain and limped to the window. Claire came from around the side of the house she couldn’t see, but she watched as she ran as fast as she could into the wood, away from the sun, just like Nesta said, and disappeared into the trees. She couldn’t stop the whimper of relief that left her, but she clamped a hand over her mouth as she remembered he was back in the house.

With a deep breath, she crept along the wall and left the room, making her way into the hallway and then out into the open living room. She could still hear Tomas screaming into his phone and she took that as a sign that he was preoccupied. Though it made her vision blur, Nesta hurried into the kitchen and grabbed the tool that had served her well many times before and had served her well enough the night before.

Nesta had come to terms earlier in the day with the fact that her life was most likely going to end tonight, but that didn’t mean she would go out without a fight.

------

Cassian and Rhys were riding as fast as they could through the trees. He knew nothing about the cottage, not where it sat on the property or how big it was, just that Nesta had said she’d always ridden west. So they followed the sun. They rode for what felt like hours but could only have been minutes before Rhys called, “Who the fuck is that?”

But Cassian knew, gods, he immediately knew. He was off his horse before he’d even stopped, calling her name. “Claire!”

She looked towards his voice and the sob that left her could be heard the quarter mile that separated them. He sprinted towards her, slowing down when he noticed the small bundle in her arms. He froze. “No.”

Rhys appeared by his side, and he breathed, “Tell me she’s not holding a fucking baby.”

Cass was moving again and he caught Claire as she met them, crying.

The little bundle in her arms began to cry, too, as Cassian took his daughter into his arms.

“She begged me to take her,” Claire sobbed. “Tomas threatened me, so I delivered the baby, and Nesta asked me to bring her to you.”

Her words were hardly understandable, but Cassian was frozen in place, staring down at the baby in his arms.

She was so incredibly beautiful.

His mind couldn’t fully comprehend that Nesta had just had a baby while being held captive. He couldn’t. 

He looked up to Claire, tears streaming down his face as he asked, in a numb, deadly calm. “Are we close?”

Claire looked over her shoulder, then back to Cassian and Rhysand, and nodded. “There’s a small clearing in about half a mile.”

Claire went on to tell him how dangerous Tomas was, but he wasn’t listening. He kissed Sloan on her soft, tanned forehead, and handed her to Rhysand. “Bring her back to the house. Wait there with Feyre, Az and Elain. Take Claire, too.”

Rhysand carefully took Sloan and cradled her against his chest.

Then Cassian mounted his horse and continued west.

#theranchnessian #sharacocllab #shacmc #nessian #fanfic

[blackhakumen]

Mini Fanfic #802: The Day We (Kinda) Became a Thing (SSBU X Animal Crossing)

1:56 p.m. at Horizon Island's Picnic)

Nook: (Smiles Softly at Wolf and Isabelle In Front of Him) It's nice to finally see you two again.

Isabelle: (Happily Bows her Head at Tom Nook) Likewise, Mr. Nook sir.

Wolf: (Smiles Softly as Well) Yeah. You and the folks here are alright.....Well, I mean, except for that Restti asshole.....

Isabelle: (Immediately Turns and Pouts at Wolf) Wolfie!

Wolf: What? The guy's a dick.

Isabelle: Not all the time. He's a really nice person once you get to know him. (Turns to See Mr. Restti Angrily Yelling at his Co-Workers From a Distance) For the most part.....

Wolf: (Shrugs) Eh. Still have my doubt.

Nook: You know, I've been thinking....

Wolf: (Turns Back to Tom Nook Along With Isabelle) Hm?

Isabelle: About what, Mr. Nook?

Nook: About the both of you of course. You're polar opposites from another. Yet the love and chemistry you share......It just might be the brightest bit of romance I've seen yet.

Isabelle: ('Gasps')

Wolf: (Eyes Widened a Bit in Genuinely Surprised) Oh shit. Really?

Nook: (Simply Nodded) Mmhmm. Which leads me to my question. How exactly did the two of you met each other in the first?

Isabelle: Oh. (Smiles Brightly) Well, it all started back when I was still getting used to living at the mansion at the time.

Wolf: I started having a crush on her the moment she first moved in. So one day, I asked crew mates, Panther and Leon, for some romantic advice.....

Flashback....

Wolf: Panther, what the hell the this?

Panther: (Smiles Confidently at the Paper He Just Gave to Wolf) The words I've come up for you to say to your admirer. Practice saying them to perfection before going to your exquisite date together this evening and she'll be falling head over heels for you in no time.

Wolf: (Gives Panther a Deadpinned Look on his Face) Dude, I'm just taking her out for coffee. And on top of that.....(Points at the Paper) These are all in Spanish. I don't know how say all of this shit!

Panther: Oh I'm sure you'll be able to learn them in due time. Spanish is one of the languages that is perfectly suitable for romance after all~

Wolf: (Groans While Pinching his Nose in Annoyance) I am regretting this already.....(Turns to Leon, Who is Reading a Magazine) Leon, help me out here, will ya?

Leon: (Moves Away From the Magazine and Turns to Wolf Before Putting his Hand on his Chin) Hmmm....(Gives Wolf a Thumbs Up) I wish you the best of luck, Captain.

Wolf: (Immediately Glares at the Chameleon) NOT THAT KIND OF HELP, ASSHOLE!

Leon: ('Sigh') Look, I don't know why you're getting this desperate for our help to begin with. You've flirted with a plenty of women before.

Wolf: Yeah. But....(Turns Away While Blushing and Rubbing the Back of his Head Back and Forth) Izzy's different from all of them, you know?

Panther: (Raised an Eyebrow in Confusion) Izzy?

Wolf: It's a nickname I just thought of giving her someday.

Leon: Cute. But try refraining yourself from calling her that in your first meeting.

Wolf: (Sighs While Nodding in Agreement) Right. But yeah, like I said. She's completely different from all the girls I've talked to over the years. She's kind, hardworking, hell, she can even rival Kirby in a cuteness contest and she would win by a landslide.

Leon: (Smirks a Little) You've really fallen for her, haven't you?

Wolf: Yeah. I.....guess I am. I know I'm not the most romantic guy in the bunch, but....I dunno. Something's telling me to give this one a shot. And I guess I believed it.

Leon: Well....If this is really what your heart desires, then I suppose the advice I can give you at the moment is to have more confidence in yourself while talking to her.

Panther: And if all hope is lost, you can always blurt out these lovely pick-up lines on the paper.

Wolf: Still don't know how to speak in Spanish, Panther. But I'll try not to fuck up out there. Thanks, guys.

Few Minutes Later in the Dining Hall.....

Wolf: (Reading the Paper Panther Gave Him While Walking) "Te....A-mo.....Mu...sa.....Sway....la?" ('Sigh') Why the hell couldn't that Casanova written all of this in English? (Crumbles the Paper Up) Ridiculous.

????: Mr. O' Donnell?

Wolf: What do you wan- (Eyes Widened Once Realized that Isabelle is in Front of Him) O-Oh! Uh...Izzy- No! I-I mean! ('Clears Throat') Isabelle. Uh....How it's... going?

Isabelle: (Smiles Brightly) I'm doing very well. I've just got done finishing the laundry for the week. How about you?

Wolf: I'm doing fine. In fact, I uhh....Wanted to see you for a minute. If you don't mind.

Isabelle: Of course I don't mind. What is you want to see me for?

Wolf: Oh uh....Just wanted to ask you a question is all?

Isabelle: What's your question?

Wolf: ('Sigh') Well, uh.....If you're not doing anything at the moment....I was hoping if you... Wanna spend some quality time with me in meantime. To uhh...get to know each other and whatnot. B-But not to some fancy restaurant or anything like that! I wanna take you this place called La Shy Guy's Café or whatever. It's a coffee place from across the street from here and....I thought it would be.... cool if... we go there together and junk. But I COMPLETELY understand if have a busy schedule ahead or....if you're not really interested in the whole in general-

Isabelle: I would love to go with you.

Wolf: Or maybe if you- (Eyes Suddenly Widened) Wait. What now?

Isabelle: (Giggles Softly) I said I would love to go to café with you, silly~ To tell you the truth, I've been wanting to get to know you too, Mr. O' Donnell.

Wolf: ('Heh') Please. Mr. O' Donnell is my old man's name. Just call me Wolf.

Isabelle: Oh okay. Wolf it is then. Lovely name by the way.

Wolf: (Starts Blushing Again) Oh uh...Thanks. But anyways, you... really want to get to know me better?

Isabelle: (Happily Nodded) Mmhmm. I know you may have a reputation of being rebellious and scary to some here, but I honestly think there's more to you than meets the eye, you know?

Wolf: (Shrugs) I'm not too sure about all of that. But if you're still willing to hang out with someone like me, then I ain't complaining.

Isabelle: (Smiles Brightly) I'm up for anything, Wolfie!~

Wolf: (Raised an Eyebrow in Confusion) "Wolfie?"

Isabelle: (Eyes Begins to Widened Once She Realized What She Just Said) O-Oh my! (Starts Blushing as Well) S-Sorry about that. It's a nickname I thought of calling you for a bit of while now. I-I hope you don't mind.

Wolf: (Gives Isabelle a Soft Smirk on his Face) Not at all.

Flashback Ended

Wolf: Then after a couple of hangouts, meet-ups, and an actual date at the restaurant later, we finally became a couple.

Isabelle: (Giggles Softly) I can't believe Panther written you a list of romantic pick-up lines in Spanish! Did you really thought about saying them all to me?

Wolf: ('Sigh') I dunno. Sort of? Even if I did had time to learn all of that beforehand, I'd still would've find a way to mess it all up. Plus, I thought you wouldn't be into that kind of stuff at the time, so......

Isabelle: Te quiero mucho, mi grande, apuesto, Wolfie~

Wolf: (Genuinely Surprised by Isabelle's Sudden, Yet Fluent Spanish Speaking Skills) Goddamn, Izzy. That was impressive.....But what did that all stand for exactly?

Isabelle: (Giggles Some More Before Hugging Wolf's Arm) It means that "I love you very much, my big, handsome, Wolfie~" (Gives Wolf a Big Kiss on the Cheek)

Wolf: Oh. ('Heh') Right. I....(Starts Blushing a Little) Knew all of that....(Smiles Softly at his Girlfriend) Love you too, Isabelle. (Starts Kissing on the Top of Isabelle's Forehead)

Isabelle: (Giggles Ticklishly By Wolf's Kisses) Wolfie!~ Not in front of Mr. Nook!~

Nook: (Chuckles Lightly) Oh now don't you mind me, Isabelle darling. I, for one, enjoy watching lovely couples interact with one another like this. It's a wonderful feeling indeed. Which reminds me....(Smiles Brightly at the Couple in Front of Him) When's the wedding?

Wolf and Isabelle Immediately stopped what they were doing turn their heads to Tom Nook with completely surprised looks on both of their faces. All while blushing madly red in the process.

EHHHHHHHHHHHHH!?

@boriswolf4423

@keyenuta

@26shann

@cyber-wildcat

@caleb13frede

@ma-lemons

@albion-93

#super smash ultimate #animal crosing new horizons #wolf o'donnell #ac isabelle #tom nook #leon powalski #panther caroso #orgin love story #cute romance #humor #wolf x isabelle #the nook still ship these two #new horizons vacation #edited

[lovelyirony]

if you’re taking prompts uhh “the darkness encroaches (you keep it at bay)” idk for who maybe tony?

Tony, for one thing, did not like the fact he was apparently part of a long line of magic-users. 

His mom had always been tight-lipped about her own family history, even after she left dad and they moved back to New York. 

Tony had asked one time about her family. They had to talk about family history in one of his classes, and there was no way in hell that he wanted to talk about Howard in any capacity that was even neutral. (After all for his debate class, he was talking about how much he sucked in terms of universal weaponry policy.) 

Mom had given him a sharp look from the kitchen counter, and even though she was wearing rubber gloves and her hair was pushed back by a bandana that had little Mickey Mouse print on it, she still looked terrifying. 

“They’re not worth mentioning, Tony. Make something up.” 

“Geez, okay. Touchy subject...” 

“Not touchy. Just not worth the time.” 

Tony didn’t make a comment after that, because in all honesty he and his mom have never been excellent liars to each other, and this time is no exception. 

He does make up his family history. He knows his family is probably from Italy somewhere, they moved in...1923? Yeah, that sounds good. And he’s named after an uncle. 

(He isn’t.) 

Tony doesn’t ask his mom again because he knows that she won’t give in or break down to answer his questions, and there’s probably good reason why he doesn’t know. 

- 

Oh, there’s a reason alright. 

- 

He likes science. He likes understanding things. In his (correct) opinion, magic is just science that no one understands yet. Everything has an explanation. 

Well. 

He accidentally set an asshole’s Mustang on fire. 

To be fair, he was an asshole. He had been talking over the professor during every single slide in the lecture presentation for his lecture, and Tony had just about yelled in frustration. 

So instead as he saw the guy rev his engine for his stupid fucking car and make a whole big scene about how he had a Mustang, how fucking cool is that you absolute shit-heel of a person-

Fire. 

Nothing serious, but Tony knows he did it. 

He could feel how his hands twitched, how something came to him and from him. Something not normal. 

Or at least if it was normal, health class never came close to covering it. 

- 

But it’s a one-time thing, he thinks. He’s not really doing anything else, so maybe it only happens when he’s really mad? That’s probably it. That has to be it. 

Except the ramen that he likes at the grocery store is on the top shelf, and Rhodey wandered off to get actual food, and so he can’t reach it because he’s not a freak who is like 6′4″. 

It floats. 

It fucking floats. 

The sweet-chili-ramen floats into his cart and Rhodey sees it, and he stares. 

"Either I took an edible and it finally kicked in, or you just did something that definitely isn’t supposed to happen.” 

“Maybe the latter,” Tony says faintly. 

“Oh,” Rhodey says. “Do you think we have time to get that queso you wanted, or do we have to pay for the groceries and go to the car to process?” 

“Queso over my mental state,” Tony responds automatically. “Let’s go.” 

-

They eat in silence when they get to their apartment, and they don’t say anything for about ten minutes. 

“So. Do you think you can fly on a broomstick?” 

“What? No!” Tony exclaimed, but pausing. “Well, I’ve never tried before, so...” 

“Then we have to try. For science reasons,” Rhodey says. “Where the fuck do we get a broomstick?” 

So...

As it turns out, you can’t really get a traditional broomstick, so they went to the store and bought a mop. 

“They have a mop, but not a broomstick?” 

“To be fair, it is April.” 

“Why does that matter?” 

“Well,” Rhodey starts to explain, “April showers bring May flowers, but also wet boots into the hallway. Also, it’s not your holiday yet.” 

“Well yeah, it’s not May yet.” 

“I didn’t mean your birthday, dipshit. I meant your holiday.” 

“What the fuck is my holiday?” Tony demands. “No one has a ‘celebrate Tony Stark’ day in their calendars, as far as I or my ego knows, so-” 

He stops. 

“Oh, you little shit.” 

“I’m not little,” Rhodey brags. “I’m taller than you.” 

“For now.” 

“For permanence!” 

“I’ll make you pay for this broomstick with the last ten dollars in your checking account.” 

“Then I’ll tell Jarvis!” 

“Damn your need to know my family,” Tony curses. “Fine.” 

- 

Tony can’t fucking fly on a fucking mop. 

- 

One broken arm later and a phone call to his mother later, Maria Carbonell is sitting on her son’s dormitory mattress and wondering just why the hell he lied to her about how he broke his arm. 

Here was her son’s lie: 

“Um. I broke my arm because dinner sucked.” 

A.) There was no follow up. 

B.) Her son is bad at lying as she is. 

Unfortunately, she did not announce her arrival, and so she gets Tony’s roommate opening the door and screaming that the liquor is in the second cabinet from the left. 

Maria raises one eyebrow. 

“Did Tony at least pick out good wine?” 

“Uh...you’re Tony’s mom?” 

“Yes.” 

“I didn’t think you were coming to visit until move-out.” 

“I...we had an interesting conversation. You wouldn’t happen to know why Tony actually broke his arm, would you?” 

“Um...no.” 

(Rhodey is also a bad liar.) 

- 

Tony gets home about ten minutes later and promptly says: 

“Oh fuck.” 

“Is that any way to greet your mother?” Mom asks, already sipping delicately on her glass of water. 

“Um...move-out isn’t for another month.” 

“I know. But you lied to your dear mother.” 

“How did you know?” 

“You can never hide anything from your mom, and your excuse needed work, honey,” Maria answers. “So. How did you break your arm?” 

Tony sighs. 

“Promise me you won’t laugh. And don’t tell Jarvis.” 

“What did you....what?” 

- 

The mop. 

Maria doesn’t laugh at first, at least until she sees the pictures that Rhodey took and chuckles. 

“You promised me you wouldn’t laugh!” 

“What were you doing? And why?” she asks, laughing. Tony rubs the back of his neck nervously. 

“Um, well...funny story...” 

- 

Maria should have known that her son would have her...abilities. But she had hoped that if he had never known the family, had never known what she could do, that maybe...maybe they wouldn’t come. 

“So what you’re telling me,” Tony says, nostrils flaring, “is that there’s magic?” 

“Yes,” Maria says. “And what we deal with specifically is good magic.” 

“Oh, so I could’ve put Glinda the Good Witch on my family tree project,” Tony says sarcastically. 

Maria scowls. 

“Don’t sass me, Tony. I did it for your own good.” 

“I set a car on fire!” 

“Well, what kind of car was it?!” 

“A Mustang!” 

“Then that makes sense!” Maria says. “Your father drove one, and we all know how that turned out!” 

Tony blinks for a moment. 

And then laughs. 

Maria starts laughing too, until they’re both giggling in the apartment, and Tony tells her about the grocery store incident. 

- 

Mom tells him, essentially, that they have a job: defend from the darkness. She doesn’t say if the darkness is someone or a group or a concept. She just says that she’ll send him some of the spell-books (fucking spell-books!) over and talk about how emotions and different hand motions can affect how spells go. 

“So, why never the family? I mean, you could’ve told me about them and then just not mentioned the magic portion,” Tony asks when he’s moved back into their house, and has grilled Mom on just about every single page in the book. 

“Because as much as your father is a terrible person, you’re still like him in some aspects,” Maria says. “And you are stubborn and don’t let information go. You want to know how everything works, and that includes family. You would’ve been wreaking havoc since you were eight.” 

“I was already wreaking havoc when I was eight,” Tony whines. “But, this also raises the question of when are we doing a family reunion?” 

She stops, looking at him. 

“They weren’t exactly pleased when I married a millionaire.” 

“Not even when he became a billionaire and you got half his fortune?” Tony teases. 

“Not even then,” she answers. “I have a...complicated relationship with magic.” 

“As in, you don’t use it.” 

“Correct,” she answers. “You don’t need magic in your life, and quite often, it gets you in more trouble than you anticipate.” 

“Are you going to give me a ‘magic has consequences’ speech?” 

Maria laughs. 

“No. Magic, as far as I know, doesn’t really have consequences. The actions you do have consequences. You could blast up an entire country and as long as you don’t get caught, no consequences other than what you do to yourself.” 

“Like having guilt?” 

“Like having guilt. But enough about that, it’ll make you feel weird for a week if you keep thinking about it. I want you to light candles from two feet away.” 

“Of course I can do that,” Tony scoffs. 

“Sure you can.” 

-

Tony also sets the curtains on fire! 

- 

Maria realizes that her son is perhaps just a tad (okay, a lot) more powerful than she was (and is). 

So, she regrettably calls her mother. 

- 

Nonna Carbonell is a very imposing figure. A woman who is four-foot-eight and about seven-feet-tall in terms of personality, and dresses only in questionable 1970s-print dresses. 

“Ah, so you finally come back home, Maria. And you brought your boy! Who I only see twice in the magazines!” 

“You know exactly why I didn’t come back, Mama,” Maria says, rolling her eyes. “But enough about that. You need to teach Tony.” 

“Antonio,” Mama says, grinning at him and pinching his cheeks. “Ah, so good to see you have the Carbonell nose, your father was ugly as a mule.” 

Tony pointedly does not say that everyone else seems to think that he is the spitting image of his father, but...

His mom and Nonna do not get along, if family dinner is anything to go by. Tony’s lucky that his mom got him at least some Italian lessons so he’s not completely lost with all of his aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

He sees pots and pans coming off the shelves themselves. Ladles and knifes dance out of the drawers. 

His baby cousin-Geraldine, who is only two-is waving her fingers lackadaisically, and in what seems to be no effort, her bottle of juice is off of the counter. 

Great. A two year old is better at magic than he is. 

- 

Nonna is a great teacher, who also happens to terrify Tony with how much she can do. 

“You’re important,” she grins. “You have more power than your mother, thank God.” 

“Why thank god?” Tony asks. 

“You always thank God, Tonio,” Nonna says, waving the curtains shut. “Now, let’s see you get the flour off the shelf.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to get, like, a salt shaker?” 

“If you spill the salt shaker we get the devil!” Nonna declares. “Flour is better.” 

It is not better. It turns Nonna into a ghost, and Tony has to spend ages dusting it off his black jeans. 

“Maybe pepper shaker next time,” she says weakly.  

- 

Tony does call Rhodey. He was supposed to go on a road trip to see him, and now he’s in Italy learning how to fling flour sacks across the kitchen at his idiot Uncle Theo. 

“How goes your magic training you fucking nerd?” 

“Literally I call you, and that’s how you greet me?” 

“I told my DnD group that you moved to Italy to play on a campaign for a worldwide championship.” 

“You are quite literally the worst friend ever.” 

“False, because when I moved out I found your favorite Black Sabbath shirt and am saving it for when you move back. Please tell me you’re moving back so I can plan friendships accordingly.” 

“I’ll be back. Who knows, I might be able to help with some lifting.” 

“I still don’t trust your noodle arms, no matter how much ‘magic’ you have now.” 

“Hey! They’re not noodles!” 

“Says you, noodle-arm boy.” 

“I’m going to curse you into a toad.” 

“There’s no way you can do that,” Rhodey says, laughing. “I guarantee you that you wouldn’t be able to turn me back.” 

“And then we’d have so much more space in the apartment, darling.” 

“But then I wouldn’t have to pay rent! Huzzah! And I wouldn’t have to do my stupid business classes!” 

Tony laughs. 

“I’ve missed talking to you, Rhodey. I can’t wait until I get to come home again.” 

“Me too,” he responds. Tony can practically feel his smile through the phone. 

There’s yelling that Rhodey can hear, something about “come back here you American bastard and learn how to knit with magic!” and a hurried “goodbye, love you” from Tony. 

- 

Tony does get good at magic. He gets very good. 

It’s terrifying to Maria, really. 

Darkness has always existed, and it will always exist. Their family exists as a way to keep it balanced, and Tony...

He plays with magic as if he’s always known it, now. He can do things that not even the older family can do. He has meshed magic with mechanics, and he’s started on ideas that Maria was quite sure no one had thought of. 

- 

And then, of course, family does what family does best: 

They tell you things you should’ve known about three months earlier. 

-

With most families, the thing that they don’t tell you is something like “oh, Aunt Margaret made a terrible choice in husbands again.” Or perhaps “did you see his tattoo? Who in their right mind gets a Sonic the Hedgehog tattoo on their chest?” 

- 

With this family, it is the fact that darkness is coming within the next four years, and Tony is probably their only chance. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” Maria hisses at her sister. 

“Because you moved to America!” Gia hisses right back. “We can’t afford to collect call every single time we had trouble.” 

“You couldn’t tell me that the darkness is approaching way sooner than we expected?! Because what, you didn’t want to pay for a phone call!” 

“To be fair, Nonna made that decision,” Enzo says. “She thought we could handle it. And we can! We can!” 

“Oh sure, that’s why Nonna told me that my son is your only chance,” Maria says, dry tone to her voice. “God, I need wine...” 

“Everyone needs wine, it’s practically a requirement,” Gia says. “Don’t worry. Things will work themselves out.” 

“But will it work out for us?” Maria asks. “I don’t want to be the modern model for the next pietà someone wants to make...” 

- 

Tony, unfortunately, is his mother’s son and has listened in on every single conversation that’s ever been had in their house. Here are three things that he has learned: 

1.) Apparently, his mother used to bake the best bread, and they forgot to write and ask her for the recipe, and they also didn’t call her. 

2.) He’s the last hope for everyone of existing with good things, and no one’s sure how to beat the darkness and he has no clue how to. 

3.) Apparently his grandfather (named Basil, of all names) could out-drink anyone and had publicly threatened at least six government officials just because he wanted to see if he could. 

- 

You will notice that one of these facts is most likely important than the others. 

Who the hell names their kid Basil? 

(Just kidding.) 

- 

Tony gets back to the US, promises his mom that he won’t tell anyone, and then immediately tells Rhodey when mom goes to the grocery store. 

“Wait, so...they’re trusting you?” 

“I know! What a terrible idea!” 

“God, I know. You can’t even clean a microwave.” 

“That was one time!” 

Rhodey laughs, tackling Tony in a hug. 

“I know, I know. Welcome back, Tones.” 

He feels safe. Protected. 

- 

He has to learn how to fucking throw knives. Mom has decided that she is going to call in a favor from Howard, and it involves dragging Tony to a most-likely-illegal-pseudo-government-set-up and training under a guy who goes by Hawkeye and a lady who goes by “Black Widow” and expects Tony to be fine with it.  

Rhodey also attends, because Tony appreciates misery with company. 

Plus, they can complain together as they’re getting their asses kicked. 

“Do you ever think about taking a vacation?” Rhodey asks, panting as Natasha once again slams him down on the mat. “I’m sure that Florida or the Philippines would appreciate you. Tourism or the economy, or something like that.” 

“You’re not getting out of your fighting lessons by bribing me with a nice vacation,” Natasha says simply. “Tony, adjust your left arm. You’ll break it when Clint comes into contact.” 

“Maybe I want to break my arm!” Tony declares. 

“Do you want to have to wrap your cast in plastic every single time you shower?” Clint asks. “Because that’s what’ll happen.” 

“Why don’t you just spray the cast with some sort of waterproofing spray?” 

“Would that even work?” Clint asks. “Because you might have just blown my mind.” 

“It might work, I don’t know,” Tony says, panting. 

-

It is eight months when Tony first brushes with darkness. 

It’s the morning, which is...odd. He wouldn’t think that darkness would show up in the morning, but here he is on his morning walk trying desperately hard to fight it off and also not grab attention. 

He manages to slam it down on the road and have a car run it over, and for the most part, the darkness retreats. He sends it off with a curse, and he runs all the way back to the apartment. 

Rhodey frowns. 

“We probably need other people, right?” 

“A regular family reunion and then some.” 

- 

So as it turns out, they’re not getting a family reunion. At least, not any time soon. 

Apparently, Nonna is demanding that they have to be there from October 31st through December 7th, according to Holy Days of Obligation and Holidays (specifically, Christian holidays.) 

“Nonna, isn’t witchcraft considered illegal or something?” Tony asks. “Like, I thought the church didn’t like that.” 

“Too bad, too late. We stay. Talk to your mama, Tonio. She will have answers.” 

-

Maria has absolutely no answers! 

“I didn’t seek out witches who live here, baby,” she says, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Why don’t you email people? Ask around?” 

“You can’t just ask people if they’re a witch!” Tony cries. 

“Why not?” 

“Because you get people who think you’re insane, or they’re insane!” 

“So?” 

“...good point.” 

- 

Pepper Potts is not sure why she answers the post. It is probably something else not related to what she does. Maybe she’ll be meeting with weirdos. But when you get an ad that’s about “stopping darkness from engulfing the world in two-to-four-years: you wanna help?” you listen to that. 

So she answers, and she walks in her business-casual outfit, and she meets two guys who are sitting at a shitty folding table at the park. 

One of them is wearing cargo pants. 

“Are you here about the darkness?” one of the boys says, blinking up at her behind gigantic glasses. 

“Um. Yes?” 

“Good. My name is Tony, this is Rhodey in the terrible pants. And you are?” 

“Um. Pepper?” 

“Oh, cool name.” 

“Thanks, picked it out myself.” 

Rhodey laughs. 

“Good. Now, what kind of magic stuff can you do?” 

“I’d hardly call it stuff.” 

“Tony uses his to make us ramen while we marathon a crime show, I’m calling it stuff,” Rhodey defends. 

Pepper watches around her, and satisfied with the lack of people around, lifts Rhodey out of his chair and floats him about thirty feet over. 

When he jogs back over, he’s grinning. 

“Very cool. What else?” 

Pepper is well-versed in technique, spells, and a few tricks that Tony doesn’t know about involving manipulation of light. 

“How can you do that?” 

“Practice,” Pepper says. “And a late-night conspiracy theory documentary.” 

“Cool,” Tony and Rhodey say at the same time. 

- 

Pepper actually doesn’t live that far away, and she goes to the same college. They see a lot more of her and become friends. 

She helps them update the spell-book, get it organized online, and focus on finding out where the darkness is going to appear next. 

- 

Tony is trying very hard not to break down from stress. He’s barely twenty, ate ramen for lunch and dinner yesterday, and is not very sure that he can do this. 

People keep telling him that he’s the only hope they have, and he doesn’t want to be that. 

He just wants to have a regular summer and make fun of Rhodey’s questionable fashion choices. 

He doesn’t even know how to defeat this. At all. And he just wants to graduate college, and get a job somewhere and annoy his mom into teaching him how to make homemade pasta. 

Not...not this. 

But you don’t get to choose what you have to do for others. You have to do what they need. 

Rhodey, at least, understands this. 

- 

That is why he is outside of Tony’s door with a half-cold burrito of questionable origins, a smile, and no knowledge of personal boundary space. 

(Not that Tony minds.) 

“Hey,” he says. “So, you have to save the world and I still remember the fact that you forget to get your shit out of the microwave.” 

Tony laughs at that, taking the proffered burrito and biting into it. 

“You still have shitty taste in burritos. Where is this even from?” 

“A badly-painted truck two blocks from here. I think I was their first customer of the day.” 

“No shit,” Tony says, taking another bite of the burrito. “You want to watch a movie or play a video game?” 

“Movie. Something light.” 

- 

This is how they get to watch a movie that honestly doesn’t mean anything to either of them, but it is mindless and it allows Rhodey to sneak his hand over Tony’s, and it allows Tony some sort of happiness that at least Rhodey is still by his side. 

“Hey Tony?” 

“Yeah?” 

“You think if I managed to find an actual broomstick, you could fly it?” 

“Oh, fuck you!” Tony laughs, tossing a pillow over Rhodey’s face. 

“I’m serious. You managed to charm the coffeepot into being sentient, so...” 

“That was a mistake, and now we’re stuck with Maggie, don’t bother her.” 

But it does have him thinking. 

If he can charm a coffeepot, what else could he charm? 

- 

A suit of armor. 

That’s what he charms. He was originally shooting for a broomstick, but then Pepper surprised him and now he has a charmed suit of armor that stands in the hallway of his mom’s old house. (Their base of operations.) 

It gives him an idea. 

Why not combine the old with the new? 

After all, it’s not like darkness hasn’t adapted to hundreds of years of battles. Why not throw a curveball? 

- 

“I don’t like using my major,” Rhodey whines as Tony makes him lift one of the arms for his own suit. 

“Too bad,” Tony teases. “I’ll get you pizza after.” 

“Promise?” 

“Mostly.” 

“Good enough for me.” 

Pepper thinks they’re both idiots, at least until she gets her own suit and is positively thrilled when she looks like she’s a superhero from a television show. 

“Yeah, yeah, we look cool.” Tony says. “Now, who’s ready to learn how to conduct magic and electricity at the same time?” 

It works out better than anticipated, all things considered. 

- 

“You ruined the couch, Anthony Edward Stark-Carbonell!” Mom fumes. “The couch! Where I sit!” 

“To be fair, it’s a really ugly couch,” Tony says weakly. “And it’s, um, for the betterment of...magical society?” 

“Don’t you dare quote your Aunt Gia at me!” Mom goes on muttering in Italian, and it sounds suspiciously like “why did I have to have a son who blows up couches” to Tony. 

- 

The darkness comes in full-force on a Saturday night, which is really inconvenient for a lot of reasons: 

1.) A Saturday? Really? It couldn’t come on, like, a Thursday? 

2.) They’ve been celebrating Rhodey’s birthday and perhaps Tony has enjoyed two or three drinks and gotten a pleasant buzz out of it, all things considered. 

3.) It’s midnight. Why midnight? That’s late, Pepper wanted to get to bed. 

4.) Mom is going to kill them, because technically they weren’t supposed to be out on the town. 

 -

So here they are, panicking and throwing shitty restaurant chairs around in order to main some sort of ahead-of-the-game mentality. 

“Do you think if we called your mom, she would help?” 

“She would probably kill me first!” Tony wails. 

“Before darkness can?” 

“Probably!” 

- 

Maria won’t kill her son yet. 

Yet. 

But god she’s going to come close. 

“You could’ve just asked me to buy you wine!” she says. “You could’ve had a movie in!” 

“Well sorry, I didn’t think that the darkness was going to come on Rhodey’s birthday!” 

“Oh when would you have thought it would come? Next Thursday? Or something more convenient for your year?” 

“I mean, when I have to visit Howard over the summer, that would be beneficial.” 

“I’ll make up a different excuse,” Mom hisses, deflecting a tendril of darkness from the window and wincing as it smashes a painting down from the wall. 

- 

The fight is a hard one. All good fights are. (Although the best fights are ones that are over in five minutes, give or take.) 

It’s been hours, Tony is tired, and honestly he really is debating calling a break and going to get a shitty fast-food burger. 

Rhodey says “no” even though his stomach is growling. 

Pepper has been having fun finding new ways to animate cars, but she’s getting tired. 

- 

And then it gets all of his family that he’s made. 

He can see Rhodey writhing in it, can see his mom fight it off, and watches Pepper scream. 

Tony is not sure if he can do it. 

But he has to. He has to beat this fucking terrible thing back because if he doesn’t, everyone else dies. And they don’t get families, they don’t know what will happen. 

(And he also really wants to plan a vacation with Rhodey and Pepper next year.) 

So he takes himself and all of what he knows, and launches himself directly into it. 

-

By all accounts, he wasn’t supposed to do that. But he hasn’t been able to cut it down into a more manageable size, so he figures that maybe it’s time to try something that has never been advisable by anyone on either hemisphere of the world, or anyone who has ever been rational. 

Going into darkness is a very difficult thing, because for one, you can’t see shit. 

For a second thing, he can hear everything. 

Darkness is not just absence of light. It can be absence of every single damned good thing on the earth, in your head, or anywhere around you. Some people have described it as hell. 

Tony is alone, and he is not sure what to do. 

There’s a table, and there is someone sitting there. 

“So.” 

The woman is stirring an olive around her martini, and she looks impeccably dressed. A fitted skirt and suit, manicured black nails, and eyeliner that looks impossibly intricate. 

“You are...?” 

“The person you’re supposed to destroy.” 

“But you’re not exactly a person, are you?” 

“Smart guy. No, I’m just the personification of what you’re fighting. You intrigue me, Tony Stark.” 

“Just Tony.” 

“Fine then. Tony.” 

“Why do I intrigue you?” 

“Most heroes are alone,” darkness says. (Does he capitalize her name? He’s not sure. “They go alone, they don’t involve people in their struggle. You have involved your family, put them in danger.” 

“They would’ve been in greater danger if I had gone by myself,” Tony says. “People have a nasty habit of sticking together, you know.” 

“Do they now?” 

“Yeah,” Tony says. “And now, I have to make sure we stick together anyways.” 

“And what do you mean by-” 

He’s already lunging at her. 

She wasn’t expecting him to lunge, he guessed. 

She goes down, and yells. 

Tony scrabbles to fight again as she sends out a blast his way, and he ducks. 

“You can’t hide from me!” she yells. 

“I’m not trying to!” he yells back. “I’m just trying to kill you!” 

The fight goes on, and she plays dirty. Her nails tear into his armor, and he tears his fingers through her hair. 

“You can’t beat me,” she howls, triumphant as she manages to pin one of his legs down, and trying to claw at his face. “Darkness always exists! You would be nothing without me!” 

Tony pauses for a second. 

“So what you’re saying is...as long as you exist, so does everything else?” 

“Yes!” 

Tony grins. 

“Aw, you shouldn’t have told me that honey.” 

With darkness being the beginning, everything else comes forth. Tony summons his cousins, his family, Rhodey, Pepper. 

And eventually, her physical form gets smaller and smaller. 

- 

Darkness is not something that can be eradicated from your life. But you can beat the shit out of it with help. Tony learned that. 

He also learned that Rhodey has a phenomenal flying kick. 

- 

They spend the following day laying on the couch or adjacent chairs and staring at the decorations that they need to replace. 

They also learn that Nonna has learned how to call, and is not quite sure if she can be heard or not. 

“TONIO? TONIO! WHERE ARE YOU?!” 

“Nonna, quiet,” Tony groans. “I literally just saved the world yesterday, please don’t yell.” 

“I HAVE FOOD FOR YOU. COME TO ITALY. NEXT WEEK?” 

Tony groans. 

“Sure, Nonna. I will come.” 

“BRING FRIENDS. HAVE GIFTS FROM POPE FOR YOU.” 

“You...when did you have time to get gifts...the pope?” 

“HAVE FRIENDS. COME!” 

Tony looks at Mom, Rhodey, and Pepper. 

“So. When should we leave for next week?” 

#HI THIS IS VERY VERY LONG #VERY VERY LONG #pepper potts #tony stark #rhodey #tony's family from italy !!! is somehow witch and catholic simply because i wanted to make it funny #maria carbonell #lovelyirony writes #tony stark is a fucking badass #yes he is a witch yes he is a badass #darkness can also be representative of uhhh anxiety or how bad things will alwyas be there #but it has to be to point out the good #just my take on that #also yeah rhodey and tony???? together but not mentioned #pepper saying she chose her name was something i meant to delve into but i didn't so #magic au

[kyotakumrau]

2020.05.29 ROCK AND READ 090 – interview with YUCHI – translation part 1/2

profile & information

born April 2nd. Blood type B. Plays on bass in sukekiyo, a project started by Kyo from DIR EN GREY in 2013, but also works as a support musician in several places. Other sukekiyo members are Takumi (g, pf), utA (g), Mika (ds). The footage from their last show in June last year in Nakano Sunplaza is included on the newest video and sound compilation 'LIQUEFACIO' available now.

future

Started as a solo project by Kyo from DIR EN GREY, but having fixed members, sukekiyo functions totally as a band. YUCHI plays on bass. The position of his bass is high, his playing overflows with grooves, he's a bassist with a sense of present. Although right now they are not active we talk about his role in kannivalism as Yuuchi (* 裕地 ), about his work as a support for MIYAVI and so on, his musical path including his early life/childhood, things he gained from sukekiyo and his prospects/outlook from now on.

text : Yukinobu Hasegawa photos: Yosuke Komatsu (ODD JOB LTD.)

translation; kyotaku (pls let me know if you see any mistakes or typos)

――As a bassist you deploy a phrase approach and have a strong presence, but I also feel a sense uncharacteristic for a Japanese there. I just feel like in sukekiyo you have shown your true abilities. What got you interested in music originally?

　　It's hard to say when I started to listen to music exactly, but it was in the beginning of junior high that I started to listen consciously. Like thinking, let's buy a CD. In elementary school I liked to watch music programs on TV, but it didn't end up with me buying CDs. I have older and younger sisters, two of them liked music. The 2nd older sister had LUNA SEA's 'MOTHER'. So when she went out like to go to her part time job and so on, I sneaked into her room and listened to 'MOTHER' (laughing).

――Why did you get so crazy about ‘MOTHER’ to even enter the path of crime?

　　I got it when I was a 1st year jh student. And because it was a new release even the CD shop in the boonies had a LUNA SEA corner. And that way I got it. I think that I’ve been a bit perverse(nonconformist) even since then. At that time, I felt in my child’s heart there were many light/moderate artists. LUNA SEA was of course very popular, but they seemed so manly. So it was like, I wanted to be a person listening to the bands like that. And my sis had LUNA SEA’s ‘MOTHER’. I think it’s another reason I was listening to it. And, kuroyume’s ‘FAKESTAR,～I‘M JUST A JAPANESEFAKE ROCKER～ ‘ came out around the same time as ‘STYLE’, so I also got it. And a bit later X-JAPAN's ‘DAHLIA’. I think all of those came out the same year. Thinking about it now 1996 brought us amazing crops. It was great time to start listening to music.

――But you got into all of the rock bands. Were bands also popular among your friends?

　　Nah, not really. [I lived in] Funabashi in Chiba, so even in the city it was like a countryside. There were no shops with CDs in my town. No convenience stores even (laughing). That’s why to buy CDs I had to go to the nearby town, the basic train fare was 300 yen one way. A lot of money for a jh school student. I remember riding my bicycle to buy CDs. With ‘STYLE’ and ‘MOTHER’ I was listening to them like every day. When I was in the 2nd year, there was a visual kei boom in the world, it became a pop/popular thing. And I think since then I could also talk about music with my friends. But I found that boring. Because in the end I also ended up listening to pop artists.

――Did you always wanted to be a minority?

　　I was twisted a bit, somewhere. Looking back now, I wanted to go into more and more extreme direction, that time. I knew special CD stores from music magazines, also about indies and so on. I started digging deeper and deeper.

――Any special titles or bands that left an impression that you’ve encountered back then?

　　If it’s about leaving a strong impression, then definitely X’s past works. I started to listen to more indie bands from that time, but listening and watching old stuff from X was really impactful. When I started digging into indie music X-JAPAN has disbanded. The history and more of X was featured a lot in music magazines, it was interesting to read that. And with that I felt I wanted to be in a band.

――A band similar to X?

　　I think then it was like that. As long as I could be in the band I didn’t care about the position. All band members in X were cool, guitar was cool, bass was cool, drums were cool, so if I could be in a band any would be fine. Although I thought that singing would be impossible. To be honest I bought a music instrument around jh 1st year. 30,000 yen IBANEZ bass. Even as I didn’t know the roles of the bass and the guitar (laughing). Later I realized that the sound I wanted to play was the guitar.

――A mix up from the very first step (laughing).

　　Yup, and like that I continued with the bass (laughing).

――Isn't that the best? (laughing) doesn't the excitement go up with the first instrument?

　　Yeah, it does. But even as I bought a bass I didn't really understand it. It took me about a year to learn how to use the tuner (laughing). The first score I got was X-JAPAN's 'DAHLIA', and there was an instruction to lower the tuning by a half-tone. But I didn't even understand the regular tuning not even mentioning the half-tones. And at that time, there was a person who died electrocuted by the electric guitar. I think he was called Yamada Kamachi. So being afraid of getting electrocuted I put on working gloves and played with the wrong tuning (laughing). But I had a vague feeling of wanting to become a professional musician. If I do it I should do it properly until the end, I was thinking like a child would. On the contrary, I didn’t have any other interests. So like a child would, I got happy that I finally found something I could really get into.

――And after that you devoted all your energy and curiosity into playing the bass?

　　Yup. But it didn't matter it was a bass (laughing). As long as I could play music and be in a band I was happy. I wasn't that interested in the instruments themselves, so I got into writing songs. I started that around 2nd year of jh.

――All of a sudden original songs?!

　　Thinking about it now, it was all copying the songs from the score books I bought. Imitations of the songs of the bands I was listening to then, simply saying I was 'borrowing' the cool parts (laughing). I was connecting the parts I liked from LUNA SEA and X-JAPAN into a songs. Pretty much, all were [borrowed] parts. I think there was a software/game to do that.

――When you are young you can easily start using programs for writing and composing music.

　　Ah, no, it wasn't DTM or anything like that (DTM=Computer Music). There was a game like that on PlayStation. You could choose each part and write the score with a controller. And after writing all parts in the score you could just play it like that on PlayStation. But you couldn't record it. At the beginning I just entered all music notes as they were written in the score. And with that I got 'ah, so song goes on like that' or 'chords move like that' and 'the chords are composed like that' and so on. I wasn't planning to be learning through this, but as I was playing with this program as a result I've learnt a lot.

――You must've experienced the fun and thrill of the band ensemble.

　　Yup. And that's why I liked all the parts in the band.

――By the way do you remember the title of the first song you composed?

　　No, not at all. I think it must've been something embarrassing (laughing). It was a song similar to 'BLUE BLOOD' by X. I made my friends listen to it. But they were just confused (laughing). But it roughly had the right composition, A melody, B melody, chorus. In the end, the know how I got from this got very useful later.

――Was the high school time when you got to start a band the moment when the revolution happened for you?

　　Yeah. My elementary school was in a small town, so there weren’t that many students. But upon entering high school suddenly the number of students was high. And at that time many bands were popular so there were many people playing on instruments. So I invited my friends to play at the live house (small music club). It was fun. I’ve realized my dream to play in a band. But ever since the 1st year of jr I wanted to play in a band professionally so I had this weird uncomfortable feeling. Friends who created a band with me at school weren’t really interested in becoming professional musicians, I think they were just doing it for fun. Playing in a band at school sure has its limits huh, I felt. I didn't wish for the same story as SUGIZO and Shinya from LUNA SEA , but it seems they were childhood friends and started a band at school and continued until professional level like that. I realized that in reality there are more cases that don't end like that. And then I realized that I have to start a band with people who were very serious about music. Thus around the second year I quit high school (laughing).

――Woah, wait. I will act as a parent here for a bit. 'What do you think school is for, punk?'

　　I went to high school to join a band.

――You're being serious!? That's the first time I, your dad, have heard that!

　　Hahaha. Thinking about it now it sounds like a joke, but at the time I was serious about that. Also when reading the interviews with musicians I liked, they said things like 'we started the band at high school' and that you meet band members at school. So thinking that's the way, you start a band at high school and aim at becoming a professional like that. But reality is different. Well, duh (laughing). But as it was a school focusing on preparing for university entrance exams it was different. I caused a lot of trouble for my parents and teachers.

――They must have been worried about your future and talked to you many times.

　　I think so. They tried persuading me. They told me that I can start a band after graduating. That is true. You can also play in a band after classes while still going to school. I was 13 when I first thought about starting a band, at 17 only 4 years have passed. It would be fine not to decide everything in those 4 years. I wouldn't quit school if I was deciding now (laughing). But then, I was serious, it felt wrong to continue going to school. I thought I will miss my chance at the goal of my life. I thought I have to quit school and pursue band properly. Then I wanted to spend time doing that.

――You had a lot of enthusiasm but didn't know how professional musicians did things and worked.

　　Mostly that, yeah. For example I went to a clothes store in Harajuku to [check] the handwritten ads by people looking for band members. By calling so many people from all of those ads I gathered members. Among the people I got to know there were some who had an experience with being in a band or performing live. And this way my circle gradually kept expanding. But around the 17 year old me everyone was older. But among people I have met later were Ryo and Kei who are doing BAROQUE now. They were around 15 or 17 then. It was unusual to have someone that young so I remember that we met because of that.

――Was kannivalism the band born then?

　　Yes. Ryo and Kei were playing together in a band for over a year already, so  they had quite some experience and also some fans. When they were starting a new band I got invited. I really wanted to do a band with someone in the same age, we understood each other well. I remember that we started with working on the songs, experimenting what sounds are good in the studio. Kei came in with some original songs, we listened to them in the studio and I added the bass then and there. DTM was still not common then, it still wasn’t the time when most of band musicians have computers. That’s why I remember we all gathered in the studio and worked on the songs saying this is not it, that is not it, creating a song from scratch.

――Do you remember talking about what kind of band you want to create before it all started?

　　I think we didn’t really have a talk like this. But we wanted to do something  no other bands did. At the time, the visual kei boom I’ve seen when I was in junior high was on the decline, it was a period with the number of bands steadily decreasing. And with things going on like this there weren’t any visual bands that felt new. That’s why we wanted to do a band that no one seen yet, no one done yet. But we didn’t have a concrete model what the band should be like.

――Did all of the band members aim at becoming professional musicians already from the time you started the band?

　　Instead of thinking to become professional we thought starting the band we already are that (laughing). Quite a big misunderstanding (laughing). But there are some good things that can result from such misunderstandings. It can spread into various things like possibilities or the momentum. We continued doing some things then that now I would be scared to try.

――When kannivalism came out, everyone was talking about the birth of a young band with a good sense.

　　If that’s [how it was received] it makes me happy. Band activities and everything else, all felt fresh to me. Both Ryo and Kei had done bands before, so their way of thinking was a bit more mature. But then, before I noticed kannivalism was also over (wry laugh). In the small world of visual kei the word about the new band kannivalism has spread also to some more senior band musicians and Ryo got headhunted by the more senior band. And like that we disbanded in less than a year.

――Was the break up of the band wrapped in dreams really the answer?

　　it was, but the headhunted member will usually start activities in the new band very soon, right? It was like that, and myself, I wanted to do a band that will kreep going properly so I soon looked for new band members and started another band.

――You're talking about k@mikaze?

　　You know well. Not even a month after kannivalism disbanded we had the k@mikaze's first concert. In k@mikaze I wrote some songs. But there was quite an age difference between band members, I was the youngest, and there was a 7 year difference between me and the oldest band member. It is also quite different how quickly 18 yo and 25yo people absorb and perceive things. I was watching and listening to various things, my attitude was to try add what I found interesting. And somehow there was a gap between [the younger me] and the 24 or 25 yo people. When I think about it now, I remember that they were desperately responding to the things I wanted to do, but the me then was not satisfied. And like that k@mikaze too disbanded after about a year and half.

part 2/2 will come soon ;)

#sukekiyo #yuchi #rock and read #interview #translation

[itsjackgilbert]

Situation Comedy

INSCRUTABLE MUSIC-VIDEO GENIUS MAKES MOVIE. IT'S VERY GOOD. INSCRUTABLE FILMMAKER DOES MAGAZINE INTERVIEW. IT'S VERY BIZARRE. A VERY SMALL GLIMPSE INTO THE INSULAR WORLD OF SPIKE JONZE, WHERE MAKING AWESOMELY STRANGE FILMS, WEARING FAKE PENISES, AND GETTING BEAT UP (SORT OF) ALL ARE PART OF THE SCENERY

BY ZEV BOROW

"He came to visit me once and when he first arrived I got a phone call that I had to come pick him up because his car had been impounded because he'd been chased by, like, ten cops on bikes after he drove his car onto these little fairgrounds and did a bunch of doughnuts. So, then I had to drive him around all weekend." — Three Kings director David O. Russell

"Actors are more consistent. They tend to land their tricks." — filmmaker Spike Jonze, on who is easier to direct, actors or skaters.

"He wanted his brother to be in Three Kings, so he shot an audition tape with his brother doing the Sharon Stone role in Basic Instinct, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It was the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen." — David O. Russell

I meet Spike Jonze at the production offices of his new movie, Being John Malkovich, which is a bizarre comedy about a love triangle between three people who find a secret portal into John Malkovich's head behind a file cabinet in an office building where the ceilings are four feet high. John Cusack and Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener are in it. So is John Malkovich. It's really good and weird and funny, though not always in that order. Spike Jonze directed it.

Jonze is 29 years old and sort of famous for directing some of the best music videos ever made: the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage"; Fatboy Slim's "Praise You"; Weezer's "Buddy Holly"; Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet"; and other really good ones, too. He's also made some excellent commercials and two interesting short films. However, mostly because of the exceedingly cool videos he's done for, mostly, exceedingly cool people, Jonze has also become famous for being exceedingly cool. A wide and deep selection of the hippest people alive dig Jonze. They are his friends. This past July Jonze married actress, filmmaker, and fellow sort-of-famous person Sofia Coppola. Tom Waits sang at their wedding. Tom fucking Waits.

Jonze is small and wiry, with the body and demeanor of a skateboarder, which he is. He is relaxed, unfailingly polite, and has a voice suggesting a 15-year-old boy. When we meet he is wearing a T-shirt and scuffed-up $350 Marc Jacobs shoes. He tells me he's supposed to meet with Knox, an as-yet-unknown guitar player, to discuss ideas for his video and invites me along. But first we go to buy a big bag of cat food for his cat.

Jonze says Knox plays "sort of country-funkabilly-Prince-like music...really beautiful stuff." A friend gave him a tape, he says, and he fell in love with it. We get lost trying to find Knox's house.

When we finally arrive, Knox says he was asleep because Jonze was supposed to arrive hours ago. Jonze says he's sorry, that it must have been his assistant's fault. Knox is tall, with short, dark hair styled vaguely pompadour-ish. His apartment is small. Neil Young in on the CD player. An acoustic guitar rests in the corner.

"I'm the only one in the band, so I do the whole gig," Knox says. "My old man was a guitarist and my mother was, like...well, she was a capable pianist, not great. I'm from Tenness–Knoxville–that's why I go by Knox. My mother ahd a baby two years before me, a little boy, and it died at birth, and I am, like, the copy of that kid. And my little brother almost died at birth 'cause of me, so it's kind of all cyclical. But I'm still tweaking it. So, uh, what kind of ideas do you have?"

Jonze talks about making a video that's not very commercial, about something that's cool in and of itself.

Knox: "I just don't want it to be cute. Don't take this as an affront, but some of your videos are...cute. The 'Buddy Holly' thing was little fucking cute. I was thinking more of an early John Cugar-type of thing. Like 'Jack and Diane.' Maybe with some of the words on the bottom of the screen."

Jonze: "Uh, cool.... But it’s also cool to do something maybe not as literal.” He asks Knox if he wants to be in the video. Knox says maybe just his face, as a child.

Jonze says he could come over with a video camera and they could try some stuff out.

Knox: “Like what?”

Jonze: “Well, I don’t want to just throw stuff out.”

Knox: “Well, I’m not going to steal your stuff.”

Jonze laughs, sort of. There is an awkward silence.

Jonze: “How about a video with Xeroxes, just as a cool medium?”

Knox: “Yeah, well, that sounds schticky. Xeroxes are schticky.”

Jonze tries to say something about form. Knox says he likes “the Jazzercize” video Jonze did.

Jonze: “‘Praise you.’ Cool.”

Knox turns toward me and says he doesn’t think Spike looks very into it. Jonze says he doesn’t want to do anything he’s done already. He asks Knox if he saw the video he did for Sean Lennon.

Knox: “Nah. That guy’s too fuckin’ avant garde for me.”

Jonze: “No, I’m not saying that. It’s just I don’t want to make something silly out of your song, but at the same time....” He trails off.

There’s a tense silence, then Knox turns to me and asks if I have any ideas for videos. I tell him I don’t. Knox says “fuck,” loudly.

Jonze: “Look, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, and if you don’t really like my stuff maybe we shouldn’t work together. I like working with people who are....”

Knox: “Yeah, well...fuck.... Well, if you come up with some ideas, any ideas, call, but I just...shit.”

Jonze: “I should go.”

Jonze gets up. Knox begins to pace. Then he screams, “Fuck!” and throws a small wooden chair Jonze had been sitting on against the wall. It shatters.

Jonze: “Dude, chill.”

Knox: “I think you better leave!”

Jonze: “I was just....”

Knox: “Just fucking leave!”

Then Knox pushes Jonze into a wall, hard. I think to myself: Spike Jonze is about to get his ass kicked. Then, like a panther (or jaguar), Jonze jumps at Knox. They hit the floor. Jonze is on top of Knox, throwing punches at his head. After about 15 seconds, I pull them apart. Knox gets up and screams, “Wait right fucking there!” and runs into a back room. Jonze looks at me and says, “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” and runs out the door, fast.

Knox jumps out from the back room, glowering and holding a baseball bat.

DRIVING AWAY, JONZE MUSES ABOUT HOW “HECTIC” things got with Knox. He repeatedly pushes his face toward the rearview mirror and asks if I think his eye looks swollen. It doesn’t. He says nothing like that has ever happened to him before, except once “with Everlast, but it never got physical.” We pull into a 7-Eleven and he gets a juice and some Advil.

I try to ask some more questions about the movie. “I’m apprehensive about talking about it at all,” he says, “because I feel like it’s going to cloud someone’s opinion. You think about all the movies you had preconceived notions about, about all the ones you read stuff about until you were sick of them before you even saw them.

SPIKE JONZE’S REAL NAME IS ADAM SPIEGEL. He isn’t interested in talking about why, or when, he started going by Spike Jonze, or how much it has to do with Spike Jones, the 1940s band leader, but it’s probably related to the fact he grew up hanging out with a lot of competitive BMX bikers similarly fond of pseudonyms and alter egos. He was raised in Bethesda, Maryland, a well-heeled suburb of Washington, D.C., where his mother enjoyed photography and his father enjoyed being the scion of an extremely successful family-owned catalog company. Jonze is the middle child (younger brother; older sister) and was into skateboarding, photography, lots of Dischord-era punk rock, and, most of all, BMX.

In the mid-’80s, BMXing’s popularity was exploding, and Jonze was spending much of his time at Rockville BMX, a legendary retail and mail-order BMX shop in nearby Rockville, Maryland. At age 15, he accompanied the Haro pro-BMX team on a summer tour of the U.S., serving as part-time roadie, contest announcer, T-shirt salesperson, and using an old 35-millimeter camera, team photographer. By the time he was 16, he was writing and taking pictures for skate and bike magazines. At 17, immediately after finishing high school, he moved to Torrance, California, to work at Freestylin’, the sport’s preeminent glossy. There, he met Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins, two kindred spirits.

“We were all living together in this apartment across the street from the magazine’s offices, in the Valley, which was like the epicenter of the skateboarding and BMX world,” says Lewman, who was 18 at the time and is now a creative director at Lambesis, a San Diego–based advertising agency that deciphers youth culture. “We’d skate to work, ride ramps, listen to Black Flag and Eric B. and Rakim, and get into adventures drinking Night Train, being weird, and stomping around downtown L.A.”

They’d also make zines. First, in 1991, Homeboy, then, two years later, Dirt. Clever and funny, they became popular with the 25-and-under, proto-extreme-sport, punk/rap-inclined hipster set. During this time, Jonze also started getting hired to take photos for magazines such as Details and Interview. And he began filming skateboarding videos, including one particular deft collaboration with ‘80s skate god Mark Gonzales titled Blind Skateboard Video.

One night, backstage at a Sonic Youth concert, Gonzales gave a copy of that tape to his friend Kim Gordon, who dug it so much that she asked Tamra Davis–who had just directed her first film, Gun Crazy, and had yet to become the wife of Beastie Boy Mike D.–to work with Jonze on shooting some skateboarding segments for Sonic Youth’s video for the song “100%.” He was 21.

Jonze has always lived in something of a rarefied world inhabited by bikers, skaters, emerging rock icons, and movie stars. Even so, he notes, he first met the Beastie Boys through his sister. She and Adam Yauch met in traffic school. The Beasties and Jonze share an appreciation for the absurd. Yauch and Jonze used to do things like rent police uniforms so they could direct traffic in Manhattan.

A few short years after “100%,” Jonze was established as America’s preeminent director of unusual music videos. This fact seemed to bore him. In 1998′s Fatboy Slim “Praise You” video, the one with the dancers in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Jonze credited the direction to Richard Koufey and the Torrance Community Dancers. To this day, Jonze denies having been a part of it. Earlier this year, a typed letter arrived at the Spin offices vehemently demanding Spin retract its report that Jonze directed the video. It was signed Richard Koufey and included a detailed résumé for Koufey that stated he was a dancer in the “Thriller” video, the “Love Shack” video, the film Dirty Dancing, and something called “Dancextravaganza” at the opening of a Dellamo Fashion Center.

IN ADDITION TO BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Jonze has another movie coming out, one in which he acts. It’s called Three Kings and was written and directed by David O’Russell. The two met when Jonze hired Russell to help him write a script for Harold and the Purple Crayon, which was to be a partially animated adaption of the children’s book, and Jonze’s feature-film debut, but never made it into production. Jonze costars in Three Kings with George Clooney, Ice Cube, and Mark Wahlberg. They play four U.S. soldiers who try to steal a secret cache of Kuwaiti gold at the end of the Gulf War. It’s a different, very sharp war-genre picture. Jonze plays a redneck private who is the sidekick of Wahlberg’s more seasoned soldier.

“I’d never really acted before,” Jonze says. “A few little things with friends, but nothing serious. And it’s not like I really want to get into acting. But David was really into me doing it, and Mark was especially supportive. In some ways I feel like I had no right to do it. But it was a lot of fun.”

Russell recalls Jonze’s commitment to the project. “He stayed in character a lot on set, and I think he eventually regretted it because Mark started beating the shit out of him as if Spike was really his tagalong sidekick. We tried telling Mark to go easy on him, but he was in character too. I think Spike was upset that that was happening.

AMONG THOSE IMMERSED IN THE CULT of Spike Jonze, the Weird Al prank is infamous. As partially recounted in an issue of the Beastie Boys’ zine, Grand Royal, Mike D. and Russell Simins, the drummer for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, interviewed by Weird Al. During the interview, they got the conversation to come around to the Beatles. Precisely at that moment, they had Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono walk by and staged something weird and funny. No one at Grand Royal can remember exactly what happened, but it included Spike Jonze dressed up as a waiter.

I didn’t know of the Weird Al prank until weeks after meeting Jonze. As such, I spent a good portion of my evening immediately following the Knox vs. Jonze incident breathlessly telling friends all about their fight, until a friend, a longtime skater, looked at me and matter-of-factly said: “He staged it.”

Two days after the fight I go to meet Jonze for lunch, and, even though I’m not sure, I tell him I now that the afternoon with Knox was staged. Jonze demurs. “That would be gnarly” he says. “Maybe we should come back to this topic after lunch.

We pull into a Carl’s Jr. Things between us are slightly tense. I keep pressing him on the issue as we walk into the restaurant. Jonze doesn’t say anything until he’s just about to order at the counter, then he says we should walk outside. I follow him into the parking lot toward a parked black sedan. There is a guy in dark sunglasses sitting there, sipping on a Coke.

“Dude, it’s off,” Jonze says. “We’re busted.”

Jonze then reveals that he’d “planned something” for right there, right then, at the Carl’s Jr. We all had back inside the restaurant, where Jonze begins walking around the seating area and tapping on what appear to be lonely Carl’s Jr. diners on the shoulder. There are four of them, strategically placed; two have video cameras hidden on them, on has a regular camera. Two of them, including the guy from the car, who is Jeff Tremaine, the art director of the skateboarding magazine Big Brother, are wearing hidden microphones.

“This was going to be an all-out assault,” Tremaine says. “I was going to walk by and bump into Spike and my drink was going to fall all over me. And then I was going to get all jacked at Spike and knock some shit on him and get into a fight.”

“I was actually going to take a punch this time,” Jonze says, “but I was also going to bite down on some blood pellets.” He shows me two small capsules of fake blood. “I wanted the whole article to be about how I keep getting my ass kicked.”

“I was going to knock over the salad bar,” Tremaine says. “We were going to have the whole thing on tape. I twas going to be a turkey shoot, like Kennedy.”

“You are all extremely fucked up,” I tell them.

Jonze says he started planning for it late last night and tells everyone he’s sorry he didn’t go through with it. Tremaine tells Jonze that he was excited to punch him. Then, everyone tells me some stories of previous pranks, the best of which is described as simply the Hard-On One. It goes something like this:

The guy who played Knox yesterday–a friend of Jonze’s who also pulls stunts like getting himself hit by a car (for a Big Brother photo shoot) and shooting himself with a gun while wearing a bulletproof vest (for fun)–puts on a pair of flimsy gym shorts, out of which sticks a large, fake rubber penis. Then, he goes out and gets into a pickup basketball game. Next, he walks into a guitar store, where, when a salesman hands him a cord to plug in, the salesman is pulled toward the fake rubber penis. After that, he makes a quick stop at a karate studio, from which he is quickly removed. Finally, he goes to get measured for a tux, where, according to Jonze, the tailor exclaims [in a thick Indian accent], “What? You always run around with your dick sticking out?”

“It’s amazing,” Jonze says. “We’ve got the whole thing on tape.”

After Carl’s Jr., Spike lobbies me to concoct a wild, made-up story with him, one I could submit in lieu of the article. He’s got some funny, clever ideas for it, too.

“SPIKE DIDN’T GROW UP WATCHING A TON OF FILMS or even TV,” says Kim Gordon, who has known Spike ever since he worked on “100%.” “So he’s not tied to any sense of history image-wise, the way most people are. He just has a real instinctual feel for what people like. And he’s willing to try absolutely anything.”

“I think he kind of looks at everything like it’s a chance to take a golf cart and make it go 60 miles per hour,” says his old friend Lewman. “It’s always been about having a really good time.” Even so, by all accounts Jonze is meticulous, tireless even, whether it concerns a feature film, or taking down a Carl’s Jr. salad bar. His willingness to go to almost any lengths to maintain the integrity of any project–no matter how seemingly small, trivial, or twisted–is nothing short of spectacular. It is probably the one quality that best portends him making very good movies for a long time. A vast portion of Jonze’s creative energies are consumed by these tiny, hysterical performances that will never make any money, that are solely for the benefit of himself and his like-minded friends.

“But it’s not about being weird for weird’s sake,” Lewman says. “I mean, Malkovich is a movie that, at its heart, is about something everyone can relate to–desperately wanting to be someone else.... I think a lot of how [Jonze] looks at the world might come from skating and biking. You do that as a kid and you don’t look at things normally. You look at a hockey rink and see a place to skateboard. You look at a bench as a thing to do tricks off of.”

I SEE JONZE ONE MORE TIME. HE MAKES IT OBVIOUS he’d rather I not write about the Knox and Carl’s Jr. pranks. Further, he mostly turns off my tape recorder any time I start to ask him anything. He tells me he doesn’t know what to do because he doesn’t want to come off as a guy who is lucky enough to make cool movies with big stars but is all petulant about talking to the press. He tells me again how anything he says as far as explanation of his own work is less interesting than someone’s own interpretation of his, or any, movie. About an hour passes. I ask him to name some of his favorite movies and filmmakers.

“I like stuff that is unpredictable in terms of tone,” he says. “I like Tim Burton, The World According to Garp, Being There, all the Coen brothers’ stuff. I feel really lucky to even have the opportunity to try to make those kinds of movies.”

I ask about his movie, about what Malkovich was like.

“He’s just amazing. Really genuinely eccentric. He heard about the script and contacted us, loved the idea. It was weird because he plays himself in the movie, but it’s not really him, it’s the script’s idea of him. Whenever I see him do the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment, I’m like, this guy is my hero.”

The Dance of Despair and Disillusionment is reason alone to see Being John Malkovich. In the movie, John Cusack plays a puppeteer who enters the body of John Malkovich and forces him to give up acting for puppeteering. At one point, Malkovich acts out the dance he wants to be his ultimate master-puppeteer work, the Dance of Despair and Disillusionment. Just out of the shower, he acts it out in a towel. David Fincher, the director of Seven and Fight Club, fellow former music-video director, and close friend of Jonze, calls it “up there with Butch and Sundance jumping off the cliff, as far as greatest movie moments ever go.”

I try to get Jonze to talk about other things, videos, his commercial work. (Jonze often shoots commercials, the most recent being Lee Jeans’ “Buddy Lee” spots.) He won’t. A few days later, we talk on the phone. He asks how I’ve decided to “handle” the article, says he knows I’ll write “something good.” The next day, I call him back, ask him to clear up some factual stuff, dates he worked on things, how he first met certain people. He’s not into it. But, before we get off the phone, he does answer one question.

Me: Where did the idea for the “Sabotage” video come from?

Jonze: “Australia.”

#spike jonze #spin magazine

[skulledstars]

oh heavens, is that ALONZO FIGUEROA from SYCAMORE WAY i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -RESTLESS & -TACITURN. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool ARCHITECT and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +ALLOCENTRIC & +GREGARIOUS. i hope i see them around again!

PINTEREST  •  PLAYLIST  •  STATISTICS

          hello,  y’all  !  i’m  frankie,  am  24  years  old  and  my  pronouns  are  she/her,  coming  to  you  live  from  the  cst  ——  &  it’s  been  nearly  seven  months  since  i  last  rped  tbh,  so  please  bear  with  me.  i  honestly  don’t  know  what  else  to  say  but  if  you  could  give  this  post  a  like  &  i’ll  come  with  desserts  into  your  dm’s  so  that  we  can  plot  or  something  ?  if  anyone  prefers  D!$C0RD,  feel  free  to  add  me:  FRANKIE ♡#7928  ——  but  it’s  up  to  y’all  of  course...  ANYWAYS,  MEET  ALONZO.

trigger  warnings:  brief  mention  of  a  parental  death  due  to  cancer.

          »     𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒     ;

full  name,          alonzo  ismael  figueroa  castillo.

meaning  of  name,          ❛  noble,  ready  for  battle.  ❜

pronunciation,          uh - lon - zoh.

aliases,          lonz,  lonny,  lonzo,  zo.

age,          forty-four      [  44  ].

date  of  birth,          december  10th,  1975.

place  of  birth,          santiago,  chile.

hometown,          mapleview,  north  carolina.

zodiac  sign,          sagittarius.

race,          hispanic  ╱  latinx.

nationality,          chilean  &  american.

gender  &  pronouns,          cis  man     +     he  ╱  him.

profession,          architect.

current  location,          mapleview,  north  carolina.

face  claim,          josé  pedro  balmaceda  pascal.

          »     𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏𝐒     ;

parents,          enrique  ismael  figueroa  &  esmeralda  lucía  castillo.

siblings,          n ╱ a  —  only  child.

martial status,          divorced,  single.

children,          elena  [  11  ]     &     mateo  [  4  ].

pets,          one  dog  &  two  cats,  (  names,  breeds,  et  cetera,  tbd.  )

          »     𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘     ;

alonzo  was  born  in  a  south  american  country:  chile.  his  parents  &  a  9-month  old  baby  boy  moved  to  the  united  states  —  and  had  grown  fond  of  the  small  town  by  the  name  of  𝒎𝒂𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘  &  stayed  ever  since.  mom  and  dad  never  had  another  child;  it  was  the  three  of  them  against  the  world,  or  that’s  what  it  felt  like  for  the  first  couple  of  years.  they  did  everything  they  could  to  raise  him  in  a  land with  better  opportunities.

growing  up,  he  was  a  decent  student  with  passing  grades:  mostly  b’s,  c’s  and  the  occasional  a’s  (  which  called  for  small  victories  with  chilean  desserts  and  a  milkshake  ).  alonzo  improved  the  more  he  attended  tutoring  sessions.  they  expected  more  from  him...  obviously.  as  one  parent  does.  his  strongest  subject  was  mathematics.  long  story  short,  he  tried  his  best  with  everything  he  did.

during  his  senior  year,  his  parents  noticed  that  since  math  was  his  strong  suit  so  they  suggested  he  should  get  into  an  architecture  degree—this  was  one  of  the  few  times  where  he  actually  agreed  with  his parents.  he  applied  to  several  universities  and  one  of  them  was:  usc  school  of  architecture.  let’s  just  say  he  couldn’t  let  this  opportunity  pass.  so  long,  mapleview;  hello  california  !  off  he  went.

several  years  had  passed,  alonzo  graduated  from  USC  with  a  bachelor’s  degree  in  architectural  design.  after  that,  he  spent  some  of  his  years   away  from  his  hometown,  living  in  california,  earning  himself  an  internship  with  a  top  tier  design  studio.  he  never  saw  it  coming.  he’d  worked  too  hard  to  be  where  he  was  and  he  wanted  more;  accomplish  more  than  he  sought  out  for.

of  course,  he’d  visit  his  parents  for  some  time  in  the  holidays  or  surprising  them  with  a  visit—  helping  them  with  anything  and  everything  they  needed.  he  felt  like  he  owed  it  to  them.

alonzo  met  his  future  ex-wife  while  she  was  an  intern.  they  got  on  very  well—  started  off  as  friends  until  they  eventually  fell  in  love  with  each  other.  it  was  bliss  and  married  only  a  year  and  a  half  after  dating.  they  decided  to  move  to  mapleview  after  he  found  out  his  mom  fell  ill.

alonzo  was  a  small  town  boy,  then  a  big  city  guy...  and  back  to  a  small  town  dude  a  little  over  a  decade  ago.  however,  the  circumstances  were  that  of  his  mother  and  his  responsibility  was  to  care  for  her,  look  after  her.  alonzo  was  eternally  grateful  that  she  supported  him.  no  matter  the  amount  of  struggles  they  had,  looking  after  his  mom,  it  was  always  rough  for  him...  all  of  them.

alonzo  and  pia  eventually  had  a  daughter,  elena.  not  only  was  he  a  busy  man  but  as  soon  as  he  became  a  father,  he  made  every  fiber  of  his  being  to  be  as  hands-on  &  100%  present  as  possible.  sure,  there  were  obstacles  along  the  way,  but  alonzo  sure  made  the  effort.  thankfully,  his  parents  and  his  mother  was  still  alive  to  welcome  their  first  grandchild  into  the  world—  still  pushing  through.  unfortunately,  some  years  later,  she  had  lost  her  battle  with  cancer.

alonzo  and  pia’s  marriage  started  to  deteriorate  and  decided  to  divorce.  they  had  found  out  she  had  fallen  pregnant  with  their  second  child,  a  son  by  name  of  mateo.  before  he  was  born,  they  decided  to  stay  together.  shortly  after  his  birth,  they  couldn’t  stay  together  just  for  the  kids.  they  amicably  decided  to  split  and  co-parent  their  kids.  he  and  his  ex-wife  remain  friends  to  this  day,  four  years  after  their  divorce.

you  may  have  spotted  the  name  𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐙𝐎  𝐅𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐑𝐎𝐀  in  several  architectural  digest  magazines  (  including  others  ),  as  he  is  known  to  be  a  successful  and  renowned  architect  across  the  globe.   has  he  received  awards?  damn  well  he  has.  over  the  years,  he  expanded  his  design  firms  with  locations  across  the  nation.  despite  living  in  a  small  town,  he  still  works  and  occasionally  travels  for  work.  however,  he  also  works  from  home  and  has  a  work-life  balance.  it  wasn’t  easy  at  first  but  he’s  there  and  pleased.

          »     𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃  𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒     ;

design  firm  partner  [  0 / 2  ]  ——  description  to  be  added.  might  be  a  wc  sent  to  the  main.  idk.

best  friends  [  0  /  4  ]   ——  pretty  self-explanatory.  they  can  be  their  own  grown  up  squad.  age  shouldn’t  define  them;  they  are  often  times  up  to  no-good.

short-lived  fling  [  0  /  1  ]  ——  description  tba.  can  be  plotted  out.

will  they,  won't  they  [  0  /  1  ]  ——  description  tba.  can  be  plotted  out.

ride  or  die  ??

polar  opposite  friends  ??

cousin(s)  ???  y’all,  idk.

ANYTHING  &  EVERYTHING.  COME  TALK  TO  ME.  i  don’t  bite  :)   pinky  promise.

#mapleviewintro #death tw #cancer tw #parental death tw #¿¿ somehow this turned out to be longer than i intended ... ?? #......... ALSO i may have sprained my finger because it’s swollen #.... hence the intro being delayed .... #*frankie’s slowly typing*