#where nicky has a really fucked up nightmare. begins with him being led into a tunnel by will-o the wisps

[non-un-topo]

★

★ what was the scene you most wanted to write in [fic]? what was the hardest scene to write?

Hello hello! <3 Oh man this is so dumb, but I really couldn't wait to write Andy and Nicky's little "cage fight" scene in Chronos. Idk, something about the energy and the body language and the parallels between Nicky and Nile (plane fight scene my beloved) just made me really hype. Close runner-up would be the scene at the end of chapter 2 of Tangerine and Roc, wherein shit gets real and the stakes raise for the mystery. Not spoiling anything, but my mental image of Nicky's blown-out pupils is still so clear. Also, I totally know how natural sedatives work dw.

Hardest scene to write also came from Chronos... that fic nearly gave me a stomach ulcer I swear. There are short little flashbacks where Andy remembers details and sensations of an event that occurred thousands of years ago. It was genuinely hard to keep those scenes vague enough that it wouldn't be obvious as to what was going on, but still clear enough that it wasn't just nonsensical. I still don't think I did a great job on those, hence it was hard lol. Andy's POV is just hard in general, because I want to capture how ancient she is and... that's a lot. Runner-up would be a few different scenes in The Falconer (like, training the sparrowhawk and also weaving in the real history and historical figures) because I knew absolutely nothing about falconry and I was so afraid people would be able to tell dfghfd.

fic ask game

#thank youuuu <333 #i need to write new stuff so i can shut up about my old mystery series lol #there are a lot of scenes from a lot of fics i really wanted to write. i can never pick just one im sorry dfghfd #but i figure it's better than self-deprecating. i was so stoked to write this one scene in perfero #where nicky has a really fucked up nightmare. begins with him being led into a tunnel by will-o the wisps #yeah that mental image still fucks. #at the top of the list of scenes that were hard to write... i would put every scene in my current wip 'axis' #lmaaaooooo

[nevermindirah]

I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

#nile freeman #tog meta #book of nile #sebastien le livre #the old guard #mine #us imperialism #european imperialism #jewish things #antiblackness #police violence #orientalism

[aion-rsa]

How Charlie Watts Defined The Rolling Stones’ Sound: A Musical Exploration

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Charlie Watts’ drums were the foundation of The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote the songs, got the most press, and were the most visible members, but Watts dictated the style. Besides being named to Vanity Fair’s “Style” Hall of Fame, Watts kept the Stones’ sound intact and impeccable, regardless of whatever the songwriters brought into the studio. 

There is an incident recounted in the 2010 memoir Life, by Richards and James Fox, about a mid-1980s party which hits the nail on the head. Mick drunk-dialed Charlie’s hotel room in the middle of the night to invite him to a party which was raging. Jagger demanded to know “Where’s my drummer?” Watts showed up. He’d showered, shaved, put on a suit and a tie, beautiful shoes, freshly shined, and “you could smell his cologne.” He walked up to the Rolling Stones’ frontman, grabbed him by the lapel, and told him “Don’t ever call me your drummer again. You’re my fucking singer,” and punched Mick in the face.

Charlie Watts, the now, sadly late, great drummer for the Rolling Stones, didn’t capture the spotlight of his bandmates, and never became as iconic as some of his iconic contemporaries. Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham had power, and a double bass sound which could reach the bowels of the earth. Keith Moon was as much a shooting star over his kit as he was in his rock and roll life. Neal Peart had almost as many individual drum heads as Rush’s songs had time signatures, while Ringo Starr made complicated time changes sound easy.

Watts didn’t take solos, wasn’t a bombastic or showy player, and never graduated from the basic four-piece drum set, usually Gretsch in basic black, and preferably circa 1957. Even Ringo’s later Ludwig kit had five pieces. But Charlie leads the band from the bottom of his 22″ x 14″ bass drum, 16″ x 16″ floor tom, 12″ x 8″ mounted tom, and 14″ x 5″ snare. No gongs, no double bass drums.

Watts was not flamboyant. He was solid, laying down methodical beats with minimal fills, and only basic rolls. He could do them, and effortlessly, but he saved them for meaningful moments like 1968’s “Jigsaw Puzzle.” Ever-present, Watts never got in the way, even dropping eighth-note hi-hats to give room to snare. He moves seamlessly through shuffle, psychedelia, disco, reggae, or funk. Charlie drummed in riffs and hooks. They were simple, unique, and got stuck in your mind. His jazz training put a swing feel to strict patterns. He made regular rock-and-roll beats dance and bounce.

We’ve chosen an album’s worth of hot rocks that showcase Watts at his understated best. Turn it up, and appreciate a master at work.

“Come On”

The Rolling Stone’s first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” was released in June 1963. Just when you think Watts will never deviate from his boogie woogie shuffle, his drum fills counterpoint the song’s break, and give the key change more importance. He rides the cymbal for just a few sparse bars before he brings the song to an almost surprised stop.

“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

Richards’ fuzzed out lead is the standout hook, but the tambourine couplets proved to be the key to the band’s first Number One, (“I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” from June 1964. Watts pounds the beat so relentlessly we know he will never be satisfied. This is four on the floor at its sexiest until disco, and Watts’ brief moment alone just pounds it harder.

“Get Off My Cloud”

Watts serviced the song and the unified sound. He was the one of the most restrained beat-keepers of his generation, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t drive a song through the simplest of iconic and aggressive repetitions. For the verses, Watts plays exactly the same fill every two bars, and defines the  movement. He simplified Chris White’s beat on the Zombies’ “What More Could I Do” to its most propulsive framework on “Get off of My Cloud,” for a run which could be considered the song’s most recognizable hook.

“19th Nervous Breakdown”

After the initial stumble over Brian and Keith’s guitar opening, Charlie lays down a jazz feel for most of “19th Nervous Breakdown,” from 1966. But he takes the choruses to another level with cymbal crashes and rolling toms. Wyman brings his own individual bass rumble to bridge the strings and skins, but when Watts lets out with break intros you feel an oncoming breakdown in your nervous system.

“Paint It Black”

“Paint It, Black” from 1966 might be the most insane performance from the steadiest drummer in rock. Watts rolls, spins, fills, triplets, paradiddles, and marching bands like he’s an army of percussive attackers. This might be his answer to Ringo Starr’s performance on “Rain.” Even among the sitar, Hammond B3, and Mick’s magnetic menace, Watts cannot be denied nor ignored. He’s playing like he’s got an extra palm and we can only imagine how many red doors he could paint to drive the point home.

“Sympathy for the Devil”

Seemingly complex, because of the congas by Rocky Dijon and Wyman’s African shekere shaking, Watts’ drums on “Sympathy for the Devil” are amazingly low-key. They propel the song, and give it that hypnotic insistence. But listen as Watts restrains every urge to fill an empty space. He plays the emptiness, suspense comes between the beats, and Watts never gives in to temptation. He sticks to the basic samba rhythm, which was loosely inspired by Kenny Clarke’s “A Night in Tunisia,” and lets the evil rise to the surface with subtlety a man of wealth and taste could appreciate.

“Street Fighting Man”

“Street Fighting Man” (1968) is an auric nightmare, especially for anyone trying to recreate the sound. Watts used a 1930s practice drum kit, and mounted tambourine-sized skins to small brackets. The “marching charging feet” can almost be heard in the hollow reverb. He gets a large sound, and yet it sounds squeezed in from another room, or coming in through the windows.

“Gimme Shelter”

“Gimme Shelter,” from Let It Bleed (1969), is masterwork of suspense and exaltation. It opens with guitar licks which sound muted by an apocalyptic overcast. Jimmy Miller’s guiro lets the audience know this is no day at the beach, as opposed to the scraped wooden agogo of The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.” Then Watts rains down over everyone in a thunderous downpour. While Mick looks for shelter, Watts brings the storm. Lightning doesn’t even have to strike twice, as the drums continue the same relentless current the band drowns in. The only life preserver in site is the snare. Watts is on full restraint, which makes it all the more menacing.

“Honky Tonk Women”

“Honky Tonk Women” has a more identifiable cowbell than any song other than “Mississippi Queen.” But don’t fear the reaper, death is the furthest thing from the Stones’ mind in this sordid sip of southern comfort. Charlie is so loose on this song, it feels like he’s using a love seat as a drum stool. He takes his time catching up to the band from the very beginning. It honestly feels like he has to be reminded to come in on the three-note-fill before he kicks into the groove.

“Fingerprint File”

“Fingerprint File” is not a well-known song from the band. It closes the Rolling Stones 1974 album It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll, and is the funkiest Watts has ever sounded. Richards leads through the wah-wah, Jagger is on the heavily phased rhythm guitar, Mick Taylor is on bass to free Wyman up for synthesizer. Also at the sessions are the funkmaster Billy Preston on clavinet, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. The Beatles got their title for Rubber Soul from an insult which was hurled at the Stones at the time. This song proves they are capable of more than plastic soul. Watts’ hi-hat work should be studied at Julliard.

“Emotional Rescue”/”Miss You”

A lot of bands “went disco” in the 1970s and 1980s. But The Rolling Stones produced it organically. This is mainly because of Charlie Watts. He was always a master at four-on-floor, and had already proved he’d been listening to the soul sounds of the same period. For “Miss You” from the 1978 Some Girls album, he and Wyman take the most iconic of the genre’s cliches and make it their own. Between the bass octave jumps and the Philadelphia-inspired drumming, this and “Emotional Rescue” were dance floor naturals.

The Charlie Watts Orchestra – “Stompin at the Savoy”

Charlie Watts is known as a one band man, but he’s been playing with jazz ensembles on the side almost throughout the Rolling Stones’ later periods. He’s toured and recorded with his own big band jazz unit, the Charlie Watts Orchestra, which included Jack Bruce on cello. As you can hear in “Stompin at the Savoy,” Watts is an expert ensemble player, who really lets go when having a good time.

Casual mentions

Watts drives “Not Fade Away,” a Stones cover of a Buddy Holly classic, with a tumultuous take on the Bo Diddley beat. He completely reinvigorates its already-electric rhythm, and tops from the bottom. The live version of “Midnight Rambler” contains a very subtle duet between Charlie and Mick. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” from Sticky Fingers, might be the tightest riff from the rhythm section.

Charlie Watts has laid his last grooves, but he’s left volumes of inspiration. 

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