#* threads : holly and ben.

[seattlites]

ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE. ↪ for benjamin morgan, @sgmwesters​​

when holly had left atlanta, she was in search of something that she couldn’t find in the comfort of home or those close to her. her brother leaving the big city he had convinced her to move to was a big factor but she also wanted to get to know the world. use her skills as a nurse for something greater than just herself. never in a million years she’d think she would find someone to love while working abroad.

truth be told, their relationship was still kind of new. some would disagree, considering they had been together for a couple of years. but as holly would like to remind herself, bonding in the other side of the world when they were removed from the normalcy of western society and their day-to-day jobs wasn’t exactly the same. living together for just a couple of months was proving to be more challenging than handle a whole medical center by herself in the middle of nowhere.

“sorry i didn’t make it for lunch.” holly was happy to have a night-in with her boyfriend. these days their schedules were so opposite they barely saw each other. “the ER was an absolute chaos, i barely had time to eat.” which was why she had texted him saying she’d bring sushi for dinner. it was one of those days. “please tell me your day was better than mine.” holly brought the plate of sushi to the coffee table by the sofa, where ben was waiting for her with two glasses of wine.

[jungle-angel]

Into The Wild Woods (Ben Mears x Reader)

Summary: You, Ben and the coven are all out on a hunt one night when you receive some unexpected help from the most unlikely of places

Warnings: Injuries, religion, multifandom crossovers etc.

Tagging: @floydsmuse @attapullman @rhettabbotts @sebsxphia

You placed your hand on Ben's clammy forehead, his chest heaving from his labored breathing. A horrid wet sounding cough came from his throat as Father Callahan made the sign of the cross on his forehead, lips and chest with a few drops of holy water. You very gently pressed a cotton ball against the scratches on his chest, surrounded by tiny little threads of blue and beginning to turn an ugly black.

"Damnit!" Father Callahan hissed. "Where's Dorothea when you need her? She'd be able to draw this out of him."

You wished with every fiber of your being that the voodoo priestess was here too and not three and a half hours away in Bangor. With her and Father Callahan's help, she'd be able to draw out the black poison that was beginning to show itself.

"Baby......." he mumbled, his speech beginning to slur. "M'freezing.....keep me warm....."

You lowered your head to kiss him. "I'll stay with you," you promised him. "Don't worry. You're safe."

Father Callahan gathered the rest of the coven around him. "Listen up," he told them. "I want every single one of you to go and find as much wild garlic as you can. Find wild garlic, buckthorn, wild roses, juniper, holly, hawthorn, anything that's in the plant section of the grimoire, go find it......hurry!"

Off into the woods they all ran, Mark Petrie, Mike and Lucy Ryerson, Matt Burke, Bonnie and Corey Bryant and all the rest, searching frantically while you and Randy stayed with Ben. Their lanterns and flashlights burned like fiery eyes in the woods as they went about searching for the plants that would help draw out the vampire poison.

At last, Father Callahan had found something, the blooms still fresh on a wild hedge of roses likely from an abandoned shack or cabin in the woods and smelling heavily of the rugosa roses Mabel Wertz had planted outside the coven house. Quickly with the Swiss Army knife in his pocket he began cutting as many off the bushes as he could, petals and all when he suddenly felt something pointy against his throat.

"What's this?" asked a woman's voice in the dark. "A priest caught off his guard?"

Father Callahan looked up and over his shoulder, relieved at the face he saw.

**************************

You and Ben were startled by the blinding white light that suddenly emerged from the trees, illuminating your faces. A huge white stag came galloping over the grass and rocks, the antlers like a great crown upon its head. Somewhere behind it, four horses with riders upon their backs followed, the hoofbeats thumping along the ground.

The stag disappeared into thin air when the horses reigned in to a stop but the light didn't fade as the riders dismounted. Your jaw dropped when you saw who they were.

"Is he bad (y/n)?" Harry asked, kneeling beside Ben.

"He was scratched," you answered.

"Doxy?" Harry asked again.

You shook your head. "Vampire."

Harry sucked in a breath. "Fuck," he cursed under his breath. "Malfoy!"

A silver haired rider in a cloak of deep green and black hurried to you, Harry and Ben with a drawstring bag. Ben shuddered when Draco touched his skin, the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.

"He's beyond the help of muggles," Draco concluded. "He needs wizard medicine."

"But what about the others?" you asked. "They went off to find wild garlic and the other things."

"We'll make a paste and wrap the wound with it," Draco answered. "But we need to hurry and get home. If we wait too long he'll fade."

The others came rushing back with the wild plants and quickly, Draco, Harry, Ginny and Astoria set to work making a paste with the plants. Ben's face scrunched in pain when it was applied, his big hand squeezing yours as Draco's careful hand applied it, his voice speaking in some language that neither of you had ever heard before.

"How did you know where to find us?" Father Callahan asked.

"Easy," Harry chuckled, tightening the saddle on the huge horse he had ridden. "Abraxan horses have noses keener than a bloodhound's. They smelled trouble and started going absolutely mad. That and four of your Russian friends were lurking around in the woods."

Father Callahan nodded. Leave it to the four sisters to tell others where they were.

"You'll need to come with us," Hermione told the priest. "All of you. The woods aren't safe from these creatures and we fear there will be worse ones by daylight."

"But vampires only come out at night," Mark told her.

"Hermione's right," Harry told him. "We need to be on the move before and during daybreak. Your friend is beyond muggle help and he's fading fast. The ones we're after only come out during the day and will chase us if given the chance. We cannot give it to them."

"How are we supposed to go with you guys?" Mike asked him. "There's no portal, no standing stones, nothing."

"Cumberland Ford," Harry answered. "It's the easiest way in and out. We won't need a portkey if we go there."

Matt, Father Callahan and Mike shivered. Frank and Beth Daniels, both members of the Mikmaq Nation, had told them that there were things that had happened in Cumberland Ford that for generations, their people had never been able to explain. Perhaps that had been it.

Other horses were brought forth, all of them the same as Harry, Ginny and Draco's mounts. Hagrid, giant of a man he was, gladly took charge of you and Ben while the others rode alone or with others. Ginny carried Randy on her back in a pale blue wrap while Mark coiled his arms tightly around Harry.

One swift nudge from the riders and off they flew into the night, leaving the woods behind them and hurrying on for the long miles ahead.

Morning soon broke and with it had come the danger that Hermione had spoken of. From out of the woodlines had come those black, ragged creatures who were truly far worse than any bloodsucker imagineable.

The horses thundered along but the dementors wheeled and swooped in for the kill, coming close to the pack of riders. Mark clung fast to Harry, shutting his eyes while you held on to Hagrid. All of you slalomed through the trees and galloped over the hills, urging the horses ever faster.

Mark watched in awed terror as a dementor swooped in and came alongside them. Harry called out the command, drawing his wand and unleashing the light of the patronus shield, clinging to the stallion's bridle. The dementors shrieked and flew away as they galloped faster and faster, turning around one tree and then another.

You watched in horror as one began to reach its bony arm and shriveled hand for Ben, daring to try and draw his already weakened life force from his body. You heard the loud screaming of a horse, thinking it was one of yours but there before your eyes was Ginny's mare, a blinding blue-white that trampled the dementors beneath her hooves.

Over the hills, through woods and across the gullies you rode with the others until at last you reached it, that huge stretch off river that cut through the cliffs like a silver ribbon. The horses splashed across the water but the dementors stopped dead in their tracks.

"Give up the hunters wizard filth!" the leader of the dementors commanded, his voice dead and grating.

Harry drew the sword of Gryffindor from the scabbard in the belt of his jeans. "You want them?!" he taunted defiantly. "Come and claim them!"

The dementors began to make their way across but the wizards never once backed away nor did the horses. Harry drew his wand and began to speak some sort of indiscernible spell. With a wave of his arm, the waters of the Androscoggin River suddenly roared to life, rushing around a hairpin bend and taking the shape of horses which neighed and screamed wildly. The dementors flew in fright but the water pulled them under, drowning them all in one fell swoop.

Harry reigned in his horse and the rest of you followed him deeper into the ford.

************************

Ben's eyes fluttered open as he woke, finding himself in a strange room with the sun pouring in through the stained glass windows near his bed. A smile crawled across his face when he saw you sitting next to him, more so when he saw the image of a lady in a Victorian nurse's uniform moving in the stained glass.

"Morning Sleeping Beauty," you chuckled.

Ben laughed a little as you leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "How long was I out for?" he asked, his voice gravelly from sleep.

"Twelve hours," you told him, brushing a loose strand of hair out of his face.

"Oh bless ye Mr. Mears!" exclaimed the image of the lady. "Bless ye, ye be awake!"

Ben laughed as he tried to sit up, wincing at the pain on his chest.

"Now don't ye go and try sittin up, ye hear?" the lady said. "I'll be right back."

He saw her flitting through one window after another until a nurse in her bright green and white uniform entered the room.

"Hah!" Madame Strout exclaimed. "And that old fool of an intern told me he wouldn't awake. Well serves the little toad right for what I'll do to him later. I see you're in much better shape, Mr. Mears."

"A little but not by much," Ben answered.

"Oh no, don't you dare strain yourself," she ordered, helping to prop him up. "After what you've been through, you absolutely must rest. And I'll certainly hear about it from your watchnurse in the window."

You and Ben turned your gazes to the window where the lady was once again seated with her book, the little gold banner underneath reading the name "Anu O'Maileigh" underneath. She giggled a little and turned her attention back to her book.

"Where are we anyways?" Ben asked.

"You my dear boy are at St. Mungo's and rightfully so," Madame Strout informed him. "Had your friends been any longer and you would've faded. Terrible thing that is, neither here nor there but in between worlds and stuck therein."

Ben shuddered at the thought and you did too.

"Thankfully your friends had knowledge of how to draw out vampire poison," Madame Strout remarked, pouring some orange liquid into a glass. "Makes me quite glad to see that a good portion of muggles still have respect for our ways."

Ben smiled a little, dead tired as he was. "You ever hunt vampires before?"

"Oh have I," Madame Strout said matter of factly. "In fact my father was an auror who chased them down from here to the Carpathians. You wouldn't know it, but a good friend and partner of his turned out to be Van Helsing himself."

Yours and Ben's jaws dropped. "No way!" he exclaimed.

"Oh yes way," Madame Strout told him, mixing together the odd assortment of powders and the juice that was as orange as a pumpkin. "Taught the good doctor everything he knew of hunting vampires and more. In fact, he was so skilled at his craft that he willingly taught muggles how to defend themselves against the foul things at his own secret school. The Harkers were the first teachers enlisted along with the rest of their compatriots."

You and Ben couldn't believe such a thing. It amazed you how the lines between the ordinary world and the realms of magic could be so blurred.

Madame Strout made him drink the entire glass she had mixed together, the motherly nurse in no mood for any shenanigans. "This is pretty good," Ben told her. "Tastes kinda like a Bloody Mary."

"A Bloody Mary with a bit of our own secret ingredient," she told him. "Though I won't tell you what it is. A nurse never reveals her secrets."

Madame Strout made her rounds just as the others were beginning to come in. None of them had been harmed in their flight to the ford, much to your relief, all of them relieved beyond words that Ben was awake and alert.

He spent the better part of two weeks at the hospital and when there was no trace of poison left, Ben was given the all clear to head home. All of you thanked your newfound friends for their help, saddened a little to have to return to the lot. But before you had all left, the witches and wizards promised that this wouldn't be the last time you visited their world, nor would it be the last time they visited yours.

And you and Ben looked forward to that day immensely.

[transgenderswagcompetitions]

Okay! So I don't have an official bracket yet, but I finally got every character written down and determined who will be automatically going on to Round 1 and who will have to compete in preliminaries. Everyone automatically moving on to Round 1 had more than 1 submission, while everyone in the preliminaries only had 1 submission.

I will put together an official bracket tomorrow, but here's the list of competitors!

The characters automatically going on to Round 1 are:

Alex Fierro from Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (4 submissions)

Shi Qingxuan from Heaven Official's Blessing (2 submissions)

Cheery Littlebottom from Discworld (2 submissions)

Nimona from Nimona (2 submissions)

Elle Argent from Heartstopper (2 submissions)

Eolo from The Raven Tower (2 submissions)

Anthony J. Crowley from Good Omens (2 submissions)

Kade West from Wayward Children (2 submissions)

Kel Brezon from Machineries of Empire (2 submissions)

The characters that will be competing in the Preliminaries are:

Rafe from Viscera

Rafe from The House of Whispers

Ash from DIE

Ash from Girl Haven

Jerico Soberanis from The Toll

Nadir from The Thirty Names of Night

Holly from The Mellification

Petrichor from Saga

Kazuhito "Kirito" Kirigaya from Sword Art Online

Aster Vanissen from Witch Boy

Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes

Vess from Invisible Kingdom

Tonkee Innovator Dibars from The Broken Earth Trilogy

Ben Van Brunt from Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow

Shuos Zehun from Machineries of Empire

Villy from Basil and Oregano

Valentine Weis from World Running Down

Howl Pendragon from Howl's Moving Castle

Hero from Something's Not Right

Dominic Seneschal from Terra Ignota

Firestar from Warriors

Enjolras from Les Miserables

Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

Axolotl from Wings of Fire

Isa from Transmuted

Inspector Javert from Les Miserables

Addy from Basil and Oregano

June Egbert from Homestuck

Alto from Your Mind is a Terrible Thing

David from Dark Currents

Monique from The Worm and His Kings

Viola Carroll from A Lady for a Duke

Will Avery from Names for the Dawn

Qven-and-Reet from Translation State

Syd from The Heartbreak Bakery

Claire/Claude from Baker Thief

Cersei Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire

Will Treaty from Ranger's Apprentice

Starflight from Wings of Fire

Yadriel from Cemetery Boys

Zila from Aurora Cycle

Kaladin Stormblessed from The Stormlight Archive

AR/Lil Hal from Homestuck

Zoe from Sleepless Domain

Sera from Angela: Queen of Hel

Max Owen from Magical Boy

Jonathan Harker from Dracula

Diana Wrayburn from The Shadowhunter Chronicles

Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula

Never from Skulduggery Pleasant

Benji/Benjamin from Hell Followed With Us

Brick from Warriors

Sidra from Wayfarers

Sascha Vykos from Vampire: The Masquerade

Penfield from Future Feeling

Sallot Leon from Mask of Shadows

Ieshwi from The Stormlight Archive

Vriska Serket from Homestuck

Orlando from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Spencer Harris from The Passing Playbook

Jane Crocker from Homestuck

Lupe from Four Leaf

Trina Goldberg-Oneka from The Seep

Cassandra Igarashi from The Wicked + The Divine

Aya Burnstein from Dancing in the Devils Auditorium

Lucus from High Class Homos

Merlin from The Left Handed Booksellers of London

Nightheart from Warriors

Sol from Dead Collections

Max from Magical Boy

Artemis Fowl from Artemis Fowl

Teo from The Sunbearer Duology

Wanda from The Sandman

Tal Smithson from Time to Orbit: Unknown

Petey the Cat from Dog Man

Captain Artemisia Blastside from Piratica

Rosa from Threads That Bind

Alter Boi from House of Whispers

Wegg from Be Kind, My Neighbor

Loki from Loki: Agent of Asgard

Scorn from Emergent Properties

Alanna of Trebond from The Song of the Lionness

Marcia Overstrand from Septimus Heap

Sage from Strawberry Seafoam

Jules from The Chromatic Fantasy

Peter Parker from The Amazing Spider-Man

Razia Khan from Stealing Thunder

Dipper Pines from the Gravity Falls comics

Mel from Something's Not Right

Hero Shackleby from American Hippo

Kino from Kino's Journey

The Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere

River Runson from The Melting Queen

Jonathan Morgan from All the White Spaces

Leigh Hunter from Grey Dawn

Xada from LoveBot

Ienaga Kano from Golden Kamuy

Viola/Cesario from Twelfth Night

Silas Bell from The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

Let me know if I accidentally have a character on this list twice! Also let me know if you see anything misspelled or under the wrong book or series. Basically, let me know if I've screwed up lol

Thank you all for your continued patience!

[ninja-muse]

September is birthday month, if anyone's wondering why my acquisition of books appears to have slipped again (picture #2). At least I'd read nearly all of them before they joined my library shelves, and Winter's Gifts, well, it's really easy to read an Aaronovitch novella within a day or two of acquiring it. Especially since…

September was also week-vacation month, which is part of how I made it to 13 books read but very little explanation for my read-from-TBR-shelves stack (picture #1), only two of which I read on holiday. The two short ones I read in the gap between "finished the latest Book Of Substance" and "started the official Vacation Stack", and Digger was one of my 2023 goals so I decided to check that off. Baking Yesteryear was a surprise/accident. I was telling a coworker how much I enjoyed reading the library's copy and they said, "hey, while you were off, we got a copy too damaged to sell…". And one has to treat oneself in birthday month.

(Vacation was good, in case you were wondering. Camping, so no wifi, so lots of outdoors and reading time and charming rodent shenanigans.)

My biggest regret of the month, by which we mean less regret and more mild bookish panic, is the number of reading copies I appear to have taken home. I have one for Menewood which I'm planning to get to once I finish with My Roommate is a Vampire, and the rest of them were, well, um. Look. When your store buyer and random publishers send you books you'd enjoy and your coworkers finish reading ARCs you've been interested in, things happen, okay? At least at this point a lot of the books are coming out next year, which probably doesn't bode well for my 2024 TBR but that is a future problem.

Also, not doing great at my goal of reading a Canadian author every month. This is the second (?) month in a row I've failed on that front which, yes, is why I'm reading a Canadian author right now. (Also it's one of those ARCs a coworker finished with.)

Beyond the bookish stuff, there's not much to report. I've written a good bit and am surprising myself by how much I can write on my phone during a commute. Had a good birthday. Ate good food. Got fun things. Dealt with slightly more chaos at work than usual. Finished the last season of Great British Bake-Off aired in Canada and am looking forward to starting the Canadian version tonight.

How was your September?

And now without further ado, in order of enjoyment…

Evidence of Things Seen - Sarah Weinman, ed.

A collection of true crime journalism tackling recent social justice issues and big-picture flaws in the justice system.

8/10

multiple #ownvoices essays by BIPOC authors

warning: the usual things one would expect to find in true crime journalism

Infinity Gate - M.R. Carey

A scientist, the multiverse, AI, and the nature of humanity.

8/10

Nigerian and Moroccan POV characters

warning: slavery, fire, xenophobia, war, torture, violence

Thornhedge - T. Kingfisher

Toadling confronts the knight bent on entering the sleeper’s tower.

8/10

Arab Muslim secondary character

Digger Unearthed - Ursula Vernon

A wombat’s tunnel takes her to a very foreign land. She would like to go home please—but there are gods.

8.5/10

Baking Yesteryear - B. Dylan Hollis

Tried and true recipes from the past century.

9/10

🏳️‍🌈 author

The Fragile Threads of Power - V.E. Schwab

Seven years after Red London was saved, some people have moved on and others are still picking up the pieces. And some are asking whether the king deserves to be in power.

7.5/10

POV characters of colour, 🏳️‍🌈 POV characters (gay), 🏳️‍🌈 author

Winter’s Gifts - Ben Aaronovitch

Agent Kimberley Reynolds investigates a case with “unusual characteristics” during a Michigan winter.

7/10

Ojibwe secondary characters

Lud-In-The-Mist - Hope Mirrlees

A bourgeois father tries to save his children from the plague of fairy fruit—which is hard, since it doesn’t officially exist.

6.5/10

warning: classist, misogynist, generally unkind to the disabled and mentally ill

A Long Day in Lychford - Paul Cornell

Something is wrong with the borders around Lychford and the local coven has to put things right before people get hurt.

7/10

Black British main character

warning: mild racism and xenophobia

The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff

A servant girl flees her colonial town for the dubious safety of the wilderness.

7/10

protagonist of colour, mentally disabled secondary character, incidental Powhatan and other indigenous characters

warning: racism, misogyny, rape, disease, starvation, murder, death of a child

Board to Death - CJ Connor

Ben turns down a suspiciously good deal on an old board game. Then the dealer turns up dead on his doorstep.

6/10

🏳️‍🌈 main character (gay), 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (gay), 🏳️‍🌈 author, #ownvoices

Starter Villain - John Scalzi

Charlie inherits a supervillain empire, complete with a subscription mega-laser, spy cats, and enemies.

6.5/10

The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices - Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

Two friends go on a holiday to northern England.

7/10

Currently reading:

Like Every Form of Love - Padma Viswanathan

A writer digs into the strange, complicated story of a man she befriended in a marina.

🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (gay), Indo-Canadian author, 🇨🇦

warning: domestic and child abuse

My Roommate is a Vampire - Jenna Levine

There’s a room-to-rent in Cassie’s low, low budget. The (hot) guy renting it acts like he’s from the 1800s. Surely he’s just quirky.

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (gay)

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

Stats

Monthly total: 13 Yearly total: 100/140 Queer books: 3 Authors of colour: 0 Books by women: 5 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 5 Books hauled: 6 ARCs acquired: 12 ARCs unhauled: 4 DNFs: 0

January February March April May June July August

[diceriadelluntore]

Storia di Musica #311 - Weezer, Weezer (The Blue Album), 1994

Nella classifica di artisti che hanno intitolato i loro lavori con il proprio nome, vincono a mani basse per quantità: in 17 anni di carriere ne hanno pubblicati 6 (che poi spiegherò come si distinguono). E questa decisione rientra nel loro modo alternativo e irriverente di fare musica, in un momento di passaggio che grazie a loro diviene quasi spartiacque. Rivers Cuomo è un ragazzo a cui piace tanto fare musica: ha 18 anni quando fonda il primo gruppo, gli Avant Gard, che era anche un modo per trovare nuovi amici dopo essersi trasferito da Los Angeles al Connecticut. Dopo un po', Cuomo incontra il batterista Patrick Wilson, che gli presenta il suo amico Matt Sharp, anch'egli musicista. Si trasferiscono a Santa Monica dove Sharp incita Cuomo a scrivere, e proprio in questo periodo, siamo a fine 1991, nascono le prime idee che confluiranno nella loro prima band insieme: Weezer (dal nomignolo che il padre di Cuomo gli aveva dato da ragazzino) insieme a Jason Cropper, che va alla chitarra. Il primo concerto come Weezer è a supporto della band di un giovane attore cantante destinato al successo mondiale, i Dogstar di Keanu Reeves. Diventano ben presto un gruppo con la nomea di grandi live, e se ne accorge anche Todd Sullivan, che li segnala alla Geffen che dopo aver ascoltato dei demo li mette sotto contratto nel 1993. C'è solo un problema: il loro stile, un power pop con echi punk, irriverenti e testi molto ironici era un bel po' diverso dal nichilismo grunge imperante. La Geffen li mette sotto le cure di Rick Ocasek, ex membro de The Car, una delle band più importanti della scena New Wave Americana, che li porta agli Electric Lady Studios, di New York, il leggendario studio di registrazione fondato da Eddie Kramer per Jimi Hendrix. Ocasek ha una intuizione geniale: decide di far cantare Sharp come coro di Cuomo, secondo un particolare stile a cappella (che negli Stati Uniti ha il nome curioso di barbeshop style), un'ottava più alto, così da riuscire meglio a integrare il suono di basso e chitarra, straniando ma allo stesso tempo enfatizzando la caratteristica "simaptica" della loro musica sin dagli esordii. Nel Frattempo licenziano Cooper, sostituito da Brian Bell, e registrano una quindicina di canzoni, di cui 10 faranno parte del loro primo lavoro. Che intitolano Weezer, uscito il 10 maggio del 1994 perchè, disse Cuomo, non "ci veniva niente di meglio da proporre". Verrà ricordato come The Blue Album per la copertina perchè succederà qualcosa in seguito che lo renderà "difficile" da ricordare come "Weezer". Cinque settimane prima, come una bomba atomica, era arrivata la notizia del suicidio di Kurt Cobain, e questo disco segna il passaggio, straniante e traumatico, da un'estetica all'altra.

Se ne volete una prova, il primo singolo, e successivamente canzone mito, era titolata semplicemente Undone, ma siccome è stata una delle prime scritte da cuomo e portata sul palco sin dai primi concerti, i primi fan la iniziarono a chiamare come The Sweater Song, perchè appunto parla di un maglione: If you want to destroy my sweater\Hold this thread as I walk away (Undone - The Sweather Song in verità è una metafora di tristezza rispetto al rapporto con le altre persone spesso prevaricatrici). Un muro di chitarra, echi di punk, i coretti che a volte sembrano quasi fuori posto, una musica che verrà definita "emo" ma che si rifà anche al periodo d'oro del rock. Come non citare in questo senso Buddy Holly, canzone diventata famosissima anche grazie al meraviglioso video di Spike Jonze (che vincerà decine di premi per il mondo) in cui la band è trasportata sul palco del Drive In di Arnold di Happy Days a cantare "Ooh-wee-hoo, I look just like Buddy Holly\Oh-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore"; Buddy Holly è stato uno dei primi grandi cantanti del rock, tragicamente scomparso in un incidente aereo, insieme a Ritchie Valens, quello che scrisse La Bamba e ai The Big Bopper (a questo tragico incidente Don Mclean scriverà American Pie, "the day the music died"); Mary Tyler Moore è stata invece una attrice di cinema teatro e Tv tra le più famose degli anni '60 e '70 negli Stati Uniti. Il disco è ricco di canzoni stupende: Say It Ain't So (altro classico), nato nella testa di Cuomo quando si "autoconvinse" che il matrimonio dei suoi stava finendo per colpa dell'alcool, My Name In Jonas, ariosa e fresca, dedicata al fratello di Cuomo non risarcito dall'assicurazione dopo un incidente in auto, Only In Dreams, su un ragazzo che non riesce a dischiararsi alla ragazza che adora e così continua a vivere la loro storia d'amore "solo nei sogni". Manifesto del loro modo scanzonato e irriverente di fare musica è In The Garage: I've got an electric guitar\I play my stupid songs\I write these stupid words\And I love every one\Waiting there for me, yes, I do\I do\In the garage, I feel safe\No one cares about my ways\In the garage where I belong\No one hears me sing this song.

Il disco all'inizio è abbastanza incompreso, ma con il passare del tempo acquista sempre più rilevanza sia commerciale (venderà quasi 10 milioni di copie) che critica, stabilmente nelle liste dei dischi più importanti degli ultimi 30 anni. Sharp lascia dopo il secondo disco, Pinkerton (che mostra una evoluzione musicale ma perde un po' di slancio ironico rispetto all'esordio) dedicandosi ad un progetto particolare, i Rentals, con cui suona musica molto retrò dal gusto a volte kitsch. I Weezer lo rimpiazzano con Mikey Welsch. Ci metteranno 4 anni per ritornare ai dischi, con un nuovo album Weezer, conosciuto come The Green Album, perchè in una foto simile a quella del Blue c'è uno sfondo verde, e così succederà con Weezer (The Red Album, nel 2008), Weezer (The White Album 2016), Weezer (The Teal Album, 2019) e Weezer (The Black Album, 2019, dove almeno hanno delle tute orribili di latex su sfondo gotico di luci viola). Anche per questo vanno ricordati.

[esotericconsultingdetective]

my forever fixations (changes will be added.)

sitcoms (b99, modern family, bbt, himym, the office, friends, HOUSE MD)

benedict cucumberpatch and martin freeman (sherlock bbc, lord of the rings, the hobbit etc.)

ghosts&vampires&blood&sadists&gore&darkacademia&haunted places (frankenstein, jekyll and hyde)

english schoolgirls in the not creepy way (wild child, enid blyton boarding school books)

harry potter

neil gaiman (coraline)

true crime

granada holmes

LOCKWOOD AND CO. MY BABIES

star trek and star wars in no particular order

spock

taylor swift and old washed up rock bands

pheobe effing bridgers

gracie abrams

kill her, freak out - samia

therese dreaming and maya hawke

art

raft of medusa

travelling

nerdinators

nerf guns

spy kids

peppa pig and ben and holly and gaston and nanny plum

emma chamberlain's fashion choices

the grisly origins of fairy tales

101 dalmations' original cruella deville.

horrid henry, captain underpants and phineas and ferb

LEGOOOO

evermore and folklore

lore by aaron manke

neurosurgery

fashun

crime podcasts

the history of mad hatters

interesting things to research about

indian royalty history

transylvania

Elizabeth Báthory (the blood countess)

agatha christie and miss marple

puzzle solving but i'm terrible at it (i’m awesome, i’m trying to be humble)

a deepening disgust at mortal fascination with each other.

aliens

d&d

mathematics

Lockwood and Co.

The sisters grimm

Land of stories

middle grade horror and fantasy books

my instagram threads account

tumblr shitposts

tumblr in general

pjo (ex induced)

scarlet and ivy

THE WELLS AND WONG DETECTIVE SOCIETY (robin stevens ily)

young adult dark fantasy without romance (check point 46)

my goodreads account

ada lovelace

franz kafka, virginia woolf.

my spotify playlists (ethel cain i love u)

joan of arc

rosalind franklin

ted ed videos

witch hunts in scotland and salem.

zoroastrian burials

sherlock and watson

my pinterest

amrita shergill

CRISPR

old disney shows

cricket and india's victory in WC in '83

jhansi ki rani

my childhood tv shows

my yt history

video essays

shane and ryan (watcher or buzzfeed unsolved)

chronically online

jude bellingham

Carlos sainz

a dreaded feeling of separation.

Elsa Schiaparelli

the kelly

monaco

f1

aux en provence

ireland

my artemis fowl phase

harry potter

wales

ryan reynolds and john krasinski

adam sandler movies and similar genres of shitty comedy

cobra kai and the karate kid

superheroes

spiderman variants

bucky and the falcon

charlize theron

vintage watches

conde nast traveller

delhi

benedict cucumberpatch

kristy thompson from the bsc

anne with an e

mr brightside

mitski

podcasts

the sixties, thirties and twentys

maggie smith (downtown abbey and loewe campaigns)

jane birkin

youtube fan edits

stranger things

the irregulars and haunting of hill house

gossip girl (fallacies and legacies)

meryl streep (mammia mia and the devil wears prada)

julie andrews (the sound of music, the princess diaries)

vintage movies

youtube short films and billy joel

the prisoner of azkaban

fred and george weasley and kili and fili

gandalf > dumbledore

margaret - ldr and jack antanoff

alicia and janet (the enid blyton cinematic universe)

sharon tate

my halloween blog 'gore'

arch digest house tours

new york because i'm just a girl

BBC SHERLOCK

Star Trek

the matrix

kill bill, fight club, dr. evil, ocean’s 11

The KJO cinematic universe

Nepo babies

Tim Burton

The Addams Family

Science

Biology

Physics

Chemistry

Mathematics x 2

Nerds

Conspiracy theories

Ethical research

female serial killers

elizabeth bathory

my spotify playlists

billy joel - piano man

youtube edits

saltburn

peppa pig & ben and holly

horrid henry

lost childhood animated tv shows

enid blyton boarding school books

british sitcoms (outnumbered)

house md

characters most like me list on charactour/ openpyschometrics.

the 2 IT zoya akhtar movies

special certain bollywood

teams in red - man united, Ferrari and RCB.

Formula 1, Tennis, Football & Cricket

Batman&Alfred (Christopher Nolan version duh!)

Dark Knight’s aesthetic

old marvel and DC movies

Superhero Comics

Richard Feynman

Haunted castles

Halloween and Halloween costumes (the only right answer is switching between batman and darth Vader or my Pinterest board)

LEGO (lotr, Harry Potter, marvel and DC lego)

Batman, iron man, and dr strange

ford v ferrari

shang chi

fight club and kill bill

Zack and Cody and phineas and ferb captain underpants

Karate kid and kung fu panda

karen from outnumbered

philomena cunk

Mercedes, Sebastian Vettel being a nerd and super awesome with pit overtakes, Brocedes + 2019 rookies and Maxiel

2012 grid

2023 george russel t pose

twitch quartet

Good food and masterchef australia

LUCA

black swan

Cool nepo babies (case in point romy mars (director of the tiktok vodka pasta video & Gracie frikking abrams ily)

F2 and f3

Horror movies

SHITTY COMEDYYY movie genre I.e. the hangover, grown ups, etc.

How to train your dragon (i had a dragon dinosaur phase so this is justified)

Lego ninjago

michelle mouton

derry girls

being an absolute effing genius

academia

saltburn aesthetic

letterboxd

Horror movies

Old marvel but deadpool revival

Minions

Breakfast at tiffany’s

Old movies (arsenic and old lace, wizard of oz)

Preminger and old Barbie movies

Old Disney movies (101 dalmations)

Merida and brave and Elsa and frozen

the one dance scene from the sleeping beauty

Movies with julie andrews and audrey hepburn and meryl streep

[onett64]

my long awaited what matters most review that i wrote a week before the album actually came out

But wait there's more:

I like this one, I love how the sound of the exhausting lover bridge transcends the entire album. I love the lyric “did we really think we’d go back to normal” . It's like this album is a post covid more deep way to normal. It's a great song that questions our morals and their changes over the past years. I LOOVE the brass. I'm so happy he's using it more in this album.

Clouds with ellipses:

Idk man this one just reminds me of a church hymn but they all sound the same, it's kinda like this album's version of gone from rockin the suburbs. The emphasis on his voice in this one is really nice. He has a very good voice but I'm neutral about this one, I'm sure it'll grow on me cuz right now I think it's kinda silly. Oh wait it kinda reminds me of Gracie but not as good  lol!

Exhausting lover:

Probably my least favorite single but damn it's still so good. I like the keyboard and the big band sound that comes in, the bridge OH MY GOD THE BRIDGE is so fucking good. Anyway the weird lyrics and story is fun but i already had my autism moment  over it. Also the music video is a 10/10 so it has that going for it.

Fragile:

Sounds like me learning scales on the piano at 5 years old. I REALLY like this one its so good lyrically

Kristine from the 7th grade:

So this one has already been played live quite a few times so it's not my first time hearing. But damn this one is good. I fucking love it. The lyrics are so true and relatable fr. the strings. This one sounds like it's out of a musical or something so ben i wouldn't mind if you quit writing pop and made a musical i'll eat that shit up. I just realized this basically sounds like erase me but about ur conspiracy theory facebook aunt. PROBABLY ONE OF MY FAVES just you know what song is my fave. You know what this sounds like? The cover of creep in the book of life. Don't question me idk what im saying either

Back to anonymous (ben folds fucked my wife 4chan thread):

Best song on the album. Maybe tied with winslow gardens. It's basically everything I love from silverman songs and it's better. The harmonica?? Also whatevers at the end sounds so good too. God. best song ever made.

Winslow gardens:

Also the best song on the album. It makes me so happy honestly, it's just a really sweet song with a nice story and I like the time signature because it's the one I can never play. I have a few ben songs that just put me in a good mood and are a blessing to my ears regardless of what they are about (fair, kate, break up at a food court, fired, phone in a pool, hiro's song, bruised, etc) and this is def one of them 

Paddleboard breakup:

Boats are cool ngl. I really like this one! Wonder what gf this is about

What matters most:

I have high expectations for this being a title track. Tbh it sounds like long way to go from so there lol. It's good. I don't KNOW Ben, why don't you tell me what do YOU think matters most??

Moments:

Does every song on this freakin album sound like jesusland in a way or am i crazy??/ anyway the violin viola whatever at the end is pretty, Ben whens the drum n bass song coming out

Happy clapper (bonus track:

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs hollie said this was straight out of 2009 AND I LIKE THAT! Meowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeow I LOVE THIS ONEEEE WHY IS THIS A BONUS TRACK IT'S EXACTLY WHAT I NEED AND LOVE ABOUT BEN :-D THIS MIGHT BE MY FAVE SONG AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Kinda reminds me of michael praytor (or maybe the word bumming is just forever tied to “bumming out on the the ninety FIVE”)

Why did you tell me everything:

Eh. it'll grow on me

A million years or so :

Basically this albums the luckiest. It's cute :-)

THOUGHTS AFTER 1st LISTEN:

This is definitely one of the ben albums that grows on you and then you can fully appreciate it, like silverman or reinhold. I think it's good! There are some great songs and I love the inclusion of more brass and string instruments, a nice change from his usual piano bass and drums. 

He said this was an album that he couldn't have made at any other time in his career and i agree, it's a nice mix of elements from silverman, so there, and a newish sound that i can't really describe. I feel bad because I'm like 3 months deep in the hardcore ben folds obsession (thanks neurodivergent brain) and i'm not like, losing my shit over every song on the album unlike his other albums like bf5 self titled, whatever and ever amen, and rockin the suburbs. But i know i'll grow to appreciate it and this is a pretty good closure to ben's career as a pop song writer, who knows maybe he will write the next hamilton and take the world by storm after this.

[etxrnaleclipse]

Muse Preferences - Intimacy

((Updated Sept 24. Updating this one again since I've had a lot of changes with my muse page lately. I may not write smut in threads, but since I write drabbles and happily discuss those elements with rp partners, and also will send memes for them to others, I figured I’d put down a little about my muses in that regard for those who might find it relevant or interesting???? (or useful if you’re writing anything for our muses) Have only done these for muses who are likely to wind up in those kind of relationships/dynamics.))

AIDA - more submissive than dominant but doesn't have much of a preference

ALANNA - very dominant, rarely allows her intimate partners to take control (even if it seems like they are, she is still pulling the strings)

ANDI - very much a switch, depends on her mood, but she likes the simpler things in life

ANDRE - top leaning switch, neither submissive or dominant just goes with how he feels in the moment

BEN - mostly a switch, ever so slightly more submissive leaning, bottom for position

BENJI - primarily submissive but can show a dominant side if his partner wishes, bottom for position

CARLOS - switch, a little more on the dominant side but likes to switch it up now and then if he feels the need

CAROLINA - a little bit on the dominant side, but doesn't really mind as long as she is enjoying herself

CHARLOTTE - mainly dominant but isn’t against allowing her partner to be the dominant one if she feels like a change, quite experimental

CONNIE - dominant leaning, also enjoys poly dynamics

CRIS - can be both dominant and submissive, tends to not experiment much, switch for position

DANI - slightly a switch but mostly submissive, for all her outgoing displays in public, she can actually be a bit shy in the bedroom

DANNY - the definition of a power bottom, likes to get what he wants, but will get a kick out of being pushed around. Has some unique kinks

ELLEN - leans more towards dominant, enjoys being in control but likes to let herself be dominated on occasion

ERIC - used to be a lot more dominant in his youth, not as much anymore but will put on a dominant personality unless he trusts his partner and then he will hand over control, switch for position

EVA - primarily submissive, but if encouraged she can test the waters being a little more dominant, silently experimental but wouldn’t admit it  

EVAN - switch for both, perhaps ever so slightly prefers submissive but just enjoys intimacy

FRAN - dominant primarily, likes to get what she wants

FREDDIE - submissive leaning switch, bottom for position

GABI - submissive leaning switch, depends on her mood 

GEN - dominant unless she is around someone who she trusts a lot and feels comfortable with, enjoys feeling control over her partners but likes to focus on their pleasure while getting what she wants

GRACE - dominant leaning switch, likes to experiment and push herself

HARRY - switch for both, enjoys experimenting a little but nothing too daring (can’t switch off his mind to the potential risks being a med student)

HOLLIE - dominant leaning switch

IAIN - dominant top, likes to get what he wants

ILSA - dominant leaning switch, very touch driven

ISABELLA - much more submissive, not too experimental but she is open to trying new things for her partners

JAYNE - complete switch, enjoys taking care of her partners, is a very giving partner

JIMMY - switch for both, he just mostly enjoys pleasure

JOSEPH - bottom leaning switch, tends to be more on the submissive side and is generally a little awkward but once he gets going, he's fully into it

KARA - switch, open to mostly anything and will give it a shot as long as she feels safe

KATRINE - dominant leaning switch, enjoys being in control but likes to change things up now and then

KOA - switch in every sense of the word, prefers tenderness over roughness

LIA - switch, sees sex as a means to an end after this many years alive

LOU - classic switch, she likes what she likes

MARIA - not the most adventurous, but she enjoys pleasure however it comes, tends to be more on the submissive side

MATT - slightly submissive leaning switch, not the most experimental but is open to trying most things once, bottom for position

MICHAEL - top leaning switch, quite dominant but has a secret desire to submit

MIRA - relatively even switch, doesn’t really mind, whatever feels right in the moment

NICHOLAS - confident in who he is, but can be rather shy, bottom leaning switch and a little more submissive than dominant (not much though)

NIGEL - switch for position, a little more submissive than dominant but isn't against being adventurous

NYAH - dominant leaning switch

OLIVIA - switch, she’s used to her past as an escort where she would happily offer whatever her clients wanted

OSCAR - primarily dominant but if he trusts you implicitly then he will let his walls down and allow you to dominate him, bottom for position

PEDRO - submissive bottom, is kind of shy until a partner coaxes him out of his shell, very eager to please

PRUE - switch, not that experimental but has a daring side after a few drinks

ROBYN- considers herself very lemon, isn't one to experiment or even go out of her way to engage in intimacy

ROSE - dominant leaning switch but sometimes desires the comfort that she finds in being submissive

SORAIA - puts on the act of being more dominant, but if she trusts you, she will give you complete control

STEVEN - definitely more on the submissive side, likes to feel protected because he puts up a front of not needing protection for his work, bottom for position

TAMARA - does whatever she feels into at any given moment, and also gauges what her partner is into

THEO - very much a switch depending on his mood, primarily bottom but enjoys to top when he feels like it, prefers to be a partner who goes with whatever the other wants

TK - switch, tends to be a little more submissive but likes to take control with Carlos now and then

TOBY - into a little more rough intimacy, will always be willing to switch for both aspects, but does have a desire to be submissive and a bottom now and then

VERA - a little more submissive but she'll just go with the flow

VIC - switch for position, more on the dominant side but has let himself be used over the years and actually enjoyed it, so will be submissive for the right guy

WILL - dominant leaning switch, top for position

YASMINA - dominant leaning, enjoys experimenting

ZARA - depends on her mood, she likes to take control with her partners but if you take control unexpectedly she will melt in your hands

[cherrysugcr]

some blabbing about my muses can be found under this, it involves the elimination of some muses

I went through my extensive muse lists and found 66 of them did not have active threads, i have decided to remove some and move others onto the main pages in order to promote them more. below i will list the muses that are staying but are not actively involved in a thread, muses whose current faces are likely changing and those who are being moved to a general list of faces i would play if someone requested them. If you’re interested in any of the muses/faces below please reach out! I may be making starters with some of them soon if their muse speaks to me :)    **NOTE** IF YOU NOTICE YOU HAVE A THREAD WITH ANY OF THE MUSES LISTED IN THIS POST PLEASE MESSAGE ME AND I DEEPLY APOLOGIZE FOR THE ERROR ON MY PART 

Current Non-Active Muses:

Alexander (Raymond Ablack) Connor (Penn Badgley) Charlotte ‘Lottie’ (Madelyn Cline) Dorian (Jon Hamm) Damon (Rege Jean Page) Fred (John David Washington) Greer (Barbie Ferreira) Holly (Christina Hendricks) Iris (Gemma Chan) Jack (Colin Farrell) Jagger (Jack Harlow) Kylo (Dominic Fike) Piper (Maude Apatow) Poppy (Lily James) Rhys (Harry Styles, inspired by Jack in Don’t Worry Darling) Sean (Trevante Rhodes, face may be changing to Jonathan Majors) Stella (Hailee Steinfeld) Sutton (Dove Cameron) Titus (Jason Sudeikis) Valencio (Joe Manganiello) Vance (Ben Affleck) Wyatt (David Harbour) Troy (Charles Melton) Donovan (Jacob Elordi) Kieran (Joseph Morgan) Elton (Timothee Chalamet) Selma (Alexa Demie) Warner (Gavin Leatherwood) Sherrod (Brett Goldstein) Augustus ‘Gus’ (Tom Holland) Benedict (Ben Barnes) Cassie (Josie Totah) Beau (Jamie Dornan) Adam (John Krasinski) Deon (Michael B. Jordan) Rubio (Manny Montana) Ace (Skeet Ulrich) Landon (Chris Hemsworth) Adonis (Tom Ellis) Lucian (Idris Elba) Ross (Paul Rudd) Mark (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) MUSES WHOSE FACES ARE CHANGING AND TBD (their current faces can be requested no questions asked, I just feel these faces are losing popularity in the RPC and I want to stay current. The muse themselves, the character is still fresh for me which is why they are not being completely eliminated just revamped)

Brielle (currently Ariana Grande) Roman (currently Noah Centineo) Carina (currently Cindy Kimberly) Tripp (currently Beau Mirchoff) Crystal (currently Eiza Gonzelz) FACES WHO ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST WITH A BASIC MUSE/BACKSTORY  (The character behind these faces just aren’t sparking with me so their faces are being added to a list of general request for my writing partners this may be good to go or denied on how the musings are vibing at that time) Ben Platt (formerly Blaine) Tyler Hoechlin (formerly Elliot) Tom Bateman (formerly Evander) Zayn Malik (formerly Flynn) KJ Apa (formerly Memphis) Doja Cat (formerly Valencia) Tom Hiddlseton (formerly Wesley) Mishti Rahmen (formerly Cora) Niall Horan (formerly Grayson) Normani (formerly Serena) Kieran Culkin (formerly Tate) Sofia Jamora (formerly Whitney) Shawn Mendes (formerly Heath) Richard Madden (formerly Kingsley) Henry Goulding (formerly Reid) Jon Bernthal (formerly Rhett) 

If you’ve read all this, I appreciate you. It’s going to take some time to totally revamp my muse pages with the coding and everything but I will have this post easily referenced should there be any issues with my writing partners past, present and future until that work is completed. Thank you for your time! You’re lovely and I would hug you if I could. 

[ofmusingsxandmayhem]

Muse Preferences - Intimacy

((Note: updated list [5/11]. I may not write smut in threads, but since I write drabbles and happily discuss those elements with rp partners, and also will send memes for them to others, I figured I’d put down a little about my muses in that regard for those who might find it relevant or interesting???? (or useful if you’re writing anything for our muses) Have only done these for muses who are likely to wind up in those kind of relationships/dynamics.))

Alanna - very dominant, rarely allows her intimate partners to take control (even if it seems like they are, she is still pulling the strings)

Andi - very much a switch, depends on her mood, but she likes the simpler things in life

Ben - mostly a switch, ever so slightly more submissive leaning, bottom for position

Benji - primarily submissive but can show a dominant side if his partner wishes, bottom for position

Charlotte - mainly dominant but isn’t against allowing her partner to be the dominant one if she feels like a change, quite experimental

Cris - can be both dominant and submissive, tends to not experiment much, switch for position

Daniela - submissive leaning switch (more sub, generally) but it relatively tame in the bedroom

Derek - rather submissive, likes stronger men who make him feel safe, bottom for position

Ellen - leans more towards dominant, enjoys being in control but likes to let herself be dominated on occasion

Eric - used to be a lot more dominant in his youth, not as much anymore but will put on a dominant personality unless he trusts his partner and then he will hand over control, switch for position

Eva - primarily submissive, but if encouraged she can test the waters being a little more dominant, silently experimental but wouldn’t admit it  

Evan - switch for both, perhaps ever so slightly prefers submissive but just enjoys intimacy

Freddie - submissive leaning switch, bottom for position

Gabi - submissive leaning switch, depends on her mood 

Gen - dominant unless she is around someone who she trusts a lot and feels comfortable with, enjoys feeling control over her partners but likes to focus on their pleasure while getting what she wants

Harry - switch for both, enjoys experimenting a little but nothing too daring (can’t switch off his mind to the potential risks being a med student)

Hollie - dominant leaning switch

Ilsa - dominant leaning switch, very touch driven

Isla - isn’t massively sexual, but is mostly a switch depending on her mood and what her partner wants her to be

Isabella - much more submissive, not too experimental but she is open to trying new things for her partners

Jayne - complete switch, enjoys taking care of her partners

Kara - switch, open to mostly anything and will give it a shot as long as she feels safe

Lia - switch, sees sex as a means to an end after this many years alive

Luca - dominant preference, it is a rare moment where he allows his partners to dominate him, top for position

Matt - slightly submissive leaning switch, not the most experimental but is open to trying most things once, bottom for position

Mira - relatively even switch, doesn’t really mind, whatever feels right in the moment

Neve - switch with a teeny tiny slight preference for submissive but doesn’t mind, she likes to make love more than anything else

Nick - more submissive (he’s also super awkward don’t judge him), bottom leaning switch for position

Nyah - dominant leaning switch

Olivia - switch, she’s used to her past as an escort where she would happily offer whatever her clients wanted

Oscar - primarily dominant but if he trusts you implicitly then he will let his walls down and allow you to dominate him, bottom for position

Prue - switch, not that experimental but has a daring side after a few drinks

Ricky - switch for position, but generally is more of a bottom for the most part unless he feels like it (he sleeps around with the guys in his gang and most of them top him), dom leaning switch - everything depends on his mood and who he’s with

Rose - dominant leaning switch but sometimes desires the comfort that she finds in being submissive

Scott - switch for both, leaning more towards bottom for position, he’s pretty awkward especially since he hasn’t explored his sexuality much

Steven - definitely more on the submissive side, likes to feel protected because he puts up a front of not needing protection for his work, bottom for position

Tristan - switch for both, sometimes will voice what he needs but mainly just goes with the flow

Will - dominant leaning switch, top for position

Zach - dominant mostly with an occasional submissive side, switch for position

Zara - depends on her mood, she likes to take control with her partners but if you take control unexpectedly she will melt in your hands

[nxttheendxfthestxryarch2]

Closed Starter: Made My Choice (The Breakfast Club)

One question. What exactly am I capable of now? I mean, Sarah got the siren voice, Mary and the nose for children, I should have gained some kind of power, right?

Holly frowns to herself as she touches up her lipstick in the mirror in her locker. Sure, maybe she should have done a little more thinking into this, maybe she should have asked these kinds of questions.

But she hadn’t... not that she recalled, anyways. Her head turns at snickering down the hall. Audrey? Her face hardens when she sees the source. Jackasses.

She closes her locker up and whirls around, walking over with a confidence she always carries. “Hey, sweetie, let’s get you out of here.”

@bxrn-thc-pxgcs​

[friendofspidermannedleeds]

Fictober Day 21

Prompt #21: “what did I say?” Fandom: Spider-Man (MCU) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: None Characters: May Parker & Ned Leeds Words: 960 Summary: Against her better judgement, May reads comments under an article about "The Woman Who Raised Spider-Man."

Who is May Parker?

May’s logged into Facebook for the first time since the identity reveal. After catching up on a long list of supportive messages from various friends, she feels the urge to scroll down her newsfeed.

She knows she probably shouldn’t—social media has not been kind to Peter this past month, and she’d really rather not read any more opinions from people who don’t know what they’re talking about—but the pull to see what’s happening is tempting.

She clicks for her homepage. She’s not going to look at any articles about Mysterio, or her boy, or the case argued against him—she’s there to distract herself with pictures of her coworkers and their families on summer vacation.

Just a few seconds into scrolling, an article shows up on her feed that startles her.

Who is May Parker? Meet the Woman Who Raised the Controversial Vigilante 

Her stomach turns.

May knows better than to read the article. She’s seen enough garbage over the past month to know it will be filled with false information, assumptions, and unfair criticisms.

She won’t open the link.

But she opens the comments and scrolls through the top thread before she can stop herself.  

Holly Grimes This is insane. I can’t believe she knew! All this time I assumed she was in the dark like the rest of us! Imagine knowing your kid is Spiderman and not doing anything about it?

Harmony Smith I wouldn’t be surprised if she forced the kid into being a superhero—look at this photo, she looks like a manipulative Hollywood parent to an unwilling child star.

Mary Hewitt We don’t know if she forced him or not, but it’s bad either way.

Jenny Harris CHILD ENDANGERMENT 😠

Sharon Field forget her for a min, i just had a thought, if i’m doing the math right, this would mean the kids been spiderman since he was 14?!? is this for real??

Mary Hewitt You are correct, Sharon. Here’s what I want to know: what kind of mother would let their child do something like this?

Janice Fletcher A negligent one. 👍124k

May sits back and shuts her eyes.

These commenters are irrefutably right about some things—fourteen is far too young to be a superhero, as is fifteen, as is sixteen, as is seventeen—Peter absolutely should not have become Spider-Man, and maybe this is still child endangerment.

She’s been living this damned if you do, damned if you don’t life for nearly two years now, and she wants to tell these people that if she didn’t allow him to keep being Spider-Man while also enforcing some ground rules, he would’ve been out there in even more danger—sometimes, your kids don’t give you a choice.

But May has so often fallen short of being the mom Peter deserves. For years she tried not to let that bother her—when Ben was alive, if she screwed something up, at least Peter had another parent she could count on to help her set it right. Now that she’s been on her own, she’s guessing what to do more often than not and pretending to be as easygoing as she was before losing Ben.

When it came to rules and boundaries, she was always the more laidback half of their parenting duo, and she’s never stopped wondering how Ben might have reacted to Peter as Spider-Man. Has she done right by him?

Mary Hewitt, Janice Fletcher and 124k Facebook users don’t seem to think so.

She knows she should close out of the website and clear her head, but another comment catches her eye.

Shirley Watts I can’t believe she said that about Quentin Beck. Let the man rest in peace, witch.

What did I say?

She’s tempted to read the actual article to find out.

“May?”

She jumps. She was so invested in the comments, she hadn’t even heard Ned come up behind her.

“Hi,” she closes the laptop swiftly, “what do you need, honey?”

“You shouldn’t be reading that stuff,” Ned frowns. “I collect positive social media posts for Peter so he can read the support, and I can do that for you, too—but you shouldn’t read random Facebook comments about you guys. It’ll just make you miserable.”

May’s taken aback by his confidence and directness—Ned Leeds isn’t normally one to tell anyone what to do, especially adults.

“You’re right,” she says with a small smile, “thanks for the stern reminder.”

He looks embarrassed. “Sorry, I just—I figured you might be struggling with the same stuff Peter is, because you guys are so similar, and I—I’m trying to help.”

“You are helping," she reassures him, "no need to apologize.”  

He's right—she and Peter are similar. It took May awhile to come to this conclusion, especially since after Ben died, all she could think about was how much Peter reminded her of him.

But May and Peter have both been stewing in guilt ever since his identity was leaked, and she knows he’s blamed himself for the situation that led to the reveal as much as she has. In the thick of everything, she’s told Peter not to dwell on what anyone else thinks of him, and to keep away from any media outlets—and here she is ignoring her own advice.

“You’re doing great, May,” Ned says awkwardly, “like seriously great. You always have been. Peter tells me that all the time.”

“Thank you." This kid really is the sweetest. "And I think I’ll take you up on your offer—can you send the social media support you’re sending Peter to me, too?”

Ned smiles. "Of course."

[transgenderswagcompetitions]

The Preliminaries start Wednesday, June 5!

Here are your match-ups (links under the cut):

Alter Boi from The House of Whispers vs. Rafe from The House of Whispers

June Egbert from Homestuck vs. AR/Lil Hal from Homestuck

Vriska Serket from Homestuck vs. Jane Crocker from Homestuck

Firestar from Warrior Cats vs. Brick from Warrior Cats

Nightheart from Warrior Cats vs. Rowanstar from Warrior Cats

Loki from Loki: Agent of Asgard vs. Sera from Angela: Queen of Hel

Peter Parker from The Amazing Spider-Man vs. Rafe from Viscera

Hero from Something's Not Right vs. Mel from Something's Not Right

Villy from Basil and Oregano vs. Addy from Basil and Oregano

Enjolras from Les Miserables vs. Inspector Javert from Les Miserables

Axolotl from Wings of Fire vs. Starflight from Wings of Fire

---

Kaladin Stormblessed from The Stormlight Archive vs. Ieshwi from The Stormlight Archive

Jonathan Harker from Dracula vs. Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula

The Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere vs. River Runson from The Melting Queen

Jonathan Morgan from All the White Spaces vs. Leigh Hunter from Grey Dawn

Xada from LoveBot vs. Ienaga Kano from Golden Kamuy

Shuos Zehun from Machineries of Empire vs. Viola/Cesario from Twelfth Night

Silas Bell from The Spirit Bares Its Teeth vs. Ash from DIE

Ash from Girl Haven vs. Jerico Soberanis from The Toll

Nadir from The Thirty Names of Night vs. Holly from The Mellification

Petrichor from Saga vs. Kazuhito "Kirito" Kirigaya from Sword Art Online

Aster Vanissen from Witch Boy vs. Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes

---

Vess from Invisible Kingdom vs. Tonkee Innovator Dibars from The Broken Earth Trilogy

Ben Van Brunt from Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow vs. Valentine Weis from World Running Down

Howl Pendragon from Howl's Moving Castle vs. Dominic Seneschal from Terra Ignota

Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koro Ni vs. Isa from Transmuted

Alto from Your Mind is a Terrible Thing vs. David from Dark Currents

Monique from The Worm and his Kings vs. Viola Carroll from A Lady for a Duke

Will Avery from Names for the Dawn vs. Qven-and-Reet from Translation State

Syd from The Heartbreak Bakery vs. Claire/Claude from Baker Thief

Cersei Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire vs. Will Treaty from Ranger’s Apprentice

Yadriel from Cemetery Boys vs. Zila from Aurora Cycle

Zoe from Sleepless Domain vs. Diana Wrayburn from The Shadowhunter Chronicles

---

Never from Skulduggery Pleasant vs. Benji/Benjamin from Hell Followed With Us

Sidra from Wayfarers vs. Sascha Vykos from Vampire: The Masquerade novel series

Orlando from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vs. Spencer Harris from The Passing Playbook

Lupe from Four Leaf vs. Trina Goldberg-Oneka from The Seep

Cassandra Igarashi from The Wicked + the Divine vs. Aya Burnstein from Dancing In The Devils Auditorium

Lucus from High Class Homos vs. Merlin from The Left Handed Booksellers of London

Sol from Dead Collections vs. Artemis Fowl from Artemis Fowl

Teo from The Sunbearer Duology vs. Wanda from The Sandman

Tal Smithson from Time to Orbit: Unknown vs. Petey the Cat from Dog Man

Captain Artemisia Blastside from Piratica vs. Rosa from Threads That Bind

Wegg from Be Kind, My Neighbor vs. Scorn from Emergent Properties

[matildainmotion]

A Search for some New Images for the New Year

I feel very ambivalent towards New Year. My mother hates it. When I was little she always made a point of going to bed early on Dec 31st in order to miss it. She is a historian, specialising in early Medieval Christianity - Christmas does it for her, a midwinter celebration centred around a mythic story of hope. Or - she would argue - if you prefer to be more pagan in your approach, then Dec 21st, the solstice, will do very well - the point at which the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky and stands still before starting its ascent, to bring longer, lighter days back to the world. By contrast Dec 31st, as a threshold date of seminal importance, seems to my mother, not only distinctly arbitrary and un-mystical but unnecessary - basically just an excuse for noisy midnight parties, with booze and firework bangs. So what’s the point?

I understand her perspective. Christmas and the solstice are cyclical - they come round again, and again, like rings within a tree, and the imagery surrounding them is potent, colourful: stars, a baby in a manger, animals, angels, holly, ivy, red, gold and green. New Year, meanwhile, is all about the numbers. Counting the seconds down to midnight, counting the years up - 2020, ’21, ’22. There is no grand myth attached to it except, in the UK, the image of Big Ben, a huge clock face. It brings into sharp focus the units we have invented to mark and measure time: the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, some counted in sets of twelve, others in tens. It is an utterly human festival. The sun doesn’t care about the numbers. Nor does the earth - it isn’t wearing a new Apple watch that counts up its miles and pings every time it completes another lap. It’s our days that are numbered, not its. This is true of our individual lives and, as many climate activists point out, of our collective life as well - the earth will carry on. We probably won’t.

It is this strict focus on our human-centred constructs, on our little Gregorian calendar, and the ignoring of a greater story, that my mother dislikes. I share her sentiments and yet I also understand our need for numbers, this year more than ever.

For a start the pandemic has muddled up the count - I spent some time the other morning, with my husband, trying to figure out whether this was the second or third Christmas since the virus started. Neither of us knew. We worked it out in the end (answers at the bottom*) - but it was disconcerting how hard it was and how much this bothered me.

Secondly, this new Year, ’21-22 is particularly significant for me because I know exactly where I was, and what I was wearing on Dec 31st ’11-12. I was at the Met Opera in New York, in a stretchy black number, in high heels, also black, with a gold criss-cross pattern threaded through the leather. Shoes that would make Cinderella jealous. I have not worn them since, or any other heels so high, because on January 2nd ’12, I went into labour, and on the 6th (yes, it took that long), my son was born. This year we are coming up to his 10th birthday. Ten years of his life. Ten years of mine as a mother. The years pass and often pass me by, but the decades bring me up short. Make me stop. Like the sun at solstice. It is only numbers but it feels mythic, momentous, and at his age, the numbers are totemic, like talismans, carried for a whole year, until exchanged magically overnight for the next.

So, I think the numbers matter. We need them to help us keep track of where we’ve been and where we’re headed, both day to day and year to year. But the numeric, linear version of time which we celebrate at New Year also tends to get us in a mess, because the image of the clock so often makes us measure not only the seconds, but what we have achieved in them, to obsess over the outcomes.

This year, when doing my Christmas shopping, I stood for a while in front of the rack of packaged experiences, looking like new release DVDs, on sale in WHSmiths. My daughter selected a ‘High Street Dining for Two’ experience for Daddy (I am pretty sure, this was intended as a gift to him and her, not him and me). Above the rack there was a quote about giving ‘the gift of treasured memories.’ Our pasts are meant to be comprised of richly stocked memory banks. Our futures are meant to involve progress - that is what New Year’s resolutions are all about, and they depress me, rather than giving me hope, since the idea that the higher the numbers scroll up, the better things get, that this year things will improve, has been so manifestly undermined. I receive emails every week now, detailing how little time we have left to save ourselves from the worst version of climate catastrophe. It is a difficult time to be a mother, to wonder what will have become of the world in another ten, twenty, thirty years. But neither the count down to the apocalypse, nor a count up to a yet better time, seem very helpful. The numbers in these narratives make me feel frightened, more lost than found.

This year, then, as I move through the ten year mark in my mothering, which coincides with a significant year for my making- I have been working on my novel for ten years too and am now redrafting it for, I hope, the final time - I am in search of some other images for the New Year, beside the clock face of Big Ben. I have been looking out for images that honour the numbers, but not in order to measure my success or lack of it, images of time-travel that are directional, not cyclical, but that take me to places that I want to be. So far, I have found two.

One from a children’s fairy tale. The other from a rocket.

The fairy tale is Hansel and Gretel. In the version I know, the children collect first white pebbles, and then breadcrumbs, to drop on their way through the woods so that, in the moonlight, they can trace the way back home. The pebbles work, the breadcrumbs don’t - they get eaten by the birds - but either way, I think what matters for my purposes is the act of dropping something as they walk. Pebble by pebble, crumb by crumb, they mark their passage.

The other image is one from the papers: a photo of the rocket which launched on Christmas Day, containing the James Webb telescope, which, it is hoped, will orbit the earth and see far enough out into space to tell us about the beginning of the universe. Forget treasured memories from WHSmiths- let’s go looking for the start of time.

Taken together, I like these images. One so simple - just drop a pebble on a path - and the other so epically far-reaching, a million miles up in space, to search for 13 billion years ago in time. Drop stones. Send up telescopes. These feel like helpful ambitions for me, for both my mothering and my making, in the year ahead.

The pebbles are an ongoing practice, set down not only on special birthdays - they are the meals, baths, bedtime stories of every single day. Together they make a pathway through the woods. Some of them may be remembered, many of them won’t - the point is to keep dropping them. This blog is another pebble, left along the way.

And the telescopes?

What I like about the telescope is that a phenomenal amount of time, energy, effort and money went in to making it. They started work on it in 1996, which makes 10 years on my novel seems like peanuts. The launch went well but there are also, apparently, three hundred points, as the telescope unfolds, at which it could still all go horribly wrong. And, even if it works, they have no idea what they will find. Sounds like a fairly accurate metaphor for parenting to me, or indeed making anything - a show, a book - it’s one grand gamble with our time. I also like that it is intensely directional– you couldn’t get something much more directional than a telescope inside a rocket – but so far forward-looking that, through it, the hope is we will see the past. If you pursue the linear version of time right to its limit, it turns a corner, and starts to form a circle.

And New Year, figured like this, makes sense. A pebble dropped on a moonlit path at midnight, one in a sequence. A firework-telescope, sent up into space - a meticulously planned and yet reckless and preposterous attempt to search for meaning, with zero certainty as to its outcome. That is something I can celebrate.

And you?

How do you feel about New Year?

What are your pebbles? What are your telescopes? What images might best support you, in your time-travel, while the world circles on around the sun?

Image credit: The back cover of Zoe Gardner's mother record book, an object/project for keeping track and navigation of time. To join in, for mutual peer support, do get in touch @limberdoodle on Instagram.

*(3 since it began, 2 since it came to the UK)

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter - Monday, September 20th

LILAH: You broke in here for my contract? WESLEY: (takes out a lighter) I'm here to release you from it. LILAH: Wesley. WESLEY: You've suffered enough. (lights the paper) I want you to find some peace. (watches it burn) LILAH: Gallant to the end...but I knew what I signed up for. WESLEY: It's done. LILAH: Look in the drawer. (Wesley opens the drawer, takes out a paper from the same file) Flames wouldn't be eternal if they actually consumed anything. (Wesley looks heartbroken) But it means something that you tried.

~~Home~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

This is the Way it Really Happened (Angel/Cordelia, T) by NikitaDreams

A surprise performance (Tara/Willow, T) by Bl4ckHunter

[Chaptered Fiction]

The Slayer and the Vampire Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, PG) by violettathepiratequeen

Innocence Chapter 18 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by EllieRose101

Touching the Fire Chapter 14 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by GillO

Landed Chapter 9 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by Holly

Gray Chapter 12 (Buffy/Spike, Adult Only) by Dusty

I choose you Chapter 1 (Willow/Tara, T) by Aragorn_II_Elessar

[Images, Audio & Video]

PODCAST: Episode 76 - Judgment / Are You Now or Have You Ever Been / First Impressions (feat. Melanie Scala) by conswithdead

[Reviews & Recaps]

THE END HAS COME by yetanotherbuffyblog

[Community Announcements]

Sign up for Round 31 of Seasonal Spuffy! by eurydice72

[Fandom Discussions]

The choice to make Ben "villainous" by gothcarrie

Willow/Buffy subtext by lqvewillow

[QUIZ] WHAT FLAVOR OF SCOOBY TRAUMA ARE YOU? by snakeliciousbaby

Opinion on Tara by maybeacrowdedmind

Opinion on Buffy/Angel by maybeacrowdedmind

Buffy trusting Spike by atlasshrugd

Scoobies' reaction in Blood Ties by atlasshrugd

Spike still damned ? continued by multiple posters

Did Angel leaving make Buffy a better show continued by multiple posters

The dailies continued by priceless

Buffy's line to Spike in Seeing Red by lilbuggbear

Jane Espenson appreciation thread by InfiniteMehdiLove

BtVS Sexual Tension Awards by fondleigh

Theory/Headcanon: Part of Jasmine's plan involved destroying The First by moviephil4315

Name some of your favorite Scooby gang friendship moments by Excellent-Durian-509

The jolting reappearance of Faith by Proofwritten

Which main character do you like the least? by Melli-95

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Join the editor team :)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

It is always dangerous for soldiers, sailors, or airmen to play at politics. They enter a sphere in which the values are quite different from those to which they have hitherto been accustomed.

- Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm

**Pictured above: Seated, left to right: Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal; Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Rt Hon Winston Churchill; Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. Standing, left to right: the Secretary to the Chiefs of Staffs Committee, Major General L C Hollis; and the Chief of Staff to the Minister of Defence, General Sir Hastings Ismay.

No one serious has ever doubted the statesmanship of Winston Churchill. However a broad criticism of Churchill as warlord only came to light after the war. Many historians thought that he meddled, incurably and unforgivably, in the professional affairs of his military advisers.

The first surge of criticism came primarily from military authors, in particular Churchill’s own chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke. The publication of his diaries in the late 1950s shocked readers, who discovered in entries Brooke himself retrospectively described as “liverish” that all had not gone smoothly between Churchill and his generals.

On 10 September 1944 he wrote in his diary (an entry not known until the 2001 updated version was published:

“[Churchill] has only got half the picture in his mind, talks absurdities and makes my blood boil to listen to his nonsense. I find it hard to remain civil. And the wonderful thing is that 3/4 of the population of this world imagine that Winston Churchill is one of the Strategists of History, a second Marlborough, and the other 1/4 have no conception what a public menace he is and has been throughout the war! It is far better that the world should never know and never suspect the feet of clay on that otherwise superhuman being. Without him England was lost for a certainty, with him England has been on the verge of disaster time and again….Never have I admired and disliked a man simultaneously to the same extent.”

Many of the British field marshals and admirals of World War II came away nursing the bruises that inevitably came their way in dealing with Churchill. They deplored his excessive interest in what struck them as properly military detail; they feared his imagination and its restless probing for new courses of action. But perhaps they resented most of all his certainty of their fallibility.

Norman Brook, secretary of the Cabinet under Churchill, wrote to Hastings Ismay, the former secretary to the Chiefs of Staff, a revealing observation: “Churchill has said to me, in private conversation, that this was partly due to the extent to which the Generals had been discredited in the First War—which meant that, in the Second War, their successors could not pretend to be professionally infallible.”

Churchill’s uneasy relationship with his generals stemmed, in large part, from his willingness to pick commanders who disagreed with him—and who often did so violently. The two most forceful members of the Chiefs of Staff, Brooke and Cunningham, were evidence of that. If he dispensed with Field Marshal Sir John Greer Dill as Chief of Imperial General Staff, he did so with the silent approval of key officers, who shared his judgment that Dill did not have the spirit to fight the war through to victory. 

As General Hastings Lionel "Pug" Ismay (later 1st Baron Ismay), Churchill’s chief military asdvisor and link to the CIG, and others privately admitted, however, Dill was a spent man by 1941, hardly up to the demanding chore of coping with Churchill. “The one thing that was necessary and indeed that Winston preferred, was someone to stand up to him, instead of which Jack Dill merely looked, and was, bitterly hurt.”If Churchill were to make a rude remark about the courage of the British Army, Ismay later recalled, the wise course was to laugh it off or to refer Churchill to his own writings. “Dill, on the other hand, was cut to the quick that anyone should insult his beloved Army and vowed he would never serve with him again, which of course was silly.”

It was not enough, of course, to pick good leaders; as a war leader, Churchill found himself compelled to prod them as well—an activity that occasioned more than a little resentment on their part. Indeed, in a private letter to General Claude Auchinleck shortly before he assumed command in the Middle East in June 1941, Dill warned of this, saying that “the Commander will always be subject to great and often undue pressure from his Government.”

The permeation of all war, even total war, by political concerns, should come as no surprise to the contemporary student of military history, who has usually been fed on a diet of Clausewitz and his disciples. But it is sometimes forgotten just how deep and pervasive political considerations in war are. 

Take, for example, the question of the employment of air power in advance of the Normandy invasion.

As is well known, operational experts and commanders split over the most effective use of air power. Some favored the employment of tactical air power to sever the rail and road lines leading to the area of the proposed beachhead, while others proposed a systematic attack on the French rail network, leading to its ultimate collapse. This seemingly technical military issue had, however, political ramifications, because any attack (but particularly one targeted against French marshalling yards) promised to yield French civilian casualties. Churchill therefore intervened in the bombing dilute to secure a promise that French civilian casualties would be held to a bare minimum. “You are piling up an awful load of hatred,” Churchill wrote to Air Chief Marshal Tedder. He insisted that French civilian casualties be under 10,000 killed, and reports were submitted throughout May that listed the number of French civilians killed and (callously enough) “Credit Balance Remaining.”

This is not to say that Churchill’s military judgment was invariably or even frequently superior to that of his subordinates, although on occasion it clearly was. Rather, Churchill exercised one of his most important functions as war leader by holding their calculations and assertions up to the standards of a massive common sense, informed by wide reading and experience at war. When his military advisers could not come up with plausible answers to these harassing and inconvenient questions, they usually revised their views; when they could, Churchill revised his. In both cases, British strategy benefited.

In The World Crisis Churchill wrote: “At the summit, true strategy and politics are one.” The civil-military relationship and the formulation of strategy are inextricably intertwined. A study of Churchill’s tenure in high command of Britain during the Second World War suggests that the formulation of strategy is a matter more complex than the laying out of blueprints.

In the world of affairs, as any close observer of government or business knows, conception or vision make up at best a small percentage of what a leader does—the implementation of that vision requires unremitting effort. The debate about the wisdom of Churchill’s judgments (for example, his desire to see large amphibious operations in the East Indies) is largely beside the point. His activity as a strategist emerges in the totality of his efforts to shape Britain’s war policies, and to mold the peace that would follow the war.

The Churchillian model of civil-military relations is one of what one might call an uneven dialogue - an unsparing (if often affectionate) interaction with military subordinates about their activities. It flies in the face of the contemporary conventional wisdom, particularly in the United States, about how politicians should deal with their military advisers.25 In fact, however, Churchill’s pattern of relationships with his Generals resembles that of other great democratic war statesmen, including Lincoln, Clemenceau and Ben Gurion, each of whom drove their generals to distraction by their supposed meddling in military matters.

All four of these statesmen, Clausewitzians by instinct if not by education, recognized the indissolubility of political and military affairs, and refused to recognize any bounds to their authority in military activities. In the end, all four provided exceptional leadership in war not because their judgment was always superior to that of their military subordinates, but because they wove the many threads of operations and politics into a whole. And none of these leaders regarded any sphere of military policy as beyond the scope of his legitimate inspection.

The penalties for a failure to understand strategy as an all-encompassing task in war can be severe. The wretched history of the Vietnam War, in which civilian leaders never came to grips with the core of their strategic dilemma, illustrates as much. President Johnson, in particular, left strategy for the South Vietnamese part of the war in the hands of General William Westmoreland, an upright and limited general utterly unsuited for the kind of conflict in which he found himself. He did not find himself called to account for his operational choices, nor did his strategy of attrition receive any serious review for almost three years of bloody fighting. At the same time, the President and his civilian advisers ran an air war in isolation from their military advisers, on the basis of a weekly luncheon meeting from which men in uniform were excluded until halfway through the war.

A Churchillian leader fighting the Vietnam War would have had little patience, one suspects, with the smooth but ineffectual Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler. He would, no doubt, have convened all of his military advisers (and not just one), to badger them constantly about the progress of the war, and about the intelligence with which the theatre commander was pursuing it. The arguments might have been unpleasant, but at least they would have taken place. Perhaps no strategy would have made the war a winnable one, but surely some strategic judgment would have been better than none. Nor can strategy simply be left to the generals, as they so often wish.

The Churchillian way of high command rests on an uneven dialogue between civilian leader and military chiefs (not, let it be noted, a single generalissimo). It is not comfortable for the military, who suffer the torments of perpetual interrogation; nor easy for the civilians, who must absorb vast quantities of technical, tactical and operational information and make sense of it. But in the end, it is difficult to quarrel with the results.