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rainy-autumn-day · 4 years ago

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10 Books to read this Autumn & Halloween🍁🍂🍁

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker

This start of beautiful season off with something classic and a little scary.

The name of Dracula brings to mind visions of vampires, stakes, garlic, and crucifixes. Yet, when you read the novel, it becomes self-evident how twisted modern vampire fiction now is. The vampires in this classic story are not meant to inhabit the roles of heroes. Instead you go back a few hundred years when men and women believed truly that the vampire was a real immortal, cursed to quench his undying thirst with a living mortal’s blood. The very idea of a blood drinker should, therefore, inspire the image of a villain and that is what the titular character of this novel is. A villan you can’t help but keep reading about.

2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

Another story that is perfect if you want something that will keep you up at night like it did for me when I read it last year.

There is scarcely any comfort to be found in this book, only an ancient, arcane horror. Ten people receive a mystery letter from someone they don't know that indicates they should come to a remote island. Why would they go????? After arriving, they try to figure out the connection between all of them while waiting for their mysterious host. After coming across a cute little poem about how ten little indians die, they decide they will wait it out until the next morning when the ferry comes back to take them home. But it will never come! Each guest suddenly dies matching the line from a poem. It really keeps you on the edge of your seat.

3. THE BONE WITCH BY RIN CHUPECO

A story about a young witch just fits so well with this season, but this story is not about a teenage witch =just flying around on a broom. No it’s far darker than that. When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she’s a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.In her new home, Tea puts all her energy into becoming an asha—one who can wield elemental magic. But dark forces are approaching quickly, and in the face of danger, Tea will have to overcome her obstacles…and make a powerful choice.

4. Night Film by Marisha Pessl

This story opens in October on a cool evening with a blood chilling scene, it’s really everything you could hope for on a autumn night.

Night Film opens on a cold, cursed October evening, when Ashley Cordova, a young women full of potential, is found dead in a warehouse. Police rule her death a suicide, but investigative journalist Scott McGrath isn't so sure. From that inception point, Scott McGrath enters the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, and comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror film director Stanislaus Cordova--a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years. For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself. Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world. The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.

5. Autumn by Ali Smith

Ali Smith's lauded Seasonal quartet, a series of four novels rooted in a different time of year, kicks off with Autumn there we watch as love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as they always do.

6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I can’t tell you how many times i have read this beaful story in my life buti wants have it one my list to read at last once a year and i find it fits so well in to the amazing season that is autumn with The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and her proud beau, Mr. Darcy, is a splendid performance of civilized sparring

7.I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

This story is haunting and it will stay with you after you read it.

It's dark, twisted and unpredictable until the very last chapter keeping me on the edge of my seat from the very beginning. You are met with the unknown as you meet Aimee Sinclair, an actress who after coming home, she realizes her husband is missing and after that you are sent on a wild ride to find him.

8.Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Another classic. I have always found that that reading about a world now gone is so very perfect for autumn, as we watch the leaves we had watch grow turn colors and fly away from us.

Little Women is a beauty told story with each of the sisters seeks out a different form of happiness: Meg wants to marry, Jo wants to be a writer, Beth wants to care for her family, and Amy craves material success. We get to live their world as we following the lives and loves of the four March sisters and their mother as they mature from youth through adolescence and adulthood.

9.Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

If you love gothic horror, this one is for you. It has the same feeling as Jane Eyre but way creepier and set in 1950’s Mexico.

The atmosphere is perfect for the season, a debutante heads to a creepy countryside house, after receiving an ominous letter from her newlywed cousin, and finds the dark secrets that lie within the house and its occupants.

10.The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

A suspenseful and eerie mystery told via dual timelines all surrounding a rundown roadside motel and the secrets lurking that captivated a woman so much that she went missing in the 1980’s and now have caught the attention of her niece 35 years later. If you love a good mystery mixed with timeline jumping this a perfect one for you.

Bonus

11.The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

Handmaid’s Tale meets Salem: Born of rebellious feminist resistance by a girl who is branded as cursed because of her mother’s sins and facing the dark powers to make definite and concrete changes at the dystopian, puritanical, secluded society consisted of hypocrisy, ignorance, illogical and unfair laws.

This is another terrifying, fist clenching, soul shivering, mind crushing, heart pounding, forehead sweating, edgy, spooky, bleak, dark journey take you to the dark woods to face the four witches are ready to haunt you in your dreams and place a quite irritating thoughts inside your brains.

#reading #read #Halloween #autumn #books

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ct-multifandom · 3 years ago

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Miracuclass Amogus Cringe

I was going back and forth about making this post, but then I saw @charming-mage ‘s and I was like screw it we’re doing this. This ended up 10x longer than I thought it’d be.

Marinette (crewmate) - tries to organize everyone into a buddy system to corner the impostors, gets frustrated when people agree to her plan and then start running rogue. When discussions start she’s leading the conversation and asking the most questions. She greatly prefers crewmate over impostor because she likes the mystery solving element of discussions.

Marinette (impostor) - whenever she kills someone she goes, “ahhhh” out loud and panics while her avatar sprints away from the body. She likes coming up with convoluted plans, especially when she can communicate with her fellow imp(s), and tries to make it seem like she’s in two places at once wether it be through venting or falsified testimony.

Adrien (crewmate) - he has to unmute and ask how to do like every individual task to the point where he’s been voted out over it before because cmon, you’ve gotta be lying about it at this point, just piece it together and stop unmuting during task time. He makes puns and sings little improvised songs while tasking. When he suspects someone but they don’t get voted out, he offers to tail them at the cost of his own safety. Same with fixing sabotages late-game. To him, getting killed is just part of the game progression, and it’s not a big deal because he trusts his fellow crewmates to avenge him and doesn’t mind ghost-tasking.

Adrien (impostor) - okay maybe he lies about not knowing tasks sometimes. But it also took him a while to learn imp mechanics and he kept asking about them out loud like, “what’s the red square task on the floor? Why’s my name highlighted?” And somehow nobody noticed while his partner(s) were like nggggg Adrien no... At least he’s good at playing innocent/fake-detective-ing in discussions. Whenever he kills someone he makes some stupid one-liner about it out loud.

Alya (crewmate) - we got Sherlock Holmes over here. She overanalyzes every tiny detail and isn’t scared to sacrifice the sus for the greater cause. When she finishes tasks, she likes to hang out by security and snoop in case of the rare satisfaction of catching someone red-handed. If there’s an emergency meeting, it’s probably because she probably saw something. She supports Crewinette’s plans to corner the imps. She thinks tasks wins are boring and that it’s a lot more fun to win through voting correctly. If they task-win or lose she stops before the new game and asks who the imps were and for a recap of their actions.

Alya (impostor) - a force to be reckoned with. She’ll wait for the perfect moment to strike someone, and then cover her tracks, join a group and win herself a strong alibi anyways. Her reputation as a ruthless detective protects her, even when the game is set to show that the ejected person was innocent. She always chooses someone to kill and someone to blame for it, but sometimes she gets carried away and they vote her off for pointing too many fingers.

Nino (crewmate) - he’s just tasking, man. If he gets killed he’s like, “oh mf” and just keeps ghost-tasking. He mostly hangs out during the discussions unless he has something solid to say, only jumping in at the end to confirm, “so we’re voting for _?”. He leads his own little crewmate squad around when he finishes tasks to protect them while they finish theirs.

Nino (impostor) - mostly plays off the strategy of his partner(s). He likes playing the protective team-player type “innocent diversion” role while the partner(s) get to killing, so when discussions start he’s totally in the clear, which gives him an opening to dodge suspicion in the future if he needs to take over killing. He pretends to fix sabotages all the time because people rely on him to do that as a crewmate.

Max (crewmate) - freakishly good at the card scanning task. People always ask for his secret and he’s like? It’s so easy? He has every map memorized to a t so he can point out the contradictions in people’s stories like an ace attorney character. It’s surprisingly really helpful. He’s the opposite of Alya in that he’s a big supporter of the “guys, stop voting off random innocent people, we have like five tasks left. Whoever hasn’t done them, just finish them” strategy.

Max (impostor) - he tries his best to protect his partner(s) in the discussion while laying low himself, and sometimes he gets voted out for it, but if he senses that there’s nothing he can do, he’ll throw them even further under the bus to build credit for himself. He doesn’t like sacrificing innocents as a crewmate, so his defenses are only sus when he’s caught being wrong. He sabotages a lot to control people’s movements and vents liberally unless he committed to a tasking group. That being said, he can go whole rounds without killing out of caution.

Kim (crewmate) - he’s the guy who calls emergency meetings early into the game only to say, “I miss you guys :)” He gets voted out all the time for doing troll-y crap and ignoring Crewinette’s plans. He’s also severely confused by some of the tasks and game mechanics, but fakes it till he makes it, until the discussion where he rarely says anything valuable and just jokes around. Sometimes, though, he’ll offer a tiny offhand detail and everyone’s like Kim, I hate to say it, but you’re a genius or that’s the piece we’ve been missing! And he’s like haha ok. He’s always behind on tasks, sometimes out of laziness, sometimes out of confusion, but he’s one of the people Max is impatiently waiting on.

Kim (impostor) - he gets caught in the act a lot and it’s hilarious, but other times he gets away with everything the entire time, which is kinda scary. He’s weirdly good at introducing so much confusion and derailment to discussions that everyone gets totally lost and doesn’t know what’s going on, allowing him to survive when they could’ve easily figured him out. Unlike Max, he knows literally nothing about the maps and always says he was at the “slidey thing” or whatever and everyone’s like idk wtf the slidey thing is, and if this were anyone else they’d be gone immediately, but it’s Kim so he might actually be telling the truth. He refuses to learn the names of anything because this really helps him out.

Alix (crewmate) - always trying to convince her friends to experiment with ridiculous game settings. Occasionally, she gets to them, and they get games with comically unbalanced imp:crew ratios, awful lighting, an overwhelming load or lack of tasks, or hilariously low cool downs. She revels in the chaos. When she tasks she usually moves from place to place alone but tries to hop in with groups to confirm her movements. She’s pretty good at sussing imps out when they offer enough information, but otherwise she just makes goofy comments with Kim.

Alix (impostor) - not too worried about killing people and venting. She moves fast and dashes from place to place, joining a group on the opposite side of the map from her last body. If anyone says, “I saw someone vent but I didn’t see who” it was probably her. She likes the “stand in a clump and watch the chaos ensue when one person drops” technique as well as the gambling “hope that the UI for the task everyone’s doing covers your killing and venting” strat. Sometimes she’s forced to vent to a dead end and gets caught, and sometimes the big brain detectives catch her, but she’s usually pretty smooth.

Rose (crewmate) - a big fan of hide and seek mode. She likes grouping up for tasks, protecting each other at the cost of efficiency. During discussions, she has a hard time believing anyone’s the impostor, and everyone’s like, Rose, we know there are exactly three of them, you can’t defend every individual person. Whenever she gets killed she is like *gasp* et tu, Brute? No matter who it was.

Rose (impostor) - runs around with her squad when... oops... looks like something got sabotaged! Uh oh, wonder who could’ve done that? She’s in a battle against that task bar more so than the players, and tries to stay away from killing. She emulates crewmate behavior perfectly so no one ever suspects her until really late. If she’s the only imp left and she has to kill, it’s like an Agatha Christie locked room mystery level of drama and betrayal within her squad. But we were all together the whole time... omfg no way... it was one of us.

Juleka (crewmate) - she secretly prefers when everyone tasks alone, but goes with the squad for Rose. She only talks in discussions if she’s 100% sure about something, and she often incomprehensibly mumbles vital evidence. ~10 minutes later when they catch the imp she’s like iItoldyouso and the crew’s like ??? If she gets killed and her tasks are done, she haunts that impostor relentlessly. Sometimes she even organizes ghost brigades in ghost chat and gets everyone to follow them.

Juleka (impostor) - definitely gets a kick out of the kill button. Whenever she takes someone down she’s like heeheehee. If she was peer pressured into a task team again, she’ll anxiously try to slip away unnoticed for a second to catch someone in the hallway outside, but if she’s alone, she’s on a hunt. Nobody is safe. When she defends herself on voice chat she also mumbles incomprehensibly and everyone’s like sure, fair enough.

Mylene (crewmate) - seasoned task group leader. She also sings little task songs like Adrien. She tries to organize people into chatting regular status updates so they can tell if someone goes missing. She reports every body she finds and actively participates in the discussion, but whenever she makes good points, she gets overlooked. Then, the crew’s like Mylene, why didn’t you say anything sooner? And she’s like agjdjdhh Either that or she gets voted off for always reporting and being too eager to discuss on top of it.

Mylene (impostor) - gets her partner(s) inside her team and tries to tag-team anyone passing by, only for all the impostors to have alibis when she reports. If the ratio is right, they can destroy their own group, and then immediately point the finger at whoever is left, which works about half the time. Mylene is a pretty convincing actress, but the high IQ tricks only work a couple times.

Ivan (crewmate) - he’ll take one for the team if he has to, especially in those sabotage cases where you’d have to be isolated and vulnerable. Otherwise he’ll protect his group. He has an “innocent until proven guilty” attitude when he runs into other people on the map, and skips during a lot of the votes.

Ivan (impostor) - we all know he can’t lie to save his life. He usually gets voted out really fast if he kills someone because he gets nervous and starts saying contradictory things when questioned. That being said, he’ll do what he can to keep his partner(s) in the clear. He never vents because the risk is too high for him, instead just running around and saying, “sorry” out loud when he catches a victim.

Nathaniel (crewmate) - he’s the opposite of Adrien in that he’ll do anything to avoid getting killed. He runs around tasking on his own, but he’s usually behind because he’s so focused on avoiding everyone, to Max’s frustration. He also never reports bodies. This causes him to be sus at all times, so he gets voted out a lot. Wild Nath sightings are rare and terrifying because he’s never in the clear and he’s just standing there, menacingly. Imp!Alix sees him as a fun combo of Where’s Waldo and Assassin.

Nathaniel (impostor) - the millisecond that cool down timer runs out, someone is getting killed. Hit and run. He’s good at entering a fairly crowded large space, striking, and staying in everyone’s blind spots while he runs away, especially when the lights are out. He likes venting to isolated areas and killing as many people per round as he can, laughing when someone finally reports and everyone unmutes to go WHAT!? at the number of deaths. He tends to operate separately from his partner(s) unless they have an actual plan.

Chloe (crewmate) - gathers every single person in medbay and makes sure they all watch her scan. Yeah okay, we get, you’re a crewmate. She feels personally offended whenever someone kills her, which is often, since people tend to jokingly target her. During discussions, she accuses anyone and everyone of being sus, even if she just walked past them or saw them tasking alone. She likes stalking people as a ghost and spilling tea in ghost chat.

Chloe (impostor) - reacts similarly to Marinette when she kills. She will throw her partner(s) under the bus if it’s more advantageous in the long run, and she’s great at shifting the blame to innocents. People vote her out a lot anyways, and she says she can’t believe that they even like this stupid little game. Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. Unless she wins. Then it’s fun.

Sabrina (crewmate) - discussion detective supreme. She keeps track of every piece of evidence and testimony, every detail. She tails the sus at a distance, trying to catch them doing something. Sometimes it gets her targeted, but sometimes she catches them and calls emergency meetings to snitch. Somehow she manages to do this and finish her tasks at the same time.

Sabrina (impostor) - sabotages everything, and tries to get her partner(s) to do it too. Once she won because the crew just didn’t fix O2 in time. She avoids killing Chloe, but feels bad if she has to kill anyone else too. She typically just sticks to making other people seem suspicious, and likes the game mode where you can’t see if you voted correctly or not.

Lila (both) - she rarely joins these games. She isn’t even a member of the chat group they use. They occasionally invite her, and she usually lies about how busy she is, but she accepted a couple times to further her narrative. She pretends to be really bad at being an impostor to establish herself as someone incapable of trickery. Regardless of her role, whenever the body announcement pops up, she goes, “oh nooo, not [victim(s)]... nooo....” and Mari’s like stfu Lila.

Bonus Polaroid kids because,,, they <3

Kagami (crewmate) - hella efficient at tasks. Two discussions in and she’s done. She’s the interrogation specialist who stresses out the imps and crew alike with her barrage of questions. She likes moving either alone or in partners, three people maximum, unless Crewinette needs her, in which case she’ll stick to the plan no matter what.

Kagami (impostor) - you’re walking through the base / there’s no one around and comms are down / out of the corner of your eye you spot her / Kagami Tsurugi. She will have you cornered and you won’t be able to do anything about it. She always has a made up explanation for what she was doing, but sometimes it falls through solely because she’s always acting sus.

Luka (crewmate) - he likes crewmate a lot more than impostor. He’ll tag along with a task group until he’s done, and then he’ll go lurk in the corner and spy on people. He moves along the walls, and a few times this has led to him witnessing murders in the middle of the room while the imp only saw him after it was too late. Cue the mad dash for emergency meeting.

Luka (impostor) - works together with his partner(s) to perform some high level backstabbery. He rarely gets voted out unless he messes up because he builds bonds of trust with like half of the crew while he leads the rest into his partner(s)’ traps. He feels bad about killing sometimes, but he doesn’t mind sabotaging.

Zoe (crewmate) - she finds one or two other people she trusts and follows them around. She uses the logic of “well we could’ve both killed each other by now but we didn’t so they must be safe”. She immediately recounts everything that happened to her that round in discussions, even irrelevant details, just in case they might end up useful, and tends to bandwagon with voting.

Zoe (impostor) - tries to catch people in secluded corners or rooms with closable doors to kill them. She avoids taking risks, but sometimes she reports her own bodies and tries to act all surprised by the discovery. She’s a good actress, but she’s not the best bs artist, although the crew is used to her giving a ton of details right from the start, so they don’t suspect her unless there’s a hole in her story.

Marc (crewmate) - does tasks on his own but makes sure to stop near crowds when he can. Whenever he’s running around alone and sees someone else, he immediately turns around like ohmygodohmygod and anxiously dances around the other person who’s more than likely just another, equally anxious crewmate with places to be. He still gets killed a lot.

Marc (impostor) - he goes full anime villain mode. All according to keikaku. He’s one of those people who disproportionately rolls the impostor role and ends up with it like twice every five games. He plans out every move he’s gonna make, every complex lie and big brain play, and sometimes he gets that glorious evil win, but sometimes his plans are totally sabotaged by stupid things like Kim’s trolling.

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alpacaparkaseok · 4 years ago

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Happy Holidays - BTS Style

9. “Are you crying?”

16. “Wow. Are you always this…attractive?”

Pairing: Taehyung x reader

It doesn’t matter the time of day, weather, location, or season. There is one thing that Taehyung can almost always count on.

You’ll be reading.

It doesn’t matter what it is; you could be curled up on bed with your phone mere inches from your nose as you scroll through a short story you stumbled upon earlier. He’s seen you walking and reading at the same time, a feat he greatly admires. If you’re in the car, you’ve got an audiobook going on. In the bath? That’s the perfect time to read apparently. Waiting for him backstage? There’s sure to be a dog-eared book in your hands.

When Taehyung invites you over to his new apartment on Christmas afternoon, you show up with your new book you got for Christmas.

“What book is this?” Taehyung asks as he leads you inside. He moved in a couple of weeks ago, this certainly isn’t the first time you’ve been inside. He watches as you kick your shoes off and snuggle up closer to him, still a little cold from outside.

“Only another one of the splendid Agatha Christie’s books!” You gush, holding the book up for him to see. “You’ll have to read this one when I’m done, I’ve been dying to read it for a while now.”

Tae smiles at you, looping his arm around your shoulders and guiding you further into the house. He watches as your eyes light up when you see where he’s taking you.

“No way,” you breathe out.

Taehyung took the time to decorate his bay window with cushions, blankets, and even a little box for your books. The window provides the perfect view of the snow-covered trees and city beyond.

He can’t help but giggle like a schoolboy when you take off running toward it, diving into the pile of blankets and wrapping up in them as soon as possible. He rushes back to the kitchen to add the final touch: hot chocolate.

“Have I ever told you that I love you?” You ask, eyes wide as you reach out for the hot chocolate. Taehyung laughs again, making you scoot over so he can sit beside you.

“Yes, but I don’t think you’ve ever said it with that much conviction.”

You snort, rolling your eyes before taking a sip of the drink. As soon as you drink it, you sigh and relax into Taehyung’s chest. You’re a little dramatic, but that’s how he likes you.

Dramatically happy.

You shriek with laughter as Taehyung slips his arms around your waist and pulls you closer, nuzzling his face into your neck as you pull your book out.

The afternoon passes in a similar fashion, Taehyung basking in the comfortable silence as you flip through page after page, drinking in the story. Occasionally he’ll read along with you, but for the most part he busies himself with braiding sections of your hair and tracing pictures on your back.

He sighs out, placing a kiss on the back of your head as he looks out the window. There’s a part of him that wishes he could freeze this moment and come back to visit it whenever he wanted to. Moments like these are his favorites.

Quietly slipping away from the bay window, he grabs his glasses from his room. He’s on his way back to you when he sees your shoulders shaking.

Worried that you’re shivering from the cold, he rushes over with another blanket it tow only to find that you have tears rolling down your cheeks.

“Are you crying?” He asks, a little breathless as his heart drops. You turn to him with red-rimmed eyes, nodding. “Why are you crying, jagiya?”

You rub the tears away from your eyes, shaking your head. “The brother did it. Isn’t that horrible? How could he do that to his own flesh and blood?”

Taehyung stifles a laugh, immediately in immense relief that nothing is actually wrong. “Oh, you poor thing,” he coos. Settling back down beside you, he gives your tear-soaked cheeks a delicate kiss.

You close your eyes for a moment before opening them again and giving him a long look. He can tell by the way your eyes are roving over his face that you’re just noticing his glasses.

“Wow. Are you always this...attractive?”

Taehyung bursts into laughter at your comment, always taken by surprise by your sudden mood swings. You blush, realizing what you said.

“I mean, yes?” He says through his laughter. You bring the blanket up to your face, burying your head inside it as you try to hide. Taehyung won’t have it, though. Plucking your finished book from your hands and pulling you up into his lap and beginning to tickle you.

It would have made for the perfect ending to the perfect day, except for one thing.

He forgot about the hot chocolate.

That is, until he sent it flying and it splattered all over you. Fearing for his life, Taehyung didn't even bother to put a coat on before rushing out the front door and into the winter wonderland, hearing your frantic shouts behind him.

“You’ll pay for this, Taehyung!”

masterlist

#taehyung fluff #taehyung oneshot #bts fluff #taehyung holiday oneshot #bts holiday fluff #bts holiday oneshot #taehyung x reader #bts x reader #v x reader #v imagine #taehyung imagine #tae imagine #v onshot #tae x reader #bts requests #bts holiday #bts Christmas requests

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turtlethon · 3 years ago

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"Return of the Shredder"

Season 2, Episode 1

First US Airdate: November 26, 1988 First UK Airdate (Hero Turtles version): January 3, 1990

Shredder re-emerges from Dimension X with a plan to frame the Turtles.

Turtlethon continues with a look at "Return of the Shredder", the first episode of season 2 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987). A memorable and historic episode in many ways, so apologies in advance if I go on a bit! This one is a story by season one's writers David Wise and Patti Howeth, but with a writing credit for Christy Marx.

"Return of the Shredder" is the first episode to air on the BBC in the UK as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles at the beginning of 1990, opposite Mr Majeika on ITV; The TV scheduling equivalent of being the first jobber to lose to Goldberg.

For most UK kids, this would have been the first piece of Turtles media they'd ever seen. And without any knowledge of S1, it raises a lot of questions. As mentioned in the "Turtle Tracks" recap, things like the comic adaptation and trading cards would do a lot of heavy lifting to fill in the gaps. The other notable thing is there's STILL a lot of ninja content in this episode, and some weapons use. It was largely edited out of the Hero Turtles version but the BBC took it upon themselves to make at least one additional edit.

2021 UPDATE: When I first revisited this episode in January 2020, I only had access to a German dub of the Hero Turtles version for comparison purposes. Since then I’ve been able to acquire multiple English language VHS releases of the TMHT edit of Return of the Shredder, so I’ll discuss the changes made in a separate post.

This episode opens with Michelangelo and Leonardo witnessing a robbery while shopping for groceries. They make short work of the crooks and after making their escape, April interviews the cashier about the incident for the Happy Hour News.

vimeo

The German dubbers took some interesting liberties when they adapted the above interaction between April and Burne Thompson.

USA version

APRIL: They're heroes, I tell you!

BURNE: Bushwa!

German dub

APRIL: They're heroes, I tell you!

BURNE: BULLSHIT!

This episode includes the first appearance of Burne's girlfriend Tiffany, whose shtick is that she finds turtles disgusting. She considers anyone that defends them a "lousy turtle lover".

(Tiffany definitely went on to become one of those MAGA blondes that has a selfie of themselves in the car wearing giant shades as their userpic)

We then get a scene where the Turtles explain at length their connections to Splinter and Shredder, no doubt much to the relief of anyone watching the Hero Turtles run.

One of the first major turtle mix-ups here, where Raph is depicted talking at length but has Leo's voice. There's a way better one later on in this ep though.

Splinter has a vision that Shredder is about to return. I'd forgotten about this aspect of his character, where he has some vague mystical sixth sense about things and isn't just a wise old man that got turned into a rat. I kinda hate it to be honest.

Krang teleports Shredder to Central Park(?) where he's approached by two knife-wielding muggers, all of which remains intact in Hero Turtles. Why are nunchucks verboten and knives aren't? Your guess is as good as mine...

Shredder sees off the muggers by chopping a branch off a tree that kinda falls in front of them. They're so impressed that they give all THEIR money to HIM and run away.

This isn't even the only time in this episode that he gets people on-board by just wrecking up the place.

At the Slash-For-Cash Dojo, Shredder encounters Smash, voiced by Peter Cullen in sadly his only TMNT '87 appearance.

Ironically, Smash looks nothing like Smash from famous WWF tag team Demolition (Barry Darsow) but kinda does resemble his partner Ax (Bill Eadie).

Persuasion, the Shredder Way:

1) Walk in to someone's place of business and announce you're in charge now

2) When they object, destroy their property

3) Everyone will be so impressed they'll immediately fall in line

London, Tokyo, Paris, Washington. I'm impressed that Channel 6 is apparently so well-connected, considering we typically only ever see about four people working there

Over an unspecified amount of time Shredder turns Smash's useless students into super ninjas. They're all presented with spiffy turtle shell tunics.

WHO MADE THESE? Was Shredder up all night on the sewing machine meticulously crafting turtle outfits for the entire class?

The fake turtles go on a crime spree that mostly involves Smash karate-chopping cash registers and kicking bank vaults while the others watch, making the time Shredder spent training his pupils seem completely worthless. This soon makes the news, and the Turtles end up being blamed.

Shredder breaks into the asylum where Baxter is being held and they escape. They don't take the guy who thinks he's Napoleon with them, and frankly the rest of the series will be a little worse off as a result.

April's Turtlecom has a tiny satellite sticking out of the side of it.

Not a satellite dish, an actual satellite, the kind that orbits the Earth from space.

Donatello what are you doing

vimeo

I love this scene where the animation just flakes out.

Raphael = Leonardo

Leonardo = Leonardo

"Something strange has happened, now there are TWO Optimus Primes!"

5.1 billion people on Earth in 1988, and only two of them could teach a person this very nuanced method of kicking a door in.

Bizarrely, these lines of dialogue from Burne and April were sampled in Turtle Rhapsody Remix (from the 1990 TMNT movie soundtrack).

A recurring theme of the series later on will be that Shredder doesn’t know where the Turtle Lair is located, but Baxter just found it six episodes in. I guess they had to relocate after this.

Our heroes soundly defeat Smash’s minions and grill him for info. He tells them where Shredder is, and they’re on their way.

The whole thing ends with the Turtles tracking down a kidnapped Splinter, some convoluted hi-jinks involving Baxter's rat-catcher and a battering ram, and the bad guys getting away. Pretty standard stuff.

April exposes the Crooked Turtle Gang as imposters. An infuriated Tiffany demands Burnsie debate her in the free marketplace of ideas.

The show ends with the turtles arguing about who April was winking at in her news report, only for her to break reality by responding from within the TV that it was intended for Splinter.

“Return of the Shredder” is a notable outing in a number of ways, particularly given that it ended up being the de facto first episode of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Putting that aside, it also expands on some ideas developed in the first season about the media shaping the public perception of the Turtles, something that we’ll see more of in the future (in “Turtles on Trial” next season, for example). The idea of the team being framed for crimes committed by someone else will pop up again even sooner, in “Invasion of the Punk Frogs”.

Sadly, neither Peter Cullen nor Smash will appear in TMNT after this. Other Transformers alumni will appear in guest roles throughout the series though. One character introduced here who will return is Tiffany, who we’ll see again next season.

As I alluded to previously, this episode was heavily edited to bring it in line with the BBC’s broadcast standards, in fact it might actually be the most censored in the entire run. Some of the changes made are downright ridiculous, and I’ll cover them in a future post.

#TMNT #TMNT 1987 #Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #Turtlethon #ninja turtles #Return of the Shredder #1988

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phoebehalliwell · 4 years ago

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how would you rank the seasons from least to most favourite?

alright okay right off the bat worst season season 7. for starters i think this season has no staying power i mean like since i’ve been running this blog 4 so long now my knowledge of charmed is encyclopedic and insanely vast more than like it ever need be but for the longest time. i could not remember season 7. like wtf even happened there?? evidently leo became human??? cole returned? the avatars??? like all of it was just. it’s not even necessarily forgettable it’s just i straight up could not remember it for the longest time. and i’ve said it before the concept of utopia was way to advanced for a show like charmed to tackle i am not watching charmed for moral philosophy i am watching bc i love these girls ♥ hee hee hoo hoo magic adventure ✨ tho if i am to offer a single comment on utopia: it’s awfully rich for a show to go on about destiny and fate and then take a stand against utopia in the name of free will. but w/e. i don’t like leo in the avatars i don’t like his dynamic with piper in this season i don’t like whatever phoebe’s doing this season there’s like leslie?? maybe there’s someone else? boring & flavorless they should have been setting up her endgame instead of puttering around. and kyle. zoo wee mama. could have been a great antihero. morally gray. duplicitous. self serving. but no. they gave him all those traits and called him hero/love interest. s7 left a lot to be desired out of the characters and their relationships also gave us phat L’s such as the charmed ones are werewolves don’t worry about it and feminism peaked with naked women. shout out to zankou: demon, dilf, dub & the noir episode.

you know what? fuck it i’ll say it second worse season 5 genuinely fuck season five. this is probably a Very Specific beef 2 me But. i hate what they did to the charmed universe. this was the season that marked the transition of charmed from supernatural drama to campy soap which like. i love camp! i do! but fr. fuck this season and what it did to the worldbuilding. the early season have Such A Vibe to them man with warlocks and witches and just a couple niche monsters from assorted lore that the show took and made their own. season five opens with mermaids goes directly into fairytales then gives us superheros whatever the fuck was going on in that mummy episode the sandman leprechauns and nymphs. and i hate it for that. it takes away from this urban fantasy things that go bump in the night what lurks in the shadows of the back alleys of san francisco in favor of the ugliest cinderella dress ever put to television and an onslaught of horrible irish accents for a full episode. other issues with season five: cole’s still here? why? they don’t know and neither will you! we’re not redeeming him! phoebe’s not getting back together with him! yes he died we just refuse to let him go! the cherry on top of course being a cole-centric 100th episode. shout out to. hmm. lemme think about what i actually liked about this season. i like jason dean as a love interest i don’t remember what he did in s5 but i know he was there. the season finale i’ve talked about how stupid & shitty it was but idc i still love that episode and then shout out to bacarra the only original villain this season that was a proper serve. the crone gets second place.

next on this come on we all saw it coming season 8. it’s a bad season! and i get bts there was a whole lot happening budget cuts missing actor etc. but it goes beyond that. it was a bad season. billie and christie were bad. and i’ve said this before but billie in herself is not an inherently bad character. she was just the literal worst for the show. she was a dollar store buffy blonde confident cocky skilled and ready 2 fight evil But. we are not following her like we followed buffy we are following her mentors. it’s like if we had a show called giles that aired for seven seasons And Then buffy showed up. billie was insanely irritating to watch from our perspective and in general wasn’t like. well written. attempts to humanize her / give her more depth often fell flat. and then christy. oh nelly. oh my god. barely a character. not well acted but hey it would have been a miracle if she was. negatives include dumain who was a mess omg bringing back the triad bringing back the source billie & christy obvi and also involving homeland security. which is season 7′s fault which is why it’s the worst. dubs on the other hand include both coop and henry i really liked them the shoehorned love interests weren’t great but i like their characters i though the way the got rid of leo to save on the budget was really creative and gave us a great piper episode and of course the sugary sweet finale i love it i do what can i say.

yet another controversial choice aptly coming in fourth is season 4. i respect what season 4 set out to do. i think it was a good idea. long form narratives, keeping a darker tone, focusing on character-driven drama and growth. too bad it fucking failed miserably at all of this. cole as the source and phoebe as the queen of hell was just so so botched. they had a very unique opportunity following the death of prue to explore these characters and what it means to them to be charmed, to be witches. they saved the world but the cost is insanely high. they’ve lost an older sister. they’ve gained a new sister. how do you even begin to cope with all this? episodes such as hell hath no fury and brain drain fuck so hard because they work with exactly that. had the whole season been like those episode season four would sit at number one with flying colors absolutely no competition. but alas. we can’t have nice things. the show got so bogged down with phoebe & cole, in a way that was just so, so messy. for starters, whether you loved cole or hated him before, we can all agree source!cole sucked. he was such a strong 180 from what we had seen that the show had to make the source some type of possession to justify half the shit they were trying to pull. and then to pit phoebe and paige against one another over a man was just. disgusting. and the ending of course felt rushed because it was! they wrapped up that entire issue in a nice little bow much faster than they reasonably should have been able to. it could have been a great season. it was definitely not. shout out to the seer an iconic mastermind on barbas levels, as previously stated brain drain and hell hath no fury Specific shout out to piper’s scene at prue’s grave shout out to paige as a character i like what they did with her and um. yeah that’s it.

okay we’re exiting the shit tier in favorite of the good tier welcome to the upper half. kicking us off is season 6. season 6 did what season 4 could not in that it gave us a long form plot that still left plenty of room for like. normal demon of the week episodes. i love phoebe early in this season with her faboo haircut her brand new empathy power and her relationship with jason dean. obvious strikes against for whatever the fuck that baby crazy stint was and also the mata hari episode. yikes. i love paige’s hair color in this season nothing paige as a character necessarily stands out to me however i like how they seem to have hit the blend of work-magic with paige where she wants a life and career outside of magic however she still loves the craft and embraces is with an open heart and mind. season six also gives us chris who was a very fun male lead imo we really didn’t have many like him he’s bitchy. he whines and bitches a lot he’s got an agenda he’s a bit secretive but at the end of the day he just wants a family i like him. i like the character growth we see out of piper i like seeing her try to move on from leo i love seeing her get back together with leo i like her dynamic with chris and her fears about motherhood. i also liked richard but that one takes a lot of justification. L’s are witchstock hyde school reunion used karma off the top of my head also the paige/richard/addiction plotline was so tone deaf. also the girls were mean to darryl : ( he deserved so much better. dubs were chris as a character, tbh the episode little monsters, phoebe with empathy specifically saying i love you too to jason i could write a dissertation on that line alone also the courtship of wyatt’s father and i thought the reveals of evil wyatt and chris being piper and leo’s son were both fun and interesting plot twists.

coming in third is actually season 2 a season i really do love it’s just. it lacks structure. imo there is a lot to love about season 2 morality bites and pardon my past are both delightful time travel episodes we get jack sheridan and bane jessup two of my personal favorite prue love interests we get p3 h2o and a great prue plotline regarding the death of patty we get the super cute cupid episode it’s a great. collection of episodes. it’s not a great season. there’s just imo not a strong enough thread connecting the stories together it’s mainly held together by having the same characters in it over and over again i really liked dan personally but like. i knew we were wasting time there. he was just an obstacle. a super cute loving and caring obstacle who’s great with kids but lbr piper and leo were always endgame. wasting our time on dan was stupid. i do love the sister dynamics in season two “gotta hand it to those pesky little demons they sure have brought us closer together” but again. this season could have benefitted from a rex and hannah type or even like a cole or zankou. this season is less of a season and more of just like a handful of episodes, and while there are some fat dubs, there are also some definite swings & misses. shout out to the time travel episodes the prue centric episodes phoebe’s character growth and maturity throughout this season (e.g. her going back to college) and i also think the fashion got a lot more fun this season.

second place i’m saying season one season one was a really strong start and gave us these really compelling characters with interesting relationships between one another But. a lot of it just kinda falls flat. and credit where credit is due it was a brand new show getting its feet under it but the fourth sister feats of clay which prue is it anyway they just simply aren’t dubs imo. also i don’t like that 70′s episode bc again i am an asshole concerned about The Lore i can’t believe one bitch ass warlock caused the Charmed Ones to grow up without powers. it just really bugs me. all in all the plots as a whole like aren’t great imo they’re nothing to write home about (save for from fear to eternity) it’s really the characters that make this season so goddamn good.

first place congratulations to the one the only season three. this is just because it kinda hits all my requirements in that it has some banger one offs (e.g. all halliwell’s eve, the good, the bad, and the cursed) it has an overarching plot at the exact same time as the source becomes more prominent and obvi cole is also there with murderous intent i like the character growth we see especially from prue i like piper and leo finally get married overall i really like the aesthetic of this season that blends a darker urban fantasy tone with still some charmed fashion and whimsy. strikes against tbh phoebe and cole’s relationship i am insanely picky with my enemies to lovers and the do not come remotely close to cutting the mustard in fact they are almost immediately disqualified however from afar i can see and respect The Drama. shout out to recasting victor prue with pistols death as a character and shannen directing episodes

#and of course this is a matter of opinion i'm not expecting everyone to agree w me Howver #i think you'd also be hard pressed to talk me out of my opinion #like the closer you get to the top there's more wiggle room like what's the best season i think changes with the wind #but the shit tier stays shit tier in my mind it's a matter of personal preference and i personally prefer my season to be good #charmed #💌

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watchilove · 2 years ago

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Christie’s Watches – Kick-off of the Spring Season!

20 February 2023 – The bar has been set high for 2023, with 2022 an exception year for watches at Christie’s. While the sustained demand for vintage Rolex and Patek Philippe timepieces was reaffirmed, Christie’s private sales rose by 73% year on year, as Christie’s continued to strengthen its position as the reference for curating exceptional collections and bringing them to market: (more…) “”

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#Christie&039;s #Christie’s Watches #news #Press release

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crowdvscritic · 3 years ago

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round up // AUGUST 21

Happy 2nd birthday to these Round Ups! For two years I’ve been making monthly pop culture picks, and they’ve included:

More than 200 movies

32 TV shows and specials, plus 8 different Saturday Night Live Round Ups

27 albums, singles, playlists, and more music picks

13 podcasts

12 books

2 concerts

There have also been articles, events, museums, social media bits, trailers, and a service that helps you find movies across streaming platforms. (Find all of them here.) This month I’m adding a few more, like:

2 podcasts

2 albums

5 vampire movies

A conversation between two GOATs

A very funny dead guy

A terrifying Robert Mitchum performance

Another Dumb Rom-Com I Nevertheless Enjoyed

Here’s to another year!

August Crowd-Pleasers

1. Jungle Cruise (2021)

Indiana Jones meets Pirates of the Caribbean with a dash of The African Queen. I like all those movies, so sue me, I had a nice time! Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10

2. Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Genetically-enhanced sharks try to break free of their cages in an ocean research facility, chaos ensues for the characters, and it’s a delight for us. For no intelligent reason, I love movies that make me guess who’s going to get killed off next, so a big dumb shark movie starring L.L. Cool J and Samuel L. Jackson? It’s a particular brand of joy. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 5.5/10

3. Double Feature — Adam Sandler Comedies: 50 First Dates (2004) + Murder Mystery (2019)

Adam Sandler movies are little like IcyHot for the brain—that is, they’re the relaxing kind of mind-numbing. Thanks to a stressful month at work, I watched six Sandler flicks in August—which I don’t necessarily recommend but also don’t regret—and the Netflix original Murder Mystery (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10) was one of the the best of the bunch. It’s a silly spoof of Agatha Christie’s work, and it’s a scenic two-hour European vacay. I also gave 50 First Dates (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10) another try and was pleasantly surprised. Once you get past some of the gross-out humor at the beginning, you’ll find a sweet story all about how we need to keep showing up for the people we love.

4. Double Feature — SNL Comedies: Wayne’s World (1992) + Hot Rod (2007)

My love for Saturday Night Live is more than well-documented, so exactly zero mes were surprised that I loved these flicks from its alums. Wayne’s World (Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 7/10) follows up with Wayne and Garth in the basement we first saw on late night. Now they have the opportunity to make it big on TV thanks to a sleazy exec (Rob Lowe). Brian Doyle-Murray and Chris Farley show up, and so do Laverne and Shirley? Hot Rod (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 6.5/10) follows Rod (Andy Samberg) as he tries to make it big as a stuntman and impress his stepdad (Ian McShane). Will Arnett, Bill Hader, and Chris Parnell show up, and now I can mostly forgive all those boys in high school who quoted this movie non-stop.

5. Weekend at Bernie’s (1989)

If those SNL comedies weren’t enough silliness for you, how about you add some Bernie to your lineup? Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman are wannabe-yuppies who think they’ve got their career breaks when an exec named Bernie invites them to his vacation home for the weekend. What they don’t know is that Bernie (Terry Kiser) has been laundering money, is connected to the mob, and, is now, um, dead. The right thing would be to call the police, but then we wouldn’t have a 97-minute high-concept comedy, now would we? Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 7/10

6. Twilight series (2008-12)

I mostly skipped the Twilight phenomenon at its peak, but I’m so glad I hopped on the train years later—this series of vampire vs. werewolf showdowns are ridiculous. But major kudos to the filmmakers who somehow turned a dump truck of nonsensical gobbledygook and unhealthy teenage relationships into something insanely watchable. Also, major kudos to Billy Burke and his understated, curmudgeonly, sarcastic performance. Bella’s dad is the MVP with the only appropriate responses to all of the nonsense he's forced to participate in and the only tether this franchise has to reality. Be sure to watch with a friend so you have someone else to process this weirdness with. Series Crowd: 8/10 // Series Critic: 5/10

7. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at The Muny

You know what’s great? Live theater! This month I made my first trip back to the stage at America’s oldest and largest outdoor amphitheater, the Muny in St. Louis. Their productions never disappoint, and these performers reminded me of Howard Keel, Jane Powell, and Russ Tamblyn in the best ways.

8. Wimbledon (2004)

Paul Bettany and Kirsten fall in love at Wimbledon! Frankly, that premise alone should be enough to sell you on this very winning rom-com. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

9. Career Opportunities (1991)

This month’s Dumb Rom-Com I Nevertheless Enjoyed! Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly fall in love while stuck overnight at a Target—which honestly sounds like a dream scenario—and since it’s a John Hughes script, it’s got some heart beneath its thin premise. John Hughes directing would’ve made it better, but there’s enough Hughes in there to catch my heart. Crowd: 7/10 // Critic: 4.5/10

10. First Blood (1982)

Aka Rambo: Part I. Sylvester Stallone is a tough-as-nails Vietnam vet, and Brian Dennehy is the self-righteous sheriff who ticks him off. It digs a bit into PTSD and how we don’t take care of our veterans, but mostly, it’s just Stallone going ape with a knife and explosives. Oddly, also from the same director as Weekend at Bernie’s! Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10

August Critic Picks

1. TCM’s The Plot Thickens Season 2 (2021)

You know those movies that make you ask, “How on Earth did this get made?” This season of The Plot Thickens, subtitled The Devil’s Candy, is an attempt to answer that question. Pretty much no one thinks 1990’s The Bonfire of the Vanities works as a film—including yours truly—and reporter Julie Salomon documented many of its production troubles leading to the final product. A must-listen for anyone who loves hearing behind-the-scenes stories or just gets a kick out of schadenfreude.

2. Gene and Roger (2021)

Gene and Roger, the summer series on The Big Picture podcast, is an overview and reflection on the work of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, starting with the launch of their individual careers in the ‘60s through their partnership that lasted into the ‘90s. Another must-listen for movie lovers, especially those who love digging into the history and criticism.

3. Gold-Diggers Sound by Leon Bridges (2021)

Chill vibes and cool groves to transition you from Summer to Autumn.

4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Come for the Clint Eastwood, stay for the Ennio Morricone. Actually you can stay for Eastwood, too, because his humor is at his driest, and for Eli Wallach, whose Tuco is an insanely charming cockroach. It’s almost three hours, but this treasure hunt breezes by like a tumbleweed in the wind. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 9/10

5. AFI’s Master Class - The Art of Collaboration: Steven Spielberg and John Williams (2011)

Two GOATS talking about making some of the GOATs. They share clips and explain their collaborative process (including on projects like Jaws and Schindler’s List), and they take questions from film students at AFI. I’m only wishing it were 10 hours instead of 1!

6. The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Robert Mitchum’s terrifying preacher elevates this classic into more than just a standard crime thriller. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

7. Respect (2021)

While a few scenes indulge in melodrama, Jennifer Hudson’s killer performance—both in vocals and character work—more than makes up for it. This Aretha Franklin biopic hits the familiar beats, but it makes you feel like you’re in the room listening to Franklin sing , which is really all you want from a movie like this. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8/10

8. Solar Power by Lorde (2021)

At first listen, this minimalist pop record sounds worlds away from the angst of Pure Heroine and the melodrama of Melodrama. At second listen, you realize it’s the Lorde you know and love, just with a Laurel Canyon influence. Carole King even gets a shout!

Also in August…

This month Kyla and I checked out Loveline, a call-in radio show popular during the run of Gilmore Girls. Should our favorite Yale students give up dating OR call into the syndicated radio show Loveline? Should Dr. Drew Pinsky and Adam Carolla give strangers advice OR make fun of them? Oh, and Germany OR Florida? Listen to ep. 107 of SO IT’S A SHOW?

The '40s are coming! Reviews of 1940s Best Picture winners are on their way, and I kicked it off with an overview of the Academy that decade focusing on how they responded to World War II and their new prestigious reputation.

Photo credits: The Muny, The Plot Thickens, Gene and Roger, Leon Bridges, AFI, Lorde. All others IMDb.com.

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mysticscrystalrevelation · 4 months ago

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Game 25 Snapshot Tues, July 16 11:30am EDT Phoenix @ Washington

Starting: WASH: Atkins, Dolson, Hines-Allen, Vanloo, Walker-Kimbrough (Austin hip recovery, Sykes foot injury, Samuelson hand injury, Richards knee injury) PHX: Allen, Cloud, Copper, Griner, Taurasi

1st Quarter Myisha Hines-Allen opens the scoring with a silky smooth jumper. BG has taken the first 3 shots for the Mercury. It just doesn't look right to see Tash vs. Myisha. Opposing teams? Noooo. Anyway the Mystics pass pass pass and find Shatori free and 3-worthy. DT shoots one in response. Shatori gets a steal and passes ahead to Vanloo, and what's this? A successful layup? Fluke. Bec Allen hits from 3. Loose pass by the Mystics and Eric calls break at 7-12. Aaliyah goes up against BG and gets denied twice but manages to get the ball back each time. Jade drives in with a waning shot clock and makes the layup. Suspicious. Great cleanup on the glass by Edwards while BG is sitting. Ok now it's getting crazy, she goes in for the reverse layup and it's a tricky shot but goes down easy. What gives? Aaliyah hits a jumper and she is feeling good! Things are physical—about half of the players have personally inspected the floor in the last minute or so. DT just popped Ariel in the face and then fell/crawled over her. Let's not do the injury thing tonight ok? Flagrant 1. 19-17.

2nd Quarter The Mystics keep trying to pass overhead and it keeps getting disrupted. Phoenix may play with a "small" lineup but they aren't actually short. Yish drives hard to the basket. Stef stays strong vs BG and we get a rebound. On the transition JVL finds a streaking Jado who goes straight to it, Kiki Herbert Harrigan blocks with her hand but McWin is not happy about the body contact. Regardless Hines-Allen was there for the cleanup and a foul called now. Eric is given a tech over his displeasure about the no-call for Jade. He led the league in techs last year. DT trucks Jade on the other end now, but it was a basketball play IMO. Then she goes for 3. Physicality continues and it is definitely the most physical game of the season. DT goes again for 3 and the lead. A flaming pass from JVL inside to Dolson who is doubled and drops it off to Engstler who hesitates just long enough to draw a foul—and makes the shot. The Mystics go back to the Ariel Atkins jumper. Now it's 4 quick points for Phoenix off a turnover and a rebound. Earl hits another middy. Aaliyah comes back in and continues her great game. Painfully Recent Former Mystic Tash Cloud hits from 3. Meanwhile DC has consecutive misses and then watches as Kah waltzes to the hoop. Energy check. Shatori is there to provide from 3. Bec Allen got a tech—has she been influenced by her more demonstrative teammates? Earl now catch and shoot 3 off the kickout from Stef. There is a lot more movement now on offense for the Mystics as they respond to a zone look. We find JVL for 3 as a result. Tied at 42. Shoutout to Myisha Hines-Allen. She may not have the biggest game numbers-wise today but everything she is doing she is crushing <3. Shatori scoops one home, arcing it right over Copper and Griner. 46-44.

3rd Quarter It's JVL for 3 right off the bat in the 2nd. Slim wrote a paper in college about Christy Winters-Scott. Dredge it up! Let's read it! JVL goes again! She is back in form after a couple tough games on their road trip. Nice moves here by Shatori for 2. On the next play it's perfect chemistry as we pick, roll, and kick out to the hot hand—Vanloo 3, Phoenix timeout. DiDi is HYPING JVL like only she can. Kah hits at the buzzer to respond. A good run by the Mercury follows and it's still a very close contest. Shatori blocks Kah but the ball lands in the hands of Sophie Cunningham for 2. Stef nets a deuce from the key corner. It has been a game of impressive offensive plays. To me the defense has looked good on both ends, but it's been showing off by both teams on O. The All-Star Game wishes it were this smooth. A couple turns now and the Mercury work up a 3-point advantage. Eric stops play. We turn again out of the timeout and commit our second foul this game on a 3-point shot. Not the way to end the quarter, DC. Another turn and we are going to need to chill out at the qurater break. 13-0 Phoenix run from those turns, yikes. 63-71.

4th Quarter Things are looking just as sloppy to open the 4th. Yish flies in like a hero, though, to grab a pass and put it in. She goes strong under the hoop on the next play, too, and Coach Tibbetts wants to talk it over. Heh heh heh we go straight to Hines-Allen again out of the timeout and this time she reverses it. Stef drains a 3 now. A couple misses and turns put us right back down 10 with 5 minutes remaining. Shatori gives us 3 needed points. The Mercury are drawing a lot of fouls. JVL is off from 3, but we recover possession and she gets the second attempt. Earl is fired up and steals the ball right from DT's hands, she takes it all the way herself versus Tash and makes a difficult shot—through contact. 4-point game. Kah has been all money this half, she hits another buzzer beater. Cunningham hits a 3 and the lead is back to 9 with 1:17 on the clock. Kah seals it. We are not a comeback team. 87-96 final. Tash was one rebound shy of a triple-double. Double-double for Myisha as well. The Mercury shot very, very well. Turns piled up too much at the end for DC.

It's time for a break. Sending love and healing to our 4 injured players. Looking forward to a healthy Act 2.

#wnba #washington mystics #mystics #game 25 #phoenix mercury

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gayenerd · 4 years ago

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Another old article saved in a Word document, which I can only find behind a paywall now (but I linked it in case someone does have access to a subscription)

Green Day Rising Metal Mike Saunders, Bam, 28 January 1994 Popcore Ascending? Or Is That Just The First Phase Of 'The Greatest Band In America'?

'We were down in Irvine and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of his stride he turned around, right into a horizontal beam five feet off the ground – Vhoom...Out cold. So that suggested the concept of ...misery.'– Billie Joe

WHERE IT all it the brick wall for me personally was 11th grade carpool. Four high school boys jammed into a VW bug, or worse, with the AM radio on for about 20 minutes en route to Hall High, Little Rock.

It was the season of the great Bubblegum Wars, that pint in time where the underground FM vs. plastic AM trench wars had reached the point of no return. Kids vs. pigs, rednecks vs. longhairs. Combat was the order of the day, even in music.

In the fall of 1968, the musical lightning rod was 'Chewy Chewy' by the Ohio Express: 'Turn it off' and 'Turn it down' were the majority opinions. I was for sure the only one going 'Turn it up!' The same routine was repeated just a few weeks later with the Archies and the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (the later with the classic top-five hit 'Indian Giver'), and it seems like ever since that point in time 'pop' has been a derogatory term. Something less than…what? 'Rock'?

What does this have to do with Green Day? Well, it’s like this: There’s this real lame tag – 'popcore' (say it once and erase it forever, pul LEEZE) that was kicking around for a while last year and was affixed to the East Bay trio’s style of music. Aw, hell, they’re just a great rock band.

If Santa came and went recently and there’s still no Green Day in your house, here’s a shopping list: 39 Smooth (Lookout!), Kerplunk (Lookout!), and Dookie (Warner Bros./Reprise). Forty-eight killer tracks by this country’s greatest band and, considering that only in the preceding 12 months did its members start to hit drinking age, possibly just the beginning of what could turn out to be an amazing career.

Proof is no farther away than the band’s new album, Dookie, its first for a major label, but proceeded by two LPs and three 7-inch EPs on Berkeley’s Lookout! Records.

Anyone who’s seen the threesome knows they can play like gangbusters; the difference between a tiny indie-label budget (try about $3000 for all 34 Lookout! Tracks combined) and a major-league endeavor is that for the first time you get proof 10 times over on tape. So you get raging guitar sounds and cracking snare rimshots that explode like the early who. Even the band’s chronic shortcoming – weedy studio vocals – has been corrected to an encouraging degree.

"Yeah," volunteers 21-year-old lead singer/guitarist Billie Joe, "for my vocals we used a Beyer microphone, which was used on some of the early Elvis Costello stuff. I’m really happy with the way it came out."

The entire album is a veritable role model for any guitar-heavy rock band. Says producer Rob Cavallo: "In the case of a raw, live-sounding record like this one, what I try to do is capture on the listener’s speakers the whole left-to-right stereo spread – what we heard in preproduction, listening to the band blast away in their practice room. The key to this, in Green Day’s case, is that they have such a focused idea as to what they sound like, and they’re great players in that style."

Specific elements of Dookie’s production style include a live rhythm guitar on every song, singletracked lead vocals only, and all vocal harmonies done by the second-stage voice, 20-year-old bassist Mike Dirnt.

Warner Bros.’ hands-off role, a characteristic of the company in the wake of its Mudhoney "creative control"-type underground signings, was crucial in shaping such a record. "Warner Bros. stayed out of the way and let us do exactly what we wanted to," says 21-year-old drummer Tre Cool. "All I can say is if you can get on Warners, you are one lucky son of a gun!"

The inclination to make a guitar-heavy record was present from the get-go. "I definitely wanted to get a bigger sound," recalls Billie Joe, "something with more meat to it." Which is achieved, in parts thanks to a borrowed vintage 1972 Marshall head hooked up to the same blue Stratocaster Billie Joe’s been battering since he was 11.

The wall of guitar sound was achieved with a live track and just one more rhythm guitar dropped in. "We had experimented a bit on previous records, stacking guitar tracks to try to get a thicker sound," recalls Billie Joe. "But this time with just the two rhythm guitars; we got a better distorted sound."

Like any other trademark-sound band, it’s the deviations on the record that are most interesting. We’ve got three here: 'Pulling Teeth,' 'When I Come Around,' and the album’s first single, 'Longview,' 'Pulling Teeth' leaps out of the album like a K-Tel cut buried in a techno set; it’s the tune Dave Edmunds never had to break his career Stateside. Tight harmony vocals frame a straight guitar-heavy country-rock melody with a conciseness worthy of the masters. Not one wasted word or second.

"We were down in Irvine," recalls Billie Joe of the song’s lyrical genesis, "and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of this stride he turned ground – vhoom…Out cold. So that suggested the concept of…misery."

'Longview' hits a whole opposite style. It’s something you might imagine as a late’70s FM track, with a loping dumbo beat ("a rumble," suggests Dirnt) not too far off Tom Petty’s 'Breakdown', Lyrics about nothing, really-killing time, punching the cable remote, getting high. A two-chord riff to nowhere, then a basic garden-variety three-chord chorus. The trick is that the whole darn song is a hook. Simultaneously the dumbest and catchiest Van Halen guitar licks panning across the speakers.

"In a way, that song was cheap self-therapy for watching too much TV," recalls Billie Joe. "It was another case of writing about whatever mood I’m in."

Especially near to my heart (I’m from the South, y’all ) is 'When I Come Around,' an unintentional dead-on-evocation of Lynyrd Skynyrd at its top-40 hookiest. With a lazy turnaround beat like 'Sweet Home Alabama', it’s just about five degrees westward of the slightly ‘70s ballads 'Christie Road' and 'No One Knows' from the earlier Kerplunk album.

"On that one, we weren’t thinking country rock, but rather something that had a groove to it, almost like you could imagine having a martini and listening to it at the same time," explains Dirnt.

See, 80 percent of Dookie is in the trademark Green Day raging pop-punk. It’s this deviant 20 percent that makes one suspect they can pull off almost anything they want out of the trash-dump of earlier under appreciated rock styles. A mainstream audience could forge a very, very interesting alliance with this group.

Of the trademark pop-punk onslaught, averaging an airtight two minutes, 30 seconds apiece, 'Basket Case' and 'Sassafras Roots' are two of the strongest numbers. 'Basket Case' was about a friend who’s pretty loopy,' explains Billie Joe, 'but a bit about myself as well – like seeing your own trails in other people where it’s been taken to a total extreme. There are a lot more songs on this record that are about other people’s experiences, even though I might still be singing in the first person.'

The recording of Dookie went fairly fast by industry standards, the music and vocals finished last summer in three and a half weeks (at Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios), followed by an initial mix. The band then headed out on 40-date fall tour with the veteran LA punk band Bad Religion, which enabled them to come back to the project with a clean set of ears. The entire album was remixed with engineering whiz Jerry, Finn who paid special attention to the record’s amazing bottom end. At that point, the band’s 'creative input' reached its most extreme.

"We all three sat there for 10 days straight, 15 hours a day, and listened to every minute of the remixing sessions," recalls Tre Cool. Which is just short of four working-Joe (like me) work weeks without a day off.

Dookie is one of the rawest melodically oriented rock records to show up on a major label in the last zillion years. Usually when bands go from an indie to a major label, the result is a slicker product.

"When I listen to bad rock music occasionally, I just wind up going, ‘What the hell were these guys thinking of?" agrees Billie Joe.

I speculate that there have now been entire generations’ worth of bad drum sounds committed to record. "Huge room sounds on the drum with shitloads of reverb," responds Dirnit. "Flanged drum rolls," adds Billie Joe.

My favorite, rolls across the chromatic-tuned rototoms, comes in a close second.

While most bands with almost 50 tracks into their recording career hit the point of labored songwriting (that old saw about a band’s first album being its best), that hasn’t been the case with Green Day. "Actually, I think I was more comfortable with my songwriting on this record than I ever was before," insists Billie Joe. "I had a real good handle on what kind of melodies and hooks I wanted to come up with. Didn’t rush myself, just let them come out naturally. It was the previous time out, on the songs on Kerplunk, that I was consciously trying to outdo my previous songs."

The variation from Green Day’s uptempo style, now comprising a good one-quarter of the band’s most recent two albums, will continue. "We definitely are going to continue to expand the scope of our material; we don’t want to get into a rut where we rewrite Kerplunk or Dockie over again," explains Billie Joe. "There’s a lot of musical tastes that run through this band."

I did my homework on the band’s "song-about-girls" label (a tag, Dirnt complains, 'we got caught up in') going back to January 1992’s Kerplunk and assigning topics to each song. The tally was girls, four; mortality/meaning of life, three; neurosis/insanity, one; one novelty song; and alienation, motivation, and coming of age, one apiece. Dookie is more of the same, with topics ranging all over the map, the median perhaps being the pissed-off frame of mind of 'Chump' and 'F.O.D.' The girl-songs ratio is down around 30 percent.

The "girl-songs" tag must have sprung from what was the band’s classic 1990 debut, 39 Smooth, written and sung by Billie Joe and Dirnt at the ripe old ages of 17 and 16. A good 70 percent of the album’s songs related to the opposite sex, with the lead off track, 'At the Library', ranking as perhaps the best song ever written by a high-schooler.

One facet of a Green Day performance that’s impossible to capture on paper is the continuous bantering and riposting between the band and the crowd, much of it hysterical.

"It’s all part of making our audience feel like they’re at home, communicating on an eye-label basis," offers Billie Joe.

"See, before a show we’re usually making fun of each other – making a mess by playing baseball with apples or whatever, meeting new people who are funny and have jokes we haven’t heard – so we’re totally stoked by the time we get onstage," elaborates Tre.

It’s safe to say that after two trips to Europe, half a dozen ('at least') full American tours, and over four years of nonstop gigging, performance anxiety does not figure into this band’s equation. "We never have a list, we just make it up as we go," explains Tre.

I offer my theory that no matter how many fans a band has, there are five times as many people who think they stink, and 10 times as many who don’t care.

"I would see it as three different sections: the people who really like you, the people who really hate you, and the vast majority who are totally oblivious," muses Billie Joe.

The vast size of the record industry contributes to making yesterday’s barely gold act today’s 'Who?' (think Britny Fox, Vixen, and a half-dozen gold Loverboy albums). Indeed, if everyone who ever made fun of Motley Crue videos were assembled in one place, we would surely fill the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaking of videos, the world doesn’t faze our subjects – not yet anyway. "We’ve never done a video. They’ve got us scheduled to do one, so for now we think videos are cool," laughs Tre.

"We’re probably shooting the video in our house," adds Billie Joe, the "house" being what appears to be a subterranean Berkeley abode, complete with a tiny band-practice room; it’s not squalid, it’s absolutely slacker). "So…we figure our video concept will be kind of ‘Looks That Kill’ meets ‘Hot for Teachers’ meets 'Rock You Like a Hurricane'," quips Dirnt.

Given the absolutely superb quality of the band’s Warner Bros. debut, the only mystery is that a major label bidding war on Green Day took so long to materialize.

"Warner Bros. was the label initially considering the band," recounts band co-manager Jeff Saltzman. "But it was when Geffen and Sony/CBS jumped in with serious interest that Warners got serious about picking up the band."

Green Day never would have gotten so much done so fast, however, without the astute ears of Lookout! Records’ president and perpetual talent scout, Larry Livermore, who sent the band into the studio two months after first seeing the trio to record an EP called 1000 Hours, which was followed by the 39 Smooth album, which was recorded at the end of 1989 for less than $500.

"I knew Al Sobrante (Green Day’s drummer through mid-1990) from Isocracy, so I knew about his new band, Sweet Children [renamed Green Day six months later]," recalls Livermore. "My band, the Lookouts, were playing a house party up in Mendocino County, February 1989, so I invited Al’s band up to play also. I was so impressed with the band and their attitude, playing just in front of 15 people, that I hooked up with them immediately to record for Lookout! I never had any doubt about their potential, musically. I thought they were great the first time I saw them."

#all typos are in the article i'm pretty sure #the origin story of pulling teeth never gets old #but also who has a pillow fight OUTSIDE???#billie talking about outdoing himself even on KERPLUNK #our poor little workaholic #the stats on 'songs about girls' is sending me #green day #BAM #interview #article #articles

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years ago

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Down the Rabbit Hole part 2

At first I don't know what woke me, but then I feel a buzzing somewhere on the bed and I grope around blindly for the phone until I find it and bring it to my ear. "Hello?" I say, feeling horribly groggy.

"Hi, Roan, honey."

"Dad?" I ask, sitting up straighter. I squint at the clock on the bedside table. It's not actually as late as I thought it was, only one in the morning. I yawn and crack my jaw accidentally. "Ouch."

"Are you okay? Is this a bad time?"

"No, no, I'm fine. What's up? Isn't it late there?"

"It's only two in the morning. Your mother and I just got finished watching a season of West Wing and I thought I'd call you, see how you're doing."

"West Wing is still going?"

"No, no, it's just the latest show we're watching. We just got through with season three. How are you, honey?"

"I'm good."

There's a brief pause.

"Yeah, you're good? I'm glad, I'm glad to hear that. We, ah, we think about you pretty often."

"Yeah, I think about you guys too. How's mom doing?"

"She's good, she's good. She got through with that last operation and, you know, she was really out of it for, ah, for a couple of weeks, but she's all rested up now and she's – she's doing a lot better."

"That's great, I'm glad."

I get up, slip on some sandals, and push the door open, making sure I've tucked the room key into my pocket, and let the night air swallow me up. I lean on the second-floor railing just outside my room and look up and down the row of rooms; ordinarily you'd expect to see at least one or two chain-smoking Latinos out there burning the midnight oil, at least judging by my experiences with similar motels in the past, but it's completely deserted, just like the rest of Gumption.

"What are you up to these days? Are you still working for that paper down in Corpus Christi?"

"Yeah, the Star-Tribune."

"How's that going?"

"It's good."

"Yeah? That's good, that's good."

Another silence passes. I close my eyes. "How about you?" I ask. "How's everything at the shop?”

"Oh, it's fine. I guess it’s car crash season, now that it’s summer. We’ve been very busy. I just wish it wasn’t so hot."

"You and everybody else."

"Right," he laughs. "So yeah, that's alright. It’s good money, at least, we’re bringing it in hand over fist. And then in a couple of months your mother and I are going to go visit Alan and Margaret in Louisville like we always do.”

"I keep asking you to get me one of those little bats and you never do."

"Well, I have five of them sitting in my closet back home, if you'd come and visit once in a while."

This conversation, as it usually does, is steering in a direction I don't much like. "Well," I say briskly, "I'm glad mom's doing okay. And you seem to be doing alright as well."

"I wish you'd call more."

"Well, you know, I'm busy."

"Too busy to call your parents?" he asks, and I roll my eyes.

"Well, you know," I start, but he sighs heavily.

"Forget it," he says. "I just wish you'd talk to us more."

I think, not for the first time, of the letter laying on the floor of my apartment, five hundred or so miles away. I lick my lips and try to ignore the cold drip of apprehension at the pit of my stomach. "Dad, I –" I start, and then I trail off.

There, below me and just barely out of reach of the tall streetlights, someone is walking purposefully into the desert, headed straight for the far-off smudge on the horizon that marks the Mystery Flesh Pit.

"Roan, I think we lost connection. Roan? Can you hear me?"

I hang up the call. I spend only a moment thinking before I hustle down the stairs and, quickly thumbing the phone to silent, head into the desert as well, my eyes glued to the bobbing pinprick of a flashlight there in the desert ahead of me.

I made the decision before I had a chance to rationalize it and talk myself out of it. I have my phone, I guess, so I'll be able to record audio, but the camera is still in my room, as is my good voice recorder. Keeping an eye on the light ahead of me I sneak the top of my phone out of my pocket and look at the battery; somewhere close to sixty percent, and I know the voice-recording app that I use eats the hell out of the battery, so I probably won't get more than thirty minutes of audio out of it.

I'm not dressed properly at all and while it isn't unbearably cold I know it's going to get to me after a while. I kick myself inwardly but I'm already about a half-mile out of town, and maybe a half-mile behind the guy, so there's no point to me turning back now. I stamp down the rising head of fear in my stomach – what if I step on a scorpion and it stings me? What if I run into that homeless guy from the drainage ditch and he rapes me?

That last one, at least, I think, would have its own form of justice to it.

Whoever this guy is, he isn't making any effort to hide his movements. Although it isn't quite sandy enough for me to be able to just follow his tracks, he isn't getting down to prevent himself from silhouetting starkly against the starry backdrop of the West Texas hills, and he isn't, as best as I can tell, checking to see if he's being followed. At least, the flashlight he's holding never swings around to point towards me, although I think I'm far enough away from him that he wouldn't be able to see me even if he did look back.

The walk turns into a trudge. It's a long way to the Mystery Flesh Pit; not an impossible walk, but long. I keep losing my footing and tripping over myself and more and more this seems to be becoming a bad idea. How am I going to find my way back? I turn and look behind me, hoping to see Gumption in the distance, but if it's visible it's behind one of the slumping hills we crossed about twenty minutes ago. I want to rest but clearly this guy isn't quite as tired as I am, despite it being...two in the morning already. Christ.

At least I have all day to try and track down the librarian's brother. I'll be able to sleep in, maybe take a bubble bath...assuming I make it back to the hotel safely.

Ahead of me the guy clicks off his light and I freeze; for a moment I think he's spotted me but once I squint I can make out that he's still moving ahead, just without the light now. Before I can wonder why that is, exactly, I realize that ahead of both of us, partially masked by the nearest hill, there's another, brighter light. I drop to my stomach as it turns and points in my direction, and I see the man I've been following hold up a hesitant hand in greeting.

I pull myself forward and up onto a sort of berm and see a small gathering of people, five in total, all centered around one man, holding a much more powerful flashlight than the man I'd been following had, one of those low-slung heavy-duty jobs. I squint harder, trying to will my eyes to work like binoculars.

The guy in the middle is talking, looking between the four others. From this angle their faces are shrouded in darkness, I can't make them out at all, but there's something familiar the one in the middle. I wonder if I've seen him in town somewhere, if I've walked past him on the street...

Oh. Of course.

The face I'm staring at clicks into place and I realize that the man in the center of the circle, looking around at the others seriously, like a leader, is the hobo I saw hiding in the drainage ditch on the way back from the Mystery Flesh Pit.

They're moving now, the light clicked off, all of them ducked down into a low crouch, the man who I'd thought was a hobo leading the way. I can't tell which of them is the man I'd followed now, they distance and the darkness has made them all too uniform for such distinctions.

We crest two hills like this, them leading, cautiously, stopping when the man in front raises his hand and going when he puts it back down again, myself trailing along behind, half-bent and cautious, before we slip over a third hill and I flatten down again, for there, ahead of us, is the tall, electrified fence surrounding the remains of the Mystery Flesh Pit.

There are fewer lights than I would have expected. They're dotted every hundred yards or so, tall imposing fixtures that provide wells of pallid, fluorescent light but leave great blistering swaths of darkness between. There's no trail or road alongside the outside of the fence, but I think I can make out one on the inside, wide enough for two cars abreast, perhaps. It seems utterly deserted. I wonder if I ought to have covered my face, to try and baffle any cameras there might be, but the group ahead of me doesn't seem to be concerned about that, so I put the thought aside.

We've come at the fence at an oblique angle, far away from the main gate, which I can just barely see in the distance, well-lit and secure-looking.

Between the moonlight and the lamps I should be able to tell what the group does from this hill. I sit down, dangle my legs over the side before drawing them in beneath me Indian-style; it's too cold for anything else. At least I have the sweater that I'd slipped on before taking that phone call from my dad outside, but my bare legs are freezing.

The group ahead of me hustles over to the fence, to a small boulder nearly resting against it, and the man in the lead sets the unlit black box of the flashlight down on the ground and rolls up his sleeves and then picks up the boulder and sets it aside. I blink at that but then I realize as it falls over and he reaches down to steady it that it's hollow, like one of those fake boulders they sell at Home Depot to put over utility meters and pipes and stuff in your lawn. Beneath it is...

I again feel that same prickly feeling working its way up my spine. I can feel my mouth drop open loosely.

Beneath it is a dark, yawning mouth of a tunnel, large enough, perhaps, for an average-sized man if he were to drop on his belly and crawl through it. The leader of the group turns to the others and gestures, saying something to them. He seems to be describing a long, crescent arc, and then he points downwards, and the others nods. He pats one of them on the back and stands up, away from the tunnel, and then, one after the other, the rest of them crawl through. When the last one is through, he puts the rock back, picks up the flashlight, and hurries away from the fence, heading straight towards me.

"Damn," I growl under my breath, looking around for a place to hide. There's a bush off to the left that might conceal me if I get behind it quick enough...

I scurry backwards as quickly as I dare while he walks towards the incline of the hill, still looking off towards the main gates, and then once I've put the lip of the hill between him and me, I roll onto my hands and knees and clamber behind the bush. Fifteen seconds later, as well as roughly thirty of my rushing heartbeats, I’m still waiting. I look around quickly, wondering if he changed his course, but I see nothing, the bare rocky hill face is utterly bare. I creep forward a little, as quickly as I dare, trying to look over the edge, but I can’t reach it without getting out from behind the bush entirely.

“God dammit,” I mutter, glancing around nervously. My heart is throbbing heavily in my chest but I try to will myself to calmness. He just - went another way. It only looked as though he were heading straight for me, that’s all. He went a different way, changed his mind, went to go get something. There’s nothing that -

From very close behind me I hear a small mechanical click that I immediately recognize as the cocking back of the hammer of a handgun. Everything goes very still and silent and I raise my hands slowly, not daring to look behind me.

“Get up,” a harsh male voice says. A flashlight clicks on and throws my shadow far out in front of me. I can feel my hands trembling; my jaw shakes as though I were frostbitten. I feel like I might throw up.

I slowly get to my feet. “P-please don’t -“ I start, but the man cuts me off.

“Hands clasped on the back of your head.”

I link my fingers together and do as he says. “I don’t have any money,” I tell him.

“This isn’t a robbery,” he says, and the stab of fear I feel twists, somewhere deep down inside of me.

“If y-you touch me, I’ll -“

“Shut up,” he tells me. “Start walking. That way.”

I glance back to see where he’s pointing and after a moment of hesitation, seeing no way out of it, I put one shaky foot in front of the other and walk.

* * *

After about fifteen minutes or so he tells me to stop. I’m still shivering, both from the cold and from the fear. We are very, very far out in the desert now; if he were to shoot me out here, probably I’d never be found.

“Turn around,” he orders. I do so, squinting against the glare of the flashlight. There is a long, long silence and then he sets it down at his feet. He’s holding the gun low at his hip. His finger is outside the trigger guard, I notice.

“I don’t have any money,” I tell him again.

“And I told you this isn’t a robbery,” he says. “Who sent you?”

“Who sent me?” I ask. The question doesn’t make any sense to me.

“Yes. Who was it, FBI? NPS? The Company itself?” I can see his dark eyes shift as he looks me up and down. “I must say, whoever it is, they pick some very underwhelming field agents.”

“Field agents?” I blurt. “You’ve got the wrong idea -“

“Look,” he growls, “there’s no point denying it. There’s no other reason for you to be following me out here. So let’s just cut to the chase. You know who I am. Who sent you?”

“I - I really have no idea at all who you are,” I tell him. I look at him very seriously, willing him to believe me, and I think I seem him falter a little.

“What are you doing out here, then?” he asks.

I open my mouth, then close it again. I shake my head. “It’s a long story.”

“Tell it.”

“I’m a reporter,” I tell him. “I found out about the Pit a few days ago and I decided to come down and see it. Stayed in Lubbock for a little bit, got some tips, some people to talk to, that kind of thing. Earlier today, I drove out here, took some pictures of the fence. Then this evening, I saw someone walking out into the desert beelining for the Pit, and I decided to follow him. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” he asks.

“Swear. I’m not - I don’t know who you thought I was, but I’m not here for you. I’m looking for some guy named Peter,” I laugh. “Apparently he works at the 7/11 in town, he used to be a ranger, he was there on the Fourth when the - when the disaster happened. I ran into his sister at the library in Lubbock, she tipped me off. Wanted to ask him some questions about it, maybe do an interview.”

The man is looking at me very strangely indeed. I shake my head. “I know it sounds crazy,” I say, “but that’s all I have to go off.”

“You’re looking for a man named Peter?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Who works at the 7/11?”

“Yes.”

“Because you want to…interview him about the 2007 disaster?”

“Yes,” I say. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He stares at me for a while longer and then shrugs. “Well,” he says, tucking the gun back into his waistband, “you found me.”

* * *

"So how long did you know I was following you?" I ask. I take another puff of the cigarette and hold it, then let it out. He shrugs.

"I noticed one of my...guests had a tail, but I paid attention to you and you didn't act like a cop."

"I'm not a cop."

"I know."

He has a low, gravelly voice, but it has a mellowness to it that doesn't make it quite so unpleasant to listen to. He glances over at me every now and then but for the most part keeps his eyes glued to the fence, to the buildings beyond, to the vast expanse of desert within the fence beyond the buildings. He looks over at me. He has very dark eyes and a rough, coarse beard. He hasn’t yet apologized for pulling a gun on me but with the gun away I can feel myself relaxing a little, like this is a perfectly normal conversation and surroundings and time.

Peter takes a long drag on his cigarette and then examines it. His eyes cut over at me.

“Corpus Christi is a long way away,” he remarks.

“Not a very long plane ride,” I point out.

"Even so,” he nods. “Long way to go on a whim."

"I –" I start, and then stop, shrug at him again. "It didn't feel like it was real," I say, going through it slowly in my head. I need to make sure I have my story straight. "I had never, ever heard of this place before, and I grew up here. Not here here but in Texas. I thought it was a hoax or something but the more research I did the more I couldn't deny that there was something here."

"So you flew all the way out here to look at the fence and then go back?"

I look at him, wondering if he's getting at something. "I guess," I say after a moment. "I was thinking that maybe there'd be something here I could do a story on but it seems like all of this is ancient history now."

He laughs. "For some people it is. For others it isn't."

I look at him. "Why are you smuggling people inside the fence?"

He's silent for a moment. When he answers me it's with a question. "When you were doing all your research," he asks, "did you come across a recording of the news that day?"

"Yeah," I say, remembering it. "It was CNN, I think."

"What did you see?"

"Well...I saw a pit, full of blood, and all of the emergency vehicles, and –"

"Was it daytime?"

"Uh. Yeah, it was. Why?"

He looks at me significantly. "The disaster happened a little after midnight on the Fourth. That video was taken the next day, on the fifth."

I frown. "Wait..."

"That's right, work it out."

"Why wasn't there video of it that night?"

"Oh, there was. But it was never broadcast. Same as all the photographs journalists took that night, those were never published."

"What? Why?"

"Because of two things – first, the disaster was horribly mismanaged, and a lot of people died or got hurt who didn't need to, and secondly, because of something that happened later on, after everything was calming down."

"Which was?"

He licks his lips and looks at me. "You could just drop this and let it go. You weren't there, you don't have any connection to this place," he says, gesturing behind himself in the direction of the fence. "Least I don't figure you do."

"You're right, I don't."

"So why? Why bother?"

"I just found it fascinating. I wanted to learn more about it the moment I heard of it." I briefly relate the story of being stuck in the traffic jam and what lead me to make my way down to Gumption, and he shakes his head.

"I'll only tell you this once," he says. "You'd better get out of here."

"Is that a threat?"

"Not from me. But if you stick around you aren't going to like what you find."

I take a deep breath, let it out. I feel very calm, like a still lake is inside of me, untroubled by ripples. "Tell me what happened on the night of the disaster."

He shrugs. "About forty people who'd been injured and put in a field hospital right on the edge of the pit, after everything had died down, got up and walked to the Pit, got down to the orifice, and threw themselves in."

"What?"

"Just what I said. I don't suppose you found that fact in any of the research you did, huh?"

"No," I shake my head. "No, I didn't. But why, why did they –"

"I was there," he says softly. "I was in one of those field hospitals and I watched the woman in the bed next to mine get up, even though she had an acid burn all down her leg that would have made it impossible to stand without excruciating pain, and walk out the hospital. I couldn't move, they had me in a cast rigged up to the bedframe, I'd broken my leg getting out of the Pit."

"Did she say anything?"

"Didn't say a damn thing, didn't even look at me. She was walking like she was in a dream."

"Why did she do it? Do you know?"

"She felt it calling to her."

"Is that what that sign's about, over there by the gate?" I ask. He nods.

"Yeah. Used to be a lot of people would wander up, try and get in. That's why it's an electric fence now."

"How widespread is this?"

"Depends on how you look at it. Not very many people know about it. They took it off of the incident report that was released to the public, none of the newspapers or websites mention it. They’ve done a very good job of burying it."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"Cause people would get scared," I mutter, more to myself than to him. "We like to think that we're special, that we aren't animals, but something that can manipulate our minds..."

"Exactly. So they just get rid of it, hope that nobody ever finds out about it."

"But if this many people go missing –"

"I don't think it affects everybody in the same way, or at all. The more sensitive you are, the more emotional, creative, and intelligent you are, the harder it hits you. But it might just be an obsession for a few months before it fades, or it might turn into a pathology, and those are the people who either can't take it any more and kill themselves, or they make their way here."

"And you let them inside the fence."

"Yeah."

"What happens to them, in there?" I ask, jerking my chin towards the Pit. He shrugs.

"One of two things. Either the guards catch them, in which case I don't know what happens to them, or they make it to the Pit."

"And?"

"And if they make it to the Pit, they either chicken out, if it isn't such a severe case that they literally can't any more, or they throw themselves in."

"And you help them do this?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because if it's at that point, either way it'll be a mercy to them."

"What? How do you know?"

Peter chews on his moustache for a moment. I study him carefully. He looks…kind. It’s not what I had expected.

"I used to be one of them."

"What?" I say again. "I can't believe this story you're telling me, it's macabre."

"It's the truth. You're writing a story on this? Gonna put it in the paper?"

"I don't know," I tell him. "I thought I might but the more I learn the more I think I won't."

"Good," he nods. "They'll get you if you do. Bad idea."

"They?"

"You know. They. Capital T."

"The Powers that Be."

"Sure."

"So you help people kill themselves?" I ask. He doesn't look so threatening, now that I've been talking to him for fifteen minutes or so, but he's still a man and I'm a woman, he's still stronger than me just intrinsically, even without the gun. Stupid, stupid Roan, not taking any sort of weapon with her...not that I have one to begin with.

"It's more complicated than that."

"So it's about money?"

"Hell no. I don't take a dime from 'em."

"So tell me."

"This is your last chance to get out. You can go home, you aren't tangled in this yet."

"I'm not going anywhere."

He smiles then, and I smile back, I can't help it. There's a grinding sound, over beyond the fence, and we both look over; a Humvee is driving past, floodlight swinging back and forth along the fence. He nods. "That's the patrol. That means at least one of them made it to the Pit."

"They don't have regular patrols?"

"If you only knew what budget cuts have done to that place. See that fence? Ten thousand volts? They don't even power it any more. Too expensive. They leave all the signs up to try and dissuade people but it never works. All those cameras? Most of 'em are broken, or fake, I can't tell which. Too expensive. They're running on fumes in there. There's no research any more, no search for a permanent solution, they just keep the plant running to keep the thing asleep and keep taking the ballast out."

"Ballast?" I blurt. “They’re still taking it out?”

“Of course,” he says, giving me a look. “Not like they’re going to stop making a buck off the thing if they can help it.”

“I read online that they’d stopped taking it out,” I mutter. “Where does it go?” I ask. “If they’re taking it out.”

He shrugs. “I can’t say for certain. I think probably it goes to the highest bidder. And to my understanding, those bids can get very high.”

“Okay, but -“

Peter shakes his head. "It ain't safe out here. We'll talk tomorrow, alright?"

I nod. "Okay. How will I - ?"

"Come by the 7/11, it's dead all night, guarantee it. We can talk about whatever you want. Just…be careful."

“Of what?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Just - be careful. Don’t let anybody else know why you’re here. That’s all.”

“What do you mean - ?“

“Not now,” he says, then he gets up, starts to walk back towards town. "Come on," he says, turning back around when I don't move. "It isn't safe out here this late," he repeats. "I'll guide you back to town."

We walk in silence for a long while. I shiver to myself quietly, staring at Peter’s broad back. “You know, I didn’t think this little adventure would go like it did,” I mention. Peter lets out a little snort.

“How did you think it’d go?”

“Um. I guess I didn’t think much about it at all.”

“You ought to be more careful,” he tells me, glancing back at me. “I mean, following a stranger out into the desert is a pretty bad idea, no matter how you look at it.”

I swallow hard, try and give him a flippant shrug. I think I don’t make my eyes as insouciant as I’d like; I can see his gaze flicker up to mine for a moment before he turns back around and keeps walking. “Good way for someone to hold you up with a gun,” I suggest, and he laughs.

“I’m sorry about that,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just thought that you must have been on to me, I figured you were from the National Parks Service or the FBI or something.”

“Would you have killed me if I was?” I ask, eyeing him. He stops.

“I’m not a killer,” he says.

“What would you have done, then? If I was?”

“I don’t know,” he admits after a moment. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

I just shake my head and keep walking. Peter follows me after a moment.

“Did my sister say anything?” he asks after a while. “When you met her in the library, I mean. I know it must have been her you talked to, nobody else would have known to send you to look for me.”

I think about it for a moment. "She's sorry," I tell him.

"She told you to tell me that?"

"More or less."

"More or less?"

"Well, she told me that if I mentioned she'd sent me looking for you you probably wouldn't tell me anything."

He laughs at that, long and mirthless. "Yeah, that's my sister," he says. "Come on."

The walk back to town is long and cold and surprisingly scary, considering that about halfway through we heard what we both thought was a cougar (mountain lion, catamount, puma, painter, shadow cat, panther...) off in the distance and we both froze. I felt myself huddling closer to Peter, grievously aware of the goosebumps pebbling my legs and arms. We looked at each other for a moment then said nothing. I hoped he wouldn't get the wrong idea.

I try to say something to him when we get back to the motel but he just looks at me and nods and walks off. I realize I don’t know what I was going to say anyway. Eventually I call after him.

"Hey, what time tomorrow?"

He turns around, still walking, and shrugs. "After five," he calls back.

"You want me to bring anything for you?"

He frowns. "Like what?"

"I don't know, dinner?"

Peter waves his hand. “Do whatever you like,” he says, and then he passes around the corner and is gone. I start to yell something after him but instead I just shake my head and go back up the stairs to my room. Inside I flop into bed and then roll over onto my back, stare up at the popcorn ceiling lurking ominously above me, blow a long breath out.

I have two missed calls from my dad, back from when I put the phone on silent, right before I began this whole adventure. I double-tap the icon so that it calls him back, and then after a second I shake my head and hang up the call.

“Fuck it,” I say out loud.

Then I roll over onto my side and try to sleep.

Continue with Part 3

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#writing #mystery flesh pit

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girlysword · 4 years ago

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Manifest: Pre-Season 3 Predictions and Thoughts

Now that the season 3 trailer is out, here is an overview of my holdover theories from the last two seasons and any new thoughts sparked by the trailer

Dangers:

Death Date and the Major: I was not expecting these conflicts to be resolved so quickly, although new conflicts were introduced. Adrian believes 828 is a sign of the apocalypse, he will probably stoke the fire of 828 hate. Also, since the key to the Death Date seems to be “follow the callings, no matter what,” our heroes may be torn between doing sketchy things and possibly dying (especially since the trailer seems to confirm that they did die and were saved by the supernatural callings [and that the plane blew up in season 1 because there couldn’t be two planes at the same time]). As for the Major, someone will inevitably take her place and will be more guarded than she was. There is also the question of whether this was just her pet project or does this go higher up? If, say, the President called Vance and told him to stop helping the 828-ers, would Vance betray his new friends?

Disappearances: Cal’s kidnappers disappeared, suggested that they went the way of 828. This would be the 4th time after Zeke, Griffin, Fiona and Billy Daly. Are these disappearances increasing in frequency, suggesting an imminent apocalyptic event? Or have these disappearances always happened, it’s just widespread info in the modern age and the fact so many people disappeared with 828 that highlighted the phenomenon and this has always happened? History buffs, find mysterious disappearances where the person suddenly reappeared. Here’s hoping that the Agatha Christie disappearance was an 828 event and her novels published after her disappearance hold clues. I still believe the fortune teller Olive met had her own 828 episode. There is also still the question of how Al-Zuras is tied into this. I predict TJ will return from Egypt, riding on a white horse, with critical information just in the nick of time (which means he’ll probably be absent, bar Skype calls, for the first half of the season, but sometimes quality is better than quantity).

Xers, Meth Dealers and Kidnappers, O My!: If there is a time jump between seasons, the first episode could see the return of Cal’s kidnappers. It would be cool if their Death Date were the end of the season, so the finale’s tension is waiting to see whether or not they croak (like a villainous version of the tension of the season 2 finale, wondering whether Zeke was gonna die). They could feed into Adrian’s doomsday theory if it seems that they are following their Callings. The Xers are still a threat, Tamara may take on a leadership role with her brother in jail and the group may team up with Adrian.

Saanvi: She is not a danger, but boy is she in a lot of danger. Her attempt to cure the Callings/Death Date will definitely continue to have side effects and it may have even ensured that the Death Date kicks in. She also murdered a high ranking military officer. She’ll definitely be laying low if not in complete hiding at the start of season 3. Thankfully her shipping prospects provide her with enough plot armor that I don’t think she’ll die in season 3 (I am worried about her after that, though). As it is I think we’ll see a storyline divide between her and the other main characters. She and Vance will team up to take on the government and the other characters will deal with the supernatural stuff, with Ben bridging the gap.

Shipping:

I still think that Jared and Michaela are going to get together at least one more time, that’s just how shows like these work. Hopefully it’ll be brief and then it’ll be done. What could lead to troubled waters for Zeke and Michaela you ask? Well, a couple of things. Now that Zeke no longer has a ticking clock pushing his self-betterment, he might fall back into bad habits, and/or Zeke and Michaela could become complacent in their marriage, letting all the other drama in their lives take precedence. Be on the lookout for either or both of them starting to keep secrets from each other, the best part of their relationship in season 2 was their honesty and immediate airing of any possible issues. I do hope that Zeke and Michaela are endgame, because when their relationship is good it is great. I also hope that Jared and Drea get together because I think they could have a really fun dynamic. They would be the sarcastic couple that gets exasperated with their psychic friends (just think of the background side glances!).

I definitely think Benvi is going to happen but it is definitely a slowburn, so I don’t expect them to get together until the end of season 3 or even until season 4. We haven’t even gotten to Ben coming to the realization that he might have feelings for Saanvi, which I don’t expect to happen until either right before or during the straining of his marriage to Grace. I predicted before that Grace might lie about Eden’s parentage to protect her, and I still think that’s a good theory, especially since Grace’s first Calling was telling not to get a DNA test. Ben would understand, but that would still be a tough situation. Also, Grace was 100% supportive last season, but last season also showed that Ben’s obsessive tendencies can get him into trouble. Grace and Ben might fall out over the interpretation of a Calling, particularly if the well-being of their kids is concerned. I am starting to think that Benvi might not be good for Saanvi’s health. Saanvi has picked fights with a supernatural force and the US military, it would take some serious plot armor to protect her from the serious danger heading her way. I feel like the writers might kill off Saanvi after her and Ben get together to twist in the knife. But, I was wrong about Zeke’s chances of survival, maybe I’m just a pessimist.

Olive and TJ are flipping cute together and I hope that they are a relatively drama free couple to provide a breather from the other couples. One of my favorite things about TJ and Zeke is how well they fit into the family, I feel like if OlivexTJ or ZekexMichaela ever broke up TJ and Zeke would still be close friends with other members of the family. I really hope that TJ becomes Ben’s son-in-law someday (with Zeke’s dad in the background shouting, “I called it!”).

Characters:

Olivia: I hope Olive doesn’t go to college (I don’t have anything against college, I loved going to college and i believe that people should continue to learn after high school, even if its just Skillshare. I just don’t think it’s a practical choice for everyone and that it would be interesting to watch Olive follow a path different from the “norm”.), beyond taking mythology classes and the like at community college. I still think that she’ll take over the Church of the Believers, especially since Adrian thinks the 828-ers are harbingers of the apocalypse. The Church could split between Adrian and Olive.

Ben: Believing that they died on that plane is not going to help him chill.

#manifest nbc

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