#Freddy can just charge everything when his own electricity is too much for him

[ntls-24722]

ZOINKS!!!!

Ha haa! surprise attack!!

All this final redesings started just cus I wanted to see the oldest desings I did trhee years ago in my upgraded art. And in the way I made it easy for my self.

[ardentmuse]

Four Times Fred Weasley Proposed to You... And the One Time He Meant It (Fred Weasley x Reader)

Harry Potter - Fred Weasley x fem!Reader

Summary: The title says it all. Just read it ;)

Wordcount: 4.7k (I’m trash)

Warnings: fluff, sex, cursing - basically my holy trinity, and AU where Fred lives (which is the only universe I live in) 

Masterlist

A/N: Toddle started daycare yesterday and I learned that I churn out about 1k worlds per hour if I don’t have a kid crawling on me. Today is also my wedding anniversary for fluff felt right. A request from anon! 

I.

The candles floating high under the vaulted ceiling are the only things that don’t shake with the uproar of cheers, especially from the seventh years, that accompany Dumbledore’s announcement of return of the Triwizard Tournament. Fred bumps elbows with his twin, whom he simply knows is already conspiring to rig this thing in their favor. Fame, glory, prize money – everything they need to set themselves up for success is being presented on a golden platter – or rather in a wooden goblet. But they don’t have the opportunity to conspire before the room falls hush at the gentle lowering of Dumbledore’s willowy arms.

“Please join me in welcoming the students of Beauxbaton Academy of Magic and their headmistress Madame Maxine,” Dumbledore’s voice bellows, but to Fred it is but a whisper. The doors to the Great Hall have already opened and towards the front of the group of impressively dressed students, their jackets pristinely fitted and their skirts flared in a way that hints so nicely at the shapely things that certainly reside beneath them. Fred’s baser brain, the part that, as a sixteen year old, gives power and life to many of his higher-level functions, completely takes over. His eyes roam the group, landing on a stunning creature, third from the left whose straightened back, bright smile, and flushed face from the chill of the castle night are enough to make his mouth grow dry and his palms sweat with anticipation. 

But then you begin your dance – if it could even be called a dance. You skip forward like an elegant ballerina, your neck tall and your chest out the way a swan might look upon the lesser creatures within its pond, elegant but superior. And Fred minds not one bit being the scum that lines your lakeside domain. With light steps you descend upon the Great Hall, down the path on which he sits. And as you grow closer, you open your hands, releasing blue mist and butterflies upon the crowd, like a siren singing a song to lure in the ships at sea. 

A few more pranced steps and you are standing right beside him. He watches with baited breath as your skirts flow and twist. You lean forward with special flourish, flicking your wrists and humming in unison with your cohort. Your fingers lightly brush against Fred’s cheek as he ebbs closer in rapture. 

“Marry me,” he whispers, which draws your eyes away from the front of the hall to meet the man sitting right beside you. A simple turn of his head has his lips gently brushing against your fingertips and the piercing of his cinnamon eyes catches your breath in your chest. You miss your next step, so beguiled by this handsome man before you, broad and freckled and just the teeniest bit unobtainable in the way that confidence seems to radiate off him. 

You bite your lips as you quickly make your leave, returning to the perfectly choreographed dance that seems to have enchanted more than just the eldest Weasley twin. 

George’s elbow lands squarely in the soft space below Fred’s ribs. 

“Oi, Freddie, what the hell was that?” George asks as the room rises in applause for their new guests.

George searches Fred’s face for answers. Across from him, both Angelina and Hermione seem to be brooding in equal measure. Ron is busy picking his jaw off the floor. But for Fred, all he could do is search the room for the figure whose shape is now buried deep in his mind and whose soft fingertips he can still feel upon his lips. 

He finds you taking your seat at the Ravenclaw table beside Roger Davies, who is all too eager to move his cloak and offer you water. Something primal rises in Fred, hot bile in his gut at the sight of Davies’ hand brushing against your wrist as you turn to speak with him. But as if feeling Fred’s presence, you flick up your gaze to lock with his and almost immediate you look away. But Fred is satisfied if the way you are biting your lip and hiding so delicately behind your hat is any indication that you might be feeling the exact same electric charge between you that he is.

“I don’t know, George. I really don’t know.” 

II.

The spring sun warms the courtyard as the visiting students say their goodbyes to Hogwarts and the witches and wizards that call it home. Fred and George sit on the stone wall of the archway, overlooking the chaos of tearful hugs and exchanged promises to write, respectful handshakes and gossipy giggles. 

“So much emotion for something so simple as a goodbye,” George says as he pulls at the leaves of the bush just starting to bud beside him, “Does everyone forget we have magic? Owls, portkeys, floo networks, and the works? It’s not goodbye forever, you know?” 

Fred’s eyes scan the courtyard until he finds the top of your head standing in a circle of Beauxbaton students who are wishing farewell to their Hufflepuff friends, offering elongated hugs and whispered words of comfort to those mourning the loss of Diggory. 

You pull away from a puffy-eyed girl, handing her a notecard, which Fred assumes has your address on it, and turn your eyes up on catch him staring at you. You blush – at least he thinks you do at this distance – and turn your attention back to the young Gryffindor who has just tapped you on the shoulder. Fred closes his eyes. 

“Well, George, sometimes even a goodbye for now can be more than you’re willing to accept.” 

George looks to see Fred’s eyes still closed, his head lulled to the side in a look that can only be described as painful longing. 

“Speaking in general or personal there, dear brother? A certain French girl I caught you snogging have anything to do with—“ 

“George,” you say, interrupting their hushed conversation. George smiles almost too wickedly at your appearance. “And Fred,” you say, turning your eyes to the boy who has consumed so many of your thoughts these past few months. 

At hearing your voice, Fred’s head pops up from its angst-filled recline against the stone castle wall. The wide saucers take you in like a man dying of thirst. 

You clear your throat and move your head to take in both twins. “I just want to say that I will miss you and your laughter. You have both made my time here at Hogwarts a pleasant one.” Your smile seems forced, but Fred cannot tell why. 

“And it has been a pleasure getting to know you as well, my dearest mademoiselle,” George says in his best accent, swallowing the first “e” the way you taught him to do so precisely. “Quite the pleasure for one of us, I might say.” 

Fred turns near crimson at his brother’s coaxing and your own eyes find rest starring down at your lap. 

“Well, yes,” you stammer, knowing full well this was George’s intention but not being skilled enough to overcome its impact, “For me, too.” 

You feel a hand come under your chin, and your eyes come up to meet the very bright, but very pleased face of Fred Weasley. 

“You are a pleasure,” he says for just your ears, his thumb running across your chin as your face grows hot at his attentions. 

“You know, I’m not sure I want to go home,” you admit, looking up at the cute boy before you from under your lashes. His Adam’s Apple bobs at your minor seduction. “I have quite come to like your country.” 

“I could marry you,” he says as his hand finds the curve of your neck, “Then they couldn’t take you away. I hear Ministry visas are quite a valuable commodity these days.” 

You laugh, deep and hearty, the kind of laugh you have come to know so often as your friendship has blossomed with the twins. 

You hand a card to Fred, not a tiny index card like the kind he watch you hand your other friends, but a proper greeting card, with a beautiful calligraphed, “My Fred,” on the envelope. 

“Maybe you can write me sometime, if you want? I’d love to know how the business comes along.” 

Fred’s fingers trace the curves and bends of the ‘my’ so thoughtfully placed before his name. 

When Fred says nothing, his eyes so drawn to the paper, George pipes up with an, “Of course, love. We’ll be sure to.”

“Okay,” you whisper, but Fred’s attention is still elsewhere. With a swallow, you say, “Bye, then,” and with a tiny wave, returned by George alone, you turn on your heels and head for your carriage. 

George stares down at his brother, whose fingers have already gone to rip at the letter, to see its contents and pray that its words align with the flutter he feels in his chest right now. 

Opening the envelope releases a frill of blue dust and butterflies, scented like your shampoo, which he is ashamed to say he knows now. An index card with an address, just like the ones you gave the others sits inside, along with a note, long and eloquent about how you’ve enjoyed the time you’ve shared together, the laughter and the kisses, too, but it is the last two lines that gets him right in his throat, his heart beating faster than he can ever remember it doing before. 

“You are the sweetest man I’ve ever known, Fred Weasley, and I pray one day when I know love, it will be with someone who makes me smile, makes me think, and makes me feel as beautiful as you have in these few short months. Who knows, maybe that someone will even be you.”  

Finally, Fred hears George screaming his name, the tone of which makes it clear to him this was not the first yell. 

“What!” Fred finally screams back, his hands gripping tightly on the parchment he holds.

“You didn’t even say bye to her, mate.”

Fred whips around to see a line of soft blue suits taking the stairs into their Abraxan-drawn carriages, the boys of the school offering softly cupped hands to the girls as they ascend. Fred jumps the stone wall into the courtyard, not caring for the height of the fall and sprints through the crowds, pushing a few first year students in the process until his hand grabs yours just as you take your first steps away from Hogwarts. 

You spin around at the tug. When Fred sees your face, slightly obscured by your hat, his chest hurts at the sight of the tear lines that clearly flow down your cheeks. 

He pulls you to him quickly, catching you in his arms as you partially tumble down the stairs towards him. He kisses you before you can even recover, to the hoots and hollers of some of the younger students, which earns them the scolding of a surprisingly softhearted McGonagall. 

Fred’s lips are all pressure, as though movement might take you further away from him. He is locked in the moment, securing you to him and into his memory for as long as he may have you.

When he finally pulls away, he runs his hands along the sides of your face and your forehead, like memorizing every shape and detail.

“Goodbye, my Fred,” you say to him, you eyes still saddened, still hurt but the parting, but all the more healed for the confirmation that this is hurting Fred too.

“Goodbye for now, my princess.” 

And so you walk away, your hands lingering together as Fred does his best to help you up the stairs and into your carriage, his precious swan princess preparing for her journey home. 

A few minutes later, Fred returns to his brother, who still sits on the stone but is now holding the envelope and letter that Fred discarded in his pursuit of you. George offers a slow clap of appreciation at Fred’s grand gesture.

“Georgie, how much money do you think we have for the summer? Enough to restock and still have extra?” 

“Why are you asking?” George hands the precious parchment over to Fred for safe keeping.

Fred just stares down into his hands, at your words and your script and the remains of your magic and your scent. 

“I think I have to go to France.” 

III.

“You keep cooking like this and I’ll have to make a kept woman out of you, you know,” Fred teases as he grabs yet another of the Christmas cookies you have just pulled from the cooling racks. You swat his hand away but not quickly enough to stop him from adding another handful to the collection already lining his plate and pockets. “Trying to impress my mother with baked goods is a very good idea but completely unnecessary. She’s going to love you. She already loves you for how happy you make me.” 

“Are you sure?” you ask as you continue to turn over the cookies, packing the ones with the best looking bottoms into festive tin to take with you to Ottery St. Catchpole.

Fred’s hand grabs as your wrist as you nervously rearrange the cookies ones more, “I’m absolutely certain.” 

A few moments pass as Fred hums happily, crunching down one cookie after another before you speak up once more. “A kept woman, ye? I hope I might be more to you someday than just someone to fulfill your desires.” 

Fred’s mouth curls into a Cheshire grin as drops his plate once more against the countertop. “And what’s so wrong with fulfilling my desires? Hmmm?” 

You can’t help but smile too as you toss your oven mitts aside. 

“Nothing,” you hum absentmindedly, leaning into Fred’s game. “Other than that I have desires of my own.” 

Fred creeps around the counter, taking in your form as the aprons strings hug tightly at your waist. In one deft motion, Fred has you pinned so fiercely against the counter you worry he might actually take a bit of you instead of the desserts you have spent all morning making. 

“Well,” he whispers into the soft of your ears, sending shivers down your spin, “Make me a kept man and we can live a life filled with unending pleasures.” And with the purr of the last word, he dives down to taste the salted hollow of your neck. 

“Two kept people is just a marriage,” you manage to get out before the sweet suction upon you pulse makes you lose your breath and, with it, your composure. 

“Then married we shall be.” His lips tickle against your collarbone before making the ascent back up your neck towards your chin. “Married, happy, fat off cookies,” he says between kisses. “And drunk off desire,” he whispers, leaving a final, long, bruising kiss upon your lips. 

You are pulled from your daze by the call of George’s voice in the shop below the apartment, telling you his mother would be quite disappointed if you found yourself running late for Christmas dinner because you were too busy making her grandbabies. 

As he pulls away, Fred runs a fingertip, slow, across your bottom lip, feeling the swell his kisses put there. 

“I’m keeping you,” he says to your lips before meeting your eyes. For a moment, his look is deep with longing, but quickly he smiles and the mask of play returns to his bright features as he snatches the packaged cookies off the counter and pulls you out of the room to meet up with his twin. 

IV.

“That’s it, love,” Fred breathes into your hair as you tighten the grip of your thighs around his hips. The sweat from his brow rolls down your neck sending shivers across your already prickled skin. Fred’s arms grip at your hips, desperate and needy. You can’t help but admire the taut muscles of his shoulders, round and firm in exertion. Even now, long after all the quidditch training and regular exercise, the lines of him are still subtle perfection. 

A bite at your ear pulls your eyes away. And the rocking of his firm length deep inside you pulls your mind away, too. 

On instinct, you roll your hips to meet his needy thrusts, finding a rhythm so right that you each let out a satisfied groan. You grip tight into the shoulders you love so much, digging your chin into his neck as you work yourself against him, pulling your pleasure from him as much as he is from you.

“Merlin,” Fred breathes as he seizes your chin so he may look in your eyes. He pins your hips once more with his rough hand, pounding into you long and slow.  “You’re perfect,” he says before kissing you deeply, the action pressing your entire personage further into the mattress, all parts of him consuming you wholly.

As his hand moves from your hipbone to brush against your sex, you feel the tightening that Fred so easily can pull from you, the sweet anticipation of a cascade of relief that marks your lovemaking as something necessary. His fingers deftly work you in time with his hips and soon you are falling off that cliff with only his strong arms to catch you. 

Fred groans at the feel of your orgasm, finding his own in the sweet music your body plays for him. And as he releases himself in your depths, your body quakes once more with the pleasurable feel of it. 

Exhausted and spent, Fred lays himself upon you, chest to chest, the weight of him a welcome reminder of the real world to which your brain has just returned. 

“I can’t wait to make you my wife,” Fred says into the darkness of your bedroom.

You laugh – or at least as much as you can with his weight bearing down upon your chest. You take in his nose now resting against your shoulder, the soft freckles decorating the bridge, the pink of the creases now coated in a pleasant sheen of sweat. He pops up his eyes to meet yours in unspoken question.

“The feeling’s mutual,” you smile. You run your hands through his hair, hoping to ease the worry you feel from him. 

Fred rolls off of you to lie on his side, mischief dancing in his eyes. 

“You also can’t wait to make me your wife?”

You turn to see Fred lounging casually upon the mattress, his nudity fully on display as he shows off his body for you with a flourish. 

“Can you not resist these womanly curves?” He almost can’t keep the smile off his face. 

You lunge towards him, but he’s quicker. He hops off the bed and runs down the hallway before you can even extract yourself from the covers. The last thing you see is that cute, firm butt of his round the corner towards the kitchen. 

“Shall your wife bring you tea?” He calls in a mocking high-pitched voice from the depths of your home. You toss a pillow at the door, and as it plops, Fred laughs. 

And just as you feel the glow of your orgasm begin to subside, Fred walks through the door with two steaming cups. He sets them down on the bedside table before kneeling before you. Only then do you notice the silliness is gone from his face, replaced with the hint of nerves and raw emotion you saw only a hint of in your afterglow.

“I’m not joking, you know,” he says as he grabs at your knuckles, “I’d like to marry you someday, make this beautiful, precious thing we have permanent, assuming you want that too.” 

And with a look into those beautiful brown orbs of his, you nod. 

V.

You cling tightly to Fred’s back as his broom zooms between the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees. The castle in which you spent your formative years seems but a speck off in the distance as you direct Fred along a saddle of the range and towards the cliff face just beyond.

“There,” you point towards the gap in the trees on the north face. The rush of the wind as Fred speeds downward makes it hard to hear the beautiful crash of water you associate so much with this place. But as the trees thin, you see it – the gorgeous waterfall and crisp blue-green pools that catch its spray. 

Fred slows down his flying, weaving expertly through the forest until you come to rest upon the boulders that face the torrent of water. 

“This is it. This is where us Beauxbaton girls came for peaceful retreats. Made quite a few friends among the wood nymphs, too.” 

Fred turns to you, confused. “You find this relaxing?” He screams over the loud crash of water. 


“Trust me?” You ask as you take his hand and lead him down the winding paths deeper into the forest. He grips your fingers tightly as his boots dig into the mud you seem to navigate with an elegance that reminds him so much of how you floated into the Great Hall of Hogwarts all those years ago. 

When you finally let go of his hand, you are in a clearing covered in a canopy of trees. Steam fills the space as three pools, one flowing into the next, radiate heat outward. The water is an inviting shade of aquamarine and the stones underneath seem to glisten silver, the cleavage of them lined with some rare elements that Fred can only assume are as precious as the creature standing beside him. Your face glows with memory, like a child on Christmas filled with the possibilities of unopened boxes and mysterious smells from the oven. 

“I told you it’s beautiful,” you say, turning to the man you love, the man you are so excited to show the parts of your life he had been absent from so that he can become one with all of you. What you see when you find him again makes it clear he wants the same thing.

Fred is bent on one knee, his soft woolen jacket open revealing a pocket you hadn’t seen, and in his hands sits a beautiful ring box holding a delicate band and a single, shining diamond, even brighter for the way the blues of your hot springs cast off of it. 

“You did,” he says, his voice deeper than you are used to, like a lump somehow is already forming in his throat. But that isn’t too hard to believe, as tears are prickling at your eyes, ready to roll over before he has even spoken. The sight of this man, his handsome chiseled face and his soft, kind eyes looking so weak, so wrought with emotion, and all for you, is enough to send you into hysterics. He is perfect – your silly, brave, industrious, kind, honest, perfect Fred. And here he is, telling you without words that you are perfect, too. 

“Do you remember my first words to you?” He asks with a lift of the left corner of his lips.

“Marry me,” you whisper with a hiccup, now full-blown crying at the memory of how his lips somehow felt so right against your fingers, even though you didn’t even know his name.

“Marry me,” he breathes more to himself than you, chuckling at his own teenage silliness. He shakes his head and looks at the ground. But upon catching the glow of the ring, his eyes return to your face. “I’d like an answer now,” he says. His hand somehow instinctively finds your fingertips, the source of all the kinetic energy between you, the spark that opened the doors to a lifetime of happiness. 

You try your best to find your breath between your tears. “Yes,” you say, though you are unsure if you actually made any sound given the heaving of your chest. “Yes.” 

Fred hops into the air, his lips finding yours and his arms engulfing your body in his embrace. He showers you with kisses, your tears mingling together, no different from the moisture of the steam coating your skin.

“I love you so much,” you manage to say as you smile against his mouth.

“I love you—fuck,” Fred pulls himself from you and drops to the ground. The ring box is discarded several feet from you, dropped quickly in Fred’s desire to shower you in affection. The ring still sits inside, pretty and intact but dusted with dirt. Fred frantically wipes the ring against his coat before grabbing at your hand.

“May I?” He asks. You nod enthusiastically, enjoying the feel of the cold metal running over your knuckles, chilling your heated skin.

As Fred stares in awe at the new jewel that gilds your hand, you slowly back away from him. With a careful flick of the buttons, you drop your coat to the ground. Fred’s gaze moves to your neck where your hands now continue their slow turn and flick, opening the buttons of your blouse in the most enticing strip tease he could imagine. 

“What are you doing, woman?” He whispers, though he takes no steps to approach your still retreating form, now just inches from the edge of the water. 

“What do you think I was planning for us to do here?” You ask him. Your hands slide down the curves of your now-exposed sides, bunching the fabric of your hips. “It’s a hot spring.” You wiggle your hips just a little as you push the fabric over your rump and down your thighs. “What do you think we Beauxbaton girls did here? Painted our nails and doodled in our notebooks?” As you lift your ankles, leaving yourself completely bare – bare expect for the gorgeous ring your fiancé just placed upon your hand – you stride with slow, confident steps towards him, a swan returned to her pond, a siren seducing her sailor. 

“Do not make me picture you and a handful of beautiful French girls bathing here naked together. My heart can’t take it.” 

You now find yourself inches away from your fiancé, his eyes trying their hardest to stay trained on your face but failing miserably with each breath that lifts your chest just a little closer to his face. 

“Your heart can take plenty of things,” you moan into his ear, your entire body just an inch from touching his. “It’s taken me, hasn’t it?” 

And just as his hands comes to ghost the curve of your lower back, you flee him, jumping into the largest of the pools with a satisfying splash. 

As you come up and turn to him with your hair slicked back out of your face, Fred is already half naked, his clothing thrown haphazardly across the clearing and his belt buckle proving much more difficult than he ever imagined it would. 

“Damn it, Princess,” he says with a huff and he yanks at his jeans, “You have no idea what’s in store for you.” He flicks his eyes to you as he pulls his t-shirt over his head, revealing the beautiful expanse of strong stomach and chest that somehow never fail to take your breath away. His eyes glint with a hint of evil and a heap of lust and you are almost ashamed at how quickly your body responds to it, his gaze heating your whole self even more than the springs already have. 

“I think I know,” you say as Fred lowers himself into the waters. 

He paddles over to you and wraps your nude form in his arms. His lips find your hands and delicately play with them, his fingers running over the smooth metal as his lips move up to your wrist. You drop your head back against the smooth rocks and allow this man you love, this man who has enchanted you for the first connection, to love your body in turn. 

All tags: @fangirlandnerd, @aerdnandreaa, @thisisbullshytt,  @cancerousjojian, @whovianayesha, @themarauderstheoutsidersandpeggy, @luna-xxxxx, @sleepylunarwolf, @starryrevelations, @potter-thinking, @all-by-myself98, @bananafosters-and-books, @cutie-bug

Harry Potter tags: @tessimagines, @0-lost-in-stereo-0, @whysoseriouspadfoot, @eldritchscreech,

[natromanxoff]

Queen live at Colston Hall in Bristol, UK - November 18, 1975

x

The photos could be from either night.

This article from the November 29 issue of Sounds chronicles the second night in Bristol.

Queen triumphant

QUEEN ARE the type of group that make a man want to abandon rock writing. They pose questions and never provide answers. They exist in their own space-time continuum, visible and audible but keeping their secrets to themselves.

On the surface they couldn't be a nicer bunch of people, but they carry English reticence to an epitome. It isn't, as Geoff Barton said two weeks ago, that they're boring, it's just that they're reserved. Or in writer parlance, they don't automatically provide colourful copy. All my instincts as a writer tell me that there is a great story in that band, but after two nights with them I'm hardly any the wiser.

Skin tight

That their insularity has a lot to do with them being one of the most amazing heavy-metal and/or rock bands in Britain - with all the signs that they'll end up monsters on the order of Zep - is fairly obvious, but just how much bearing it has on the matter is hard to say. The enigmas they might pose mightn't even have answers.

Is there any logical reason why they present an image and persona straight out of the Beatles school of interlocking chemistry?

John is reserved, almost nonchalant on stage, as if it's all in a small, personal joke. When asked how he saw himself within the framework of the band he replied, with a small smile, "I'm the bassist".

Roger is his opposite, the cheeky sidekick in a Clint Eastwood movie, and attracting a lot of cheesecake attention in America and Japan.

Freddie is an original - one of the most dynamic singers to tread the boards in quite a few years. His attraction is obvious.

Brian is perhaps the biggest enigma of all. What is this seemingly frail, gaunt astronomer doing on that stage, striding purposefully and blasting diamond-hard rock? They're all equally strong personalities - like the Beatles there's no one major focal point. Ask four fans who their dream Queen is and you'll get four different answers.

Queen have been busy lads these past few months. Having disassociated themselves from their former management and joined with John Reid, the fourth album was seen to. Reid decided that a tight schedule wouldn't cause them undue harm, and figured on two months to record before embarking on this current tour.

Only Queen are driven to better each previous album - which at this stage of the game is obviously producing some excellent results - and 'A Night At The Opera' turned into a saga - culminating in 36-hour mixing sessions in an effort to allow at least a few days for rehearsal. In the end they managed three and a half days at Elstree with four hours off to videotape the promotional film for 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

Their first few dates had not been without errors and the quartet were still not feeling totally comfortable their second night in Bristol, fourth night of the tour. You'd never know it, though.

Like all other aspects of the group, the stage is sophisticated. A black scrim provides a backdrop bounded by a proscenium of lights both front and rear. At each side the p.a. rises like a mutant marriage of Mammon and Robby the Robot. Amp power is readily evident but the most extraordinary is Brian May's subtle set up: nine Vox boxes stepping back in rows of three. The only packing crate visible is holding a tray of drinks, and you may rest assured that no roadie will rush, crawl or lurk across the stage while the show is in progress unless it's to rescue Freddie's mike from the clawing crowd.

As the auditorium darkens the sound of an orchestra tuning up is heard over the p.a. The conductor taps his baton on the music stand and a slightly effete voice welcomes the audience to A Night At The Opera. The Gilbert & Sullivan portion of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' follows, a brief glimpse of Freddie is allowed, and then in a blast of flares and white smoke the blitzkrieg begins.

Roger is barely visible behind his kit, just his eyes and tousled locks. John is wearing a white suit and playing the-man-who-must-stand-still-or-it-will-all-blow-away. Brian is slightly medieval in his green and white Zandra Rhodes top, while Freddie is...

Around his ankles his satin white pants flare like wings - fleet footed Hermes. Everything north of the knee is skin tight - tighter than skin tight - with a zip-up front open to AA rating. But further south, definitely in X territory, lurks a bulge not unlike the Sunday Telegraph.

There have been sex objects and sex bombs, superstar potency and the arrogant presentation of this all-important area, but never has a man's weaponry been so flagrantly showcased. Fred could jump up on the drum stand and shake his cute arse, leap about and perform all manner of amazing acrobatics, but there it was, this rope in repose, barely leashed tumescence, the Queen's sceptre. Oh to be that hot costume, writhing across the mighty Fred!

Phallic

Freddie is not pretty in the conventional sense of the word; like Mick Jagger of '64, he is his own convention. Also like the Jagger of the time, his stage persona and action is unlike anything else. Although it borrows - like most of the group's plagiarisms - slightly from Zeppelin, in tandem with Freddie's supreme assurance and belief in himself - he always refers to himself as a star - it explodes into something that is a constant delight to watch.

He reacts to his audience almost like an over-emotional actress - Gloria Swanson, say, or perhaps Holly Woodlawn playing Bette Davis. At the climax of the second night in Bristol he paused at the top of the drum stand, looked back over the crowd and with complete, heartfelt emotion placed his delicate fingers to lips and blew a kiss. Any person who can consume themselves so completely in such a clichéd showbiz contrivance deserves to be called a star.

Freddie's real talent, though, is with his mike stand. No Rod Stewart mike stand callisthenics here, just a shortee stick that doubles as a cock, machine gun, ambiguous phallic symbol, and for a fleeting moment an imaginary guitar. He has a neat trick of standing quite still in particularly frantic moments and holding the stand vertically from his crotch up, draw a fragile finger along its length, ever closer to the taunting eyes that survey his audience.

Their show contains lots of bombs and smoke, lots of lights, lots of noise. They fulfil the function of supremely good heavy metal - i.e. you don't get a second to think about what's going on. When they do let up for a few minutes, it's only so you can focus in on the bright blue electric charge crackling between your ears.

Bulldozer

Dominating the sound is Roger's drumming, a bulldozer echo that bounces like an elastic membrane, meshing with your solar plexus so that your body pulses in synch with the thunder. Tuned into that, everything else is just supremely nice icing.

For three days rehearsal, after eight months off the road Bristol was extremely impressive. In speculative mood I quizzed people on how long they thought it would take to headline Madison Square Garden. I was thought a radical at a year and a half. John Reid smilingly assured me it would take a year.

That Queen should end up with John Reid is an entirely logical proceeding. Everything about Queen demands that the world eventually kowtows at their feet in complete acquiescence - so big that bodyguards have to accompany them at every step. Well, no - they found that an annoyance in Japan, but, you know, huge.

Such status demands a Reid or a Peter Grant, and whatever the causes for their leaving Jack Nelson and Trident, an elegant group like Queen is going to look for a man with class. Reid found the idea of managing a group interesting, and having to deal with four strong personalities a challenge. He only concerns himself with their business and ensuring that the year ahead is mapped out. In January they begin a jaunt through the Orient, Australia and America, by which time it's March and they begin preparations for the next album.

Reid's prediction of a year was proven highly credible the next evening in Cardiff. The band had still not paused from the rush up to the tour and spent most of the day relaxing and sleeping - no doubt a factor in their near recumbent profile. Also, unlike most groups, they were keeping their dissatisfaction with the show to themselves.

They stopped off at Harlech TV on the way to see a cassette of the video for 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. The general consensus was quite good for four hours, with much laughter during the operetta. Brian finds film of the group educational - the first time he saw himself was a Mike Mansfield opus for 'Keep Yourself Alive' - "It was 'All right fellows, give it everything you've got but don't move off that spot.' It was terrible." You don't like Mansfield, eh? "Oh, I hate him - we all do... I was horrified when I saw it - I couldn't believe we looked that bad. I looked very static - seeing myself has taught me a lot about stage movement. Some of the things I do are planned for effect, but it's mostly just feeling the audience and communicating that back to them."

Arriving at the motel - several miles out of town - Freddie immediately fell asleep, John held court of a sort, joined later by Brian, while Roger went jogging, a daily event when touring. Tuning in to rock via Bill Haley and Tommy Steele, he became a drummer because he was better at it than guitar. All through school he was in bands; he only went to dental school out of "middle class conditioning, and it was a good way to stay in London without having to work". His mother thought it a bit strange when he opted for a career as a rock star, but she doesn't worry too much now.

The concert starts in much the same manner as the previous night, but there are signs that tonight is work, with posing an afterthought. The endings to most of their songs are magnificent and majestic, especially 'Flick Of The Wrist' and the rapid harmonies of 'Bad Boy Leroy Brown'.

Maniacal

The audience, seeing their faces in town for the first time, are vociferous in their appreciation. Guys know all the words to every song, yelling enthusiastically at every effect and solo. The band picks up, Freddie receiving the crowd beneficently, telling them they’re beautiful.

As the show builds it is obvious that things are gelling more. The previous night Brian had seemed totally out of place, not moving too much, taking solos with the weirdest half blank half possessed stare, talking to himself; cocking ear towards guitar. He was the proverbial stranger in a strange land, one step removed from the plane inhabited by you and me.

Tonight he moves fluidly, the gonzo lead guitarist of a gonzo band. His expressions are just as maniacal, but it only makes him look more demonic. His solo in 'Brighton Rock', an exposition in riffing and echo, is a treat because of his physical response to both music and audience, complete with ham acting. Freddie gets into the same game on 'The Prophet's Song', where he conducts an acapella madrigal with himself. It's a pretty commanding moment.

It’s soon after this that Madison Square seems reasonable. About a minute into 'Stone Cold Crazy' it becomes very obvious that Queen have suddenly Plugged In. Found the metal music machine and Connected. Freddie's movements explode in perfect unison with the music, the lights and surroundings go crazy, and the audience goes berserk.

Freddie asks for requests and receives a roar out of which one can vaguely make 'Liar'. Fred walks along the stage, nodding, agreeing he will do this one and that one while the kids roar on. "I'll tell you what - we'll do them all!"

'Doing Alright' opens slow and portentously. Queen's variation of light and shade is one of the major factors in their popularity, but even so the quiet sections frequently find the audience's mind wandering. One kid starts getting a joint together, totally forgetting it when everything blasts off again; guys talk among themselves, only to instantly leap to their feet, fists flying to the beat.

'Doing Alright' changes into a cha-cha beat, Freddie snapping his fingers, the coolest hipster in town, and then instantly drops into faster-than-light drive - the whole row next to me leaps to their feet as a man, rocking back and forth as Brian roars into a blinding solo.

Two songs later, in 'Seven Seas of Rye', the kids break - very fast - and in five seconds half the audience is a seething mass in front of the stage, climbing on each other in pyramids, sudden openings appearing as a splintering seat sends a few bodies to the floor.

The rest of the show is equally intense, especially for a couple of minutes during 'Liar; where Fred and Brian merge into a tight little triangle with Roger while John stands in front of the bass drum, staring out with his small smile.

Freddie has treated his encores - 'Big Spender' and 'Jailhouse Rock' - differently on successive nights, once appearing in a kimono and in Bristol with rather rude tight white shorts, giving the song title new emphasis. In Cardiff, though, he doesn't bother to change at all. Later it transpired that Brian had twisted his ankle during 'Liar'. While he’s attended to, kids out front pick up chair slivers to keep as mementos.

On the bus back to the hotel Brian sits quietly at the back, chatting with two girls. John sits at the front, as always. Freddie stares out of the window, lost in his own world. Roger bounces around, starts a pillow fight with Brian - which stops as soon as Brian scores a direct hit to the face - then discovers an eight track of 'Sheer Heart Attack', punching it through the channels as he conducts the group. The two hours towards which they have channelled the day's energies are spent.

Ambition

That Queen have become a top attraction through a fair degree of plagiarism is amusing. Stealing is nothing new in rock (or any art for that matter) and mostly Queen use the borrowed material better than the originals. That they would be big I don't think anybody really doubted. All four have immense desire to be successful, and that kind of ambition will keep them slogging until they achieve it.

But there are popular heavy metal bands and there are popular h-m bands. From watching Queen's audience it is apparent that Queen speak for them in a way that bands such as the Who and the Stones and the Beatles spoke (and continue to speak) to their audience. Uriah Heep may be great at what they do, but five years after their demise who'll remember them? Creedence Clearwater Revival demonstrate the same thing - who remembers them? And yet five years ago they were the largest band in the world.

Queen will probably always be remembered, because as their tour is beginning to demonstrate, they have the ability to actualise and encompass the outer limits of their sense of self-importance. Queen and their music, presentation, production - everything about them says that they are more important than any other band you've every heard, and who has there been, so far, who has objected? Certainly not the 150,000 people (plus 20,000 a day) who bought 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the first 20 days of its release. Certainly not me.

See you at Madison Square Garden.

[text © J. Ingham 2007; photos © Kate Simon]

~ You can see the photos which was mentioned on the article, from the link on the title. ~

[aweebwrites]

Celestial Influence pt2

Part 1

____________________________________________

(Big thanks for my lovely beta whom I love very much @thelucariosfish! 😘😘😘)

_____________________________________________

After the two days of winter Zane brought forward, Sensei Wu double banned pranks. He banned them before but now he banned them with the consequence of several hours of community service in Ninjago City- with no powers. They were already busy helping the city pull itself together again and it sucked. Doing it longer than they needed? Pass. It's been a month since then and another major incident hasn't really happened. There were near misses but nothing too extreme. They haven't quite found a way to voluntarily use these new powers as yet but they were still trying. Sensei Wu thinks if they find the key to voluntarily use these powers, it will unlock a way to control them, even when they were angry or upset.

“You know, how cool is it that I can control the sun?” Kai says, reaching a hand up towards it, trying to move it in the sky and failing.

“And I, the moon. It is quite the phenomenon.” Zane mused from where he was meditating nearby.

“I could make quakes before but nothing like the ones I made then! Like, I bet if I tried, just a little bit, I could level this whole mountain!” Cole grinned from his place laying on the ground in the shade.

“Yeah, let's not… Do that.” Lloyd says with a grimace, glancing over at him then turning back to the practice dummy, going at it in hand to hand combat.

“You know what they say: with great power comes great responsibility.” Nya says, focusing on making various shapes with an orb of water she summoned.

“I would say that's pretty boring but I've learnt my lesson.” Jay says, flopped over on the stairs to the inside.

“I certainly hope so.” Zane huffed, keeping his eyes closed.

“Well, I guess your powers would be bad if someone got struck.” Kai shrugged and Jay frowned. “And I guess Nya's would be bad if it didn't stop raining…” He added and she looked over at him with an arched brow.

“When you put it that way, Lloyd's powers are completely harmless. Auroras are rather beautiful however.” Zane added and Lloyd blinked then narrowed his eyes.

“Our powers are just as bad as yours.” Jay says defensively.

“It's really not.” Cole says as he sat up. “I mean, lightning is pretty normal and so is rain. Auroras may be rare but not unheard of. Kai can literally hold the sun in the sky and create heat waves like nothing you've ever felt. Zane can do the same for the moon and he can bury Ninjago under inches of snow in minutes. I can level everything in just a few shakes. It's not that I'm saying your powers are weak or useless but ours are just… More powerful, more dangerous.” He told them with a shrug.

“Cole is correct.” Zane agreed.

“Yeah. No offense.” Kai says to them with a one shoulder shrug.

“None taken.” Lloyd says dryly.

Offence was fully taken.

_________________

“Can you believe those three? Our powers may not be as bad as theirs but dammit, we're valid!” Jay growled irritably after they split up for a mission, thunder rolling overhead.

“Cool it Jay.” Lloyd cautioned as they searched the museum for the thief trying to hide them out.

“I'm trying.” Jay says after taking a deep breath. “It's just- really gets under my skin.” He says irritably, a thin spark of electricity traveling up his arm.

“Look, it posses me off too but we can't afford to let another incident happen again. Especially not while we're in the middle of Ninjago City.” Nya told him as she held her sais defensively. “Don't think about it. That actually helps.” She advised as they entered the hall holding animatronics.

“Yeah, alright.” He sighed, looking around instead. “You know, maybe animatronics weren't the best idea for a museum. Have these people ever heard of Five Nights at Freddy's?” He says, walking over to the animatronic of himself.

“Jay-”

“Lightning!” They all jumped once his animatronic spoke, nearly giving Jay himself a heart attack.

“Holy fish sticks.” He got out, a hand held over his chest.

“Jay, stop fooling around. We have perp to catch.” Lloyd says with a sigh.

“R-right.” He grinned sheepishly before returning to their side.

“Kai, any signs of them?” Nya asked from the comms.

They only got static back.

“Kai?” She questioned but received no answer.

“Guys? Are you there?” Lloyd tried his but only heard static. “Jay.”

“What? I'm not doing it on purpose!” Jay huffed, crossing his arms.

His electricity sometimes messes with their comms like this but he and Nya made these ones. He was sure they would have been ok… Oh well.

“I'll look in the next room.” He says, already walking towards it as they checked the comms again.

He looked around as he spun his nunchucks idly. That perp must have either escaped or have already been caught. Nothing looked stolen anyway. He looked around then perked up, realizing that this area held the gift shop. He looked around before dashing towards it with a grin. He picked up a snow globe before shaking it, watching the particles fall over the Grundle hunting its prey. Nice. He noticed movement in the reflection of the snow globe and quickly turned around. His eyes widened at the sight of the masked figure holding a metal spear then jumped out of the way before he was speared.

“Woah! Careful with that thing!” Jay yelled, getting to his feet, holding his nunchucks defensively.

“Or what?” Jay was surprised and confused to hear the familiar voice.

“Zane?!” He says, alarmed then blocked his next swing with the chain of his nunchucks.

“Guess again.” The masked person says again, attacking quickly but Jay kept blocking, despite his confusion when the person sounded like Kai now.

“What is this? Are you some kind of skrull?” Jay accused then ducked out of the way of the person’s and punched them in the gut, making them stumble back.

“Cheap shot.” They said in Cole’s voice then cracked their neck.

“Look, I don’t know who you are or why the heck you sound like all of my friends but I do know you’re going down.” Jay says, channeling his lightning into his golden nunchucks.

“Oh really? You take me down?” They sounded like Nya now and very cocky.

He didn’t know what they aimed to do, changing their voice every time they spoke like they did, but he wasn’t about to get taken down by this wannabe.

“Lightning!” Jay yelled, using his nunchuck to zap the person dead on.

He looked alarmed when they didn’t even look phased. They didn’t even falter.

“What? Did you really expect that to work?” Oh great, Lloyd’s voice now. “Face it Jay. You’re the weakest one on the team. It’s about time someone took your place.” They said as they began circling each other.

Jay scoffed.

“What? You think you can take my place?” Jay asked, unphased. “News flash!” He struck again with a bigger bolt of lightning but they only stepped back before stepping forward again.

“I’m the only lightning elemental here.” He says, thinking of taking this person down.

“Oh I wouldn’t be so so sure about that.” The person says, using Jay’s own voice.

Jay was about to make a crack at that but then the person brought their hands together and his mouth dropped open to see them charging electricity in their palms.

“I’m sure you find this shocking!” They yelled, using his voice still before they blasted Jay, making him yelp as he skid back then fell over from the powerful blast.

“Ok, this is a little scary.” Jay grunted to himself as he got back to his feet.

“Even my electricity is better than yours, stronger even. Face it Jay, you don’t stand a chance.” They said as they walked towards him, electricity cackling along their hands.

“Uh guys! Now would be a great time to jump in!” He yelled out to the other room.

“Don’t worry about them, they’re not there.” The person says in his own voice then stood before Jay. “Zane gave them the tip that they found the perpetrator on the roof of the museum and you’re already on your way there.” They said using Zane’s voice then pulled off the mask and Jay looked at them wide eyed.

They looked almost exactly like him. Same hair, same round face, same appearance but a closer look showed their nose was just a little narrower and a little more crooked and their freckles were thinner and dotted differently than his.

When plastic surgery runs wild.

“With that, we should hurry this up. My new team will be here any second now.” They said again, a blue light coming from the collar around their neck.

That must be how they talk like them but how can they use lightning?!

He ducked out of the way of the next attack before charging, swinging his nunchucks at their head. They ducked them punched him in the gut, making Jay grunt as he stumbled back.

I can’t believe I fell for my own move!

“Are you realizing now, Jay? You’re nothing but the weakest link. The ninja need a stronger, faster, better member. I bet they’ll be glad to have you gone.” They hummed, circling Jay.

“Jay’s such an idiot. He can’t even focus on a mission. Here we are, needing to catch the intruder and there he is, playing with snow globes!” They said in Kai’s voice and Jay flinched at that.

Kai never said that. They’re just trying to get into my head…

“After analyzing our team dynamics, it is proven that Jay is the weakest member on our team. His physical strength is lacking and his powers are weak.” They continued on in Zane’s voice.

No. Zane wouldn’t say-

Their conversation earlier came to mind.

‘Well, I guess your powers would be bad if someone got struck.’

‘It's really not. I mean, lightning is pretty normal.’

‘Cole is correct.’

Jay gritted his teeth, lightning arching along his arms. The Jay knock off didn’t notice, too busy monologuing with his friend’s voices.

“Face it Jay. You’re as useless as useless gets.” They said in Cole’s voice, only adding fuel to the fire.

The nerve of them! Sure he couldn’t raise the sun or lower the moon or split Ninjago in two with a sneeze but he wasn’t weak! He was valid! His powers mean something! Outside on the roof, the ninja finally met up, all of them confused.

“Where’s the perpetrator?” Lloyd asked Zane.

“I do not understand. You said you had caught them up here in the comms.” Zane says with a frown.

“Uh, what’s going on here?” Kai says, confused.

“We were bamboozled, that’s what’s going on.” Cole says with a frown.

“Where’s Jay?” Nya says, looking around with a frown.

A huge clap of thunder had them flinching before looking up wide eyed at the night sky. The sky was overcast from the rain that fell before but they didn’t hide the lightning continuously arching and dancing in the sky.

“We need to get back down there fast.” Lloyd whispered before they all took off.

Jay on the other hand was thinking himself into a spiral, sneering at his own thoughts.

He had use! He had purpose! He may not be the strongest or fastest or even the smartest but he does his best! Sure he may joke around during serious situations but it was only because he couldn’t handle the stress of those situations!

The lightning arcing against his body became bigger, wrapping around him like a serpent as his eyes glowed. The intruder noticed this and scowled.

“Your fancy little light-show won’t change the fact that you’re nothing but a waste of space on the team!” They yelled at him, charging even more lightning into their hands then blasting it at Jay.

They looked on alarmed once Jay seemed to absorb it before he floated off the ground, his hair turning into a glowing blue, raised on end. Glowing white lines crawled up his face, creating a sharp swirling pattern over his cheeks and forehead. The perpetrator stepped back, seeming to realize that they were way over their heads now. Jay was getting hard to look at, only glowing brighter.

“Jay!” The perp looked past him to see the other ninja rushing towards him before turning around and taking off.

This won’t be the last time they see them!

“He’s gonna blow!” Cole says as they stopped in their tracks, watching him glow even brighter.

“Get down!” Kai yelled and they quickly dove behind a display stand just as the electric energy Jay kept building went off in the form of a massive electromagnetic pulse, shattering glass and short circuiting every single power source it came across as it rapidly expanded past the city and even further out.

The team of ninja had to quickly throw down their ear pieces before it could electrocute them in the process. Outside, they could hear the alarmed sounds of the citizens of Ninjago City as everything that needed electricity or even batteries went out, plunging the city, all of Ninjago into darkness.

“Zane!” Lloyd was the once to yell when he fell over, his eyes dark.

“Let me see.” Nya says, crawling over and taking a look at him. “It looks like he just shorted out but I won’t know for sure. I’ll have to get to Borg Tower to see for sure.” She told them before looking out to were Jay was still floating, lightning shooting out of him much like one would see in a plasma ball.

“You two need to apologize to him now.” She says, looking at both Cole and Kai.

“What did we do?!” Kai asked, alarmed.

“Yeah! I’m not lightning proof you know!” Cole says, a little terrified to go out there.

“Look, it was all three of your insensitive comments about our powers compared to yours that made this happen. Zane is offline so he can’t apologize but you two aren’t.” Lloyd told them firmly.

“And if you don’t hurry up, he’ll go off again.” Nya told them sharply.

A quick look showed that he was indeed charging lightning again.

“Ok, ok.” Kai says then took a breath.

Both he and Cole looked at each other before heading out, yelping when they were immediately almost struck by lightning. They managed to not get stuck and took the place the perp once was standing.

“Jay!” Cole yelled over the sound of cackling lightning and he looked down at them with his oddly glowing eyes and sneered, revealing fangs that glowed bright white as did the rest of his teeth.

“Don’t electrocute us!” Kai was quick to say once he held a hand in their direction. “Just hear us out! Please!” He begged, not wanting to feel Jay’s divine wrath.

He didn’t lower his hand but he didn’t attack so that’s a plus.

“We’re sorry we’re insensitive jerks about your powers! We really didn’t mean to hurt or upset you!” Kai yelled out to him.

“Yeah! Lightning is way powerful! We were just idiots not to see that! Believe me when I say, we see it now! Your powers are just as powerful as ours! All of yours are!” Cole says, looking across at Nya and Lloyd who were peeking out from behind the display, its glass shattered. “I know Zane would be apologizing too if he wasn’t offline right now but you’re our friend and we promise to be more considerate!” He told Jay and he looked over to where Nya and Lloyd were.

He then turned fully to where they were and Kai and Cole had a moment to panic once he floated towards them, thinking they had somehow turned Jay on them.

“Jay!”

“H-hold on!”

Their yells were ignored as he floated around to where they were, Nya and Lloyd creeping backwards a little terrified. He didn’t seem interested in them however. He looked down at an offline Zane before charging electricity in his hand, making them all panic now.

“Zane’s sorry!”

“Don’t do this Jay!”

Jay ignored them and blasted Zane with a bolt of electricity. Before they could even think of attacking Jay, Zane sat up with an unneeded gasp, his systems rebooted so suddenly, it left him scrambling for his bearings. He blinked up at Jay  owlishly just before the lightning ninja closed his eyes, his powers fading as he passed out. Zane quickly caught him on reflex before blinking down at the glowing blue streak in hs hair. Well then.

A long moment of silence passed in the room.

“So uh, how do we explain this to Sensei Wu?” Nya spoke up and they all grimaced.

______________________________

Jay felt guilty sitting before the TV late the next day. Getting the power on was easy but Ninjago City has a lot of glass related damage. Not to mention the cars stuck in the roads still. No-one died and the only ones injured was his look alike. Apparently they wore an elaborate get up under their clothes that involved a lot of powerful batteries. It was what made them appear as if they also had the power of lightning. The EMP short-circuited it and gave them quite a shock in the process. Let’s just say they would have scars to look back on. None of that helped his guilt however. He brought his hand up to his face, seeing the lazy arching of lightning between them. While anger and intense emotions fuel this power, sadness and guilt does the opposite.

He reached up and toyed with the ever glowing streak of blue towards the front of his hair. Sensei believes he’s unlocked the full potential for this power and had called in the other elemental masters to take care of things in Ninjago until they all had. He had right to fear what destruction unlocking the rest of their powers could bring forth. His was the most predictable yet no-one expected his powers to be felt continent wide. It put their poor Sensei on edge. There wasn’t any sign or cause for their powers to suddenly evolve like that and still no signs of how to control them. It had the Monastery shrouded in a gloomy atmosphere.

“Jay.” He jolted at his name then looked over his shoulder meekly to look at Zane.

“Hey…” He says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

He was surprised he wanted to talk to him after he made him go offline like that.

“I never got the chance to apologize.” Zane says as he took a seat next to him.

“You don’t have to. Really.” Jay says, looking down at his hands. “I mean, at least you were knocked offline. I could have really hurt your systems.” He says quietly.

“But you didn’t.” Zane pointed out and Jay frowned. “You would not have been in that state if I had been more insightful. If anything, it was a dose of karma.” He says and Jay looked at him borderline horrified.

“No-one deserves something like that happening to them, especially over something so simple.” Jay paused to consider. “I’ll forgive you but only if you forgive me.” He offered and Zane smiled.

“I think I can work with that ultimatum.” He agrees and Jay smiled back.

“Who do you think will reach their potential next?” Jay asked, changing the TV channel.

“It is hard to say. When unlocking our true potentials, you were first but I think it is unlikely the same phenomenon will happen again. Perhaps Kai. Or Nya. Cole even. Perhaps even I. Like I said, it’s hard to say.” Zane shrugged.

“I guess.” Jay says, returning his focus on the TV.

Lloyd frowned from the doorway. He wasn’t even on the list of possibilities.

_________________________________

Lloyd didn’t know why he let it get to him. It wasn’t that Zane didn’t mention him that bothered him, but the likeliness that he wouldn't actually have anything to unlock. He wasn't stupid. The auroras were just a timed coincidence. Kai sending more heat from the sun like he had must have triggered it. He was meant to be the green ninja. Nothing more, nothing less. He bounced the tennis ball against the wall again, catching it a second later. The question now was how to break the news to the others. He threw the ball again the caught it, holding it as he stared at the wall. Now that they had their newer, stronger powers, would they even need him anymore? He gripped the ball tightly, gritting his teeth just as tightly. He should be happy. Being the Green Ninja was never any fun. Some nights, he wished destiny had chosen someone else. But not being the Green Ninja meant not having his friends. He would probably have to leave the Monastery and just disappear. Careful what you wish for as they say. He looked down at the green ball. Looks like the legacy of the green ninja ends here.

Lloyd watched as Jay practiced with his new powers for the first time, everyone watching him in awe. He didn't know how he set it off, just that it had gone off. He wasn't charging energy or anything but he was levitating again and his hair was blue. The marks on his face were also along his arms and legs, stopping in a jagged swirl around the back of his hands and the tops of his feet. When he spoke to warn them he was going to try and call a bolt of lightning, his voice sounded all echoey and- godly even. They covered their ears at the loud clap of thunder once he did it successfully then watched in awe as he held the lightning bolt and molded it into a pair of nunchucks. The lightning at the handles faded, leaving a material similar to chronosteel in its wake, lightning arcing between both handles.

“So cool.” Jay says as his powers faded, leaving him slowly floating down to his feet, still holding the nunchucks.

“It’s like an alternative version of the Golden Nunchucks of Lightning…” Nya says in awe.

“Hey, could we do that too?” Cole asked, excitedly.

“There is a high possibility.” Sensei Wu agreed.

Lloyd looked away sadly and walked back into the Monastery. That was an epic show of power and he didn't even know what he was doing. Imagine what would happen when he does? Imagine what would happen when they all do. He heard into their room and took a picture of himself and his father from under his pillow. He didn't know where his father disappeared to after everything with the Oni. It was as if he left the realm completely- and that wasn't as impossible as he had once thought.

“If things were different, maybe I could have gone with you dad…” He whispered, heart aching as he looked at his purified father.

He then flinched at another loud clap of lightning and frowned at the cheers that came after. He shouldn't wait for them to tell him to go. He should leave while he still had some dignity left. He reached under his bed for the duffle bag there and began packing.

__________________

“Alright, maybe we should put away the overpowered nunchucks before people begin to think some huge storm is coming.” Cole says as Jay grinned at his new nunchucks.

“That would be best. Lunch will get cold.” Zane says as he stood up.

“Lunch!”

“Yes!”

“I'm starving!”

“Lunchie munchie time!” Jay says with a grin, filtering in with the rest.

“Jay, what?” Nya says and he gave an embarrassed grin.

“One of you should get Lloyd.” Zane says as he slipped on his pink apron.

“Got it.” Nya says then headed into their room. “Hey Lloyd lunch is-” She cut herself off, realizing no-one was there.

She frowned then went over to the bathroom and knocked. Before she could call to see if he was there, the door squeaked opened to reveal an empty bathroom. Getting worried, she made quick work of checking the other rooms and came up short. She even checked outside with no results.

"Guys." She panted once she walked into the dining area, everyone looking at her confused. "Lloyd's gone." She told them and they gasped.

____________________________________

Lloyd swiped the sweat away from his brows as he continued to walk in the Sea of Sand, planning on spending the night in the old Anacondrai tomb before heading off to find somewhere people won't recognize him. He'd just squeeze himself into a nice village and everything will be fine. The Ninja didn't need him anymore. Not when they would all soon have powers far beyond his own. He pulled the bottle of water he stashed from his bag then took a few gulps before continuing on, seeing the tomb in the distance. Once he got there, he dropped the duffle bag then sat in the shade close to the entrance of the tomb and rested his tired feet. He's been walking for hours on end and he was really tired. He spared a moment to wonder if they've noticed that he was gone. Would they even bother looking for him?

He had thought of leaving a letter but they were smart. They'd figure out why he left. He leaned back against the tomb wall and closed his eyes. They'd probably be grateful that he left without them needing to tell him to go. They were better off anyway. They were always the ones meant to keep Ninjago in tact. He sighed. He'd miss them but they won't miss him. He looked away. If only he had power like they did. He could stay then. Be apart of the team but he was weak… And no-one wanted a weak leader. He looked down at the tennis ball he had in hand, not sure why he brought it along. He wished he was just a little stronger, had just a little more power. They were more than his friends. They were family.

He missed then already…

____________

"Any idea where he would go?" Kai asked as he paced the length of the bridge.

"No. He could have gone anywhere. Traffic cameras in Ninjago City are down and still in the process of being repaired after the EMP hit so we can't know without going there." Nya told them as she and Zane ran a search.

"What else can we check?" Cole asked, anxiously.

"I'm afraid there's nothing much we can do…" Zane says with a frown, hands moving at an inhumane speed against the control panel.

"Ugh!" Jay says, pacing too.

"Perhaps the sky may help us." Sensei Wu says and they all frowned but walked out.

They all gasped at the bright, familiar aurora borealis streaking across the sky, flowing in the opposite direction they were going.

"Quick! Follow it!" Nya yelled as she ran back inside the bridge, taking the wheel.

She then swerved and sent the Bounty full speed towards the source.

"I'm detecting high levels of radiation ahead." Zane says minutes later, walking over to the computer to check.

"Radiation? I don't understand." Nya says with a frown.

"But I do." Jay says after a moment. "Zane! What's radiation?" He asked his Nindroid friend who looked at him puzzled.

Didn't he say he understood? He answered anyway.

"Radiation is the emission of energy as electromagnetic waves or as moving subatomic particles, especially high-energy particles which cause ionization…" Zane whispered the last bit then looked at Jay. "You think he's unlocking his powers as well?" He says to Jay who grinned.

"But what set it off? How do we end the episode?" Nya asked them.

"That's… The hard part. We won't know unless we talk to him." Jay says with a single shoulder shrug.

"Then I must be the one to go. These increasing levels of radiation can and will kill you." He told them and they weren't very happy sending him alone but what other choice do they have?

"Alright. But be careful. We can't go all the way in so take your mech." Nya told him and he nods before heading down below deck.

He then headed to the holding area, climbing into his white mech and powering it up.

"This is as far as we can go. Anything beyond this would be dangerous for us." Nya says through the comms so Zane could hear from the suit.

"I'm ready." Zane says, looking at the screen showing her and the others in the bridge.

"Dropping now." She says then pressed a button that allowed the bottom of the Bounty to open.

He then hopped out, landing the mech on its feet.

"Here I go." He says, heading further into the source of the radiation.

"And while he does that, I'll send out a warning to every nearby city and village." Nya says, leaving the steering wheel to head back to the computer.

"I wonder why he left in the first place…" Cole says as he walked out next to Sensei Wu.

"Only time will tell." Wu says calmly, despite the worry over his nephew he felt.

____________

"The old Anacondrai tomb… but why would he come here?" Zane says as he walked towards it, a frown on his face.

"That's what we're about to find out." Nya says from the comms.

He walked closer and soon saw Lloyd himself walk out then stepped back.

"Lloyd." Zane says in relief but Lloyd obviously wasn't happy to see him.

"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" He asked as Zane stopped in his tracks.

"We came to find you, to bring you home. We found you by-"

"Wait, we?" Lloyd says, cutting Zane off. "As in the others?" He asked, stepping even father back.

"Yeah Lloyd. We came to take you home." Jay spoke from the comms, the volume loud enough for Lloyd to hear.

"Why did you run off like this? We were worried! We still are!" Nya says next and Lloyd gritted his teeth.

"You shouldn't have come." Lloyd says as he turned away and stalked off.

"Why shouldn't we? Lloyd, speak to us, to me. We don't understand what's going on. Let us help you." Zane says, following after him and Lloyd growls.

"Help me by leaving me alone!" He snapped at Zane, whirling around as his green energy began to arc and flash around him. "I left for a reason! I'd rather leave before you guys tell me to!" He yelled, eyes glowing green as his energy continued to grow and so did the radiation, the super charged particles around him taking on a green glow.

"Crap! We need to get away now!" Nya's panicked voice came from the comms and Zane switched it off, just so he could focus on Lloyd.

He left the video on however.

"We would never tell you to leave Lloyd. Why would you-"

"AARGH!" He growled, a glowing streak of green lighting its way through his hair, the tips taking on the same color as he began to float. "Don't you get it Zane! You're supposed to be the smart one! You're a Nindroid after all!" He yelled, his voice taking on that echoey tone but far louder.

"I can't get anything if you don't-"

"I don't have any powers Zane!" He snapped at his friend, confusing Zane completely, even as he watched the bright green swirls, similar to Jay's make their way on his face.

Unlike Jay's, his were perfectly swirled using perfectly curved patterns. He watched wide eyed as two smaller swirls made their way high on his forehead before dark horns began to grow in, swirled from tip to base in the same green.  

"Kai was the one to create the auroras! His heat was the one to make it happen! It was just a coincidence! All I'll ever be is the green ninja! I wasn't meant to have powers like you do! I'm not meant to be or have any more than I have now! Don't you see?! I'll only drag you all down!" He yelled and with that, another huge wave of radiation pulsed out of him.

Zane snapped himself out of his shock and awe. He knew he had to stop this before the radiation field spread to villages- or worse: Ninjago City.

"Lloyd! Listen to me!" Zane yelled.

"No! You listen to me!" He yelled at Zane, floating right over to him, directly before him. "I'll only drag the team down! I've already been dragging the team down! You guys are better off if I leave! I was trying to do you all a favor! Now let me leave!" He demanded, warning signals going off in the suit.

"I can't do that!" Zane yelled back and Lloyd only grew angrier, the entire sky turning green. "Open your eyes Lloyd! You do have power! How else could you be as tall as I am in this mech?" He says, softening his tone towards the end and Lloyd was about to yell then paused.

He looked down and realized that he was floating off the ground.

"What?..." Lloyd whispered, floating back, looking down at his hands.

He then turned them over and saw the swirls on them glowing green.

"Even if you didn't have this power, we wouldn't care. You're our family Lloyd. Our brother. We love you as you are. Power or no power. We would never ask you to leave either nor do we want you to." Zane says, and Lloyd looked up at him. "It wouldn't be home without you." He says and Lloyd's eyes filled with light green glowing tears that poured from his cheeks.

His eyes then rolled back as he began to fall. Zane was quick to catch him with the mech, watching as his powers faded away, the horns leaving with it. He sighed in relief then smiled at Lloyd. He spotted movement from the corner of his eye then turned to see Nya waving at him. He quickly flipped on the audio again.

"Sorry about that. I needed to focus. He's ok now." Zane told them and they all sighed before cheering. "We're coming home." He says before turning around and walking back.

"Yeah but before you do…" Jay says and Zane frowned at that. "Make sure to stop by the decontamination shower we had Cyrus set up outside the radiation zone. It should be done by the time you get there. No offense but I'd like to keep living." Jay says and Zane huffed.

"Seems fair." He nodded.

_________________________________________________

Part 3

Part 4

____________________________________

(I’m turning the Ninja into gods? pffff What? Noooooo. I wanted to add Nya in this but it’s already past midnight so she’ll be in the other part of this series. Yes! I did say series! I have sooo many ideas for this I simply cannot not make it a series! I hope you guys liked this! Nighty night!)

[arcticdementor]

I often go to Kendi because he's unusually blunt and straightforward in stating things (possibly because he's not smart enough for the sort of clever obliquity of previous authors), but he's mostly in line with the trends in what was at least implicit in the writings of other academics in the decades before. And it's this academic consensus that both influences legal arguments, and provides cover for those who do seek to level more specific blame (like the whole "we're against whiteness, not white people; and 'whiteness' is a systemic thing" song-and-dance to which they often resort).

Psychometrics has consistently found that intelligence matters for all sorts of good outcomes.

First, they're mostly going to deny that; or at least, argue that there's no proof we can't find a way to get those outcomes while also increasing racial equity.

It's not just this sort of progressive, mind you, who argue that life outcomes need to be decoupled from IQ, but plenty of other left-wingers as well. Both Chris Arnade and Freddie deBoer have each written books to this effect, and even a bit of Murray's Coming Apart pushes in this direction.

I remember, back when I first got on Tumblr, making a point about how much of my reactionary positions are due to seeing some Progressive social trends as incompatible with maintaining industrial civilization, and I got a reply from a pronouns-in-bio type that "you better hope you're wrong about that," because they benefit too much from "progress," and so they and theirs will fight to the death to prevent anyone from trying to turn it back, no matter the cost. So, I can either get to work figuring out how to make keeping the lights on compatible with the Progressive social mission, or else resign myself to the collapse, because nothing is going to stop them pushing our society down this road. After all, if all those outcomes of intelligence require accepting racism, how "good" can they be, really?

I've seen some outlets go from "the so-called competency crisis is far-right racist nonsense" to "well, there's not enough evidence to prove that these negative trends are due to declining competence (and everyone trying to get such evidence is an evil racist)." Which English politician was it, who said that Muslim terror attacks are just part of life in a modern city? Then there's all the similar things about shoplifting, burglary, and so on. So, eventually, it's going to be that blackouts, planes falling out of the sky, rampant crime, etc. are all just a part of modern life, the price we all gladly pay for a diverse and tolerant democracy.

This is why I keep mentioning the ultimatum game. Plenty of humans are willing to take a hit to absolute well-being in exchange for a "fairer" relative distribution, and this varies. Some people are willing to burn down everything, so long as everyone is equal in the ashes.

His insistence that retards be put in charge of keeping the lights on and the water flowing would very quickly result in not having electricity, water, or instruments of governance, and then he'd die of diarrhea.

Both my mother and my brother have had plenty of stories about incompetent-but-unfirable coworkers, and in all cases, the more competent employees end up stepping in to do or fix the work said incompetents either left undone or did poorly, on top of their own work. Sure, they're not happy about it, and in my brother's case it eventually led him to quit, but the restaurant in question is still in business despite, last I heard, still employing the owner's screw-up in-law. There's a lot of ruin in a nation, and forcing firms to provide some number of do-nothing sinecures to Diversity is a lot less visible method of redistributing wealth between racial groups than straight-up government transfers.

So, it won't be "very quickly," but a slow decline. As in the Soviet Union, much of it will be blamed on political enemies, on "wreckers and saboteurs." And as elites fight over shares of a shrinking "pie," their competition via superior purity and fanaticism in adherence to the ideology will only grow ever-more intense.

When it comes to publicizing genetic differences, just who are you trying to reach, and what do you expect them to do afterwards? What do you say to someone who does see "the size and permanence of the gap," and (like Jayman) still demands people pour resources into it, in perpetuity, seeing this as an absolute moral duty, and that anyone who disagrees is a Nazi.

What good are truths about genetic differences, against those for whom "equity" is an overriding terminal value?

Progressivism Incurs A Moral Obligation To Study And Publicize Genetic Racial Differences

In this essay, I will, briefly summarize my line of argument and invite comments.

Keep reading

[sarinataylor]

Ok you have a supernatural au but what about a superpower/hero au? Im curious to see what youll give them!

rightio, pip pip! there is now like a fully developed au of this, but here’s the bare bones!

freddie: sound conversion

brian: replication

john: fire manipulation

roger: healing

freddie

so our boy can convert sound into other forms of energy

his faves are electricity and light (because they make such a show!) but he’s been known to forget to eat and supplement with sound instead

(he’s not a consumer of sound as such as he is a connoisseur. he likes his soul music, classical..... any sound will do, but he has taste you see? his body is a temple and all that)

you can imagine what their gigs are like 

people think it’s the louder the sound the better, but it’s not. sound doesn’t work like that, not when it’s filtered through the response of the human mind. the most beautiful light show he ever produced was the result of listening to the heartbeat of someone he loved overlaid with the soft sound of rain outside. not everything can be quantified, and the human element of his power makes sound one of those things. the softest of sounds can produce enough energy to keep the electricity on for a week, and then the next day give him barely enough juice to charge his phone.)

it’s a conscious choice to convert the sound though, obviously, otherwise he would be in energy overload so! he can sorta turn it on and off, though one time he slept through his alarm and woke up to all of the lights in the house blinking to the tune of Material Girl by Madonna

brian

this clone ass motherfucker (lookin @ u, invisible man mv)

so! his replication is sort of unstable? it doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. 

like, it’s solid? but, like brian lmao, susceptible to folding like a house of cards when you prod at its weak spots. like. he essentially has anxious replications?

like his replications are aware that they’re not real? and so as soon as it appears that someone else also knows this they just collapse. disintegrate. there have been some awkward encounters

(usually they disintegrate on touch if they’re under scrutiny, or feel they are. however one time brian sent a clone to wake up roger who, half asleep, rolled over and blearily told the clone to “fuck off, i know you’re not real” which was enough to send the clone into an anxious disintegration.)

yeah. look what you’ve done, you’ve fucked up a perfectly good superpower is what you’ve done. it’s got anxiety.

he mainly uses his clones to get shit done? but

ok so each clone, when it’s outside of him, creates its own set of memories and experiences which then have to be assimilated by brian once they disintegrate which is fucking EXHAUSTING

it’s like the worlds worst hangover, depending on how long they’ve been out and about. one second he’s brian, and then the next he’s brian plus a shoehorn of memories which are trying to find their place in his brain. hell!

poor guy is always fucking exhausted, but also. he’s sorta always been like this so w/e ig

john

yeah i know roger is ALWAYS the fire manipulator but guess what fuck you it’s john

(also tbh i could see roger more as an earth manipulator? freddie as air. brian as water. WHATEVER IM OFF TOPIC)

boy’s gotta temper. 

general fire manipulation tbhhhhh he’s just not got the best control?

or, well. rather: he has the BEST control

until he doesnt

he’s just not all that comfortable with his power in all honesty. it has a bad rap as destructive, and well. this is the 21st century (yeah this is modern au too bc i say so) and no one really has much USE for burning pillars of fire nowadays do they?????? he’d have been a hit in the paleolithic age but they’re a bit past all that now. 

man have fire. without the need for superpowers.

john is, on the one hand, disdaining of his power and absolutely terrified on the other. he’d rather not have one at all. he can buy a lighter. it would be worth the rise on the heating bill. 

he can contain fire? but only small scale fire. any fire larger than him is out of his control -- which is part why his power is scary to him. fire spreads, and it spreads quickly

(over time he becomes more comfortable with his power and lessens his obsessive control over it. it’s like.... it’s like walking around with your teeth clenched. he was aware he was doing it in the beginning and he had control over it, he could choose not to clench his teeth. but soon it just became something he did and the idea of not doing it became abhorrent, felt as if it would lead to something horrible. but all it really meant was that when he stopped clenching his teeth, so to say, all his control was stripped from him at once. he learns to stop clenching his teeth.)

roger

rightio it’s my boy

so he’s a healer yo

except its a secret

bc, well. he didn’t grow up in the safest of households aight, and if there’s one thing an abuser is gonna take full advantage of it’s a victim who gets better and can heal others

so it’s a secret! bc its me guys cmon gotta have me angsty secrets

(not everyone in this au has powers? like they’re becoming more and more common. think mutants except without the fascism)

basically he can heal himself pretty much no matter what. and he can heal other people if he takes their wounds onto himself. he can then choose to pass the wounds on but, like, that’s an awful thing to do and he did it accidentally exactly once and felt so fucking guilty that he swore he’d never do it again

he doesn’t have complete control over it? if its someone he feels an emotional connection to sometimes he just..... takes their injuries and illnesses? 

(brian getting hep? a fucking NIGHTMARE. as soon as roger becomes aware of it he just starts...... taking it. which works fine-ish because well, he’s vaccinated correctly. it’s fine. except brian keeps fucking replicating and his clones still have hep so when they combine again he’s fucking got it again and no one understands why he keeps yo-yoing between being fine and being distinctly not fine, the doctors are in a tizzy about him potentially have unknwon healing powers, and roger is just Over It. and then ofc brian gets distinctly upset about the fact that roger just..... stops visiting him in the hospital but roger cant)

and roger hates hospitals. one time he went to visit a mate in uni and got stuck in the waiting room for half an hour. made friends with a little girl, was building blocks with her while her ma read a celebrity magazine. never ended up seeing his friend. little girl got called in for her appointment and went off skipping while roger suddenly had a broken fucking arm.     healing sucks. 

his power gets outed when john has a slip of control one day.

[radio-nano]

A Riot At The Opera: Queen Triumphant by Jonh Ingham with my favorites parts in bold.

QUEEN ARE the type of group that make a man want to abandon rock writing. They pose questions and never provide answers. They exist in their own space-time continuum, visible and audible but keeping their secrets to themselves.

On the surface they couldn't be a nicer bunch of people, but they carry English reticence to an epitome. It isn't, as Geoff Barton said two weeks ago, that they're boring, it's just that they're reserved. Or in writer parlance, they don't automatically provide colourful copy. All my instincts as a writer tell me that there is a great story in that band, but after two nights with them I'm hardly any the wiser.

Skin tight

That their insularity has a lot to do with them being one of the most amazing heavy-metal and/or rock bands in Britain - with all the signs that they'll end up monsters on the order of Zep - is fairly obvious, but just how much bearing it has on the matter is hard to say. The enigmas they might pose mightn't even have answers.

Is there any logical reason why they present an image and persona straight out of the Beatles school of interlocking chemistry?

John is reserved, almost nonchalant on stage, as if it's all in a small, personal joke. When asked how he saw himself within the framework of the band he replied, with a small smile, "I'm the bassist".

Roger is his opposite, the cheeky sidekick in a Clint Eastwood movie, and attracting a lot of cheesecake attention in America and Japan.

Freddie is an original - one of the most dynamic singers to tread the boards in quite a few years. His attraction is obvious.

Brian is perhaps the biggest enigma of all. What is this seemingly frail, gaunt astronomer doing on that stage, striding purposefully and blasting diamond-hard rock? They're all equally strong personalities - like the Beatles there's no one major focal point. Ask four fans who their dream Queen is and you'll get four different answers.

Queen have been busy lads these past few months. Having disassociated themselves from their former management and joined with John Reid, the fourth album was seen to. Reid decided that a tight schedule wouldn't cause them undue harm, and figured on two months to record before embarking on this current tour. Only Queen are driven to better each previous album - which at this stage of the game is obviously producing some excellent results - and A Night At The Opera turned into a saga - culminating in 36-hour mixing sessions in an effort to allow at least a few days for rehearsal. In the end they managed three and a half days at Elstree with four hours off to videotape the promotional film for 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

Their first few dates had not been without errors and the quartet were still not feeling totally comfortable their second night in Bristol, fourth night of the tour. You'd never know it, though.

Like all other aspects of the group, the stage is sophisticated. A black scrim provides a backdrop bounded by a proscenium of lights both front and rear. At each side the p.a. rises like a mutant marriage of Mammon and Robby the Robot. Amp power is readily evident but the most extraordinary is Brian May's subtle set up: nine Vox boxes stepping back in rows of three. The only packing crate visible is holding a tray of drinks, and you may rest assured that no roadie will rush, crawl or lurk across the stage while the show is in progress unless it's to rescue Freddie's mike from the clawing crowd.

As the auditorium darkens the sound of an orchestra tuning up is heard over the p.a. The conductor taps his baton on the music stand and a slightly effete voice welcomes the audience to "A Night At The Opera". The Gilbert & Sullivan portion of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' follows, a brief glimpse of Freddie is allowed, and then in a blast of flares and white smoke the blitzkrieg begins.

Roger is barely visible behind his kit, just his eyes and tousled locks. John is wearing a white suit and playing the-man-who-must-stand-still-or-it-will-all-blow-away. Brian is slightly medieval in his green and white Zandra Rhodes top, while Freddie is...

Around his ankles his satin white pants flare like wings - fleet footed Hermes. Everything north of the knee is skin tight - tighter than skin tight - with a zip-up front open to AA rating. But further south, definitely in X territory, lurks a bulge not unlike the Sunday Telegraph . There have been sex objects and sex bombs, superstar potency and the arrogant presentation of this all-important area, but never has a man's weaponry been so flagrantly showcased. Fred could jump up on the drum stand and SHAKE HIS CUTE ARSE, leap about and perform all manner of amazing acrobatics, but there it was, this rope in repose, barely leashed tumescence, the Queen's sceptre. Oh to be that hot costume, writhing across the mighty Fred!

Phallic

Freddie is not pretty in the conventional sense of the word; like Mick Jagger of '64, he is his own convention. Also like the Jagger of that time, his stage persona and action is unlike anything else. Although it borrows - like most of the group's plagiarisms - slightly from Zeppelin, in tandem with Freddie's supreme assurance and belief in himself - he always refers to himself as a star - it explodes into something that is a constant delight to watch.

He reacts to his audience almost like an over-emotional actress - Gloria Swanson, say, or perhaps Holly Woodlawn playing Bette Davis. At the climax of the second night in Bristol he paused at the top of the drum stand, looked back over the crowd and with complete, heartfelt emotion placed his delicate fingers to lips and blew a kiss. Any person who can consume themselves so completely in such a clichéd showbiz contrivance deserves to be called a star.

Freddie's real talent, though, is with his mike stand. No Rod Stewart mike stand callisthenics here, just a shortee stick that doubles as a cock, machine gun, ambiguous phallic symbol, and for a fleeting moment an imaginary guitar. He has a neat trick of standing quite still in particularly frantic moments and holding the stand vertically from his crotch up, draw a fragile finger along its length, ever closer to the taunting eyes that survey his audience.

Their show contains lots of bombs and smoke, lots of lights, lots of noise. They fulfil the function of supremely good heavy metal - i.e. you don't get a second to think about what's going on. When they do let up for a few minutes, it's only so you can focus in on the bright blue electric charge crackling between your ears.

Bulldozer

Dominating the sound is Roger's drumming, a bulldozer echo that bounces like an elastic membrane, meshing with your solar plexus so that your body pulses in synch with the thunder. Tuned into that, everything else is just supremely nice icing.

For three days rehearsal, after eight months off the road Bristol was extremely impressive. In speculative mood I quizzed people on how long they thought it would take to headline Madison Square Garden. I was thought a radical at a year and a half. John Reid smilingly assured me it would take a year.

That Queen should end up with John Reid is an entirely logical proceeding. Everything about Queen demands that the world eventually kow-tows at their feet in complete acquiescence - so big that bodyguards have to accompany them at every step. Well, no - they found that an annoyance in Japan, but, you know, huge.

Such status demands a Reid or a Peter Grant, and whatever the causes for their leaving Jack Nelson and Trident, an elegant group like Queen is going to look for a man with class. Reid found the idea of managing a group interesting, and having to deal with four strong personalities a challenge. He only concerns himself with their business and ensuring that the year ahead is mapped out. In January they begin a jaunt through the Orient, Australia and America, by which time it's March and they begin preparations for the next album.

Reid's prediction of a year was proven highly credible the next evening in Cardiff. The band had still not paused from the rush up to the tour and spent most of the day relaxing and sleeping - no doubt a factor in their near recumbent profile. Also, unlike most groups, they were keeping their dissatisfaction with the show to themselves.

They stopped off at Harlech TV on the way to see a cassette of the video for 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. The general consensus was quite good for four hours, with much laughter during the operetta. Brian finds film of the group educational - the first time he saw himself was a Mike Mansfield opus for 'Keep Yourself Alive' - "It was 'All right fellows, give it everything you've got but don't move off that spot.' It was terrible." You don't like Mansfield, eh? "Oh, I hate him - we all do... I was horrified when I saw it - I couldn't believe we looked that bad. I looked very static - seeing myself has taught me a lot about stage movement. Some of the things I do are planned for effect, but it's mostly just feeling the audience and communicating that back to them."

Arriving at the motel - several miles out of town - Freddie immediately fell asleep, John held court of a sort, joined later by Brian, while Roger went jogging, a daily event when touring. Tuning in to rock via Bill Haley and Tommy Steele, he became a drummer because he was better at it than guitar. All through school he was in bands; he only went to dental school out of "middle class conditioning, and it was a good way to stay in London without having to work". His mother thought it a bit strange when he opted for a career as a rock star, but she doesn't worry too much now.

The concert starts in much the same manner as the previous night, but there are signs that tonight is work, with posing an afterthought. The endings to most of their songs are magnificent and majestic, especially 'Flick Of The Wrist' and the rapid harmonies of 'Bad Boy Leroy Brown'.

Maniacal

The audience, seeing their faces in town for the first time, are vociferous in their appreciation. Guys know all the words to every song, yelling enthusiastically at every effect and solo. The band picks up, Freddie receiving the crowd beneficently, telling them they’re beautiful.

As the show builds it is obvious that things are gelling more. The previous night Brian had seemed totally out of place, not moving too much, taking solos with the weirdest half blank half possessed stare, talking to himself; cocking ear towards guitar. He was the proverbial stranger in a strange land, one step removed from the plane inhabited by you and me.

Tonight he moves fluidly, the gonzo lead guitarist of a gonzo band. His expressions are just as maniacal, but it only makes him look more demonic. His solo in 'Brighton Rock', an exposition in riffing and echo, is a treat because of his physical response to both music and audience, complete with ham acting. Freddie gets into the same game on 'The Prophet's Song', where he conducts an a capella madrigal with himself. It's a pretty commanding moment.

It’s soon after this that Madison Square seems reasonable. About a minute into 'Stone Cold Crazy' it becomes very obvious that Queen have suddenly Plugged In. Found the metal music machine and Connected. Freddie's movements explode in perfect unison with the music, the lights and surroundings go crazy, and the audience goes berserk.

Freddie asks for requests and receives a roar out of which one can vaguely make 'Liar'. Fred walks along the stage, nodding, agreeing he will do this one and that one while the kids roar on. "I'll tell you what - we'll do them all!"

'Doing Alright' opens slow and portentously. Queen's variation of light and shade is one of the major factors in their popularity, but even so the quiet sections frequently find the audience's mind wandering. One kid starts getting a joint together, totally forgetting it when everything blasts off again; guys talk among themselves, only to instantly leap to their feet, fists flying to the beat.

'Doing Alright' changes into a cha-cha beat, Freddie snapping his fingers, the coolest hipster in town, and then instantly drops into faster-than-light drive - the whole row next to me leaps to their feet as a man, rocking back and forth as Brian roars into a blinding solo.

Two songs later, in 'Seven Seas of Rye', the kids break - very fast - and in five seconds half the audience is a seething mass in front of the stage, climbing on each other in pyramids, sudden openings appearing as a splintering seat sends a few bodies to the floor.

The rest of the show is equally intense, especially for a couple of minutes during 'Liar; where Fred and Brian merge into a tight little triangle with Roger while John stands in front of the bass drum, staring out with his small smile.

Freddie has treated his encores - 'Big Spender' and 'Jailhouse Rock' - differently on successive nights, once appearing in a kimono and in Bristol with rather rude tight white shorts, giving the song title new emphasis. In Cardiff, though, he doesn't bother to change at all. Later it transpired that Brian had twisted his ankle during 'Liar'. While he’s attended to, kids out front pick up chair slivers to keep as mementos.

On the bus back to the hotel Brian sits quietly at the back, chatting with two girls. John sits at the front, as always. Freddie stares out of the window, lost in his own world. Roger bounces around, starts a pillow fight with Brian - which stops as soon as Brian scores a direct hit to the face - then discovers an eight track of Sheer Heart Attack, punching it through the channels as he conducts the group. The two hours towards which they have channelled the day's energies are spent.

Ambition

That Queen have become a top attraction through a fair degree of plagiarism is amusing. Stealing is nothing new in rock (or any art for that matter) and mostly Queen use the borrowed material better than the originals. That they would be big I don't think anybody really doubted. All four have immense desire to be successful, and that kind of ambition will keep them slogging until they achieve it.

But there are popular heavy metal bands and there are popular HM bands. From watching Queen's audience it is apparent that Queen speak for them in a way that bands such as the Who and the Stones and the Beatles spoke (and continue to speak) to their audience. Uriah Heep may be great at what they do, but five years after their demise who'll remember them? Creedence Clearwater Revival demonstrate the same thing - who remembers them? And yet five years ago they were the largest band in the world.

Queen will probably always be remembered, because as their tour is beginning to demonstrate, they have the ability to actualise and encompass the outer limits of their sense of self-importance.

Queen and their music, presentation, production - everything about them says that they are more important than any other band you've every heard, and who has there been, so far, who has objected? Certainly not the 150,000 people (plus 20,000 a day) who bought 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in the first 20 days of its release. Certainly not me.

See you at Madison Square Garden.

And Freddie in an interview a few later after this article:

He has been talking almost an hour and from the rapid increase in body twitches it's obvious he now wants to leave. He gets up to go but then thinks of something else.

A few weeks before I had written a story that adored in detail the tightness of Freddie's costume and the obvious bulge it contained. The Editor had not missed the opportunity to use an obvious headline.

"You know, your 'Cock Opera' piece has done me more harm than good. It was a wonderful piece, but My God, I've got to live up to it now. The insinuations of hosepipes and things, it's gotten really amazing. My God! A day hasn't passed when someone hasn't made a comment on it."

I was reminded of critic Lillian Roxon interviewing Tom Jones and wanting to poke her pencil there to see if it was all Tom. I guess only Fred's tailor knows for sure.

[hey-i-wrote-a-story]

Chapter 16 Four Years Ago

           Aadesh paced back and forth in the cramped room, making it twice as uncomfortable for Erin and Freddie. “Where the hell is she??”

           “You keep asking that as if somehow we’d know”, Erin observed.

           “Y’know, we handled that very badly”, Freddie said. “Those people…we should have called the cops before we tried driving over there. They could’ve stopped it, I bet. They might all still be alive if Kaitlyn had said something—“

           “Not helping, Freddie”, Erin said.

           “Should we go back out there?”, Aadesh wondered. “Try again until we find her?”

           “The downpour is why we had to give it up and come back, Aadesh”, Erin said, trying to sound sympathetic. “The truck could barely stay on the road. It’s not like we could see anything with it coming down in sheets.”

           “Why did she run off?”, Aadesh continued his open questioning. “We need to find her!”

           “Maybe we couldn’t find her because she doesn’t want to be found”, Erin offered.

           Freddie picked up on that thought. “After what she saw, from what you guys told me, she may not want a lot of company right now.”

           “We should go back out there”, Aadesh said again, not listening to what his friends were telling him. Flashes of lightning lit the sky beyond the window.

           “We will”, Erin assured him. “After the rain lets up, we’ll all go back out there and we won’t stop looking until—“

           A massive clap of thunder shook the room and caused the lights to go out. A sharp buzzing sizzled overhead as the electricity seemed to hover within the wiring. The bulb in the ceiling blinked a couple times, then returned to life, once again illuminating the room. Freddie jumped as he saw a figure appear in the doorway. Erin and Aadesh turned to see what had startled him. The figure stepped from the shadowy doorway into the light. Soaking wet, dripping, looking haggard and shocked, she peered into the room. It was Kaitlyn.

           Everyone stared for a moment, not sure what to do or say, feeling relief at seeing her alive but uncertain about her state of mind. It was Kaitlyn who spoke first.

           “There was a body…in the woods.”

             It was much later that night, or very early the next morning depending on how you look at the clock, when the four friends sat down together to collect themselves. Kaitlyn had taken a shower and had something to eat. She was looking better, although her eyes still held a haunted expression.

           “Feel any better?”, Freddie asked her. She nodded yes.

           “Where have you been?”, Aadesh asked. “Where were you? I was afraid…we were afraid we’d lost you.”

           “I saw something”, Kaitlyn said. “You are not going to believe what I saw.”

           “You said something about a body in the woods”, Erin said.

           “Is that what you saw when you ran away?”, Freddie asked. “Was there somebody else who’d been shot? What was—“ Aadesh waved his questions away. Easy, fella.

           “It wasn’t here”, Kaitlyn explained. “It was somewhere else. There was a body in the woods in Beacon Hills.”

           “Where the hell is Beacon Hills?”, Freddie asked, incredulous.

           Aadesh realized what she was saying. “Another vision.” Kaitlyn nodded. “No”, he said firmly. “Oh no, we’re done—you’re done! No more following these visions. They only lead to trouble. We’ve had enough death and chaos to last us the rest of our lives. We’re not chasing after some body in the woods--!”

           “We don’t have to”, Kaitlyn said calmly. “Somebody else already did.”

           Erin eyed her friend suspiciously. “What are you not telling us, Kate?”

           “I did something. I…forced my visions. I called to them, I’m not sure how to describe it.”

           “And this is what you saw? This dead body?”

           “Oh, I saw a lot more than that.”  There was something different about Kaitlyn’s tone that they’d never heard before. There was a confidence and a clarity that had been previously absent. Like she was going to share an amazing story that only she knew the details to. Everyone leaned in close.

Aadesh nodded for her to go on. “We’re listening.”

And Kaitlyn spoke. She told them of an awkward, asthmatic high school boy on the outskirts of the teenage social circle. She told about his spastic, nervous energy-charged best friend with the buzz cut, the smart mouth, and the knack for getting into trouble. She told about their outing into the woods at night to catch a glimpse of a dead body. And most importantly, she told them of a dark and terrifying figure, some kind of unnatural beast that burst from the shadows to bite that awkward boy and infect him with its curse. She told them the tale of the Werewolf of Beacon Hills, or the start of it, anyway.

Aadesh, Erin, and Freddie stared at Kaitlyn wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

“Do you believe me?”, Kaitlyn asked. Aadesh looked back at the girl he loved. Her story was unbelievable. The sensible thing to do would be to dismiss it as a stress-induced hallucination. But after all they’d done, all they’d seen, it made a lot less sense not to believe it.

“It’s the truth”, Kaitlyn insisted. “I can feel it.”

Aadesh cradled her face in his hand and said sincerely, “I think we all can.”

 The following morning, after what little sleep the four friends could manage, Kaitlyn continued her story. She’d never had a vision—visions—with this much depth or detail. As she talked, morning became noon which shifted to afternoon which bled into dusk. By then, everyone was bristling with excitement over her revelations.

“Okay, so back up a second”, Erin said. “This Hale guy, the big, grumpy, anger-issues werewolf. Is he supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy?

“I have no clue. I’m not sure he does, either”, Kaitlyn answered. “Sometimes I think he wants to mentor Scott, other times I think he just wants to corrupt him. Or eat him or something.”

Freddie was the first to notice Aadesh had arrived. “Dude”, he said to his best friend, “There’s more.” Then without missing a beat, he turned back to the conversation. “You know who I love is this Smiles kid.”

“Stiles”, Kaitlyn corrected.

“Yeah! Stiles. He’s like the perfect best friend. Everybody should have a Stiles. I want a Stiles.”

“Freddie, I don’t think he plays for your team”, Erin remarked.

“Um, hello?” Freddie began to recap some of the story Kaitlyn had told them. “Gee, Scott, do you want to try making out just to see if we like it?”

“Out of everything she’s told us, that’s the part you focus on?”

“Give us the next part to focus on”, Aadesh said, settling in beside his friends for the next thrilling chapter of Kaitlyn’s story.

“Yeah!”, Freddie encouraged her. “I wanna know what happens.”

Kaitlyn looked to her boyfriend hopefully. “So you do believe what I’ve been telling you?”

Aadesh met her gaze with kind eyes. “I think we covered that last night. Besides, there are two things to consider here: One is that every vision you’ve had up till now has been true. I can’t think of any reason why this should be different, just because you got them in some kind of…I dunno, cascade or something, and they last longer.”

“And the other reason?”, Erin asked.

Aadesh looked at Kaitlyn. “No offense, hon, but I don’t think you’ve got an active enough imagination to come up with all this on your own.”

“Hey!” Kaitlyn swatted Aadesh with a nearby pillow. “Thanks a lot.”

“Ssooooo…”, Freddie prompted, “when last we left our heroes…”

“Okay”, Kaitlyn smiled. “Where did we leave off?”

“I have a feeling this is going to take a while”, Erin commented. “We’re gonna need snacks.”

The ongoing narrative did take a while longer…a considerable while. The friends got stiff necks and backs and cramped legs from sitting there for hours. And nobody minded.

  “Oh my God, for real??”, Freddie said, mouth half-full of chicken salad sandwich. “This giant wolf-thing bursts through the video store window and then it gets UP and walks on two feet?!”

“It gets up and walks on two feet”, Kaitlyn confirmed.

“This just gets better and better”, Freddie said.

“So is this huge werewolf Derek, then?”, Erin asked.

“That’s just it! We don’t know yet. I mean, I haven’t seen that far yet.”

Aadesh watched his girlfriend looking more alive and hopeful than he’d seen her in weeks. Whatever it was she had tapped into, it was reviving her in ways he couldn’t have anticipated. Then he observed his other friends, and saw the same revitalized life and energy in them. He could feel it too. It was a feeling he liked and wanted to continue.

 *    *    *

 So it went as weeks became months. The quartet found new zest, new interest, and new enthusiasm in the stories uncovered by Kaitlyn’s visions.

Freddie lay on his back on the floor, feet crossed at the ankles, resting on the wall as he scarfed a bag of popcorn. “So the mom asks the dad to kill her rather than get super powers? What a spiteful witch! Why doesn’t she just use the powers to go toe to toe with Scott on his terms? Like the super-villain to his superhero!”

“Pfft!”, Erin scoffed, devouring a package of dried apricots. “Like that’s ever gonna happen.”

“Forget the mom and dad for minute”, Aadesh interjected. “What about the granddad? With the stabbing and the drowning and the overall creepiness? Who has the cheese puffs?”

Freddie nodded in agreement. “I hope when that gravelly-voiced old goat meets his inevitable end, it is really slow and excruciatingly painful.”

“We ate all the puffs”, Kaitlyn said. “There’s mesquite chips around here somewhere. And you’re not kidding”, she continued her narrative, “after Gerard kidnaps and beats Stiles—“

Freddie fell backwards onto the floor. “He beats Stiles??!”

“Oh. We haven’t gotten that far yet”, she realized. “Whoopsie. What was the last thing I told you about?”

Erin sat up suddenly, very attentive. “You know what, you guys? We should be writing this stuff down.”

                                                        *    *    *

           Erin tapped away at her laptop as Freddie leaned over her shoulder, a dollar store sketchbook tucked under his arm. Freddie read Erin’s work as she transcribed Kaitlyn’s stories about Scott’s and his pack. It had already been decided not to simply jot everything down in a notebook that could be found lying around during a bed check or the like.

           “You can stop breathing in my ear”, Erin said. “You already know all of this.”

           “I just want to make sure you don’t miss any details. How exactly are you writing Stiles’ physical description? ‘Cause I have a few ideas about that—“

           “I am going to smack you if you don’t get out of my face, Fred.” Then, recognizing that he was just as excited as she was, she changed her tone. “Look, we’ll compare notes when we’re both done, okay?”

           Aadesh waved Freddie over to him. “Let me see what you’ve got, Fred.”

           A bit hesitantly, Freddie handed the sketchbook over to his best friend. On the first page was a rough drawing of two young men, about their age, walking along a school hallway, posed as if in the middle of an animated conversation.

           “Is that Scott and Stiles?”, Aadesh asked.

           “Well, as close as I could get to how I imagined they look, yeah.”

           “Freddie, this is really good!”

           “You think so??”

           Kaitlyn sat down beside the two of them and admired the rough drawing. Then she said, “Who do you think of when you imagine Lydia?”

           Erin interrupted, saying, “I’m starting to catch up to where we last left off. What comes after that, Kate?” Looking forlorn, Kaitlyn shrugged. “Nothing new?”

           “No new visions in days. Almost a week and a half, really.”

           “I hope that’s not the end of it”, Freddie said. “Like, if their adventures are over?”

           “I think it’s more like a break in the chaos”, Kaitlyn suggested. “Still, waiting for the next chapter…for lack of a better word…kind of sucks.”

           Freddie’s phone pinged, and he checked a text message. He frowned.

           “What?”, Aadesh asked.

           “Uh, nothing. Just that guy Gordy. He’s going on about a big score and how it’s a sure thing but he needs some more people, and well…”  

           Freddie’s hesitation hung heavy in the air. The others could feel it too.

           Aadesh cleared his throat and looked to Freddie. “I kind of suspect you’re thinking what I’m thinking. What we all are.”

“Yeah”, Freddie agreed. “Is this something Scott McCall would do?”

The four friends looked at one another and shared a silent exchange. Freddie shut off his phone and put it away. He picked up his pencil and returned to his drawing.

           All four of them felt something change right then. A seismic shift in the way they looked at the world, and themselves. They considered Scott, whose adventures had helped them come alive and come together in ways they never could have anticipated. This fantastic and impossible boy cursed with the mark of the beast had shown them that dealing with bad circumstances and bad situations doesn’t mean you have to become a bad person.

           “I am interested in seeing how you envision Gerard”, Kaitlyn told Freddie.

           “I’ll need to sharpen my pencil to get in all the frown lines”, he grinned.

           Aadesh pulled out his phone and started tapping away furiously. Freddie and Kaitlyn stared at him until he looked up. “Oh, just getting down some ideas so I don’t lose them.” They stared hard at him. Well?  “Like”, Aadesh began, “what if a werewolf Gerard had hunted and thought he’d killed wasn’t really dead and came back to confront him? Y’know, making the hunter the hunted.”

           Freddie’s eyes lit up and his expression blossomed into a huge smile. “Dude, that’s awesome.”

“Oh, man”, Erin said. “That gives me one hell of an idea.”

Freddie flipped to the next page. Erin saved what she had been writing and opened a new document. Pencil danced across paper and fingers danced across the keyboard. Aadesh and Kaitlyn shared a knowing glance and smiled as they basked in the newfound energy they all shared. More than just stories of Scott McCall had come to life in that room.

                                                       *    *    *

             From then on, things were markedly different for Kaitlyn, Aadesh, Erin, and Freddie. The stories the friends created featuring their newfound heroes began to equal and even surpass the amount of actual tales related to them by way of Kaitlyn’s visions. Each one of them took up writing their own tales. Freddie threw himself into his drawings, which he saved to a flash drive at the local bargain print shop. Erin even tried her hand at creating artwork, some of it being pretty good.

           The former delinquents discovered a new sense of responsibility which they found somehow appealing. They took advantage of some of the work day programs offered at the halfway house, and joined in on one or two philanthropic projects for the community. The changes did not go unnoticed by the staff (many of whom at first thought it was some elaborate new ploy to get away with something sinister). Before long, a rather odious and self-aggrandizing administrator cited the four friends whom he’d never laid eyes on as examples of the fine rehabilitating programs offered in his juvenile facilities. As he’d never had much interest in said facilities beyond lining his pockets with money being funneled in for every new inmate, he never bothered to meet the four friends in person. But they did provide him with some good chest-thumping material.

           Aadesh, Kaitlyn, Freddie, and Erin couldn’t have cared less. They were never referred to as anything more than “a quartet of promising youngsters”, which suited them just fine. Their altered behavior provided them with a freer rein to come and go at the house and less need to sneak out. Ironically, now that they had that freedom, they spent more and more time inside, working on and sharing their stories. One evening recently, the room was bristling with particularly high energy after having heard the story of Scott’s narrow escape from becoming a skull-wearing enchanted warrior drone by his new Beta.

           “What was it he said again, Kaitlyn?”, Aadesh asked for the third time in twice as many minutes. “The Rookie, the thing that snapped The Champion out of it?”

           Kaitlyn quoted, “You’re not a monster, you’re a werewolf. Like me.”

           Aadesh threw his hands in the air and fell back onto an old beanbag chair. “Wow! Damn, I want that on a T-shirt or a poster. Seriously.”

           “It is a class line”, Erin agreed. “Especially considering he’s saying it back to the one who said it to him.”

           “And when The Champion rips that skull off, all RRrrrrRRAAHRR!!”, Freddie gushed. “There was a burst of light, wasn’t there? You said there was a burst of light?”

           “There was a burst of light when he broke the spell, yes”, Kaitlyn confirmed.

           Freddie grabbed up his sketchbook. “I’m gonna draw that.” He began scribbling away with abandon, then paused and flipped the page. “But first…I am going to draw when he punches The Psychopath clear across the room. BAM!”

Kaitlyn looked at her friends, engaged and excited. Each caught up in the act of creating and sharing. This was by far the best version of themselves they’d ever been. And they owed it all to Scott McCall—whoops, The Champion—and his pack. It was seeing her friends like this that sparked an entirely new idea for Kaitlyn. It was nothing short of an epiphany.

“Say…”, she said, “What if we could do more than just imagine their adventures? What if we could do…a lot more?”