#i became a stay in early january of last year

[tulsa24]

i know it’s been over for a few days now but my head has been busy with taem being home and some irl things too. the kids still mean a ton to me though, as does maniac era, so i’m still gonna share some thoughts.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for blocking my suicidal friend?

TW for suicidal ideation, mental health.I know this sounds bad but hear me out.

I (25F/NB) met F(26M) in January 2017, a few months after I started university through a mutual friend, and we quickly hit it off. We started dating a few months later. We split near the end of 2021, but aside from a few awkward months right after the split, we've stayed friends. We've both seriously dated other people: F had a girlfriend, A(mid-20s F), for a little under a year, and I've been dating my boyfriend, H (30M), for about 9 months.

Throughout the time we were dating, F and I had a few problems. Money was a big one: he would borrow money a lot and not always pay it back (either when he said he would or at all). He currently owes me about £8000 that he borrowed for uni. For most of the time since he borrowed it he hasn't been in work, so I haven't been pushing the matter. One of the last straws for our relationship was when he bought a brand new PS5 and lied to me about it when he had recently borrowed money from me.

The other big one was his mental health. F has been dealing with poor mental health for about as long as I've known him, but he refuses to do anything about it. He often talks about how much he hates his life and how he should just kill himself. He often punched himself in the head or punched walls when he was upset, but he refused to admit that this behaviour was unhealthy. He wouldn't go see a therapist or doctor, or speak to anyone except me. Once, when I was visiting family, he became upset about something and I was worried he would hurt himself, so I asked a mutual friend to check on him. He refused to let the friend in, and got very angry with me.I wanted to break up with him sooner but he'd often tell me I was the only good thing in his life, and I was scared he'd kill himself if I left him. We eventually broke up near the end of 2021. Fast forward to this summer. In August, A broke up with F and F had to move back in with his abusive parents. He initially asked to stay with me but I said no (I live in a tiny flat, I can't afford to financially support another person and to be honest I'm just not comfortable with it). I later changed my mind and offered him my sofa when I realised how bad the abuse was, but he declined.

Also in August, I found out my grandmother was dying. I went to see her with my sister and brother-in-law, and the same day received a message from F venting about his life. I replied with: "Hey I'm kind of dealing with something right now can you talk to someone else? I don't really have the emotional bandwidth rn"When he asked what was up, I told him my grandmother was dying. He expressed his sympathies, and told me that his stuff could wait. He sent me the following message four hours later: "I think I'm going to kill myself""I've totally ruined my life, I've got nothing except daily torture from my parents". Again, this is four hours after I'd explicitly told him I don't have the capacity for it. I spoke to my sister and brother-in-law (28F and 30M) about it and they both said I should block him.

In September I started a new job (I recently qualified as a teacher) which has been very challenging, exhausting and intense. My grandmother died at the end of September, so the past few months have been hard for me. He knows all this, but he keeps sending me all these messages about how much he hates his life and how he should just kill himself.

Early October, I was added to a group chat between A, F's ex, and a mutual friend Z. A told us that F had sent her an email that was essentially a suicide note. I called F and made sure he was okay, and passed that along to the group chat. F was angry that, as he perceived it, we'd been talking about him behind his back. He didn't speak to me for a day or so but quickly went back to normal.

At the end of October, the day before my grandmother's funeral, I woke up to a message that was essentially a suicide note. This was not the first time this had happened. I had a panic attack, though I'm not sure whether that was due to the message or imminent funeral. I send him some messages saying that I didn't want to receive these kind of messages unless it was actually something I could help with, that he wasn't respecting my boundaries and that the friendship had become entirely one sided. I told him that I didn't want to block him but I would. He seemed to accept that, but this morning I woke up to another suicide note message. After verifying that he was still alive (he is), I started writing this ask. I feel bad, but I'm so tired of doing all the emotional labour. I have my own shit to deal with and i'm not his therapist. WIBTA if I blocked him?

What are these acronyms?

[artsyebonyrose]

"it is so worth it, sticking out" are words i personally really needed to hear as of recently.

(mini personal chat under the readmore, vaguely going into depression/sui thoughts so pls don't read if you're not able to <3)

i felt that stream so deep in my bones. to keep it brief, the last three years i've been having Bad Thoughts pop up at various points to varying degrees, and this year i got it the worse it's ever been. i've finally come to the end of my three year uni course, and it's left me feeling this sick and awful dread that once it ends, so does my life. from january to march i was unable to work, just played nitw and felt like a husk, or crying. then i tried to pull myself out of it, and by early april i'd already fallen back in. its such an all consuming thing, and the Bad Thoughts have been daily. i've only just started poking my head back up mid may because i became obsessed with resident evil (lol) which has aided in distracting my mind.

what i'm trying to say is, what was discussed and said in today's stream resonated with me very deeply. and it's awful to see another person in a similar harrowing position. i don't know how to get better yet, but i'm going to try. and i hope you all are able to get better too. you deserve to!

and aimsey if you happen to read this, thank you for being here. thank you for staying. the world needs you in it.

nothing can take you down 💜

[merrybloomwrites]

You Can Start a Family (Extra: Pet Loss)

Summary: When one of your cats suddenly dies, Harry, Mitch, and Sarah are there to comfort you.

AN: I started writing this story back in January when one of my cats suddenly passed away. I wrote it to kind of process that loss. Decided it was finally time to share it. Kind of a heavy one, but I felt like it's been a while since I posted some good hurt/comfort.

Previous Chapters:

Main Story: One ; Two ; Three ; Four ; Five ; Six ; Seven ; Eight ; Nine ; Ten

Sickfic Part 1 ; Part 2

Mitchrry Prequel

Fan Reactions

Holiday Blues

Mitchryy Reunion

Getting High

First Earthquake

Mitch x Reader Cockwarming

Harry x Reader First Time

Word Count: 1.7K

CW: pet loss, grief

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You’ve been through your fair share of traumatic events, each leaving you with another loss, another hole in your life. Even though there were people around you each time, you felt so alone. Their support tapered off after a few days, or weeks. They said they were there for you, but life happens. You’re supposed to move on, and people have their own things to worry about. 

That’s how it always went.

Until you met Sarah, Mitch, and Harry. They never stopped supporting you. When the grief became too much, even years after the loss, or when your nightmares kept everyone awake, they never left. They held you. They sang to you. They knew when you wanted them around and when you just wanted to cuddle your cats. 

Your two little calicos, Tilly and Teddy, had been by your side for years. You rescued them shortly after you lost your mom and sister. They always knew when you needed some extra cuddles or laughs. 

They weren’t senior cats, but they weren’t kittens either, having already been a few years old when you rescued them at the local shelter. 

It’s a completely normal morning, you’re getting ready for work when you hear Tilly start to heave. You’re no stranger to the sound of cats puking, and Tilly will on occasion eat her breakfast too fast, causing it to come back up. You walk over, planning to comfort her, when suddenly she starts to shake. You may not be a vet, but you know a seizure when you see one. It only lasts a few seconds and you immediately stroke her fur, reassuring her. 

You call out for the others and they’re by your side in seconds. 

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, sounding slightly panicked. 

“It’s Tilly, she just, I thought she was going to puke and just just started seizing. It’s too early in the morning, her vet’s not open, I don’t know where to take her,” you reply frantically. Tilly’s in your arms now, panting, something she never does. 

“Found a place that’s open,” Mitch says, showing Harry something on his phone. 

“Okay, let’s go,” he says and helps you stand up. 

You wrap Tilly in a blanket and turn to Sarah, saying, “Can you stay and watch Teddy please?”

“Of course, I’ve got her. I’ll call the vet and tell them you’re coming.” 

The three of you rush out to the car, Mitch behind the wheel and Harry with you and Tilly in the back. 

The drive is tense, everyone’s quiet. There’s just the sound of you reassuring the cat cuddled in your arms that everything will be okay. 

The next 30 minutes pass in a daze. The vet takes Tilly from you the second you walk in the door and the receptionist leads you and Harry to a private room. You wait a few minutes, hand clutching Harry’s tight, and then the door opens. The vet doesn’t have to say anything for you to know that it’s bad news. 

He begins to explain what he thinks happened, that Tilly likely had a heart condition. After she passed they had done an ultrasound and confirmed her heart was enlarged. He tells you that this condition is rarely found in time. That it almost always ends in tragedy like this. 

You listen closely, and while you’re absolutely devastated by the loss, it is some consolation that nothing you did caused this. 

Harry watches you closely as you calmly and decidedly discuss next steps, choosing the cremation option and signing all the paperwork. The doctor then asks if you want to say goodbye to Tilly and you say yes. 

“Do you want me to come with you, love?” Harry asks. 

You shake your head no, needing this to be a private moment with your baby, something you do alone. The vet leads you to an exam room where your cat lays, wrapped once again in her blanket. You spend a few minutes petting her, placing a few last kisses to her head, and saying goodbye. When you’re ready, you wipe away your tears and are led back to the lobby where Harry is waiting. 

You settle the bill with the kind receptionist and another staff member brings out the blanket. You thank everyone for helping and walk back out to the car, Harry following behind. 

You get in the passenger seat across from Mitch but don’t greet him, can’t bring yourself to form any words right now. He rests a firm hand on your leg, giving a reassuring squeeze, and you give him a small smile in return.

The drive home is quiet, no one knowing what to say and you hold onto the blanket like it’s a lifeline. When you get home Teddy comes running to you. 

Leaning down, you pick her up and carry her to your bedroom, closing the door behind you. Now home, sitting on your bed, you finally let yourself break down. Sobs rip through your body as you stroke Teddys fur in an attempt to soothe both of you. 

Mitch, Sarah, and Harry all stand in the living room, unsure of what to do but hopeful that you’ll turn to them when you’re ready. 

Half an hour passes and your sobs turn to sniffles. Finally, you make your way out of the bedroom and onto the couch between Harry and Sarah. 

She begins to rub your back and you lean into the touch. “We’re here for you, whatever you need,” she says, and you believe her. For the first time, there are people who are there solely to take care of you during a difficult time. 

This brings back the tears, and you begin to cry again, this time not only from sadness about Tilly, but about all you’ve had to suffer alone in the past. Suddenly you’re surrounded, the three of them all holding you in one big, clumsy group cuddle.

Time passes and you look up, eyes meeting Harry. 

“It wasn’t my fault, right?” You need to ask, the guilt still eating you away. 

“No, baby. It was not your fault. The doctor said there was nothing you could do. This is never caught until it’s too late. You didn’t do anything wrong.” His words are so strong, so sure, and help ease some of the guilt. It will take some time to fully believe that, but you know Harry will be there to remind you of the truth each time you need it. 

“I want to get Teddy tested,” you say. “See if she has the same condition.”

“Do you want me to call your vet? I can fill them in and get an appointment for Teddy,” Mitch says. 

“Yes please,” you reply, relieved to have something taken off your plate. In the past, everything fell on your shoulders. Every decision, every phone call, every bit of planning, it all fell on you. 

But now, not only did Mitch anticipate what needs to be done, but promptly gets up to take care of it so you don’t need to worry about it. 

He comes back a few minutes later saying, “Teddy has an appointment tomorrow afternoon. They’ll do a blood test to check if she has any signs of the condition.”

You thank him for his help before extracting yourself from the embrace you’re still wrapped in with Harry and Sarah. 

“I don’t know about you guys, but I could use some tea,” you say. 

“I’ve got it baby,” Harry replies and walks to the kitchen. He first brings in glasses of water, telling you to hydrate. Next is some fruit. Then the tea. And finally eggs and toast. The coffee table is filled with dishes, another sign of how the others take care of you, and while you don’t really have much of an appetite, you find you’re able to eat a sufficient breakfast. 

You spend the rest of the day at home. The others don’t crowd you, but one of them is always close by in case you need them. They don’t question when you randomly walk up to one of them and lean against them, silently asking for a cuddle. 

You pass Harry in the hallway and turn to him. He happily opens his arms and the two of you stand there, Harry holding you close to him, until the intense wave of sadness passes. 

Later, you find Mitch sitting on the couch writing in a notebook. You sit next to him, resting your head on his shoulder. You’re content to just be near him, watch him work on another new song. You’re especially soothed when he occasionally turns to press kisses to your head. 

When the exhaustion hits in the afternoon you find Sarah, asking if she’ll come lay with you. She’s more than happy to hold you in bed as you nap, Teddy curled into your other side. 

You go back to your normal routine the following day, but Harry, Mitch, and Sarah all notice that you’re a bit more clingy and tired than usual. They keep an eye on you, anticipating when you’re going to need them so you don’t even have to ask. 

Almost two weeks after her death, you get the call that Tilly’s ashes are ready. You go to the emergency vet that day after work, texting your group chat to let the other three know where you are. 

They’re all busy out of the house, but they drop everything to be home when you get there. You’re grateful for this. Picking up that little box makes it feel more real, more final. 

Walking into your home and seeing the others there to support you has the waterworks falling once more. They each take turns wiping your face and kissing the tear stains running down your cheeks. 

This isn’t the last time you’ll cry over this loss, become so overwhelmed by grief that the feelings are just too much. But no matter when it happens, someone is always there to help you. 

Loss and grief have been such a large part of your life, but now with Harry, Sarah, and Mitch by your side, you can move through the feelings, rather than drown in them.

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AN: Thanks for reading! I have a few more extras planned for this story!

Taglist: @akkatz @pandeebearstyles @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite@theekyliepage@numafarawayglxy @booberry019-blog @hillzrry@ssareidbby @gem1712 @acesofspadess@houseofdilfs@shaquille-0atmeal-1@kissitnhekitchen @amateurduck @poguestyleskye@n0vaj3an@snwells@drunk-teens-doing-drugs ; @fdl305@creativelyeva@daphnesutton@selluequestrian@lovingfurypanda @stardream14 @tbsloneely@eversincehs1@boomitsallie1@rose-garden-dreamz@fictionalmensblog@buckybarnessimpp

[blueiscoool]

Connie Converse: The 'Genius' of a Singer Who Was Ahead of Her Time - Then Disappeared

Connie Converse failed to find fame as a singer-songwriter in the 1950s, then mysteriously disappeared without a trace. On the 100th anniversary of her birth - and approaching the 50th anniversary of her disappearance - she's now remembered as a great lost talent.

In January 1961, an unknown Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village with a guitar in his hand and $12 in his pocket, on his way to revolutionising popular music with his poetic, personal songs.

Maybe he brushed past Connie Converse as she went the other way. She moved out of the New York neighbourhood that same month, after a decade of struggling to get significant attention for her own intimate, sophisticated and beautiful songs.

There is a parallel universe where Converse was the one who got the big break, and she is a household name.

At least, that’s the theory put forward in a recent book called How To Become Famous – not a manual, but about why some talented people become successful and others stay in the shadows.

It imagines a world where Converse is "widely known" as "the most original, and perhaps the greatest, of the folk singers of the 1950s and 1960s", who influenced everyone from Dylan to Taylor Swift, and for whom "a Nobel Prize is not out of the question".

Musician and author Howard Fishman, who published Converse’s biography, To Anyone Who Ever Asks, last year, also thinks Converse could have made it big.

"I love to think about an alternate reality in which Connie Converse’s music did receive the recognition it deserved in its own time, and she became a recognised for the musical genius that she was," he says.

"I almost think a better version of American cultural history could have happened, had that been the case."

But How To Become Famous author Cass Sunstein concedes that Converse wasn't better than Dylan. She also faced barriers because she was a woman. And perhaps her clever, melodic and mostly melancholic songs just never quite had mass appeal.

They dealt with subjects like loneliness, promiscuity, quarrelling lovers, and frequenting saloons in the afternoons. It's certainly hard to imagine them really catching on in the early 50s, an age dominated by schmaltzy crooners, folk purists and show tunes.

"She didn't sound like anybody else that was making music in her own day," says Fishman. "And she doesn't sound like anybody else making music now, to my ears."

British singer Vashti Bunyan became a Connie Converse convert after a recommendation from US DJ David Garland, the first person to play her songs in 2004.

"I couldn't believe that they were [recorded] so long ago, it was the 1950s," Bunyan says. "And just to hear her speaking in a way that I would have always wanted to speak was very moving.

"She was completely ahead of her time, and it must have been very hard for her. She must have felt isolated.

"If she had any ambition for her songs, she must have known how good they were, how clever and funny and wonderful they were, and poetic. But other people didn't seem to recognise that kind of genius writing at the time."

Bunyan knows what it's like to have her music "rediscovered" decades later. She released an album in 1970, which has gained cult status in more recent years. She says their stories are very different, but agrees there is an allure to the idea of "the discovery of something from so long ago".

"And how lucky that she was recorded," she says. "Connie was recorded by her friends, and none of those recordings were supposed to be commercially released.

"But it's so wonderful that they have been, that they have been found. And it makes you wonder about all the other people that weren't."

Converse was recorded at the home of one of her friends and champions, Gene Deitch, but she never released any music in her time. She performed for small groups of supporters, but never played a proper concert. She made one TV appearance, but that led nowhere.

Ellen Stekert, a folk historian who was also performing in the 1950s, believes Converse was just "too different" to have "made it".

"I think she was wonderful. I think she was totally out of sequence of any kind of cultural impulse," she says.

"She was self-contained, and also self-isolated. It was too bad somebody could not break through that."

Converse did have her supporters, but any female singer at that time needed to be backed by a man with the right connections, Stekert says. And Converse was socially awkward, and not good at self-promotion.

"Unfortunately, she didn't have much social understanding of things. She did not have a very good rapport, I think, with people.

"Evidently, she had very bad teeth and her body odour also was fairly prominent. And those are two factors in middle-class America that will make sure you don't make it any place."

Converse worked for a printing company and then for the Institute of Pacific Relations. After leaving New York in 1961, she became editor of the Journal for Conflict Resolution in Michigan, and her intellectual activities, and peace and anti-racism activism, were highly regarded.

But then, her life seemed to lose purpose and direction. On 10 August 1974, a week after her 50th birthday, she posted letters to family and friends, telling some she was returning to New York.

She drove out of Ann Arbor and has not been heard from since. Neither her body nor her car was found.

A new life?

"As far as we know, she never made it to New York," Fishman says.

"As far as we know, she never made it anywhere.

"I'd love to think that she started a new life somewhere else, and that she lived more years. But who knows?"

On Saturday 3 August, exactly 100 years after Converse’s birth, Fishman is in her home town - Concord, New Hampshire - for a ceremony to give the singer her first official recognition.

Her music has gradually spread over the past 20 years. So, too, has her story, and the mystery of her disappearance is often the first thing that gets people's attention.

"The unfortunate and darkly poetic thing is that she needed to disappear in order for us to see her," Fishman says. "That was the hook that was needed for us to pay attention to her.

"But what I always say is, don't focus on how she disappeared, focus on how she lived, because her life is so much more fascinating and meaningful, and has so much more to teach us than the fact that at age 50, she felt that she had to vanish."

By Ian Youngs.

[seoul-bros]

Six marvelous months with Park Jimin

January 2023

The year started with the announcement that Jimin had been appointed as the Global Brand Ambassador for Christian Dior (17/01). The occasion was marked with six Awesome magazine covers and the Dior Fashion Show in Paris (20/01). The fashion establishment was blown away by the response to Jimin's participation in the show.

The same month Jimin released Vibe (13/01) , a dream collaboration with his long time musical hero Taeyang from Big Bang.

This was both artists first solo hit on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 76.

February 2023

Jimin did a live on 03/02 in which he confirmed that his solo music, although a little delayed, was likely to come out in March 2023.

On 21/02, Big Hit announced that FACE would be released on 24/03/23. The next day they published the countdown schedule and on the 23/02 the tracklist for the album.

March 2023

On 02/03, Jimin was named Ambassador for Tiffany & Co which he wore spectacularly in his photoshoot for Vogue that month.

On 06/03, Soundcloud super track Promise along with Jimin's yuletide gift to ARMY, Christmas Love were added to Jimin's Spotify profile. The era of streaming Jimin's profile had begun.

From then on, everything started speeding towards the release of FACE. The Hardware and Software images came out.

Set Me Free Pt 2 exploded into the world on 17/03. Nobody saw it coming and it caused a furore on social media. It was a clear statement of intent. I am here to stay and I am here to slay. It debuted at No.30 on the Billboard Hot 100.

FACE was released on 24/03 along with the Like Crazy MV. Speaking for myself Like Crazy blew me away. Jimin set out to make a statement with that song and I will always be proud to be the fan of such an honest and brave artist.

With the release of FACE we also discovered that hidden on the record was a very special song, Letter, in which Jungkook sings background vocals.

That last week of March saw Jimin appeared on the Jimmy Fallon Show with a live performance of Like Crazy.

In the next 9 days, he gave comeback performances on MCountdown, Music Bank and Inkiagayo. He came live to thank ARMY for turning up to his shows. He won awards. He appeared on the radio, on the entertainment shows Beat Coin, Ddeun Ddeun and Pixid. He even did fan meetings.

April 2023

On 01/04 Jimin gave an unforgettable acoustic rendition of Like Crazy live on Lee Mujin Service April Fools Edition.

And then on 03/04, Jimin made history. The first South Korean to ever make No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the first Asian Artist to do so in 60 years. He came live in the early hours of the morning, clearly shellshocked but brimming over with gratitude to everyone who had supported the album and the song.

Then on 05/04 the promotions were over and Jimin once again expressed his happiness and thanks to ARMY for supporting FACE.

It had been a whirlwind and I think we, as well as Jimin, were caught off guard when the promotions ended so quickly. We had a beautiful album to savour but we wanted to continue to savour it with Jimin.

The focus returned to fashion when Jimin flew to New York at the end of April to attend the Tiffany & Co Landmark opening (28/04).

He attended Suga's concert in Newark on the 29/04 and headed back to South Korea later that week. But why didn't he fly straight back after the concert we wondered?

May 2023

It all soon became clear, he had been filming the MV for Angel Pt 1 from the Fast X movie. The song came out on the 19/05 and debuted at No. 65 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was Jimin's fourth chart entry in five months.

At the end of the month, Jimin made a short trip to London and we are still speculating on what that was all about. He posted photos of his trip to HP World as soon as he got back to South Korea on 27/05.

June 2023

Festa 2023 soaked Seoul in purple for nearly three weeks at the beginning of June in celebration of BTS's ten years since debut. Jimin gifted fans with a live performance of Dear.ARMY on 07/06 and....

,,,,,,on 13/06 BTS released this beautiful live version of Take Two with Jimin adding depth and colour to the song with his stunning vocals.

But there was still more to come, on 15/06 Jimin came live in high spirits and spent quality time with ARMY. It was the same day as the release of Angel Part 2.

On the 27/06 Jimin's solo profile appeared on Billboard and serves as a permanent reminder of everything that has happened in the short space of 6 months. It has been a roller coaster ride and I am still hopeful that we will still get more music from Jimin before he has to enlist. I wanted to make this post so that no one forgets what he has achieved and the permanent mark he has made on the global music industry since he took his first steps towards a solo career.

Post Date: 28/06/2023

[lightwing-s]

𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄

pairing: titans!dick grayson x female!reader

summary: a family, a home, was all Yn ever wanted, and when she got it, she had to part ways. coming back shouldn't hurt, shouldn't be this hard. Dick Grayson shouldn't be an asshole, but she shouldn't love him either. word count: 3,5k warnings: cursing, mentions of death, grief, family issues , and my absolute lack of knowledge of green lantern’s lore.

a/n: definitely not proof read, and it's 3:05 in the morning, so pls be kind with any errors lol a/n 2: updated on january 4th, 2024.

reblogs and interactions are always appreciated ! ♡

⌜masterlist⌟ ⌜requests⌟

Outer space was vast.  Immense with emptiness, and yet still full of life.

The last five years of Yn’s life were spent in this vast nothingness, travelling, patrolling, protecting. The bit of galaxy that was gifted to her by the guardians was her place to keep safe, and the same place where once she had felt safe herself, before discovering the magnitude of this emptiness and the dangers it hid from humans. 

Never in her young life had she expected it to take this turn, to be granted with a ring and the responsibility to be one of Earth’s protectors. She had just turned fourteen when gifted with a ring of hope, but never did she doubt her abilities, embracing the new challenge with a bravery the guardians hadn’t seen before from someone so young, and teaming with Earth’s own green lantern on the quest to defend the planet.

If only Hal knew the young girl was the one in need of defending.

As many heroes' stories go, Yn Sn was the product of a tragic life, having lost her parents at a very early age, and since then bouncing from one foster family to another. The “family” she had found herself in at that point didn’t have anything on family and on foster. They couldn’t care if she went missing for days, only to return bruised and in pain. They just cared for the money in their bank account at the end of the month.

As far as she knew, she was always alone.

Hal Jordan was the first thing to come close to family for Yn. Although reluctantly at first, he took her in and trained the young girl to become a lantern just as good as him. With time, he turned into an older brother, constantly worrying that the life of a lantern would interfere with her personal life, worrying if she was missing school or getting in trouble with her parents for disappearing for too long, but she would constantly brush off these worries, telling him they were with all that.

However, when he found out the truth, he got furious. He took her in, made her his ward “Just as a friend had done with a young boy he’d met, Yn”. But Hal was often away, be it for lantern duties or his own work and personal life, so he was concerned she would feel too alone in their apartment. That she would feel left out.

That’s when he heard about the Titans from Batman, the group of young heroes created by his own protégé, Robin, and a few others. Considering they were all of close age, he hoped they would get along, that she would make friends and finally build her own chosen family. So, with much arguing and persuasion, he took her to San Francisco to join the young team.

At first, Y/n was careful with the other teen heroes. She didn’t know if she could trust them, or even if they trusted her. But with each training session and with every mission she eventually grew to appreciate their company and little by little they became that family Hal had so wished for her.

However, even within the best families there’s always conflict and a certain level of distrust, and her greatest source of both came in the form of a green, red, and yellow costumed boy: Dick Grayson. The famous boy wonder, self-proclaimed team leader, the one that could get on her nerves like nobody else.

Always reprimanding her, always pointing out her flaws. He was unbearable, and sometimes she wished to punch him so hard he’d end up on the other side of the galaxy.

“I told you to stay in formation, not to go rogue and almost ruin the mission, lantern.” He scolded her after their most recent encounter with Cheshire.

“But I got to her anyway, and also disarmed the bomb. You should be thanking me for doing your job, and much better than you ever would.” She confronted him, knowing very well how to trigger the boy.

“We are a team, Yn. T-E-A-M,” he spat out. “Supposedly, these work together, but you wouldn’t have known, as you’re trapped too deep into your own ego to care for anyone else.” Pointing his finger in her face, his own getting red and spit jumping out of his mouth.

Gosh he hated how she could so easily rile him up, how she held a power over him that made everything good turn bad with single a snap of her fingers.

“My ego?!” She laughed, getting even closer to Dick than he already was. “Look who’s talking, Mr. I made myself team captain because I clearly think I’m above everyone else. You think so highly of your plans that…”

“Enough, you two!” Donna interrupted, rubbing at her temples. “If you keep doing this after every mission, I don’t know what I’m capable of doing.”

During her time with the Titans, Yn had to withhold herself from arguing with Robin 80% of the time. The other 20% were times they were sent on missions separately and she finally could feel at peace. But somehow it worked. The team ran as a connected unit, never missing a beat, one complementing the other as if they were parts of the same body.

But that didn’t last long. They worked well until loss and grief broke the connection entirely. With Garth’s death much of that confidence and team spirt was lost to fear, anger, and distrust, and there seemed to be no fixing that.

“If only you had listened to me. If we had taken care of Deathstroke like I wanted to, Garth would’ve been alive today!” Yn screamed at Robin, as her voice trembled, her eyes soaked, and tears started rolling down her cheeks like a waterfall. She had told him, warned countless times, that they couldn’t deal with Deathstroke by simply doing whatever shit he and Batman did in Gotham. Slade was too dangerous to be left alive, and death was the only way to get rid of him for good.

“So, you want to blame me for something that isn’t my fault? You were the one that made him angry in the first place.” he responded.

“We all pissed him off, Grayson. Don’t try to put this on me. I could have been as much of a target as Garth and Donna were…”

“Don’t say this…”

“Or even y-you!” her voice barely made it to the end of this sentence, a lump forming in her throat impeding her from continuing to argue. Tired of everything, exhausted in fact, Yn stormed out of the room and ran to her bedroom, collected her few belongings in a rush and made her way out of the tower.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” asked the Boy Wonder, his voice was shaky and covered in a feeling Yn couldn’t fully comprehend.

“Away!” she replied rashly. 

“Away from where?“

“From everything! The tower. San Francisco. Earth for all that matters. I want out of here!”

Dick was sure her screams could be heard all the way on the street, and just as loud as that was the sound of his heart breaking, shattering on the floor like broken glass. The team was over, and there was nothing he could do about it except watch it crumbling down.

Leaving Earth all those years ago wasn’t an easy decision. After all, it was her home. But with the end of the Titans and the destruction of the only thing she deeply cared for in this world, there was nothing holding her down to stay anyways. The galaxy was now her home, where she travelled and visited so many planets, she didn’t even know were real.

Hal tried to bring her back to Earth with him an uncountable amount of times, but all of them were unsuccessful, and he learned that leaving her be was the best he could do to allow her to heal. When she felt ready, she would return. 

And then, finally, after a little bit more than five long years, Yn felt confident in herself enough to consider going back. It was about time, she missed their sun, the food was always superior then anywhere else, and she had to know how he was. Go back to Earth, she would often think, You have no home here, Y/n.

Upon her return, she expected things to have changed. She expected to see that her old friends had moved on from the crime fighting world, from the hero gig, and left the Titans just a memory. But to her surprise, the present didn’t appear to be too different from what was left all those years ago.

Turning the TV inside her new and tiny apartment, the news shows were all about the apparent reopening of the Titans Towers, about Robin going rogue in Detroit and his return to the city San Francisco with intentions of bringing the once beloved team back. Y/n knew Dick was stubborn, but gosh he could go beyond expected. Why would he do that? Who would do that with him? Did Donna or Dawn or Hank come back too? Are they all stupid brainless masochists?

She knew it would sound hypocritical of her, after all she’s still in her position as a Blue Lantern, patrolling a patch of the galaxy where Earth belonged to. But she had no choice, she made an oath to protect it and if there was one thing Yn was never going to break was a promise.

If it wasn’t the oath, Y/n would have quit five years ago. Or maybe not. Being a hero filled a hole in her heart that left untouched would be filled with pain and hurt instead, so maybe she would stay and keep it filled with everything else but her true feelings.

All those questions were eating up her brain and wouldn't let her sleep at night. So, deciding to rid herself of all doubt, she searched for the one she wished she had left behind all those years ago.

Dick had just turned off the last light in the Titans Tower, the whole team probably sound asleep by that point, as he so wished to be.

Restarting the Titans was an unexpected gift, but also the reconquering of a number of responsibilities that were leaving him gradually more exhausted day by day. A good night's sleep might solve his problem just temporarily, but the temptation of a good rest was always irrefutable.

Just as he entered his bedroom, he noticed a shadow. The shadow of a human, a person he couldn’t identify in the darkness, and his fight instincts kicked out. But before he could’ve attempted anything, the shadow’s sweet voice sent a shiver down his spine:

“When I came back to Earth, I expected it to be in a better position than the one I had left it on, but it appears that humans are much clingier to the past as I thought they would be.” It told him, the owner of the voice someone he hadn’t expected to hear and see any time soon, but that he would have recognized even if hundreds of years had passed.

“Yn?”

“So, you want to bring back the team that took so much from us?” She questioned, and although she was still hiding in the dark, he could notice her trembling chin from just her voice. She questioned him incredulously, still not daring to look away from the huge floor to ceiling windows. “You want to take kids into the crime fighting world just like the man you hate the most did to you?”

Finding Yn Sn in his bedroom wasn’t in his yearly bingo card, nor his decade one. In fact, he truly thought he would never see her again, with how upset she was the last time they had talked. But, ironically, here she was and just as angry as the last time they’d talked. Too much for hanging on to the past, huh?

“This is not what you think.” He declared and Yn turned to him abruptly.

“Explain to me, then,” she demanded, a dark humor hovering her voice. “Why did you take those kids in?”

“You’re acting as if you didn’t start fighting crime yourself as a teenager…”

“That’s different, “ she interrupted, her voice only getting louder. “I got chosen by the ring to defend the universe, it’s a different situation.”

“Don’t come to me with your “I’m special” bullshit.” Dick made quotation marks with his own finger, feeling the anger climb his spine. “Even if it wasn't for the ring, you'd have been just like us, and you know it.”

“Well, now I know better. Kids are not supposed to be fighting crime, or don’t you remember what happened the last time we were in San Francisco?” Shaking her head judgingly, she adds. “You’re unbelievable, Grayson.”

“And you still fail to see the bigger picture, Yn.“ Dick counter argued. “I’m not doing this for the sake of having a team back. I’m doing it for Rachel and Gar, for Kory. They’re strays just like one day you and me were, or did you forget how it was to not have a family and desperately want one?”

The mention of a family had Yn frozen, standing still and staring right back at him without knowing what words she should muster. He knew it was her weak spot, he knew that through it he could make her understand, so poking her wound was his only option.

And he was right. Y/n didn’t forget. The Titans were not just a superhero team, they were a family just like no other, built of strays with no hopes or expectations, those who lived in someone else’s shadows and desperately tried to strike on their own. Even so, the consequences of bringing the team back were far larger than one would think, and Yn so badly wanted to avoid any more heartbreak.

“Still… Don’t you mind the stakes? Don’t you remember the pain anymore? The hole left by Garth’s loss, do you want to feel it again, Dick?” her voice got softer, pain evident in every syllable. “Because you know it will come, eventually. Much stronger than the first time.”

“It’s a risk worth taking.” He replied honestly. If it wasn’t him, then someone else would do it, otherwise they’d be allowing too much shit to hit happen that he couldn’t even contemplate what future it would lead them to.

“Really?! You wanna risk children’s lives, your life? Do you wanna risk all that pain in the name of a mission that never seems to have an end?” She spat out, anger returning to her tone. “You had quit, I saw it. And you have no idea how jealous that made me because I couldn’t do the same. Travelling through space did nothing to soothe the emptiness I felt inside, no crime fighting would fix my heart and you tell me you’re willing to go back to it all when you were finally free?” the burning sensation in her eyes told her news she hoped wouldn’t happen, but at this point, crying was inevitable.

“We can’t be sure if something is gonna happen. It’s a risk worth taking because so far, it has worked for us. We did lose Garth, but remember how much more we had conquered?”

“Having you say Garth's death was worth it, Dick…” she shook her head before being interrupted.

“You know it was not what I meant. Stop twisting my words.”

Dick was growing infuriated. It doesn’t matter how much time passes, Yn Sn is still going to try to paint him as the bad guy when he just wants to get on her good side.

“Because you are so damn capable of keeping everyone alive, right? How about your own life, who’s gonna protect it then?”

“My life is the smallest of my problems.” Dick stated nonchalantly, surprising Yn a little.

That line, that simple sentence had Y/n’s heart shattered. Did he think so little of himself to consider his life worthless? Because to her, his life was worth millions. His life was worth putting hers in danger or sacrificing an entire planet for.

"Don’t say that!" screamed the girl fiercely. "Losing Garth already had me broken. I don't know what I would have done if I had lost you too!”

Her sight was blurred due to the tears that allocated themselves in her eyes, uncontrollable, untamed. Her voice felt hoarse, weak, the lump on her throat making her words barely leave her mouth. I am weak, she thought. He knows.

And he did now.

He felt nauseous at first. If his thought process was right, if what she said was real and not a product of his imagination, she… liked him, she cared for him. Liked him enough to not want to lose him, even hypothetically.

Dick was astounded. Never would he have believed it, if anyone had told this him before tonight, that Yn Sn was in any level into him, he’d tell them they were insane. He thought she would rather see him burn over something like this. But it all made to him, all the fights they had after he put himself in dangerous positions during missions, all those arguments when he ended up hurt. She cared about him, him. 

"Yn, what do you mean?" he asked carefully, approaching her ever so slowly. He feared if she saw what he was attempting to do that she would flee like she did before.

"Nothing…" she said while drying her eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. "I have to go."

She felt disoriented. She had guarded herself so well all her life, and here comes this stupidly good-looking guy, with his stupidly charming smile, breaking her walls and making her feel so… small and insignificant. Trying to recompose herself, she fixed her shirt and rushed past her old “friend”, only to be stopped as she felt his strong hands holding her in place.

"I know I would’ve gone mad if I had lost you." he confided.

Coming onto his own senses, Dick realized all he wanted was her safety too. Her health, her happiness, her smiles every time the team would fight for the front seat in the plane, the remote control or about what movie they were going to watch. He wanted to see the sparkle in her eyes every time she would make the most eccentric creations with her ring. He wanted her to have the family he knew she had always wished for, he wanted her cared for and loved. And even more, he wanted to be one providing her all of it.

"I wouldn’t have made it if you were the one to have gone. If you were gone… so would I.”

Hearing his confession, Yn body stopped working, her heart stopped pounding and her mind kept repeating his words. Her body didn’t respond to her head saying go, or even to her heart telling her to kiss him, right then, right there.

All these years of hatred made her believe he truly despised her. She thought he would hate her for leaving, for being selfish, for hurting him. She hated that pain and herself for feeling it, making her a fucking coward. But all this time, he was hurting just like her. He was a coward too, she thought. A silly, stupid, and lovable coward.

"You are incredibly stupid, you know." she blurted out, and he laughed.

"And you are the hardest person to love in this whole entire world."

The four-lettered word threw a burst of energy into Yn’s body, awakening it and her thoughts. Her body erupted with an energy not even the ring had made her feel, and without another thought, without wasting anymore time, without waiting five more years, she kissed him.

Passionately, lovingly, intensely. She kissed him for all the lost years, for all the accumulated anger he made her feel. For never stopping being that boy full of hope and determination, and the hardest of heads she’s even known. 

Yn loved Dick Grayson. She always did. And from the way he kissed her back, she knew he did it too.  That his words were not lies of his to try and get her back. She felt his love, his passion. She wanted to feel it more and more and more…

"Stay with me…" he begged, voice mixed between heavy breaths. "With the Titans."

His forehead rested on hers, his eyes closed, as if praying she'd say yes. Even if her mind kept telling her it was a bad idea, that bringing back the team was dangerous, her newfound softness for him pushed her into saying yes, into staying. Into building again, the family she once had, but now in the right way, now with him by her side.

With a sigh and a desire of getting intoxicated on him once more, a desire that was making her lose all her senses and certainly her mind, Y/n answered:

"I’ll have to think about it."

Unbelievable. With a shake of his head and a soft, breathy laugh, Dick held her face in his hands and kissed her once more, giving her what her eyes were begging and knowing damn well this time she was gonna stay. She was gonna be with him, and there was no way he’d let her go.

She was here, with him. At home. He was her love, her friend, her home.

[gyusrose]

➵ the five lovers -> ot5

⚠︎ fluff, angst

✎ non-idol! au

summary: being alone now, makes you reflect on how much you took for granted your love life.

ot5 x fem.reader

wc: 1 .5k

“so uh we kiss now?”

Taehyun was probably the one person you knew better than yourself, you spent more time with him than your own parents. growing up together had its advantages, he always had your back no matter what. even when he got ridiculously popular during late middle school-early freshman year, he never forgot about you, how could you not fall? you had trouble figuring out if he was flirting or just being friendly, you seriously couldn’t tell. that was until a summer night before sophomore year..

“i really like you, a lot, not as a friend but you know?”

you almost screamed at that moment, thankful to know that it wasn’t one-sided.

unfortunately as the weeks and months went on, you noticed how much you didn’t act like a couple. yes surely you’ve kissed, but nothing more than a peck and would only hold hands occasionally. nothing changed from your friendship to your ‘romantic relationship’ just the title.

Taehyun noticed as well, that’s when during January he decided to have a talk with you regarding what y’all really where. you both decided to stay off as friends instead since it clearly wasn’t meant to be more than that. you hold nothing but brotherly love towards him still. you were sure of that when you saw him get a girlfriend and felt nothing but happiness for him and so did he when you did.

“you’ve never done this before?”

Yeonjun was a heck of an experience. he was the school’s basketball captain which also meant he had girls at his feet, swooning over him, yet he saw you. it wasn’t out of nowhere of course. over the summer you definitely grew into your face a bit and had a puberty bloom so going into junior year, you were pretty popular as well. destiny put the two of you in the same physics class and it started from there. he sat next to you and somehow always made a conversation with you, it escalated week by week, next thing you know he’s asking you out on a date. obviously you say yes.

he was your first REAL relationship. he made experience everything (if you know what i mean) although you’ve been worried about losing your virginity and feeling ashamed of it, Yeonjun made it as special as it could’ve been. y’all dated for the whole year. since he was a year older than you, he graduated high school. the two of you really wanted to keep dating ‘long distance’ but we all know how that’s pretty much a slow breakup. it didn’t help the fact that he went so far away. he was also surrounded by college girls, even if he denied it, you knew there was definitely a couple of kisses stolen from his friend’s instagram stories. it didn’t take much for the both of you to end it keeping in ‘good terms’.

“you sure you hate me?“

Beomgyu was the last person you’d taught you’d even think about dating. after taking a year to focus on yourself, the moment you got to college you were met with a crazy long-haired boy, bumping into you. he didn’t even say sorry or anything which was already enough to dislike him.

later you found out he was in a rock band, how ‘surprising’. you found this out when your roommate invited you to go with her to one of their gigs since her boyfriend was the lead singer she had extra tickets. you, not knowing he would be there, agreed since you needed to have some fun. your excitement was drained when you saw him playing the electric guitar and he was good, which made you more annoyed.

your roommate invited you to parties and he was always there, he noticed you the first time, after noticing your coldness, he kept bugging you day after day, trying to make you laugh once. the way he pushed your buttons made it almost impossible to not answer back. it became a love-hate friendship in a way? more hate than love. you clearly don’t despise him but you don’t like him at the same time. it wasn’t until during an argument, to shut you up, he smashed his lips into yours and you didn’t hate it? needless to say you both started dating shortly after.

unfortunately you can never enjoy things too much since he got signed with a company and decided to focus on his career and dropping out of university, in no way were you going to try long distance again so the only choice was to break up. you listen to his band’s music from time to time when you’re sad.

“my sister has good taste in friends”

HueningKai was perfect for you. one summer during junior year of college, your roommate , Lea, invited you to a vacation with her family, since you weren’t doing anything during the summer so why not? that’s where you met him. Lea’s younger brother wasn’t…bad looking. you didn’t start immediately dating, in fact y’all started off as friends, very good friends. both of you had a lot in common, some things you never seen someone also like. after the vacation you hung out at their home most of the time.

the both of you didn’t feel any romantic feelings until that one night. it was his 20th birthday and you two somehow ended up ‘accidentally kissing’. you guess you were just really excited for him and ended up kissing him. from there it kind of became awkward. you didn’t know if you should bring it up or just forget about it and pretend it didn’t happen. eventually he brought it up which ended up in a confession. you hesitantly accepted , you liked him but not to such point.

you loved him. yes you did. being with him for two years, making it your longest relationship, he made you love him, so much. he had this other part of him, the crazy one, which you adapted to love. he was like beomgyu but way softer.

this can’t be a happy ending right ? of course not. you got a job opportunity outside of the city and you would be dumb to not take it. once again you went through another break up. we decided to stay as friends and hang out form time to time, meaning once a year.

“i really like you”

Soobin was the love of your life. after three years of being single, you were craving love, wanting someone to be with and just love you, yeah you had your friends but it wasn’t the same. your best friend and coworker noticed this and decided to have a night out and go to the club, you didn’t budge and agreed since you actually needed it, at least to get laid.

you met this jaw dropping handsome guy, which didn’t seems like a club type of person since he looked really reserved wi to himself so for the first time, you started the conversation, thankfully he wasn’t creeped out or anything and continued ending up in exchanging phone numbers. soon you found out who he was, the son of one of the richest man in the country. you were surprised since Soobin was very humble and down-to-earth. you didn’t treat him differently though, knowing he’d probably hate that.

y’all started to go out to different places except his house since he mentioned how his dad was. after a couple of months he asked you out which you obviously said yes to, unknown to his dad but unfortunately he eventually found out and was against it since you weren’t “high class” . Soobin rebelled against this and still found a way to meet up with you one way or another. until one night.

he came with his head down dried tears down his cheeks. you were very confused, his next words explained everything though.

his dad had arranged a marriage with another woman.

your heart crumbled. his dad was too powerful to say no to you understood, but you still spent the next few days sobbing into your pillow. the marriage happened way too soon as well, it was all over the news, now making it impossible to watch television.

you can never have a happily ever after can’t you?

[lego-man-speer]

Nuremberg Defendants: Part 1, Alfred Rosenberg - Nazi Philosopher

I've created a new goal for 2024, which is to make posts about the defendants of the Nuremberg Trials. For the sake of the fact that there are already many Tumblr blogs that talk about specific figures from the trials, I won't be making these sort of posts for Göring or Speer. I made one for Hess a couple of months ago in response to an ask I received, which I will link here. These posts will be related to the lesser-talked-about defendants that stood trial and the first of these (because I'll be posting this on his birthday) will be Alfred Rosenberg.

-Alfred Ernst Rosenberg was born on the 12th of January 1893 in Reval (now Talinn), Estonia. His parents died when he was still fairly young and was raised mostly by his two parental aunts.

-What we know about Rosenberg's early life is very limited to what he wrote in his memoirs at Nuremberg. However, what we do know is that he had an elder brother called 'Janny', whose date of death is unknown (he had been arrested by the Soviets). From around his mid-teens he became interested in philosophy. We also know that some of his hobbies included sailing in the summer and ice skating in the winter, and that his nickname given to him by family (or at least referred to by his niece in letters) was 'Freddy'.

-Rosenberg had studied to be an architect and obtained his PhD in 1917. At his stays at home in Estonia he worked as a drawing teacher.

-Rosenberg spent the years of the First World War as a student. He had volunteered to serve in the army but was rejected on the grounds of his nationality. After the revolution in Russia, Rosenberg fled to Munich where he was taken in by Dietrich Eckart.

-Rosenberg had planned to continue with his career in architecture in Munich, but had eventually started working for the far-right newspaper 'Völkischer Beobachter' (English: People's Observer). This paper was sponsored by the Thule Society, a group that which Rosenberg was a member of (and adding onto this, Rosenberg was one of the very first to join the Nazi Party). In 1923 Rosenberg became editor-in-chief of the newspaper.

-Rosenberg, like all of the early members of the party, took part in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Rosenberg had escaped from police and took refuge in the home of an old lady. After the Putsch, Hitler had named Rosenberg as leader of the Nazi movement. This was a tactical move made by Hitler, as Rosenberg was regarded as lazy and was not as dominant as other members of the movement (such as Julius Streicher - who I will be making a post on in the future). Hitler knew that there was no chance of Rosenberg completely taking control of the whole movement, which therefore secured Hitler's leadership, which was restored to him after being released from prison.

-Also in 1923, Rosenberg obtained a divorce from his first wife, Hilda Leesman. Hr married her in 1915, however she was often sick and never followed Rosenberg to Germany. Rosenberg presented himself as the guilty party when obtaining a divorce. His first wife died in 1928 from tuberculosis. Rosenberg married his second wife, Hedwig Kramer, in 1925 and the marriage lasted until Rosenberg's death. Together they had two children: a son that died in infancy, and a daughter, Irene, born in 1930.

-Rosenberg was also often the victim of numerous rumours. For example:

A common rumour was that Rosenberg was in fact Jewish. His last name obviously didn't help with these rumours. He also didn't put in much effort to clarifying his ethnic background (but this was to keep the rest of his family - occupied by the Soviets - safe).

A rumour spread mostly by Hermann Göring was that Rosenberg had been working as a French spy during World War 1.

Another rumour was that he had an “unsavoury romantic life” which included him attending orgies of both men and women. This was a rumour spread by Ernst Hanfstaengl. Hanfstaengl gives no source for this, however he is also incredibly biased against Rosenberg so we can also assume that this was made up.

-Rosenberg is most well-known for his book “The Myth of the 20th Century”. This book shows us his ideas of National Socialist philosophy, a form of National Socialism which he later claimed was never truly realised. The Myth sold around 1 million copies by the end of the Second World War. The book at the time was not translated into any other languages, as per Rosenberg's request, although a refined version was written by Rosenberg for use in schools (however Rosenberg personally disagreed with this too, believing it was for the youth themselves to develop their own ideas). It's also interesting that Hitler personally disliked The Myth. He claimed that it was something that ordinary people would not understand and made digs at Rosenberg's Baltic background.

-An important part of Rosenberg's ideology was his fierce anti-Christianity, especially in regards to the Catholic Church. Rosenberg himself was raised Protestant but believed there to be no need for Christianity, and also believed that Christianity was gradually dying out.

-Upon the Nazi's coming to power, Rosenberg's primary role was related to being the party's chief ideologist. This role undoubtedly had its limits. A specific example was the amount of real influence he had over schools. Rosenberg had no direct influence over schools and other party officials made sure that he could not intervene in schools. His desired plans for 'Hohe Schule' eventually had to be abandoned.

-In the Second World War, Rosenberg was given a big role, being made Reichsminister für die besetzten Ostgebiete (English: Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories) after Germany had made successful advances in the East. However, once again, Rosenberg's role was limited. He was constantly blocked by other party members (including Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, Minister for Occupied Ukraine Erich Koch, Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann, as well as constant battle over authority with foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop).

-Rosenberg's position on the governance of the Eastern Territories was different to that of Erich Koch. Where Koch saw dictatorial opportunities in Ukraine, Rosenberg saw an opportunity to break up the USSR and allow for self-governance of the eventual newly-created states.

-Rosenberg was personally horrified by the treatment of Slavic peoples during the war and there are moments in which he intervened (as best as he could). There is no evidence that he intervened on behalf of Jews, but Dr Otto Bräutigam recorded an occasion where Rosenberg condemned 'wild excesses' against Jews in Russia (however this does not mean that his opinions on Jews and anti-semitism had suddenly changed, they did not). Rosenberg had a principle that some ethnic groups were 'more deserving' than others, and this basis had saved lives of prisoners of war by getting separate camps set up for them and sending out inspectors to tour them. Although Rosenberg's motives were often not clear, his interventions were usually on the side of sanity and in some cases humanity.

-After the failures of Stalingrad and when territory in the East began to erode, Rosenberg's role as Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories became increasingly meaningless. Only in 1944 did Rosenberg pluck up the courage to send a letter of resignation to Hitler, however Hitler did not bother to respond to this letter. It's suggested that if Rosenberg had resigned in 1943 (as advised by the staff that worked under him), it's likely that he would have been spared by the hangman's noose.

-Prior to his capture in May 1945, Rosenberg had considered committing suicide along with the rest of his family to avoid capture by the Russians. He had acquired enough cyanide for himself, his wife and his daughter. However, Rosenberg had a change of heart, apparently throwing the cyanide into the sea at Flensburg (according to his Nuremberg memoirs). After this Rosenberg had sprained his ankle (throughout adulthood he always had problems with his foot) and had to be taken to a military hospital where Rosenberg then gave himself up to the Allies. Albert Speer claims that Rosenberg was drunk when he sprained his ankle, however Speer was not present nor did he provide a source for this information. Rosenberg claims that he was not drunk but had to be carried.

-In the Nuremberg Trials Rosenberg was defended by Dr Alfred Thoma. Rosenberg's examinations by the prosecutors at Nuremberg are fairly awkward. For example, the Russian prosecutor M. Y. Raginsky gave a description of Rosenberg's authorisation of the removal to the Reich in 1944 of 40,000 homeless Russian orphans (this is something I will refer back to again shortly), but the prosecutor fell silent when Rosenberg alleged that a similar number of adults had been deported to the USSR in 1940 from the states of Latvia and Estonia. US prosecutors also had their awkward moments, for example Thomas Dodd who heatedly accused Rosenberg of persecuting religion.

-Coming back to my mention of the removal of Russian orphans to the Reich: although Rosenberg could not deny that he authorised the removal, to Rosenberg's credit he could maintain that he had cared of the wellbeing of the children and had visited the camp near Dessau. Dr. Thoma insisted that Rosenberg took charge of them at the personal request of Field-Marshall von Kluge, who feared that they would otherwise fall into the hands of Fritz Sauckel. There is also confusion of the numbers involved. The Russian prosecutor alleged 40,000 orphans; whereas Dr. Thoma admitted to 20,000. However, expert opinion now suggests that the real figure was somewhere between 2,500 to 3,000 orphans.

-Rosenberg followed trial proceedings very closely whenever it concerned him personally. On several occasions while being examined but the Russians, he tried to intervene to check the the translation, which he claimed to be distorting what he had said. Whenever he wasn't being examined, he tended to lose interest and spent his time making pencil sketches of witnesses.

-Although Dr. Thoma did his best, Rosenberg's defence was handicapped for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons was that documents and witnesses were provided at the indulgence of the prosecution. Rosenberg had tried to call a witness to testify on behalf of his work in German-English relations, however there was o response. Another reason is that Rosenberg himself gave complicated answers when being examined, so much so that even Dr. Thoma had asked him to be more concise.

-Rosenberg was found guilty on all four counts of the indictment of the tribunal and was sentenced to death by hanging. Upon the scaffold when asked if he had any last words Rosenberg said “no”, being the only criminal condemned to the gallows to have no last words. Rosenberg was hung in the early hours of October 16th, 1946.

[blowflyfag]

Pro Wrestling Illustrated: 1995 THE YEAR IN WRESTLING. March 1996

MATCH OF THE YEAR: DIESEL VS. SHAWN MICHAELS 16,710 votes

For four months, fans waited for this one–and a worthwhile wait it was.

Until Survivor Series 1994, Diesel and Shawn Michaels were he best of friends. Going into that pay-per-view, they  were also the WWF World tag team champions. But a disagreement in an eight-man tag team match made them the bitterest of enemies. Shawn remained a rulebreaker, while Diesel went the fan favorite route. And three days later, “Big Daddy Cool” became the WWF World champion.

Everyone wondered when these two former friends would finally meet, one-on-one, with the World title at stake.

Everyone found out when it would be on January 22, when Michaels won the Royal Rumble and earned a World title shot against Diesel at WrestleMania XI.

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Lawrence Taylor at WrestleMania was good, but Shawn vs. Diesel was better. It lived up to all the prematch hype, and for the third consecutive year, Michaels was involved in our Match of the Year. 

Diesel pounded his old buddy early on in the bout. “The Heartbreak Kid,” as everyone expected, showed tremendous resiliency. He clotheslined the World champion over the top rope, executed an over-the-top-rope flying bodypress, then spent a few minutes trying to wear Diesel down. He used a flying elbowsmash from the top rope and a sleeperhold. 

Then came the turning point. While Michaels and Diesel were brawling outside the ring, referee Earl Hebner, in an attempt to keep Sid Vicious, Michael’ Bodyguard, from getting involved, twisted an ankle. That prevented him from getting back into the ring quickly. It may have also prevented Michaels from becoming the World champ, because Shawn superkicked Diesel and had him pinned for at least 10 seconds before Hebner crawled back to make a count.

Diesel recovered, caught Michaels with two boots to the face, and “jackknifed” him for the win at 20:40.

“Incredible!” wrote Ken Wallace of Topeka, Kansas. “I didn't think Diesel could stay with Shawn for a match that lasted 15 minutes or more. And even in defeat, Michaels was terrific.” Everyone knows what happened the next night. These two rivals became friends again. We may never see a Shawn-Diesel rematch, but even if we don’t we’ll always have memories of this thrilling bout. 

RUNNERS-UP

JEFF JARRETT vs. SHAWN MICAHELS: 15,831 votes

First runner-up:  “The Heartbreak Kid” strikes again! A 20-minute thriller between two terrific athletes is the simplest way to describe the July 23 In Your House II match in which Michaels won his third Intercontinental title. A powerful superkick to the jaw was all it took for Michaels to finish off “Double-J” after The Roadie accidentally tripped his employer.

HARLEM HEAT vs. THE NASTY BOYS: 13,798 votes

Second runner-up: The Nastys won the WCW World tag belts from Booker T and Stevie Ray in this Slamboree slugfest. The result was noteworthy because Jerry Sags fought half the match on his own after Brian Knobs was injured before the bout. It was the Heat’s legdrops vs. the Nastys’ piledrivers, and it ended when Sags pinned Booker after a top-rope elbowsmash.

PSICOSIS vs. REY MISTERIO JR.: 6,620 votes

Third runner-up: These two masked superstars, rivals in Mexico's AAA, brought their feud to ECW on September 16 and contested a bout that featured stunning aerial moves. Misterio at 5’3” and 140 pounds, beat his 5’10”, 200-pound rival in a match that was highlighted by Misterio diving from the ring apron onto Psicosis , who was lying in the third row of the audience!

VOTES FOR OTHERS (15,187)

Some of the top vote-getters who did not capture a runner-up spot include: January 22: Diesel vs. Bret Hart; April 2: Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Lawrence Taylor; June 18: Brian Pillman vs. Alex Wright; August 4: Tony Anthony & Tracey Smothers vs. The Heavenly Bodies; August 26: Eddy Gurrero vs. Dean Malenko; August 27: Shawn Micahels vs Razor Ramon.

[sapphyreopal5]

hey there

just wanted to add to your last post, there was also a few pictures going around with him in those tityrestaurants as you mentioned lol, it's also called Hooters.

hevwas seen there a lot and what's funny about it is, it was right after he said he wanted to spend more time with his wife and kids, and how happy he was with his work because he gets to be with them, and then boom, picture after picture of him with those girls.

i don't think he stopped going there, but I think he stopped taking pictures with the girls, because after that gen started to squeeze her hand on his neck more and her posts became moe cringey and vulgar and she started to go to cons with him.

he's trying to break free but she won't let him. 💰💲

Oh my goodness Anon thank you for the ask! I had this funny feeling this wasn't exactly his first rodeo at places like this. After your bless-ed ask came through not too long ago, I decided to go look up on Google "Jared Padalecki Hooters". Lo and behold, below we have an Instagram post where it seems he ASKED for an autograph from this girl here, Nadira who was Miss April in 2021 for Hooters. A signed calendar for April 2021. Below is the post for everyone's viewing pleasure. "To Jared ♥♥ Thanks for coming in! Keep being Awesome :) XOXO, ♥ Nadira ♥" is what the autograph reads. Note the date for this post below says May 16, 2021. This Hooters is located outside of Dallas, Texas and is over 3 hours and 15 minutes from his home in Austin, Texas. It doesn't seem like he was there that time for a Creation convention because funnily enough, the one that was scheduled for March 2021 was rescheduled for January 2022.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by N A D I R A (@nadeeruh)

I also found this old photo seen below on Pinterest which led me to this site here. It seems Jared has always had a thing for Hooters and other similar types of places, even brought Gen to a location based on this photo as someone commented when they were seemingly first dating "Natalie88 I'll be happy if it turns out that Jared and Gen are really dating!" Well Gen, you should've seen it coming that Jared is a boobs man and he likes them "breastaurants". Why Gen would get so uptight about them knowing this is how he was like from the get go, man don't get me started on this kind of illogical thinking.

I will say this Anon, I am very happy you mentioned this to me, not gonna lie :D Funny story, when I was first dating my ex who is my son's dad years ago and mentioned I believe did black magic on me also once upon a time, he decided to tag me along to a strip club with a few friends of his. While one of them was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time and lied about being "at a bar" (more like a strip club "bar" ha ha). I swear the drinks at strip clubs are so overpriced it's ridiculous but hey, they do serve breakfast super early in the morning! So yeah, long story short I was super drunk apparently and my ex decided to pay $50 or $60 for me to get a dance from one of the strippers. The girl who gave me the lap dance actually did let me touch her and straight up put MY hands on her boobs. I at one point said to her "am I supposed to do this?" with such a "confused yet happy" look on my face as my ex put it (and was smiling the whole time I got the dance). She told me that they don't allow guys to touch them but admitted they give the ladies better lap dances because "we don't have to worry about them getting horny". She also told my ex at the time "your girlfriend is so cute", must've been because I asked if I'm supposed to do this like a moron when she clearly put my hands on her boobs and I also had them on her hips and then waist at one point.

As for Gen not letting Jared go, I do believe her time with black magic is coming to an end. I think Jared and her are exhausting all measures available to make their marriage stay alive. It seems even though he made other trips to Hooters and stopped photographing himself at these places, it seems he has started back up again in recent months. Hmm, thank you so much for coming by Anon with this tip.

[animalhumanemn]

We adopted Kylo from the Golden Valley site on New Years' Eve 2023.

2023 was a really difficult year for my husband and I and started with one of our senior dogs (Daisy) going to the urgent care vet on January 1st. The year progressed with her being diagnosed with degenerative neuropathy and Cushing’s. About half way through the year (on Memorial Day) our other senior dog (Duke) became ill and was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma 2 days later. It had already spread throughout his body so we made the extremely difficult decision to end his suffering and say goodbye. This was the first time we had ever had to make the decision to say goodbye to a fur-baby and it was the most difficult decision we had ever been faced with!

Returning home to Daisy (and Poppy) without Duke was heartbreaking! Daisy was never the same after he passed and developed severe separation anxiety. Her health continued to be a rollercoaster for the next few months and life without her best buddy definitely took a toll on her. In early November she developed a gagging cough and ended up at the emergency vet in the middle of the night. She was diagnosed with heart failure and atrial fibrillation. The outlook wasn't good and she had already been through so much throughout the year, that we again made the heart-wrenching decision to end her suffering and pain and say goodbye.

Two dogs in one year was more than we could bear and it broke us! We weren't sure we would ever be able to open our hearts up to another dog after we lost two of our best friends. Luckily, we had our sweet cat (Poppy) there to comfort us with endless cuddles. Her unconditional love is what got us through those first few months. After a couple of months passed, we were really struggling with how quiet the house was without Daisy and Duke. We had at least one dog in our home for the last 14 years and had never lived in a house as a couple without one. So we started to casually look at puppies online at Animal Humane Society. Our hearts slowly started to open up to the idea that maybe we could share our love with a dog again, but we were concerned about how we would introduce a dog to Poppy as her happiness and wellbeing were our main priority and concern.

We visited the Humane Society a few times over the next few weeks and visited with a few puppies, but nothing felt quite right. The Friday before New Year's Eve we saw a puppy online at the Coon Rapids location. After we both got off work we met there to go visit with him. Unfortunately, another couple already had him in a visitation room and ended up taking him home. We took that as a sign that he wasn’t the puppy for us and decided to keep looking online and decided that we would make a trip to Golden Valley right when they opened Sunday morning (New Year's Eve) to see what puppies they had available. We looked at the website on Saturday evening and had our eye on a 3-month-old puppy, Biscuit. She was absolutely adorable and we figured she was still young enough to be able to work with her on building a great relationship with Poppy.

We arrived at the Golden Valley location shortly after they opened on New Years Eve and quickly made our way back to the puppy suites. We located a volunteer and asked to take Biscuit into a visitation room. We visited with her for a while, but the connection wasn’t really there. We could see the other puppies from the room we were in and noticed a little pure white puppy watching us. My husband left the room to find a volunteer because he wanted to switch puppies and visit with him instead. Not long after switching puppies we knew something was different. This one felt right, but would he get along with Poppy? We stayed in the visitation room with him for over an hour and visited with several staff and volunteers during that period trying to decide if this would work. The last volunteer we visited with was a foster for kittens and shared her experience with us and told us confidently that she thought he would be a good fit for Poppy if we introduced them slowly. So we decided to leave that day with Kylo, still not completely sure we were ready for this, but knowing that we wouldn’t have the heart to return him, so we had to make this work!

We weren’t attached to the name Kylo so thought about changing it to Peanut. Later that evening; out of curiosity, I googled “Kylo meaning”. What popped up at the top of my search was “Sky; Heavenly” and we instantly knew we had to keep the name. I am a true believer that everything happens for a reason, whether we see it right away or not and it felt like this was a sign that he had been sent to us by our fur-babies who crossed the rainbow bridge earlier in the year.

Two months have passed since we brought our sweet Kylo home. His personality and appearance are an odd 50/50 combination of Daisy and Duke. While he looks more like Duke in his stature, he has Daisy’s color. He loves to cuddle in blankets like Duke used to, and sleeps with his limbs in the air like Daisy used to. He is a constant reminder of our fur-babies that have passed, but also brings a new life into our house that we haven’t had in a while. I think he is exactly what we needed to be able to move forward. I still struggle with the loss of Daisy and Duke every day, but he is there to help me through it alongside Poppy. The first few weeks were really tough introducing him to Poppy, but I am happy to report that as of a few weeks ago we are all sleeping in the same bed and Kylo no longer has to be on a leash in the house!

I want to say “THANK YOU” to everyone involved with Animal Humane Society! The work you do is so AMAZING! Kylo is our 4th fur-baby adopted from Animal Humane Society's Golden Valley location.

(Daisy & Duke are in the first picture, Kylo and Poppy are in the second picture and Kylo is pictured alone in the last one)

— Sarah & Matt

[wolfpants]

Honesty Hour: a deleted scene from one of your Drarry fics? Or a scene that was meant to be different?

Hey anon! Thanks for coming along for happy hour (ask me anything! although every hour is happy hour for me, tbh!).

Here's a little something from Terrible People, which didn't make it into the final draft after I decided to take the fic in a different direction. It's towards the end of the fic, when they're in Ibiza.

-

Deleted/alternative Terrible People scene - TW for Lucius asshattery

Draco wakes up the next morning to an empty bed. He’s on his back. He’s been sleeping on his back since he was a teenager. Before then, it was always on his stomach; knee tucked up, hand curled under his chin, thumb within easy reach of his mouth.  At age ten, six months before his eleventh birthday and nine months before he was due to start at Hogwarts, Draco’s father had started a new nightly ritual with him. “This,” he’d said, unscrewing the cap of the steely grey potion bottle purchased from the apothecary in Bath one frosty January morning, “is for you. Boys at ten do not suck their thumb. Hogwarts students-to-be do not suck their thumb.” It’d tasted vile. Sharp and acetous and unsafe. Draco had had to dip his thumb in it every night before bed, had the further humiliation of packing it in his school trunk for the first year of Hogwarts, unseen and unknown to anyone else but Pomfrey who’d had to calm his panicked nerves whenever he couldn’t sleep just because he had nothing else to soothe him. It’d become natural, then, to sleep on his back, hand tucked out of sight and out of reach. More-so as he got older, as the dangers at night became less about his own self-control and more about keeping safe from everything he couldn’t control on the outside. From then on, it’s just become natural to him, to sleep like this, unless he has a partner he feels safe enough to show his back to. Draco stares at the ceiling. It’s white, the same shade as the walls, and the bookshelf that keeps the sleeping nook separated from the rest of the suite is casting a shadow, long and stretched, as the sun trickles up the watery horizon outside.  It must be early. Last night, when they finally made it back to the boat by the skin of their teeth, Harry had tried to get him to stay up, to go out drinking in the main bar, to dance with all the other partygoers looking forward to their last stop in Ibiza. He’d been tactile and soft and tempting; a dangerous thing and a worsening bad habit. Draco had chosen bed, and a break, and his sanity. His phone buzzes on the pillow next to his head, startling him. He swears as several text messages fly onto his screen, one after the other. Are you awake?  Btw it’s me Harry Pansy gave me your number sorryyyy Brekkie? Draco heaves a sigh, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He checks the time. He makes that ten hours. I’ll meet you outside the lifts in thirty.

[omegaremix]

25 Years Of Discovery.

January 1st, 2000 came with such underwhelming results. Didn’t help that last summer I had to permanently cut ties with a Judas sorority cousin after a public screaming match in front of family, neighbors, and strangers. I also pissed away the ones closest to me, my circle of “friends” from Brentwood. The liars, narcissists, victim-blamers, and the ones who left me out to dry all alone in parking lots because they were too awesome having fun in groups. Now you see why I had to spend New Year’s at the neighborhood church, pining away three hours until midnight arrived and even I couldn’t have that. A mother arrived with two screaming kids at 11:30 PM and all the while she’s running around the aisles between the seats, shuffling around like crazy catching them to stay put and she acted like a stereotypical soccer mom in the process. The most anti-climactic way to celebrate anything ever.

As my former friend Victoria said: “sometimes you have to go through the worst to get to the best.” Nice one, sweetheart. The best isn’t guaranteed no matter what people suffer through. The following Summer saw myself dealing with even more fallouts and the unpleasant surprises kept delivering.

What became of a Summer job working at the pool supply store with my friend Dede became a weekend bully convention. Dede, who got me the job, showed his true colors when he stood and laughed at me as two co-workers swung boxcutters at me. Store managers who heard my concerns nodded their heads and promised action, but in the end did zero. Showing up five minutes early for my shift wasn’t enough for Dede, however, and the Ever-Controlling One wanted me to work more days. "Who cares about your well-being?", he argued, because according to him it was all about him and his job. After daily dealings with his elitist prima-donna starfucker attitudes and half of the store talking about me behind my back, I no-showed him and shut him out for good. The next morning, he called my house while I was sleeping. “Why did you quit on me?” he asked. No “hello”, no “what’s wrong”, no “hey, everything OK?”. I answered by hanging up on him. Good-bye and good riddance to a self-important narcissistic asshole. But, I still had one out left in the deck. That out was Anna.

Anna and I had plans to meet up at Ocean City where she lived. Eight months of weekend online chats, pictures, cassette trades, hand-written letters (!), and Sunday night calls in the making. Here was a 5’8” pale Polish girl of straight neck-length brunette hair, green eyes, mid-cut shirts and tight jeans. Cute, flirtatious, charming. She came across so amorous and complimentary in such a way I never felt from anyone before. We’d trade notes about my struggles dealing with prima-donna underground musicians and egocentric writer-critics. She had her own drama with friends, co-workers, and exes- while recapping last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live. It was one of the few shining points of a dismal few semesters at community college. All fucking week I looked forward to those two hours talking to her on the phone. The time was right for me to come visit. She wanted it to happen. We made plans well in advance in what would be a unique event for me. To meet someone in a different state via Greyhound and experience something totally new would be exceptional.

Sunday night comes and I get a phone call from her to verify that it’s a go…it’s not happening. She broke the news to me in a sad let-down tone. Our plans were canceled. What was it? Was it because I was quiet about her mixtapes she sent me? Or was it because I saw no indication that she didn’t keep base with her folks that I was coming over and maybe her cover was blown? To this day I don’t even know. She never gave me a reason. They usually don’t. Real nice how some people show their interest in you, take it all back at the last minute and ultimately string you along for a few more miles before leaving you on the side of the road and drive away, never to be heard from again.

It’s June 19th and Summer was on life support. The only saving grace was spending 4th of July at a friend’s house. Then it finally died. I had close to nothing. No job, no pursuits, no movement, nada. Only a Playstation, bike rides to the library, and some trips to the bookstore to buy whatever music with what little money I still had. I was grateful in no longer having a selfish self-centered superstar for a friend, manager, and connection. On the other hand, Anna made me feel dejected because our plans were no more with no reason why. The season now became an excruciating waiting game for Autumn for a final unbearable semester at Suffolk Community.

I was already one year into listening to WUSB. They were the only game in town that played industrial and underground hip-hop. I tried hard to distract myself from recently losing the chance to see Anna, so radio was the drug of choice. I had plenty of blanks to run record on during my late-night shoot-’em-up sessions. Dubbing had been my weekly ritual since the Brentwood era. It was our way of capturing the moment. Downloading and streaming was in their infancy, and we didn’t have the permanence of online archives or YouTube. If you missed it, that’s it. Four, five, six tapes were lined up for the record button with one set aside to be transferred on. That was the beauty of dual tape decks, consolidation, and re-recording. Hit the red dot and let the chips fall as they may. Up on the itinerary: one of the four hip-hop slots our station had on the grid. Ghetto Radio, Street FM, The Basement, or Eminent Audio. Those slots never played the commercial -ish at the time, and they were four reasons why I returned to hip-hop after mostly abandoning it by senior year.

So, this happened: two of Eminent Audio’s dee-jays decided to play some short snippets of Seventies’ jazz, fusion, funk, and groove. Some late Seventies’ groove-line, and some Eighties’ R&B. The classics spun in short 20-30 second bursts, one after the other. It all started with Gang Starr’s “The Planet” which sampled Taj Mahal’s “The Cuckoo”, followed by Steve Davis’ “It’s All Because She’s Gone”, then Galt MacDermot’s First Natural Hair Band’s “Ripped Open By Metal Explosions”. Nas’ “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” were also thrown into the mix.

And then, the Ace in the deck: Les McCann’s “Vallarta” ('77).

It played in the tinniest quality, as if it was trying so hard to push itself out of a drive-in movie speakerbox. It hit. It fucking hit like no other. Those feelings of watching those big money shows and ginger'd moms from Indianapolis deal with divorced life and her two kids, as I remember seeing it in my Brooklyn youth. Richard ‘Groove’ Holmes’ “Onsaya Joy” hit in the exact same fashion, too. Then Bob James’ “Caribbean Nights”. I was absolutely stunned out of my fucking mind.

The following week, Asmar (The Basement), always one to keep it real and spit consciousness, played Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes’ “Expansions” (‘75). Then the comedown: “Aspirations” and finally “Colors Of The Rainbow”. None more accurate to describe the sounds and tonality of an isolated and introverted down summer. At that point that week’s Basement ended and it completely settled in.

It was all over for me.

The sampling parade and Lonnie Liston Smith songs tied into an era, a Borough Park childhood of spending days sitting at home playing with an Atari 2600, watching game shows (with surprise devils, computerized dragons, and lightning bolts), and late Fifties’ Looney Toons on a RGB-lens projector television. The days of my Brooklyn years continued on as an Eighties kid on the island when some of the most memorable moments, believe it or not, were these television station i.d.’s, opening and end credits, and production logos. 11 Alive, WGBH, WABC’s 4:30 Movie, WCBS’s The Late Show Intro, WPIX Channel 11 Film Festival, PBS, Magnetic Home Video, World-Northal, Viacom’s ‘V’ Of Doom, its sister Screen Gem's 'S' Of Doom, and chuckling pinball sounds with Peignot type…I can go on. They stayed with me the whole time. From that point on, I started staying in touch with myself. I always missed those obscure years living in Brooklyn. You miss them because you feel you haven’t had enough of them. Take all those moments, connect the dots, connect the stars, and get everything out of what you can that had everything to do with the era.

I started buying my own vinyl before the turn of the millennium, shortly after I started going to record stores. Only after WUSB’s Summer programming did I start pursuing the classics whenever and wherever I could. It was one way I had to keep up. A trip to what was Bay Shore’s Special Sauce, a skate and ski shop, once sold bins of vinyl records and was the first of many vinyl splurges. When I wasn’t crate-digging, I always referred to the-breaks.com, one of the first sampling sources on the net, way before WhoSampled took the lead it has now. Meanwhile, classic Seventies’ Saturday Night Live episodes followed and later discovered that my significant Yenny had GSN. You could imagine her level of tolerance to have her record these old shows for me on the regular. No, I lied. She was pretty cool about it.

YouTube came halfway into my stay at Stony Brook and I re-discovered those i.d.’s, credits, and logos. It was when I got deeper into collecting and finding those key artists that matched where I came from. John Tropea, Vic Juris, Chick Corea, and Esther Phillips. more Lonnie Liston Smith, Eric Gale, and Les McCann (again). Another very important kicker was my very first jump into library music. (Hello, KPM. Nice to meet you.) That's where I found Alan Hawkshaw, Brian Bennett, and Alan Parker. In fact, it was Parker’s “Unlimited Love” that was used for one of WABC’s movie intros-. Down the road towards the end of the Aughts, my vert first trip to High Fidelity’s old location in Amityville had me discover Phil Upchurch and Billy Cobham. That visit showed me to shop by year of release and gamble on artists I knew totally nothing about. That explains why I have two Karla Bonoff records, The Olympic Runners, Stuff, Maynard Ferguson, Urbie Green, and Ramsey Lewis.

I got re-acquainted with KPM after the turn of the decade, and made an entire mixtape / playlist dedicated to nothing but these sounds. Just so happened that I listened to nothing but Seventies, jazz / fusion, funk, groove line, and soul sounds for that entire Autumn and during Hurricane Sandy. The ultimate point of no return was when I found two very essential groups: Vinyl Archeologie and Reef Ali’s Vinyl Frontier. Could you imagine all these rare and obscure finds for samplers, crate-diggers, and producers they collectively unearthed? The sounds always featured on these groups (as well as Breaks & Samples and The Real Digging And Archeology) have shown me that it all goes to a whole new level.

These above groups are (all) the figurative time machine that takes me to places that no longer exist, ones which I’ve never experienced or been to, but felt like I have. They’ve extended my interest in jazz, soul, classic R&B, funk, groove, and fusion. To this day, they still do. This first-ever “jazz, fusion, rare groove, obscurity, resonance, vinyl finds, and sampling” showcase that aired on my radio show (Summer '13) not only made part of a personal summer mixtape, but symbolizes an all-too-important moment in my timeline with an addict ex-. Because of them, once-unknowns are now all-to-familiars to me. Gordon’s War, Starfire, Sass, Champaign, McNeal & Niles, and perhaps one of the most magical of them all, General Lee & The Space Army Band.

Since then, my affinity for these sounds have all but solidified. In the last few years, I discovered the Music DeWolfe, Patchwork, and Themes International library labels. Vinyl Archeologie and Vinyl Frontier have continued to unearth classics, resuscitate legacies, and renew interests in original artists. Omega is still doing bonus sampling / crate-digger broadcasts, and I’m always returning to find those classic programming moments for myself. With the help of Shazam and YouTube comments, I finally bullseye’d Otto Cesana & His Orchestra’s “Hi!”, Syd Dale’s “Cuban Presto”, and Reg Tilsley’s “Hold The Road”. I’m still unearthing new finds in the form of Emily Remler, Eddie Russ, Teddy Lasry, Tomorrow’s People, and Walt Barr. And, it seemed like only yesterday (Spring / Summer '18) that I once dropped $1,500 to all of the island’s record stores for post-surgery shopping therapy, and I did another record-store tour (Spring / Summer '22) in a winner-take-all fashion for double the price. If there was jazz, soul, fusion, whatever - it was mine.

I can’t say that the unreliables above (my former manager "friend" and the Jersey girl) made for vinyl music to happen. They’re isolated incidents. The sounds that our hip-hop dee-jays made possible happened regardless. I just happened to catch it. I still have the original recordings and digitized them last this year. How wild is it that the Summer has been salvaged from being a total bust for being in the right moment at the right time? How wild is it that one moment has carried on and still thrives to this day? It will continue to keep going because there’s always be something waiting to be discovered all over again. And as long as that does, the self-discovery continues, the broadcasts continue, the spending sprees continue, I continue. Here’s hoping you’ll do the same in your own right.

[justforbooks]

Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Japanese musician whose remarkably eclectic career straddled pop, experimentalism and Oscar-winning film composition, has died aged 71.

As a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra alongside Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto created joyous and progressive electronic pop in the late 1970s and early 1980s, alongside solo releases. He acted alongside David Bowie in the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and composed its celebrated theme, the first in a series of film scores including Oscar-winning work in 1987 with David Byrne and Cong Su for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.

Sakamoto had twice been diagnosed with cancer. In 2014, he took a year off from music as he recovered from throat cancer, describing the illness as “the most harsh, physically painful time in my life”.

In January 2021, he announced he had been diagnosed with bowel cancer, saying: “From now on, I will be living alongside cancer. But, I am hoping to make music for a little while longer.”

He was born in Tokyo in 1952, and began taking piano lessons aged six, later attending Tokyo University of the Arts to study music. He trained on early synthesizers, and enthused by everything from Debussy to Kraftwerk, began working on various musical projects, including with Hosono and Takahashi. After Sakamoto released his 1978 solo debut, Thousand Knives – playing melodies that harked back to traditional Japanese music on electronic equipment – the trio realised their vision for a Japanese disco-pop group, Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO).

The group became a huge success in Japan – in 1980, two of their albums stayed at No 1 and No 2 in the charts for seven weeks, and they had seven Top 5 albums during their career. “Accidentally the three of us became very popular,” he remembered in 2018. “Walking the street in Tokyo, people pointed at me. I hated it.”

Their English-language lyrics helped them cross over into the US, where they appeared on the TV show Soul Train, and their electronic production influenced early hip-hop and electro scenes. Michael Jackson covered their song Behind the Mask and intended to include it on Thriller, but a royalties disagreement prevented it.

Their track Computer Game was also a Top 20 hit in the UK. YMO went on hiatus in 1984, though occasionally reunited for releases and reunion concerts.

Alongside YMO, Sakamoto continued releasing solo albums including 1980’s B-2 Unit, another influence on the robotically funky sound of electro that also foreshadowed other dance music styles. After focusing purely on solo work, he forged further connections in the west, collaborating with musicians including Iggy Pop, Robert Wyatt, Laurie Anderson, David Sylvian and more. Sylvian contributed Forbidden Colours, a vocal version of one of Sakamoto’s most famous works, the theme to second world war drama Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. Sakamoto also starred in the film as a prisoner of war camp commander.

Following The Last Emperor (in which he also had an acting role), he collaborated with Bernardo Bertolucci again for The Last Buddha, and with Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence director Nagisa Oshima for Gohatto. He also scored two films by Brian De Palma (Snake Eyes and Femme Fatale), plus Wild Palms for Oliver Stone, High Heels for Pedro Almodóvar, the 1990 film adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, and more. His 2015 score for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film The Revenant was nominated for Golden Globe, Bafta and Grammy awards. In 2019, he composed the music for an episode of dystopian TV drama series Black Mirror. He took no further acting roles, aside from appearing as a film director in Rain, a music video for Madonna.

Sakamoto released a steady schedule of solo releases throughout the 1990s and onwards, and wrote a piece for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. In 1999 he debuted the multimedia opera project Life, in collaboration with artist Shiro Takatani with contributions from Bertolucci, Pina Bausch and more. He and Takatani extended the concept into installation work from 2007 onwards.

Also in 2007, he began the ambitious Schola project, curating 17 compilations of global music ranging from composers such as Ravel and Beethoven to Japanese pop. It was released via his record label Commmons, set up in 2006, which has also released work by artists including Boredoms and OOIOO.

In 2002, he began a fruitful partnership with German musician Carsten Nicolai, who used his Alva Noto alias for four collaborative albums of minimalist electronica.

Sakamoto was also an environmental campaigner, opposing the use of nuclear power, and creating the forestry project More Trees to enable carbon offsetting.

In 1982, Sakamoto married Japanese pop musician Akiko Yano, a touring member of YMO and a successful solo artist in her own right. They split in 1992, and eventually filed for divorce in 2006. They had a daughter, pop singer Miu Sakamoto.

Since the early 1990s, Sakamoto has been in a relationship with Norika Sora. Their son Neo Sora contributed to a documentary, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, directed by Stephen Nomura Schible in 2018.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[lantur]

I used to work as a patient education event planner, and now (as of January, when I moved into leadership), I don't. I had one last large event, our signature annual event, to wrap up before I officially and fully handed the torch of my job off to my replacement. My replacement just started last week, and I've been training him.

I was super stressed about the event yesterday, because part of it involved public speaking to a group of 250 people (in-person) and another 200 virtually. :/ But it went well! It was great to see a lot of the friends I've made amongst the patients in the community over the last 7 years in attendance at the event. It was even better to watch the event unfold and know it was my last time doing this, and that I have no stakes in it anymore. It was even better to walk New Guy through everything he would have to do to plan future conferences and symposiums. Emphasis on he, not me.

Event planning on the large scale is incredibly challenging. I have some fond memories of holding events all over the state over 7 years, driving hundreds of miles across Minnesota in the very early hours of the morning, watching the sun rise, fueled by a Holiday gas station coffee. I spent most of my twenties doing this. It used to bring me adrenaline, joy, and accomplishment to plan an event, basically solo. In 2020, I pivoted to Zoom symposiums, and in 2022, I pivoted back to in-person. But paradoxically, event planning became more and more challenging for me the longer I stayed in the job. I'm incredibly happy and grateful to have moved on.

I used to carry boxes of stuff with me to every patient education event. Boxes or bags filled with patient ed literature, signage for the event, etc. It was heavy to carry and it always took multiple trips to and from the venue and my car. It was pretty liberating to take all of that with me yesterday for one last time and set it up one last time in the morning - and then hand it all off to New Guy when I left. I got to walk out of the venue with nothing more than my own backpack with my laptop and wallet in it. It felt very symbolic of finally closing this chapter in my life and moving on.

Other notes,

I've had issues with sleep since I was a young teenager. I was basically incapable of sleeping through the night. Every night, like clockwork, I would wake up between 3 to 5 AM and be unable to fall back asleep for at least 1.5 hours - despite melatonin, exercising during the day, etc. My psychiatrist suggested trying magnesium supplements. I've been taking it at night for almost 10 days now. For the first time in almost two decades, I'm sleeping through the night. It's amazing.