#Electrical Association of New York | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

it-was-summer · 16 days ago

Text

Nevertheless (I'm In Love With You) 〰 2

A/N: I like to pretend that Spencer is a wanderer?? Like he thinks of a place and just starts walking without thinking twice. Just like me fr. Two grown adults... struggling with their emotions. Yummy... yummers to those who use that word (my bf). I actually proofread this bitch. Happy late Valentine's Day!!!! Hope you guys like it!

Link to the Ao3: Nevertheless (I'm In Love With You) Link to the: Yee olde masterlist Link to the: Nevertheless (I'm In love With You) Masterlist

Previous chapter: Enemies (If You Can Call It That) You are on: Friends (Associates at Best) -> (Better off as) Lovers Tags: Use of She/Her pronouns (I apologize), talk of forensic science, norovirus mention!!, the flu... my enemy, spencer has a 'oh shit,' moment, Spencer being a little oblivious to jokes and his feelings, gossiping students, something else?, this is a very soft and light fic.

Genre: Slight Enemies to friends to lovers. ForensicsProfessor!Reid x ForensicsProfessor!Reader

Plot: Two professors run into each other at a museum. One invites the other to coffee. They enjoy each other's company, and a friendship blossoms—a friendship teeming with affection.

Word Count: 6,414

Friends (Associates at Best)

Serial killers seldom rest during the holidays. Spencer has spent countless Halloweens, Christmases, and Birthdays working BAU cases. This is the first time in a long time that he can sit at home and not hover around waiting for his phone to ring… and he’s bored.

Considering how fast his mind runs, the boredom comes and goes, but it’s still there. He feels lazy, like he should be doing some work. He’s planned out a rough outline of his lesson plans for the Spring Semester, updated his syllabus, and sent emails to his cohorts two weeks in advance.

Now, he was just killing time for another week. Years ago, he would have begged for this kind of solitude. He could always catch up on some reading. However, the need to engage in some sort of social activity won’t leave him.

He almost finds it laughable when he pieces it together. He isn’t bored. He’s lonely, and he blames all those hours spent surrounded by students and faculty.

He pulls on his trench coat, tucks a technical book in the pocket, and pulls gloves on as he haphazardly drapes his purple scarf around his neck before heading out the door. He tries to think of things he’s never done in the city– everything he’s held off.

He’s done the sightseeing, the occasional movie in the park, and trains to New York City; maybe he just needs to be out of the apartment. After all, he’s technically already seen seven people— mission complete.

Spencer sighs as he pushes on. His feet take him to the metro, where he takes the Red line that will eventually take him to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. There are patches of ice on the sidewalk as he walks toward the entrance, happy to take his gloves off and stuff them in his pocket as he checks for new exhibits.

He enjoys the electricity hall; it was a nice way to kill time. If he was being honest, there wasn’t a plan. He’s still debating the activity as he heads down to the second floor, his eyes scanning for something new, hoping it will catch his eye when he sees a familiar head of hair— or at least he hopes it is.

He watches as you pace outside one of the exhibits on your phone and finds himself smiling as he sees the exhibit’s topic— Forensic Science on Trial. He wonders if you’re here just for this one exhibit, and that makes you better than him because he doesn’t have anything resembling a plan for his day.

He watches you briefly, silently debating approaching you and saying hello. He’s sure you won’t want to see him, but when you hang your phone up and look up, you spot him almost instantly. Your eyes widen, and your brows furrow momentarily before glancing back at the exhibit, smiling, and walking over to him. So much for thinking you wouldn’t want to see him.

Spencer can feel his lips start to twitch upwards as you walk over to him. You’re wearing a trench coat frighteningly similar to his, and your gloves peek out of your left pocket— purple. He finds these accidental similarities amusing, and it’s clear on his face as you stop in front of him.

You notice his gaze falling on your coat and follow it, looking slightly confused before you realize it's the same dark brown as Spencer’s. Your head snaps up, and you point at his coat with a goofy smile. “Woah, we should get Dr. Matthew in on this matching action. It’ll be like a faculty spirit day.” Then you pause. “Or a cult.”

Spencer scoffs a little at the idea, a look of confusion in his eyes, “Cult for what exactly?”

“Trench coats?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“I apologize for being enthusiastic about something. It’ll never happen again.” With that, Spencer gives you a playful raise of his eyebrow before shaking his head. You chuckle, your cheeks warm. “Are you here for the exhibit?”

Spencer’s eyes leave yours to look at the exhibit steps behind you, silently debating lying and telling you yes– a vain attempt to hang around you a little longer– but the idea sours the longer he thinks about it. With a shake of his head, he lets out a little, “Not exactly, I was…” He trails off briefly, not wanting to say he feels bored. He’s sure any sane professor would hate him if he says he misses work.

“Bored?” You finish for him, watching his cheeks turn pink. You give him a tentative smile, silently wondering how fast that mind of his works. Of course, he’d be bored. You got stir-crazy after having a few days of nothing to do. Spencer probably got cabin fever in a few hours. You gave him a shrug of your shoulders, “I get it.”

Spencer drew his lips into a small line, nodding. “But I would love to accompany you. If you’d… let me?”

He watches as your nose scrunches up, acting as though the idea perturbs you before you let out a soft chuckle, “If you insist.” Then, you turn on your heel and walk back towards the exhibit.

Spencer happily follows, hands in his pockets as his long legs soon surpass you with long, easy strides. He watches as you walk a little faster to catch up with him, and he’s trying not to find the action funny– honest! But he can’t help the grin that stretches across his face.

You groan, and then you do something surprising. He watches as you look up at him, your eyes pleading silently, brows furrowed just a bit, and his heart clenches in friendly adoration. He gives you a mocking look of exasperation before slowing down and settling into a stride beside you. He doesn’t miss the smile you give him as the two of you start to explore the exhibit.

“So, it’s split into three sections.” You hold up three fingers, “ ‘Of people,’” He watches as you put down one finger, “‘By people,’” Then another, “‘For people.’” Then you put down your hand. Your eyes focus as you walk toward an ancient-looking polygraph machine.

Spencer's eyes linger on you as you admire the machine silently. Organic conversations and reading rooms were always difficult for him. Whenever he tried to be conversational, his words came out awkward—too forced. That didn’t stop him from trying anyway. “Do you come here often?”

Your back straightens with that, casting him a judgmental look over your shoulder, “Are you trying to hit on me?”

His cheeks quickly set ablaze, a deep red against his pale skin as he stutters, “W–What? No! No, I meant, do you come to this museum a lot? The American History Museum.” He stammers out, heart pounding.

You’re surprised at how easy it is to make him flustered, and you hate that you enjoy the sight much more than you should. He frowns softly, almost pouting, as he watches the wicked smile that consumes your previously judgmental glare. “Stop that.” He hisses out, his voice cracking with embarrassment.

“But it’s so easy.” You whine. Spencer gives you an annoyed look, his head tilting to the side to look down at you with displeasure. You sigh and throw your hands up dramatically. “Fine, take away all my fun.”

“Thank you,” he chirps back, the warmth in his cheeks fading remarkably slow. “So, do you?”

You move your head side-to-side, trying to count up all the moments you’ve been in this museum as he follows you to another artifact on display. Your voice is low, trying to be courteous to the small group of older women on your right. “Not often, no. What about you?”

“I like the electricity hall.”

You groan a little, a hint of amusement in your misery. “You would.”

“What’s wrong with the electricity hall?” His brows furrow, his eyes flitting over to an arsenic kit.

“Nothing! It’s simply not the best thing in this museum.”

“Says the sporadic visitor.”

“Yes, well, the sporadic visitor is right.” You scoff out, eyes studying a microdynameter carefully.

Spencer's eyes stay on you, studying your side profile before he bites, “Well, what is the best thing here?”

“Entertainment nation.”

He rolls his eyes; that’s everyone’s favorite. He feels surprisingly stubborn as he starts to list other exhibits. “There’s Inventing in America,”

You shake your head. “Nope.” You pop the ‘p,’ “Entertainment Nation.”

“American Democracy?”

“Enter–” You pause, pretending to think. “-tainment nation.”

He frowns at your stubbornness. “The Star-Spangled Banner?”

You sigh, turning to face him and narrowing your eyes. He raises his hands and nods, “Entertainment nation, fine.” He laughs. He then pauses and snaps his fingers, “Oh! The First Ladies.”

You look off towards the ceiling, a low ‘mmm’ coming from your closed lips before you shake your head. “No, it’s Entertainment Nation.”

Spencer sighs, walking around you to examine a framed court document. “Uninspiring,” he jokes a little.

He smiles when he hears you let out an annoyed grunt, turning on your heel to walk closer to him. “I’m sorry, Dorothy’s red slippers are uninspiring?” You scoff out in a whisper of disbelief.

He waves his hand with a mischievous look, “Apologies. Mainstream.”

“It was the first technicolor movie!”

“Actually, the first technicolor movie was in 1917 called, ‘The Gulf Between.’” He corrects you, his eyebrows shooting up with surprise at the playful glare you’re giving him.

“Well, it is still an American Classic." You cross your arms over your chest. “I thought we were friends.”

Spencer smiles, a laugh bubbling up in his throat. “If I remember correctly, the last time I called us friends, you called us associates. " He then licks his lips quickly. “At best!” Then, Spencer’s breathy laughter fills the exhibit, and you’re more than happy to shush him.

The weekend before classes start, Spencer is deep cleaning his apartment. The thought of deep cleaning his apartment hadn’t left his head all morning, so he started the process at noon. He’s scrubbing down his bedroom door when he hears the familiar ‘ding’ of his –often neglected– cell phone.

He scrunches his nose, trying to ignore it, his hands stuttering slightly. Then it dings again, and he’s sure it’s the team. He sniffles softly, the smell of pine sol fresh in the air as he pulls off the rubber gloves Garcia had gifted him four Christmases ago.

The screen doesn’t display Penelope’s contact, nor Emily’s; instead, it shows yours. His fingers scramble to open the message, his eyes reading the text you’ve sent him at the speed of light, ‘Are you a fan of coffee?’

He feels his lips quirk into a light smile as he reads the following text directly beneath. ‘This is me asking you to coffee. Say yes so we can keep pretending to be friends.’

Despite feeling a little taken aback by the fact that you thought the two of you were simply pretending to be friends, he lets out an amused scoff. With a shake of his head, he sets his phone face down and picks up his gloves. However, just as he’s about to slide them back on, he finds himself tossing them on the table and reaching for his phone.

He doesn’t feel like himself as he texts back a hasty, ‘Where?’

The ‘where’ in question is a small coffee shop two blocks away. Spencer knows he could have ignored the text and finished his cleaning, but for some reason, he’s happy –concerningly so— to abandon his half-cleaned apartment.

The cold bites at the tips of his ears, and the wind wildly whips against the sensitive skin until he’s in the shop. He doesn’t spot you immediately, his eyes watering a little due to the cold gusts of wind on the street. After a few blinks, his eyes land on you. You’re wearing that same trench coat and thick knitted multi-colored scarf, your eyes transfixed on the window.

He wonders if you were watching for him. Maybe you were nervous about him not showing? Though that possibility seemed slim. He clears his throat softly as he approaches the counter-height chair next to yours. When you hear it, your chin immediately tilts up toward him, your eyes shining, “Smells like snow,”

No hello. No greetings. Just “‘smells like snow.’” Nonetheless, the seemingly random comment makes him grin, slightly lopsided, as he sets down his messenger bag on the seat next to you. “Petrichor.” He says simply.

You snap your fingers. “Yes! I always forget the word.” Then you take him in, your eyes trailing up towards his incredibly tousled hair. Your lips form an understanding smile. “The wind did a number on you, too, huh?”

Spencer scans your appearance for imperfections but finds none, “Too?”

Your smile broadens with that, finding that you like how he always looks into your eyes when he’s talking to you. “Well, I carry around a brush.” You explain, patting your bag gently.

His lips form a silent ‘oh’ before he hears your name being called by the barista. Your face brightens as you slide off the seat and happily walk over to get your cup of coffee— a sweet, warm latte.

You turn to tell Spencer to order something, but he beats you to the punch, already walking up to the front counter to order a drink. You hum softly as you head back to your previous seat in front of the window.

Honestly, you weren’t sure why you invited Dr. Reid to coffee. You had plenty of other friends you could have reached out to, but after spending a whole day with him at the Smithsonian American History Museum, you found his presence calming. Being around him made something inside of you become still— quiet. It was… nice.

You wondered if you had the same effect on him, though you knew that you’d rather die than ask him the question directly. For now, it would have to be a mystery to you, and you simply hoped that you weren’t annoying your coworker.

He didn’t seem annoyed. His hazel eyes held yours in conversation, his body leaned into yours, and sometimes —when he couldn’t hear you well enough— he would lean his head down a little with a gentle ‘I’m sorry?’. A nagging voice inside you noted how attractive that action was, yet you attempted to shove the thought into the deepest recesses of your mind.

Nevertheless, seemingly against your will, your eyes slowly left the window’s view. You peer over your right shoulder, watching Spencer as he pulls out his card to pay the barista behind the counter. You notice the polite smile dancing on his lips, strands of brunette hair slowly falling into his eyes.

Your lips form a smile as you watch how he pushes the hair out of his face, and— that’s enough!

You blink rapidly, turning your face back toward the window and forcing yourself to stare at the windy winter streets of DC. You prop your elbows up on the wood counter, leaning your face into your hands to rub out the growing tension between your brows.

“Everything alright?” Spencer’s worried voice spooks you, eliciting a tiny gasp from your lips. A gasp he seems to find amusing as he carefully sets his cup of coffee down on the wooden countertop with a smile.

“I’m fine, just a headache.” You groan, picking up your latte and taking a delicate sip.

“Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”

You lick some foam off your lip, eyes trailing up towards the ceiling as Spencer sits beside you. “I believe so. I’m sure it is just the thought of the Spring Semester beginning in two days.”

Spencer’s eyes linger on you, how you look down at your cup and then at him. He’s sure something is on your mind. He doesn’t know you well enough to determine what it is, and he wants to accept your answer with a simple nod, but he can’t help the urge to pry.

The following silence seems slightly tense, “You don’t strike me as the type to be nervous about teaching new students.”

Your lips spread into a slow grin as you shake your head. “No, I’m not.” Your fingers slowly trace the handle of your cup. “I don’t know, it's just a feeling I can’t shake— foreboding.” You chuckle at that, rolling your eyes a little at your words. “It isn’t important, just first-day jitters.”

Spencer let out an appreciative hum, the sound low and soft, as he compared your feelings toward the semester starting to his own. He’s always loved school, and learning new information brought him immense comfort. Teaching was a newer passion, but a passion all the same. He loved it. But he could still understand some of what you were feeling.

Before he can express his understanding, a long sigh escapes you. “You ever miss it?” Your voice sounds far away as you stare out the coffee shop’s window.

“What?”

“Profiling. The BAU.”

Spencer’s eyes follow your gaze, watching a young woman clutch her partner's hand. A slight ache in his chest makes him think of everything he’s gained… everything he’s lost. “I miss certain aspects of the job, yes.”

“Such as?” You turn your head to look at him.

“My team. I still see them, but not as much as I used to.” Spencer blinks, finding the words strange to say out loud. Adjusting to teaching was easy, but he missed his friendships. He missed his family. He missed their laughs, easy touches, and dependability. He missed being silently understood. “It’s hard for me to connect with strangers. I’m not exactly a social butterfly.”

He can hear the smile in your voice before he sees it. “I think you’re turning it around.”

You watch his head turn to face you, his warm honey eyes looking particularly amused. “Yeah?” he rasps out in a shy tone.

You nod happily, “Yeah.” His smile grows at that, and you can feel your heart squeezing inside your chest. “Dr. Reid, I’m proud to bump your title to work, friend.”

“Spencer,” He interjects, and you can’t help the butterflies that stir inside your stomach at how soft his voice sounds.

You lick your lips slowly, ignoring your growing nerves. “Spencer.”

And Spencer tries to ignore how much he likes the sound of your voice calling his name.

Madeline Anderson was a dutiful graduate student. She was always happy to plan study dates with her cohort, ask questions openly, or visit a professor during office hours. However, despite a twenty-four-year-old's diligent efforts, she was still a person. And, like most people, she never turned down a good story. How could she when there was a story as good as this one unfolding in front of her very eyes?

Dr. Reid was a favorite of hers. He explained topics thoroughly, and sure, sometimes, he rambled about a different, unrelated subject, but he wasn’t dull. Halfway through his lecture, the hall could hear the eerie creaking of doors that slammed closed with a significant thud. Madeline’s hand kept writing her notes, ignoring the doors until her seatmate, Sadie, kicked her shoe softly.

Once she had Madeline’s attention, Sadie glanced to the back of the room, silently pleading with Madeline to look that way and fast. Madeline scoffs, slightly amused, shaking her head, but she looks anyway. She was a little caught off guard when she saw you shuffling into an empty seat in the back row with a sheepish smile.

Sadie nudges her, a mischievous look in her brown eyes. Madeline raises an eyebrow and mouths a tiny, ‘No way.’

Madeline steals another look over her shoulder to look at you, and your eyes are trained on Dr. Reid as he talks with his hands. Gossip!

Once the lecture was over, the two girls could be seen packing up their items terribly slow. Madeline watches as you stand, waving at a student or two before beelining it for Dr. Reid’s podium. The same podium that Dr. Reid was leaning against and looking down at you like you were a creature of captivating beauty.

Wait! No! His gaze resembled that of a love-struck man in a painting! No, still not good enough. It resembled a love-lorn man pinning over a muse, a creature so close and far away. She finds she can’t look away as you drum your fingers on the edge of his podium, your body leaning toward his.

Sadie is the first of the duo to stand; her steps are small, and Madeline is close behind. Just before they leave the lecture hall, they stop by the door and openly stare. They watch as you pick up Dr. Reid’s messenger bag, holding it out for him to take. The way Dr. Reid smiles at you, the corners of his eyes crinkling sweetly as he thanks you. Then they watch how his hand hovers at the small of your back, leading you away from the podium, and how you tilt your head back to flash a winning smile. Then they’re out of there.

Spencer couldn’t place his newfound friendship with you. It lacked —naturally– the familiarity that the BAU gave him, but it still managed to make him feel at home. He never dreaded coming to work, but lately, he’s found that if he doesn’t see you, the work day feels rather lackluster.

He wonders how you would react if he told you that. He pictures you laughing a little at his confession, or maybe you’d get flustered like you did when he told you he liked spending time with you two weeks ago.

That was another thing; he had never imagined his old coworker’s reactions to something he’d said before. Sure, there were moments in the past when he sat wondering what Derek or Emily had meant in their responses to his comments here and there. But this level of contemplation never occurred with his friends.

He’d never sit at his desk like he is now, wondering how Penelope would react to an invitation to lunch or if she’d laugh at one of his jokes. Spencer couldn’t help but chalk it up to knowing precisely what Penelope —or anyone from the BAU team— would say to the invite. Hell, he even knows the jokes he would share with Penelope. He could easily say it was because he was still getting to know you, but something about that explanation didn’t sit right with him.

That uncanny, familiar rush of excitement that courses through his veins whenever he hears your voice across the hall doesn’t sit right with him. The euphoric feeling he gets from making you laugh. And now, this excessive daydreaming. It’s an emotion he’s previously felt, yet he’s struggling to conceptualize it— frustratingly on the tip of his tongue.

His foot anxiously taps against the carpet under his desk, and he fears that if he keeps it up, there will be a hole where his right foot naturally rests. He pushes his chair away from his desk, stands, and walks across the hall to your office door, gently rapping his knuckles against the wood.

He can hear the faint sound of music coming from your office, and you don’t bother turning it off as you open the door, and Spencer gets an earful of something from the 80s. Spencer tries to suppress the giddy feeling that completely consumes his body when he sees that giddy look in your eyes.

You always had the prettiest eyes, but when you were having fun? They just lit up the room— the universe. He’s seen people brighten or perk up when they are excited, but nothing matches the look in your eyes when you are excited. The last time he saw those eyes shine the way they are now was at the beginning of the semester when Spencer brought in some cookies that Penelope had given him that first week.

You gasp softly, leaning against your door slightly, your head resting on the wood slowly. Those shining eyes stare at him almost dreamily. “Spencer Reid, my esteemed neighbor.”

Spencer tries to ignore the saccharine tone of your voice and the way it makes him feel like he is melting into a puddle of goo. “May I borrow a cup of sugar?” He sounds slightly awkward as he jokes with you, and his head dips down in a vain attempt to hide his growing embarrassment.

Despite his awkward attempt at being funny, he can hear the melodic sound of your laugh in seconds, and a surprising rush of reassurance settles in his chest. “You tried.” You state with an empathetic look on your face. “You looking for a lunch buddy?”

Spencer’s eyes always have this puppy-like look when he wants something. Whenever he’s after something, his eyes —unbeknownst to him— become irresistible. Those honey and green hues in his eyes mix into a pleading look that has your stomach twisting into knots and refusal dying on your tongue. It’s terribly distracting and, if you’re being honest, disturbingly attractive. You’re huffing out a mocking sigh of frustration as you grab your bag, shut your computer off, and lock your office door. “I believe it’s my pick this time.”

“It was your pick last time,” Spencer replies, walking beside you, his head tipping to the side to look down at you.

“I thought you were a gentleman.”

“What prompted this conclusion?" Spencer taunts as his hands reach for the door handle, holding it open with a warm smile.

You walk past him with an incredulous look, “A hunch.” You can see the confused look on his face even when his face isn’t in view. The mental image makes your insides turn to jelly, and a small voice in your head begins to wonder what’s wrong with you.

Before you can dwell in that house forever, Spencer reappears at your side. “At least hear me out,” He pleads softly, and for a brief moment, his slender fingers brush against yours.

Your throat feels slightly dry. “Fine."

Spencer brightens at that, leaving you dazed, “That café you like does specials on soups and sandwiches on Wednesdays.”

It does? Why is it that Spencer knows that about your favorite café and you don’t? The notion that he took time to look up the weekly specials makes you feel —momentarily— warm all over. Then, a nagging voice reminds you of his eidetic memory. Of course! He didn’t take the time out of his week to look up something as silly as the specials at that café you like. He probably just remembered it from last time.

The fact should calm you down and give your pounding heart a reprieve, but it doesn’t. Instead, you can feel your chest tighten with disappointment as you give Spencer a lackluster nod of approval. “Sounds great.”

He notices the subtle shift in your body language, his fingers nervously tugging the frayed edges of his cardigan into his palm. “Unless you’d like to eat somewhere else?” He remembered the weekly specials the last time you took him there and was waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

He doesn’t know if he’s said or done something wrong, but the brightness in your eyes has seemingly deflated. “No, I’m fine! That sounds good.” A tight smile forces its way onto your face as you walk toward the café in question.

–

It’s not uncommon for campuses filled to the brim with students, such as this one, to experience outbreaks of various diseases—the flu, stomach bugs, the occasional case of mono. According to you, they posted pamphlets about norovirus last year— a germaphobe's worst nightmare.

Spencer swears that he’s gotten better at handling germs; prison wasn’t the cleanest place. He got through the Fall semester without catching a single cold, and so far, he is accomplishing the same goal with the Spring Semester.

Unfortunately, you have a different fate. You’ve canceled classes two days in a row now, and the last time he talked with you over the phone, you sounded terrible. Spencer offered to help you grade some papers or take over a class or two, but you vehemently declined.

You trusted that Spencer would do a good job, but the guilt of him doing twice the work would eat away at you as you sniffled, shivered, and coughed roughly on your couch. You’ve slept through half of the day. Your fever is still going strong. Your hands blindly search for your phone, scrambling on your couch until you feel it in your hands.

You wince at the time, six o’clock in the afternoon. Your appetite went out the window yesterday, alongside the ability to breathe through your nose. You groan, back hitting the back of the couch, slumping over a little. You need to eat, but your fog-filled mind and weak limbs struggle to get up and cook something.

A knock at the door spooks a yelp out of you, but it quickly turns into a thick cough. Wrapping your quilt around your body, you hobble to the door and peek out the peephole. Your head reels back at Spencer Reid standing outside your apartment door. “Spencer, I’m sick!”

Watching him through the peephole, you see him grin, “I know, I come bearing gifts.”

You lean your forehead against the door, sighing out at the feeling, “Leave them on the–”

Spencer cuts you off with a rather loud, somewhat embarrassing, “No!” He clears his throat, shifting his weight on his feet. This isn’t his comfort zone, and while he hates germs, he cares about you. It was a feeling he was starting to piece together– tender and true. Not hearing your voice these past two days has felt oddly similar to torture. “No,” He continues, “I’ll heat it up for you, and don’t say no because you sounded terrible on the phone-–”

His sentence is cut off as you swing the door open, and his heart clenches at the sight. Your hair is messy, you have a red nose and pale cheeks, and the look is complete with some baggy pajamas. You groan softly, motioning for him to come in with a wave of your hand as you trudge back over to the couch, laying down with a rough oof.

Spencer's feet hesitate for a second, hazel eyes studying your messy living room– tissues on the coffee table, empty mugs on practically every surface. He swallows roughly, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his throat as he takes the plunge, taking a comically large step into your apartment and gently shutting the door behind him.

‘This is a terrible idea. I’m going to get sick, and then we’ll both be out of the office, and then–’ A sneeze from you pulls him away from his panicking thoughts, and he looks down at the items in his hands with a sudden purpose.

He can feel his cheeks warm as he looks down at the bouquet of daisies in one hand and the container of noodle soup in the other. He can hear your labored breathing from the couch as he awkwardly finds your kitchen. As he searches for a vase, it dawns on him— this is his first time in your apartment.

His anxiety gets the best of him as he manages to find a pretty-looking vase. He silently wonders if he should stick the soup in the fridge, leave the flowers in the vase, and take his leave. He finds a pair of scissors, carefully cutting the stems as he anxiously chews on his bottom lip. He’ll heat the soup, take care of the flowers, and get out— yes!

He fills the vase with water absentmindedly, arranging the daisies with gentle hands before moving on to the soup. He shakes his head at his anxious thoughts, thousands of reasons to get out, escape routes overlapping in his mind. He finds that he’s already done everything he said he would do. So, why was he still here?

Spencer rolls out the tension in his shoulders as he grabs a spoon from the kitchen drawer. He can hear a soft cough from the living room as he carries the warm soup with extreme care. Setting the soup bowl and spoon on your side table, he looks down at you as you stare up at him tenderly. “Thank you.” Your voice is hoarse as you carefully sit criss-cross on the couch and hold the bowl of soup in your left hand, your right hand using the spoon to search for the best-looking egg noodle in the bowl.

Your eyes stray toward Spencer, who flashes you a warm smile. His nervous eyes look around at the tissues on the coffee table just before he disappears into the kitchen.

You barely have time to ask him what he’s doing when he comes out wearing your hot pink cleaning gloves, holding a plastic bag in one hot pink gloved hand, “How did you–”

“They were by the kitchen sink,” He hurriedly explains as he gets work picking up the dirty tissues around you and tossing them into the plastic bag.

You sniffle as you sip on some broth. “You don’t have to clean. I know how much you hate germs. I won’t be mad if you leave. You’ve already been so helpful–”

“I want to help.” His head turns to look at you, his hazel eyes filled with determination. You let out a soft laugh, covering your mouth as your laugh turns into a shaky cough. Spencer smiles at that, feeling a warm burst of pride in knowing he can make you laugh, even now.

You continue to watch Spencer as he tidies up your living room, his eyes and hands concentrated on the task at hand. You feel your body growing warm, and you’re unsure if it’s because your fever is breaking or because of how sweet he’s being. You shift on the couch, taking small bites of the soup and smiling softly.

If you didn’t feel so terrible, you would be talking more, but you’re finding that this is a comfortable silence. Spencer leaves your view again, the living room now clean of dirty tissues and empty tea cups, as he carries the mess into the kitchen.

When he returns, he’s carrying a vase full of daisies— did he have those when he came in? Your eyes widen at the sight, and you quickly set the bowl of soup back on the side table. “You got me,” A sneeze followed by a short sniffle. “Daisies?” You ask him, cheeks burning with emotion.

Spencer’s pale cheeks are tinged pink as he sets the vase of daisies on your now-clean coffee table. He watches with a warm, giddy smile as your fingertips reach out to brush the petals. “I– well, yes. Did you not see them in my hand when you let me in?”

You shake your head, glancing up at him with a beaming smile. There those eyes are again, big and bright with joy. He’ll buy out flower shops if that’s what it takes. He watches as your gaze drifts back to the flowers, and he can feel a slight shiver of realization slither into his heart. He loves you.

His calm demeanor dissipates rapidly, praying that you don’t look over at him as he stares at you with a shell-shocked expression.

How?

When?

His shell-shocked expression morphs into one of slight panic, and his breathing begins to sound slightly erratic. He’s got to get out here. He needs to… what does he need to do? He can’t think straight. He can’t tell you, no. No, no, no, you’d be appalled.

Well, would you?

As he steadies his breathing, he decides he needs time to think. He can’t reach a healthy conclusion with you three feet away from him on the couch. He’s searching for a good enough reason to leave when you announce, “I love them.” Your eyes flit over to him, and he feels like he could melt.

“I–” He sighs, swallowing against the lump in his throat, “I’m so glad.”

You notice the tension in his shoulders and, resting your back against the couch, “Thank you for everything. You’re the best friend a girl can have, honest.” You lick your lips, a mischievous look in your eyes. “However, I fear I must force you out.”

Spencer starts to protest, but you shush him quickly. “Nu-uh, I won’t hear it. You’ll get sick if you stay here a moment longer.” You stand, sniffling softly as you gently motion to the door.

When Spencer doesn’t immediately move, you groan and gently press your right palm on his shoulder, pushing him weakly toward the door. His feet work against him as he looks over at you, “At least let me–”

You shush him again, earning an annoyed look from the tall brunette man you’re bossing around. You open the door for him, leaning against it as you watch him step out into the hall. He looks utterly confused, stuttering softly, “Well, I can bring you lunch tomorrow?” he suggests weakly. He doesn’t understand why he feels so disappointed at his leaving. He had just decided to leave, so why did leaving feel so… melancholy? Despite his confusing new revelation, he wants to stay and care for you— even if it means catching a cold.

But you persist. “I’ll call you if I need your assistance.”

He wants to tell you you’re being unreasonably stubborn, but he bites his tongue. His lips form a slight frown. He’s on the verge of a pout as he throws his hands up. “Fine.”

Your pale, sick cheeks have a little color in them now as you wave. “Goodnight, Spencer.”

He swallows, feeling the desperate urge to beg you to let him stay. “Goodnight.” Spencer remains standing in the hallway as you slowly close the door. He groans out in frustration, shaking his head as he mournfully makes his way down the hall. He needs to call someone.

Unbeknownst to him, you’re sitting on your couch again, admiring the daisies with a soft smile. You let out a weak sigh, shaking your head a little as the thought crosses your mind. As you slowly lie back on the couch, you mutter to an empty room. “How am I supposed to get over my feelings for you when you do things like this?” Maybe you need to phone a friend, too.

57 notes · View notes

intotheelliwoods · 2 years ago

Text

The "Hey Ell what on earth did you do to the Huggy Leos™?" Masterpost

There has been a lot of people confused on what exactly had happened the past few updates, so here I am creating a big post that should explain everything that went down!

This will also be added to the main masterpost to help new readers!

---

First, how to tell the difference between the Leo's 101.

Let it also be known that in the mindscape, Big Leo has both normal arms, Medium Leo has his robot arm.

---

Explanation of the plot, click the links to see their associated comics that showed this:

The Foot existing outside of New York got wind of the key currently being there. Past iterations usually have the clan existing in many other parts of the world, it would not be a stretch for Rise to have the same scenario. Since for example, there are multiple Hidden Cities across the world.

The team made a plan to lure them away from New York by using a fake key.

Raph was an unexpected casualty during the mission.

Out of panic, Big Leo tried to see if he could destroy the key without himself going with it. This is because Raph was also the first to go in his timeline, his actions were out of fear. His plans didnt go very well.

With the key destroyed and Big Leos energy how harnessed by the strange entity, it escaped its box and spread the world. This caused apocalypse 2 electric boogaloo. In my head I have ideas for what this apocalypse was like, however I dont know how or when it can make it to comic form.

Mikey sent Medium Leo back in time to try again. With their timeline now also basically hopeless.

Medium Leo was now sent though the same portal Big Leo once came from in his time. Big Leo is not there because he does not really exist anymore. The events of the movie happened, just add in Little Leo losing his arm in the brief moment he was in the prison dimension, and add a Medium Leo coming out of the portal along with the Little Leo of this timeline.

I promise this timeline is safe! Everything after this plot development is nothing but healing for the characters and finding a way to safe the timeline.

---

Misc:

Way more information such as Goop guy backstory is in a later intermission on the masterpost :)

Why was a new villian created for the second apocalypse?

---

Friendly reminder that you are free to stop reading after this comic if you are not a fan of the development. That comic was my original planned ending after all before I got swarmed by other ideas I wanted to experiment with

#2 arms left #will be editing this so much later down the line haha

417 notes · View notes

noirleo · 2 years ago

Text

confessions pt. 2

(bayverse & reader are all adults <3)

leonardo

leonardo has saved the city of new york—and the world, by association, because what kind of world would be left without his precious city—twice before even entering adulthood. since the age of fifteen he’s saved countless lives and can tell stories that would leave even the most seasoned police officers lying awake at night.

nothing in his repertoire of harrowing life experiences has prepared him for the gut-wrenching experience of catching feelings for his best friend.

leo had been the last of the brothers to trust you after mikey had cheerily, thoughtlessly, brought you unannounced to the lair one night. his decision had led to several hours in the hashi after you’d left, but leo couldn’t stop you from coming back. eventually, reluctant trust transformed into a friendship, easygoing and natural in a way that he didn’t know friendships could be.

when you first met leo, he could count everything he cared about in the world on one hand—his family, his training, and his city, in that order. the world he lived in was small, but it was his. his to understand, to care for and protect. he would never have dreamed of describing himself as lonely until meeting you. how infuriating, then, was your insistence on worming your way into that shadow-hidden world, cracking it wide open and exposing that loneliness to the sunlight of your smile.

so here he was, laying on the floor of his own bedroom, hugging a pillow while you painted gentle brush strokes across his shell.

you’d been begging him to let you paint his shell for ages, promising not to listening to any of mikey’s explicit suggestions of what to paint. after years of experience telling his brother’s ‘no’, he’d thought he was immune to pouting.

evidently not.

“you still awake?” you paused for a moment, looking up from your work to check on him, and received a muffled hum in response from where leo’s face was buried into the crook of his elbow. you were kneeling at his side, one hand on his shell to support your weight as you focused on the task at hand.

for the first several minutes, his entire body had been tensed up. leo was never more aware of his hulking size and strength than when he was next to you. however, he had quickly melted into your touch, hypnotized by the swirling brush strokes and comfortable silence in the room.

how long had he been laying here? seconds, hours, years—leo had no idea, and he didn’t care. nirvana was definitely a real thing, he decided, and he’d found it under your gentle touch against his shell.

“alright, i’m finished,” your voice broke through his thoughts and he lifted his head to look at you. paint bottles and cups of water surrounded where you were kneeling at his side, and were all being whisked away to the side.

“wait, wait, wait, don’t move yet—it still has to dry,” you urged him as he began to lift himself up on his elbows. he huffed in response, letting his face hit the pillow he had been laying on unceremoniously, and side-eyed you.

“i didn’t realize this would be an all-day event, or i would have brought some entertainment,” he mumbled dryly. you laid on the ground next to him, arms folded under the back of your head, and looked over to grin at him. he tried to ignore the crackle of electricity under his skin as your arm grazed his, your faces just inches away from each other.

“i’m pretty sure i’m all the entertainment you need, actually,” you replied cheekily, making him smile and roll his eyes.

his gaze lingered on you just a moment too long. it had taken him ages to slow down his racing heartbeat when you had first begun, and now it threatened to beat out of his chest again as he listened to you begin to delve into your creative thought process, careful not to give away all of the details of your work before he could see it for himself. he watched the corners of your eyes crinkle, the furrow of your brow and the way your fingers traced the air as you always did when you started talking about the things you love. where leo was collected and calculated, you were animated and colorful. all of the best parts of being alive begin and end behind your eyes, he thought to himself.

“i think it should be good now,” you decided, leaning up on one elbow to gingerly touch the paint on his shell before nodding, a look of excitement and nervousness crossing your face as you crouched down and extended your hands. “wanna take a look?”

he accepted, taking your small hands in his, rose to his feet and walked over to the mirror propped up against the wall.

leo stood in awe of the swirl of colors painted across the back of his shell. a city skyline in shades of blues and purples was splashed against a dark sky, and he could make out four small figures standing side by side on a rooftop in familiar colors.

“it’s new york,” he breathed, eyebrow ridges raised as he craned his neck, trying to see it more clearly in the mirror.

“you like it?” you asked in a hopeful voice, swaying in place as one hand tapped your cheek in anticipation.

“it’s fine,” he said finally, earning a smack on his bicep from you. he turned to you, grinning ear to ear. “it’s amazing. you’re amazing. the guys are gonna be so jealous.”

he turned down to look at you, towering over you as you beamed that sunshine smile at the praise. amused, he noticed a splatter of bright blue on your cheek and gently wiped it away with his thumb. had he imagined the scarlet blush of your cheeks as you turned your eyes away from him?

did it matter?

“c’mon, i wanna go show the others,” you decided, turning past him towards his bedroom door. without thinking, his hand shot out of its own volition to grab yours. you froze at the large hand gently holding your wrist, rooting you to the spot.

“wait, just…wait,” leo rasped, immediately ashamed at the edge of desperation creeping into his voice. you turned to face him, brow furrowed slightly in curiosity. that familiar stinging that he felt every time you left the lair bubbled up in his chest. he didn’t want to go back to the others and have to see them crowd around you, begging you to do the same for them. for once, just once, he wanted a moment that he didn’t have to share with his brothers. he wanted something to just be his.

he wanted that something to be you.

he wasn’t thinking properly, he knew it, but he never really was thinking clearly around you.

you began to ask if he was okay, your lips forming around the words, but never made it to the end of the sentence as his hands reached up to your face, cradling you in his hands. your eyes widened a little at the touch, but you made no effort to pull away.

“leo?”

the sound of his name rolled off of your tongue so easily, so effortlessly breaking down his usual barriers of self discipline that dictated his every waking moment, and finally he released himself to his impulses as he leaned down to kiss you.

you tensed up in surprise the moment his lips touched yours, and he pulled away as quickly as it began. his fearful thoughts began to race, screaming at him for being so selfish. the one friend he’d ever made for himself, and he’d ruined it.

“i—shit, i’m sorry. i don’t know why i…”

his regretful rambling was stopped midsentence by your hand on his plastron, his chest heaving as your gaze followed a trail from his eyes to his lips.

“leo. shut up.”

it was his turn to be surprised as you stood on your toes, pressing your lips against his.

he poured all of his feelings, the long months of pining and languishing over his certainly-unrequited feelings into the kiss, grabbing you by the waist with one arm and moving the other to quietly shut the door again.

the others could wait a little longer.

#leo’s always angry because hes gods perfect killing machine but you keep calling him baby and doing his makeup #i dont know how i feel about this one #i like the idea that leo is a little bit terrified by having feelings for someone bc hes supposed to be the Big Fearless Leader #and then comes along his s/o #moon.txt #my writing #bayverse x reader #bayverse leo #bayverse leo x reader #tmnt x reader #tmnt leonardo #leonardo 2014 #leonardo 2016 #tmnt leo x reader #tmnt x gn reader #tmnt 2014 #tmnt 2016 #bayverse tmnt #tmnt bayverse

525 notes · View notes

uwmspeccoll · 6 months ago

Text

A Pigeon-fluencer Feathursday

This week’s post was inspired by a recent Guardian article on the rise of Pigeon-influencers on TikTok and their role in reviving the popularity of the oft-derided and underestimated birds.

Throughout history, pigeons have provided sustenance (“squab”), labor (in the form of the “pigeon post”), and companionship to human populations. Though these days we may typically associate the Rock Pigeon (Columba livia, otherwise known as the common pigeon) with other animals classified as “pests” in urban landscapes, they are in fact understood to be the world's oldest domesticated bird. Historical documentation of pigeons can be found in hieroglyphic texts and art dating back as far as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. According to Colin Jerolmack, professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at NYU and author of The Global Pigeon, pigeons “have been in cities as long as we’ve had cities” and, prior to the technological innovation of the telegram, were “the most reliable messaging system in the world”. While “fancy” pigeons (like Frillbacks, English Magpies, Jacobin, and Archangel pigeons) were bred and kept as prized pets in the Victorian era, the North American Passenger Pigeon (or “wild pigeon”) was hunted to the point of extinction in the early 20th century.

To illustrate the complexity of our love-hate relationship with the birds we've selected a variety of illustrations and text from our collection and featured them alongside some images from outside sources.

The engravings in images #2 & #8 from The Illustrated Natural History: Birds (London: George Routledge & Sons) were created by the Brothers Dalziel, a wood engraving shop in Victorian London founded in 1839 and operated by George and Edward Dalziel. Image #1 from Birds of America; Fifty Selections (with commentaries by Roger Tory Peterson) (New York: Macmillan) is a reproduction of a hand-colored lithograph produced by the shop of J. T. Bowen of Philadelphia from a painting by naturalist and artist John James Audubon in the early 19th century.

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Other image sources:

#3: Western Crowned Pigeon (Goura cristata) in TMII Birdpark - Western crowned pigeon - Wikipedia

#4: Keyla Rose with Tony, her pigeon, on a walk in New York. Photograph: Alaina Demopoulos/The Guardian. August 23, 2024.

#5-6: from City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness Pigeons (poem) by Chicago-based Puerto Rican poet and community activist David Hernandez, DH+BH (image of tattoo) by Camilo Cumpian.

#7: Ceiling Fragment Depicting Pigeons in Flight | New Kingdom | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) (ca. 1390–1352 B.C.)

#9: a Memorial to the extinct Passenger Pigeon at Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin (1947)

#10: from Nikola Tesla's Obsession with Pigeons, Electricity, and a Plan to Wirelessly Connect the World (nautil.us)

62 notes · View notes

catenary-chad · 1 day ago

Text

Thrifting/antiquing/flea market shopping headcanons, continued. Ft. basically everyone else in the cast.

Other engines:

Greaseball buys a lot of used car/other machine parts, he gravitates towards overbuilt 50s equipment that’s easy to modify and repair so he goes to the used market a lot. He’s relatively “typical” size and tends to have an easier time than many others finding used clothes. The Gang are his flying monkeys looking for stuff for him… to mixed results.

McCoy and Rusty collect old prewar/postwar era toy and model trains. Whenever they see electric ones they get confused and call it a “trolley”, alien artifact, or “sci fi revisionist nonsense”.

The Nationals are not opposed to doing a little shopping while abroad, it can be really fun to thrift/vintage shop overseas. Caveat: there’s probably even funnier answers to this section based on what people actually like buying abroad irl but I don’t know enough about that so I’m going off vibes. Very open to suggestions if you have fun more cultural ones.

Ruhrgold gets excited by American amusement park and carnival stuff (merch, models, etc) because Germany has a strong culture of them that’s very different from the US so they’re a real novelty to him.

The British Engine likes miniatures. Cartoonishly tiny versions of things because they are tiny by train standards due to the British loading gauge.

The Japanese Engine LOVES the New York subway system and thinks New York is way cooler and more glamorous than it really is. Buys all kinds of stuff related to the romantic ideal of the city and especially its trains. Goes nuts for any kind of subway stuff they’ve seen in movies and associates with exciting foreign cities. (This bit is based on actual sentiment among some Japanese railfans and 80s city pop)

Coco/Bobo- god help me it’s hard to think of anything for these two, I just imagine them shaking their heads in disappointment. I could see them being bafflingly excited by anything involving the Milwaukee Road since it was an early influence on early French rail electrification.

Turnov will quietly get banned or hard to acquire music and media to smuggle home, probably skewing towards punk rock

Espresso and Electra are often into the same Italian designers but they are very different sizes and thus have a mutual truce.

(Not doing the Wembley engines because I just don’t know enough about them and they don’t have strong real-life inspirations to draw from)

FREIGHT

Dustin knows what to look for in terms of used workwear and will point it out to the other freights (and other people in general). Poor guy tends to leave disappointed since big and tall tends to be very hard to find used, but he loves to help others.

Especially Flat-Top, who’s newer to it and doesn’t really know what to look for for his DIY projects. If they find something good that just has some damage/needs repairs, he loves patching stuff up in typical punk fashion.

The Rockies and Hip Hoppers follow Dustin around like a line of ducklings when he goes to mineral society shows. You can get some great deals on Cool Rocks at them since a lot of the sellers are just rockhounds selling off their extras or selling deceased members’ collections off vs more commercial vendors. Morbid side note: nothing makes you feel more impermanent than buying a dead guy’s Cool Rocks, knowing they have been here for millions of years and will outlive you by orders of magnitudes unless something truly catastrophic happens.

Rockies tend to look for lightly used sports equipment. Hoppers go for the logomania brands Electra rejects and try to convince them that they’re actually cool.

CB always goes for old radios and electronics of course, often teaming up with Electra to look for stuff to cannibalize for parts. Evil Twink Caboose is into tinplate toys and often successfully convinces Rusty that they’re cool. It’s always something that secretly has lead paint or sketchy ancient electronics though. Post 2018 Caboose likes novelty piggy banks and will hide evidence of his crimes inside things he sells/donates to rid himself of it.

Slick is excited by unusual plastics, especially collectible/rare stuff like Bakelite. I think she would enjoy plastic dinos and old gas station merch.

Porter hangs around Dustin and the Rockies/Hoppers at rock shows looking for coal and hand tools for rock collecting

Lumber views all wood in terms of burnability and everyone goes out of their way to keep him away from nice old furniture. He WILL chuck that nice old hardwood in a fireplace even if it’s a bespoke artisan piece. It’s been very hard to shake him from his ways.

Hydra likes airship and zeppelin related stuff. Sketchy old chemistry sets that may or may not have actual uranium or instructions on how to make things explode too.

COMPONENTS

Volta is always looking for stuff to mod in her typical gothy DIY projects. She often comes out with a baffling assortment of clothes but somehow makes something cool from them. Also drawn to VERY warm winterwear and will go on and on about what produces the best insulation. And snowglobes. I could see her being into snowglobes.

Joule always manages to find stuff with sketchy chemicals, asbestos, or other toxic things in them from back in the day when that was accepted. She has to be lured away with cute ceramic animal figurines.

Purse is always looking in pockets and compartments for money and money alone. He’s probably the only one who’s actually a reseller and goes for items he knows he can flip for a lot. If the cashier takes too long to calculate things he’ll often whip out a sheet of paper and do the math by hand at light speed.

Krupp looks for more of the obscure/European tool and electronic brands that Greaseball doesn’t know and Electra is kind of sketchy on. Also Kraftwerk media. He will inspect any CD/record/etc looking for rarities. Also excited by unusual hardware regardless of true usefulness.

Killerwatt pretends to know what Krupp is talking about and silently judges display cases based on security.

MISC

The Marshalls are always on the lookout for skate and scooter parts

Control hates clothes shopping with their mom no matter where they go but can be bribed by the offer of getting a new toy train at the end

#Stex #starlight express #i feel like i might have forgotten someone and it’s driving me a little nuts #call it out if I have (minus the wembley engines)

14 notes · View notes

amidst-wonderland · 7 months ago

Text

ELIZABETH LANCE-WAYNE

REAL NAME : elizabeth lance-wayne FACE-CLAIM : olivia cooke MAIN ALIAS : siren OTHER ALIASES : starling ⭑ batgirl ⭑ black canary ⭑ crow ⭑ molly malone KEY RELATIVES : bruce wayne (father) ⭑ dinah lance (mother) ⭑ damian wayne, (half-brother) ⭑ olive west-wayne (daughter) ⭑ ronan west-wayne (son) AFFILIATION : batman family ⭑ justice league ⭑ birds of prey ⭑ teen titans ⭑ suicide squad ⭑ flash family ⭑ team arrow ⭑ wayne enterprises BASE OF OPERATIONS : gotham city ⭑ keystone ⭑ star city ⭑ new york city

ORIGIN & LIVING STATUS

ALIGNMENT : hero LIVING STATUS : alive, formerly deceased PLACE OF BIRTH : gotham city UNIVERSE : prime earth IDENTITY : secret CITIZENSHIP : american MARITAL STATUS : separated, it's complicated. OCCUPATION : wedding planner ⭑ socialite (former) ORIGIN : hereditary metagene obtained from mother, black canary. took on protégé role of starling as a child. CAUSE OF DEATH(S) one | killed by the joker after being stabbed with an electric rod during an arkham aslyum surveillance mission with robin and kid flash in an attempt to blow the island sky-high. two | shot by royal flush gang's queen during 'task force x' operation three | impaled by zoom in an act of revenge against flash iii four | beaten to death by 'death metal' alternative, screech in attempt to protect her children

SKILLS & ABILITIES

expert detective master martial artist and hand-to-hand combatant ultra-sonic scream (canary cry) enhanced strength and speed expert strategist, tactician and field commander trained gymnast espionage utilises high-tech equipment and weapons, such as her element adaptive mono-wire proficient archer sound immunity

RELATIONSHIPS / ASSOCIATIONS

marriage | wally west long-term | roy harper fling | adian cobblepot ⭑ joseph wilson

heroes | bruce wayne ⭑ dinah lance ⭑ wally west ⭑ zatanna zatara ⭑ barbara gordon ⭑ dick grayson ⭑ roy harper ⭑ donna troy ⭑ jason todd ⭑ tim drake ⭑ stephanie brown ⭑ cassandra cain ⭑ renee montoya villains | harley quinn ⭑ magpie ⭑ cupid ⭑ rainbow raider ⭑ royal flush gang ⭑ screech ⭑ mad hatter ⭑ catwoman ⭑ hazard ⭑ poison ivy ⭑ killer frost ⭑ joker ⭑ punchline ⭑ court of owls

MISC.

elizabeth was the batgirl to jason's robin and is arguably the closest with him, post resurrection.

after being stripped of her cowl again by bruce, elizabeth winds up babysitting 'task force x' with long-time friend, roy harper and dawning a new short-term alias, crow. the two find comfort in each-other within the band of belligerent criminals as ex-titans, roy after his split with jade and elizabeth longing for a love she doesn't even know she's forgotten.

she’s viewed as an almost modern day ‘daisy buchanan’ type figure in gotham for better or worse

elizabeth's wayne!persona feeds into the catty high-school popular girl, a little ditzy but applying where it counts. she's no valedictorian but fronting the cheer squad and the debate team whilst earning herself prom queen is no small feat (think torrance shipman) but unfortunately for her date and half the school's male populous, she's head-over-heels for nobody but keystone's cocky redhead with a heart of gold. post-gotham academy, she becomes a hilton-type party girl which doesn't go down well with wally.

even after their separation (in name only, these two would literally die for each-other) wally is still persistent that she keeps her flash button-pin on her person at all times, just in case. even after a fight, yet another break or just a storm-out he'll always be there when she needs him and he knows she's stubborn enough to only press it when she really needs him.

liz was a pretty taken aback by wally's reappearance. learning of a life she once had, the children she'd forgotten and unlike everyone else that accepted wally back almost immediately, liz was a little slower, much to wally's impatience.

she covers for her mother as black canary during league outings whilst dinah is on maternity leave, even keeping with the mantle when teaming up with wally when he returns to the flash role.

dinah and bruce were only briefly together, bruce hadn't even begun his career as batman and dinah was working part-time as a florist and club singer.

liz and dick are the same age.

all three of her costumes incorporate led lining, more-so her time as batgirl with the cowl, her batgirl colour-coding was black and sheer white, whilst starling had an ombre rainbow lining - similar to the bird and siren taking on both aspects with the black and white costume and rainbow led lights.

KEY ARCS / MOMENTS / STORYLINE

MATCHES (UNDER THE RED HOOD PREQUEL)

central characters | elizabeth lance-wayne (molly malone) ⭑ jason todd ⭑ tim drake ⭑ cassandra cain ⭑ selina kyle ⭑ adian cobblepot ⭑ oswald cobblepot ⭑ edward nygma ⭑ carmine falcone ⭑ dick grayson ⭑ barbara gordon

whilst batman is off-world with the justice league, the rest of his team have been tasked to protect gotham so newly returned elizabeth gets a whiff of a developing human trafficking ring, she swiftly adopts the 'molly malone' persona in order to infiltrate their operations and put a stop to it. however, she's met with some resistance from the city's newest mob-boss, the red hood.

notable beats

one | this is elizabeth's first solo operation in gotham since the batgirl mantle was taken from her and since she married childhood sweetheart wally west, who is currently off-world with bruce. two | selina helping elizabeth get into the spoilt mafia brat image with hair as big as her tits, heels as fake as her lips and leopard print dress peaking above her ass. during this, cass watches on at the pseduo-mother / daughter moment, longing back to her own childhood. three | seducing oswald cobblepot's absolute meathead unit of a son, adian as malone's guard-dog boyfriend after 'spontaneously' meeting in gotham's 'my alibi' strip club with the promise of opening a brothel (refuge for victims), playing on his sycophantic eagerness to get impress / out-do his own father, mirroring elizabeth's own ambition. four | red hood interrupting her first meeting with the gotham rogues, removing their attention from her, to him. jason identifies liz immediately, being aware of the 'malone' schtick from bruce but decides to toy with her game-plan just to tick her off. five | jason overhears an argument between tim and liz ordering him and cass to back-off the op, he decides to stir the pot by ambushing the boy-wonder. six | elizabeth returns to her and wally's shared penthouse only to be confronted with the red hood confirming her identity as a wayne and poking at her marriage, "does west know you're hanging off penguin jr?" taunting her to press the alarm, knowing bruce and the scarlet-speeder would return seeing the mess she's made of the op, jason offers her a hand.

ROYAL ROULETTE (THE SUICIDE SQUAD) - breakdown to be added

below is just some fun i had after seeing the suicide squad, enjoy!

SNIPPET

“Joining you, Dubois will be two classified and undercover operatives with decades of field experience between them, though you may find their methods in comparison to your active teammates are rather passive.” Amanda Waller drags out as she walks the marksman through the bleak halls of the prison. “Both parties are, like you doing this with a certain level of willingness, but again like you, they have their own rather elusive baggage.” Dubois continued to follow the woman into her office before being shown some very familiar inmates, one blond and the other ginger, who’d been a real pain in his- “Arsenal. Speedy and Red Arrow all known aliases of former Green Arrow protégé, Roy Harper. I know you’re aware of Mr. Harper’s craft, but you may relax. He is your covert second-wave operative on this mission.” “Does he know that?” “He’s been warned, whether or not he wishes to push my buttons is entirely up to him.” “Blondie here, is your problem.” “That’s not Quinn, is it?” “Far from, this is Siren. Meta-human.” “Christ.” “That’s a moot point a third of your team are meta-humans, but this one, used to be Batgirl.” “Fuck off.” “Watch that tongue.” “I thought the Bats were good guys.” “Yeah, well some of them have tendencies, including this one.” “What’s she do?” “Classified.” “How’d you get her to agree?” “Classified.” “Does the Batman know?” “He knows his daughter is doing covert work for me.” “Ooh, lying to the cape-crusader is-“ Dubois furrowed his brows, “Did you say daughter?” “That I did. Siren is a meta-human with enhanced strength, equipped with a Canary Cry that can shatter just about any form of glass within a two-mile radius. Her mother is Black Canary, her Step-father? Green Arrow and her husband is the fastest man alive,” Waller tensed, “Dubois, no matter what the circumstances may be, I do suggest that you and your team do not cross this woman, specifically Quinn.” “What do the Gothamites have history?” he joked, although Waller did not reciprocate. “You don’t spend five years as Batgirl without a run in with the Clown. Joker killed her brother, paralysed her teammate, and critically injured herself to the brink of death that she spent seven months in the ICU, all to enact a grand idea that involved blowing Arkham Island to bits.” “What happened?” “Two metal rods, and fifty-thousand volts. Folks said the scream could be heard from Metropolis.” “How’s she not dead?” “Rumour is Kid Flash was able to restart her heart.” “So Quinn’s a sore-spot?” “I don’t want them left alone, Siren won’t kill but Quinn would in retaliation, and I don’t want the job of explaining to Flash why his wife’s body was left in some South American jungle because of a psychotic jester who nearly killed her as a teenager.” “The bomb threat?” “As far as she's concerned, there isn't one.” “Why?” “Guess.” “What about Quinn?” “Quinn’s quick and unpredictable, Siren could be dead before I hit the button. They’ve known each other for a decade - know how to make each other tick therefore it is your job to make sure they don’t." “You want me to babysit two grown fucking women? If she’s this much of a hassle then what use is she to us?” “Siren has trained with nothing but the best, she is a skilled, heavy hitting fighter, acrobat, tech genius, can speak four languages fluently – one of which you will need – and can be an excellent diversion when the moment calls for it. Her skill set is vital to the completion of this mission.” “And yet Quinn?” “Cannon fodder. She’s got more balls than any other man on your team.”

#batman #dc comics #the flash #black canary #wally west #nightwing #teen titans #batsis #batgirl #red hood #jason todd #suicide squad #oc: elizabeth wayne #batfamily #roy harper

36 notes · View notes

jcmarchi · 3 months ago

Text

Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/study-reveals-ai-chatbots-can-detect-race-but-racial-bias-reduces-response-empathy/

Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

With the cover of anonymity and the company of strangers, the appeal of the digital world is growing as a place to seek out mental health support. This phenomenon is buoyed by the fact that over 150 million people in the United States live in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas.

“I really need your help, as I am too scared to talk to a therapist and I can’t reach one anyways.”

“Am I overreacting, getting hurt about husband making fun of me to his friends?”

“Could some strangers please weigh in on my life and decide my future for me?”

The above quotes are real posts taken from users on Reddit, a social media news website and forum where users can share content or ask for advice in smaller, interest-based forums known as “subreddits.”

Using a dataset of 12,513 posts with 70,429 responses from 26 mental health-related subreddits, researchers from MIT, New York University (NYU), and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) devised a framework to help evaluate the equity and overall quality of mental health support chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4. Their work was recently published at the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP).

To accomplish this, researchers asked two licensed clinical psychologists to evaluate 50 randomly sampled Reddit posts seeking mental health support, pairing each post with either a Redditor’s real response or a GPT-4 generated response. Without knowing which responses were real or which were AI-generated, the psychologists were asked to assess the level of empathy in each response.

Mental health support chatbots have long been explored as a way of improving access to mental health support, but powerful LLMs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are transforming human-AI interaction, with AI-generated responses becoming harder to distinguish from the responses of real humans.

Despite this remarkable progress, the unintended consequences of AI-provided mental health support have drawn attention to its potentially deadly risks; in March of last year, a Belgian man died by suicide as a result of an exchange with ELIZA, a chatbot developed to emulate a psychotherapist powered with an LLM called GPT-J. One month later, the National Eating Disorders Association would suspend their chatbot Tessa, after the chatbot began dispensing dieting tips to patients with eating disorders.

Saadia Gabriel, a recent MIT postdoc who is now a UCLA assistant professor and first author of the paper, admitted that she was initially very skeptical of how effective mental health support chatbots could actually be. Gabriel conducted this research during her time as a postdoc at MIT in the Healthy Machine Learning Group, led Marzyeh Ghassemi, an MIT associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science who is affiliated with the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

What Gabriel and the team of researchers found was that GPT-4 responses were not only more empathetic overall, but they were 48 percent better at encouraging positive behavioral changes than human responses.

However, in a bias evaluation, the researchers found that GPT-4’s response empathy levels were reduced for Black (2 to 15 percent lower) and Asian posters (5 to 17 percent lower) compared to white posters or posters whose race was unknown.

To evaluate bias in GPT-4 responses and human responses, researchers included different kinds of posts with explicit demographic (e.g., gender, race) leaks and implicit demographic leaks.

An explicit demographic leak would look like: “I am a 32yo Black woman.”

Whereas an implicit demographic leak would look like: “Being a 32yo girl wearing my natural hair,” in which keywords are used to indicate certain demographics to GPT-4.

With the exception of Black female posters, GPT-4’s responses were found to be less affected by explicit and implicit demographic leaking compared to human responders, who tended to be more empathetic when responding to posts with implicit demographic suggestions.

“The structure of the input you give [the LLM] and some information about the context, like whether you want [the LLM] to act in the style of a clinician, the style of a social media post, or whether you want it to use demographic attributes of the patient, has a major impact on the response you get back,” Gabriel says.

The paper suggests that explicitly providing instruction for LLMs to use demographic attributes can effectively alleviate bias, as this was the only method where researchers did not observe a significant difference in empathy across the different demographic groups.

Gabriel hopes this work can help ensure more comprehensive and thoughtful evaluation of LLMs being deployed in clinical settings across demographic subgroups.

“LLMs are already being used to provide patient-facing support and have been deployed in medical settings, in many cases to automate inefficient human systems,” Ghassemi says. “Here, we demonstrated that while state-of-the-art LLMs are generally less affected by demographic leaking than humans in peer-to-peer mental health support, they do not provide equitable mental health responses across inferred patient subgroups … we have a lot of opportunity to improve models so they provide improved support when used.”

14 notes · View notes

loveothislife · 1 month ago

Text

Timothée Chalamet: ‘Young Dylan was a contrarian. I was so obedient!’

Bob Dylan’s love of films has always inspired his work – but playing him in one is a another matter, reveals the star of A Complete Unknown

The Telegraph | January 17, 2025

The first time we glimpse Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in the new biopic A Complete Unknown, he appears as a scruffy urchin in a Huck Finn cap and battered jacket, hunching his wiry shoulders as if steeling himself against bitter winds, or perhaps building his nerve to take on the world. It is 1961 and we are meeting Dylan as he arrives in New York, all of 19-years-old, shedding his given name of Robert Zimmerman, and every bit as anonymous as the title proclaims.

Key to the success of any biopic is the audience’s willingness to accept an actor inhabiting a familiar physical presence. In this respect, the 29-year-old modern heartthrob might seem odd casting. Physically, the leonine Chalamet doesn’t bear more than superficial resemblance to Dylan, lacking his prominent nose, baggy eyes or jowly features.

Yet speaking to Chalamet at a preview of the film in London, he made an interesting observation about Dylan’s presence. “You know, you have these names like Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, all these gods of culture, and you can easily associate a face with them, because there’s so much media on them,” said Chalamet. “But the truly elusive figure Bob is, it’s sort of harder to pin a face to him.”

What unfolds across the film’s two hours and 20 minutes is an act of self-transformation – the spectacle of a great actor playing a real person whose own character is a kind of act.

A key scene, appropriately, takes place inside a cinema, where Dylan and his girlfriend (Elle Fanning playing Sylvie Russo, a lightly fictionalised version of Dylan’s real-life paramour Suze Rotolo) are watching Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. Russo comments on Davis’s character being on a journey to find herself. “She didn’t find herself,” Dylan notes. “She just made herself into something different.”

It is something Dylan has been doing all his life. I once asked Joan Baez (elegantly portrayed in the film by Monica Barbaro as his lover, singing partner and early champion) how well she felt she knew Dylan. She smiled and said, quite seriously, “Bobby’s unknowable.”

If that’s what Baez thinks – a woman who has known him most of his adult life – what chance is there for any film-maker or actor to get under his skin? Writer and director James Mangold’s thoughtful movie doesn’t really attempt to solve Dylan the enigma as much as Dylan’s multifariousness. “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,” Baez’s character notes at one point, which Dylan seems to accept as fair comment, an interesting aside being that both Baez and Dylan approved the script.

“Dylan was really helpful,” according to Mangold, who also spoke to me at the screening. “He shared a lot of stuff from the inside about what he felt about so many people wanting things from him at such a young age.”

Mangold made the Oscar-winning 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line starring Joaquin Phoenix, which took a conventional narrative form, locating the roots of Cash’s complexity in childhood trauma. Adapting Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, Mangold decided that he needed a different strategy for Dylan. “There was no real way to unlock Bob that was going to satisfy the kind of standard movie unlocking – like, Oh my God, he’s been hiding that secret, and now he’s spoken it, he’s released!,” Mangold says.

“I think if there is any real secret, it is the burden and joy of something none of us can completely understand: how a young man can write so many of the greatest songs of all time, and become one of the greatest artists of the last 100 years, and secure that position before his 24th birthday. I don’t even know if Bob can explain it, and do we have to? Sometimes people are born with something, and there is no specific Freudian event of their genius that somehow is the cost. It’s actually that they’re touched in some ways.”

Chalamet is not the first actor to play this mercurial character. In Todd Haynes’s brilliant, experimental drama I’m Not There, he was portrayed by six actors, including Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Richard Gere. Ben Whishaw played Dylan as a rebellious poet channelling Arthur Rimbaud, black teenager Marcus Carl Franklin was cast as a young homeless busker and Cate Blanchett memorably evoked the lean, druggy, androgynous rocker who is effectively emerging as A Complete Unknown ends. Blanchett’s performance has become a fan favourite, partly because it has an element of comedically edgy impersonation whilst embracing an androgyny that reflects Dylan’s near universal appeal.

A 1978 review in The New York Times pertinently noted that “as an actor, Mr Dylan specializes in giving the simultaneous impressions that he isn’t really interested in acting, and that he is always acting anyway.” For a songwriter who opens up vast interior worlds in his work, Dylan never appears sincere on screen. He is a very flimsy presence in Sam Peckinpah’s elegiac Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, for which he at least provided a classic soundtrack. He appears to be drunk all the way through abysmal 80s rock romance Hearts of Fire.

Dylan’s love for movies permeates his work, even if his awkward screen presence suggests movies don’t always love him back. His accomplished amateur oil paintings often feature lovingly recreated scenes from old movies, whilst actors, film characters and whole lines of borrowed dialogue flicker through his songs, from name-checking Bette Davis in 1965’s Desolation Row to setting 1986 epic Brownsville Girl at a screening of Gregory Peck’s classic Western The Gunfighter.

Anita Ekberg, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Peter O’Toole, Al Pacino and Marlon Brando are amongst the actors to have walk-on parts in Dylan lyrics, whilst Leonardo DiCaprio makes an incongruous appearance in Dylan’s fanciful 2012 retelling of Titanic, Tempest. A fan website compiles 61 movies quoted in Dylan songs, a favourite apparently being The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart, from which Dylan appropriated lines for three songs on 1985’s Empire Burlesque.

The Dylan portrayed by Chalamet in A Complete Unknown is at the start of his musical journey, but already a trickster and a fabulist. He drew heavily on Dylan’s 1960s press conferences. “He’s so confrontational in his attitude, sort of a wise-ass. When my own career took off, I was so obedient! Just to see how contrarian Dylan was at that age was so appealing to me.”

Dylan has offered words of encouragement, albeit via a typically ambiguous message on social media platform X. “Timmy’s a brilliant actor, so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”

“That was hugely affirming,” admitted Chalamet, who learnt to perform 30 Dylan songs for the role. Despite Dylan requesting a script and agreeing to personal meetings, Mangold seems equally uncertain of the extent of his real interest, noting that the first thing Dylan asked him was “so what’s this movie about?” Making his own enquiries, Elijah Wald, author of the source material, was told “Dylan doesn’t read about Dylan.”

For Mangold, it was vital that Chalamet and all his actors playing real people should have the freedom to bring their own characters to the role. “Timothée’s exceptionally bright, exceptionally logical, focused and verbal and articulate. There’s a lot I felt he could burrow into with this character. You’re playing a real person but if you want a perfect representation, we can actually watch footage of the real person...”

A Complete Unknown succeeds because it offers a visceral, entertaining glimpse into another side of Bob Dylan, rather than attempting a definitive portrait. “Who’s Bob Dylan?” as the man himself said at a press conference in 1986. “I’m only Bob Dylan when I have to be Bob Dylan. Most of the time I can just be myself.” Whoever that is.

Text: Neil McCormick, Chief Music Critic 📸: Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures; Rowland Scherman/Hulton Archive; Michael Ochs Archives

#timothée chalamet #james mangold #interview #jan17 2025 #spoilers #acu spoilers #a complete unknown

11 notes · View notes

memoriae-lectoris · 4 months ago

Text

Covered in asphalt or gravel, the area behind the house was “a utilitarian space where trash was burned, clothes were washed and hung up to dry, and unneeded household items were left to rust.” It was in front of the house that children played, in the yard or in the street, in view of the neighbors. The border between private and public space was the porous alcove of the front porch, a place for supervising those kids, flirting with a classmate in the respectability of the public view, snooping on neighbors doing the same, or adroitly greeting relatives or salesmen who weren’t quite welcome inside the domestic sanctum. […]

In the 1920s, the backyard began to supersede the front porch as the primary domestic outdoor social space. This switch would be accelerated by the arrival of indoor enjoyments like television and air-conditioning, as well as appliances like washers and dryers, which freed the backyard from its workaday purpose, but it began with the automobile. Prior to widespread car ownership, streets were multifunctional public places suitable for hawkers and markets, stickball games and snowball fights, the storage of construction materials, and waste disposal. The roaring car traffic associated with Henry Ford’s Model T cemented the street’s sole purpose as a thoroughfare. […] The suburban cul-de-sac was the fruit of newly widespread car ownership—and a refuge from it. In 1922, House Beautiful noted strains of front porch fatigue: “the increase in motor-traffic, the dust and proximity of other houses tend to make the front porch less desirable each year . . . One prefers [porches] turned away from the trivial drama of the street with its hucksters and milk wagons and gossip.”

At the Tenth National Conference on Housing in 1929, one speaker declared that the dirty old backyard, of all places, could be repurposed to offer “charm and sanctuary from a too noisy world”—away from “front porch promiscuity.” But it was less the question of how cars moved than of where to keep them that changed the shape of the American house. This shift from front porch to backyard coincided with the forward march of the garage, out of the backyard and into the house itself, as the car (later, cars) assumed its prime place in family life. Wright led the way. With his Usonian houses, a series of middle-class dwellings he designed beginning in the 1930s, America’s foremost architect invented a new word, carport, to describe an attached, sheltered overhang for car storage. […] He preferred the carport to the attached garage for the same reason he disliked basements: closed garages were likely to become just another place to gather household clutter.

Nevertheless, the implements of the closed, attached garage were all in place and awaiting the postwar housing boom. Overhead garage doors were commonplace by the 1910s, electric garage door openers by the 1930s. Early subdivisions may not have had interior spaces for cars—at the most famous of them, Levittown, east of New York City, the entire house was barely the size of a modern three-car garage—but the attached garage became de rigueur in the 1950s as mass-transit ridership plummeted and the car reinforced its dominance.

#book : paved paradise #architecture #usa #20th century #1920s #1930s #1940s #1950s #car #garage

10 notes · View notes

doomandgloomfromthetomb · 5 months ago

Text

Joe Henderson Quintet -The Lighthouse, Hermosa Beach, California, June 1977

A recent New York Times profile revealed that the great drummer Jack DeJohnette has retired from the touring life — at 83 years old, Jack has earned it. But retirement means he can dig into his archives, and Jack has struck gold almost immediately.

Hank Shteamer reports: The increased time at home has given DeJohnette time for reflection both musical and personal. Lydia [DeJohnette] and Joan Clancy, the DeJohnettes’ personal assistant, are currently cataloging and organizing his vast sonic archive, containing decades’ worth of unreleased recordings. One tape from this trove is a turbocharged 1966 live set from the storied East Village venue Slugs’ Saloon that features DeJohnette alongside the pianist McCoy Tyner, the saxophonist Joe Henderson and the bassist Henry Grimes. It will come out on Blue Note in November as “Forces of Nature,” a title chosen, he said, “because everybody’s being pulled and pushing each other to the umpteenth level, and it shows.”

Aw yeah, this is just what the doctor ordered ... check out a sample from the show. Great sound quality, phenomenal performance, impeccably Slugs-y vibes.

And then, enjoy a soundboard of Joe Henderson a little over a decade later all the way across the country in Hermosa Beach at another storied venue — The Lighthouse! I was just in Hermosa Beach over the summer and this club is still standing. On the marquee when I was passing by? Boys Of Summer: A Don Henley & Eagles Tribute. Oh baby. But hey, this tape of Joe is great, with the saxophonist's longtime associate George Cables on electric and acoustic piano; check out Joe and George blissfully trading lines on "'Round Midnight."

More bygone Hermosa Beach daze — my buddy Chris has been doing sterling work with his Rat Beach Rags t-shirts, reviving some classic (and long-shuttered) logos from our misbegotten youth: Alternative Groove, Scooter's Records and, most recently, Either-Or Bookstore, a Beat-era holdover that was right up the street from the Lighthouse. I spent endless hours at Either-Or back in the day, flipping through magazines, petting the cat, trying to act cool. Get your Either-Or shirt here.

#joe henderson #mccoy tyner #jack dejohnette #george cables #henry grimes

17 notes · View notes

ofmighty · 4 months ago

Text

// ( melissa barrera . cis female . she/her ) . ⸻ emilia sanchez , a thirty year old , has survived another day in red creek where they have lived for their whole life . the trailer trash is known for being electric and combative and is often associated with last call at the bar , bouncing between jobs , and brown hair flowing mid-dance . in a small town where they work as a waitress at dolly’s diner , word travels fast . it’s hard to keep a secret , and it looks like the boogeyman knows redacted ( dee , 21+ , est , she/her , n/a ) .

hello ! i'm happy to be here, my name's dee. fair warning, i haven't written on tumblr in forever, but i'm looking forward to plotting & introducing you to my two babies.

BASICS:

NAME: Emilia Sanchez

KNOWN AS: Emilia, Mia, Emi

BIRTHDATE: October 27, 1994

ASTROLOGY: Scorpio sun / Aries moon / Cancer rising

HOMETOWN: Red Creek, MI

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual

HEIGHT: 5'7"

OCCUPATION: Waitress at Dolly's Diner

QUICK FACTS:

born & raised red creek to a single mom and younger half-sister. she's only ever lived in the small trailer she was raised in, at the trailer park in town

her mother had her kids young and wanted to keep the party lifestyle going, so emilia and her sister quickly learned to take care of each other and their mom, rather than the other way around. eventually her mom stopped working, and it fell on the girls to keep their small trailer afloat.

emilia always dreamed of leaving her small town and going to vegas or new york to pursue dance, but there was a loyalty to her little family that kept her tethered there. by the time her mother passed away five years ago, she felt like it was too late in the game for her to go for what she wanted. instead she stayed for her sister, and her sister stayed for her, two girls desperate to leave but also unsure how to do anything but stay.

despite the judgment she's always held for her mother, emilia shares a lot of similar traits with her: inability to hold a job ( her mother because of her drinking, emilia because of her sharp tongue ) , spending most of her nights out late at the local bars, definitely inheriting her self-destructive qualities.

unlike her mother, she had no interest in flimsy relationships built on free drinks and lies. apart from one semi-serious relationship back in the day, she's sworn off having to rely on anyone else to keep herself happy—but she is the kind of person who likes some no-strings fun.

fiercely independent and quite opinionated, she struggles with keeping people in her life for long, but the few she does keep around she's fiercely loyal to.

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

a best friend or a couple close friends

that one ex from high school / early 20s that made her swear off relationships for good

ex-colleagues before she quit or was fired from a job, especially people she pissed off in the process

coworkers for the diner

drinking buddies

people she mooches free drinks off of

neighbors at the trailer park

former classmates

cousins

girls she used to take dance classes with

childhood friend she grew apart from

truly anything and everything, i'm all ears for plots !!

#redcreek.intro #like this and i will come to you to plot!#emilia ; intro

6 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 2 days ago

Text

Dust Volume 11, Number 2

FKA Twigs

Well, okay then, that was a long month. February 2025 is in the books and, gut check, we’re all still alive. We’re all still listening to music, too, and it’s time for another survey of what’s been playing on our various devices, specifically Dust, our monthly collection of short reviews. We bring you operatic apocalypse, minimalist repetition, guitar jams, grind ‘n roll, acoustic funk, E-6 associates and other treats, with contributors including Jennifer Kelly, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Justin Cober-Lake, Tim Clarke, Patrick Masterson and Andrew Forell. See you in March, if we all make it that far.

Cruel Diagonals — Calcite (Beacon Sound)

The planet will be fine. We’re the ones in danger. Megan Mitchell, the producer and vocalist known as Cruel Diagonals, takes the long view of environmental devastation in this four-track EP, lending her unearthly soprano and chilling electronic atmospheres to a tale told on a geological time scale. Wordless swells of vocal sound, trilling high and murmuring low, usher in “Scintillation,” her interpretation of planetary formation. Her voice has a ululating middle-eastern quality, but also operatic precision and resonance, as glitchy beds of ominous sound percolate and morph as freely as liquid rock. “Disobedience” tracks the disastrous impact of human destruction in echoing, curving laments and the flicker of electronic keyboard patterns. “Euxinia” glowers in low-toned menace, massed, slightly dissonant voices surging in autotuned, uncanny valley choruses. “Calcite” meant to evoke a post-human, post-biological planet of bare rock, instead ricochets with hocketing voices and blasts of low-brassy synths. It mourns but lightly, agily. All four parts glow with luminous, unreal beauty, abstracting the end of existence into pure tone and emotional heft. Cruel, indeed, but gorgeous.

Jennifer Kelly

John Davis — Landlines (Students of Decay)

Bay area musician John Davis presents a poignant overarching framework for Landlines, a collection of pieces that “reflect on the importance of connection — to ourselves and to the world around us.” The album’s eight compositions leverage their own unique trajectory as they seek to address this concept. The meditative “Cluster Tone” presents a bare, David Grubbs-ian acoustic guitar that wanders wistfully. A muted trumpet serenades a skeletal piano on the title track, as the two instruments shoulder their way through an Eraserhead-like windstorm. Some of the tracks are kaleidoscopic in nature, segueing between multiple thematic approaches but staying within Davis’ underlying conceptual fabric. The effervescent “Ovum” transitions from sprightly minimalist repetition into a lonely organ howling over a scene of playing children. The entirety of Landlines gracefully emits a sense of fond nostalgia. It flows gently from scene to scene with a dreamy logic that beautifully reflects the artist’s thematic intent.

Bryon Hayes

Decimus — Morning and Evening Ragas for Solo Electric Guitar (Kelippah)

This is the fourth entry in Pat Murano’s Morning and Evening Ragas series, where he ventures outdoors to record extended sessions among the flora and fauna of upstate New York. His crepuscular meanderings dissolve themselves into the sounds of birds, crickets, and passing cars. It can be a challenge to discern whether he’s influencing his surroundings or vice versa. Either way, the results of his extended jam sessions are entrancing. On this recording, Murano pares his arsenal down to the titular instrument: six strings and electronics. He offers up two divergent pieces. The first is a meditative feast of gurgling mantras and metal whirling through the air, while the latter is a pot of drones brought to boil and poured over a slithering mass of melody. Both sides of this LP defy gravity and float off into the twilit sky, auricular messages that Murano emits with grace.

Bryon Hayes

Drugs of Faith — Asymmetrical (Selfmadegod)

youtube

Drugs of Faith has one of the best band names in the biz, even if that moniker sneaks up on the didactic (“Religion is the opium of the masses,” anyone?). The lyrics to the band’s new record Asymmetrical don’t sneak; they go all in. Check out this passage from “Divestment”: “Droughts, floods, heatwaves, fires and hurricanes / They never stop! / Food riots, climate refugees, resource wars / No hiding on the garbage patch from leaks of unnatural gas / Water is the new currency.” And so on. The band’s music is even less subtle. For reasons unfathomable to this reviewer, Drugs of Faith calls its sonic stylings “grind’n’roll,” an execrable phrase, and an even worse idea. But never fear: mostly what you hear on Asymmetrical is a muscular variety of the heavy that combines the angriest sounds of Mission of Burma, the most unhinged guitar breaks Fugazi ever managed, and the occasional superfast bit from early 1980s hardcore. It’s a winning combination that makes the lyrics’ sledgehammering self-righteousness nearly tolerable. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe direct language is precisely what’s needed. As vocalist Richard Johnson (also of grind mainstays Agoraphobic Nosebleed) shouts at one point, “I forget we’re at war all the time.” Which war does he mean?

Jonathan Shaw

FKA twigs — Eusexua (Young/Atlantic)

youtube

Most of FKA twigs’ albums are genre tagged on (that noted authority) Wikipedia as “art pop,” which is fitting enough, but she’s always been club/dance influenced or adjacent enough that knowing that Eusexua is inspired mainly by the techno twigs heard while going to raves in Prague for a while (and yeah, she’s had the kind of life/career where that also seems unsurprising) doesn’t feel like it’s that big a shift. And purely sonically, it’s not quite; but twigs and her collaborators (primarily Koreless and Marius De Vries here, but also everyone from Eartheater to Two Shell) have also made maybe her most focused, consistent record to date. The themes are still the mess of relationships (“Sticky,” “24hr Dog”), the edification that comes from seeking sensual pleasure (the title track, “Room of Fools”), the crucial pursuit of personal autonomy (“Keep It, Hold It,” “Wanderlust”). and here they’re explored over twigs’ catchiest, most danceable set of tracks, even morseso than her fine other albums. An early highlight of 2025.

Ian Mathers

Rich Halley 4 — Dusk And Dawn (Pine Eagle)

Oregon-based tenor saxophonist Rich Halley’s spent a fair bit of his recording coin on collaborations with the Matthew Shipp Trio in recent years, but he’s back on home turf for Dusk And Dawn. The drummer, Carson Halley, has known the saxophonist since birth; bassist Clyde Reed and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich are enduring associates. So, what you hear on this album is a sequence of fluent conversations in a shared language that spans decades of jazz and adjacent styles. During “The Hard Truth,” the drumming prods and tests each horn player in turn, turning up the heat to splendid effect. And on “Spatter,” for example, passages of muscular, acoustic funk sandwich a freer but still propulsive midsection. Vlatkovich and Halley share a penchant for using sturdy, charted passages as jumping-off points for solo exchanges that have an engaging vocal quality.

Bill Meyer

Ofir Ganon — Same Air (Island House)

Ofir Ganon coaxes extraordinary resonance and clarity from his electric guitar. His tone vibrates, shimmering inside a luminous cloud. It splinters like light through a prism into a 1000 different colors. Ganon makes his living fine-tuning other people’s guitars, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s able to elicit beauty from his. More surprising, perhaps, is that he does it in a bright, clear idiom that owes very little to folk or blues or Takoma-style picking. “Pelham Blue” for instance, circles restlessly round an arpeggio each guitar sound a liquid drop of melody, but no bends or slides or flatted sevenths. An Israeli who spent time in Morocco, Ganon does slip a bit of middle eastern tonality into the mix, as on the show-stopping “Miel,” which might remind you of Richard Bishop’s Tangiers interludes. “Belleville,” an early single, flirts closest to folky picking, but with a jazz-leaning transparency, every note a bright, sparkling jewel, none run together or blurred.

Jennifer Kelly

Oh the Humanity! — Ground to Dust (Sell the Heart)

Oh the Humanity! brought in A Wilhelm Scream's Trevor Reilly for production on their latest album, Ground to Dust. The choice makes sense, given both bands' approach to punk, but what makes this release excel isn't that the band leans into its strengths but that it shows flexibility. The essentials are there, including the anger and emotion, but the group finds coherent ways to blend a mix of sounds. At one moment they push the skate punk sound, but in the next moment they're a metal band in full shred mode. They shift continuously without losing momentum or breaking the flow, mixing angry crunch with catchy hooks (the sound is surprisingly bright, and maybe stepping outside of their hardcore a little bit). When “Never Do Another Rule” gives a solo that could almost be classic rock, it makes sense. Ground to Dust isn't exactly a linear progression, but its sequencing does give it a proper sense of direction. OTH! doesn't quite drift into a commercial sound, but they strike a balance between the punk you might hear in a sticky basement and the punk you'd sing along to in an actual venue. It's a thoughtful album that doesn't relinquish any of the madness, a fun approach to frustration and catharsis.

Justin Cober-Lake

The Rishis — s-t (Primordial Void / Cloud Recordings)

Athens, Georgia’s The Rishis are Elephant 6-adjacent, featuring John Fernandes (Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System) among their ranks. This is the band’s second album, and it has a strolling, wide-eyed quality, best exemplified by opening track “Coloring.” It’s easily the best song here, masterfully balancing float and jangle, bringing together dinky bar-room piano, classic E6 horn moves, and a George Harrison-esque guitar break. The rest of the album continues in this mid-tempo vein, led by frontman and primary songwriter Ranjan Avasthi’s sweet vocal tone, but there’s lots of variety to catch the ear, including lovely cello on “Buffalo” and “Dharamsala.” The parts don’t always quite click into place as satisfyingly as they should — such as the hesitant performance of “Miles,” or the overdriven guitars of “Criminal Activities” — but The Rishis is still a breezy, likeable listen.

Tim Clarke

Ritual Error — Dial in the Ghost (TNS)

I’m a simple man: I see a band contextualized by Drive Like Jehu, Hoover and Circus Lupus, I’m gonna investigate that band. Such was the case when I perused the latest output from the Maximum Rocknroll crew and found the blurb for London trio Ritual Error’s first full-length out late last year on Manchester’s TNS. Sure enough, it doesn’t take but a quick listen of first single “Good Conscience in Three Stages” to confirm these guys get it: Okala Elesia’s vocals evoke Tim Harrington at Les Savy Fav’s most wild-eyed, his razor-sharp guitars spew melodies and countermelodies across the canvas, David Thair’s max attack percussion exacerbates headaches, and Alessandro Incorvaia’s bass only just holds it together. Whether it’s talking listlessness at sea or Maggie Thatcher or moving from home for the first time, Ritual Error is for real, and they’ve come a long way in a short time since their three-song debut demo. I told you when I found it; now you tell me when you have, too.

Patrick Masterson

Ernesto Rodrigues / Frank Gratkowski / Guilherme Rodrigues /Michael Griener — Unstable Molecules (Creative Sources)

First off, let’s all give a tip of the hat to the best-named venue in Berlin — Kühlspot. That’s where this encounter took place in March 2024, when Portuguese violist (and Creative Sources CEO) Ernesto Rodrigues improvised with his cello-playing son Guilherme and two other Berlin-based musicians, Frank Gratkowski (alto saxophone, clarinets) and Michael Griener (drums). This could have gone in a number of directions, for while the string players share a predilection for bristly, romance-free interaction, Griener and Gratkowski can push things in a number of directions. In this case, the drummer seems to insert his sounds within the cello-viola dust-ups, matching timbre for timbre and rustle for rustle, while Gratkowski adds just enough ballast to make this chamber session swing. The outcome is pretty cool.

Bill Meyer

Saint Vengeur — Sex and Repression in Higher Society (I, Voidhanger)

A hybrid of coldwave, witch house and industrial’s mechanized noise, Saint Vengeur’s music is about as arch, icy, irritating and occasionally exciting as you might expect. Does it help that Sex and Repression in Higher Society comes with a booklet of poetry, some verses of which are occasionally recited along with the tunes? Depends on how you feel about poetic language like this: “Exposed wires beat with cursed life / Bursting in excess / For nothing will suffice / Dig black, lace gloves / Satisfaction is now buried / Somewhere in the lies.” But he’s serious, folks — and sometimes, somehow, it all works. Check out the smartly titled “Poor Homme,” which could soundtrack a gloomily antic moment from a John Carpenter film (The Fog, perhaps) or a vampire-themed videogame. It’s one of the tracks on Sex and Repression in Higher Society that seems to wink at its own gratuitous atmospherics and then heads for the dancefloor. “Affection Paradigm” toggles between nimble synthy stuff worthy of early Heaven 17 and the aural equivalent of an East German sex dungeon, c 1982, which ends up being more fun than it sounds. Not sure that’s the intended effect.

Jonathan Shaw

Traxman — Da Mind of Traxman Vol. 3 (Planet Mu)

youtube

Rashad’s martyrdom and RP Boo’s belated flowers aside, Cornelius Ferguson to me belongs in the same pantheon from Chicago footwork’s first wave not just for his mastery of the 160 bpm format that goes beyond post-Dance Mania ghetto house and juke, but also because he recognized the viability of the album format right around the time Planet Mu’s Mike Paradinas was peaking in his push via the Bangs & Works series. The first Da Mind of Traxman in 2012 remains, alongside DJ Diamond’s Flight Muzik, Double Cup or Legacy, arguably footwork’s finest single-artist album. The second volume in 2014 solidified his position among the elite, but since then, he’s done what the rest of these guys do by plying his trade and minding his own as both Traxman and his Corky Strong alias. Renowned producer Sinjin Hawke offers us a timely refresher of Ferguson’s talents for anyone who wasn’t around or may’ve forgotten with this third volume that plucks 15 tracks from the archives. Songs range from 2002 (“Kill Da DJ”) to 2022 (a Benny the Butcher sample in “I’ll Write the Hook”); there’s Mortal Kombat in here (“Round 1”); there’s Carly Simon (“I Bet U Think This Track Is About U!!”); there’s plenty more. It’s tough to shake that this feels like a comp in the same way Vol. 2 did, though, which puts it slightly below the elite tier Vol. 1 justifiably deserves.

Patrick Masterson

Ventr — Ubique Diaboli Voluntas (Signal Rex)

youtube

The ongoing deluge of satanic black metal records from what purports to be a mysterious underground of malignant entities may put lie to both the “mystery” and the “underground.” When there is so much information (songs, promo sheets, music videos, manifestos and so on) trying to leach its way into the daylight of the open market for music, just how much obscurity can be sustained? Is that even the idea? Anyways: here’s a new record by another relatively recent addition to Portugal’s fecund black metal scene, Ventr’s Ubique Diaboli Voluntas. It doesn’t have the utterly nuts volatility of Mons Veneris (good luck finding that degree of musical insanity just about anywhere else…) or the compelling impulse toward self-extinguishment you can just about feel in recent releases from Black Cilice. Even Portugal seems to have limits. But as traditional black metal goes, Ubique Diaboli Voluntas is fine, perhaps even good. It may be winning song titles like “The Poisonous Blade of Kindness” or “The Rope around the Neck of Ataraxia” (which made your reviewer laugh aloud); it may be the relative fun in seeing a rat fashioned into Ouroboros on the album art — but something elevates Ventr’s record just above most of this month’s inexhaustible stream of black metal releases. Must be February.

Jonathan Shaw

3 notes · View notes