#I will be having completely normal thoughts about the beatles for the next couple weeks

[abcwordsurge]

the shift from crediting all of his songs to "lennon-mccartney" to "how do you not understand by now that I am johnandyoko" ruined my day actually

[mysweetgeo]

Do You Want To Know a Secret ? (Part 4)

Summary: Reader and George have been best friends since they were kids, but when The Beatles got big, they were forced apart. What happens when George returns for a couple weeks wanting their friendship to return to normal?

You didn’t hear from George until the next day, when the call came through just after noon you’d all but jumped to answer it the second it rang.

You cleared your throat before answering, “Hello, (Y/N) speaking.”

“Well hello my love, how is today treatin’ you?” His accent thick and full.

You smiled, “Fair, but much better now,” you answered honestly.

You could hear his smile in his voice as he answered, “Well that’s wonderful to hear, fancy a trip to the pub tonight? John invited me and I’d like it if you’d accompany me.”

“Hm, seeing as I don’t have to work tomorrow that sounds quite lovely,” you replied, twirling the phone cord around your finger. “What time should I meet you there?”

George scoffed, “As if I’d make you drive yourself to the pub,” he muttered. “I’ll pick you up at eight, does that fit into your busy schedule?” He asked, mocking the words you’d said to him just the other day.

You rolled your eyes, “Fine. But next time we go out I’m driving—and paying!”

He laughed, “Fine, fine! It’s a deal, as long as I get to see you again,” he said sweetly, a smile forming on your lips.

It was quiet for a few moments before you spoke again, “I’ll see you at eight then?”

“Eight o’clock, sharp,” he confirmed.

“It’s a date then,” you said, smiling to yourself.

“It’s a date,” he repeated before you hung up.

+

When George knocked on your door at eight o’clock (sharp) you’d been waiting his arrival, ready to open the door the moment he knocked.

He grinned when he saw you, giving your simple outfit a look over.

You wore a pair of high waisted denim bell bottoms with a pair of chunky orange heels. he laughed when he saw your shirt, a Beatles tee you’d found at a local shop when you’d been out and about a few weeks ago.

“Where on Earth did you find that?” George asks, leaning in close to observe your shirt.

“Found it at one of the shops in town, d’ya like it?” You ask with a proud grin.

“I look like rubbish,” he mumbles, running his fingers over his own face on the fabric.

“You do not, George,” you say, swatting his hand away from your top. “You ready to go?” You ask.

He nods and holds the door open for you and the two of you walk to his car.

You ride to the pub in a comfortable silence, completely content just being in each other’s presence.

When you arrive at the pub, George opens your door for you and offers you his arm, which you gladly accept.

You walk into the pub, immediately finding John in a corner booth, with an arm around Cynthia who is sitting beside him.

When John sees you, his face breaks into a massive grin, “George! You brought your girl!”

You blush and squeeze George’s arm a bit, looking at the other couple, “Nice to see you again, John,” you mumble, slightly embarrassed.

Cynthia stands to pull you into a hug, which you gladly accept. You’d missed her almost as much as you’d missed George.

You and George sit across from John and Cynthia, George’s arm slung around your shoulders as John tells you about the crazy things they’d done while on tour.

By the end of the story you’d been clutching your stomach, doubled over in laughter while George sat, his face red with embarrassment.

You were now a few pints in, feeling warm and light—like you were floating.

“Why didn’t you tell me about that Georgie?” You whined, gripping his thigh so that he would look you in the eye.

He shrugged, “Didn’t think you’d wanna hear about all the silly things I’d done,” he replied.

Your jaw dropped, “Well of course I do! I can’t keep pickin’ on ya if its the same four stories from when we were kids!” You said loudly.

“John!” You yelled, reaching over to grab his arm, “You have to tell me all the silly things he’s done!” you slurred.

John laughed, completely knackered, “When we were in Hamburg, George had a girl in the hotel room—while we were all in there!” John said loudly, his head rolling back with a snort.

You felt your heart drop, and suddenly you weren’t in a laughing mood anymore. You scooted yourself away from him, a small movement that John didn’t notice, but Cynthia and George did.

You glanced at George out of the corner of your eye after you’d moved to see him staring back at you, almost like he was apologizing.

You didn’t know why you felt so upset, you couldn’t possibly be upset with George for sleeping with someone when you’d done the same with many guys. After all it’d been nearly two years, you couldn’t expect him to wait for you when he didn’t even know how you felt about him—you didn’t even know how you felt about him.

John was still laughing, not noticing the mood change, when he slapped the table, snapping you and George out of your trance.

“I need another pint!” He slurred, pounding the table.

You nodded agreeing with him, “Me too,” you mumbled, just loud enough so that George could hear you.

+

Three more pints down and you’d completely forgotten what you were so upset over. You were practically attached to George, clinging affectionately to his arm.

You were sipping your next pint, your arm looped in George’s as he watched you.

“(Y/N) how’d you meet George again?” Cynthia asked, yelling over the other voices in the pub.

“Oh! I love this story!” You squealed, “We met when we were just itty bitty little kids,” you said fondly with a smile.

George laughed at your expression as you rested your head on his shoulder, smiling proudly.

“I was five and George was six!” You exclaimed, “He tried to kiss me on the playground and I pushed him in the dirt!”

“Hey! That’s not what happened!” George interrupted after taking a large gulp of his pint.

You turned to him, a grin spread across your face, “Really? Then how do you think it happened?” you asked, raising an eyebrow.

George’s eyes bore into your, like dark brown pools. “I wanted to hold your hand, is that such a crime! ‘Was just a boy who fancied a girl,” he said matter-of-factly.

“You fancied me?” You asked, teasing him and poking his nose.

“What? No—I just meant—I—“ He stumbled over his words.

You giggled, “Sounds like you fancied me, Geo!” you teased, nudging his side with your arm.

He rolled his eyes and pushed your arms away from him, “Stop that!” he yelped.

You let out a hearty laugh, “Oh c’mon, George! ‘m only teasin’!”

“Mhm, sure you are,” he mumbled, finishing the rest of his beer.

You grinned, finishing yours as well, feeling warm and fuzzy. “I wanna do shots!” you exclaimed.

John gasped, “Shots!” he yelled, the two of you unable to sit still at the thought.

John flagged the waitress down, getting her to bring your table a whole mess of shots.

You turned to George, a crooked smile on your face, “You gonna do shots too, Georgie?” you asked, tugging at his arm to try and get him to agree.

He rolled his eyes, a smile forming on his face, “I suppose I can do a few,” he answers, which made you squeal in excitement.

John, George, and yourself split the shots amongst the three of you—Cynthia decided against them (probably for the best).

The shots felt endless, and soon you were slurring your words and clinging to George’s arm just to keep the room from spinning.

George was feeling just about the same way, the two of you laughing at something John had said—which neither of you could remember.

Eventually Cynthia dragged a heavily intoxicated John out of the bar, bidding a goodnight to you and George.

George paid your tab, wrapping an arm tight around your waist as the two if you walked out.

The waitress had hailed a cab for you—which you were thankful for because you couldn’t think straight.

You sat practically on top of one another in the back of the cab, staring into each others eyes, trying (and failing) to contain flirtatious smiles.

When the cabbie had dropped you off at your house. you and George climbed out of the cab after paying, immediately going up to your room.

You immediately went to put some music on, putting the Please Please Me vinyl on the turntable, skipping to your favourite song, secretly hoping George would sing it to you.

George grinned when you both heard the familiar chords begin.

You’ll never know how much I really love you

You’ll never know how much I really care

He pulled you close to him, leaving barely enough room to breathe, and began to sway you back and forth.

“Listen,” he sang softly in your ear, “Do you want to know a secret?”

“Do you promise not to tell?” You nodded enthusiastically, your body jittering with excitement.

“Oh, closer,” you felt yourself pressing yourself closer to him, aching for him to tell you.

“Let me whisper in your ear,” he murmured breathlessly in your ear, “say the words you long to hear.”

“I’m in love with you,” he whispered softly, kissing your neck.

You sighed in content, allowing him to attack your neck and jaw with kisses.

“Oh, George,” you murmured.

George’s lips moved to your cheek, progressively moving towards your mouth.

You whined in protest when he pulled away, “Can I kiss you?” he murmured.

All you could do was nod, your body aching for his touch, your lips yearning for reciprocation.

You looked into each other’s eyes before George pressed his lips against yours, and the world stopped.

Your body lighting on fire, feeling the butterflies swarm in your stomach as you wrapped your arms around his neck.

The two of you fell on your bed, George straddling you, kissing you with a patience that did not exist.

You moaned into his mouth, enjoying every second of the kiss, not knowing when it would end.

George brought his hand up to caress your face lovingly, as your tongues danced in each others mouths.

He kissed you with a hunger you’d never experienced, like he thought you’d vanish at any moment.

The kiss felt like you’d been making up for a lifetime of repressed feelings and longing stares.

Too soon you both ran out of air, panting as you pulled away, looking at each other with pure love.

His lips were a deep red colour, swollen from the kiss. you could only imagine yours were in a similar state.

You ran your hands through his hair as you caught your breath, your thumbs caressing his cheeks, running along his sharp jaw bone.

He smiled sleepily, the movements of your hands relaxing him.

His tired eyes met yours, “I love you,” he said in the happiest voice.

Your heart swelled as you held his face in your hands, “I love you, George.”

He dipped his head to give you a quick kiss before his body weight dropped on top of you.

You groaned, “George,” you tried to push him off of you but there was no way to move him, he was already snoring softly into your neck.

You continued to run your hands through his hair, admiring him and soaking in every detail of the moment that you likely wouldn’t remember.

Deep down you knew that was for the best, you’d just gotten George back and you didn’t want to lose him again—especially when these feelings were involved.

His arms formed a tight cocoon around you and he sighed into your neck, completely content.

You smiled sleepily at his state, leaving your hands in his hair as you closed your eyes, letting yourself drift off to sleep.

[blackberry-gingham]

Hello there! How about John x Reader where Lennon began to notice her shy gestures whenever they got the chance to hangout, and since the reader was usually comfortable with him and suddenly, her manners turned into a delicate one, at the same time, now barely speaks with him. John never asked the reader why and suspects by himself she fancies him. He’s certainly not sure about his thought so, he soon pulled his bandmates to help him find the real reason out.

Oooo interesting! John needs the whole squad to figure out your feelings lmao. So on brand tho ??? I love it 😂

Enjoy!

---

The sun beams proudly overhead, framed by sparse clouds. It's a surprisingly mild summer day and you are relaxing pool side with your best friend, John Lennon. You're at his place and he's reclining in his yard chair completely at ease, eyes closed behind his dark sunglasses.

You sneak yet another glance over at him, trying hard to play it cool. With a quiet but deep breath in, you turn your attention back to the clouds.

What's wrong with me? You think to yourself.

You see, you and John have been friends for ages now. Before Hamburg, before the Quarrymen, before the Beatles... There was just you and him.

All this time, you've both been comfortable in your friendship together. After all, it's hard to find someone who gets you quite like you get each other. And yet... you feel different somehow.

You glance John's way one more time. He's begun to stir a bit and after so many years of knowing him, you sense he'll want to find some fun soon. But for now, you continue resting.

For all this time that you've known him, it may surprise some to know that deep down, the tough and witty John Lennon everyone knows is actually something of a romantic. John's had his flings here and there on his search for lasting love, but nothing seemed to stick for him. Of course, things have worked about the same for you.

Normally it gives you both just another thing to commiserate about, but you've got to thinking lately...

It's probably stupid. After all, if it were possible, surely he would've realised it by now, or at least said something... right?

You sigh and play with your hair, a bad habit of yours, you know. The thing is, you can't help but wonder if there would ever be a chance for maybe... You and John to be together. Of course there's no guarantee things would work out, but you'd never know unless you try...

"Alright, enough of that", John sits up abruptly and takes off his sunglasses. He ruffles his hair and turns to you. "Want to cool off with me?", He nods to the water, "Then we can clean off inside. I know you have to be getting on soon"

You smile, a bit proud to have your hunch proven right. With a big stretch, you sit up as well and turn your sunny gaze to him, "Sounds like fun"

John smiles a cheeky grin and leaps up from his chair. Before you can inquire what all the rush is about, he tears off towards the water and over his shoulder he yells, "Last one in is a rotten egg!"

You gasp in playful disbelief, but you aren't about to let him win. In less then a second you're up and right after him. John slows down a touch just before the waters edge, and for a moment, you think he might let you win.

He comes to a stop right at the lip while you yourself slow down from your head of steam to join him. But, before you can stop completely...

"Ladies first!", John gives you a playful push and sends you on your way into the water. This end of the pool is shallow enough for you to stand with your head comfortably above water, so you shoot back up just in time to get splashed as John cannonballs in beside you.

You splutter and wipe the chlorine water out of your eyes quick as you can. Once you think you're safe, John reemerges and shakes his mop top out, sending another sheet of water your way.

"Oh, you-!", You clear your eyes and then, for the briefest of moments, you bring your hands to action.

John is wading there with a grin plastered on his face, as though he wants you to retaliate. Call him a name. Splash him with water. Perhaps give him a little shove... This is his idea of fun and games. Annoying people, that is.

Normally you quite enjoy it actually, but ever since you've been second guessing your feelings for John, you're not sure how to act. After all, you can't risk giving your feelings away! What if he catches on and rejects you, and then doesn't want to be around you anymore?

No, best to not do anything that could even remotely be interpreted as flirtation or teasing or anything of that sort.

You instead use your hands to tread the water and head back to the lip of the pool, "You are such a child!", You laugh.

John's grin falters as he watches you wade away. After being by your side for years, he can safely say that is very strange behavior for you. He's so comfortable and use to you returning his shenanigans that to see you just... Not, bothers him deeply.

In fact, now that he thinks about it, this is far from the first time you've acted this way. It's actually become a bit of a pattern with you over the last week or so, and John can't stand the mystery.

He sighs sadly, disappointed that his plan to get you to act like your old self didn't work, and crawls out after you. The two of you clean up and part ways for the day. John doesn't bring up his concerns to you, and yet he does want to know the truth...

All that evening he can't escape his thoughts.

By all accounts, nothing should be wrong! Nothing's changed between you two, no ill words or actions, so that's out. There's no outside life issues causing problems, or at least nothing that wasn't already there, so it can't be that either!

But then... What's left?

John pulls the blankets up close as he lays down for the night. The clock on the wall says 11:48, and even now he's still worrying over all this. He rolls over with a sigh. The bedside lamp is still on.

He reaches to click it off, but hesitates for a moment. Instead he finds himself digging in the messy table drawer until finally... Yes, here it is.

Out comes a little polaroid photo. It's a bit aged and ragged by now, but it's perfectly clean and one of John's most prized possessions. Within the frame of the picture, your beautiful face stares back at him, smiling sweetly. You gave him this photo as something for him to hold onto while he was away in Hamburg.

He's never told a soul, but even after all these years, he takes it with him on all his tours since.

He smiles back at your picture. He's never been so love sick in his whole life. For a minute, he dares to wonder... What if, you liked him back? It might explain why you've been acting strangely, but...

Well, that's just rediculous. John frowns and, with a little hesitation, begins to return your picture to the secrecy of it's drawer. There's just no way you could fancy him.

After all, he knows you. Just as he knows that, while he's many things, being worthy of you is not one of them.

He closes the drawer with a gentle click and turns out the light. John rolls over and falls asleep, dreaming a dream that you were here with him.

The next day, John is in the studio with the other lads. They're tuning their equipment and gearing up for the day. As such a close friend of John's, you're on friendly terms with the other Beatles as well of course! So when John tells them about the goings on with you, they're quite dumbfounded.

Even they know something is up.

Paul and Ringo suggest a few silly things, all of which John waves off. After some back and forth between those three, George speaks up and suggests something that John has been too afraid to ask.

"Well I think it's obvious... John, she likes you", George's tone is teasing, but the seriousness of the suggestion is quite apparent.

The room falls silent at George's words.

Slowly, Paul begins to nod. "Yeah... Yeah! Have you thought about that John? You two have been mates a long time, makes sense she'd might fancy you after a while"

"Exactly", George adds.

John's heart skips a beat at the idea alone, but he quickly shoots them down. However, the boys are persistent. They ask for more details on your behavior, and with every scenario John describes, they only grow more adamant. Even Ringo agrees!

There's a bit of back and forth to convince John, but... Maybe... Maybe they're right. Even if they weren't, how long was he going to lie to himself? He knows who his heart belongs to, and no one else could take your place.

He has to at least try.

It's a couple days at least before John sees you again. You must admit, you've been purposely trying to keep your distance. To what end, you don't know. But today you have no excuses to fall back on.

You arrive at John's place right on time and when you arrive at the door, he greets you with a bright smile, just as always. But today, John follows it up with a hug, something a bit unusual for him. He takes you by the hands and pulls you inside after you've said your hellos.

"John, wha-?", you laugh.

"Sh, I have something to tell you!"

You laugh some more and follow him briskly to the living room. John takes a seat on the couch and pats a spot beside him for you. First though, you have to take in the view.

There's a soft and low record on in the background and the room smells fragrant and fresh. A far cry from it's usual scent of cigarettes and musk. On the coffee table sits two cups of tea, a fresh vase of roses, and a small flickering candle.

"What's all this...?", you approach the couch slowly as you bask in the environment.

"Oh, well I um... I hope it's not too much, it's just I-I've been meaning to ask, er uh, I wanted to tell you-"

The look on your face is unreadable, and John's words begin to falter. This was a dumb idea, he's ruined everything. But then...

You lean in ever so slightly. A light dances in your eyes, a smile tugging gently at the corners of your lips. This is everything you've ever wanted...

"Yes?", You ask with baited breath

John sits in stunned silence for but a moment. Then, "Well, I-I love you"

Finally.

The tension seems to melt in an instant. You throw your arms around him, "You've no idea how long I've wanted to hear that"

"Really?", John looks utterly surprised.

You laugh and reassure him, and any last traces of his anxiety is gone.

"In that case... You've no idea how long I've been waiting to do this"

He leans in close and there, in the candle light and amongst the flowers, you share your first, tender kiss.

[writing-is-my-guilty-pleasure]

Stormy Weather || Thor x Reader

Main Masterlist

Marvel Masterlist

‘Would you want to do a Thor x Reader where the reader and Thor are spending the day together in Thor’s place and the reader has to leave to do some work for Cap or Tony but Thor causes a thunderstorm so that she doesn’t leave because he knows how much she hates getting wet (she doesn’t mind though!)’ A/N: I didn’t know whether you meant Thor’s place as in his own house or living in the Avengers tower, but I’m going to set it after Civil War, (we saw Thor looking for different roommates and lets say he managed to find a place of his own. Also mentions of siding with Steve in Civil War soz if you didn’t but I feel like Thor would have sided with Steve.) and just ignore the fact it might not totally fit into the timeline of the movies but hEy I did my best I’m still struggling to accept Infinity War even though Endgame is in like two weeks.  Also sorry if this is too short, I’m trying to overcome writer’s block!

 “You know, when you said you had your own place, I never expected it to look this good.” You said absentmindedly, leaning against Thor as you watched the TV together. Thor chuckled, and you felt it rumble through his entire being – his loud, booming voice was not restricted to speaking, it radiated from his entire being.

“I’ll take that as a compliment, considering my taste in decoration seems to have exceeded your expectations.” Thor grinned at you, moving his arm so that it rested on your shoulders, eyes not leaving the screen infront of the two of you. You smiled at him, eyes resting on the world outside one of Thor’s windows. It was a relatively normal day: the sun was shining, and there were only a few clouds in the sky, or so you could see from your limited point of view. You could hear the world moving as normal around you, the occasional car horn standing out amongst the usual bustle that was the citizens of America.  “I appreciate you taking the time out of your week to come and visit me, Y/N.” Thor’s voice broke you out of your train of thought, and you turned your head back to him.

“It wasn’t any trouble at all, Thor.” You grinned at him. “I’d much rather be here spending time with you than out fighting bad guys and putting my life on the line, which by the way,” You paused, shifting around on the sofa, sitting up straighter. “Is a lot more tiring when you aren’t a god or a super-soldier who doesn’t feel like they might collapse after a few hours of fighting.” You pouted as Thor let out a laugh at your rant.

“You make a good point Y/N, it is certainly much more enjoyable to spend time with someone as ruggedly handsome as me, who would obviously never let anything bad happen to a mortal such as yourself, and is much more experienced and trained in combat than our fellow Avengers.” Thor said, puffing out his chest physically, and also somehow expressing the same vibe when speaking. Loki’s energy has really been rubbing off on him, you thought to yourself as you shook your head, smiling. You found yourself doing that a lot more these days, especially when you were around Thor. He just seemed to have that effect on you, often reducing you to a giggling mess.

“It’s certainly nice to know that I’m appreciated for something other than my combat skills and for actually being a decent human being.” You resumed your position of resting against Thor. It was peaceful moments like this where you forgot that Thor was a god, and heir to the throne of Asgard. He felt normal to you, sure he was a little naïve when it came to realising how this world worked, but he was a genuinely kind and gentle person. You’d watched him grow as a person since you first met him when the Avengers initiative was finalised and launched, maturing over the years and realising that the Avengers never saw him as a Prince, but as one of their own and a relatively normal person. You’d also seen him grow as a so called ‘superhero’, growing used to handling his power in different ways and saving the world multiple times. When you heard about how he saved the world against the Dark Elves you couldn’t believe that it was Thor who had done it. Well, you could believe it but a few years ago, the Thor that you knew then wouldn’t have risked so much to save your world.

And hey, if in the time you’d known Thor you’d developed a slight crush on him, who was to judge you? And more importantly, who was to know? You’d never told anyone how you felt towards Thor, although the only person who you thought would know anything about your emotions and what went on inside your head was Wanda, as you’d felt the extent of her powers when you all first encountered her and her brother. The battle of Ultron really gave you some time to reflect on whether you wanted to remain a member of the Avengers, and unsurprisingly, it had been Thor who had reasoned with you and asked you to stay. But then not too soon after you’d made your decision, he’d told you all in one last meeting with some newer recruits that he had to leave to return to Asgard, and to explore parts of the universe to recover things he called ‘infinity stones’. That had almost broken you, losing one of the people you cared most about in the world – well, worlds. So while you’d stayed with the Avengers back on earth, and fought off more bad guys than you could count, there had always been a Thor-shaped hole in your heart, and for a while it had been hard not seeing him every day around the new compound, but you’d made friends with the newer members; Sam, Wanda and Vision.

Then, the Avengers split up. They straight up, boy-band, split up. Like how the Beatles split up, and how One Direction (it still hurts) split up. You’d sided with Steve and met up with Clint again and a new guy called Scott Lang. You’d never felt worse when facing your old team-mates, but you wouldn’t be free if you sided with Tony and signed that damn agreement. It might even have prevented Thor from re-joining the group when he came back. It wasn’t a proper fight – nobody wanted to seriously hurt anyone else, (except maybe T’Challa when it came to fighting Bucky) and when Steve and Bucky made it away from Tony and the reason that the fight had started, the rest of the team had to face the consequences of their actions. That had to have been one of the worst moments of your life, the time you all spent in those cells. It hadn’t helped when Tony came by to visit, and even when he tried to help, you still weren’t sure about him anymore. He’d changed.

Fast forward a few weeks, and you found yourself on the run from the government, accompanied by Steve, Sam and Natasha. You travelled from hotel to hotel, never using the same name when booking rooms, and you and Natasha had had to dye your hair to try and keep your real identities secret. Hey, it had worked so far. You’d run into Thor a couple of weeks ago in a library, and almost had a heart attack upon seeing him. He hadn’t recognised you at first, but as soon as you spoke his face had lit up, and he’d pulled you into a bone-crushing hug. You’d explained your situation to him, and while he seemed to think that the whole event was completely ridiculous and simultaneously offended that you hadn’t thought to invite him along to the fight, he appreciated that you had to lie low for a while, so the two of you couldn’t meet up in public.

So, today was the first day in a long time that you had been able to truly relax, and you immediately got in contact with Thor, because if anyone can make you feel relaxed and safe, Thor can. Bringing yourself out of your memories, you saw that the movie you two had been half-heartedly watching had ended, and the credits were rolling. Without speaking, you reached over Thor, picking up the remote and clicking through the vast selection of movies that Netflix supplied, and once finding a movie the two of you wanted, you pressed play, and set the remote on the coffee table infront of you, and resumed your position against Thor.

“Thanks for letting me stay here today.” You said quietly, only half-focusing on the movie, half-focusing on the literal god sitting next to you. Thor’s hand shifted from resting on your shoulder, and brushed a few shorter strands of hair away from your face, and gently ran his fingers through your hair in a soothing motion. He didn’t reply, simply letting out a long breath, acknowledging your thanks silently. You abandoned trying to focus on the TV, and let your eyes roam over Thor, from his long, blonde hair down to Mjolnir, which was resting on the sofa on the other side of Thor. As you gazed at him, you felt your cheeks flush, as your emotions decided that now would be a great time to express your affections towards Thor.

As if you had spoken aloud, Thor turned his head to look at you, and his gaze softened as his eyes roamed over your face. “You know, my father used to tell me that humans were ugly beings, and were never worth our time.” Thor rumbled, and you sat up abruptly, eyebrows raised, feeling rather offended. I mean sure, you weren’t the prettiest and most good-looking person in the world but now that’s just plain rude. Realising what he said might have come off a bit too harsh and not at all like it had sounded in his head, Thor hurried to correct himself. “And while I did believe him when I was younger, my personal opinions have changed quite drastically.” He shifted, pulling you closer. “You changed my mind, Y/N.” His usual smile graced his features, and for you, it lit up the whole room. “I’ve never met anyone so beautiful, and if I could, I would give you all of my free time, because you are worth all the time in the world.” During his speech, the distance between the two of you had lessened.

“Thor,” You breathed, face even redder than before. “I-I don’t…” You couldn’t find the words to express your reaction to his words, but he seemed to understand what you meant. He rested one of his large hands on your cheek, tilting your head up and simultaneously leaning down towards you. You were so close that if you leant forwards the slightest bit, the two of you would be kissing, and lord knows when you’d stop.

Just as you were about to close the gap between the both of you, your phone decided to say a big ‘fuck you’ and let out the harsh sound of your ringtone. You stayed where you were for a few seconds, and when your phone didn’t stop ringing, you let out a loud groan of annoyance, and heaved yourself off the sofa, grabbing your phone.

“Hello?” You answered, a bit more rudely than you probably should have, considering you didn’t check who had called you.

“Y/N? Is this a bad time?” Steve’s voice rang through the phone and you mentally hit yourself multiple times. “Only something’s come up, and if you aren’t busy we could really use your help.”

“Oh…no, its not a bad time at all,” You answered sheepishly, on full alert now. “I’m…” You looked around at Thor, who was watching you with an affectionate expression plastered across his face. “Hanging out with a friend, what’s up? Let me know where you are and I can probably come and find you guys.” You mouthed ‘It’s Steve, I have to go.” at Thor, hopping around ungracefully on one foot as you struggled to pull your shoe on. Thor frowned slightly, and turned to look outside. You followed his gaze, and no sooner than you did, the bright blue sky began to turn a dark grey, and the rumble of thunder echoed across the sky. You sighed as Thor turned around again, a cheeky twinkle in his eyes as you bit your lip. “Actually, Steve, it’s not looking too great out there and I don’t want to risk getting in an accident trying to get to you guys…and you know I have a thing about getting wet.” Steve sighed on the other end of the phone, but didn’t seem too bothered about you not coming, and you hung up the phone.

“Thor, that could have been an important mission…” You reprimanded half-heartedly, because who could be truly mad at Thor?

“If it was that important, you would have left anyways.” Thor said truthfully, and you knew he was right. Besides, you weren’t complaining that you got to spend an extra few hours with him. You grinned, pulling off the one shoe you’d managed to get on correctly, and resumed your position on the sofa next to him, and you felt your heart flutter as he placed one of his arms around you once more.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Christmas - New Year’s Edition – WONDER WOMAN 1984, NEWS OF THE WORLD, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI..., PIECES OF A WOMAN, HERSELF, SYLVIE’S LOVE and More!

Welcome to the VERY LAST Weekend Warrior of the WORST YEAR EVER!!! But hopefully not the last column forever, even though I already plan on taking much of January off from writing 8 to 10 reviews each week. It just got to be too much for a while there.

Because it’s the last week of the year, there are a lot of really good movies, some in theaters but also quite a few on streaming services. In fact, there are a good number of movies that appeared in my Top 10 for the yearover at Below the Line, as well as my extended Top 25 that I’ll share on this blog sometime next week. I was half-hoping to maybe write something about the box office prospects of some of the new movies, but after the last couple weeks, it’s obvious that box office is not something that will be something worth writing about until sometime next spring or summer.

(This column is brought to you by Paul McCartney’s new album “McCartney III” which I’m listening to as I finish this up… and then other solo Beatles ditties picked for me randomly by Tidal.)

First up is easily one of the most anticipated movies of the year, or at least one that actually didn’t move to 2021, and that’s WONDER WOMAN 1984 (Warner Bros.), Patty Jenkins’ sequel to the 2017 hit, once again starring Gal Gadot as Diana Prince. I reviewed it here, but basically the sequel introduces Wonder Woman arch-nemeses Barbara Minerva aka Cheetah, as played by Kristen Wiig, and Pedro Pascal’s Max Lord and how an ancient artifact gives them both their powers, as well as helps to bring Diana’s true love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) back despite him having disappeared presumed dead in WWI. As you can see by reading my review, I thought it was just fine, not great and certainly not something I’d make an attempt to see a second time in a 25% capacity movie theater. Fortunately, besides debuting in around 2,100 movie theaters across the nation, it will also be on HBO Max day and date, which has caused quite a stir. Being Christmas weekend with no work/school on Monday, I can see it still making somewhere between $10 and 12 million, but I can’t imagine it doing nearly what it might have done with most theaters only 25-30% full at the maximum and that theater count being roughly half the number it might have gotten during the “normal times.”

Paul Greengrass’ Western NEWS OF THE WORLD (Universal) reteams him with his Captain Phillips star Tom Hanks, this time playing Captain Jefferson Kidd, a Civil War soldier who travels from town to town in the Old West reading from newspapers to anyone who has a dime and time to listen. After one such reading, he discovers a young girl (Helena Zengel) on her own, having spent the last few years with a family of Native Americans who were killed by soldiers. Together, they travel across America as Kidd hopes to bring the girl to her last surviving family members.

I already reviewed Greengrass’ movie for Below the Line, and I also  spoke to Mr. Greengrass, an interview you can read that right here (once it goes live), but I make no bones that this was one of my favorite movies I’ve seen this year, and it’s not just due to the fine work by Greengrass and his team. No, it’s just as much about the emotion inherent in the story, and the relationship between the characters played by Hanks and Zengel.  

I’ve watched the movie three times now, and I’m still blown away by every frame and moment, the tension that’s created on this difficult journey but also where it leaves the viewers at the end that promises that there can be hope and joy even in the most difficult and turbulent times. It’s a wonderful message that’s truly needed right now.

Listen, I’m not gonna recommend going to a movie theater if you don’t feel it’s safe – I’ve already spoken my peace on this at a time when COVID numbers were much lower – but this is a movie that I personally can’t wait to see in a movie theater. I honestly can’t see the movie making more than $3 or 4 million in the open theaters considering how few people are willing to go to movie theaters. Obviously, this isn’t as big a draw as Wonder Woman, but it is a fantastic big screen movie regardless.

Also opening in theaters this Friday is Emerald Fennell’s directorial debut PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (Focus Features), starring the wonderful Oscar-nominated Carey Mulligan as Cassie Thomas, a woman who has revenge on her mind. Cassie spends her nights picking up guys in bars by pretending she’s so drunk she can barely walk, then humiliating them and presumably worse. When she encounters an acquaintance from med school in the form of Bo Burnham’s Ryan, the two begin dating, though he ends up awakening a darker side to Cassie that seeks revenge for something that happened back during their school days. (Honestly, if you’re already sold, just skip to the next movie. That’s all I want you to know before watching it.)

I was ready to love Fennell’s movie when it opened with a disgusting shot of gross stock market bros in loose-fitting suits gyrating in slow motion before one of them tries to pick up a totally soused Cassie at the club. It’s a scene that really plays itself out quite well, and then leads into Mulligan’s character allowing another clear scumbag (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, maybe as a slight-older McLovin?) before turning the tables on him as well.

There’s going to be a lot of talk about this movie after people see it, since it’s one of those great films that begins a lot of conversations. I imagine most women of a certain age will love it, but some men might see themselves in some of the characters (even Burnham’s) and wonder whether Cassie just won’t take crap from any man or if she’s a full-on misandrist. One thing we do know a lot is that she does this sort of thing a lot, and there’s something from her past that has driven her involving something that happened to her female friend in med school. I’m going to stop talking about the plot here, because I definitely don’t want to spoil anything who hasn’t seen the movie, but the second half of the movie is as deeply satisfying as Tarantino’s Kill Bill in terms of the surprises.

You’ll realize while watching what a treat you’re in for when you first watch Mulligan’s amazing transformation from pretending to be drunk to being completely cognizant and just all the emotions we see her go through after that. Of course, we never really know what she’s actually doing to the guys she lets pick her up -- she keeps a notebook with guy’s names and a quizzical counting system, so we can only imagine.

Fennell’s screenplay is fantastic but her work as a first-time director in maintaining the the tone and pacing of the movie is really what will keep you captivated, whether it’s the amazing musical choices or how Cassie dresses up to lure men. There’s also a great cast around Mulligan whether it’s comic Burnham in a relatively more serious role, but one that also allows him a musical number. (No joke.) Fennel’s amazing casting doesn’t just stop there from, Jennifer Coolidge as Cassie’s mother to Laverne Cox as Gail, her workmate/boss at the coffee shop – both of them add to the film’s subtle humor elements. Alfred Molina shows up to give a show-stopping performance, and Alison Brie also plays a more dramatic role as another one of Cassie’s classmates. I can totally understand why the Golden Globes might have deemed the movie a “comedy/musical” (for about two days before going back) , but putting so many funny people in dramatic roles helps give Promising Young Woman its own darkly humorous feel. All that darkness is contrasted by this sweet romance between Cassie and Ryan that’s always in danger of imploding due to Cassie’s troubled nature.

The biggest shocking surprise is saved for the third act, and boy, it’s going to be one that people will be talking about for a VERY long time, because it’s just one gut punch after another. I loved this movie, as it’s just absolutely brilliant – go back and see where it landed in my Top 10. As one of the best thrillers from the past decade, people will be talking about this for a very long time 

Promising Young Woman hits theaters on Christmas Day, and presumably, it will be available on VOD sometime in January, but this is not one you want to wait on. If you do go see it in theaters, just be safe, please. No making out with random men or women, please.

Regina King’s narrative feature debut, ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI... (Amazon Studios), will ALSO be in theaters on Christmas Day, and though I’ve reviewed it over at Below the Line, but I’ll talk a little more about it here just for my loyal Weekend Warrior readers.

Yet another movie that made my Top 10, this one stars a brilliant quartet of actors --  Kingsley Ben-Adir, Leslie Odom Jr., Aldis Hodge and Eli Goree—as four legendary black icons: Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay, on the night after the last of them wins the World Boxing Championship against Sonny Liston in February 1964. The four men meet in Malcolm X’s hotel room to discuss what’s happening in their lives and the world in general, as well as Clay’s decision to join the Nation of Islam, just as Malcolm X is getting ready to leave the brotherhood due to philosophical differences with the group. In fact, all four men have philosophical differences that are discussed both in good humor and in deep conflict as they disagree on their place in a white-dominated world in a year before the Civil Rights Act would be signed.

First of all, there’s no way to talk about this movie without discussing the Kemp Powers play on which it’s based, and we can’t mention that without mentioning that Powers also co-wrote and co-directed Pixar’s Soul, which will be available on Disney+ this Friday. It’s a fantastic script and King put together a fantastic cast of actors who really give their all to every scene. In the case of Leslie Odom, Jr., you really can believe him as Cooke, especially in a number of fantastic performances pieces. Likewise, Goree looks a lot like Clay both in the ring and out, carrying all of the swagger for which he would become more famous as Ali.

I’ve seen the movie twice already and if you’ve looked at my Top 10, then you already know this is another one that made my cut, so I don’t think I need to give it a much harder sell. I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot about this one on its journey to Oscar night when hopefully, King becomes the first woman of color to be nominated in the directing category. Or rather, she’ll probably tie for that honor with Nomadland director Chloé Zhao.

If you don’t feel like going to theaters for this one, you’ll be able to catch it on Amazon Prime Video on January 15, too… you’ll just have to wait a little longer.

Also, the new Pixar animation movie, SOUL, directed by Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out) and co-directed by Kemp Powers (remember him?), will hit Disney+ on Christmas Day, and I reviewed it here, so I probably don’t have  lot more to say about it, but it’s great, and if you have Disney+, I’m sure you’ll be watching it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a screener for Matteo Garrone’s PINNOCHIO (Roadside Attractions), which also opens in about 700 theaters on Christmas Day. This adaptation stars Robert Benigni as Geppeto, who famously starred as Pinocchio in his own version of the classic fairy tale from 2002. That other movie was “Weinsteined” at a time when that just meant that a movie was ruined by Harvey Weinstein’s meddling, rather than anything involving sexual assault.

Another great movie hitting streaming this week is Eugene Ashe’s SYLVIE’S LOVE, which streams on Amazon Prime Video today. It stars Tessa Thompson as Sylvie and Nnamdi Asomugha (also a producer on the film) as Robert, who meet one summer in the late 50s while working at Sylvie’s father’s record store. He is a jazz musician who is on the rise, but their romance is cut short when he gets a gig in Paris but she refuses to go with him. Also, she’s pregnant with his child. Years later, they reconnect with her now being married with a young daughter (clearly Robert’s) and they realize that the love between them is still very real and true.

This is the first of three movies I watched this week where I went in with very little knowledge and absolute zero expectations. Like everyone else on earth, I am an avid fan of Ms. Thompson’s work both in movies like Thor: Ragnarok and smaller indies. She’s just a fantastic presence that lights up a screen. While I wasn’t as familiar with Asomugha’s acting work – he’s produced some great films and acted in a few I liked, included Crown Heights – there’s no denying the chemistry between the two.

What’s kind of interesting about the movie is that it combines a few elements from other great movies released this week, including Soul and A Night in Miami, but in my opinion, handles the music business aspect to the story better than the much-lauded Netflix movie, Ma Raimey’s Black Bottom. Frankly, I also think the performances by the two leads are as good as those by Boseman and Davis in that movie, but unfortunately, Amazon is submitting this to the Emmys as as “TV movie” rather than to the Oscars, so that’s kind of a shame.

This is a movie that’s a little hard to discuss why I enjoyed it so much without talking about certain scenes or moments, or just go through the entire story, but I think part of the joy of appreciating what Ashe has done in his second original feature film is to tell the story of these two characters over the course of a decade or so in a way that hasn’t been done before. That alone is quite an achievement, because we’ve seen many of those types of movies over the years (When Harry Met Sally, for instance).

What I really liked about Sylvie’s Love over some of the other “black movies” this year is that it literally creates its own world and just deals with the characters within it, rather than trying to make a big statement about the world at the time. Maybe you can say the same about Soul in that sense, but you would be absolutely amazed by how much bigger an audience you can get by telling a grounded story in a relatable world, and then throw in a bit of music, as both those movies do.

So that’s all I’ll say except that this will is now on Amazon Prime Video , so you have no excuse not to check it out while you wait for Regina King’s equally great One Night in Miami to join it in mid-January.

Hitting Netflix on Christmas day is Robert Rodriguez’s WE CAN BE HEROES, his sequel to his 2005 family film The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl – not his best moment -- which follows the kids of the Heroics, a Justice League-like super group. They’re all in a special school for kids with powers but they have to step up when the Heroics are captured by aliens. Want to know what will happen? Well, you’ll just have to wait for Christmas Day for when my review drops to find out whether I liked it more or less than Rodriguez’s earlier film which SPOILER!! I hated.)

The first thing you need to get past is that Shark Boy and Lava Girl are now man and wife, and just that fact might be tough for anyone who only discovered the movie sometime more recently. There are other familiar faces in the Heroics like Pedro Pascal, Sung Kang, Christian Slater, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and more, so clearly, Rodriguez is still able to pull together a cast.

The movie actually focuses on YaYa Goselin’s Missy Moreno, daughter of the Heroic’s leader (Pascal) who has also retired. Just as aliens are invading the earth, Missy is put into a school of kids with superpowers, all kids of various Heroic members. Sure, it’s derived directly from The X-Men and/or Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, so yeah… basically also the X-Men. We meet all of the kids in a great scene where we see them using their powers and learn their personalities, and honestly, they really are the best part of the movie.Probably the most adorable is Guppy, the very young daughter of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, played by Viven Blair. Oddly, Missy doesn’t have any powers so she feels a bit fish-out-of-water in the group even though, like her father, she proves to be a good leader.

As much as I really detested Rodriguez’s Shark Boy and Lava Girl movie, I feel like he does a lot better by having a variety of kids in this one, basically something for everyone, but also not a bad group of child actors. (There’s also a fun role for Adriana Barraza​.) There are definitely aspects that are silly, but Rodriguez never loses sight of his audience, and wisely, Netflix is offering this as a Christmas Day release which should be fun for families with younger kids who might see this as their first superhero movie.

More discerning viewers may not be particularly crazy about visual FX, all done as usual in Rodriguez’s own studio but some of them look particularly hoaky and cheap compared to others. (I mean, that’s probably the appeal for hiring Rodriguez because he’s able to do so much in-house. In this case, he got all four of his own kids involved in various capacities of making the film.)

We Can Be Heroes is clearly a movie made for kids, so anyone expecting anything on part with Amazon’s The Boys will be quite disappointed. It’s probably Rodriguez getting slightly closer to Spy Kids than he has with any of his other family-friendly movies, but one shouldn’t go in with the expectations that come with any of the much bigger blockbusters released these days. Personally, I enjoyed that fact, and I totally would watch another movie with this superteam.

Michel Stasko’s BOYS VS. GIRLS (Gravitas Ventures) is a fun retro-comedy that follows a war between the male and female counselors at Camp Kindlewood, which has just gone co-ed. At the center of it all is Dale (Eric Osborne) and Amber (Rachel Dagenais) as two teens who are in the middle of a meet-cute romance in the middle of a inter-gender competition called “Lumberman vs. Voyagers,” which I have no idea whether it’s a real thing or not.

I probably should have known I’d like this one from the catchy New Order-ish song in the opening credits, but listen, Wet Hot American Summer is one of my all-time favorite movies, and that was basically made to satirize ‘80s movies like Meatballs. This one falls more towards to the latter in terms of humor, but it also feels authentic to the ‘80s summer camp experience.

It helps that the grown-ups at the camp are played by the likes of Kevin McDonald from New Kids on the Block, Colin Mochrie from Whose Line is It Anyway and others, but it’s really about the younger cast playing teen boys and girls in the throes of puberty, something we all can in some way relate to. The young cast play a series of stereotypical young but there are a lot of funny tropes within them, as each of the cast is given a chance to deliver some of the funnier gags. This isn’t necessarily high-brow humor, mind you, but I love the fact that you can still make a movie about a time where you could still make fun of girl’s periods in school. (I’m kidding. I just put that in there cause I feel like I need to throw things like that into this column just to see if anyone is ACTUALLY reading it.)

The presumably Canadian Stasko is another great example of an independently-spirited filmmaker who has an idea for a fun movie and then just goes about making it, regardless of having big stars or anything to sell it besides many funny moments that can be featured a trailer, so that those who like this kind of movie will find it. Listen, Wet Hot American Summer wasn’t a huge hit when it was released. I still remember it having trouble getting a single screening at the multiplex in Times Square when it was released but over the years since it became sort of a cult hit (kind of due to Netflix having it to rent on DVD, I think).

Besides a fun script and cast, Stasko also find a way to include tunes that sound so much like real ‘80s songs we would have heard on the radio but aren’t quite the big hits that would have cost him thousands of dollars, but I really just enjoyed the heck out of the tone and overall fun attitude that went into making this movie.

Also on VOD now is Ian Cheney and Martha Shane’s fascinating and funny doc, THE EMOJI STORY (Utopia), which I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival when it was called “Picture Character.” (That’s what “emoji” in Japanese means, just FYI.) As you can guess it’s about the origins and rise of the emoji as a form of communication from its humble beginning in Japan to becoming one of the biggest trending crazes on the globe. I’m not that big an Emoji guy myself – I tend to use the thumbs up just for ease, but I do marvel at those who can put together full thoughts using a string of these symbols, and if you want to know more about them, this is the movie you should watch.

Now let’s cut ahead to some of the movies that will be opening and streaming NEXT week…

Hitting select theaters on Wednesday, December 30 and what really is my “FEATURED FLICK” for this column is Hungarian filmmaker Kornél (White God) Mundruczó’s PIECES OF A WOMAN (Netflix) before its streaming premiere on Netflix January 7.

Written by Kata Wéber, who also wrote Mundruczó’s earlier film, it stars Vanessa Kirby (The Crown) and Shia Labeouf as Martha and Sean Weiss, a Boston couple who lose their baby during a particularly difficult home birth and follows the next year in their lives and how that tragic loss affects their relationship with each other and those around them.

As you can imagine, Pieces of a Woman is a pretty heavy drama, one that reminded me of the films of Todd Field (Little Children, In the Bedroom) in terms of the intensity of the drama and the emotions on screen from the brilliant cast Mundruczó put together for his English language debut. I’m not sure I could use the general plot to sell anyone on seeing this because it is very likely the worst possible date movie of the year after Netflix’s 2019 release, Marriage Story, but it’s just as good in terms of the writing and performances.

At the center of it is Kirby – and yeah, I still haven’t watched The Crown, so shut up! I’ll get to it!!! – who most of us fell in love with for her role in Mission: Impossible - Fallout, but what we see her go through as an actress here really shows the degree of her abilities. But it also shows what Mundruczó can do with material that (like many movies) started out as a play. For instance, one of the first big jaw-dropping moments is the home birth scene that goes on for a long time, seemingly all in one shot, and Kirby is so believable in terms of a woman going through a difficult birth, you’d believe she has had children herself. (She hasn’t.)  I also don’t want to throw Shia Labeouf under the bus right now just because that seems like the trendy thing to do. (Without getting it, I believe FKA Twigs… but that doesn’t deny the fact that Labeouf is just the latest great actor that everyone wants to cancel.)

Anyway, to change the subject, we have to talk about Ellen Burstyn, who plays Martha’s meddling mother, who is quite clingy and overbearing, so when the couple lose their baby, she steps in to take to task the midwife she deems responsible (played by the highly-underrated Molly Parker). Or rather, she hires a family lawyer (Sarah Snook) to take her to court to get compensation for the loss of her daughter’s baby. The film’s last act culminates as their case goes to court.

Again, the film covers roughly a year after the tragedy and deals not only with how Martha and Sean’s relationship is affected and how it emotionally affects Martha in particular, but also how others around them start behaving towards them. It feels so authentic and real that you wonder where the screenwriter was drawing from, but Mundruczó has more than prove himself as as filmmaker by creating something that is visually compelling and even artsy while still doing everything to help promote the story and performances over his own abilities as a director. Doesn’t hurt that he has composer Howard Shore scoring the film in a way that’s subtle but effective.

Listen, if you’re looking for a comedy riot that will entertain you with funny one-liners and pratfalls than Pieces of a Woman is not for you. This is a devastating movie that really throws the viewer down a deep spiral along with its characters. The first time I watched it, I was left quite broken, and maybe even more so on second viewing.  (As we get closer to Oscar season… in four months … I hope this film will be recognized and not just thrown under the table due to Labeouf’s involvement. That would be as big a tragedy and misjustice as much of what happens in the movie.)

So yeah, in case you wondered why this also made it into my prestigious Top 10 for the year, that is why. :)

Also in theaters on Wednesday, December 30 is another terrific drama, the Phyllida Lloyd-directed HERSELF (Amazon Studios), co-written and starring Clare Dunne, as Sandra, a mother of two young girls, trying to get out of an abusive marriage, while making ends meet and providing shelter for her kids. One day, she learns about a way that she can build her own home, and one of the women she cares for offers a plot of land

Another movie that I really didn’t know much about going into, other than Phyllida Lloyd being a talented filmmaker whose movie The Iron Maiden, which won Meryl Streep her 500th Oscar, I enjoyed much more than the popular blockbuster hit musical, Mamma Mia! This is a far more personal story that reminded me of Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, a smaller and more intimate character piece that shines a light on British actor Clare Dunne, who as with some of the best and most personal movie projects, co-wrote this screenplay for herself to act in.

There are aspects to the film that reminds me of many other quaint Britcoms in terms of creating a story where one person’s challenge is taken up by others who are willing to help, and in this case, it’s Sandra’s desire to build a house for her two quite adorable daughters while also trying to keep it secret from her abusive ex.

Dunne’s performance isn’t as showy as some of the other dramatic performances mentioned in this very column, but she and Lloyd do a fine job creating an authenticity that really makes you believe and push for her character, Sandra, surrounding her with characters who can help keep the movie on the lighter side despite very serious nature of spousal abuse (which also rears its ugly head in Pieces of a Woman). Oh, and don’t get too comfortable, because this, too, leads to an absolutely shocking and devastating climax you won’t see coming. (Well, now you will… but you’ll still be shocked. Trust me.)

Still, it’s a really nice movie with the house being built clearly a metaphor.  I know there’s a lot of truly fantastic movies discussed in this week’s column but don’t let this wonderful British drama pass you by, because you can tell it’s a labor of love for everyone who made it.

Herself will be in theaters for roughly a week starting December 30 before streaming on Prime Video on January 8.

In select theaters and on VOD on New Year’s Day is Roseanne Liang’s WWII thriller SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (Vertical/Redbox Entertainment), starring Chloë Grace Moretz as Flight Officer Maude Garrett, who is assigned to deliver a top-secret package on the B-17 bomber “The Fool’s Errand” with an all-male crew that throws her into a turret “for her own safety.” She ends up getting trapped down there as the plane is attacked by a creature that no one believes is out there, as they fight back against the unseen enemy, many secrets are revealed.

This is yet another movie I didn’t know that much about other than it has Moretz on an airplane, but there’s so much about the movie that both had me scratching my head but also has me quite deliriously amused that filmmakers could get away with some of the craziness that we witness. Maybe it’s not a surprise that the movie was co-written by Max Landis -- not exactly the most beloved screenwriter in Hollywood these days, and certainly not a critical favorite.

Again I really didn’t know what to expect so after Moretz’s character gets on the plane and is trapped in the turret under the plane, I thought that maybe I was seeing something similar to the one-location thriller 7500, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which I wasn’t too big a fan of even though the actor was good. Moretz continues to be quite a phenomenal actor, but the mix of Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper’s music, which borrows as much from Soulwax (look ‘em up on Spotify) as John Carpenter, and the sexist attitude by the male crew towards Garrett made me unsure of what the movie was meant to say.

Much of the movie just has Moretz on her own with the men’s voices over the comms, which is not something that could possibly sustain a whole movie. Part of it is borrowed from a very well-known episode of “The Twilight Zone,” in fact.

but fortunately, it breaks from out of that deceit but then just starts getting crazier and crazier. I’m not even gonna tell you about what happens or what’s in the box Garrett is carrying or where things go, because honestly, I don’t think you would believe me.

I haven’t seen any of Ms. Liang’s previous films but when you realize how much crazy stuff she’s able to get way with, I’ll be really interested what she does next. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any movie that’s quite as crazy as Shadow in the Cloud or one that makes me want to watch it again for that very reason.

Oscar-winning Icarus director Bryan Fogel’s doc THE DISSIDENT (Briarcliff), which opens in theaters Friday then will be On Demand January 8, follows the horrific assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in September 2018, thought to be the work of the Saudi kingdom and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman aka MBS.

I’m really fascinated by movies like this one and Ryan White’s recent Assassins – both which could be in the Best Documentary race at the Oscars in April, by the detective and investigative work done by both filmmakers to get to the bottom of murders that shouldn’t be possible and find those that are responsible. I’ll admit that I didn’t really pay much attention to this story when it was happening a few years back, so I don’t know how much of the details are new and exclusive to Fogel’s doc. He does get access to Kashouggi’s fiancé Hatice who had gone with Jamal to the Saudi embassy in Turkey to get proof that he was single and could marry when he vanished for days and then turne up dead.

Fogel also meets with another Saudi dissident now living in Quebec who goes through the events that led up to Kashouggi’s murder that involved a social media campaign against the journalist within a country where 80% of the population is on Twitter (!).

This is another fascinating doc by Fogel that I’m sure some will be more interested in due to its subject, but when it comes to investigative pieces that really take a deep dive into news from the headlines, Fogel has created another unforgettable doc.  (Also, it was absolutely little surprise to me that Fogel’s film is co-written by Mark Monroe, who has been involved with some of the best docs I’ve seen over the past 15 years or so…  just look up his IMDB credits!)

Opening at the Film Forum Virtual Cinema in New York for a one-week qualifying run is Russia’s movie for Oscar consideration, Andrei Kochalovsky’s DEAR COMRADES! (NEON), a black and white dark dramedy set in 1960s Kruschchev-era Russia. It involves a strike by locomotive workers when the government raises food prices, leading to chaos and a massacre that leaves a Communist party loyalist,  Lyuda (played by Julia Vysotskaya) who the film then follows. Unfortunately, I had a choice of either writing this column or watching this two-hour movie. I opted for the former (obviously) but I do hope to get to this later in the week and should be adding more on this movie once I do.

Also streaming in Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema starting next Wednesday, December 30, is Mario Monicelli’s 1960 film, The Passionate Thief.

Unfortunately, I also wasn’t able to get to Two Ways Home (Gravitas Ventures), In Corpore or Fire Will Come, which will open in Metrograph’s digital ticketing system.

Metrograph will also continue showing Tsia Ming-Liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong, and lots of great programming over the holidays. It would be a great time to get yourself or a loved one a digital membership for just $50! (James Gray is also programming some of his own films like Little Odesssa and other favorites, like Richard Quine’s Strangers When We Meet, over the holidays.)

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest! 

[timeaftertime-chriscornellfanfic]

Chapter 7 - I’m Entering Without A Sound

Seattle Washington, July 29 1980

(Andi is 18, Chris is 16)

CHRIS: "I'm sorry if the shirt's a little big..." I say as Andi comes out of the bathroom, her gorgeous dark curls falling down around her shoulders as she adjusts the Black Sabbath Master Of Reality shirt  - her favorite Sabbath album by the way - that I was able to find for her in a thrift store downtown.

"That's ok, I like the leggings though," She says so cutely as she looks down at the black distressed leggings I picked out at the same store with a pair of old Doc Marten's.

" - and the boots are a little scuffed up but - "

"No, it's perfect, I love them," She says glancing back at me with those beautiful brown eyes, flipping her curls out of her face.

n the months since I met her - well really since she randomly just showed up in my bathroom - Andi and I have become really close. Incredibly close in fact. When she first got here she ended up staying here in this time for a couple of weeks and obviously since she didn't have a place to stay, I asked her to stay in the basement with me. Not to you know, like, do anything of course - even though I imagine it all the fucking time- but since there was a spare room at the back with just a box spring and a mattress, I made a makeshift little bed for her grabbing blankets and anything I could find in the house. When I went to go and make sure that it was alright with my mom, Andi stopped me and told me not to.

For a little while, it felt like I was hiding her in the basement since she pretty much refused to go with me anywhere, like when I had band practice or when I had to work. Obviously she wouldn't be able to come to work with me but, you know what I mean. She was so afraid that she would 'mess up' things in this time if she interacted with people aside from me. Even though she already met my mom once really quickly, Andi insisted that I can't tell my mom because of the whole 'messing up things' in this time.

It was confusing at first but I understood, and I really loved having Andi here with me. We pretty much bonded over music, laying on the floor of my basement in front of my stereo, talking about our favorite bands and listening to hours and hours of The Beatles, Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd. She told me more about the bands from her time like Guns N Roses, Metallica and Slayer. She explained that Slayer was like an even more demonic version of Venom, but even faster, bridging on speed metal - whatever that is. She told me she's been trying to work on playing Slash's solo part in 'Sweet Child O' Mine' from Guns N Roses, but she can't seem to get the tone right.

'There's just something about the way he plays it' she said. 'I just can't get it quite right'

I just love the way she talks about her music. The way her eyes light up when she explains how it makes her feel, it's the exact same feeling I get. She just knows... she gets me. Every time she says she wishes she could just play it for me, once again, she's afraid it will affect the time line - or something - and probably because I don't have a guitar here for her to show me. Maybe I'll fix that soon...

I told her more about my band - The Jones Street Band - a cover band obviously named after the next street over where we practice. We play everything from AC/DC to Rush to even punk shit like the Ramones. I really love it when we get into covering some Police tunes, since being a drummer, I can really just go all out y'know?

When I saw her leave the first time, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. She was obviously worried about how I would react but it wasn't anything that scared me. It was actually really amazing and sad to see her disappear. Sad in the sense that I had no idea when she would show up again or if she would show up again but amazing in the sense that there are some things in this world you can't explain. Magical moments that can change your life forever. She warned me before it happened, taking my hand and thanking me for letting her stay and just as she touched me, her clothes fell to the floor and she was gone.

When she came back a month later, I was actually surprised. I honestly thought that I was never going to see her again. She once again appeared in my bathroom, completely naked and it was hilarious because I was in there taking a shower when it happened. She scared the shit out of me. I scrambled for a couple of towels to cover us both as I helped her up to sit on the toilet seat. After she was able to catch her breath, we both just started laughing. She was probably laughing at my girly scream 'cause I swear, I thought I was going to die. Ok, I'm being dramatic but seriously, she really startled me. That's when I decided to make sure I left some clothes for her.

The third time was in June and she ended up staying here for another couple of weeks. During that time we just basically spent everyday together. Since she is still going to school, I asked her how in the hell does she keep up with everything especially since she ends up leaving for periods of time. All she would say is that she manages and that she is able to keep up alright.

When she left that third time, that's when I knew I was falling for her. I had never experienced the amount loneliness like I had when she left that third time. I missed her so much, way more than I thought I could ever miss anyone in my life. She had become my best friend and when she left I knew, I wanted to be just more than friends with her. There just isn't any way that I could tell her yet. Even now, because I don't want to end up messing up the time line either.

Damn, this is complicated.

Before she left though, she did tell me little bit more about how we met in her time and left me a list of dates of when she would be here. When I asked her how she knew when she would be here, she just shrugged and said that she just knew. She was pretty vague on explaining when we would meet for the first time for her, but she said we would meet backstage in the dressing room at The Central on February 13th 1988 but she wouldn't tell me much more than that. Other than when we do meet, to go easy on her and to not say too much because once again she was afraid that she would mess up the time line which would defeat the existence of those dates she gave me which may make it so I would never see her again, but here she is, her beautiful self standing in my living room as she ties up the bottom of the Black Sabbath shirt I found for her.

"Thank you for um... leaving some clothes for me this time, I forgot to say something the last time but I didn't know if I was coming back here or not," She says.

"You're welcome," I say and we sit down in our usual spot on the floor in front of my stereo.

"Um... I'm sorry I hate to ask but, I'm really hungry. Would you happen to have anything - ?" She looks at me with those beautiful dark eyes furrowing her brow.

"Oh yea, of course... jeeze don't be sorry. Um... is a sandwich ok?" I ask as I stand up.

"Anything," She exhales. I give her a small smile and head to the basement stairs, climbing 2 at a time and make my way into the kitchen. Realizing I'm hungry myself, I quickly make us both a sandwich, grab 2 cans of Coke and hurriedly make my way back downstairs.

"Did you write this?" She asks, holding a piece of paper in her hands and flipping her curls out of her face.

"Uhhh... yea but - " I cut myself off and scramble over to the floor, setting the sandwiches and drinks down on the coffee table and quickly take the paper from her hand.

"You're not supposed to see that - I mean it's not finished yet," I say nervously, feeling my voice shake as she looks at me confused.

"What is it?" She asks so cutely, shuffling a little closer to me.

"Um..." I hesitate.

"Is it a poem?" She grins.

"No, not really" I say glancing over the messiness that is my handwriting, a combination of lower and upper case letters scribbled across the page.

"Is it a song?" She raises her eyebrow with a cute little smirk spreading across those perfect full but tiny lips. I glance at her and begin to feel nervous and look back down at the page, then quickly fold it up.

"No, it's... it's nothing," I exhale, running my fingers through my hair.

"Chris, come on tell me, what is it?" She asks so sweetly. I glance back at her and I realize she's moved even closer to me, and all I want to do is just kiss those perfect lips of hers.

"Uh, here... you um, said you were hungry?" I change the subject, stuffing the paper in my jeans pocket and grab one of the sandwiches I made and offer it to her.

"Yea," She says her expression falling a little as she takes it from me, taking a bite. Suddenly she stops eating and sets the sandwich back down on the plate and I can tell by the expression on her face that she isn't feeling well.

"Andi?"

"Chris, I think I have to go," She says.

"No, wait you just got here," I say worriedly reaching for her hand.

"I know, bu -but I'll be back -" She stammers a little which is normal when she's about to go.

"Andi -?"

"Bye Chris,"

"Wait - " and as she leans in to hug me, all that is left is her clothes in a slump on the floor.

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

[chorusofravenousangels]

Tagged for D/s and hypnokink

You make an announcement. Aloud. Speech is good. It keeps you going in a direction when the internals start looping. In your powerful voice, you announce, you portend:

“My sleep schedule is fucked. But! I’m getting somewhere. So that’s killer.”

“Because academia is like that, in my limited experience. Academia is the eternal balancing, it’s tearing up the boards of the steamship and using them for fuel to make harbour. That’s where I am now. I’ve got this plan. And it’s impossible. But it’s not, somehow.”

“In a week, I’ll have the paper done. Complete! Forever. And then I can sleep.”

“Aaand yeeet, I cannot conceive of existing, with a paper done, a week from now! What I can conceive of, just barely, is drinking enough coffee, and getting enough sleep, to read through thirteen articles and one introduction of a group of collected essays on the cognitive science behind the perception of colour, and make helpful notes to reference later. Not only that, I’m fuckin jazzed about it. The coffee is helping with that, but this late in the game, I can see progress. I am Achieving Concrete Goals besides one book a day, which is a shitty but necessary goal.”

“And that is why! I! Am! Powering myself up in the mirror! Baby!”

“What is up, Rosalie! I am up! At noon! Which is plenty of time to read! So! Great! Job! Okay.”

“And then! After that! I will even shave my damn ass legs!”

“Whoof. hello gay Rosalie. It is but a day in Shakespeare’s garden, and Shakespeare hast bitten thee on thine... leg, or something. Ugh. Bad job Rosalie, minus three points. Run a lap.”

You lean on the counter.

“It.”

That’s a start. Direction.

“Would be good to have the time for this nonsense. But I don’t. I don’t. As much as I have feelings, I do not.”

“What I do have is awareness of O’Connor’s principles of, fuckin, white balance and microtint, and there are the theories around ultraviolet, which, I know. I am actually aware of that stuff, and I have notes. So four days is, yes, less than I wanted, but. Cry me a river and all, I can’t do anything else tonight, so I have to either try to sleep, or try to... do work, sooo...”

You play with the taps for a few seconds pointlessly, on and off in both hands, the way that fucks with the inner workings over time. Reading, writing, the entire scope of the project, sleep, shower, gender, the impossible chasm of the future, the weakness of your frame. You’re looping, you’ve been silent for too long.

“So. Fuck it. Okay. What can I even do right now. I can. Take a shower, and chill for a second, and decide.”

Shower cap. Water on, wait for it to get hot. Bathroom fan. The habits, the ritual of the shower makes it hard to talk. Narrating your thoughts interrupts your half-thought actions. You try a couple of times.

“So. After this, um... maaaybe food? Have I eaten? I kinda had a meal... maybe should I order Indian?...”

You drop back into musing silently, though, and your body does the things it needs to do. Razor, shaving cream, warm your stomach under the hot water before you shave below. Your wandering mind tells you it’s glad you’ve got these little affirming rituals, at least, and you resolve to order food and give up on figuring things out for now.

Lavender soap on the shelf as you shave. A lovely birthday purchase, a luxury that makes you smile every time you see it. Little floral touches for Rose-a-lee.

Hey, you’re smiling! Great work, you! And then food, probably! Oh, oops, stopped shaving, next step. Shoulders. Does everyone have to shave their shoulders? You hear about shaving your back, but shoulders seem uncommon. You should ask Miranda.

You mean, later, obviously. That’s decided.

Rinse, hot, soap, loofah. Scrub through the normal bodily paths that loop like a jumpsuit over and around your feet and then back up the backs of your thighs, the lower back and the places you can’t quite reach alone. Rinse.

Just for a second, your hands and face press the cold shower wall. Just thirty seconds, feeling something between sexual energy from the ridiculous fuck-me pose and exhaustion held behind your eyes in strained pouches, letting the cool and the hot bathe you, germs be fucked. Just a bit, listening to the music of the shower.

Oh, it’s music now! That’s where you am in the sleep cycle. White noise becoming snatches of music. Sometimes it’s radio voices announcing car commercials or football games, but you like the music best.

A little moment of beauty.

Your ear gets lost following hundreds of little threads, reminded of dozens of songs, drifting on the overwhelming soft wash of noise like ghosts in fogbanks.

You realize you’ve been listening to (imagining you’re listening to) an old Jason Mraz song for what feels like half a chorus, and cackle at the absurdity as you warm your face in one last wash of hot water.

“It’s the remedy, baby! Fuck yeah! It’s the experience! It is extremely a very dangerous liaison!”

Your love of your own stupid, bold, confident voice fills the tiny, misty room, and you can’t help laughing again. “Yeah fuckerman! I’m back! Indian food and probably even a fuckin book after. I eat books for breakfast! And Indian for dinner!”

And like that, you’re balancing again, not like the steamship captain weighing fuel against structural integrity. Like a bicyclist at full speed on a narrow path.

“The only trick is not stopping, right?”

You stare into the mirror. Your eyes are wide, your skin is filthy. So close.

You’re forgetting to breathe. You gasp air.

This is al

“most certainly because I haven’t stopped.” Mumbling is not great. Feeling oily is bad. So.

“Gotta shower. Edit shape. I will be in it, and also, in the shower. Hell yes. Rosalie, baby, you done did it.” Pants off, clothes following, messy pile. “So close.”

Socks, underwear. “Full pot of coffee maaay have been too much. No. Relevant. Necessary. I am very smart.” You giggle a bit. Keep yourself talking. Give yourself direction before you wander off. Shower! Filthy. Wake you up, get yourself a shave! “Hell yes.”

“Hell. *Yes*.”

Shower cap, glasses on. “Babe, I’m tryin,” you murmur. Left a sock on, fix that. More coffee? “No. Shower time, baby girl. Gotta get in there.”

“Listen,” you slur. You do better, speechwise, stepping into the heat. “Listen, schweetheaht.” That was on purpose so it’s okay. “We both know you’re barely holdin’ it togethah. So. Fine. Soap an’ stuff, and maybe... a nap? Nooo, nap is a bad idea. Mmph, need to ed-dit. So. So.”

You are staring blankly at the razor. You don’t have time for the razor. You don’t have attention for the razor. You can raze later. You’ll call a TV station and hold a fund-razor.

Oooh this is bad. Soap. Soap face. Habit begins. “Yesss. Lavender.” Soap across you in silence, my brain hardly holding onto anything.

It’s a bit foggy, actually. Oh, yeah, glasses still on. For razor. You grumble and toss them onto the laundry heap. You miss and they clatter across the hard tiles but they’re fine. Fuck. Soap. More soap. Not using the loofah. You groan in frustration, but hell, you’re almost done now and at least this will get the academic sweat smell of the all nighter off of you.

“Too many coffee times.”

There. Rinsing clean. Front...

Back.

Front again, listening, because something. Is that the Carpenters? Or someone covering the Carpenters. No, now it’s “Lovefool”. Which is the Cardigans, not the Carpenters, but close. Oh, and now it’s that orchestral bit from the Beatles, the one song. With the yellow matter custard gross bit?

You surprise yourself with the press of the cold corner of the shower stall against your back and ass. Losing your balance is also bad, but a determined part of you knows you can’t go to sleep yet. Standing here might be as much as you can manage for a minute or two.

Don’t slip.

The music is still there with you, though, and you don’t want to talk or snap yourself out of this half-daze in case it goes away, because it’s beautiful today. Strings arpeggiate thick, beautiful chords. Shadow voices hum and cross over and back again in loops, open into luxurious, unafraid vowels, shimmer as they become brass sections that move in soppy, overdramatic unison, no oom-pahs here. Everywhere you direct your attention there is something, so you don’t, you let it wash you as the water washes you.

You think to yourself, Is this dying? Am I dying?

You think to yourself, If I am, it’s beautiful, and you don’t move.

The throb of the music is like crystals shaking together, like wind chimes strung together into nature’s gamelan, and you wish you had the brain to understand any of it, and then that’s swept away in wonder too with the hum of what is both radio static and impossibly a terribly beautiful sequence of chords buzzing fruit scents and lightning into the air sweet April mornings bright grandfather clocks the sound is become all senses black and yellow spinning glorious disco ball spearmint moan and soft, soft thunder until in an instant you have seen her and before you know it it stops

You do not know how long it takes you to come back into your mind, but you dimly register that by the time it happens, she has straightened and is facing you. You hardly know how you know she is she, because she is a dimly curling shape in the shower-fog, slim shoulders and hair that drifts to one side, the suggestion of eyes where drops patter off or through her and glimmer. Then you remember you heard it through the music.

You wish you had your glasses, but you’re not moving. It’s you and her, and the music has stopped, and you know what that means because you’ve heard enough of her song.

The shower hisses and splats without her voice, and you miss it achingly already. Deeply. You’re speaking.

“Please don’t go. Please stay.”

The woman in front of you... you don’t have your glasses you wish you could read her expression, but in fog and myopia she is a double suggestion, and so you don’t realize she has come closer until you feel

something

on your ear, thrilling like a drop of ice cold water as your nerves try to understand, and then

close to you

she sings.

You awaken--

No.

You come to in the computer chair, three-quarters through your editing, dressed in fresh clothes, and somehow it feels impossible to stop, which makes sense, after all you’re on a roll, and then the thing is done and it’s only 1PM, plenty of time to go drop it off and head back home, and you’re on the bus, and you’re home, and you’ve done it, your stomach is full of lunch, and it’s time to sleep, but first, you walk into the bathroom and stare into the mirror, not quite believing it happened, that you did it all, that

you never

do your makeup

when you go out.

Gingerly you close the bathroom door. You remove your clean clothes reverentially, fold them, place them on top of the laundry pile (you are not leaving the bathroom now, not on the cusp of this). Your hand moves to the water-stained steel shower faucet, badly cleaned four months ago, and hesitates. But you’ve always needed to know answers to terrible questions, and so, Rosalie, you turn the faucet on and leave the bathroom fan off, like you did this morning, and you steel yourself, and you step into the shower.

A minute passes, and there is no music. Your chest grows heavy with the heartbreak of it, with one beautiful hallucination ardently believed. Sleep deprivation has made a fool of you, and the pouches behind your eyes start to hurt with the power of your own deception.

But of course you can’t give up here, and so you open your mouth to say,

That is--

You want to say,

...something, but nothing comes out;

and as you think back over the course of the day, you can’t remember speaking to keep yourself on track. You remember direction, and doing what was necessary; you remember being at peace and powerful.

You can’t remember speaking at all since this morning, and when the music returns, behind you, close in your ear, a part of you in the thrill recognizes a new member of the spectral choir, before you are gently washed clean of thought and the thrill is all that is left.

[supersymmetries]

i got some time to kill and took the liberty of transcribing it! i put it under a cut bc it gets loooong:

[I'd rather die young than old and lame," Muse's Matt Bellamy talks about fame, death, mushroom-assisted amnesia and that blue hair in the Melody Maker Interview.

When The Maker put Muse on the cover back in February, it was because we already thought that they were a great band. Their debut album, "Showbiz", was shattering speakers and busting eardrums throughout the indie world and their gigs were getting the kind of response normally associated with healing the lame and raising the dead. Since that historic week, a manic schedule of over 50 festivals and God knows how many gigs around the world has put them on course for the serious big time. When frontman Matt Bellamy sidles into a flash London bar and signs a couple of autographs, with a cool polished by months of on-the-road adoration, we know that we're now dealing with a real star. But the surprising thing is, Matt doesn't yet seem to know it himself…

With the re-release of "Muscle Museum", everyone seems to expect you to get a little bit closer to being the next big thing. How does it feel? I saw a programme on The Beatles the other day and one of them said that when they were at their peak he felt like they were in the eye of a tornado and everything was spinning around them, but where they were was very calm. We're obviously nothing like as big as The Beatles, but it's starting to feel like that. I think while I'm still writing and making music I should be able to stay in control, but if that ever became a problem I could see myself getting swept away.

How is the new album coming along? The writing is going better than ever, because being in the environment I'm in there's so much to see and you learn so much about people. It is a completely unreal situation, but I think humans are very good at adapting. If you were thrown onto a planet where there were aliens and the gravity was different, you'd soon adapt to that and find happiness. In fact, I'd love to live somewhere where there was less gravity and you could just float around. I'm learning to fly at the moment-- I've got a para-motor which is an engine with a few propellers on your back and a parachute. I want to be the first person to cross the English Channel on one.

Isn't learning to fly the kind of thing retired rock stars do when their music gets mellow and boring? Muse seem to be going in the opposite direction, getting heavier and heavier. Yeah, most bands start out really edgy and hard and then mellow out. We've done the opposite to that-- we started out really pedestrian and boring and now we're getting more powerful and direct.

Boring? Which of your singles are boring? I think the last single, "Unintended", was a bit on the dull side. Sometimes we've got lost in the production and we're just trying to bring out what we're live a bit more. You'll have a more honest version of what we're like and that's a bit more hard-hitting, maybe.

What sort of themes are on the new album? There's a song about inflatable sex dolls-- called "Plug In Baby", I was looking in the window of this sex shop and there were all these devices for stimulating you and I started thinking about all the different things people are inventing to give us pleasure. There's also a lot of songs about morphing or changing your reality to something that's totally surreal and then adapting to that and accepting it as normal, so that everything else seems weird. Generally, it's more exciting than the stuff we've done before. It makes my heart beat faster and (Laughs) the tempo is generally a little bit faster.

You've been accused of being careerist--- do you think people will say you've decided to do a metal album because metal is the current thing? Ha! Yeah, we're just going to be metal for this album, next time we'll sound like the Aphex Twin, or something, whatever's popular at the time! People think "Showbiz" was our first album, but we'd done loads of things to get to that. there are certain early songs that I look back on now and think they were brilliant, because they were so simple.

What's it like going back home to Teignmouth now that you're becoming successful? Everyone's my best friend now. It's kind of fake and I like it. There are a couple of people who blatantly didn't like me and now they go, "Yeah! Best mates!" It's good fun, I miss the people I regard as my close friends, but Dom and Chris [the other members of Muse] are my closest friends. They know sides of me that no one else ever sees.

What sides of you do Dom and Chris see that nobody else does? They know that I'm immensely shy and that I don't think I'm a very good singer. I can sing when they're behind me, supporting me, but I can't sing to them. One time I was supposed to do a festival in Exeter on my own and I couldn't do it, because I had a fear that Dom or Chris would come into the audience and realize that I wasn't very good and not want me in the band anymore!

Is it a different Matt who appears onstage to the one who appears in everyday life? I think when I'm onstage that's the real me-- I've taken off some of the layers that we have around ourselves to avoid saying anything offensive. If I was like that normally, I'd get into a lot of fights. It's the same as if you're in love with someone, or if you're having sex, or if you're with really close friends, your inhibitions go away-- we'll I'm like that onstage.

Have you ever taken that attitude offstage and ended up getting into trouble? Many times. I've gotten into a couple of fights this week. I always know I'll lose, but that's what eggs me on for some reason. Once was when someone threw some beer over me at the Elle Style Awards. Another time I went to a pizza place near Leicester Square and it was closing, so the woman gave me some pizza for free, but then the bouncer just grabbed me and threw me down the stairs. I was really faffed off with that because it hurt! So I got the whole pizza and threw it into the restaurant and then ran a mile. I think that's a blue hair thing-- people thinking, "Who the fuck does he think he is?"

Blue explosion! What the fuck is going on with your hair? Me and Dom bleached our hair in Norway because everyone had white hair and we thought it looked cool. I looked like a dick, but I found that I didn't give a toss, so after that I thought I'd try dyeing it blue. I'm just enjoying the fact that I really don't care. I've lost the security that I used to have and in some ways that's a good thing, in some ways it's a bad thing. I'm enjoying the fact that I don't need to have a fixed idea of myself, I can just change all the time.

When was the first time you realized that you were famous? Just then! No one's ever put it that way before. Usually it's, "Do you think you're famous?" It's different all over the world. In Japan, it's the same old story, women falling over everywhere. I was alone in a lift with this woman over there and she started bowing at my feet. That's quite scary. She followed me into my bedroom, but I went, "No, it's gotta stop there." I can't deal with that. I don't find that kind of thing attractive. That whole groupie thing isn't something I've dived into. Yet.

Have you ever really disgusted yourself with your own rock star behavior? No, not really. Although me and Dom went out picking mushrooms near the studio recently and three days later I woke up in a sauna. It was so steamy and hot that I was deaf in one ear. I thought for a moment that I had gone deaf permanently and I was disgusted with myself then-- risking my hearing, you know what I mean? But if you can't do it when you're young, when can you do it? That's a song by TheAudience, isn't it? Haha!

In the classic rock cliche you should be in the middle of your "drug hell" now-- how's it going? When I did the first album, I didn't drink or smoke or do anything, but this time I've noticed that I've been pretty, um, off it, so hopefully that will come out on the record.

Do you feel under a lot of pressure with so many people wanting to hear what the new album will sound like? I suppose so, yeah. You deal with it by escaping from it and not really paying any attention. What are my escapes? I don't know. (Thinks hard) It's something I've got to face. I might go and blow up the World Trade Organization, or go and see a Rage Against The Machine concert! I want to get involved in something that I can get passionate about that isn't music.

What else, apart from music, do you feel passionately about? That's what I'm looking for! All I've got is music and writing songs. I've got no religion or anything like that, so maybe I'll just go and pray on an island somewhere and see if I can find some weird entity. But I doubt that will happen. It's more likely that some demons would arrive.

You've been criticized for not being political in the past… I am interested in that sort of stuff. I'm just not sure about how I can bring it to the music. There are certain ways I'm living and certain things I'm doing that contradict my own beliefs. I'll go out and buy something from a company that you know uses slave labor in other parts of the world. It's a contradiction for me to then go and tell people what they should and shouldn't do. I'm aware of things, but I'm not quite strong enough to live up to my own beliefs, and that's why I'm not a very moral person. But I'd like to be.

You've toured all over the world this year-- what's the most extreme thing that's happened to you? Reading Festival was really weird. When we walked off after doing the signing tent there were all these people shouting random things like, "I know you!", "You're meant to be with me," and stuff like that. Some of them had this look in their eyes like, "Why the fuck aren't you coming to talk to me, you bastard?" I found that disturbing because it was England. I've seen it before in France and Japan and I could turn my back on it. But to realize that, when I couldn't understand them in those countries, they were actually screaming things like that was really scary.

How do you feel about the fact that if the new album's successful that will happen more often? I think we're approaching a peak in terms of hype. Maybe it will settle down, who knows? If it gets bigger than that, I'm not sure what will happen. If it was like that, but even more so, it would get worrying. We're not a massive band, but our fans are exceptionally keen. I suppose I would have problems if we became huge, but, you know-- people manicuring me and carrying me around everywhere-- it could be a laugh! But I doubt that will happen.

Do you think you make a good rock star? No, you have to die young to do that. I don't particularly want that to happen, although I'd rather die young than old and lame. I'd rather die than lose how I feel about things. If I live to be 40, I'll have to change. I'll have to become a different person. The only reason people talk about death in connection with us is because of Nirvana and Jeff Buckley. There are lots of other bands who you could compare us with who are still very much alive and raring to go.

Do you think about death a lot? Yeah, I think about how much time I've got and what to do with that time. I think, "Why am I doing this?" There must be more than just life and death. A couple of people close to me have had kids and they put so much into their children that they'll almost live on through them, and that's great. You can concentrate your influence on one person or you can spread it out thinly to thousands of people, and I suppose that's what we're trying to do. It's not a bad job. You get paid to explore yourself and the world and anything else you want to: drugs, women, death, life, anything, everything.

Colin from Radiohead said that you should lighten up… Ha! I think he was joking! Coming from that band, I assume he was. I would find that difficult to swallow coming from them. I'm not getting any lighter or darker, I think I'm getting more of both, more extreme sensations generally. the lows are low, but the highs are bloody high. I've heard some of Radiohead's new stuff and I think it's alright. But from where I'm standing, we couldn't be more different.

What are the lowest low's you've had? The lowest moment was when we were on tour and there wwas a huge crash on the motorway and we were the first vehicle to reach it. We just got out and went, "Fuck off!" It was just the most disturbing thing I've ever seen-- mangled, dead people and people struggling. We had to sit there for two or three hours and all I could think about what was happening and people killing each other. It made me aware of my inability to accept death, and since then I've been thinking about it way more. Since then, I've been looking for something that's going to help me accept that.

And what are the highest highs? I have very vague memories of being in the sauna on mushrooms just feeling this incredible sense of happiness. Another time was being on tour with the Foo Fighters. They've got such an ability to have a good time. Their outlook on touring and being in a band was just brilliant. Dave Grohl and the guitarist are really funny guys. You'd go in their dressing room and there'd be a couple of nice ladies doing stuff and things like that. That was always good fun!

Matt isn't saying anything more about that and it's probably time we let him go finish Muse's second album. By the time it appears, next spring, we should know whether they've made the leap to the big time, and, you never know, Matt might have found a few of the answers he's looking for.]

Someone on Reddit uploaded a mag scan of an old interview in Melody Maker from 18 October, 2000. I'd normally post a link to Musewiki because I know mag scans aren't as accessible, but this one's actually not on Musewiki. I might transcribe it later if I have time, I was able to read most of it.

credit: u/becomingmorelikeabbi on Reddit.

[nipponnomad]

TRANSLATION TAKE 2: One-sensei’s interview with Young Sunday (excerpts in detail)

Thanks to the lovely and talented @isasm, we’ve been blessed with a Japanese transcript recording excerpts from One’s interview with Young Sunday. Even though I already summarized the interview, I thought you all might be interested in reading some passages in greater detail (plus whoever put the excerpts together focused on different parts than I did, so it’s like looking at the interview from another angle). I hope you all enjoy it. Especially everyone over at @one-blog!

(P.S. I’m so exhausted I did this all at work today I’m gonna get fired someone help me aaaaahhh :P)

EDIT: Here’s a link to the summary, which I’ve tweaked to fix a couple mistakes I made before I had access to the transcript. :)

Submitting to Weekly Shonen Jump, the magazine everyone longs to be part of

YAMADA: Hey, you know the student council president from Mob Psycho 100? That page is really intense, where the whole page is that scene with the monologue about the pressure he gets from his parents? And it was like, suddenly it's gone all Yoshiharu Tsuge (TN: A famous Japanese cartoonist and essayist).

OKKUN: Tsuge and Kazuo Umezu (TN: Horror manga author).

YAMADA: That guy's style is totally Garo (TN: Avant-garde manga anthology magazine).

OKKUN: For real! It's so Goya (TN: The painter I guess? Or the Spanish film awards? I'm not sure; the literal translation is "So it's Goya," which is so vague I give up aaaah).

YAMADA: (while pointing at Okkun) We better watch it! We'll get drawn into the darkness of artistic criticism. We've gotta handle this like they do on Sawako no Asa (TN: A Japanese talk show).

OKKUN: (to ONE) So you were painstakingly drawing in secret, you created a homepage, did you ever submit your work?

ONE: I submitted something in my first year of college, it was a 19-page gag manga I drew and took over to Weekly Shonen Jump, which of course is the venue everyone aspires to.

YAMADA: So you did submit something!

ONE: It was just the one time.

YAMADA: So how did it go?

ONE: The thing I submitted was really dull. Even as I drew it I was like, "The moment I show this to the editor, I'll be laughed at." Anyway, the guy I showed it to went through it at a crazy speed, totally passing over the parts that were meant to be funny.

YAMADA: Yes, exactly! That's how it goes even now!

ONE: The editor went through 5 or 6 jokes I'd put in, and I immediately broke out in a cold sweat. I was like, "I'm a complete joke, I wanna go home." After that experience, I'd made an elaborate homepage with a blog I updated incessantly, and my updates only accelerated.

YAMADA: Ah, I see.

ONE: That felt a lot safer than submitting anything again.

Posting Manga on Garake

(TN: This seems to be a type of SoftBank cell phone)

YAMADA: So after that disappointment you returned to what was safe, intending to redouble your efforts. I see. Like you decided, "Let's forget about submitting, make my own homepage, and post manga for everyone to read for free"?

ONE: Basically, yes. I had already made the homepage by the time I submitted, and all these other aspiring mangaka I had met through the homepage were winning awards.

YAMADA: So it was like, "That guy too?"

ONE: I was thinking, "Him too?" At that point I was working under the pen name "ONE," and one of the acquaintances who had won an award was like, "Maybe ONE-san will be next?" That was pretty much why I made the mistake of submitting.

YAMADA: So that's how it was. Like, "What have I done?"

OKKUN: So what did you do then?

ONE: Before I tried submitting, I had bought myself a cell phone (TN: Garake) with a camera on it, and I would take tiny little pictures of the manga I was drawing, getting really up close so the pictures wouldn't come out shaky, and upload them to my homepage. Because there was this cell phone service that let anyone create a homepage.

YAMADA: You're part of that generation.

ONE: That was how I released my super ugly manga on my homepage. At that time, you couldn't view an entire page at a time on your cell phone. When you opened a manga, you couldn't see more than two panels or one word bubble at a time.

YAMADA: So hard to read!

ONE: To get through one scene, you'd have to read through about 15 pages that way. At that time, acquaintances of mine started drawing pasokon manga.

The first serialization of One Punch Man on the web

ONE: I didn't know anything about the culture at the time, but I started drawing pasokon manga and uploading it to a website. As I learned more about creating a series, I looked through that site. It was called Niitosha. (TN: "NEET Society," though the characters used for "NEET" spell out "new capital.")

YAMADA: That's an awesome name! Niitosha is an amazing name!

ONE: The name was meant to be something like a place where NEETs gather, though the actual users were mostly students and members of society. When I saw the site, I thought it was really awesome. All the users were beginners or semipros publishing their own works. People had been publishing there for however many years, and there were more than 5000 registered works.

When I looked at the work my friend was publishing on there, I saw a column called "Send Impressions" or something like that. When you clicked it, you could see the feedback other Niitosha authors had left all lined up. And you could also give your own impressions of the work. This site had been made as a place where beginners could receive feedback.

"I've stumbled across a really good place," I thought. "I wanna draw pasokon manga!" I was bubbling over with motivation. So I got myself a notebook computer and a drawing tablet and started drawing in a program called Comic Studio. The manga I drew became One Punch Man.

YAMADA: What!? For real!?

ONE: Yes.

OKKUN: Your very first work was One Punch Man.

YAMADA: Isn't that just the Japanese dream! Amazing! That's the dream we have in this country! At that time, did you ever think it would be broadcast as an anime?

ONE: I never would have believed it.

YAMADA: That manga could have been a Marvel movie! It could come right after Ant Man! "Iron Man," "Ant Man," "Whatever-Else-Man," and then comes "Anpanman" and then "One Punch Man!"

OKKUN: You put Yanase-san in there too. (Laughs) (TN: Takeshi Yanase, creator of Anpanman.) "One Punch Man" follows the Marvel pattern, right?

YAMADA: They'd definitely have to accept One Punch Man over there! (TN: Overseas). On the other hand, Anpanman would totally have the wrong feel. People over there would be like, "I wanna eat him," it'd be like, "No, you can't do that!"

We've got a self-sacrificial type of spirit in Asia, that's why Anpanman is popular. (TN: Anpanman heals others by giving them pieces of his head to eat.) But outside of Asia they'd be like, "Eh? You guys are eating yourselves!?" And it would never become popular.

Surpassing ONE PIECE abroad

(TN: This was my biggest mistake in my first translation because I missed that they were talking about One Punch Man's popularity outside of Japan. One Punch Man does indeed surpass One Piece in sales in the U.S., though not in Japan.)

OKKUN: Looking at viewer comments, it looks like One Punch Man outsells One Piece abroad. I don't know if that's true, but that's what the comment says.

YAMADA: Believe it, everyone!

ONE: I think One Punch Man is number one depending on the day or week, but I don't know all the details.

YAMADA: See! What did I tell you!

OKKUN: What? What did you know that I didn't?

YAMADA: We're sitting next to the guy who's taken over all of America! That time has finally come! (Laughs)

OKKUN: (Looking at viewer comments) It outsells the Bible!?

YAMADA: Whooooa! Wait a second, wait a second! Is that a Beatles reference?

OKKUN: That was Jesus!

YAMADA: Saying, "We're more famous than Jesus"?

OKKUN: Because there's a Paul in Christianity!

YAMADA: All right, that's enough! We're getting way off track!

ONE: Murata-sensei is so amazingly talented.

YAMADA: But it's really incredible. I think of Kinnikuman, and that's drawn like kids' doodles, two people were just casually chatting and they created this character all by themselves.

OKKUN: Are you evangelizing about Yudetamago? (TN: The duo responsible for Kinnikuman)

YAMADA: I'm not talking about Murata-sensei, but rather I'm segueing into talking about ONE-kun's characters. They've (TN: The characters in Kinnikuman) got such a total One Punch Man feel.

ONE: I guess they do.

The hero who solves everything with one punch

YAMADA: What kind of feeling were you going for with that character? (TN: Saitama)

ONE: There's no point trying to cover it up, I liked all the normal manga aimed at elementary schoolers and I read a lot. But by contrast, I thought it would be funny if the character started with the sort of strength you usually see in the final chapter, and I noticed that after drawing the first chapter.

In that first chapter, I wrote "One Punch Man" because he's a guy who takes out enemies in one punch and goes, "Damn it, I did it in one punch again!" That's all I'd come up with.

OKKUN: So it's like you cut out all the boring stuff.

ONE: Yeah, exactly. From there, it started spreading, and it spread far more than I'd predicted.

YAMADA: Was that difficult?

ONE: No, not at all. On the contrary, I suppose you could say it felt easy.

YAMADA: Most people wouldn't think of starting from the end like that, would they? In that sense, the fact that it feels like the character immediately comes out like "HYAAAH!" and makes you go "Whoa, whoa," is probably why it spread like that. Did all that come out naturally?

ONE: Yeah.

OKKUN: There you have it, he's a genius. We've got a genius here. (Laughs)

ONE: There were various difficulties and dilemmas, but at times when things got tricky, it was like the hero trying to use knowledge and personal experience to push his way through...

Reiji-sensei (TN: Yamada Reiji, the host and a fellow mangaka), you've met and spoken with a lot of different people and absorbed a lot of things in a lot of different situations, so I think you can write all different types of characters. I don't think I can do that. So I just solve everything with one punch. (Laughs)

Of course there are also times when things can't be solved through punching. Within the world of One Punch Man, Saitama can adapt his strength in a flexible way. If he has a problem, it's with regular people or with running out of money.

OKKUN: Or hitting up a special sale at the super market.

YAMADA: That's the issue this week. (TN: The literal translation is "That's this week's guy," I'm not sure what he's referring to)

OKKUN: That kind of everyday stuff. Plus he's just become too strong.

ONE: That's true. As the author, I started by creating a character who's really tough and reliable, Saitama's always there no matter what other troublesome character shows up.

OKKUN: I see. That's what makes it so fun to look at.

YAMADA: A real Mito Komon type of guy. (TN: The hero of an old Japanese period drama)

OKKUN: There will always be justice in the end.

The surprising popularity of One Punch Man

YAMADA: Mob Psycho is the same way. He stays quiet, until whatever percentage comes out, and after it comes out it's kind of refreshing. He's the kind of guy that shows up in a manga like "The shocking answer will be revealed just seconds from now!"

OKKUN: Isn't Mob Psycho drawn as the flip side [to One Punch Man]?

YAMADA: We're moving on to Mob Psycho now.

OKKUN: This program's been all about One Punch Man, it seems like.

YAMADA: I actually think we've showed off One Punch Man considerably well. He's a true human being, that guy. That's become all too rare, I think. Thank you very much. Have I got it all correct?

OKKUN: So you were getting responses from others, but when you posted on Niitosha, did One Punch Man become popular immediately?

ONE: It was pretty quick. I was shocked. I drew and uploaded the first chapter thinking I'd be happy if I got one or two comments like other manga, but then I was sitting their watching the comment column after each update and the number was increasing more and more. There were people who said they were looking forward to the second chapter, so I worked hard and released the second chapter, and within three or four chapters, it seemed like the people on Niitosha decided I was an author who was going to update properly, so I got even more views.

There are a lot of web manga that just stop right in the middle, or chapter one gets posted and the next chapter gets posted 3 years later. (TN: Ain't that the truth!)

YAMADA: That's why we update every week. Every week on Wednesday, everyone can rest assured that the next update is coming.

OKKUN: Saitama's a hero for fun, isn't he? Then he enters the association and gradually rises through the ranks, like he's just flowing right through them. Like he's just going at his own pace. Then he gets this disciple, right? A cyborg.

YAMADA: I need to butt in here, this show has been crammed full, it's time to snag your favorite food and prepare for the second half.

OKKUN: For real!?

YAMADA: It's already been 40 minutes.

OKKUN: You're right. Crap.

One's three themes

YAMADA: When I look at Mob Psycho, and One Punch Man is the same way, I feel like it conveys three themes.

YAMADA: Basically, the three themes ONE has embraced are: "What is power?" "What do we do with power?" And moreover, "What is our true power?" How do people who have power live their lives in relation to that?

So in the end this leads to a theory of life or a theory of happiness, really the mechanism underlying everything, I think that's amazing.

Basically that thing with wanting more power never changes, and it leads to the same problem at the start of both works that you see in common with works by other authors. The character's default is overwhelming power. It's the same in both works.

Looking at it objectively, the people who always win are naturally going to be viewed as protagonists. This is what we always want to show. But first, I want to show some great pictures you've done. Your pictures are the best. This is the scene where the protagonist shows up in chapter 2. This picture, at the very beginning.

YAMADA: Was this the picture you started with on the homepage? What kind of picture did you start with?

ONE: It hasn't really changed. (TN: Between the online and the print versions) But this is much better, because the homepage I used in college was so bad.

YAMADA: When you were taking pictures with your phone?

ONE: Right. I was just drawing these tiny pictures because I was restricted by the camera. You can't just draw tiny pictures, right? So I was drawing pictures and making what looked like reduced versions of them.

OKKUN: Everyone, this viewer comment says: "ONE has gotten so skillful."

YAMADA: He has. He's become so good since the beginning, but these pictures at the beginning are really interesting. This is a picture from the beginning. Reigen is showing up like "BAM," this is chapter 1.

YAMADA: I think this is so awesome.

YAMADA: And this, it looks like Ebisu Yoshikazu. (TN: A Japanese actor—our Tome-chan is way prettier than him, btw!)

(Laughter in the studio)

No assistants or anything

YAMADA: It's like this awesome magazine from the 80's, Garo. Was that an influence at all?

ONE: I actually haven't read it.

YAMADA: Where did a picture like this come from? You just did it and it turned out like this?

ONE: I probably didn't use a reference.

YAMADA: It definitely feels like you didn't copy anyone else's work.

OKKUN: Do you have any experience with assistants?

ONE: None. (TN: I know he has assistants now, though...maybe they’re just talking about when Mob Psycho first started up?)

OKKUN: Ah, that explains it!

YAMADA: If you'd had assistants a lot of things would have been fixed up. (TN: His verb form here implies that would be a bad thing, like ONE's art would lose its originality)

OKKUN: No assistants, and I've been told no editor either.

YAMADA: Like these lines that draw focus to Reigen here, the points hit right here and it just pops like "BAM."

YAMADA: Normally it has that effect. This was done without white out?

ONE: It's a sticker.

YAMADA: Oh, so it’s just put over top! (Laughs)

ONE: Yeah, it's just a sticker from Comic Studio.

YAMADA: So you can do this because you're using Comic Studio, this is awesome.

The Sid Vicious of the manga world

YAMADA: As I think you can see from this program, I take an oblique view of what's skillful in terms of artwork. A picture can be unskilled but still interesting, some pictures have more expressive power and I respect that. That's one way of saying it. Higashimura Akiko's like that too. (TN: The mangaka who did Princess Jellyfish, among other things)

It's a doctrine of expressiveness. A doctrine of anything being good as long as it conveys. I like people saying, "I want to convey this, so let's do it this way." It's so punk. It's avant-garde.

This is especially interesting, Reigen's hand when he's talking on the phone. This is the best.

YAMADA: Everyone has trouble drawing a hand holding a telephone.

(Laughter in the studio)

YAMADA: It's hard to draw. But I don't think you should start with trying to do it properly. All things considered, anything goes. This is punk. This is early hip hop.

YAMADA: Looking at a guy who goes with his gut, I feel like, "This is super unskilled but super interesting, maybe I can do this too." It's like Mashi's guitar playing in The Blue Hearts. (TN: A Japanese punk band) It's Sid Vicious. It's destruction and creation at the same time.

OKKUN: (to Yamada) There's only one person in your class, and he's the one who drew it.

YAMADA: Moreover, the contents seems like it gives rise to some delusion that, "Anyone could draw that!" But in your case, you draw totally differently from anyone else, you give us real human beings.

YAMADA: All fluffy or intense like "BOOM" (Imitates a Dragonball Kamehameha pose) That's how everyone draws. Speaking of which, what is "BOOM"? Nobody ever seems to think "It just went BOOM, but what's actually BOOMing?" There's just this BANG when someone's like, "At last I've achieved power, the world belongs to me!"

 Because you're giving us real human beings, we feel like, "No, it really is like that," or "I can totally understand that, but let's not act like that around people."

 When it comes to true human beings, those who have power are the ones who must carry it, and there's a sense of security in that. It times of political instability or whatever, those with political power are the ones who have to worry about it. Everything rides on those with power deciding they want to join forces. Which is really interesting. This is the most important part of these drawings.

[emjenenla]

If You’re Gone, Maybe it’s Time to Come Home [SoC Fanfic]

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Title: If You’re Gone, Maybe it’s Time To Come Home

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjen_enla (Wattpad)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: (There’s an awful lot of breathing room, but I can hardly move) Or Kaz goes into a downward spiral after Crooked Kingdom.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: Mainstream, post-Crooked Kingdom

Dominant Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, appearances of various other characters, a couple relatively minor OCs

Pairings: Kanej (Kaz/Inej), perhaps one OC/OC if you squint (and/or can read my mind)

Warnings: depression, panic attacks, anxiety, some drinking, Kaz being Kaz, Ketterdam being Ketterdam

Notes:

-I think the time has come for us all to admit that I’m not going to be posting as much as I once did. I’ve been really busy in the last year with school and work and my own original work. I’m not saying that I’m completely done with fanfiction, but updates might be pretty slow from now on.

-I did not intend for this to be a multi-part fic, but I was working on it tonight and realized that the part I have written (which I think it roughly half) was already over eight thousand words. I figured that I may as well release it in parts to make it a bit more manageable. I’m hoping this will be a two-part fic, but it might get up to three. Hopefully I’ll be done before I go back to college at the end of August, but I’m honestly not sure what will happen.

-I read the Six of Crows Duology over Christmas break and it (mostly Kaz, let’s be honest) has stuck with me ever since. This story is mostly inspired by the fact that I’m honestly really worried about Kaz now that his only real reason for living (revenge on Pekka Rollins) is gone.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Six of Crows or the song “If You’re Gone” by Matchbox 20.

--

Part One

(1)

After they beat Van Eck and Pekka Rollins, everything and nothing changes.

Kaz is now king of the Barrel. Of course, the rest of the gangs haven’t figured that out yet. Everyone is expecting Rollins to eventually dig his way out of the hole he’d fallen into. The rumor of him on his knees at Kaz’s feet is spreading through the Barrel like wildfire, but Rollins has been in power for so long that no can fathom the idea that his time as ruler might be over. However, Kaz knows that it’s only a matter of time before that minor annoyance is rectified.

He also has four million kruge slowly siphoning into his accounts. Between that and the shares of the Crow Club and Fifth Harbor that he bought off Haskell, he figures he’s easily the richest person in the Barrel and probably comfortably in the top fifty richest people in Ketterdam. Not bad for a person who was flat broke two weeks before.

Still he makes the rest of the people involved in the Ice Court job keep the payoff quiet. It won’t do any of them any good for people to realize just how much kruge they’re each rolling in. Kaz has built his life around stealing from the ridiculously wealthy and he’d rather not become one of those pigeons for some other angry upstart.

He should be ecstatic, even with the Council of Tides still breathing down his neck, but he’s not. Firstly, Inej is leaving. He’s not surprised, though, and he’s not going to try to stop her. He understands why she needs to go, he just…wishes she wouldn’t.

Inej and her parents stay for a few days so Inej can show them around Ketterdam. She’s always with them so Kaz tries to say out of their way. Being around Mr. and Mrs. Ghafa makes him nervous. He’s not positive, but he’s pretty sure that Inej’s parents know exactly how he feels about her. (He shouldn’t be surprised, nothing says “I’m completely and totally, illogically in love with your daughter” like “I bought her a ship so she can go fulfil her purpose in life.”) That transparency makes him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. He’s not ashamed of what he is, but he knows that he’s not the kind of boy that the Ghafas want their daughter to end up with.

(Will he and Inej end up together? He’s not even sure.)

He tries to tell himself that Inej is the only thing bothering him, but if he’s truly honest with himself Matthias is weighing heavily on his mind as well.

Though it’s a truth he’ll take it to his grave, he was not completely surprised by Matthias’ death. He’d planned hundreds of possible scenarios for the auction scheme and he’d known that the chances that at least one of them wouldn’t make it out were much higher than he would have liked. He’d also known that after Kuwei, he and Matthias had the worse odds of them all. If something went wrong, the rest of the gang had a chance of being able to vanish underground and wait things out. He and Matthias would be forever chased by the powerful people who wanted them dead.

Still, he hadn’t mentioned any of that to Matthias. He’d told himself that he didn’t want to risk Matthias backing out, but he’d known that Matthias would never back out while Nina was still in danger. There had been no excuse. Perhaps telling Matthias about the dangers would have saved his life, perhaps it wouldn’t have (they still aren’t sure what had happened, though Kaz has his theories). Either way, the idea of Matthias going to his death knowing it was a possibility seems like it would make things a little better.

Kaz has lost crewmembers before, but somehow Matthias weighs on him heavier than all those others. The night of the auction, after he left Van Eck’s—Wylan’s—house, he returned to the Slat. He made a mug of the herbal tea Inej keeps around and makes after big jobs when he feels like crud because of shear exhaustion. He couldn’t get it to taste right so he corrupted it with a double dose of a painkilling tonic and couple shots of whiskey because why not. Then he downed the whole vile-tasting thing in a couple gulps. His stomach was empty so the concoction hit him hard and knocked him out in a matter of minutes. He slept until late the next morning and expected to wake up feeling more like his normal self, but he didn’t.

He hadn’t felt quite right since then either, but it would be okay. He’d had low times before and he always snapped out of them.

It would be okay.

(2)

Inej leaves long, long before he’s ready. The night before the Wraith is due to leave, she shows up at the Slat and they spend a night wandering the city, just like they did before the Ice Court. Kaz leaves his gloves off and tries not to flinch when people come to close. Inej pretends not to notice when he fails.

“So how exactly are you planning to catch these slavers?” he asks while they’re walking down an empty street even though they’ve already talked about this a number of times.

“Well, first I’m taking my parents back to Ravka,” Inej says. “I want to see the rest of my family again, plus they’ll need a ride back. While I’m there I might try to add to the crew. Papa says that I have a couple cousins who might be interested in signing on and there are a lot of purposeless Grisha in Ravka now. After that, I start looking for slavers.”

“And how are you going to find them?” he asks.

“Well, I know there’s a slaver hideout somewhere between here and Ravka,” she says. “I don’t have the crew or experience to take it now, but knowing where it is will help me to intercept individual ships.”

He nods and they’re quiet for a couple more minutes while he considers if he really wants to do this.

“I’ve thought about what you said about me helping you catch slavers,” he says after what feels like an age.

“Really?” she looks at him. Her expression is passably neutral, but he knows her well enough to see the tension.

“I’ll help you,” he says before he loses his nerve.

A huge grin spreads across Inej’s face. She moves like she’s going to hug him and he leaps out of the way, wrenching his bad leg. The smile fades as she realizes what just happened. Her arms drop back to her side and her lips press together. “Thank you very much,” she says formally.

The mood never quite recovers from that.

(3)

More people show up to see the Wraith off than Kaz anticipated. He hadn’t realized Inej had integrated herself so well into the Dregs. Even people like Beatle and Swann who had tried to literally beat Kaz’s brains out a few weeks before are there. A small group of people crowd the dock as Inej and her crew off.

Kaz leaves his gloves on. The crowd isn’t big by Ketterdam standards, but the dock is narrow enough that people bump and brush up against each other. He knows that if he tried to go barehanded he’d probably end up having one of his episodes like the one in the prison cart. (He knows what the proper name for those is, but he feels less pathetic and weak when he doesn’t think of them by that name.)

He waits until everyone else has finished saying goodbye to Inej before he approaches her. They stand there, staring at each other, neither knowing what to say, how they should part.

“Remember to write,” Inej says. Perhaps that sounds sweet to someone who doesn’t know that they ended last night by coming up with a plan on how he can get letters to her and an overly complicated code so he can send her information without blowing his involvement. There’s nothing romantic about her telling him to write; it’s just business.

He wishes it wasn’t. He wishes he could tell her he loves her. He wishes he could throw his arms around and hold her until she agrees to stay here with him. He wishes he could kiss her just so he could know what it’s like.

Instead he nods stoically, showing no hint of any of his desires. “I will,” he says and the promise is too audible in his voice so he goes on with something cutting, “And try not to get killed. It would be a waste of perfectly good kruge I spend on that ship.”

Her expression is somewhere between fond and disappointed. When she speaks again, her voice has dropped to a near whisper. “Kaz, about last night-”

He does not want to talk about this ever, let alone in front of all these people. “Wraith-”

“Kaz,” she cuts in her voice rising slightly, but when she next speaks her voice is quiet again. “Don’t give up hope, okay? Just keep trying. It’ll get better.” Then she reaches out, takes his gloved hand and squeezes.

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, but he finds himself nodding stiffly and squeezing her hand back. They stand like that for a couple seconds. He can feel the gazes of the other people burning into him. He’s uncomfortably aware that for most of these people this is probably the first time they’ve seen him touch someone in a way that isn’t violent.

He pulls away first and steps back to put a little more space between them. “No mourners,” he says because he doesn’t know how to put words to what he actually wants to say.

“No funerals,” she says. “Take care of yourself, Kaz.”

When he doesn’t respond right away she turns away and heads up the ramp onto the Wraith, leaving him in Ketterdam all alone.

“You too,” he says too quietly for anyone else to hear.

(4)

The next few weeks are busy ones. Kaz consolidates his control of the Dregs and begins to use his inside knowledge of the falsity of the plague to encroach on the territories of other gangs (namely Rollins’). He begins searching for more spiders after it becomes obvious that Roeder won’t be able to fill Inej’s shoes on his own. He quietly starts tracking down slavers and their compatriots.

He’s very busy. Given that, if he’s eating and sleeping less than he should, that’s okay. If he’s drinking more coffee and whiskey than he probably should, that’s okay too. He’s a general now, not a lieutenant, he has more responsibilities than he did before (never mind that he was practically running the Dregs before the Ice Court job).

He’s not trying to ignore his stubbornly lingering guilt about Matthias. He’s definitely not trying to distract himself from the gaping hole in his heart and by his side where Inej is supposed to be. He’s fine. Just fine, thank you very much. There’s absolutely nothing wrong.

Nothing.

(5)

A month after the auction, Kaz pulls his first job as leader of the Dregs. There shouldn’t be much difference between this and any other job he’s ever done. After all, after the Ice Court and everything that happened afterwards, Kaz is pretty sure every job he’ll ever do should seem easy.

Still, no one knows about the Ice Court, and it doesn’t look like anyone ever will. This is his first job as leader of the Dregs and all the gang members in Ketterdam will be watching and waiting to see if he chokes.

That shouldn’t bother him—if anything it should make him more confident—but it does.

The job is a raid on a particularly rich mercher’s private jewel collection. It’s a job that requires a fairly small number of members (himself, Anika, Pim, Roeder and Mina, the thirteen-year-old Grisha Heartrender he’s letting try for a position as a spider). The job also doubles as a chance to look through the mercher’s records to see if the vague rumors Kaz has been hearing about the man being involved in the slave trade are accurate.

The break-in goes off without a hitch. The mercher and his family are still waiting out the “plague” in a summer home and it looks like the servants have taken this as an opportunity to take a paid vacation. Once inside, he leaves the others in the showroom to bag the jewels while he goes upstairs under the pretense of doing some reconnaissance. In reality, he picks the lock on the mercher’s office door and goes through the man’s papers.

It takes him four and a half minutes to find the information he’s looking for. Yes, the man’s involved in the slave trade. Yes, he knows when the next shipment’s coming in. There aren’t any routes in the information, but there are locations of launches and when they’re supposed to come in. That information will be a start for Inej. It takes him three minutes to memorize the information, then he puts the office back the way he found it, locks the door again and gets back to the showroom before the others have time to start wondering what was taking him so long.

The rest of the job goes off without a hitch. They’re back in the Slat within a few hours a couple thousand kruge richer. As soon as he’s sure everything’s settled and the jewels are locked up in the big safe that only he knows the combination to, Kaz retreats to his upstairs rooms (he’s taken over Per Haskell’s office, but his private rooms are something else entirely). He lights a candle, gets out a sheet of paper and starts his first coded letter to Inej.

He takes all his self-control to focus on the business and not say anything pointless about how much he misses her.

(6)

He doesn’t get a return letter from Inej for almost a month and when one does come it’s a list of the ships they’d raided (mostly ones from that first list he’d sent her) and people rescued. Perhaps Kaz feels a little pride at knowing his information was put to good use, but mostly he wishes she’d have said something, anything about herself and how she was.

He forces those thoughts out of his head with a couple shots of whiskey, then sits down and writes her another completely impersonal letter about the new information he has for her.

(7)

Almost three months after Inej left, Kaz dreams that he’s in the harbor again, swimming for his life. Not that unusual an occurrence, especially now. He would have thought that his nightmares would have gotten better after he got his revenge on Pekka Rollins, but if anything, they’ve gotten worse.

Still none of that matters in this moment. He struggles to keep hold of the corpse under his arms and struggles to keep kicking towards the lights of Ketterdam which never seem to get any closer. His breaths burn in his throat, his teeth chatter from the cold, his chest is tight with fear.

A wave washes over his head. He almost loses his grip on the corpse but manages to pull himself back onto it at the last moment. He blinks saltwater out of his eyes, harsh breaths that are just a little like sobs ripping out of his body.

Then he looks down and realizes the corpse he’s clinging to isn’t Jordie’s but Inej’s.

He jolts back to reality in his bed in the Slat, blankets twisted around his legs, sweat soaking through his shirt and sticking it to his chest and back. He takes two heaving breaths before he turns and vomits over the side of the bed onto the floor.

When he’s done he collapses onto his side and twists his bare hands into the sheets. He’s been trying not to wear the gloves as much so he can surprise Inej if she comes back (when she comes back, Kaz tells himself, when), but now he wishes he was wearing them. He’s sure that if he was just wearing the gloves he could deal with this, but they’re lying on his desk in the other room and he’s shaking too hard to make it in there to get them.

He curls up in a ball, biting the insides of his cheeks so hard he tastes blood. He stares at the opposite wall until his vision starts to tunnel. Images both from his memory and from the dream play over and over in his head. He can’t stop shaking.

He lies there, almost too afraid to blink as the night drags by and sunlight starts to slowly creep into the room.

The sun is quite high by the time he’s able to get up and go retrieve his gloves.

(8)

Inej comes back to Ketterdam two weeks later. Kaz meets her on the dock under the pretense of having just been passing by. He can tell she doesn’t believe him, but he finds that he doesn’t really care. He’s just happy to be near her again. Her quiet, steady presence relaxes and completes him. He feels more like himself than he has in months. Which is relieving, but also a little scary, mostly because he hadn’t realized he wasn���t feeling right until it stopped.

“So, you managed not to die or destroy my investment,” he says jerking his head at the Wraith.

Her smile is superficially fond, but he can see disappointment underneath it. Her eyes shift to his hands, encased in his gloves. She doesn’t say anything but he knows what she wants.

“Sorry,” he says beginning to peal the gloves off. “Forgot.” His stomach clenches into a series of knots. He’s been wearing his gloves constantly since the nightmare, because the thought of that happening again gives him cold sweats. He feels ashamed; he really wanted to be less reliant on the gloves the next time they saw each other.

He doesn’t mention any of this as he tucks his gloves into his coat, careful not to let his hands shake. Inej is studying him, with her head cocked to the side. He expects her to have noticed his nerves, but what she says is, “You look tired.”

He doesn’t know how to tell her that he’s been trying to avoid sleeping as much as possible because he’s terrified of having a nightmare about clinging to her corpse again, so he just gives her a thin smile. “Been busy.”

Now her smile is definitely fond, he feels like he’s floating. “You do know that even demons need to sleep, don’t you, Kaz?”

(9)

She leaves again long before he’s ready. Again, he wants to beg her to stay, again his bites his tongue and covers his true feelings with biting comments. Still he stands on the dock and watches until long after the Wraith has vanished over the horizon. Though he’ll never admit it, he’s hoping she’ll realize that there’s more for her here with him than out at sea.

That’s ridiculous though, Inej is nothing if not a noble person. There are a lot of people in the world who need her way more than one demon-boy in the city of Ketterdam.

By the time he heads back to Slat, a cold rain has started to fall.

(10)

Several months later, the Razorgulls start a gang war with the Dregs. People have been slowly realizing that Pekka Rollins is not coming back. That makes things more difficult for Kaz. He’s been slowly moving the Dregs into Rollins’ holdings since the plague scare. Up until this point, people have just been letting him, assuming that he’ll regret it once Rollins comes back. Now that it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, people realize that Kaz has been allowed to snag a huge amount of territory with little to no resistance.

The conflict with the Razorgulls comes down to a massive fight through the streets of the Barrel while the stadwatch stands by helpless to control the violence. Torches light up the night until it’s nearly like day as Kaz chases the Razorgulls general through the alleys near the fighting.

He comes out into a dark dead end and the general is nowhere in sight. He has half a second to wonder where he went before the man leaps on him from behind wrapping bare forearms around Kaz’s neck in a headlock.

The waters rise up before Kaz has time to breathe and he drops like a stone. Within instants the other general is on top of him, one bare hand around Kaz’s throat and the other punching him in the face. He was probably yelling, but Kaz couldn’t hear him over the ringing in his ears.

Kaz can’t breathe, he can’t think. He struggles against the weight of the body on top of him, looking for a way out. Eventually he gets his fingers around one of his hidden knives and stabs it into the other general’s stomach. The man’s grip loosens and Kaz is able to shove him off. He finishes the job, then collapses against the wall gasping.

He waits until he’s no longer shaking like a Grisha on parem before he drags the general’s body up onto a high balcony above the main body of the battle. He declares the war over and gives the Razorgulls an ultimatum: join the Dregs or die.

Unsurprisingly most of them opt to join the Dregs.

That surrender takes place a few hours before dawn but it’s still well into the afternoon by the time Kaz gets back to his rooms. He’s profoundly exhausted in a way he hasn’t been since the Ice Court and he can’t quite shake the tremors from the memory of someone else’s hands around his neck. He collapses onto his bed and loses his grip on the world.

He wakes up late the next morning by Anika pounding on his door with a list of questions, as exhausted as he was when he fell asleep.

(11)

The surrender of the Razorgulls nearly doubles the size of the Dregs. Granted, it’ll be a while before he can actually trust any of these new recruits, but the Barrel runs on strength. Kaz is confident he can win them all over given time.

One of the more interesting new members is a scrawny eleven-year-old boy. He’s newly orphaned and worked cleaning chamber pots in one of the Razorgulls’ hideouts. His name is Espen and his eyes gleam with the same cold, calculating anger Kaz sees in himself every time he looks in a mirror.

Perhaps Kaz should take Espen under his wing and attempt to put the boy back together in a way better than the way he put himself together. Perhaps he would if he was a better person. Perhaps he would if the mere thought of putting up with another person’s issues on top of his own wasn’t utterly exhausting.

So, he doesn’t try to help. Instead his foists the kid on Mina and tells her to teach him to be a spider instead.

Maybe that will be enough.

(12)

His letters to Inej are starting to get out of hand.

Not the ones he actually sends to her; those are just as impersonal as always. It’s the drafts of those letters that are starting to become problematic.

They’ve gotten long.

Kaz has always been a master of brevity when it comes to letters. He can normally fit anything he could possibly need to say to anyone into under a page. His average letter is only a couple sentences.

The drafts of his letters to Inej go on for pages and pages.

His words scrawl across the paper, rambling in ways that don’t sound like him, and to make matters worse, he’s not really talking about anything. He does talk about the Dregs and Ketterdam news sometimes, but mostly he just talks about how much he misses her and begs her to come back and stay with him.

He realizes that this is getting beyond ridiculous the night he writes almost thirty pages of a logical, step-by-step argument for why she should abandon her quest to bring justice to the slavers and return to being his spider.

He stares at the letter for a long time, a strange feeling of disgust and fear swirling inside him. He can’t possibly send something like this to Inej. Hunting slavers is her purpose, and she will keep doing it no matter what. All this letter would do is guarantee that she really will never come back.

He crumbles the letter into a ball and throws it into the fire. Then he starts another draft. He intends for this one to be a short, to-the-point passing of information, but somehow it devolves into an even longer argument. This one is about how he is a horrible, corrupt person with no hope for anything better and how Inej would really be better off if she left him behind and never looked back.

The sun has risen by the time he finishes this letter. He sits at his desk and stares blankly at the letter. He images that a normal person would probably be crying right now, but there are no tears for him. There haven’t been since that night in the harbor all those years ago. It’s like something about that night locked all his tears up somewhere inside him and threw away the key. He hasn’t been able to cry since, even as an act.

So, his eyes are dry as he looks at the letter, but his chest is tight. He has never hated himself, never felt a sliver of shame about what he is, but he feels it now. If only he wasn’t like this, maybe Inej wouldn’t have left him. Sure, she’s come back a couple times, but how long will it be before she realizes how much better off she is without him in her life and stops coming back? How long before she leaves him completely alone?

The sunlight creeps into his room. The Slat is coming awake around him. He has a million things to do. He’s the leader of the Dregs, he has everything as long as he does the things he needs to do. He knows that he needs to get moving, but he doesn’t want to. He’s empty and sad and so incredibly tired.

So, for the first time that he can remember, Kaz Brekker ignores his responsibilities, he shoves the letter aside, pillows his head on his arms and hopes things will be better when he wakes up.

They aren’t.

(13)

Kaz is tired.

He’s used to being tired—he has a tendency to ignore things like sleep when on big jobs and doesn’t sleep a normal amount even when he’s not on jobs—but normally he can just slam a couple cups of coffee and be fine. This is something different. Even with his veins seemingly swimming with coffee, he still finds himself fighting against a deep-seated exhaustion. Even sleep doesn’t seem to shake it, even though he’s sleeping more than he normally does.

He tells himself that it’s no big deal. He knows that his sleeping habits are unhealthy, and if they’re finally catching up to him, Inej would probably say it’s for the best. It’s not like he’s sleeping an insane amount, anyway. If anything, he’s probably just sleeping a normal amount now and it just seems like a lot because he’s not used to it. It will only take him some time to adjust.

Still, he is tired and it’s hard to care about any of the things that used to take up his full attention. He hasn’t destroyed the letter. He keeps it tucked carefully away in one of the drawers of his dresser, nestled among his ties and spare pairs of gloves. He takes it out and reads it sometimes, as a reminder of why he’s so lucky for the chances he’s had with Inej and why he should never expect too much.

(14)

He, Roeder, Mina and Espen are on a job. They get in easy enough, but while they’re bagging the man’s inappropriately stuffed safe, the owner of the house comes home. They all freeze in shock when they hear the front door open. Kaz had calculated that they had another hour and a half before the mercher came home from his mistress’ house. For a few blank seconds, all Kaz can think is “How was I so wrong?” then survival instincts kick in.

“Clear out,” he orders and they make for the windows.

They aren’t fast enough. Within minutes the stadwatch are on their tails. They’re crossing over the river when one of the stadwatch gets lucky and hits Roeder. The oldest spider takes a dive over the edge of the bridge and into the water. Mina skids to a stop on the bridge and stares over. “Dirtyhands!” she yells (he has never heard her call him anything else, even Brekker) “You need to do something! Espen and I are too small!”

A voice whispers that he should just let Roeder die, but he needs Roeder. Roeder is the only one of the spiders who’s obviously useful in a fight and he’s not about to lose that advantage.

“Take care of the stadwatch,” he tells Mina giving her a look he hopes she interprets it correctly. Then he thrusts his cane into Espen’s hands. “Be careful with that; it’s worth more than your life,” he says then vaults over the side of the bridge and into the water.

Kaz knows how to swim; he is honest enough about his own life to know that is a useful skill, but he doesn’t like it. The water in the river tonight is cold and the memory of the barge returns. Still he does his best to push it down and he lunges to Roeder.

He grabs the back of the spider’s shirt and pulls him into his chest. He wraps his other arm around Roeder’s chest and almost immediately has one of the biggest flashbacks he’s ever had. He is nine years old in the harbor clinging to Jordie’s body, he has little to no recognition of ever being anything else. His head goes under and the only thing that keep him from shoving Roeder’s body away is the belief that he is Jordie and the only thing keeping him drowning.

His free hand strikes something hard. He grabs on and manages to drag his head above water. His mind is whirl of panic and revulsion. He knows that he needs to get out of the water, but the panic is so much that he can’t move.

When another hand clasps around his arm, he loses himself completely and trashes, letting go of whatever he was holding onto completely in an attempt to get away. The hand doesn’t let go, actually another joins it and jerks him to a stop just as his head goes under again.

The next moment his heartrate starts to slow and the edges of his panic fade. He realizes that his head is underwater and kicks until he’s above the water again and can get a gasp of air. His vision clears and he realizes the person attached to the hands holding his arm is Mina. She’s kneeling on the pier he grabbed onto, water sticking her mouse-brown hair to her face and her gray eyes wide. She’s using her abilities to lower his heartrate.

Mina helps him pull Roeder and himself out of the river and they drag the spider onto the shore together. Immediately, Mina pulls Roeder’s shirt open and positions her hands over his chest. Kaz knows that she’ll now use her powers to draw the water out of his lungs. She’ll do it carefully so no one knows exactly what she did. It’s still dangerous to be a Grisha in Ketterdam, so Mina keeps her powers carefully under wraps. Kaz isn’t even sure if Roeder and Espen know she’s a Heartrender. She would have been careful to find a very subtle way to incapacitate the stadwatch when he ordered her to.

Kaz just wants to collapse and not move until he can breathe again, but the instant Mina starts tending to Roeder, Espen is in his face.

“What was that?” the little boy snarls with an expression that even Kaz will admit is slightly demonic. “What is wrong with you?”

“What are you talking about?” Kaz asks more to buy time than anything else. He almost winces at how wrong his voice sounds.

“You were supposed to save Roeder, not freeze and make Mina pull you out!” Espen has his face in very close to Kaz’s, so close that flecks of the boy’s spit hit Kaz’s cheeks. “What kind of general are you?”

Kaz wants to pull away and put miles of distance between himself and every other human in Ketterdam, but he forces himself to react to Espen’s taunts and closeness in the way that helped to earn him his reputation, the way that will save face.

He punches the kid in the jaw.

Espen, for all his bravado, does not know how to take a punch. The kid goes sprawling across the ground, gasping. Mina looks on in surprise. Kaz takes a fortifying breath and stands up even though his legs feel no more solid than the water he almost drowned in both tonight and all those years ago.

“You really should learn that you’re not in charge here,” he tells Espen, keeping his voice steady through sheer force of will. “You only have a place in this gang because you the good you outweighs the annoyance of putting up with you. Understand?”

Espen is staring. For once, he’s actually wearing an expression other than anger. He looks shocked and a little scared. His mouth opens and closes mutely.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Kaz snarls. “Now, what did you do with my cane?”

--

[kootenaygoon]

So,

The guy had been bludgeoned to death by his own chauffeur.

His name was Francis Rattenbury, a famous architect responsible for designing Victoria’s Parliament Building and the Empress Hotel, and he’d traveled to the Kootenays to work on an impressive stone courthouse in the dead centre of town. The dude had traveled all over the world and won widespread acclaim, but ended his life in a gasping, bloody pulp because his wife was fucking his teenage driver. Some say his soul still lingers in his creations, thirsty for revenge.

The vines on Rattenbury’s courthouse are a vibrant green for most of the year, but pivot towards a blood-red colour as summer transitions into fall. It stands sentinel while inside the daily drama of justice plays out. Most of Nelson drives by it every single day, ignorant of what goes on behind the pale stone. It was an intimidating and completely alien place to me, and every week I admired how Ed and Greg could march in there and dredge up incredible court stories on everything from child pornographers to drunk drivers and arrested logging protesters. It was a scary amount of privilege, reporting on what most people prefer to keep private, and it was a skill I was determined to learn.

It was 8 a.m., long before I normally started work, but Greg had sent me down to finally capture a shot of Andrew Stevenson being led into court. I’d been following Ed’s coverage closely, keen to learn more about this shotgun-wielding phantom, and the prospect of seeing him in person had me jittery and half-drunk on anticipation. I felt like one of those Beatles girls that was waiting on the tarmac when the Fab Four first touched down. 

“Hey, you’re going to have to move up to the sidewalk. We’re going to be transporting prisoners here in a minute,” one of the sheriffs said, his face furrowed like he was holding in a fart.

“Nobody’s allowed past the top of the stairs.”

I explained to him that I was a journalist from the Nelson Star, and I was told this would be the best place to get a photo. I handed him my card, which he frowned at. Then he glanced around, sighed, and told me I’d have to wait until his boss came around. In the meantime he didn’t want me to move from the bottom step.

“This is slated for the cover of our Friday issue,” I told him. “I’ve been trying to get this shot for over a year, but the dude keeps appearing by videolink.”

He blinked slowly. “Sit tight.”

For another ten minutes I watched the wind rustle the vines, and even took some macro shots of insects while I waited. The sky was clouded over and the wind was brisk. I watched a little convoy of vehicles appear in the parking lot a hundred feet away, and then a strict-looking female sheriff came striding up to where I stood. She was about to tell me to vamoose, like her colleague, when she noticed who it was. I’d been hanging out with her the week previous, covering her participation in the Cops 4 Kids fundraiser, and I’d taken a great shot of her along with her children. Her face transformed, and for a moment she shifted from one foot to the next, trying to figure out what to do with me.

“You’re here for Stevenson?” she asked. 

“Yup, I was just telling your guy that we’re hoping to get a cover shot for the Friday edition.”

She nodded. “Okay, well Stevenson isn’t my only prisoner today. We’re going to be bringing in four or five people before him. I’m going to need your word that you won’t take pictures of any of them. Only him.”

“Easy. Done. Of course.”

She nodded again, then leaned in conspiratorially. “Now I want you to stand right there in the grass, in that corner, and I don’t want you to move. The sheriffs will be blocking him as he walks up the sidewalk, but as he rounds this corner you’ll have a few moments to take your picture. You’ll have to be quick.”

“I can be quick, for sure.”

She walked over and demonstrated, miming a camera, how she thought I could get the best angle. It occurred to me that in only moments she’d gone from kicking me off the lawn to giving me a step-by-step walkthrough of how to accomplish my task. Journalism karma, I thought, thanking her profusely. She shrugged and rattled her keys, hurrying off to whatever was next.

It took another ten minutes for the sheriffs to unload the prisoners, and one by one they filed past me with mournful expressions. Some of them were in ankle bracelets and prison attire, while one teenage girl sauntered inside wearing skateboard shoes and a jean skirt. The handcuffs were the only hint that there was anything unusual going on with her. I stood with my arms crossed, my gaze down, while they headed inside to their fates.

“Okay, buddy,” one of the sheriffs said, with a nod. “This is him coming next.”

My heartbeat was thudding against my throat as the entourage approached, two sheriffs blocking my view just like the boss had described. I took a couple long shots that didn’t work, then took a long breath through my nostrils and waited for my moment to come. Just like taking pictures of Nel the osprey a year earlier, I knew the final image would rely on near perfect timing. I watched as the sheriffs rounded the corner and exposed Stevenson, whose gaze was downcast as he loped past.

He had acne-scarred cheeks, a bad haircut and cheap-looking thrift store clothing. The dude was approximately my age and shorter than I’d imagined. The word that rung through my head was pathetic. This wasn’t some monstrous villain; he was just a sick human that had made some bad choices. As my shutter clicked I knew that I would never think about him the same way again. In that moment he transitioned from a fictional character into something else entirely. I felt a stomach clench of empathy, hit the shutter once more, and then he was gone.

The Kootenay Goon

[voguingtodanzig]

AFTER LONG LAYOFF, PAVEMENT OFFSHOOT SPIRAL STAIRS RETURN TO THROW POIGNANT ‘DAGGERS’  (3 months ago on Clyrvnt)

By Raymond Cummings

Time was, Scott Kannberg’s strongest songs — from Pavement's iconoclastic “Hit the Plane Down” and pugnacious b-side “Stub Your Toe” to something like Preston School of Industry’s spindly “The Idea of Fires” — took flight on a riff and a prayer. These tunes were catchy, brusque and instinctually wrought, 7"-worthy wonders party-crashing the LPs or EPs they happened to come packaged along with. Doris and the Daggers is the Stockton, Calif., native’s fourth post-Pavement album and his second as Spiral Stairs, but it’s his best album because it arrives without those sonic M-80 firecrackers of yore. His songwriting here is eclectic, self-assured, mature and heartfelt, reflecting time’s unyielding march and a heavily stamped passport. A few weeks prior to the release of Doris and the Daggers, I interviewed Kannberg via telephone.

I thought you were back in California. When did you move to Mexico? We were. We moved back to Los Angeles in 2013, I think. We’ve been here in Mexico for like the last 10 months, in Merida, in the Yucátan. My wife’s parents, we lived kind of near them. They decided to move to Mexico because they had a house here in Merida, and we had an opportunity to be close to my parents and be close to them in Mexico. Then, in the end, we wound up following them to Mexico. I’m not sure how my parents feel about that. And also, Australia’s so far away, and we were spending so much money on travel. And I wanted to make music, and the people I make music with are in the States. We wanted to move back to San Francisco, but a lot of my friends from San Francisco are moving to L.A. At that time, L.A. was still pretty cheap, and it felt like San Francisco on the east side of town. But in the three years we lived in L.A., it got so expensive.

How do you like living in Mexico? Merida’s a pretty cool place; it’s really growing because it’s a real safe city. A lot of people from Mexico City and Monterrey are moving their families here, so it’s kinda bursting at the seams. But I don’t know any Spanish. Well, I know a little bit. You kinda have to know a little Spanish. There’s a lot of expats here. We have some friends, my wife knows a little Spanish. The food’s amazing, the culture’s amazing, the climate’s a little too hot for me. [Laughs] So, it’s okay, for a while.

I feel like, of all your solo records, Doris and the Daggers is the one that fits together best as an album. There’s normally albums where one or two songs stand out as “the singles”; the Preston School of Industry albums had that, to an extent. This one doesn’t have that; it feels like a whole. I try to create a comfortable listening experience. I look at it as two sides, like a vinyl record; I don’t make it for a streaming or CD kind of world, because I don’t know that world, really. I don’t know how bands like the Beatles made 35-minute records. The goal is to make it so that a listener is interested for 20 minutes, and then they turn the record over, maybe revisit the other side at another time.

For this record, I recorded probably 15 songs with Justin [Peroff, drummer of Broken Social Scene] and Matt [Harris, former bassist of the Posies], and then another 15 with others, and the songs really fit together well as a cohesive kind of thing. I never really try for singles, but I guess I can definitely see the Preston records as having more singles, or “single”-type songs.

This also feels like a more personal album, like you’re really putting yourself out there. I think so, too. There’s an emotional theme to it, I guess. I’ve been listening to a lot of those kinds of records — I really started to get into Lloyd Cole, who has sly lyrics, but they’re emotional. Maybe it comes from that. But maybe it’s that I’m older, more at ease with my songwriting.

One of my favorite songs from the album is “The Unconditional,” which conveys nicely what it’s like to be a parent as children reach that age where they can start making demands. Was there a particular moment that inspired this? I had the riff, and I had the basic music of the song. It was kind turning into this kind of Van Morrison-y thing, with horns. I had a rough idea of some of the lyrics, but a lot of these songs I actually made up the lyrics driving, or riding my bike. Behind our house in L.A., we had this amazing hiking trail. I’d go out there every day and listen to these songs, and whatever popped into my head, I’d jot down. Basically, you’re driving your kid to school and these things pop out of their mouths. [Laughs] I’ve always liked songs people wrote about their children. Everybody does that at some point; I wanted to have one.

Has your daughter heard it? Yeah! She loves it. She knows all the lyrics. She pronounces some of the words wrong. The thing I’m always amazed by with kids is how they retain the language. She’s saying some pretty complicated words. We let her watch little YouTube videos of people playing with toys, and I think that’s where she gets most of it from.

“No Comparison” was a surprise. It flows with the album, but it’s very staccato. It’s almost like disco. How did that one come together? I’ve always been a big fan of the Talking Heads. That’s where it started. I like the Happy Mondays, and I’ve always liked a good dance beat. Originally, “No Comparison” wasn’t intended to be like that, but it kinda morphed into it. The synthesizer element came way late. Kelley Stoltz, when I went up to do some things with him, he added those synthesizer lines; they’re so brash and funny-sounding that I had to keep them. This was my stab at a song off of Remain in Light or something, or something off of Flesh and Blood by Roxy Music. I did that in Pavement, too; “Passat Dream” was a dance-y kind of song. They come out every once in awhile.

I feel like this album has a lot of little touches that bring something special, like how on “Dance,” every time you sing that word in the chorus, there’s a horn stab. Yeah! The horn guys I had were incredible. That song took a real turn. If you heard the demo, it’s completely different — it sounds more like an early Wire song. It went in another direction when I got the horns on there, and I asked this friend of mine, Doug — who actually plays in a Roxy Music cover band — to play on the song and make it sound like Roxy Music. [Laughs]

I know that your longtime drummer, Darius Minwalla, passed away before recording started. Knowing that the vocal at the end of the title track was his really adds something — it’s kind of left-field without the context, but it’s emotional if you know. Can you tell me a bit about him? That vocal was a snippet from a video we put together for a tour from maybe 2004 or so, because Darius kinda came on after [Preston School of Industry's] Monsoon. It was kind of fitting to place it at the very end of the record, because the whole record is emotionally part of him, and I wanted to have his voice in there somehow.

A couple of these songs are about him. “Exiled Tonight” is about a dream I had. It was the last song I was going to record the vocals for. I didn’t have any good vocals, and I came into the studio one day, and the engineer stopped me halfway through and said, “Those lyrics are terrible.” I said, “I know they are.” He said, “Come back tomorrow.” That night I had this dream, where Darius is stuck in the afterlife, and it was a kind of a sign that I had to finish the song so I could finish the record. Another song, “Angel Eyes,” has a verse about him, that the very last song he ever played on drums was “No More Heroes” by the Stranglers.

I think it was a freak accident. He had a bad heart that he didn’t tell anybody about; he had a heart attack and died a month before we were supposed to record up in Seattle. It kinda threw everyone for a loop. It sent me in a different direction for this album.

He was a great guy. I’d known him a long time. He seemed pretty happy in his life. When I moved to Seattle in the early 2000s, he was the Posies’ drummer; Matt Harris, who played on Doris and the Daggers, was the bass player for the Posies. After the Monsoonrecord, Darius started playing with us; he’s the drummer on The Real Feel. After I left Seattle, I moved to Australia, and we lost touch for four or five years. He was supposed to play on Doris.

Justin from Broken Social Scene was really good friends with Darius, too, and he called me up and asked if he could drum.

“Exiled Tonight” seemed, to me, like a touring travelogue. With Pavement, you were touring constantly. Do you miss the touring life? I do miss it. With Pavement, in the old days, we worked it pretty hard. We did every single show anybody asked us to do. We did it on a shoestring budget. I think it kinda wore us down in the end. The reunion tour was great because it was at a much bigger level, and we had a crew and could stay in hotel rooms; it was like a nice vacation, really. This solo stuff is still shoestring, but it’s still touring, and I’m excited about it. I’m going next week to play SXSW, six shows there, then we’ll do a West Coast tour in April, an East Coast / Midwest tour in June.

Eight years separate The Real Feel and Doris. Do you have a big backlog of unreleased songs? Sorta. I didn’t really write that many songs after The Real Feel. But the way I do things, it takes me a long time to get up and running, and when I do start writing songs, I write a lot of songs. I try to use most of them on the records or as b-sides. Most of these are from the last few years. Some of them date back to The Real Feel era, but they sound a lot different than they used to. I’ve already written my next record, and I’m ready to record that!

You’re way ahead of the curve. I don’t wanna fool around. I don’t think you need to, anymore; you can kinda just put things out when you wanna put 'em out. I’m not gonna wait another eight years.

What does the song title “AWM” stand for? It stands for “Always Wanted More.” It’s about my ex-wife. Chrissy was a big part of Pavement; we split up in 2003 or 2004. She’s still around, in San Francisco. She comes to shows. It was tough. It was pretty tough times in Seattle, after the divorce, but then I met Sarah, and things changed after that. I’m much happier.

[kadobeclothing]

A Chat With Stella – WWD

“We’re all in this together” — a universal mantra of the coronavirus era. Sometimes that commonality is comforting in its more superficial aspects. Last week, when uncooperative English-country cell service put the kibosh on a no-visuals conversation with Stella McCartney, her p.r. went swiftly to un-planned B: Zoom. We settled in to chat equally undone, granted, with Stella flaunting a much better top, a sweatshirt from her collaboration with “We Are the Weather” author Jonathan Safran Foer. (Full disclosure: Before joining, I switched out of my Clorox-spotted, Bronx County DA sweatshirt, an artifact of a younger brother’s stint on my couch 25 years ago.)

While some people embrace the primp-up-at-home approach to quarantine, that’s not Stella’s thing. “I put makeup on for the first time in a month last week, when I had to do something,” she offers. As with most conversations these days with someone you haven’t spoken with recently, ours starts with “How are you coping?”

“I couldn’t be luckier,” Stella says, ever self-aware. “I’ve got a little bit of help here, which is a massive blessing. I can’t complain.” Like millions of others, she is working through 24-hour household-running, juggling work, meals and homeschooling of her four kids, ages 15 to nine. Her day starts with Stella McCartney brand meetings — more frequent and of broader scope than before lockdown. While the kids are old enough that interruptions aren’t an issue, she goes into “tough-love” mode when it comes to school. Last week, English schools were still on Easter break, so she was anticipating readjustment this week. “They all go to different schools and each school has handled it in a different way. Some are more tech savvy than others,” she says.

As for cooking, Stella is top chef, but lately, she’s getting help. Because her work day starts early, she tries to think through each day’s meals the night before. But on this morning, she woke up to a surprise. “My daughter Bailey had already cooked tomato soup. I have to say, it was delicious,” she boasts. “It’s great, they’re getting into [cooking], I mean, they’re making fun of me because it’s, like, soup every day. I’m such a waste-not, want-not type, it’s at the core of everything in the brand and in my personality. Literally, I’m using everything. It’s great. That’s how I was brought up.” To our primary purpose: a check-in on Stella’s business in the age of COVID-19, and what this particular Earth Day represents to her. I learned after we spoke that even from quarantine, she’s found a way to celebrate its spirit. Stella worked with Ocean Outdoor, the digital advertising company, to host a major screen takeover at London’s Piccadilly Circus. It launched on Tuesday and runs through Sunday at midnight, rotating a series of upbeat messages including “Mother Earth has started healing” and, captioning a photo of the Earth painted on Amber Valletta’s face, “For us, every day is Earth Day.”

Amber Valletta as Mother Earth in Stella McCartney’s Earth Day screen takeover in Piccadilly Circus, on display through April 26.  Courtesy Photo

WWD: I just saw Barry Diller on “Squawk Box” [on April 16]. He was not optimistic. Stella McCartney:  Well, f–king welcome to Stella McCartney, Bridget Foley.

WWD: Thank you. How are you feeling? S.M.: I am very much split. I’m split between my personal emotions, and then obviously, I have a business to run. I’m living two lives right now. I’m the mother of four, I’m a wife. I’m cooking three meals a day and I’m loving it. I’m with my babies, and blessed to be in nature and not in the city. I’ve got my horse. So I’m fine in my solitude. Then, obviously, there is a deep sadness for all of the lives that are lost and for what people are going through. I have a huge respect for the people on the front line here in England in the NHS and all of the emergency workers. That reality, the mindfulness of what other people are going through, and that we’re all connected in all of the same thoughts, which is a really heavy realization, not to be lightly dismissed. I am very aware of that. Then, there’s the side to me that employs hundreds and hundreds of people globally. Obviously, we are affected as a business, like every other business right now. I’m always wanting the business to do well because of what we stand for as much as anything, and also because I’m a businesswoman. But right now you think, “Wow, this is the first time we are all connected in so many ways.” That’s the important thing that sits on my mind. WWD: It’s odd that that connection comes through isolation. S.M.: Yes. I have a large family network so I’m not isolated that much on my own. The first couple of weeks were really interesting for me on a working level because in our industry, we work with teams, and we feed off each other creatively. I was trying to settle into working via device and using my teams in a different way. [Now] all of us are feeling connected. I’m more connected with teams globally than usual — “let’s meet with China; let’s meet with Japan,” bigger meetings with teams. I’ve enjoyed that and I want to carry through. One of the big questions here is how does this impact our lives going forward, when things get back to whatever the new normal will be. I’m looking to my team a lot, also. Holistically, making sure my teams are OK mentally and emotionally. And that, normally, I don’t have time to do; [usually] I’m just getting involved in my day-to-day. But now I’m like OK, we need to have calls every week just to check in on everyone and see how everyone is feeling. I worry about people, just how they’re doing. My teams in Italy, they’re not allowed out, they’re allowed out to go food shopping and that’s it….I’m mindful of that, like how are you all doing emotionally and mentally because that’s hardcore, going out or not going out and looking out and seeing nothing there. That’s quite hard hitting. I’m not sure if any of us really know how that will affect us all. WWD: Nuts and bolts, I’m sure the specifics vary from region to region. S.M.: Yes. there’s one side that’s creative and there’s one side that’s very, very much responding to different regions and who is quarantined, who’s not. Obviously, we’re massively based in Italy, so it’s been a big conversation about what we can make, what we can’t make, what we can have access to. When you do work in a sustainable way, you have to work far in advance to be sustainable. I develop the majority of my fabrics far in advance, and I have such a deep commitment to my suppliers and to where we’re growing the yarn and the process and the entire circle-ness of it all. I try to remain respectful and loyal to X amount of [suppliers] because I know they’re my reliable source points. WWD: Quarantining with family is very different from quarantining alone. But it still puts stress on work. S.M.: I grew up in a creative household. And creatively, it was pretty much isolation. When The Beatles broke up we moved to a farm in Scotland, completely isolated. My mom and dad did an album; my dad did an album of McCartney, and I think it was his best work. It has been a massive impact on my life, that isolation, on how I think and how I live my life through my business, through my family, through my friendships. The majority of my friends are artists or work in the creative fields, and the majority of them work in isolation; it’s just what they do. Name-dropping, I checked in with David Hockney, and he said, “I’m painting more than ever.” The birth [of] creation is a very insular moment. And then [creatives] go into a teamwork frame, if at all. So my dad will write an album on his own. When he has that creative birth, he will then take it to the next step, engineering it, producing it, art-working it, and ultimately it goes on tour in front of hundreds of thousands of people. So it’s sort of this journey….Our industry goes very quickly away from isolation in the creative sense and goes into teamwork. It becomes a production line, if you like. WWD: It sounds as if you prefer a longer solitary creative process. S.M.: I seem to be busier than ever because I’m doing more and more calls. This is taking me away from my creative process and isolation, so I’m trying to find a balance, which is at the core of everything we do at Stella McCartney. Maybe the answer to all of this is trying to find the balance. WWD: Other designers have talked to me about the creative process being teamwork. It sounds as if your process still starts singularly. S.M.: My name is on the door of the brand, so everything that it stands for has come from me at some stage in my thinking, from my belief systems and my creativity. And then the team around me, we all feed off each other and we all create from that starting point. In our industry we all complain about not having time. So I want to be respectful of that right now and [think of] how can we find that balance between teamwork and creating with your team and bouncing off of each other and all that stuff. Even before all of this happened, I was already approaching spring like this. I was like, OK, how can we not buy new fabric for spring? How can we look at everything that we [have already]? I’ve done that for years. It’s the way that I work; it’s the way my mind works. What have we got in stock, how can we repurpose it? How can we give it a re-life or a rebirth? We did all the upcycling two seasons ago on the runway. How can we look at what’s in a warehouse somewhere? So it’s a really interesting moment for our brand.

Vegan leather — it’s not just for the Falabella bag. This coat is from fall 2020.  Giovanni Giannoni/WWD

WWD: What does your sweatshirt say? S.M.: It says We Are the Weather. It’s my Jonathan Safran Foer collaboration. We Are the Weather — it’s very apt. It feels like most of what I’ve done seems apt right now. It seems like everything I’ve done in my career seems to be quite apt right now. WWD: To that point, and going back to what you said a moment ago, do you think you’re a bit ahead of other brands fabric-wise? S.M.: My viscose comes from sustainable managed forests. It took me three years to [develop it]. So once I’ve taken that long and it’s the only source I have, I then commit to it. I [now] have had to look at all the business, which I do anyway, but it’s more magnified. Then that goes into, can we have access to

Unisex short sleeve t-shirt

$ 20.75 – $ 25.00 Select options

our e-commerce if [production] is all in Italy, and da da da. And what markets are opening up more than others, or which ones are going into isolation or coming out of isolation. We’re all doing the same thing I’m sure. WWD: What differences do you find among the various global markets? S.M.: Every single market is reacting differently. But what people are buying is what would be expected, much more home pieces, much more classics. We’re so lucky in that we have real iconic, timeless, staple pieces — the Falabella bag, for example, the Elyse shoe. It’s not dissimilar to what I’m sure a lot of brands are finding. Hopefully people will lean toward a more mindful culture now. To be a more conscious consumer more than ever, I hope, starts to have some kind of resonance with people. And I think that that’s what we represent in the industry. WWD: It surprises me that people are shopping at all for clothes or accessories. You’re finding that people are shopping? S.M.: They’re not shopping as much. I think the whole reality of this is buy less, care more. That’s the highlight for me, but it has always been the case. As I say, before when I was looking at doing spring, I was already thinking, why do we offer so much product? Waste is a big, big, big issue in our industry, and I am a massive fan of trying to reduce waste or do better with the waste that exists. I think we probably waste the least out of all the brands, we’re so mindful and careful. The challenge for me to my teams is how can we be better at our production and how can we be much more efficient. So we’re pretty on it. I think that now more than ever is the time to look at our industry and say, OK, the truck loads of fast fashion that are incinerated or buried. That’s $100 billion worth of waste a year in fibers, in resourcing. It’s crazy. There is just so much we don’t need. And I agree, I don’t think anyone needs to buy anything ever again. It’s how you repurpose. This is what I think all the time; this is not anything new for me. That’s why I’m [looking] to the classics that I’ve created, because they’re timeless. It’s how I approach the birth of design — by starting with, how can I create something that lasts somebody a lifetime, and then another lifetime after that? How can I design something that is so not relying on a trend so that it can be recycled or repurposed or resold or rented? How can I encourage all of that? I am so open-minded to all of that.

Sustainably sourced viscose is a Stella McCartney staple. This dress is from fall 2020.  Giovanni Giannoni/WWD

WWD: When you have that attitude about less is more and less is better, how do you keep on a growth path? S.M.: There’s real growth. We’re not a massive, massive brand. Look, there’s always going to be brands, there’s always going to be products, you’re always going to want a mug for your cup of tea, and when your mug breaks, you’re going to buy another one, or you’re going to get bored of that mug and you’re going to go, “I want a new mug; I deserve a new mug.” That’s OK. It’s allowed, we’re allowed to consume. What we need to do is consume in a better way. And what companies have to do for the customer is make better and source better and be better brands. We are really f–king good at that at Stella McCartney. That’s a nice mug, Bridget. You’re allowed to buy yourself a new one in a week. WWD: Thank you. From a craftsperson in Ireland. S.M.: Exactly! Look, my way of thinking has always been, it’s allowed. You’re allowed to buy s–t, right? No one is going to stop buying s–t, but people are going to, I hope, buy more locally now, they are going to buy better, they are going to buy more online. That will reduce a lot of carbon in the air. For me, I’ve always had this really difficult dilemma where it’s like, if I do things mindfully and ethically and environmentally, [does] that mean I’m not allowed to have a successful business? But I believe now more than ever that my business model should be more people’s business model. When everyone is doing things [mindfully] then fine, then we can have a non-growth conversation. But right now I need to set an example, I need to show people that you can have a healthy business, you can employ people, you can employ mills in Italy, you can work with farmers all over the world. You can create commerce in a more conscious way. WWD: During these massive global quarantines, we’re seeing cleaner air and cleaner water; it’s been measured. But it has taken a total shut down and total isolation. So does that make you optimistic or pessimistic? S.M.: I’ve been really optimistic that we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in a matter of weeks. Pollution — you could see the results really quickly. Obviously I never envisaged a shut down so dramatically. WWD: No one did. S.M.: More than ever now, we need to have these conversations, and we have to learn. [Otherwise] I think it is such a disservice to the suffering. I feel like every single person that has lost their life or lost a loved one from COVID-19, that cost and pain and suffering needs to see something good come of it. If the people in power can respect those lives lost with some kind of environmental respect and management and policymaking, then I feel like it’s not in vain. People have got to stop and ask, “What was the cost, and what can we do in a positive way [to honor] the pain that people have felt?” WWD: Yet some public health protocols seem at odds with environmental protocols. We’re all washing our hands constantly, so we’re using more water than ever. Also, the return to single-use items. In New York State, the plastic-bag ban went into effect only a while ago, and it’s now suspended. And before it closed, Starbucks stopped accepting customers’ containers, at least temporarily. S.M.: The single-use plastics — that’s where tech will come in. I’ve been looking for many, many years at things like that. We’ve been looking at a company making single-use items that are completely biodegradable. It’s now looking at single-purpose spoons and cutlery, because obviously, the world wants disposable spoons and cutlery. Look, water. We’ve done so many things over the years at Stella, just simple things like clever care such as a whole campaign around not dry-cleaning, not washing your clothes so much, turn your washing machine down, doing it less frequently. The amount of water we use just in the fashion industry — the facts are ridiculous. So outside of washing hands, there are ways to reduce water consumption, many, many ways. And that’s just everyday practice in pretty much every industry. WWD: Do you see a dichotomy between the environment and the public health issue or do you think ultimately they come together in the big picture? S.M.: Ultimately, they come together in the big picture. Ultimately, we’ve got to have some kind of respect for animals on the planet and we’ve got to stop the way in which we farm them and kill them and eat them because it’s a hotbed for disease. It’s not an industry that is healthy or pretty. I’m not isolating out a nation because I think the entire globe is guilty of how they farm and kill and manufacture animals. We have seen many diseases come of that. So, you know, it ain’t gonna go away until somebody looks at that predominantly. They are all connected. And I think it’s so interesting that it’s the conversation nobody is really having. WWD: Why not? S.M.: Because people don’t feel good about the fact that they kill billions of animals a year. There is a guilt attached to it. They don’t feel proud of it so they don’t want to talk about it. They know it’s wrong, and it’s hard to face that. We are all part of it. Well, I’m not part of it. But the majority of the planet is part of that conversation, and responsible. Again, I’ll be the glass half-full type where I say, “you don’t have to give it up completely if you can’t, but just reduce it and just buy it better.” Draw a line in how you consume. Set yourself goals, set yourself parameters that are better. Because it comes down to individuals. The individual consumption and demand will dictate what the ceo’s and the businesses invest in, what they buy into. I’ve been working on my mom’s vegetarian food [company] since she passed away 22 years ago on Friday. She started it, what, 30, 40 years ago? She started a vegetarian, alternative food brand, and it is growing year on year. And I have never seen more competitors in a most exciting way. My mom would be so happy. She probably would have closed the business, seeing how many vegetarian alternative competitors there are now. That’s not because KFC loves chickens. It’s because they see that the consumer wants a vegan KFC. The biggest burger selling at Burger King right now is the Impossible Burger. This is due to customer change. This is the reaction to hopefully the new way of life.

Sophisticated fake fur from fall 2019. “I’ve got my own little supply network,” McCartney says.  Giovanni Giannoni/WWD

WWD: Do you oversee your mother’s company? S.M.: Well, the whole family does. We create the products, we create the range, I do the packaging, we look at the marketing. It’s a family brand.. WWD: That’s amazing. How long has it been? S.M.: I don’t know the exact founding year. I need to look at it, actually; this reminds me. I want to put it on the packaging when we re-brand. [Linda McCartney Foods launched in 1991.] WWD: You have stayed faithful to your upbringing, and the tenets you were raised on. Do your kids embrace the lifestyle that you live at home? Has any of them ever questioned it? S.M.: Yes, they do. They are exactly how I was. But I think now there’s more people around [with similar views], although there’s still not a huge amount of vegetarians. Like, surprisingly, not all their friends are veggie. But it’s a much more well-versed conversation now. They are a lot less freakishly alone. But it’s very similar. I remember when I was really young, I’d say to my mom and dad, “why are we vegetarian? Why can’t I eat meat?” And they would say, “Well, you can eat meat because it’s an individual choice. But this is why we choose not to, because we don’t want to eat a dead animal.” My kids have asked me the exact same questions, and I give them the exact same answer. I’m like, “You are totally free to do what you want to do. I really respect your choice, but this is why I do it.” I see it through their eyes. Because when you’re part of a high-profile family that the world knows doesn’t eat animals, you don’t feel like you can go and sneak chicken Kiev on a weekend. But at the end of the day, my kids — I believe very much that children are so beautifully connected to nature and they’re so innocent and they’re so pure and the minute you say to them, “Look, there’s a chicken alive and there’s a chicken deep fried. Do you want to eat it?” I mean, nobody wants to eat stuff if they see how it’s made. I don’t think anyone would eat it if they really saw how it got to their plate.

A fanciful take on boho-cool, knitted from upcycled leftovers, from fall 2019.  WWD/Shutterstock

WWD: What do you think the lasting impact will be of COVID-19 on the industry? S.M.: I don’t know what the lasting impact will be, if any. My biggest fear is that things will just get back to what we consider normal, whatever that is. But I think that the immediate impact will be thinking differently, I hope. I’m always trying to push myself and my teams. They laugh at me. I’m, “OK, so what are we going to do? How are we going to do this differently?” For me, if every single day I didn’t try and figure out how to come at something differently, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to do what I do. I think that the entire industry now, and anyone in business now, has had to stop and say, “this is a moment I didn’t see coming. How am I going to be the one to think outside the box?” We are all competitive. We all want to win, and we all want to come up with great ideas. Right now people have got to push themselves and try to guess what might happen next. It’s a breaking of the norm as we have known it. I think if you are in fashion, you need to think that way every single day, regardless of the coronavirus. That’s our job. But there are obvious ways in which things will change. I think people are going to be much more cautious with their money. They’re going to invest more carefully, and they will buy in a different way, physically and emotionally. WWD: Small picture, back to spring, a little more on your thoughts right now. S.M.: We started working on spring, and then we paused. But I feel like at Stella we need to do something to [speak to] this moment and not just say, let’s just cancel everything until it’s over. For me, it feels like creatively we should be more inspired than ever to stand out. So I have been working on this little idea of individual pieces and individual gems, and being mindful of the two ends of the spectrum. I think some people will come back and go, “oh f–k it, I deserve to enjoy fashion for a second. I have been sitting in my flat in my pajamas for three months.” So I think there’s going to be [some people who want to shop]. Again, it comes back to working sustainably. I’m trying not to order new fabrics for [spring]. I’m just like, what have we got? We have fabrics that we buy in bulk because they are sustainably sourced. They are our go-to’s. We’re not like other fashion brands. WWD: No, you’re not. S.M.: I have a relationship with environmentally friendly suppliers. I have even created them in some instances. That’s the core value system of the brand, so that’s what we can go to. We’re lucky in that sense. It’s like saying I know that I can get my organic oat milk from this supplier, that’s not going to change. It’s just then left to me as to what I print on it this season or if I can embroider on it this season, which I probably can’t. I work like that anyway. My upcycled collection [fall 2019], those pieces all become limited editions. My final coat was like five seasons’ worth of prints sitting in a warehouse. So it shows that if you are sustainable as a business in fashion, you’re kind of ahead of the game when something like this happens. I’m not reliant on the same things that other people are reliant on because I am much more reliant on a sustainable source. WWD: Your ethical premise becomes pragmatic business. S.M.: Yes, and it becomes a supply chain conversation. I know there’s only two non-leather suppliers that I want to work with, with whom I’ve developed a soft non-leather or a faux fur. And so they are who I go to. I never start a season with, “let’s see 700 fabrics from Italy.” It’s not how I work. I’ve got my own little supply network. Over 60 percent of our environmental impact happens at the raw material stage, which means that this is where we have the biggest positive impact as well. If I didn’t use a fabric maybe in one season because it didn’t feel right, I don’t then sell it or chuck it away. I go, “OK, maybe I’ll use it next season.” It will sit somewhere and then I’ll reuse it.

A fluid coat crafted out of fabrics from past collections, from fall 2019.  Giovanni Giannoni/WWD

WWD: How will this crisis impact the show system? S.M.: I feel like we’ve been having that conversation for 20 years. Like, ugh. You know?  WWD: Yes. But do you think this is, finally, the essential reset button? S.M.: I think maybe more the conversation is, it’s our job to come up with newness, come up with different ways of grabbing attention and reflecting the feelings, the thoughts of other people. We represent that in what we do. So there’s always got to be a new way of doing it. We all think that fashion shows are medieval. We all question how that works and if it needs to be done that way. It’s just always hard to find an answer on that one. This will [force the issue], for sure. Exciting new ideas will come out of this, for sure. NOTE: On Monday, Stella’s p.r. Arabella Rufino sent word of the screen takeover at Piccadilly Circus. Asked why she planned the initiative at a time when there are so few people on the streets to take it in, Stella sent a thoughtful reply. “For the first time in history, we can truly measure the damage done by human activity,” she wrote. “Will we go back to the norm, or will we give Mother Earth the respect and time she deserves to continue healing — so that these city centers with their huge screens can be seen through unpolluted air? I hope we can learn from this moment of pause and that nature can reclaim its rightful focal place in our lives. My message is a gentle, loving reminder: Every day is Earth Day.”  

Source link

source https://www.kadobeclothing.store/a-chat-with-stella-wwd/

[socialattractionuk]

15 men share their wildest sex stories

(Picture: Liberty Antonia Sadler for Metro.co.uk)

Many of us have had some wild sexual experiences.

However it happened, having consensual sex – no matter how kinky – is nothing to be ashamed of.

We all like to try new things – some of us more than others – and often we’re left with memories we tend to keep to ourselves.

But 16 men decided it was time to share their stories with Metro.co.uk. They told us about the most out-there things they’ve ever done in the bedroom – and outside of it.

The one with their hairbrush…

‘I had my wife and friend buttf*** me with a hairbrush. And once inserted my wife’s big vibrator in me.’

The one with the gangbang…

‘Went to a Naturist Spa in Kentish Town and banged a 47 year old in a steam room. I’ve also been in a gangbang.’

The one who likes to share…

‘For most of my adult life I have found that when I am in a relationship for quite a while then I become fixated on the idea of sharing my partner with other men.

‘I’ve had partners just shut that down and say its not their thing (I’d never try to be pushy about this kind of thing) and others who’d be up for dabbling. With my wife, as we have been together for 10 years, it has been something that is “there” for ages.

‘She has always been keen on the idea but sensibly wary about damaging a relationship. In the beginning it was “this is just a fantasy, we shouldn’t risk it”.

‘Over the years that evolved towards dipping our toes in to the water, so to speak, and eventually to the point where she was as keen as me to try. We have done it with a handful of different people and she has also been with someone while I’m not present.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for MEtro.co.uk)

The one who likes to take risks…

‘I had sex in the parking garage at my place of work. It was the risk of getting caught that made it amazing.’

The one who got high…

‘Most extreme thing I did was take GHB and let my ex and her mate strap-on me while we were all off our faces and drunk.’

The one with the older woman…

‘Weirdest sex I’ve had was with a woman who was 41 when I was 19 in a field. Did loads of oral and different positions. Didn’t plan it.’

More: Showbiz

Pink's husband Carey Hart teaches daughter Willow, 7, how to shoot a rifle

15 men share their wildest sex stories

You can help in worldwide search to find never-before-seen photos of The Beatles

The one with the surprise four-way…

‘My ex decided she wanted a four-way, promised me it was other women, and that all would be a surprise.

‘I had to turn up at her house, and go straight to the bedroom, where she came in and locked the door.

‘Tied me to the bed and blindfolded me. I had to remain blindfolded until they removed it.

‘I was completely at their disposal, was pegged and peed on, used in every way.

‘Took the blindfold off midway to see that the other two women were her cousin and her best friend. I was then untied and allowed to continue on into a dominant role.

‘Genuinely the strangest evening, night and morning I have ever had.’

The one who finished in pain…

‘Craziest thing ever was tearing my foreskin during sexual intercourse and not knowing which of us was bleeding after climax as the pleasure masked the pain for about 10 seconds.

‘Had to go to hospital for surgery. How embarrassing.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

The one who just couldn’t wait…

‘Well, I was at University in Leicester and was seeing a girl, who I’ll call Sally, who was, like me, studying Maths.

‘We had a shared sense of adventure and lived to live life on the edge. Having tried sex in (among other places) rooms in the Holiday Inn which we weren’t staying at, the library at the University and many more, we had spent the day in London.

‘Being poor students we had hitchhiked down there and back. On the way back, Sally started becoming, shall we say, amorous, in the back of the car that had kindly given us a lift.

‘The couple in the front were completely unaware of anything that we were doing in the back of their car and, when we approached Leicester, the guy driving just pulled over onto the hard shoulder instead of of leaving the motorway.

‘We jumped out and passion got the better of us so we had the most incredible sex right there on the grass bank next to the M1. It was early evening the sun was setting, but still light enough for a lot of cars to toot their horns to let us know they’d seen us!’

The one who got caught…

‘In a tent… my ex and I were wild camping and obviously decided to have some fun, I don’t know if it was the risk of being “outdoors” but we were definitely a bit louder and friskier.

‘We were interrupted by a torch shining on the tent. It turns out we woke a small village just outside the forest. The guy said he thought someone was being attacked.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

That one time, in a car…

‘Craziest sex ever was in the back seat of my car while on the train through the channel tunnel.

‘My wife and I had driven for about six hours before getting there and she’d been teasing me by saying things she knew would turn me on and by rubbing my penis.

‘By the time we got there I was ready to explode. We climbed into the back and I lasted less than a minute.’

That time in Iraq…

‘I’d been injured and was kept in the medical centre for observation for 48 hours. I connected with a nurse, who was a commissioned officer, Captain, and I was a JNCO, Corporal.

‘So any relationship was a military crime on two levels, she was an officer, I wasn’t. She was a nurse and I a patient.

‘We’d had some heavy petting my last night in the medical centre but it was too risky to go further as the Doc and the medics slept in there.

‘We made a plan to do it covertly elsewhere. We arranged to meet near the phones and then make our way to one of the Warrior armoured fighting vehicles.

‘It was January and got dark very early.

‘We snuck into my Warrior and disabled the power so the hydraulic door wouldn’t open. As we were having sex, which was amazing, the camp came under attack from both mortar and 107mm rockets.

‘The vehicles being a very safe place to be we kept going. With the sound of alarms and explosions we continued to go at it as though the world were about to end.

‘It’s a special memory.’

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

The one whose experience happened during a time of alcoholism…

‘All of my wild sex escapades were in the midst of my disease and not with my wife. For me, it all centred around being pursued and pursuing others, it was never about the sex itself.

‘I was with men, women, men and women at the same time, with cross-dressers, and have cross dressed myself.

‘I’m not proud of these experiences, some were good and fun, some I put myself into danger, and all in all I carry a lot of shame.

‘The worst of it all, through my actions, I put my wife’s health in jeopardy with my affairs.

‘To my knowledge, she is completely unaware. Today, I am living my amends to her by being faithful and placing my sex life on to a spiritual plane.

‘I know if I let myself succumb to my own desires, I get pulled into a spiralling circling of thoughts and actions that led me to make decisions that placed my wife’s health and my health in danger.

‘Thank goodness I was fortunate and never picked up an infection or was raped or murdered.’

More: Sex

Can you use sex and masturbation as a form of meditation?

Woman accidentally masturbates to mum and dad's sex tape

Five women open up about how having a stoma bag has affected their love lives

The people watchers…

‘I hooked up with a guy and we went to the park after opening hours. I was f***ing him in the trees when we realised there were loads of men in the bushes watching us.’

And finally: The one who broke his penis…

‘When I first got with my partner we were at it all of the time, trying new moves and weren’t afraid of anything!

‘One day I decided to turn her around 180° while still on top of me, and we both just heard SNAP, she got off me straight away because we both knew something was definitely not right, and sitting at the end of my dick was blood coming out.

‘Luckily it stopped fairly quickly, but I still got a paramedic to take a look – which must’ve been the most embarrassing moment of my life.

‘For a few weeks afterwards my willy was clearly bent sideways from around the middle of it, but thankfully it went back to normal soon afterwards…’

Stories have been edited for length and clarity. 

MORE: Boohoo and Missguided shamed for failing to promote sustainable fashion

MORE: Channel 4’s Pure recognised my mental illness for what it truly is

[unfetteredprose]

Tinder: Same same or different?

Things that Tinder confirms to me:

Now, I will start by saying that I don’t think that Tinder necessarily reflects young culture on the whole. I think it attracts a certain types of people and, if you want to peruse what’s on offer there, you have to expect that 99% of what you’re going to find is of that variety. I’m going to explain what makes up that variety and my thoughts on each aspect.

In my mind, I have created the generic “modern girl’s” profile. It goes something like this:

“Me: Yogi. Wine Drinker. World Traveler. Fluent in Sarcasm. Tattoos. Whiskey. Sagittarius.

You: Must love dogs. Beards and Flannel are a plus. Over 6’ Tall.

Loves: Coffee. Witty Banter. My Passport.

Hates: Trump and his supporters. Animal Cruelty. Religion.

Just go ahead and swipe left if you’re looking for a one-night stand, or if you smoke.

~420-friendly~”

It can be many permutations of this profile, but I think you get the idea. The picture painted for us here is one of a feminist, animal lover, party seeking, lobbyist, esoteric, pseudo-intellectual, kool-aid drinker filled with wanderlust. This type of profile, or parts-of it, are so common between my search range in D.C. for the ages of 26-32 that it almost feels like people are copy-pasting their profiles from a website offering pre-made information.

Tinder is infuriating in the sense that I wish that I could confront people with their own obvious hypocrisy sometimes, but I can’t unless they swipe right on me as well. To be honest, nobody would (or will) swipe right on me because I’m not Patrick Dempsey or Channing Tatum or whatever the female kind in this area (and age range) seem to be interested in finding via online methods. I’m also quite sure that most of them either don’t take the app seriously enough to put much effort into or, or they are into casual sex and one-night stands.

Before I continue, I must make the preface that I understand sometimes that what is listed may not be part of a person’s identity and may, instead, just be a list of things that the person likes. However, when you begin a sentence with “I am…” or “Me:” you are telling me that whatever is about to come next is such an integral part of you that you feel the pressing need to mention it as a date qualifier. Also, I would submit that the things we are interested in do, in fact, make up part of our identity. Of course, everybody isn’t going to be a unique and utterly astounding person, but I do think it’s worth sitting down and trying to figure out why a guy would choose to pick you over any other random girl. If you don’t know why that is, then you can be darn sure the only thing they want to do is sleep with you.

Let’s begin.

“Yogi – Yogini – Loves Yoga / Barre / Running”

First of all. What you’re talking about is exercise. You’re such a boring person that part of your identity is literally made-up by what kind of exercise you do. Nobody cares. Of course, we want you to look good… nobody is specifically looking for a boxtroll on purpose; but, whether you get your health and looks from running, barre, yogi, general calisthenics, tumbling, gymnastics, swimming, soccer, or whatever, we don’t care. Unless, what you really mean to say is that you practice yoga as a spiritual art. However, rarely do the supplied photographs and Instagram accounts validate this theory. Most of what can be seen are females doing some version of a hand-stand or self-lift and taking a selfie of it. These are often accompanied by tepid statements that are meant to “inspire” the viewer to the same level of passion that the artist (or yogi) has to “believe in their dreams” or that “you’re beautiful” (despite not knowing you or anything about you). What’s not captured in the photo are the twenty two tries that it took for them to take the perfect handstand selfie. To be honest, this is the first in what I’ll call “the boring girl’s list of superlatives”. I wish this didn’t catch on… just keep your personal habits a secret until we’re serious with each other, then it might make a difference.

“Wine Drinker”

There are some women out there that seem to think that drinking wine makes a person cultured. In fact, wine culture has only recently made its way into society’s spotlight with the advent of mainstream wine stores and “painting while drinking” studios. Although wine has never been a completely absent thing in the United States, just think back to the 90’s… where would one go to get a fine wine? Were sommeliers as prevalent? Modern society has definitely placed a spotlight on this drink.

Given this cultural history, it’s not surprising that you’re “into wine”. That’s like saying in the 50’s and 60’s “I’m into The Beatles”. Of course you are, it’s what everybody is doing these days. By saying you’re a wine drinker what you’re really saying is that you’re into what everybody else is into. I would be more impressed by a person who said they didn’t like wine, because at least they stand against something that a lot of people do. It’s almost anti-establishment. Of course, if you like wine there is no problem with that. It’s a drink made from fruit, and it’s been around for some time (so humans have gotten pretty good at making it), but the real issue here is that I’m certain that your love of wine is just a cover up for your love of being drunk. It’s “classier” to drink wine, therefore it looks better if you’re a lush. I am not particularly interested in girls who list part of their identity (or just interests) as being made up of the love of alcohol. While I do drink a beer occasionally (and I do mean… very occasionally), I would never list it as a positive on my chart of things-about-me. I feel that people who do, are just filling in space where something more interesting should be.

“World Traveler / Wanderlust”

This is the one that gets me every time. Almost every. single. girl. has this on her profile these days. As you might start picking up, most of the things on this long and exhaustive list are things that any normal and sane person would simply say “of course” to. Of course you’re in love with travelling. Who isn’t? Who doesn’t want to go explore other cultures and landscapes, food and people? It’s fun. The only person who has said to me that they are not interested in this kind of thing is my racist ex-step-mother.

The issue here is not that you like traveling, but that traveling has become almost a kind-of “keeping up with the joneses” type of thing. “How many countries have you been to?” “I’ve been to 12.” “Oh yeah? Well, I’ve been to 19!” As if going to more countries makes you a progressively more interesting person. Nope, you’re just the same old asshole that’s pissing off another group of people for about a week. Either that, or you’ve been squatting somewhere (like Bangkok) where a bunch of other foreigners are, working as a foreign teacher and also pissing off the locals for a couple of years. A sub-genre of this “traveling culture” is people who say they just “moved” from some place international back to the D.C. area when, in fact, they are either from here or from somewhere else in the U.S. originally. Mother-father, you didn’t MOVE from anywhere. You simply returned from a temporary residence in another place. You were always going to come back here because your money ran out or you don’t have any marketable skills (or language) to stay permanently in that place.

I was in the Peace Corps in China from 2013 to 2015. I would not make the statement that I recently “moved” back from China. I was always going to come back. Moving implies an unexpected (or at least not forseen for a medium amount of time) situation that causes you do pick-up residence and resettle somewhere new for a specific reason. Humans like having a home, and they are creatures of habit. If you say you “moved”, chances are that you knew you would return to the U.S. at some point. If you work in D.C., it was likely because your job was a temporary limited-term appointment.

Another funny quirk that I’ll mention briefly is for a foreigner (a non-U.S. Citizen) to list on their Tinder account that they just “moved” from <someplace> to the U.S. As a United States Immigration Officer, I know they are glossing over a few major points with this one.

If you are not aware of how our system works, one does not just simply decide to “move” to America. That’s not possible. The two major ways into the U.S. are through employment or family. If you “moved” here, it’s either because an employer petitioned for you to be a Green Card holder so that they can use your unique skills to supplement their company, or it’s because you got married to somebody and they petitioned for you to come here as a green card holder. In some minor circumstances, other USC’s can petition for their brothers and sisters to come to the U.S. but normally we see that these people are older and not in the 26-32 age range. Other notable ways to move are being a child of any of the above categories, as you would move with your family as a derivative to that benefit.

MOST of the people on Tinder in the age range that I’ve described in D.C. are not intending immigrants, but non-immigrant visa holders that have a time-limit on their stay here. This is similar to my above point where the word “move” implies a largely unexpected situation change that causes you to resettle for an indefinite amount of time. In the circumstance that you are a graduate student or a nanny temporarily residing in the U.S., you cannot say that you “moved” to the U.S. You’re just here for a short-time until you’ve finished with what you need to do and the terms of your visa state that you need to leave afterwards. While some people wouldn’t think twice about the meaning of the word “move”, it is something that bothers me. Mostly because it glosses over a huge piece of information about that person, and also implies that they’re going to stick around for a while. This may play upon the initial reactions of people who are searching for commitment.

World traveler bothers me on an economic level. Alright, so you have a decent job. You’ve been to how many countries? Most travelers aren’t super knowledgeable about special pricing and fare-deals. They also have a tendency to be tourists and have no connection to the place where they go. They simply move from one place to another on the earth and continue to be a consumer of that place instead of a give-backer. All of that to say that traveling is expensive. Flights, hotels, rental cars, food, drinks, fun crap to do. I get emails about cheap flights, and not once have I priced out a week’s vacation for under $1200, and that’s getting a huge discount on a flight. If you have $1200 just laying around to spend on a week’s vacation somewhere, then I expect you to not have a car loan or credit card debt. Generally speaking, it’s idiocy to spend that money if you have consumer debt.

The argument here is that “I want to enjoy my life while I’m young” instead of waiting until you’re older when you might not have the physical prowess to do it (or just be dead). This is exactly the kind of self-first thinking that has caused America to be a credit society instead of a saving society. When you end up 80 years old and having no savings because you didn’t sufficiently plan for retirement (I assume because you didn’t think you’d live that long), you’ll be taxing our already over-burdened Social Security system.

Swipe after swipe I see the same thing on the profiles “world traveler”, “loves travelling”, “let’s go on an adventure”, etc. I don’t see a fun person, what I see is a person who is extremely bad with their money and looking for a free ticket to a vacation. As I’ve said before, traveling the world is fun and exciting, but there’s simply no way that people have the cash on hand and means to be doing it as much as it’s represented on Tinder

“Hella Sarcastic / Fluent in Sarcasm / Etc.”

When I see something like this on somebody’s profile, I immediately think that they must be a terrible person to be around. By saying that you’re a “sarcastic” person, what you’re TRYING to say is that you’re witty or funny. However, that is not what sarcasm is. Sarcasm is a negative counter inflection to what your statement really intends.

“Hey guys, like my new jacket?”

“Yeah Dave… real nice… *rolls eyes*.”

Sarcasm can be funny in small amounts, but in larger doses it’s disingenuous and rude. Imagine a person who spoke to other people like person 2 in the example above? Wouldn’t you think that they thought they knew better then you, or that you couldn’t connect with them as a human being because their humor set them apart from you? I know I would.

Sarcasm is used as a replacement for true wit. It’s a little subversive, so it gives the user a sense that they understand more than what they’re saying. People know that wit is formed in the intelligent mind and isn’t something immediately graspable by common people. In their effort to seem “better than thou” or, at least, want to picture themselves as in some sort-of movie (like a romantic comedy perhaps?) they latch onto anything that makes them seem smarter or more intelligent than they really are. If you want an example of real wit, you might look up your favorite Guy Ritchie movie, or episode of Top Gear. Europeans (especially the British) are exceptionally good at wit. Americans are not. That being said, wit isn’t usually something that can easily be riffed from the top of your head. It’s usually planned, and written, and crafted. Sarcasm does NOT equal wit.

Most girls who list this on their profile as a positive either don’t understand what Sarcasm is, are using it as a replacement for being funny, or picture themselves in a movie where all the characters have a kind-of loveable tension between them. It is especially telling about what kind of person they are if they use this. Note to males: keep away unless you enjoy slamming your fork down at dinner with your friends and screaming “Enough Stacey! You think you’re funny, but you’re not! You’ve got spinach in your teeth!”

“Curses like a sailor / Potty Mouth / Etc.”

I’ll tell you straight up. I do not like this even a little bit.

I’ll also tell you another thing straight up. If you want a guy who is actively seeking a girl who curses a lot, then you’re looking for a bad hombre. You want a guy who isn’t going to be good to you.

Nobody really likes cursing. Most of us engage in it at some point. Usually out of frustration or in the middle of telling a really exaggerated story. Almost no sane and normal person throws curse words into their sentence for no reason what-so-casual-ever.

Nobody likes girls that curse either, unless they are an avid curser and probably aren’t well-liked themselves. The reason is because that we like to believe in the good of humanity, and subconsciously we all know that cursing is quite the opposite. It reflects the negative dregs and pits of human consciousness and experience and for somebody to so lightly pepper a sentence with that they are telling us that they’ve given up on trying to be a good person. They’re even telling us that they don’t care what other people think about them. They’ll curse in front of children, in front of their parents, at the movies, in the mall, at the grocery store. You’ll have people looking at you all the time. You have to be slightly sociopathic to NOT care about that.

While I actually think that these girls are telling the truth here, and probably have mouths like sailors, what I think they’re really trying to do is “just be one of the guys”. I think that they’re either listing this, or have become this, in order to appeal to the kind of guy that doesn’t want a prissy girl or a girl that is high maintenance. The issue is that I’m not looking for another guy. I’m looking for a partner to try and be better for. I’m looking for someone that makes me want to be a better person, not someone who will go down into the blackness with me. I don’t want a girl that is high maintenance, one that can get along with my friends, one that WE can be close friends. I don’t need another “bro”.

Specifically choosing a girl who says they have a potty mouth is like finding a dog that is foaming at the mouth and losing its hair and taking it home as your pet. It’s got rabies and it’s going to bite you at some point. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something here…

“Tattooed / Tattoos”

This one is strange to me. A person listing ink on their body as part of their identity when it should be the other way around. Polynesians get tattoos on their body as an outward reflection of who they are. Not that having a tattoo is the identifier for them, but that it’s a signifier.

What we’ve got here is the Jennifer Aniston from Office Space situation. You know, that one where her boss is trying to insinuate that she wear more “flair” on her suspenders for her job at Shenanigans? She asks “isn’t 20 the minimum” and her boss replies “yes, but is that all you want to be is just the minimum?”

It doesn’t seem to matter to the girl what the tattoos are of. Which, in my opinion, should be important since there are a lot of absolutely crap-tastic tattoos these days. Just so long as you have tattoos, it’s hot. This tells me that girls aren’t really even paying attention to the tattoo specifically, but that the tattoo is acting as a signifier in this context. They signify that the guy is a badass. A guy who is willing to suffer the slings and arrows of society’s judgment about his character, a guy who paves his own way, blazes his own trail, and on and on ad-nauseum.

Reality check. Tattoos have become so mainstream now that one in two millenials have one. 45 million American’s claim to have at least one tattoo. Considering that the population is only 325,000,000 people in the United States, that means at least 14% of people have one tattoo (from babies to the elderly) and I’m even willing to bet that that number is way too low since 5 out of 9 of my coworkers have a tattoo (or had one and got it removed). It’s simply not that special anymore. It doesn’t have any bearing or meaning on the character of the individual except that they either want to memorialize something, or don’t mind using their own body as a canvas.

Personally, I don’t have any tattoos, because there was nothing I ever thought I wanted permanently on my body. Plus, I’m not convinced that the science behind putting ink under your skin completely backs up a long and healthy lifestyle. Also, it’s another waste of money. I have seen really cool ones, but mostly what I see are junk tattoos that are just o.k. or are terrible. I don’t think that this reflects on a person’s character more than anything else except for the simple fact of what they want YOU to think of them or what they think about their own body. It would not be something I list in my “looking for” section of a profile since no good information about a person can come from it. Similar to looking for someone “with hair”.

“Whiskey / Drinks Whiskey / Whiskey Drinker”

Wow. This is something that I tend to see way more than I would have ever thought. This is probably the one single superlative listed on a young female’s profile that makes me think you guys are copying from one another. There literally cannot… CANNOT… be this many women who are into drinking whiskey. There aren’t that many men who are into it for certain.

First of all, I believe this is listed on profiles for much the same reason as the above “curses like a sailor” is listed. It makes you seem like one of the “boys”. “Hey guys, check me out… I don’t want a cosmopolitan fru-fru drink, give me a good ol’ straight shot of whiskey. I’m down with the boys.” That’s literally what that is telling me when I read that you are a whiskey drinker. At this point in human history, there are so many different kinds of alcohol. You could have a special affinity for ouzo, or sangria, or mint schnapps, or lambic, or anything else but one of the most regular kinds of alcohol there are. Furthermore, liking “whiskey” isn’t even a clear indication of what you’re into since there are at least five different major sub-types of whiskey (Irish, Scotch, Canadian, Tennessee, and Bourbon). So which one is it? Or do you like all whiskey? Or are you just… an alcoholic?

This one is kind of a mix of “I’m a regular guy” and “I am boring, so I do all the things other girls do”. Again, putting your identity in what you drink is telling of the fact that you have nothing else going on for you.

“Sagittarius / Gemini / <insert astrological sign here>”

Listen, I don’t know what kind of retro-dark ages bullshit we have reverted to, but putting your astrological sign in your dating profile is an instant left-swipe from me. You could be the hottest girl I’d ever seen, but if you’re telling me that you believe in ANY of that baseless bull crap then you’re nowhere near a fit for me. Even if you take it as a joke. Even if you only half think it’s interesting. Any merit you place in this esoteric pseudo-science taints your entire being to me.

The reason is because it’s no different than witchcraft. To look at the stars and think that their placement in the sky has literally ANYTHING to do with your life as an individual is both offensive to the progress we’ve made as a species and egotistical. It is offensive in the sense that everything astrology stands for flies in the face of science. It is literally based on ancient practice before the scientific method was invented and hasn’t been proven true even a little bit. It’s egotistical in the fact that you think the stars care, or that fate is somehow concerned with you specifically. Oh wait… it isn’t concerned with you specifically… the science groups people into twelve and only twelve vague groupings based on birthdate. So tell me again how we’re supposed to take this seriously in any way?

If you see any truth in a horoscope, or those vague lists that get passed around Facebook and social media that list superlatives for people in each group, then you have a problem with your perception of the world. You’re easily fooled. You can be led astray without any effort.

Now, I’m a Christian, so some might ask how I can believe in both science and what the Bible says. Frankly speaking, I don’t see that religion and science are necessarily fighting with each other. I believe that God has allowed to us to discover what he has built, and that things back at the time that the books of the Bible were written may have appeared the way they did. In fact, as a further twist, there are schools of thought and evidence out there to support what the Bible says with scientific fact. I absolutely reject the esoteric sciences like palm-reading, tarot cards, Ouija boards, astrology, and any kind of the occult. The fact that astrology still lingers around in our society (as well as these other things) is simply a sign that evil hasn’t disappeared and it’s been here since the beginning of recorded human history.

Also, on a less spiritual level, it’s just plain stupid. How are you able to convince yourself that you can match with another person based on these arbitrary categories made a long time ago? I think it works more like the placebo effect. If two people are agreeing that they are compatible because they have compatible astrological signs, then they are simply compatible because they are agreeing and nothing more.

Actually, you know what? I’m glad that people list this on their profiles. It just helps me identify the wrong people more quickly.

“Must Love Dogs”

Ok. So I’m not sure where this came from? Sounds like the title of a movie or something. I don’t know that many guys who don’t like dogs. In fact, I can't think of a single male friend of mine that wouldn’t at least pet a dog, let alone say they don’t like them. I realize that you may have a dog that you trap in your house and won’t let go because you love it so much, but if me and the dog don’t get along (or are just, at best, acquaintances) you’re saying that you would trash the whole relationship? There is something seriously sociopathic about that.

Most dogs that people keep as pets are nice. They’re cute and fluffy. They lick you. They are active when you want to be. A dog will love you almost no matter what, and they only have friendly intentions towards you. What I think this represents is something that you’re searching for in a man that you haven’t been able to find because our culture is so whacked out these days. Unconditional love from something you value. Not just unconditional love. There are guys out there willing to give that to you; ugly guys, fat guys, real dorks with hearts of gold; but you don’t want their love. You want what they have to offer plus good looks. You choose your dog, or maybe you don’t… it doesn’t matter because most dogs are cute and/or cuddly. A dog will give you unconditional love and it’s cute. Both things that serve you and your designs. Oh, if only you could find a cute guy who will love you unconditionally… well, guess what. That’s what we’re all looking for. Get over it.

If you say something to the effect of “My dog better like you or else we’re not gonna work out” what you’re saying is that you treasure your relationship with things that make you happy over human connection. It’s very materialistic if you stop and think about it. You might as well say something like “You’d better like my Coach purse, or else we’re not going to work out”. Who gives a crap if I like your purse… or dog… as long as you like it that’s all that matters. If you picked a good dog, I’ll probably like it and we’ll probably get along fine. Unless I’m allergic to it, in which case you’re making a predetermined judgment about me based on something I can’t control. This isn’t really something even worth mentioning in your profile. I guess, mentioning that you HAVE a dog is a good idea, especially if you love it a lot, but saying that you’d put a higher priority on your relationship with your dog means you’re not ready for a relationship with a human. Humans and dogs are different. Deal with it.

“The Height Thing / Please be over <X’Y”>”

Man, we’re doing real well as a society when we can be so picky and choosy over what the other person looks like physically. I understand that it’s a turn off to have a guy who’s shorter than you, that goes back to the animalistic sides of being human. Hunter and gatherer type of stuff. It seems narrow-minded of you to require me to list my height so it makes it easier for you to accept or reject me without even first giving me a shot.

Also, height and weight are two different things. I do not want a fat girl. I will say that outright. Overweight / Obesity is highly unattractive to me because it comes across as sweaty, smelly, and speaks deeply about your habits and who you are as a person. I realize that, due to genetics, there are people who are more prone to be overweight. I am not judging those people as bad people. However, that doesn’t make me attracted to them. Weight is not healthy, it’s a biological circumstance that you are presented with when you eat too much or have a slow metabolism. We don’t always accept our biological circumstances as “beautiful” or “attractive” because that makes us who we are. Think about cerebral palsy. It’s not attractive, it’s quite hideous. We love the people who are afflicted with it DESPITE it. We don’t love them BECAUSE they have it. The same goes for weight, we can love somebody DESPITE their weight, but we don’t love them BECAUSE they’re overweight. We also try to cure cerebral palsy. We don’t think it’s good for a person to have. Medicines, physical therapy, gene therapy. We live in an odd culture now that seems to want to glorify laziness and physical afflictions. “You’re beautiful just the way you are.” “Stop the body shaming.” “I’m not fat, I’m curvy”.

No. You will be shamed because weight is something you can control and you don’t. You’re not curvy… you are fat. I don’t see the lipstick choice, or the dress, or the hairstyle of a girl who is overweight; the only thing I can focus on is the fact that she is massively overweight. All of the effort of trying to make yourself pretty is useless.

There is a range of weight. Not all overweight people are obese. There are some girls out there that look very good with more weight on them, but they’re not who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the literal 50-100lbs+ women who are out there in the dating world. If a guy is willing to date you despite that, then that is awesome. You are totally and 100% deserving of the same love as anybody else. However, you must know that you wouldn’t be doing him a disservice if you lost the weight. He would not complain.

I know it sucks, but you may have to work harder for the same things than other people do. This affects most of humanity, as most of us, in some way or another, fall into a minority group that serves to our detriment. Do you think it’s easy being a Christian this day and age?

Height is different than weight. A person cannot change their height despite their damnedest. This, in effect, means that you are being exclusive of people for something that they cannot change. To be fair, I do this as well. If I don’t like a girl’s face, I’ll swipe left on her. I am not asking her to get surgery to change her face and, realistically speaking, she can’t really change it anyways. So I’m judging them based on something they can’t change. However, the difference between that and what you’re doing is that I’m taking it on a case-by-case basis and giving each person their due consideration. Whereas, you’re simply writing off a whole group of people without even seeing them individually. That’s pretty selfish.

Must be nice to be able to cherry pick what we want out of other people.

(You see… that was sarcasm… Was it funny? I didn’t think so…)

“Witty Banter”

So what I actually think “witty banter” means is probably not at all what most girls mean when they put it on their profile. What it should mean is a conversation full of well crafted, and well timed, jibs at the other person or about the topic. Zingers, if you will.

The problem with this is that most people are morons and can’t craft a joke full of “wit” outside of the obvious with any accuracy. So, in practice, what I think “witty banter” really pertains to is the significant other’s ability to be sarcastic or crude. Despite all of these women on Tinder that claim to love witty banter, I have never met a girl that has held an entire conversation that one could describe as being “full of wit”. What I mostly observe in real life are girls being really sarcastic and obnoxious about whatever topic and resorting to the most obvious joke about whatever topic is on the table.

This idea may also refer to rapid topic switching, where one topic leads immediately to another. This happens when a completely new and unrelated topic is bred out of one or more pieces of the previous topic of conversation. It goes something like this:

“I need to take a shower, I smell.”

“Aw yah, me too. My aunt has the best shower in the world”

“Oh yeah, what kind?”

“It’s kind of like a hotel shower with a really huge head and it kind of comes down on you from above.”

“Oh man, I love hotels. What’s the last one you stayed in?”

“I stayed in one a few months ago. We got a really good service on it.”

“What? How?”

“We used the ‘tip sandwich’ trick.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s where you sandwich a tip between your credit card and ID when you’re at the front desk.”

“Oh, that’s really smart”

“Which hand to you masturbate with?”

The conversation continued on like that for nearly an hour; jumping randomly from one piece of content in a sentence to another. There is nothing “witty” about that conversation. In fact, that conversation was a real one that I personally observed in my real life that actually took place. It was quite baffling to try and follow their trains of thought while it was happening, and I found myself asking “what is actually being communicated here?”

Real wit takes effort, time, and thought. Most normal people don’t have the capacity for this, unless they are older… and British.

Next.

“Open Minded”

So I see a ton of girls put this on their profile. It’s almost as if they’re trying to convince other girls that they are part of the “open minded” club. Usually it’s thrown on there as a two-word phrase with a period and doesn’t contain any kind of explanation as to the nature of its meaning.

This is an issue because “open minded” could mean a handful of things.

On the one hand, it could be referring to a political leaning. For example, someone could be open minded about new policies and theories, and fixing something that is broken. This may be indicating that the speaker of the phrase leans heavily democratic or left wing and it more liberal. I’m not making this up. Liberally minded people literally often describe themselves as “open minded” and think that anybody with an opposite viewpoint is not.

Open minded could also mean that they are willing to sleep with either a male or female. They are “open minded” sexually, and are willing to run with whatever situation they find for themselves, instead of being “closed minded” and only being accepting of a more traditional monogamous or gender heteronormative dichotomy.

It could also be something just as simple as being open minded towards whatever the other person has in mind for a date.

The problem with injecting this phrase into your profile and not explaining what it means is that it leaves the interpretation up to the viewer, which may explain why you get a lot of jerk-offs hoping that what you’re talking about is my second point.

Also, the phrase is kind of egotistical. You’re describing yourself with a word that you realize has a more beneficial connotation than “closed minded”. With this label you are saying that you are “this” way and other people are “that” way, when you, in fact, do not have any idea about what other people are and are just doing the same thing that you probably accuse “closed minded” people of doing and over-generalizing other people who you haven’t even met.

I’m starting to get the feeling that it’s really just a code for either my first or second point anyways.

“Will beat you in Mario Kart 64”

Wow. Well, I have to hand it to whoever the first girl who ever used this in her profile was, it sure is unique and specific. However, I have seen quite a bit of girls use this. So much so that I’m starting to think that most of the one’s who have this statement listed don’t even know/haven’t ever played Mario Kart. Well, to be honest, it was quite a popular game back in the day, but in all my travels, and in all my experience as a heavy gamer, I have never come across a girl who took any game as seriously as a guy.

Now, not to fall prey to one of my previous statements in my last point and over-generalize, of course there are going to be some girls that do take gaming super seriously and are probably great at them. The problem is that so many girls are listing this on their profiles that it doesn’t statistically match with what I know to be true based on my experience.

Part of me wants to think that they’re not actually that good at Mario Kart, and they just want to connect with a guy on something that “guy’s like”, but one girl even went so far as to specifically mention on her profile that it had to be Mario Kart 64 and no other version.

Either this is just another trend that’s full of shit, or I’m really missing something here with the female Mario Kart 64 crowd.

“Not Religious / Atheist”

Ok. So you don’t go to church and don’t really consider God as a part of your life whatsoever. That’s on you. It’s an unfortunate conclusion that you have arrived at, and one that I’m sure is based on your desire to not be controlled by anything or be restricted by inconvenient rules. However, I would pose this question:

“Is this really something to organize over?”

By listing this in your profile, you’re either trying to do one of two things: connect with someone else who is an atheist, or you’re trying to take an underhanded jab at anybody who is religious.

The first one is pretty strange when you think about it. What other sport/topic/interest/cause/thing do humans ever organize over that is “not” something? For example, there are people who don’t like skiing, but are there groups of “not skiers”? People who dislike skiing so much that they organize together at groups, rallies, and make relationships over the fact that they hate skiing? No, that would be silly. If you really don’t like it that much then, since nobody is forcing you to ski, so you just don’t do it or hang around anybody that does. You don’t walk around saying how much you hate it.

Wait. Hmmm… that’s an interesting thought. Hate. Someone dislikes something that other people enjoy so much that they feel passionate about being vocal against it? I think that might qualify as a hate-group. Oh, there’s a thought for open-minded liberals who stand with Planned Parenthood right? People who are against abortions and want to defund the organization for helping women get abortions are classified as hate groups right? They like “not getting abortions” so much that they feel passionate that other people shouldn’t be involved in them either.

Sounds an awful lot like how modern atheism works. People who feel so passionate about “not religion” that they feel the need to be outspoken against it. This plays more towards my second point at the beginning that simply describing oneself as “atheist” is, often times, just trying to take a jab at the people who aren't. Like putting “not Hindu” on my profile.  Atheism isn’t a religion. It’s simply nothing. The belief that there is no higher power. The belief in nothing, if you will. There is no code of morals. There is no written scripture or manifesto from a nonexistent deity. Therefore, when it comes to atheism there isn’t much to talk about. If there isn’t anything to really define the sentiment of atheism by, then there isn’t really anything to organize over. If there isn’t anything to organize over, or any traditions to maintain, or philosophy to uphold, then it doesn’t really seem like something that is really worth being expressed as a part of your identity. Just like I don’t express the fact that I don’t like tomatoes as a part of my identity. That’s not something I would throw out there on my profile, because I’m not really defined by the fact that I don’t like tomatoes. It’s simply something that the other people would discover in a casual conversation or experience with me.

Furthermore, if the other person happens to be religious, and we went out on a date, it should be immediately obvious that we don’t share this in common and, if it were taken seriously by the religious person, then they wouldn’t ask for a second date. Even still, since religion is so important in a religious person’s life, they would most likely mention it on their profiles and, therefore, eliminate the need for you to put “atheist” on your profile.

Therefore, in the context of the above thoughts on the matter, you listing your non-religion looks a heckuva lot like you’re being hateful towards those who practice a religion. Think of it this way, it’s the same thing as putting “non-smoker”. Does this phrase not reek of anti-smoking sentiment? Of course it does. The same goes for your outspoken lack of submission to anything but yourself.

When you put things on your profile that say what you “aren’t” or “won’t accept” (much like some of these other topics I’ve mentioned here already), you come across as egotistical. Like, I’m too good to accept this thing, or I’m so confident in my ability to attract a mate that I can literally dictate to other people what they can and cannot be. I’m not at all worried about not finding a mate. I will still have plenty of suitors, so the ones that don’t fit into the mold of what I want can just take a hike.

Again: It must be nice to be able to cherry pick what you want from another person.

So guys, there are a lot of crazy things out there in the world of swipe matching. A lot of those things don’t seem to make any sense, because, well, frankly the format doesn’t make any sense. You’re set up to make snap judgments based on photographs that the users can clearly take from old stock, or at strange angles, or even just use someone else’s photos all together. Why, at all, would anybody care what was written on a 500 character profile? Well, why indeed.

I’ve started to get the feeling that these women, these… people, aren’t actually a good sample set of what’s really out there, and I think the amount of ubiquitous data (as dissected here) is pretty good proof of that. The question really is: “Where do I find the real good ones at?”

This author’s suggestion: you should go to church.

[olwog]

So, we’re off to Ibiza or more accurately, we’re going to the Costa del Folk which is a music event like no other and, on this occasion includes a little bit of excitement with the Manchester Airport Security Services when both ‘yours truly’ and the Pilgrim are exposed as ‘mules’.

The event is not necessarily on the Costas and its not all Folk. It’s a great gathering of people who come together with the artists and enjoy a great cross section of music in a four star hotel for a few days in the sun; what’s not to like?

So the first day goes like this…

Manchester airport is not my favourite, it’s manic beyond belief and we seem to be on a much elevated state of security. We stayed at the Clayton last night, it’s on the airport and walkable to all terminals with T3 and T1 being particularly accessible. We’re going From T3 but chose the shuttle bus as it’s still dark at 0440 and cold to boot. The UK is having what Carol would refer to as an Arctic Blast and as we step out of the hotel reception we get an extremely chilly reminder of the winter just gone. It’s a warning shot from nature to delay the sowing of tender plants and heed my dad’s mantra “ne-er cast a clout till May is out”. He explained it to me once that in the North this meant until the month of May becomes the month of June but further south it means wait until the ‘may blossom’ is out which is usually a little earlier. Either way, it’s good advice and any plants set a couple of weeks later will easily catch up those that were hurried into the ground and bitten by a late frost.

The Pilgrim is awake now having gone back to bed at 0425 because it wasn’t 0430, “every little helps”1 It has to be said that it was a little later than planned when we drifted off to sleep last night, or should i say this morning. The shuttle driver has been either well trained or had a happy pill and grabs our luggage with a cheery “You are going to T3 aren’t you?”. It’s a rhetorical question to ensure we’re on the right bus and he doesn’t wait for a reply.

The journey is only 5 minutes but we’re grateful to be set down with only a short walk to the escalator taking us to the check-in hall. It’s definitely an ungodly hour but the there is a queue at the Ryanair desks already and, like us, the majority are going to the festival. There’s enough silver hair to stir the fantasies of an undertaker, some of them we’ve seen on previous trips and all fingering passports and boarding cards nervously as we approach the self-check-in area.  It’s populated with scanners and weighing machines where hold baggage is labeled by us punters saving time and reducing the number of jobs to make the process cheaper.

Although the whole procedure is unfamiliar and there is the odd hiccup it does work surprisingly well and within a few minutes we’re heading back along the hallway to security.

In fairness to Manchester Airport authorities, they have staff at several points on the way into Security proffering plastic bags to put our small tubes of toothpaste, aftershave etc. The Pilgrim has stressed the importance of this since our trip last month when I was stopped because I had 5 ml of aftershave in a bottle. The whole process was quite theatrical in as much as all of my hand baggage and toiletries were emptied then electronically sniffed and when the aftershave bottle was identified there was a theatrical show of putting it into a plastic bag accompanied by a stretching and slapping sound as rubber gloves were donned in preparation for an imagined uncomfortable search that didn’t happen. I’m reminding you of all this because the Pilgrim gave me very short shrift regarding the level of care necessary for me to prepare for this process.

This time I’ve emptied my toiletries bag of all things liquid and put toothpaste in my hold luggage along with suncream and anything else with a tendency flow. I’ve followed instructions and put my belt and fleece together with my wallet, phone, usb stick and spare change into one tray then put my laptop into a separate tray that also becomes the receptacle for my boots when a security lady spots their potential for wanton destruction. I’m standing next to the scanner when another security person asks me if my pockets are empty, I nod an ascent then remember I have a pen in my shirt pocket so I quickly return to my tray and drop it in. I’m now ‘clean’ and make another attempt at getting though the scanner. I’m told to pause as the lady in front has set it off. When she clears I get an almost imperceptible nod from the man in charge and I move forward. The alarm goes off and the lights flash and I realise that I’m still wearing my watch. Bollocks, shit and lots of other words form. I take my watch off and make another tour of the scanner. It goes off again and I’m wondering what the surgeon used when she repaired my aorta last year, I thought it was latex but now I’m not sure.  So… I’m getting my excuse together as the security man poses with a hand held device that’s going to be levelled at various parts of my body.

I have no idea what this device is but it’s quite happy with most of my body as it searches areas that would normally be accessible only by me and very close friends. He’s waving it around my chest now and it suddenly goes ballistic; it’s found something in my shirt pocket! Double shit, quadruple bollocks and now my mind is so full of rude words it’s like a Tourette’s factory on steroids  as I remember I’d bought a tiny tube of aciclovir (generic equivalent of Zovyrax) for a potential cold sore on my lip and this little beastie has found it.

In fairness to the security man, he’s fairly laid back about it and hands it to a colleague who promptly renders it safe by encasing it into a small plastic bag. Now that it has been neutralized the airport can breath a collective sigh of relief as I’m allowed to proceed.

I’m expecting a degree of ribbing from the Pilgrim as I approach the scanning machine that has singled her out as a potential threat. She’s looking a little uncomfortable as I approach and I see that her bag is on the alternative conveyer belt meaning it is suspicious and by implication so is she.

It turns out that, like me, she’s forgotten a small lipstick and the equipment here has found it. It’s all very impressive even if it’s also frustrating. There’s no mention of my faux pas this time!

Contra to the image that Michael O’Leary tries to project, Ryanair and their staff are charm personified and their carry on allowance is generous whilst the hold baggage limit of 15kg is a little tight. Before we know it we’re in the ‘plane and whilst setting off late we still arrive at Ibiza on time to the fanfare of celebration and the announcement that 95% of Ryanair flights arrive on time; this is followed by a rag bag of applause rippling around the aircraft like a deranged seal has been released and it’s expressing its delight at the freedom.

In Ibiza the Passport Control is well organized well staffed (unlike the UK offering) and we’re through in a matter of minutes.

Enjoy Travel are on top of their game and have us on the bus fairly rapidly although there’s a little hiccup when they realise they haven’t registered us in. This is resolved quickly and before we know it we’re at the hotel where there are more queues due to the island implementing a new tax that is payable by each of the hotel guests.

We decide against queuing and jettison our luggage to make a short trip to a bar on the beach. It’s in a small bay so the view is a delight and when it’s combined with Serrano ham and exquisite bread that’s been slightly toasted with some balsamic vinegar and excellent olive oil; the whole experience is a great opener and sets the mood for the festival well.

An hour later and we make our way back to the hotel where the queues have disbursed and we’re registered by a wonderfully helpful member of the hotel staff and welcomed by the Enjoy Travel reps who are now more like close friends.

The afternoon is taken up with mundane unpacking and a short snooze on my part while the Pilgrim grabs a few zeds on a sun lounger followed by an impressive 5km run.

The festival doesn’t start until tomorrow but that’s never stopped the impromptus sessions that crop up like mushrooms responding to the dark and tonight is no exception.

As we enter the huge bar area, there are groups of people re-acquainting themselves with old friends and others meeting for the first time. This is my third festival and I can vouch for its intimacy and friendliness from organizers to artists and most of all, us, the audience. (although that label doesn’t feel adequate)

Flossie Malavialle, Rosie Clegg, Mike Harding and Mick Doonen along with many others are taking turns singing and playing various songs from traditional folk, war time standards, Dylan to Beetles and Everly Brothers, it’s sublime.

More beer is consumed and we meet some lovely people Simon (bodhron player) and his wife Sue and Donal and his lovely wife from Dublin. Time flies when Stu Luckly gets up to deliver a couple of traditional Geordie songs to celebrate Newcastle United’s promotion to the Premiership. As a Boro supporter I’ll say no more but the songs are sung by all with gusto.

It’s been a long day and the Pilgrim and I start to  make our way to our room when we see Flossie again, this time she’s teamed up with two parts of Shite Shirts (yes you read that right and normally they wear shirts that are living testament to their name), they’re normally a trio and they’re singing more Everly Brothers, Elvis and Beatles songs along with some Country standards. They’re currently delivering a special request for the Pilgrim; it’s a Johnny Cash number. It looks like it might be a long night so I get another beer!

I don’t remember going to sleep but I’m guessing I must have because I’ve woken up and completed this.

Thanks Costa del Folk and all you lovely people that make it happen.  That was a great day and the brilliant thing is this, the festival doesn’t officially start until 1400 today!

Feel free to share…G..x

Costa del Folk – Ibiza So, we're off to Ibiza or more accurately, we're going to the Costa del Folk which is a music event like no other and, on this occasion includes a little bit of excitement with the Manchester Airport Security Services when both ‘yours truly’ and the Pilgrim are exposed as ‘mules’.