#INTONATION 2020

[undying-love]

Paul's grief over time: A Compilation

“During the session [in 1981] Paul fell into a lugubrious mood. He said, ‘I’ve just realized that John is gone. John’s gone. He’s dead and he is not coming back.’ And he looked completely dismayed, like shocked at something that had just hit him. ‘Well, it’s been a few weeks now.’ He said, ‘I know, Eric, but I’ve just realized." (Eric Stewart)

“It’s still weird even to say, ‘before he died’. I still can’t come to terms with that. I still don’t believe it. It’s like, you know, those dreams you have, where he’s alive; then you wake up and… 'Oh’.” (Paul, 1986)

"Occasionally, it wells up. Y'know, and I'm at home on the weekend suddenly and I start thinking about him or talking to the kids about him and I can't handle it." (Paul, 1987)

"Is there a record you like to put on just to hear John’s voice?" I ask Paul the next day. Paul looks startled. He fumbles. “Oh, uh. There’s so much of it. I hear it on the car radio when I’m driving.” No, that’s not what I mean", I persist. "Isn’t there a time when you just wish you could talk to John, when you’d like to hear his voice again?" For some reason, he instead responds to the original question.“Oh sure,” he says and looks a little taken aback. ‘Beautiful Boy". (1990)

"Also not obvious is that McCartney [for the Liverpool Oratorio] has penned a gorgeous black-spiritual-like piece for mezzo-soprano that intones the last words spoken to John Lennon as he lay dying of gunshot wounds in the back of a New York police car -- "Do you know who you are?" McCartney gets a bit choked up at one point when he reveals, "Not a day goes by when I don't think of John.” (1991)

"Delicious boy, delicious broth of a boy. He was a lovely guy, you know. And it gets sadder and sadder to be saying “was”. Nearer to when he died I couldn’t believe I was saying “was”, but now I do believe I’m saying “was”. I’ve resisted it. I’ve tried to pretend he didn’t get killed." (Paul, 1995)

"Paul talked about John a a lot, but the strange thing was that it was in the present tense, “John says this" or "John thinks that. Very weird." (Peter Cox, 2006)

“John Lennon was shot dead in 1980. That totally knocked dad for six. I haven’t really spoken to him a lot about it because it is such a touchy subject." (James McCartney, 2013)

"It's very difficult for me and I, occasionally, will have thoughts and sort of say: "I don't know why I don't just break down crying every day? […] You know, I don't know how I would have dealt with it because I don't think I've dealt with it very well. In a way… I wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatrist would sort of find out that I'm slightly in denial, because it's too much." (Paul, 2020)

"Like any bereavement, the only way out is to remember how good it was with John. Because I can't get over the senseless act. I can't think about it. I'm sure it's some form of denial. But denial is the only way that I can deal with it." (Paul, 2020)

"When I talked to Paul about John and when he missed John most, he couldn't answer me for a long time and his eyes teared up. And I asked him where he thinks about John and when John comes into his mind and he just … he lost it, he completely lost it." (Bob Spitz, 2021)

-------------------------------------------------

The following two are from the gossip website Datalounge, so they may or may not be true. Still interesting though:

"The one time I was ever actually in a room with Paul, zillion people between me and him (and no way I'm gonna bother him, all of us who travel in celeb circles have people we're fans of and all of us inexplicably try to hide it to seem "cooler"), he started talking loudly about himself and John, and how hard it was not to have him there. I remember him saying something along the lines of not a day passing that John's not still in it with him, but it's not like he can pick up a phone and say, "Hey, just needed to hear your voice today," and even when he got craggy responses, he still missed them. He misses it all, and it's bothering to him that he misses him more as time goes on -- it doesn't heal, he just learns new ways to bandage the wound."

“Since everyone is anonymous here, I guess I can give a bit of info I got from a female friend of mine who at one time worked as one of Paul’s assistants. [...] She does not know for certain if John and Paul were involved but she suspects it since to this day whenever John’s name is brought up he acts in her words ‘like a widow’ and he also addresses John in present tense. He would say things like, ‘John thinks that the music should be like this,’ and during his bitter divorce from Heather he was saying, ‘John says that this is getting nasty.’ Kind of creepy." (this one actually seems very intriguing because it sounds very similar to what Peter Cox said, about Paul often talking about John in the present tense, saying "John says.." or "John thinks...")

[eversionimpulse]

How We Learned to Front on Command (and maybe you can too!)

a post by Naomi (she/her) about how we use voice and body language to control who's fronting

-

When we first realized that we were plural, back in 2014, we had no control whatsoever over who was fronting. There was no way of passing the baton back and forth, not that either of the alters who existed at that time would have wanted to. We didn’t have amnesia about each others’ experiences, but we essentially lived separate lives that intersected with each other at random. One alter would front for a long time, and then a random circumstance in our life would force the other one to the front, who would front until she was forced out. Things continued like this for a while. One of the alters was much more active than the other anyways.

Around 2018, we first started trying to actively pass fronting back and forth. We would do it by thinking very hard at each other, by getting into situations the other would want to front in, or occasionally by trying what was basically a summoning ritual. The first method was unreliable, the second method was a lot of work, and the third method took too much time and too much obviously weird behavior to be used in most social situations. Things continued like this for a while, too, until life circumstances led one of those two alters to suppress the other entirely for a couple years.

In 2020, our relationship to plurality changed quite a bit. The temporary singlet we had become realized she was miserable that way, and tried to mentally reach out to where the other alter had once been. In response, I began to exist. I’m not the alter she was reaching out to (who was at that point definitively gone), but I had a lot of her traits, especially at first. It was a messy awakening, and again we mostly switched based on circumstances or with considerable mental effort. However, after a while, I noticed my mannerisms starting to become noticeably my own. This is where we had a bit of a breakthrough.

I had the thought that I liked being different, and that it would be nice to assign mannerisms more strongly to each of us: voices and body language, mainly. So I set about deciding what kind of voice I’d like to have, and she decided what kind she’d like to have. I developed a low, languid, fry-heavy style of speech with a lot of intonation to it. She spoke as fast as she could think, with lots of vocal pauses and a more casual, breezy tone. I caught myself making poised and calculated movements, hip-driven and limp-wristed. She lurched through her day a little off-balance, letting her full strength fall where it may. One day, she tried to imitate the way I moved, only to discover that after a second or two, it was no longer her imitating, but me fronting. That’s how we figured it out.

So, to stop being coy about it, here’s the idea: by deliberately attaching different vocal and physical (and typing) mannerisms to different alters, by noticing the differences between us and cultivating or exaggerating them, we’ve trained ourselves to front on command, and I think that perhaps you can too. The way I see it, we’ve managed to anchor mannerisms so firmly into our individual personalities that to perform the mannerisms of an alter is to be that alter. Except in situations where one of us is really having a hard time fronting (or isn’t willing to), imitating another alter will bring that alter to the front.

You can think about it like an actor getting into character, which brings me to the actual technical advice. My number one piece of advice is to develop ways of moving or speaking that, at least to you, make each of your alters really feel like themselves. At first this will feel like clumsy exaggeration, and probably like you're just pretending, but once you get a feel for it you’ll be able to settle into something more natural. Whichever behaviors or vocal tones you want to use as a switching trigger should be ones that are fairly distinct to each alter and not shared by others. If you don’t have those, then make them up! Try out different characteristic voices and behaviors until each of your alters finds at least one thing that makes them feel like themselves.

It can really help in this case to use specific anchor phrases, usually paired with a gesture. I’ll run through our anchors here as an example. The anchor we use to bring Cass to the front is to sigh, slouch our shoulders, and wince out “sure” in the sort of breathy growl he tends to speak in. For Jules, we perk our head up as if noticing something, take a deep breath, and let out a higher-pitched, friendly “yeah!” on the exhale as if we’ve been asked for a favor. For me, we roll our head back and forth, cracking our neck, then shake the tension out of our upper body, find a comfortable pose with our shoulders back, and go “hmmm” nice and deep. Elise is new as of writing this, but for now it seems like we can get it to front by ceasing to try to make any facial expression at all, looking directly at a (real or imagined) conversation partner, and giving a monotone “hello.” And for Marceline, we tuck our elbows in tight to our sides, press our knees together, and say “ok” in her distinctively nasal voice. We don’t always do this full routine in order to switch, but it’s the guaranteed version we rely on if we can’t do it either by thinking at each other or with just vocal tone. Yours don’t have to look exactly like this either. You could use smaller or larger gestures than we do, or you could use full sentences as anchors. Ours are one word because they’re essentially out-loud responses to having been silently asked to front. 

So, why learn to do this? I’m sure the idea of switching on demand, for readers who can’t already do it, probably sounds pretty appealing. But just to spell it out: this helps us make sure that in situations where one alter feels safer than another, or where one alter’s skills are more valuable than another, we get to decide who is there and experiencing that situation. It lets me front in situations where we need to be confident and assertive, it lets Marceline front when we’re in pain and need to avoid using up our limited energy, it lets Cass make small talk with strangers in public. It can also help to make sure than an alter who is getting distressed can switch out and cool off instead of having a meltdown. But it also has some unexpected benefits- developing distinctive voices and mannerisms on purpose can keep us from bleeding into each other or merging at times when the boundaries between us are getting porous. It also means that people we trust enough that they’ve spent time with all of us tend to eventually start recognizing who’s fronting without having to be told, which is a tremendously affirming feeling once it starts happening. Not only is it a useful tool, but it also makes us feel more like our own people. The cooperative aspect of this technique has made it easier for us to remember that we’re a team, too. It’s a nice feeling.

One question remains: when doesn’t this work? For us, it tends to be less effective when the alter being imitated is in a particularly unstable state, either emotionally or in terms of identity. We can also fall out of practice with it if we don’t use it openly for a while due to social isolation, even if it’s just relative isolation from people around whom we feel safe being openly plural. It comes back with practice, though. For others, we’re not sure how possible this technique is for systems who have significant amnesia between alters. I suspect it may also be less effective for systems who tend to go very long stretches of time without switching. Plurality is so varied and experiences with it so individualized (it is, after all, your life) that it’s really hard to say how well what works for us will work for others. If you try it out, though (or if you already do something like this), I’d love to hear about it! Tell me how well it works, how it feels, what your most exciting discoveries have been. This especially extends to systems whose experience of plurality differs dramatically from ours (number of alters, degree of separation, degree of amnesia). I’d love to know if systems unlike ours can use something like this, or if not, what it was like to try anyways.

[dustedmagazine]

Kilynn Lunsford — Promiscuous Genes (Feel It!)

Kilynn Lunsford presides over a stylish nightmare, her lurid poetry draped over skittering rhythms and sonic landscapes that are both cavernous and deeply claustrophobic. “She lives in the gateway to hell,” the singer intones on the mid-album cut “Gateway to Hell,” surrounded by shrieks and moans and pulsing, churning thumps.

Lunsford hails from out-there Philadelphia, a city that birthed her best known outfit, Taiwan Housing Project (Little Claw started earlier in Detroit) before tossing her out on her own. Dusted reviewed her last solo album in 2020, calling Custodians of Human Succession, “a woozy, ominous world that Lunsford bumps and bops and chants through, but one well worth visiting.” Her latest salvo constructs concise dioramas of sound, each self-contained and distinct, but aligned in an eerie, dystopian miasma of echo and unease. In Lunsford’s house, there are many mansions, but every single one of them is haunted.

Consider “Nice Quiet Horror Show,” which pulses with bubbly euphoria, a sweet baby 1960s girl group refrain of “Oh, oh, oh, oh-oh-oh,” running through a slash and clatter of drums, an abstract and evil-sounding guitar lick. Lunsford flickers between ingenue and devil queen like a holograph that shifts depending on the angle, murmuring about suicide and brain damage as Talking Heads style guitar funk stutters in the background.

Lunsford is unafraid of rock’s Mount Rushmore figures, disemboweling both the Beatles’ “You Never Give Me Your Money” and the Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls” in her own twisting, writhing, demon-possessed style. She likewise takes a surgical saw to Motown girl pop in “Saddest of Dreams,” against a distant jangle and beat box sputter, singing sweetly about utter failure, a man who can’t seem to rouse himself out of the bathtub.

The lyrics have the effect of a spell, mesmerizing without really giving up their secrets. First line to stick for me was “Modern day fairytales, sex films, Roger Ailes,” from “Some Mothers Do,” and I still have no idea what it means.

And yet, though dark, dangerous and somewhat mysterious, Promiscuous Genes is also a bit of a bop, much more dance-y and body oriented than the previous disc. It’s also a cabinet of curios, leading you, fun-house style past one grotesque after another. The last album that created so many different, faintly disturbing worlds for me was Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, and that’s a high compliment.  

Jennifer Kelly

[fanhackers]

An Intimate Sound–Podfic and Confluence

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about podfic, i.e.., audio versions of fanfic, read out aloud. Podfic, as an audio-based medium, sits at the confluence of disability accessibility, performance, and of course, simply being a new form of narrative text.

In the first ever published article on podfic, Olivia Riley states:

“Audiobooks, another auditory predecessor of podfic, share podfic's emphasis on fictional narrative and vocal performance as well as other qualities typical to all the audio mediums so far discussed, including portability and ease of access. The comparison of podfic to audiobooks is particularly important because in my investigation I ran across numerous instances of listeners explicitly comparing the podfic experience to that of an audiobook, while only one referenced podcasts in relation to these audio narratives; thus, we must take into account how fans theorize their own texts and experiences.”

This particular comparison between audiobooks and podfics interests me; podcasts, whether fictional or non-fictional, arguably may be more intimate, in so much as we may get to listen to the speakers’ personal opinions, thoughts, ideas, etc. And yet, podfic finds itself standing more with audiobooks, despite sharing half its name with podcasts. I’d like to complicate this further, drawing from my own experience of both running zines with audio components, as well as interacting with fellow fans who make podfic, and who have had podfic made off their own work: fans are sometimes hesitant to provide permission to have their work read out aloud, concerned about the voice and audio work “exposing” perceived flaws in their written texts.

There’s a certain intimacy involved in the process, certainly, more than just that of getting a work beta-ed, or proof-read. It’s similar to the collaborative nature of fanart for fanfic, except fanart is welcomed with a lot less hesitance.

In the same article, Riley further goes on to explore this very intimacy:

“The audio performances of podfic produce a queer network of relations between the performer, the text, and the listener. To begin with, the text itself is an actor in podfic. All the podfics examined for this article were explicitly queer in their content, featuring queer(ed) characters, queer themes, romance, and often explicit sexuality. The characters in these podfics carry variously transformed and reimagined genders and sexualities. These podfics are palimpsests of many texts and authors, including the fan fic being read aloud, the source text the fan fic was inspired by, the contemporary fanon and fan community that shaped the fic's production, the various music and sound effects often used in these recordings, and the labor of all the creators who made these media. Further, through the reader's performance, listeners receive a unique interpretation of the fan fic being read, conveyed through the intonations and other subtleties that emphasize and elide various textual significances. This profusion of overlapping and sometimes contradictory layers of meaning impact how a listener understands a character's gender and sexuality, refusing the simplicity of heteronormative binaries.” RILEY, OLIVIA JOHNSTON. 2020. “PODFIC: QUEER STRUCTURES OF SOUND.” TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS AND CULTURES, NO. 34. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.3983/TWC.2020.1933.

There is, then, a definite sense of vulnerability in getting podfic made off one’s work. But podfic, I’d argue, is almost the most celebratory fan-object fandom has ever produced—it sits again on a confluence, not just of medium and accessibility, but of multiple creatives, all of whom have a singular contribution in making the final product. Podfic is, in many ways, a community object, more so than most fan-objects, simply by its nature of needing multiple inputs. 

What are your thoughts on podfic?

[thiniceofeternalyouth]

MISLEADIN' ME SERIES: CHAPTER TWELVE

THIEF OF THREE DESTINIES

⊳ Gojo Satoru x f!reader

series masterlist

Genre: angst, fluff, sci-fi, cosmology.

Words count: ~13k

⊲ previous

[July 1, 2020; 02:17am; hunters' hq]

[02:01] You: Megumi's back, he's fine

Delivered.

Unread.

[02:11] You: u ok?

Delivered.

Unread.

Gojo wasn't answering your calls either. You were drowning in an abyss of intrusive thoughts, each one worse than the last. Was he okay? If he was all right, why was he silent? Such silence was like the silence of a dead man - just as endlessly cold.

You stirred, pushing the images away from you and setting the phone aside. Maybe that was your lesson to learn. Wasn't that what he meant by loneliness?

There was nothing left of Kyle, not even his cold corpse was honored to rest deep underground. His image along with the vague tracings of his voice seemed to beg you not to forget him, but you knew that every image and every melancholy has a year later. Eventually, a wave of new memories would erase his still-green eyes. 

The moral compass had been broken, trampled, torn to pieces. In which direction should the lost traveler go now? This entire time traveler had been walking along the dark side of the moon towards the calling sun - towards something bright and warm. Where would the road lead if the sun was stolen?

"Meg," you called out detachedly. "Asleep?"

"No," replied the mechanical voice.

"I have a riddle."

"I'm listening."

"There are two hunters," you began, staring blankly at the black monitor screen. "One is experienced, the other is a newbie. They were surrounded by demons, the experienced one was killed, and the newbie survived. What kinda a case is this?"

"The newbie was with the demons," Meg replied without hesitation or questioning intonation.

"Think again," you said, admonishing more yourself than the artificial intelligence.

Meg was silent, but it was as if you could hear her digging through the informational bowels of universal human knowledge, and she was doing it so fast that it would take you a lifetime to absorb that much information. "Hmm...," Meg drawled. "The messengers don't get killed?"

"The messengers don't get killed," you confirmed in a whisper, watching in the extinguished monitor as your eyes went black.

You didn't even notice that you had chewed your own thumb to a bloody pulp. Those devils knew everything. From start to finish. They knew you'd broken into a settlement, knew which one, knew that Kyle would be going instead of you that day. So where was the rat lurking? Was it one of the people in the void? Or was it one of the people who lived in the house?

Knock-knock.

Your only task was to keep your head down. You knew exactly what they were after, and they seemed to be getting close. Every day it became harder for you to control the turns of the invisible blades embedded in your body. You wiped the moisture from your dark eyes with a sharp movement, and making sure you looked like anyone else, you walked to the door.

A pair of sad, frightened child's eyes greeted you. "Why ya still awake?" you asked Yuuji tiredly, trying to maintain a neutral, if not positive, attitude. The boy looked down at first, before peeking over your shoulder. "Okay, come in," you surrendered, throwing up your hands.

He walked hesitantly over to your bed and sat down on the very edge. It looked like he was about to fall to the floor. "I... I brought something," Itadori began in a shaky voice and reached into his pocket with the same hands. "I think...," he stammered, and you could see him literally chewing the inside of his cheeks. "I'm sorry, but I don't think you should have thrown it away," he stated in an already firm voice, looking you dead in the eye. In his outstretched hand lay a silver bracelet, mockingly sparkling. "Especially in the trash can," boy added more quietly, trying to hide from you again. "It's a memory."  

"I've never complained about my memory," you said, shrugging.

"That's not the point!" he protested, and the bracelet almost fell out of his hand. Itadori immediately pressed it to his chest. "Don't you wanna have a piece of him always near you? It's very precious," he whispered, pressing the jewelry harder against his chest.

"This thing's worth 20 bucks."

"Don't you dare say that," Itadori hissed. His fear faded away, making way for anger at the words you had said. "Take it!" he ordered, holding out the jewelry to you again. "Take it, now!"

It was the one shining thing that didn't make you want to take it or steal it. You walked over to the bed and sat down next to the boy, and you had no time for inner cries and agonizing - you couldn't show weakness in front of anyone. As soon as you took the bracelet in your hands, you felt like the ultimate fool. Why did you throw it away in the first place? It had never been a soulless piece of metal, at least not since you'd put it on your brother's arm.

You glanced around the workroom. Kyle wasn't here anymore, and he never would be. Maybe you'd never see him again, or maybe he'd see you in hell.

Along with everyone else.

"Thank ya," you smiled weakly but sincerely at Itadori. Maybe he sensed it, maybe he heard it in your voice, but he fidgeted restlessly, dropping his gaze to the floor again.

"What are you thanking me for...? I yelled at you. I'm sorry," he mumbled, and the swollen red face was drawn again with sorrow. Where is the artist who painted such things on children's faces? Maybe if you ripped their heart out, you'd feel a little better.

You wrapped your fingers around Yuji's chin, making him look up at you. "For being more mature than me today," you tried to wipe away the tears that had started streaming down his cheeks before you'd even finished speaking. He snuggled into your shoulder, muffling the tearing sobs. You didn't pay attention to how wet your sweatshirt was from his tears and snot, only gently stroking his back. "It's gonna be okay," you repeated the words like a mantra straight into the pink top of his head.

His body was clearly exhausted, and he collapsed in your arms. Yuji seemed to have cried for so long that all the water had gone out of his organism. "Try to get some sleep, 'kay?" you said, adjusting the pillow on the bed with your hand. At his exhausted questioning look, you shrugged. "Ya can go to your room if ya want. It's just that I remember ya saying it's quieter at my place."

You patted him on the top of his head and got up from the bed, heading back to the computer chair. A murmur behind you made you chuckle quietly - apparently Itadori had made his choice. "Y/N?" he addressed you quietly, covering himself with a blanket. You hummed questioningly. "You didn't call sensei?"

You didn't want to disturb an already wounded young heart. "He's busy right now, so I didn't bother him with the news," you said evasively. "Just texted him to say that Megumi is fine. Now go back to sleep."

A fresh morning breeze wandered through the room, taking all the memories with it as it made its way back through the window into the freedom of the bay. There really wasn't much stuff - you only needed three boxes to pack all of Kyle's clothes. Was it always this black and gray, or had you stopped perceiving colors?

You folded another T-shirt carefully, deliberately slow. After all, this was the last day you'd ever been this close to him. As you put the folded T-shirt in the box, you glanced at the unopened men's perfume on the bedside table. Would anyone need it now?

When you picked up the black sweatshirt, the door clicked open. The fresh air in the room was instantly freezing, chilling to the bone. Rachel was like the walking dead, even the large eyes on her gaunt face showed no signs of life. She stood on the other side of the bed, across from you, staring blankly at the sweatshirt you were holding.

You tentatively held it out to Rachel, and she took the sweatshirt in her hands after a few more seconds of staring blankly at the space. "Um...," you began quietly, watching her go through the clothes in her hands. "I packed everything here, so... When ya go to Hopetown, bring it with ya, 'kay?"  

Rachel covered her eyes for a moment, her nose buried in the sweater as if she hadn't heard you at all. You looked away awkwardly and headed for the exit. "Ya're going too," she demanded in a strangled voice.

You sighed convulsively and turned around - Rachel was still standing with her back to you. "Rach, I don't have time to stand by a tombstone that doesn't even have a body underneath it." 

Everything froze. Your ears heard nothing, your eyes saw nothing. Your skin felt neither wind nor touch. Even your memory stopped - all the images melted away, spreading out into the obscurity.

You came to your senses from the impact of your head hitting the floor. Rachel was on top of you, clutching your throat with both hands - she must have been doing it for a long time because your chest was already cramping helplessly. Certain places on your body were aching desperately, especially your ribs and cheekbones. "Rach," you wheezed, grasping weakly at her wrists.

She held it all in not making a sound, and you could have sworn you could see the muscles in her face tense behind the shroud of rage. You tried to reach out to her again, but another pathetic croak escaped your lips, and Rachel let go of your neck, whimpering suppressedly. "Ya're going," she hissed, getting up from the floor.

You pulled yourself up, coughing and rubbing your neck. "Rachel," your voice became an order of magnitude rougher as if your sister's hands were still clutching your throat. "I understand ya feel bad," you watched as she walked back to the bed, looking down at the same sweatshirt and wiping silent tears from her face. "But why ya so angry with me?"

She turned around sharply, meeting your uncomprehending gaze. "Because it's ya who should bear that burden, not me!" she shouted out desperately. "It's-," her own sobbing interrupted her, and she tried to push it away, hiding her face in hands. "It's all your fault, so why am I theone in tears right now?"   

"I didn't ask anyone to follow me-"

"Shut your fucking mouth!" the perfume flew just an inch from your face. When it hit the wall, it left nothing behind but shards that crumbled to the floor. "Shut up!" Rachel gasped and agonized with her own emotions. Despite the fact that she let them out, it didn't get any easier in the slightest. "Ya just an ungrateful bitch," she hissed weakly. "Ya'll go to the funeral. Otherwise your white-haired weirdo will find out-"

"He knows," you cut it off.

"That's how it is," Rachel said, naively slamming her eyes shut. "Then it's strange that he's still with ya. I can barely stand ya, even though I've been around since I was a kid."

"Rachel," you sighed tiredly. "Let's just not fight, 'kay? This isn't really a good time for that."

Wiping the nearly dried paths of tears from her face, your sister straightened to her full height and headed for the exit. "Ya're going or ya don't have a sister anymore either," she mumbled absently, shoving you with her shoulder.

It was definitely her favorite.

"We are gathered here today to honor the memory of our beloved son, brother, friend..."

The weather was clearly mocking. The midday sun brightly illuminated the growing greenery, the black-clad people, and the names on the tombstones. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, just a vast blue. Nature didn't seem to want to grieve with the people. She didn't care about all of you.

You stood away from everyone else, leaning against a tree. There was no place to hide in this cemetery field, and the tree seemed to be your only refuge. You pressed your shoulder against it as hard as you could, smoking your third cigarette.

"Words cannot express the full horror of this tragedy that has touched us all..." 

Tragedy.

Megumi and Danielle stood in the front rows, huddled together as if trying to become one. Both were pale and lifeless, but Dany still had the strength to cry. She stood with her face buried in his neck, unable to look at the closed coffin, and the boy stroked her head inconsolably, unable to take his eyes off of it. It was unclear which of them had it worse, but they decided to deal with it together.

It brought some people together.

Rachel stood beside them, holding Mike in her arms. She kept her hand on the redhead's head, pulling her son closer to her chest as if ordering him not to look. You could see his little body flinch and twitch. Rachel never spoke to you after that fight. She didn't even look in your direction.

Someone was distanced by it.

Frank's skin was the color of his hair and beard, but he struggled to keep that same good-natured expression, though it was completely drenched in sadness. He stared blankly at the empty coffin. How could you look him in the eye now that you couldn't even bring the body?

The people from the void who had come to the funeral were frightened. This man had saved them, fought for them, but if he was suddenly mortal, didn't that mean the rest of you were too?

Tragedy inevitably befalls everyone. For some it prepares them, for others it comes completely unexpectedly. It leaves behind either a hardened spirit or a broken heart - a person must choose for themselves.

"Wherever he goes, I believe he will end up in the arms of God..."

If God didn't have time to keep track of everything going on here, who's to say he had time to keep track of the other side? Did it even exist? You looked around the cemetery helplessly. There was a whole universe under each tombstone, but what would be under your brother's one?

"Y/N," greeted the woman who came up behind you.

"Camila," you said, taking another drag on your cigarette. The woman leveled herself at you and stared through her dark glasses at the spectacle in front of you. "I didn't think anyone from the old generation would come here."

"Can we be judged for that?" asked Camila plaintively. "Kyle's death hardly our business."

"He's Frank's son," you reminded her. "To Frank ya owe a lot."

"I didn't come here to bicker," the woman said sternly, nervously smoothing her already perfectly bunched hair. "I want you to give me my sons back."

"Did that one death scare ya like that?" you raised your eyebrows in surprise.

"One?" barked Camila, but immediately lowered her voice so as not to draw attention to herself. "Whatever. Anyway, I'm expecting Axel and Ryan home tomorrow. If not, we'll come pick them up ourselves," she gave you a meaningful look as if she wanted you to feel like you were nothing.

"Will mom's skirt save them in battle, too?"

There was a resounding smack. You bit your lip and put a hand to your aching cheek.

"It's called concern," she hissed, leaning over you. "You don't know of such a thing, do you? You don't care who you let go to waste."

"Concern?" you chuckled. "It didn't keep your hubby safe," when she tried to hit you again, you intercepted her arm, digging your nails into her skinny wrist. The hiss of bubbling blood eclipsed all sound, so you didn't immediately notice that there was no noise at all. No voices, no stomping. "Hit me again and I'll rip your heart out. Just like everyone else who will come to our house," you had barely finished grinning when a ringing silence that you hadn't sensed earlier hit your ears. Stunned by this, you turned towards the people gathered here to pay their honor. All of them were looking at you.

Shoving the frightened Camila's hand away from you, you strode away from the cemetery to the taunts of the midday sun.

Gojo thought he was doing the right thing. At least for the first couple days. Wasn't it fair to feed you the same pill you kept giving him? If you didn't give it a taste, how else would you know how bitter it was? That's how he reassured himself when he saw another missed call. If on the first day it made him smile stupidly, after a while he grew more and more anxious - maybe you've forgotten him already? He had to hand it to you - in all this time you called only four times, the last call was dated last night. It wasn't enough for him. He didn't want you to miss him only at night, he wanted to be in your thoughts every morning and evening, whether you were eating or fighting.

Gojo didn't miss your messages either. Megumi did well, how could he not? It couldn't have happened to any of his students otherwise.

He muffled the panic rising in his chest by poking curse's eye out with his heel. The eye burst with a squelching sound. He couldn't count how many times it had been these days because he had personally volunteered for mission after mission. "God, that's a lot of yelling," he muttered, tucking his hands into his pockets and pressing down on the ugly head even harder. Whether there was a brain inside the curse head or something else, Gojo's shoes were immediately stained with purple goo.

Gojo didn't hear the phone ring because of the ultrasound, but he pulled it out when he felt it vibrate in his pocket. Biting his lip in frustration, he stared at the caller's name for a while longer before answering. "Hey," Gojo chirped.  

"Jesus, what's that sound in the background?" hissed Megumi. The boy was heard to pull away from the phone.

"Oh, wait a second," Gojo rambled apologetically. He squatted down, and leaning over the curse, grabbed it by something that resembled a throat. When the covers crunched, when the curse froze, opening its mouth in an already silent scream, a mad chuckle escaped Gojo's lips. Clenching his hand even tighter, he ripped the creature's head off with a single tug. Tossing it away from him, Gojo leaned the phone to his ear again. "Better?" he asked carelessly.  

A long sigh sounded from the other side. "Are you really that busy or are you really just an unscrupulous asshole?"

"Hey!" he resented. "It's been so long since we've seen each other, and you don't have a warm word to say?"

"You should come. Anyway, the ceremony's already over, but I think it would be respectful to at least show up here," Megumi muttered moodily, and what was even more surprising to Gojo was the weakness hiding behind the usual scowl.

"Ceremony?" wondered Gojo, feeling his palms begin to sweat. "What did you guys do in there without me?" he asked, trying to suppress a nervous grin. 

"Uh," Megumi began uncertainly. "Didn't Y/N tell you?"

"Told me about what?" he inquired, smiling forcefully. There was silence on the other end, and the longer it lasted, the harder his heart began to pound. It pounded loudly and painfully, breaking all his arrogance and confidence in his own actions. "Megumi, told me about what?" 

Before his heart could stop, there was a rustling sound as if Megumi had pulled the phone as close to him as possible. "Kyle's dead."

They'd never been close. A few insults and promises to kick each other's asses were all they had in common. However, Gojo wasn't hurting for himself right now.

That's why you called him last night. You had called him twice in a row, and while Gojo had hesitated to answer the first call, the second one had made him throw the phone away. He'd been told that many times, directly or veiledly, jokingly or seriously, but as soon as he waved his hand, the words evaporated before they reached his soul. He couldn't even look up now, though. For the first time he felt like nothing.  

Sitting at the empty dining room table, Rachel stared out the window as if there were something more mesmerizing than the everyday sunset. Whether she prayed, pleaded, or argued, the inhabitants of heaven were adamant or deaf. The angels and their arrows did not care about human suffering.

Gojo was sure she heard the front door slam, so why didn't she turn around? The only thing that moved was her fingers, which scrabbled against the tabletop, occasionally touching the crystal ashtray that held at least twenty or so cigarette butts. The ashes smeared awkwardly against the table were like feelings - neither reversed nor returned, only wiped away with a damp cloth. "Hey," Gojo sounded muffled in spite of his ringing voice. "Sorry for your loss," Rachel never turned around. No nod of her head, no greeting. "Um... You know where Y/N is? Is she still in town?"  

"Why would I know where your monster is," she mumbled. Despite her slurred words, there was no bottle or glass on the table in front of her. Apparently, her father's influence was taking its toll.

"Uh? You're her sister," he said with a perplexed shrug.

Rachel clicked her tongue lazily, not taking her eyes off the window. "I wish I wasn't."

"Oh, I see," he drawled, an arrogant smirk in his voice. "So you're the poor unfortunate girl. The only one who lost someone, huh?" he tilted his head sideways, looking at your sister. There was no child sitting in front of him, so where did such childish behavior come from? "Grow up already."

Rachel sat still for a few seconds, then slowly turned her body and stared at Gojo with empty eyes. He'd come to her house, to her family, hung around her sister, failed to show up at her brother's funeral, and dared to mock her.

"Tranquillity."   

Gojo remained standing as he was. He realized that something had happened; even though he wasn't shackled, he felt strange as if the chain did exist and it was beginning to be slowly pulled around his neck. "Is that all you got?" he asked excitedly. There was only one desire burning in him now - to test the limits of his own abilities. 

If she'd had the strength to smile, her face would have contorted into a mad grimace, but right now Rachel just kept watching him. Nothing reflected in her glassy eyes. No surprise, no satisfaction. "What were ya saying about your infinity?" she asked blankly, not expecting an answer. It was not enough for her. If he couldn't feel the mental pain, let him feel the physical.

"Tranquillity."

She was ready to tear him and his equanimity. Thin black strips crawled along her fingers, wrapping around every inch of tanned skin.

It was hard for him to breathe, but the reverse technique was doing its job - it broke the chains time after time, but they were put back on, each one thicker than the last. His hand flew involuntarily to his throat.

"Rachel, that's enough!" shouted Frank, rushing down from the second floor. He hadn't even had time to change - he was still wearing his black suit. "I said STOP!" he howled, and Rachel's head popped up. When the chains of dark energy stopped restraining Gojo, he began gasping for air.

Frank walked over to him, and taking him by the shoulder, looked him over anxiously. "Son, ya okay?" Gojo nodded, rubbing his throat. "And ya," he turned angrily to his daughter. "What the hell ya doing?"  

Rachel showed an emotion other than total absence for the first time in a day. She laughed bitterly. "I'm just wondering why everyone is defending her."

"I don't know who exactly ya talking about," the man hissed. "But we have a duty to protect her because she's our family."

Rachel laughed even harder, and the louder her laugh was, the crazier it sounded. "Mom never carried her under her heart! She's here because you're a hearty idiot! You just felt sorry-"

"Shut your mouth!" snapped Frank sharply.

"I won't!" she yelled, jumping up from her chair. "None of this would have happened if it wasn't for her! I just want to come home and know that Kyle will meet me! Alive!" she gasped, muffling her own sobs. "And now he's gone. All because ya took pity on her once! You should have just left her to them," she whimpered weakly, her head collapsing onto her chest.

"You don't feel well. Go to your room," Frank ordered softly.

She glared sharply at him, for ire gave her strength. "Ya can't tell me what to do!"

"I am your father. Sure I can," he replied firmly, and though he kept his voice low, it sounded much louder than his daughter's screams. 

"Obedience."

Rachel groaned painfully and tried to keep her legs in place, but they were trying to get off the floor against her will. "Fuck you," she spat out, and then she went up the stairs and disappeared to the second floor.

Gojo watched Frank anxiously. The man was breathing heavily, staring after his daughter and rubbing his chest as if his heart were painfully throbbing. His arm was covered in dark, wriggling stripes, and when Frank's legs started to wobble, Gojo picked him up immediately. "Hey, hey, oldman," he gibbered worriedly. "What's the matter?" he dragged Frank to the couch, and sitting him down, poured him some water. 

"Thanks, son," the man took the glass with a shaky hand and took a couple sips. "Sorry for no warm welcome today. We're all on edge right now," setting the water aside, Frank pulled back the collar of his shirt. The dark lines wrapping around his collarbones almost reached his heart. "Shit...and here I thought I can live to fight another day," he grinned grimly.

Frank wasn't a fool. He may not have been the smartest man, but he had a lot of experience under his belt. He saw no anger or irritation on Gojo's face at what had happened, just the faded blue eyes. "Lost someone?" the man asked.

Gojo nodded briefly without looking up. "Yeah," he said quietly. 

"She's in the church now," Frank prompted politely. "She went to give some things away, so... You'll find her there."

"Do you really think I'd leave an old man with a heart attack?" clinging to the remnants of his temper, Gojo glanced slyly at Frank.

He got a fatherly slap, not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to set him straight. "Go already," Frank growled, and Gojo didn't bother to argue or bicker with him. Rubbing his aching heart, Frank barely waited for the door to slam shut. "Ya left too soon, Kyle," he sobbed, digging his fingernails into the blackened skin. "They still need your care."   

You dragged the boxes to the far corner hidden behind the columns and unlit by hundreds of candles. You did it as quietly as possible, trying not to disturb the praying parishioners. On days like this, the church came alive. The hall filled with light from the fire was crowded with people, and those who did not have enough room in the pews reverently said their prayers on the floor, on their knees. Everyone was silent, all those present turned only to God. Paradoxically, it only took one dead person to do this. On other days, the place was not gloomy, but rather empty - all the voices of those who came here echoed off the walls.

You could barely lift the boxes as if each one weighed a ton. When you would sneak quietly into a corner with a box, your forearms would ache terribly and you would want to drop everything or carry it back home. Were clothes always this heavy? Or was it the weight of parting?

When you reached the last box, you took your time putting it down. You held it tightly to you as if you were hugging it, and sat down on the floor next to the rest of the things. Watching the people in the gap between the columns, you wondered - perhaps you should have done the same. No one had ever explained what silent prayers could do. It was something intimate, something that remained only between man and the creature from above.

Man is all-powerful. Man is fragile. A person can move mountains or they can break their heel jumping off the bench. Person loves and hates, misses and has fun, makes mistakes and feats, but they forget that all this exists only because of them. Without them there would be neither conquered mountains, nor love nor hate.

And then the man dies.

"Y/N," a soft voice addressed you. "Don't sit on the cold floor. You'll catch a cold," you looked up and saw the Holy Father holding out his hand to you.

Setting the box aside with the rest of Kyle's belongings, you took his palm and stood up, shaking off your feet. "Kalev," you awkwardly tried to shove the boxes away so they wouldn't get in the way. "Um... Thank ya for performing the ceremony."

"What are you talking about?" wondered the Holy Father quietly. He was still dressed in his ceremonial robes, and unlike the others, it was completely white except for the wide collar - it was embroidered with silver threads. "Of course, I agreed to it. I don't care about the rumors. We're all human, and we deserve to go to the other world accompanied by a God."

"Yeah," you muttered, faltering and not looking up. "I guess ya're right."

"What's troubling you?" he asked worriedly, barely touching your hand. "We can always talk," seeing your gaze flicker around the church, he squeezed your palm harder, trying to reassure you.

You knew what awaited you behind those columns, away from the congregation. A small, cramped room that separated the speakers by a mesh partition. "There's no way I'm going to the confessional," you grinned nervously, feeling the back of your neck sweat.

"I didn't say anything about confession," the Holy Father smiled modestly. "I was talking about ordinary human interaction," the man spoke the most ordinary words, but the aura around him radiated a light-winged warmth as if he really was protected by a god. "I will always be happy to talk to you, Y/N," he continued to hold your hand in his, wrinkled and cognizant of the years that carried not only his joys and sorrows, but others' as well. "But it seems to me that someone else wants to talk to you now."

His kind gaze didn't change a bit as he looked over your shoulder. When he let go of your hand, he nodded softly, ordering you to go. As if it were a command from above, you turned around.

You couldn't see his face in the shadow of the columns, but you knew who it was. You walked past Gojo and sat down on the step without even looking at him. Since it was the will of the shadows, let the expression on his face remain a mystery to you forever. "I'm sorry," came the husky voice that had always been ringing and cheerful.

"Me too," you replied detachedly, watching the deserted town.

He carefully sat down beside you, keeping his distance. "Why didn't you tell me what happened?"

"So ya didn't see the calls and texts after all."

"I saw, but...," the heated tiles beneath his feet began to crumble. Gojo had heard once of that feeling of the ground leaving beneath one's feet, but no one had warned him that it would do so slowly. "If you only texted me about what happened, I would be here right away."

"Why," you couldn't even catch the sarcasm in the impersonality of your voice. "Did something like this really have to happen for ya to finally pick up the phone and say ya 'kay?"

So that was it. You didn't ask for help or pity. You just wanted to be reassured that he was okay. "I really am an asshole," there was none of his usual sass in his voice. Just the realization crashing down on him like a slab of granite, crushing all arrogance and carelessness. "I'm sorry. I'm not- I'm just- God," he buried his face in his palms. "I can't even find the right words."

"Whatever," you said, and your alienation did not catch his despair. "I still have more to think about besides another person being disappointed in me."

"No, no, no. It's not like that at all," he mumbled in a weak voice. He cupped your face. To his surprise, you gave in effortlessly as if you were a rag doll. "Only a brainless idiot would be disappointed in you," he leaned his forehead against yours. "And I'm an idiot, but I have brains. Right?" he asked you, and noticing the faintly familiar wrinkles in the corners of your eyes, he smiled, even though his eyes were glistening treacherously.

"If you had brains, you'd run away," you didn't realize that both his mind and his heart had been screaming to the contrary for a long time. That's why he was here now, in front of you and with you, all broken with naked soul. 

Gojo pressed you tighter against him and even pushed you back a little, so as not to disturb the exiting parishioners, but you didn't notice anything. On the other hand, he noticed everything, right down to the way you burrowed harder into his neck when someone walked past you. "Mochi," he rubbed his nose softly against the top of your head. "Is anyone home?"

"No," you replied without raising your head. "All here in Hopetown."

Not to a grieving Rachel, not to a worried Frank, not to a maelstrom of hissing hunters - he didn't want to give you to anyone. Gojo hoped you would understand his selfish desire. "Let's go home then, 'kay?" he whispered and, stunned by the church bells and the beating of his own heart, he kissed you shyly on the temple - your very first kiss. 

You washed away today - all the water running down the drain, taking the dust, sweat, anger, and pain with it. You tried not to disturb your mental equilibrium, and one way to maintain it was with a routine. After smearing moisturizers on your body and applying balm to your hair, you wrapped yourself in a robe and stood in front of the dresser with your clothes. Gojo wanted you to open up - it was time to start somewhere. 

You had no idea what was waiting for you on the floor above. You'd agreed to just watch something, but Gojo was running around the kitchen trying to make a quick meal. He's already gotten it into his head that you're an omnivore. Maybe there were some exceptions like boiled carrots or something, but he didn't like those things too, which meant you'd find something to your liking from all the things he'd quickly cooked and panic-bought at an unknown store - in his state of chaos, Gojo didn't even realize where he'd teleported to. Garlic croutons, mozzarella cheese balls, baked shrimp in bacon, nachos with chili sauce, a few chocolate bars - cholesterol plaques. Everything just the way you liked it. "Well... Acceptable," he muttered, eyeing the edibles.

"What is it?" you asked, peering out from behind his forearm. Gojo didn't even jump - he was used to living in this house with the thought that you could be behind him at any moment. He was ready for anything. Or he thought so until he turned around. 

You were wearing regular pajama pants. Avocado, kitten, funny writing, or solid colors - he'd seen them all. But instead of the usual closed shirt, you were wearing a top. A little stretched and faded, but it hid almost nothing. "Uh," you drawled uncertainly, noticing the lost expression on Gojo's face. "Is something wrong?" you took a step back.  

Gojo had long suspected what was under your clothes, and his suspicions were confirmed. Scars of all kinds - sunken, bumpy, torn, and stretched - adorned your skin, layered on top of each other. The whitish-pink indentations on your wrists were like bracelets, and your throat was covered with many thin tightened cuts, like a dried bloody necklace.  

That wasn't what Gojo was interested in. He knew that if he gave it a single thought, he would be consumed by rage, which was good only in battle and only if it was cold. However, in helpless rage one could only find the road to self-defeat. Anyway, a trigger clicked quietly in his head.   

Kill them all.

"N-no, it's okay," Gojo mumbled, averting his eyes in embarrassment. Your naked arms, shoulders, collarbones, and neck - it made it seem as if you'd exposed more than just a part of your body. "Y-you just- uh," he panted quietly and tried to brush away the unruly white strands that tickled his burning face with his hands. "You took me by surprise," he mumbled awkwardly, raising his eyes to you again.

"Well, I just wish I could wear something like that sometimes too. At least in your workroom," you shrugged. "When I told ya ya could sleep over sometimes, I didn't think ya'd end up living there," you chuckled, not noticing how the man in front of you was being pulled further and further into the abyss by the shame.

"Sorry, I- Uh, I-I just...," Gojo kept stammering like a flustered teenager, and his hands couldn't find their place - he was trying to shove them into his pockets, then cross them over his chest, then fix his hair again. "I'm sorry, I didn't even think of that," he admitted timidly. 

"Nothing, it's fine," you smiled, seeing his condition. "If it bothered me too much, I'd tell ya about it, so... Let's just take it all to the TV," you suggested, pointing to the food. Gojo nodded, and you walked over to the dining table. Seeing several bars of chocolate, you looked dumbfounded. "God," you whimpered. "Wait here. I forgot something." 

You had no right to do that. He'd been through too much emotion that day, and this waiting during your sudden outburst only made him more anxious. He tried to rub his face with his hands to get the red paint off it or to cool it down a little, but it was in vain. Even his hands were burning.

Gojo was eager to get everything ready. He moved all the food to the coffee table, fluffed all the pillows on the couch, brought a couple of blankets, turned on the TV and searched for a movie, but nothing worked. He was still in a panic. 

"Here," you drawled uncertainly, rising from the workroom and walking over to him, sitting on the couch and tapping his foot against the floor. "It's hardly tasty, so...," you bit your lip, holding out the chocolate bar to him. "Just a souvenir from the void," you chirped, flopping onto the couch and tucking your legs under you.   

Gojo stared dumbly at the bar of chocolate in the weathered wrapper - it had been pink, but there was no lettering or logo. Did you think of him?  Was there really room in your head for him in the midst of the cold and the demons, the half-dead people and the unknown? When you were all alone and didn't know how to get out? "I won't eat it, I guess," he said weakly, though he tried to smile slyly.

"Prissy," you snorted, grabbing the nearest pillow and throwing it at him. "Crank up TV."

You've seen several movies, but Gojo didn't understand any of them. The plot, the acting, the locations - he couldn't remember any of it, even though he was staring straight at the screen. Thoughts were rushing around in his head, and his side vision was emphasizing you. You were eating with an envious appetite on whatever he'd cooked or bought, which made him bury his face harder into the pillow he was cradling against his chest. Was it fair that you were so comfortable around him? Was he the only one in this room with a heart that was out of place?    

"That's it," you sighed tiredly, stretching. "I'm full and I can't move," you said, throwing the pillow on the couch and flopping down on it, keeping your legs tucked in so you wouldn't disturb Gojo. 

Okay, it may have been unfair, but it was rarely otherwise in this world. He made that decision on his own. If you were knocked out and made to run away by his attempts to get closer to you, he was willing to back off, but just one step back. No further. Everything was fine as long as you let him stay by your side in this room, on the same couch, eating mozzarella cheese balls he'd made.

"Hey," you poked your foot gently into his thigh. "You're falling asleep," you said, watching his eyelids slip shut. "At least lie down." 

Gojo glanced sleepily at the door; he didn't want to go down to the workroom. He sighed tiredly and lay down behind you. In a strangely familiar habit, he put his arm around your waist - your back was pressed against his chest. "Mochi," Gojo whispered gently into your shoulder, realizing it was time for a risky endeavor. "Look, this might seem weird to you, but... Is it just me or are you and Rachel not getting along?" 

He furrowed his brows at his own insolence, though he hadn't been bothered by those devils pulling his tongue before. You remained silent, stroking the back of his hand with your thumb, an action that made him relax a little. "We fight with her a lot," you finally uttered. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"I just heard something I wasn't supposed to hear," he admitted honestly. "She said things like, uh... It's not like a common fight."

"She rarely watches her tongue," a shaky exhale escaped you, and Gojo, burrowing deeper into your neck, tried with all his might to show he was there for you. "Rachel, she's... She's not the bad person. It was just a bad day, that's all," he felt you squeeze his hand harder as if you were trying to hold him in place. "Besides... She has a right to be mad at me." 

He squeezed your hand in response. "Why?"

"I killed her husband."

You sat in the huge wooden barn, surrounded by sleeping cattle. The thin hay stung your skin even through your clothes, but you didn't dare move; you sat obediently as you had been told. The strong wind made the barn door wobble as if it were about to swing open. Nothing could be heard outside, only the long whistle of the night air through the cracks.

You tried irritably to wipe the dried blood off your hands, your skin itching and aching in places as you tried so hard to get rid of the scarlet liquid. With the quiet sleepy snorting of the animals and the shoving of another straw away from you, you wondered angrily. What had gone wrong? Where had you miscalculated? And where the fuck did Frank go?

No matter how fast or slow the time dragged on, he was already late. Did he really think that if he told you to sit still and keep your nose clean, he could disappear as long as he wanted?  

As irritation began to turn to frustration, the barn door swung open, banging loudly against the wall. "Shit," mumbled Frank to the howling wind that blew in. He examined the door, and making sure it was still on its hinges, closed it back with force.

You immediately jumped to your feet, approaching him. "Well? How bad is it?" you worried.

He put his arm around your shoulders, forcing you back into the haystack and sat down beside you. The stack immediately sagged, nearly flattening to the floor. "I'm not gonna lie. It's pretty bad," Frank admitted on an exhale.

"Hunters?"

"There's less than half of them left."

"And the people?" you asked hopefully.

"Everyone was slaughtered," Frank reported grimly, patting you comfortingly on the knee.

"Wonderful," you said desolately. "They were the first people we brought out of the void, and for what? So that a couple weeks later they could just be killed?"

"It's okay," the man put his arm around you, and noticing the deep cut on your eyebrow, touched it - dark lines immediately began to tighten it. "The important thing is that we're still alive."

"What... What's up with the plantation?" you asked through force, expecting the worst.

Your expectations were confirmed. "Burned down along with the village," Frank said threateningly quietly. "We don't have the black orchid anymore."

You jumped to your feet again, and even Frank's heavy hand couldn't hold you in place. You started pacing from side to side, wringing your hands nervously. "That's fucking bullshit," you bellowed. "Hunters have lived there for centuries, has anyone ever attacked?" at your rhetorical question Frank still shook his head. "Then what the hell? Did someone turn us in?"

"I have no clue," the man shook his head contritely. "We'll have to think about it on a fresh head. Right now it's better to rest."

Because of your worries and the excitement of the elements of nature, you did not hear someone knocking shyly on the barn door. The guest, not waiting to be answered, opened the door themselves.

You turned around, but Frank had already managed to step forward and covered you with his back. "Oh, Noah," he exhaled, and his body relaxed. "Thanks for bailing us out," Frank said, and he wasn't so hard at covering you anymore. Peeking out from behind his shoulder, you met the worried gaze of a man who was wrapping himself more tightly in a fur vest.

"It's nothing," Noah muttered, shivering from the cold. "But you can't stay here for long," he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Don't think I'm chasing you out of here. It's just that they... They might find out through me that you're here."

"Don't worry. We'll wait out the night and leave at dawn," the insider nodded uncertainly at Frank's assurance and took a step backward, slamming his back into the wall. The clattering pitchfork made him jump up and he stormed out of the barn. "I dunno where to go, though," he admitted aloud.

"Then you'll come to our house," you said in a voice that didn't tolerate bickering.

"I doubt the hunters would agree," grinned Frank sadly.

"Let them go to motels then. I don't care," you waved it off, settling back on the haystack. "We ain't done with that settlement yet anyway. Those people need a place to live, and without hunters, there'll be more room in the house."

"Still... The house isn't rubber, after all," the man frowned.

"We have to rebuild the village," you tried to cheer Frank up. "Somewhere on the edge of the Earth. And this time we'll have to think seriously about how to protect it."   

***

Two months had passed since the bloody incident, and you were on tenterhooks again. It was comforting to know that you weren't the only one in that state. Kyle was sitting next to you on the couch in the hallway of the infirmary. He jumped up, walking to the closed door of the chamber, and then sat back down. Involuntarily watching his fidgeting, you began to get even more nervous. Doc had never taken so long to examine a patient before; had something terrible happened to Rachel?

Your brother wouldn't stop - he would pop his head up every now and then when there was a rustling and mumbling outside the door. "Ya're not helping. Sit down," you turned to him exhaustedly as he once again got up from the couch.

You shivered as the doc's replica rushed past you. The same white coat, the same hands that clutched the clipboard and pen, only the replica never had a face. A blank canvas with no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Doc was always good at optimization, but the implementation was sometimes horrifying.

You both rose from your seats as doc left the ward and closed the door behind him. Clutching the clipboard to his chest, he stared at you over his glasses. "Congratulations," he said glumly. "She's pregnant."

"What?" you both simultaneously blurted out, and were reflections of each other - both amazed, right down to your open mouths.

"I mean, it's...," began a panting Kyle. "That's great!"

"Go to her," Doc nodded, but as you took a step toward the room, he grabbed your arm. "Not you. In my office. Now," Doc hissed and immediately rushed off in the direction of his office. You and Kyle looked at each other dazedly, and after a little while, you headed after doc.

As you closed the office door, you saw doc fidgeting with his medical records, and when he found the right one, he began to flip through the pages. "Doc, what's the matter?" you worried, watching as he began to write something down. The pen was almost tearing the paper.

"Sit down," he called out without raising his eyes. You obediently took the chair and moving it closer to the desk, sat down. "I won't beat around the bush," he tossed the medical records aside and interlocking his fingers, stared at you again. "Rachel has uterine hypoplasia. Or rather, she had uterine hypoplasia."

"Uh," you began confusedly, digging around doc's desk with your eyes, not sure why. Maybe looking for answers. "Can we use human language?"

"Undeveloped uterus," doc chided. "Specifically in her case, no bigger than this thing here," he tossed a pencil eraser under your nose. "I examined her from top to bottom just a month and a half ago, everything was the same. And now she's pregnant," he said coldly.

"She never told me anything about her disease," you said wistfully, thoughtfully twirling a pencil eraser in your hands.

"She suspected her reproductive problems, but I never told her anything about her disease," doc explained glumly. "Rob wanted kids too much, and I wanted to find a solution to that problem before I told them everything," he grimaced as he watched you put the eraser back on the table. "But the problem seems to have been solved for me."

"Couldn't ya... Ya know, recover her or something?" you suggested weakly, crossing your arms.

"I can only replicate what is already available. Not create new things," doc shook his head, tapping his fingers restlessly on the table.

"So what ya getting at?" you asked, the corners of your lips involuntarily creeping upward, and there was no way you could stop that panicked nervous smile.

Was it because of this that a few months ago you all literally drowned in blood and lifeless bodies? Was the price of all this something ephemeral, something that had not yet come into this world? You didn't want to believe it, and you hoped that none of you would say it out loud.

Doc was of a different opinion. He was always satisfied only with truth and facts, and it didn't matter what they carried with them. "If you don't believe in God, I suggest you to start," he said, leaning back in his chair. "After all, if this isn't a miracle of God, I'll laugh in the face of anyone who says it's just a coincidence."  

***

Rachel didn't have any of those weird wants - no cucumbers with chocolate, no honey and chips, no chalk - but her appetite was growing by the day. Because of her cravings, you could go to the store several times a day, only to have her tell you afterwards that she didn't want it anymore. Just like that, you were shoving now unwanted strawberries into the fridge. The container crumpled from the force you exerted, and the walls of it turned scarlet - unable to withstand such violence, the poor strawberry simply burst.

When you heard your sister's mumbling from the couch again, you spread your arms out to the sides with all your fingers together, closed your eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths to catch the slipping calm. You weren't supposed to be angry, Rachel was pregnant. This behavior was normal.

"What the hell ya doing there?" whined Rachel, peering out from behind the back of the couch. "The show's already starting."

"I'm coming," you muttered, slamming the refrigerator door shut. As soon as you sat down on the couch, she immediately laid her head on your lap, not caring at all about the way your legs were going to cramp up. Sighing, you started stroking her red curls, realizing where this was going. "Ya can't sleep on the couch forever. It's bad for your back."

"Back off," she snorted, fidgeting and tugging the blanket over her. "What can I do? Rob stinks."

"What's that he smells like?" you laughed softly.

"How should I know?" she whined for the umpteenth time this week. "He just stinks. I get nauseous around him all the time."

"Ya sure it's about the smell?" you asked casually, smirking eagerly, for which you received a hard slap on the thigh. "Ouch!" Rachel only frowned more at your exclamation and squirmed harder into a ball, not taking her eyes off the TV. "Rach... How did ya even realize ya were pregnant?"

"Well...," she drawled thoughtfully. "I got my period first. When it first start when you're thirteen it's normal, but when you're in your early twenties... I had a real panic attack," she laughed merrily, remembering her flighty state. "I thought I had vaginal cancer or something."

"Rachel," you giggled quietly along with her.

After calming down a bit, she continued. "I went to the doc right away, and he calmed me down, saying I was just menstruating. Only he was looking unkindly at my medical records. Dunno, maybe I imagined it. Just a couple weeks later, I got so sick...," she whimpered, placing a hand on her still growing belly. "I thought I had poisoned myself with something, but Rob kept following me around and insisting to take a pregnancy test. So, it just happened," she pressed her palm harder against her lower abdomen, and she could have sworn she felt another heartbeat even though her common sense screamed that it was too early for that. "Ya think I'll be a good mom?" she asked muffled, almost bashfully.

"Uh...," you drawled surreptitiously, playing with a strand of her hair. "I guess so? Actually, it depends on the kid, too. It's a matter of luck," you shrugged, trying to choose your words. "If it's a gifted child - fine, but if it's not... Well, then ya'll be scrubbing shit off the walls," you giggled, which earned you another hard slap to the knee. "That hurts!" you squeaked.

The fact that she was unaware of it was neither comfort nor relief. The deeper you went into your thoughts, the more your hands shook as if your mind were a labyrinth, its icy walls stretching to the edge of heaven, leaving no way out. You didn't know if you had to do it or if you just wanted to, but it seemed like the best solution.

Toxicosis is a terrible thing. Either a woman eats a lot and then vomits, or she eats nothing at all and still vomits. After a few trips to the bathroom with Rachel, she finally fell asleep. You carefully put a pillow under her head instead of your lap and headed to the second floor.

You didn't spend more than a minute in there. All you had to do was walk as quietly as possible past the sleeping Rob, steal his phone, and carry it into the workroom. Trifling matter, but when you got to the desk, you couldn't bring yourself to plug the phone into the computer. You felt like you were shackled, and the more you resisted, the harder the shackles dug into your skin - a familiar feeling that made you collapse helplessly into the chair.

"Need help?" the suave mechanical voice was like a nudge or just a key to all the chains for you.

"Meg," you addressed the artificial intelligence, finally plugging the cable into the computer. "Find something," you sobbed raggedly, watching as his phone lit up, announcing that the connection had been successful. "Find something that says he had nothing to do with this."

***

Vito looked at you as if you were mentally unstable. Everyone else had left to celebrate the completion of Hopetown, and you were the only one sitting in the kitchen, in absolute silence and total darkness. No garland was lit. No crickets were chirping. No cold wind rushing in.

Doc probably only told you about it because he knew Rob was Kyle's best friend. He wouldn't have been able to judge impartially, and there was no telling which evil would show its face. A desperate attempt at vindication, or a brutal, agonizing murder. "Eh," Vito sighed, wrapping elastic bandages around his legs. "I was born to drink beer, not this stuff," he glanced at you sneakily. "And why aren't ya at the party?"

"I felt sorry for ya," you joked back.

"Come on," Vito said cheerfully. "I bet next year someone else will get a shift on those dates, and I'll make up for it then."

After waiting for him to lace up his boots and put on his mask, you got up and went to see him off. When you got to the training field, the same point from which every voidrunner departed, Vito nodded, and after telling you to drink a bottle of beer for him, disappeared in a purple flash.

You walked around the place where the man had been a few seconds ago, took a dozen steps toward the forest, and turned around, leaving footprints in the snow. The clammy anticipation of the inevitable made your palms sweat. The clouds of vapor coming out of your mouth were jagged, intermittent, but not from the cold, for all you felt was desolation.

You could feel his presence, but you couldn't sense his thoughts or his moods. You ran a hundred excuses in your head for him, but none of them fit. Your gut shook more and more as he approached. Before the purple flash was even born, you covered your eyes with your hand.

Rob didn't look hurt or tired, only frantically shaking something off his sides with his hands, unaware that there was someone standing ten paces behind him. Someone with obvious motives, someone with courage and no sympathy. Perhaps if he'd paid attention to the fresh footprints, he might have been able to do something about it.

"Relocate."

There was no longer a field beneath your feet - it was a scaffold. One of your hands rested on his shoulder, and the other, clutching the dagger, was between his shoulder blades. The dagger cut the flesh silently, so your conscience was silent, too. It was very quiet. No sobs, no whimpering. Only when you twisted the dagger and pulled it sharply from Rob's heart was there a gurgling wheeze.

The man tried to turn around, but he didn't have time - his legs gave up before he could. He fell to his knees, and only after a few long moments, collapsed face first into the ground.

You'd always loved the sight of blood running down a back - a sure sign that the reaper had gone unnoticed. You watched blankly as the scarlet puddle spread beneath Rob, desecrating the pure white color, and you never realized that this was the first murder you'd ever committed that didn't make your hands tremble.

Your world froze, but everything continued to live without your participation. To the songs of the white wind under the northern sky, winter was sweeping everything away. The ground, the cooling body, the sins of the living and the dead. The only thing left untouched and naked were your bloody hands.

There were two persons in the field. One was the best friend, the father, the husband. The other was the one who took it all away. 

It was a sudden revelation that was never meant to be spoken, and Gojo froze in place, trying not to scare you away. You took it in your own way, though you tried not to think about how badly you might have spoiled his attitude toward you by telling him about your past. It was better to keep your mouth shut as it had been, and though Gojo was sometimes angry at you for it, you'd never felt like he was about to leave for good before. "Rob never had time to figure out who killed him, and Rachel never found out what happened to him," you continued to drown yourself, forgetting your sense of self-preservation. "I just told her that he never came back from the void," you were disturbed to your shaking knees by this uncertainty - Gojo still had his arm around your waist but remained motionless, you couldn't even hear his breathing above your ear. "I used to reassure myself that it was best for her, that she'd never know what he'd done or how much Mike's life really cost, but... I guess those were just pathetic excuses for a coward like me. That's all."  

"Look at me," though there was nothing commanding in his tone, his hand tugged at your waist, forcing you to turn around. "A real coward wouldn't have done anything and let it go, but not you," Gojo said, stroking your cheek soothingly. He would have given anything for you to look at him now, to feel how sincere his words were, but you only squinted your eyes harder. "I killed Megumi's father," he admitted on an exhale, and you opened your eyelids. "I'm not seeking for attention, it's just...," Gojo mumbled embarrassedly, but didn't take his palm away from your face. "It would be fair of me to admit something in return. And... Uh, he doesn't know about it either." 

"How come?" 

"It's just happened," he grinned bitterly. "He had a person to kill and I was just in the way. To be honest, he kicked my ass pretty good, but it was that bastard that made me stronger," Gojo sighed wistfully at the recollection that seemed to have faded into oblivion. "I never got to protect that person, though," he added more quietly. 

"But ya've protected many others."

"Exactly!" he brightened, burying his nose in your cheek. "So do you. Don't ever forget that, 'kay?" you nodded your head weakly, but it was enough for him. If need be, he was willing to repeat it every day, and it didn't matter that there was a chance he'd pester you to the point where you'd ban him from the workroom forever. He could have come in through the window anyway.

The annoying feeling of worrying for someone had long ago turned to trepidation, and when Gojo felt you fidget once more, there was no way he could keep another question inside him. "How long ago did you stop sleeping?" your stunned stupor made him chuckle. "It's not like I'm a blind fool. You said you were gonna sleep in the other room, but when you're home, you don't leave the workroom at all." 

You climbed under the blanket and pressed your forehead against his chest. "Ya've reached your limit of questions for today," you muttered sullenly, pouting your lips.

The only reaction he had to your behavior was tenderness. You may not have remembered it, but he'd seen you asleep once. In this very same spot, on this very same couch, which was illuminated by the light from the TV. He remembered covering a restless you with a blanket and sitting next to you all night, pretending to watch cartoons. "Come here," Gojo whispered softly into the top of your head. "Come here," taking advantage of your lack of comprehension, he rolled over onto his back, wrapped both arms around your waist, and laid you on top of him with enviable ease. His arms closed around you in case you decided to run away, even though he realized that if you wanted to disappear, you would. But you remained motionless, leaning your head against his chest. "Try to get some sleep, 'kay?"   

The song of his heart was fast and feverish, but it wasn't annoying. In the timid embrace of such a rare guest as a dream, you heard another melody, unfamiliar one. The longer this melody was played, the more embrace became tender and stronger, but did an ordinary dream know how to embrace like that? 

Gojo hummed softly to himself, hardly saying any words. It was a muffled melody, and he doubted you could hear it. Either way, you began to fidget less and to raise your head less often, looking around the space with a blurred gaze. "Shh," he hushed quietly as you jumped up once more and gently returned your head back to his chest. "It turns out you're snuffling. You knew that?" after all, he had already kissed you once, would it make it worse if he did it again? Gojo didn't remember himself as his lips covered everything they could reach with tender kisses. "My baby," he whispered softly, touching with his lips the spreading black lines on your forehead. "You're so beautiful," he breathlessly babbled nonsense into your blackened hair and smiled foolishly, but his face changed immediately as if someone was trying hard to take you away from him. "I'll always be there for you. I promise."  

You were pushed from side to side as if you weighed nothing, but it wasn't anyone's fault. There were more people in the bar this time, but everyone was still as drunk and happy as ever. When you heard the threatening creak, you unconsciously bounced. An old wooden sign fell where you had just been standing. A cheeky hooting sounded, profanity was heard everywhere, and a bottle smashed against the wall a few feet away. You ducked as if you were in a battlefield and headed for the familiar staircase.

It was still the same fog of cigarette smoke, but it was a lot calmer. Maybe it was the quiet people who gathered here or maybe it was the influence of the sullen-looking bartender. He was still polishing the glasses.

No one was interested in anyone here. When you walked in, not a single head turned in your direction. The people here were happy in their own way, and they didn't care about anyone else. "Sunshine!" a joyful, familiar voice called out to you.

When you looked over, you saw Kyle sitting at a round table. He had a glass of light beer in front of him, and judging by his blissful look, it wasn't his first glass. He was surrounded by painfully familiar faces, but that pain carried with it only surprise. Vito was slyly pouring more alcohol into Kyle's glass, and your brother's shoulder was gripped tightly by a man's hand. Rob sat next to him, encouraging them both.

"Hey guys," you smiled, taking a seat across from them.

"Hey! Why ya sitting so far away?" whined Kyle drunkenly, holding out his arms to you. "Come here!" you looked at this picture through your fingers. Shifting your gaze to Rob, you saw him raise his eyebrows guiltily.  

"I see ya two are best friends again?" you asked snidely, pulling Kyle's beer glass to you. Kyle was drunk, but he was able to focus and send you a questioning look, even though you thought his eyes were about to drift apart.

"All right, lad, let's go bring ya to your senses," Vito announced businesslike, lifting Kyle by the shoulders in one jerk.

"Oh my," you said meaningfully, watching as Vito dragged Kyle's collapsed body on his back. "It's not even a day later, and he's already on a roll."

"He's been looking out for ya all his life," Rob reminded you, laughing. "He's long overdue for a rest," he sighed as the door to the restroom slammed shut behind the men. An awkward silence hung. You had a lot to say to each other, and only one of you needed the courage to start. "Ya mad?" asked Rob quietly, looking into your eyes.

"No," you replied simply, shaking your head and pressing your lips together. "I'm not."

"Ya didn't tell him?" he nodded his head in the direction of the restroom.

"Kyle's not stupid. I think he figured it all out on his own."

"I just...," he began tentatively, and all his movements seemed awkward, embarrassed. Rob scratched the back of his head thoughtfully before continuing. "I just want ya to know. I don't regret anything."

"Yep," you chirped, sipping from Kyle's glass and immediately grimaced. You sighed heavily, wanting as soon as possible to say goodbye forever to the feeling that made your soul clench into a helpless lump. "Me too."

"That's your style," Rob laughed and immediately relaxed. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. "How's... How's my baby boy?"

"Mike is fine. He's nothing like ya," you stated, wrinkling your nose. "Not in looks, not in personality."

"It's for the best," he said, raising his glass as if his words were a toast. Taking a sip from the glass, Rob set it back on the table with a thud. "And how's my wife?"

"She is okay," you lied, shrugging indifferently. "Ya know her. She can handle anything."

"Oh yeah," he drawled meaningfully, stretching and putting his hands on the back of his head. "I never thanked ya," he started laughing softly again, and you realized what he was getting at.

"Kyle brought ya two together, not me," you tried unsuccessfully to remind him, but Rob was already flying in his memories.

"He just gave me her number and some idiotic advice," he waved it off carelessly. "And ya," he literally jabbed his finger at you. "Ya're the one who told me to bring a bouquet of garlic bread and dried squid instead of flowers on our first date," you clucked your tongue and involuntarily hid half your face in your palms, hoping he'd get your sign and not continue. "And how she chased it all with beer, mmm," he thought blissfully, closing his eyes. "I was all gone," he chuckled again. "Here comes our drunk," he announced, nodding toward a sobered Kyle.

He looked like he was being dragged to trial. His face was still wet and red, and he clutched his clenched hands to his chest with all his might. "I'm sorry," he said quietly to you, sitting down next to you. "I forgot myself a little," he stared guiltily at the table, not daring to look you in the eye.

"You deserve it," you reminded him, shoving him gently with your shoulder. Suddenly, on cue, a thought popped into your head as if your mind was a jewelry box and someone had just put a piece of jewelry in there. "By the way, Kyle," you chirped, reaching into your pocket with your hand. You didn't take it with you, you didn't even think about it, so why did you have it? "Ya left something," you said, holding out a silver bracelet to him.

"Oh shit!" worried Kyle, taking the jewelry from your hands and placing it on his wrist. "I thought it was gone forever..."

"Don't lose it anymore," you jokingly chastised him.

"Thank ya," he wrapped his arms around you and began kissing your face, and you wrinkled unhappily at the touch of wet black strands against your skin.

When he was done with his affection, you unceremoniously pushed the beer glass away from him. You decided to stay out of the men's conversations and musings - they'd been gone too long already. You'd heard stories about their first dates, their first fights, and there seemed to be some generational difference between Vito, Kyle and Rob.

Kyle wouldn't be himself if he hadn't noticed your state of mind even in the midst of a cheerful conversation. He could see your desperate gaze circling the bar, searching for someone. "Sunshine...," he began, taking your hand. "I'm sorry, but she's not coming tonight."

"I thought so."

You're just now noticing that there's been music playing in the bar the whole time. Quiet, but energetic. You only realized this because your brother looked playfully into your eyes. "Shall we dance?"

"Kyle, I can't dance," you protested weakly, flinching away.

"Just a twitch, then," he chuckled, taking you under the arm and pulling you from the table.

There wasn't a single person here dancing. Maybe they didn't know it was allowed or maybe they just didn't want to. Either way, no one paid any attention to you. Everything merged in your clumsy movements, and did so tightly that it ceased to exist at all. You forgot what happened yesterday and didn't know what would happen tomorrow, the only thing that mattered to you now was Kyle dancing and laughing right in front of you. He was alive and whole, and no one tore him apart. He still loved and supported you even when you failed.

The two of you, panting and red, Kyle from the exertion and you from the embarrassment, didn't notice as the bar began to empty. People lingered here for a long time, but they left quickly one by one, and now there were empty tables all around you. "Okay, that's it," he put his arm around your shoulders, trying to catch his breath. Kyle saw Rob and Vito already getting ready, slipping their jackets over their shoulders. "Sunshine," he whispered, looking into your eyes confused. "I'm sorry. But we really have to go."

"It's okay," you cheered him up. "I understand everything. Go."

He pulled you hard against him, but at this point, you couldn't feel how much love he actually put into it. "See ya," Kyle whispered into the top of your head, and he could barely pull away from you as if every inch between you was causing him a tremendous amount of pain.

"See ya," you said after him.

The same bartender was still sullenly going about his work as if he had an endless supply of dirty glasses under the bar. When all the door bells rang out, you looked around and realized you were alone in that corner bar again.

The crackle of burning wood in the fireplace and the smell of smoldering timber brought calmness, one of the few states of mind available to them. Not discerning day or night, sun or moon, love or hate, but only pretending to know everything around them, these creatures sat in corners, in shadows, trying to sort out their own affairs. "It's time to stir up the hornet's nest."

Rei reluctantly raised his head. "Hm?" he lazily uttered, examining the ceiling of the room as if the person speaking was sitting there. "If you meant kill them all, there's a different expression for that. You should be around people more often," Rei stuck back into the fashion magazine and slid the whiskey glass closer to him.

"Who has access to the repository with the artifact?" the creature asked, ignoring the barbed remarks.  

"Frank and his kids," Rei replied nonchalantly, admiring the model's sultry skin on one of the pages. He ran his finger across the page. Why instead of a soft smooth texture he didn't feel even a pitiful semblance?

"How fortunate you killed the lad," the creature hissed

"Do I hear sarcasm in your voice?" grinned Ray, looking up again. "Oh, come on," he laughed, grabbing a glass of whiskey, the ice rattling as if it were afraid. "You're the one who advised me to watch out for the redheaded girl. We didn't need the lad. He just got in the way."

"Any luck finding anything out?"

"Nope," Rei muttered, pouting his lips demonstratively. "Her only weaknesses are alcohol and sex. I like her, by the way," a smile slowly formed on his face, and he turned back to the model. Rather, to her sultry skin.

"You can't be entrusted with anything at all," the creature disappointed, and the glass the demon clutched in his hand crackled. The thin glass shattered into hundreds of small shards, but never broke. "We need someone with powers of observation."

Taking a couple deep breaths, Rei came to his senses. "Stop underestimating me. Even if we did have it, the town is protected by relics," he said irritably, carefully setting the glass aside. "They only protect it from demons and dark energy, though. No one said anything about the rest," the indignation was replaced by a mad chuckle so quiet and short it could penetrate anywhere. Under the skin, under the bones, into the heart.

"Is there someone in mind?"

"Yeah, kinda," Rei chirped, wiggling his leg flirtatiously. Maybe he should have done it for nothing because every movement of that body created an rage in him that he couldn't get rid of. The more he spat it out, the harder he let it out, the more it came back to him. There was only one thing that could do it all.

"You're still not happy about something."  

"Give me one good reason why I should stay in this body or I'll change it immediately," he bellowed, tugging on a shirt that was twice his size.

"Have you tried working out?" the voice suggested sincerely and courteously. "They say it builds muscle."

"Why don't I start eating fucking porridge in the morning too?" Rei clenched his teeth in anger, pitching forward.

"You can't change your body right now," the creature warned. The glass, already battered and hitherto standing peaceful on the table, burst. "Your date hasn't happened yet. She needs to see this," there was a huge upside to each creature seeing and hearing what the other creature saw and heard. At least, if it wasn't hiding. Rei moaned quietly, pitifully in pleasure as he saw your image through the prism of the one who spoke to him. "Calm down. It'll be a while yet, but until then... You need to stay in this body. If you hate it so much... I think you could change it a bit."

"That's right," he said cheerfully, taking off his glasses and breaking them in half. Only one small detail remained. Grabbing the shears from the table and going to the mirror, Rei cut off a long black braid in one motion.

next ⊳

[thatgirlonstage]

For the bookworm ask: 15, 27 and 34? Hope you're having a good day!

15. Which genre(s) are your favorite?

Fantasy! No contest that tops out, but I do like to read widely and across genres. My other top contenders would be sci-fi (which admittedly gets parceled in with fantasy, sometimes the line is pretty blurry there, but I do also like hard sci-fi/spec fic type stuff quite a lot), murder mysteries, and romance—I was a latecomer to real dyed in the wool romance novels, I started looking around for recommendations in 2019-ish because I wanted to read smut more widely before attempting to write it and then 2020 was… 2020, and I fell down a rabbit hole and listened to a shit ton of them on audiobook, so now they're comfort food. I also love a good historical piece, which frequently overlaps with any of those genres (except sci-fi, usually).

27. What was the first book you remember reading as a kid?

Ooh! I can answer this very precisely in fact! So, setting aside picture books that my parents read to me as a baby and toddler (your Dr. Seuss, Make Way for Ducklings, The Gruffalo, Barnyard Dance, etc), two answers:

One, the first like, longer form book that I know my parents used to read to me—the first one where we had to read only a section and then pause and read more of it the next night—was an illustrated, kids' edition version of Dr. Dolittle.

But two, the first book I read, myself, was the first Magic Tree House book. That series was my first foray into reading solo, reading books by myself that had not been read to me previously. I spent several years just devouring those books and they definitely left their mark in the kinds of things I like to read, I have a very soft spot for them still.

34. Favorite book narration voice actor(s).

My sampling here is not the widest but I like a lot of Joel Leslie's work, enough that if I'm borderline on whether I want to listen to a particular audiobook, if he's the narrator it will tip the balance in favor of checking it out for me. Cornell Collins is also quite good imo. I don't think he does audiobooks by habit but Andrew Kishino does an excellent job with Fonda Lee's Green Bone Saga books as well (I was going fucking nuts trying to place his voice while watching Camp Cretaceous because I was like I KNOW I know this man but nothing else I've watched from his filmography seems like he had a big enough role for him to sound as familiar to me as he does and then he finally said something at just the right intonation that my brain was like KAUL HILO???? and it finally clicked lmao)

—

And I hope you're having a good day too!!

[cliperry]

source: HSD

111 BEAUTY A RELATIONSHIP that does not understand GENDERS

The singer HARRY STYLES strengthens his bond with GUCCI by becoming the ambassador of its new fragrance, Mémoire d'une Odeur. With this proposal, for all audiences, he defends the greatest fortune of our time: the freedom to be oneself.

"Roman chamomile, jasmine, cedar, various musks, and an irresistible touch of vanilla," recites, from memory and with perfect intonation, Harry Styles (England, 1994). These are the ingredients of Mémoire d'une Odeur, Gucci’s first universal fragrance," adds the singer, seated in the suite of a Roman hotel, where he has come to introduce himself as its ambassador. The lesson, of course, is already well learned.

The Brit will lead, therefore, in an innovative aromatic-diplomatic exercise born from the mind of Alessandro Michele (creative director of Gucci for four years), a diverse cast of friends, including designer Harris Reed, artist Ariana Papademetropoulos, musician Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, designer Zumi Rosow, and more than a dozen models.

The proposal is, therefore, as universal in its selection of raw materials as in the choice of protagonists for the campaign. "Gender is becoming less and less important in matters like perfumes or clothing. People already express themselves as they wish in these areas... I think the standards are not as strict as they used to be, and that is something I find incredible," states the singer.

His outfit at the latest Met Gala—dedicated to the camp aesthetic and attended alongside Alessandro Michele—proves it: high-waisted trousers (up to the chest), a semi-transparent chiffon blouse with a bow at the neck, nails painted in various shades of blue and green, multiple rings, patent leather ankle boots with a five-centimeter heel, and a dangling pearl earring. "It was an exceptional opportunity to play with the look. Besides, we are in an industry that is absolutely liberal in that sense. Clothing is part of the show, and it allows you to express yourself in a way similar to music," he argues.

It was not the first time the public celebrated his stylistic audacity. In fact, his relationship with Michele dates back to 2016. He had bought a bunch of shirts and a handful of suits for his concerts, and one day, they met for coffee in London. "He's incredible: kind, generous, good... the kind of man you need to have close," he describes.

By the time his 2017 tour, Harry Styles: Live on Tour, began, he was already completely devoted to the Italian designer's ornate and striking designs. "Performing shows is what I enjoy the most. And I think wearing a slightly crazy suit can help in certain moments, make you feel good."

The admiration was mutual: in January 2018, Styles starred in his first campaign for the brand's division.

BEAUTY 145 THIS IS HOW HE DRESSES

At the entrance of Gucci’s 2020 Cruise show in Rome, with a handbag.

At the latest Met Gala, wearing a semi-transparent Gucci blouse.

At the Met Gala afterparty, with a large red bow at the neck, by Gucci.

At the iHeartRadio Awards in 2017, wearing a harlequin suit by Gucci.

In a purple jumpsuit by Charles Jeffrey, on X Factor, in 2018.

At a concert in New York, in 2017, he debuted a pink suit by Edward Sexton.

For Gucci’s menswear campaign, directed by Glen Luchford, he visited a fried chicken shop with a live hen under his arm. "Glen is one of my favorite people on the planet to work with. And we’ve been lucky to reunite now for the Mémoire d'une Odeur campaign. We all gathered for three days on the outskirts of Rome. It was great because, most of the time, we were just hanging out, chatting, and spending time together while they filmed us. It was really entertaining."

Outside the Roman hotel where he is currently staying, a large group of fans waits—mostly teenagers who have followed him passionately since his days in the boyband One Direction, on indefinite hiatus since late 2015, when Styles launched his solo career. They found out about his arrival in the Italian capital and refuse to leave without meeting their idol.

Dressed in loose khaki trousers and a mustard sweater with a deep V-neck—revealing three of his more than fifty tattoos (the two swallows on his chest and the upper part of the butterfly adorning his abdomen)—he remains relaxed on the sofa, where he will give interviews to various media outlets throughout the afternoon. He animatedly reflects on fashion, gender, memories, perfumes...

"Times are changing in every way. It’s incredible to be alive at this moment, to witness how the world evolves and be part of it. My friends, and my friends’ friends, have a freedom like never before to be open and free. They have the opportunity to be who they truly feel they are. I find it amazing to think that my children will grow up in a time when they can be whatever they want to be."

Seconds before the interview ends, he returns to his role as ambassador. "I know from Alessandro that the new perfume is about the connection we have with scents and fragrances, which can evoke certain memories or transport you to a place," he explains. "He’s not just creating a perfume and presenting it. There are emotions behind it. I love that. And besides, it smells really good. It contains Roman chamomile, jasmine, cedar, various musks, and an irresistible touch of vanilla."

PALOMA ABAD

ALLUDING TO THE PAST

Just as a simple madeleine triggered countless memories in Marcel Proust, inspiring him to write seven novels, Mémoire d'une Odeur (€66+), by GUCCI, comes from the most intimate memories of Alessandro Michele.

[thebookhoard]

Title: Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Pages: 613

Jonathan Harker is travelling to Castle Dracula to see the Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. He is begged by locals not to go there because on the eve of St George's Day, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will come full sway. But business must be done, so Jonathan makes his way to the Castle - and then his nightmare begins. His beloved wife Meena and other lost souls have fallen under the Count's horrifying spell. Dracula must be destroyed...

I know I am repeating myself, but for a book called Dracula, he doesn't show up very often. He's more like an afterthought or that feeling in the back of your mind that you are forgetting something important. He quite literally lurks in the shadows. I enjoyed the style of storytelling - the letters and journal entries - which let the reader know more about what is going on than the characters.

The ending disappointed me a bit, but overall, I had fun reading it. This book also caused me to watch BBC Dracula (2020) with which I also had immensely fun, mostly because I was unable to take it too seriously (don't ask why that's the first adaptation I watched, I don't know either).

Small excerpt from Chapter 2:

A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white mustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation: -

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!" He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice - more like the hand of a dead man than a living man. Again he said: -

Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!"

[couslandofhighever]

Rosamunde Cousland - DAO again 4 years later

CW: Mentions of IRL parent death.

Dragon Age Origins was the thing that I sank into during 2020 while the world was much slower for all of us. While there were terrible things happening in the world and in my own life, the fact that I was able to simply just be for a lot of the time was cathartic to me on an imaginative and creative level. The Alistair/Morrigan fic I wrote during that time remains one of my favorite fics I have ever completed and one of the only chapter fics I've ever completed. I also wrote several other one-shots for the fandom.

I was really into Dragon Age 2 as well, but then my mother took a turn for the worse, and my headspace constricted to a point that I didn't have much time or emotional energy for playing anymore. And, on a lighter note, I found the rivalry prospects in DA2 a little more intimidating, though I even made myself a little guide to deal with it on Google Sheets, back during the time I didn't have a job to take all of my problem-solving energy and then some.

Knowing that Veilguard was coming (though I still wish it had been called Dread Wolf, lol, but what even is theming, BioWare), I wanted to get back into Dragon Age. I knew it had been such a long time that if I wanted a sense of my world state that I needed to play DAO again.

One thing I think I might like a little more about Dragon Age 2 as opposed to DAO is that Hawke is a little bit more solid as a character. While you choose a "voice" for your character in DAO, it has very limited use cases, and a lot of the time the voice choices are really just a matter of choosing the least cringe option. For example, I end up choosing the aggressive voice for the Female Cousland character that is to be Rosamunde for me, but the actual lines almost never fit her. I just pick that voice because it's the least objectionable to me. Hawke, on the other hand, follows the BioWare logic of red/purple/blue personality and class where they're different flavors of a basic character you can choose.

I really struggle with whole-cloth OC generation. I'm very attached to the other characters, but I kept floundering a little bit with my Warden, especially when I tried to write her. One of the best things I can do when writing is to capture a character's voice, and it's really hard to do when I am tasked with imagining around the limited voicing and dialogue options provided by DAO for the Warden, as a product of its time.

I had a vague idea of who and what my Warden was four years ago, but having played her again and with a bit more perspective, I think I have a slightly better grasp of her now. I think grounding her to certain touch stones in other media has helped without completely attaching her to a reinterpretation of an extant fictional character.

Way back then, I fancasted her as Adelaide Kane, but I haven't ever watched the period piece or anything much the actress has been in. It was more just a visual vibe upon which to base her.

I can't remember if I found the actress before or after I made my original Rosamunde model in the game.

The above is what she looked like back in the DLC the first time I played.

Now, I've come full circle and am back to beginning of playing awakening, and here's a screenshot of what she looks like now:

She feels much more organic now. Fits the game better.

As I was playing this time, I tried to imagine, at times, how I would intone or rewrite the dialogue choices to fit how I view her as a character.

This time around, I found myself thinking about Rose Tyler, particularly if she'd grown up to be a noblewoman as she fantasized about. It was never on purpose, but I really just needed somewhere to ground my thinking in how she might think about things, and I think there's... some thread there that I am pulling on as I try to help myself feel like my Warden is even half as developed as some of the rest of you guys can make yours.

I'm not quite sure what the vibe is that I'm picking up on here after all this time. I guess it's just a combination of:

A sense of justice while also being willing to be a bit ruthless. Good not being nice always.

Despite the fact that Rosamunde is a Cousland, a noble, and she takes that aspect of her life and role seriously -- that she has a responsibility to people -- her mama was a pirate, so I guess there's supposed to be a mix of a potential for street smarts mixed with a youthful naivete of never having really tested what she's been prepared for prior to Howe murdering her family.

[mariacallous]

Nothing good ever seems to come of Gal Gadot singing. Those of us with clear memories of March, 2020, during the early days of pandemic lockdown, may recall the video montage she beamed out of herself and other celebrities, all warbling John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It was meant to bring us together, and on that score it was a total success. Amid a crisis of mass illness, unemployment, poverty, and death, the internet users of the world—suddenly faced with an off-key medley of hope, performed by famous people sheltering in multimillion-dollar hideaways—found themselves united in pure, unmitigated hatred. Only a few days into quarantine, a loathsome instant classic of Hollywood vacuity had been born.

Now, five years later, Gadot is singing a new tune, and how. She doesn’t warble; she belts, or at least makes a valiant attempt. Her backdrop is not a mansion but a palace, where she descends a Vegas-ready grand staircase, with bewimpled ladies-in-waiting as backup dancers. And what she sings is not a song of hope but an anthem of fascist aggression: “All is fair when you wear the crown / A little perk that your power provides / If they dare speak up, swat them down / She, with the diamonds, decides.” Here it may be worth noting that Gadot delivers this performance in the new film “Snow White,” Disney’s live-action remake of its own 1937 animated masterwork, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” She plays the Evil Queen (“She. Was. Evil!” a narrator helpfully intones), which accounts for the severity of Gadot’s royal regalia: a black balaclava-style hood, a glittering cloak, and an enormous stained-glass crown so sharp and spiky that Her Majesty might have run headfirst through a cathedral window.

Gadot has worn ridiculous things before, notably and delightfully as Wonder Woman in various DC Comics movies, but then the role of Diana Prince was particularly well tailored to her charisma and behind-the-beat comic timing. In “Wonder Woman” (2017), as a demigoddess encountering the oddity of the human world for the first time, Gadot projected a pleasurable fish-out-of-water disorientation—a disarming mix of courage and naïveté. But, in “Snow White,” she must embody exactly the opposite, and the strain is immense. Tasked with reinterpreting one of the most frightening and emblematic villains in the Disney canon, Gadot evinces no feel for malevolent cunning, or even knowing cynicism; smacked down repeatedly by her Magic Mirror, she can barely conjure a decently icy glare in response. The great Jean Marsh, who gave us such blood-freezing villainy in “Return to Oz” (1985) and “Willow” (1988), makes Gadot’s Evil Queen look like the mushiest of poisoned apples.

Snow White herself does offer something of an antidote. She is played by Rachel Zegler, who, from the moment she appears, wearing scullery rags and a smile, reveals a winning calibration of radiant innocence and underdog conviction. Although Snow White has lost her parents and finds herself at her stepmother’s unreliable mercy, she hasn’t abandoned hope; she’s “waiting on a wish,” to quote the most tuneful of several new songs, written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The Snow White of 1937, voiced by the opera singer Adriana Caselotti, leaned over a well and sang, “I’m wishing,” with sublime, lilting simplicity; Snow White 2025, by contrast, must dart hither and yon, across seemingly half the castle grounds, as she croons her way through a breath-sapping manifesto of self-empowerment.

And, against considerable odds, Zegler sells every word. She has the gift, rarer than it seems, of not only singing well but also acting well as she sings; her pipes are as potent, and her nerves as steely, as they were when she made her sterling film début, as Maria, in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” (2021). One day, Zegler may well tire of headlining faintly sacrilegious remakes of beloved movie musicals, and rightly so; based on her track record so far, though, I can register no complaint.

The internet, however, has registered plenty. When Zegler, who is of Colombian descent, was first cast in the film, racist trolls across the land registered their displeasure, much as they had done when Halle Bailey, a Black singer and actress, was cast as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid” (2023). In subsequent interviews, Zegler offered some mild criticism of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” pointing out its dated sexual politics, and noted that she would be playing a bolder, less lovelorn, more proactive fairy-tale heroine. Her remarks, mild as they were, generated fierce backlash. From there, the controversies snowballed. The less said the better about the vague rumors of a feud between Zegler, a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate, and Gadot, an Israeli actor who has been staunchly supportive of Israel, and whose own involvement with the film has fuelled calls for a boycott.

“Snow White,” in other words, may be the latest in a long, generally uninspired, and cumulatively numbing line of Disney remakes. But the sheer breadth of pre-release ill will it’s accumulated, across such a broad swath of the political spectrum, feels almost impressive. By the time the film finally arrived in theatres this week, it had sprouted almost as many controversies as dwarfs—and, of course, the issue of dwarfs predictably triggered one of the movie’s very first representational dustups. In 2022, the actor Peter Dinklage, who has a form of dwarfism, expressed his annoyance that Disney was “still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave.”

Although Disney promised to approach that aspect of the story with greater sensitivity, purists can rest assured that the director Marc Webb and the screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson have seen fit to keep Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful, and Dopey in the picture. They still toil merrily in a diamond mine, albeit one that’s been souped up to resemble a future high-speed Disneyland ride, and they still sing “Heigh-Ho,” though a version that has been tricked out with extended, over-explanatory lyrics. But the word “dwarfs” has been conspicuously banished from the movie’s title, and it is never once uttered in the film, which takes pains to emphasize that the seven men are nonhuman creatures. Indeed, there is a dispiriting absence of humanity in their bulbous and curmudgeonly computer-generated faces; the less human they look, the logic seems to go, the less offended any actual humans will be.

There are other, less perplexing differences. For one, the little men—for convenience, let’s call them the Seven—do not return to their woodland cottage, as they did in the 1937 film, to find that Snow White and various four-legged forest denizens have cleaned the place from top to bottom. This time, the Seven tidy up the house with Snow White, who calls the shots, delegates the tasks, and shrewdly chips away at the notion of household chores as purely women’s work. Fortunately, Snow White’s newfound enlightenment does not deny her the possibility of romance, although princes are now strictly off-limits; her love interest here is a fetchingly impudent bandit, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who is leading a scrappy rebellion against the Evil Queen.

Snow White and Jonathan—honestly, it doesn’t sound promising. Who wants a fairy tale to end with “And Cinderella and Bob lived happily ever after”? Still, Zegler and Burnap do make a cute duo, even in cloying magic-hour interludes illuminated by highly swattable C.G.I. fireflies. From time to time, you are reminded of the fleet romantic-comedy touch that Webb brought, years earlier, to “(500) Days of Summer” (2009) and parts of “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012). Mostly, though, you are arrested by the combativeness of the characters’ screwball banter, much of which is devoted to the explication of clashing political ideologies. How do you overthrow an Evil Queen—by trying to reason with her, or by pillaging the castle’s food stores and giving back to the subjects who are starving under her reign of terror? The film makes more than a token effort to explore the material and psychological realities of life under fascist rule, and the transformation of a charming agrarian utopia into an austere military dictatorship. In these moments, “Snow White” doesn’t feel entirely like a fairy tale; it’s like “I’m Still Here” with C.G.I. chipmunks.

Does that make Gadot’s Evil Queen the fairy-tale embodiment of Trump? Putin? (Netanyahu?) To even ask such questions is to imbue “Snow White” with an undeniable, even ostentatious, resonance. Seen from another angle, it bears out the calculation—as well as the mounting futility—of the interminable Disney remake project, which, from Day One, has exuded a cynical, self-cannibalizing reek. The cynicism derives from at least two interrelated forms of corporate cowardice. With a few rare exceptions—I’m thinking fondly of Tim Burton’s endearingly nutty 2019 remix of “Dumbo”—the remakes have smacked of a maddening artistic timidity, a reluctance to irritate fans by departing too boldly from classic material. That blandness has gone hand in hand with a shifty political opportunism, marked by half-hearted representational milestones—Ariel is Black! LeFou is gay (sort of)!—that Disney has either celebrated or downplayed, depending on which faction it’s trying to avoid offending at any given moment.

None of this could be further removed from the spirit, let alone the sheer overpowering visual beauty, of the original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” A work of art made with wild risk and abundant imagination, the film looks like classicism now but was, in 1937, nothing short of revolutionary. One of the first full-length animated features ever made, it proved especially ingenious in its use of the multi-plane camera, with hand-drawn backdrops on shifting layers of glass, so that when Snow White fled into the darkness of a haunted forest, her terror—and ours—was amplified by an artful and astonishing illusion of depth. The new “Snow White” has its own illusions of depth, though not the kind that one can commend. 

[denimbex1986]

'*****

The National Theatre At Home's website is a Rolodex of some of the theatre's greatest productions to date, an ever-updating library of acting royalty. On 6 December, the site is welcoming the arrival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter - as staged at The Old Vic in the summer of 2019, along with The Grapes of Wrath.

Matthew Warchus’ production’s stellar cast (Andrew Scott and Indira Varma both won 2020 Oliviers for this production) brings its own expectations. They star as the separated but yet-to-be divorced couple, Garry and Liz Essendine. Such are their larger-than-life personalities, that we’re kept guessing about whether it’s all for show or if it’s fundamentally who they are.

The cast is rounded off by Joshua Hill as Garry’s ever-so-real Valet, Fred; Kitty Archer as one of Garry’s many (many) admirers, Daphne Stillington; Luke Thallon as Roland Maule, a budding playwright with a slightly overheated addiction to Mr Essendine; the always so ‘charming’ (and destined to be your favourite character) Monica Reed is played by Sophie Thompson; Abdul Salis and Suzie Toase star as manager-producer duo, Morris and Helen respectively; Helen’s ‘wandering’ (for one of a better word) husband, Joe, is played by Enzo Clienti. Wrapping up the cast list, Liza Sadovy stars as maid and medium, Miss Erikson.

Present Laughter tells of Garry Essendine, an actor and producer in London who is preparing to go on a theatrical tour of Africa, when news of a potential affair, in both the friend group and theatre firm, comes to light. Garry’s loved ones try to support him through not only the tour, but also in how he deals with his obvious loneliness. What they fail to realise is that the only person who may actually be committed to being their authentic self is, in a very weird turn of events, Garry himself! A perfect comedy emerges.

As you would expect, this 21st century version of Coward’s provocative play has seen a fair few changes from the original 1942 production.

Firstly, let’s talk about the queer representation this adaptation beautifully brings to light. Coward initially wrote the part of Garry as a man who filled his loneliness with evening after evening in the company of women whom he barely knew - even spending a night with the wife of his longtime friend and producer. But Warchus has added an even deeper level to Mr Essendine’s antics. The production sees a gender-swapped cast for a few of the supporting characters. Toase’s character, Helen, was originally that same producer, Henry; and Helen’s wandering husband, Joe, was initially her cheating wife, Joanna.

Nothing about the plot essentially changes, however, showcasing a complex and beautifully told story of openly (and some not-so-openly) queer characters in a setting where the plot isn’t necessarily about their sexuality - it is a part of them, not the totality of them.

The play is genuinely side-splittingly funny from start to finish, with powerful scenes of tenderness and humanity to ensure those moments of comedy truly land.

Andrew Scott’s versatility should be studied. The fluidity of his portrayal of Garry Essendine is beautifully orchestrated as if each thought were new, were genuine - he defines ‘truth in the moment’. His vocal gymnastics are both something to be in awe of, but also to hang on to as a key element of the storytelling. From changes in intonation, to completely random tempo changes, Scott hilariously and effortlessly has the audience, and in most cases, the cast, in the palm of his hand - and, sure enough, he milks it for what it is worth, in the best way possible.

Although every cast member had their own opportunity for sending the audience into fits of laughter, it was the earthly rootedness of Varma’s character, Liz, that kept me drawn in during moments of chaos. Varma is effortlessly funny, it’s part of who she is. Every joke lands because she just simply is that funny. I won’t spoil too much, but Varma’s humanity in the piece, specifically towards the end, really steals the show, and complements Scott’s theatrical dramatics perfectly.

Present Laughter is an ideal show to watch with loved ones this festive season: from its humour and clever comedy, to its stunning portrayal of real people living. The simplistic, yet stellar, portrayal of queer characters in a play that was not originally dedicating space for them, is something that makes this piece so special. Chemistry, comedy, and chaos - the perfect evening of theatre that you will not want to pause (even though now you can).

All that entertainment, and yet Warchus’ reimagined production also goes straight into my ever-growing list of ‘plays you must see to understand the complexity of people’...'

[fuckyeahvanhalen86-95]

Alex Van Halen hopes that those coming to his new memoir, Brothers, for a tell-all will be disappointed.

“It’s not about the dirt,” Van Halen, older brother and bandmate of the late Eddie Van Halen, tells Billboard. “If I start throwing dirt, it’ll never end. I think some people would like that; that’s how projects are sold nowadays. I think it divides the audience, and we’re not here to divide. I think the tone of the book and how I want the book to be perceived is more on a spiritual and creative level. That’s why there’s very little, or any, dirt in there.”

“The majority of things that were written about Ed were third party,” he continues. “They weren’t really there. I’m not degrading any of it, but it’s not accurate. I really felt like a lot of the stuff that was out there was incorrect, and it didn’t do justice to the more sensitive side of Ed. So before I die I would like to at least partially set the record straight.”

Brothers, publishing Oct. 22 and written with New Yorker staff writer Ariel Levy, acknowledges the sex and drugs and rock n’ roll. But as the title indicates it’s primarily a chronicle of the drummer’s relationship with his guitar hero brother, who passed way during Oct. 2020 at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer. The tome is undeniably emotional, with some passages written directly to his late brother. Van Halen acknowledges that the process “really took its toll on me.”

“You have to remember we were together for 65 years; that’s a lifetime, if not more,” explains Van Halen, who was born in Amsterdam and came to the United States with his family in 1962, eventually settling in Pasadena, Calif., where the Van Halen band was formed in 1974. “(Brothers) not only forced me to look at everything Ed and I had done in our lifetime, but also — and I should thank Ed for this — it forced me to look at me. What are my motivations? Why am I really doing this? Who does anybody do this? It took me a lot of places…very heavy.”

Throughout Brothers’ 231 pages, Van Halen discloses the tight bond between him and Eddie, personally and musically — and presents the connection between those two as one and the same thing. Van Halen offers a detailed account of the entire family dynamics, too, from the influence of their father, Jan, a jazz musician, and their more strict Dutch East Indies-born mother Eugenia, and the impact of immigrating to America and being treated as outsiders. The passion for music came early and was a constant, of course, and one can read in Brothers a kind of mission on Van Halen’s part to offer a more expansive and sophisticated view of his brother’s talents.

“There was more going on than most people recognize or realize, and it’s not our job to ‘teach’ people,” explains Van Halen, who also makes use in the book of a variety of other sources, including published interviews with his brother, books by original frontman David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman, and philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. The brothers, who first learned to play piano, actually started out on each other’s instruments before switching as teenagers. “When Ed picked (the guitar) up he could make it sing. It was amazing. That sound, that intonation was phenomenal. You couldn’t express it in words. Everybody gets blinded by the fact Ed was such a phenomenal player (that) you’re not even understanding who the human being was. Maybe people don’t care, but I care. He’s my brother.”

BROTHERS OF A BAND

Writing about Van Halen the rock band in Brothers, Van Halen says that “me, Ed and Dave were very subversive in the way we looked at music and the political system and the way we looked at people in general…The band was dysfunctional. It was completely running on three wheels, if you will. I think Ed was quoted as saying ‘but we always played well,’ and that was ultimately what kept it together until it was no longer together. It was a very sad moment when that whole thing fell apart.” Van Halen, in fact, writes in Brothers that Van Halen’s 1985 split with Roth “was the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust. Until I lost my brother.”

Despite the acknowledged rancor with Roth over the years – and blaming Roth for the failure of a planned Eddie Van Halen tribute tour — Van Halen maintains that “I’m not angry at all with Dave. He was one of the three main components of the band. At the time we didn’t recognize it because we were constantly battling things out. That’s why I mentioned (in the book) that the first person I called when Ed died was Dave because I felt like I owed him that, to the work we had done together and the fact that our families knew each other and the fact that everybody was sort of on the same level, if you will, when we first started. I don’t know where things went wrong…I have nothing but the utmost respect for Dave and his work ethic. I just think some of his choices were really strange to me, but that’s not my job to figure it out.”

Other than his brother’s death, Van Halen chose to stop the story with the Roth split, leaving out subsequent runs with Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone and even the reunion with Roth that started in 2007. (Roth and Hagar both wrote memoirs after their respective tenures with the band.) Van Halen cites “limitations to how big the book could be” but also says it the scope of the narrative made sense to him.

“What happened after Dave left is not the same band,” Van Halen explains. “I’m not saying it was better or worse or any of that. The fact is Ed and I did our best work whenever we played. We always gave it our best shot. But the magic was in the first years, when we didn’t know what we were doing, when we were willing to try anything.” Not surprisingly, Van Halen was not responsive, either, when Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony reached out about him taking part in some way in their Best of All Worlds tour celebrating Van Halen.

“I’m not interested,” he says. “They’re not doing the band justice. They can do what they want to do. That’s not my business.”

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME

Van Halen does add, however, that his auction of drum equipment and other items in June “was misinterpreted” and simply clearing out a warehouse of gear that wasn’t being used.

“I’m not quitting. I don’t know where that came from,” Van Halen says. “I’ll die with sticks in my hand.” Spinal issues he’s been battling for decades are still present, he adds, including a recent injury during a trip to a shooting range in 2022. “But with modern technology we have now I should be OK in about five years,” he says.

Despite rumors of what the Van Halens were up to between the last tour with Roth (in 2015) and Eddie’s death, Alex maintains there was little to report. “We never really talked about it,” he says. “We prefer that things just happen by some kind of magic. The issue was Ed had been dealing with cancer for quite a number of years, and some of the stuff that he was doing out of the normal procedures, if you will, had side effects. Some of the stuff that was being said about Ed was completely wrong, and it was painful…. He was fighting cancer. It’s as simple as that.”

Fans are certainly excited about the presence of a new instrumental track, “Unfinished,” that’s part of the audio version of Brothers. It hails from a trove of ideas the brothers recorded at Eddie’s 5150 studio and stashed away, and Alex anticipates releasing more of that material “when it feels right.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” he says. “I do have a certain obligation to keep it to Ed’s standards. He was meticulous and he was a pain in the ass…and I need to have access to the right takes, ’cause not every day did we play at our best. But we always had the tape recorders running. We didn’t go in the studio like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna make a record from beginning to end.’ We had little pieces here, little pieces there, you put ’em away until the time comes and you go, ‘Hey, I think I like that piece…’ and then go back to it and build something from there.” He told Rolling Stone that he’s approached OpenAI about using its technology to help turn some of the material into songs.

“I know people want to hear it,” Van Halen adds, before cautioning that, “the other side of the coin is this doesn’t sound like Van Halen. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” He says that for future releases he’s also “looking forward to getting some people involved…other musicians and producers. You have to have the right team, because not everybody can do everything. So we’ll see.”

For the time being Van Halen is focused on promoting Brothers, which he’d also like to turn into a movie — though he notes that, “I learned a long time ago not to put your hope in things that don’t exist yet. I know people who would be willing to participate, but it’s a very complex fabric of things that need to happen.” Meanwhile Van Halen has three book events lined up — signings at Barnes & Noble in New York on Oct. 21 and at Books & Greetings in Northvale, N.J., the following day, and a live conversation on Oct. 24 at the Frost Auditorium in Culver City, Calif.

“People can ask whatever they like — that’s their prerogative,” Van Halen says. “It’s my prerogative to answer. Or not answer.”

One thing Van Halen will make clear, however, is that his brother is still a strong presence in his life.

“He’s not gone for me,” Van Halen says, citing the “island voodoo” of their mother’s upbringing and the Spooky Action at a Distance concept of quantum physics. “He’s still there. His spirit’s here, and it’s not something you can grab or touch. There’s something between us that’s just connected on a level that is beyond explanation. Scientists will tell you that you cannot destroy energy, it just takes different shapes, and that’s kind of how it is for me with Ed.”

“I really had a tough time when Ed passed — full of rage, for a number of reasons. I heard this thing by Billy Bob Thornton; he just said basically when his brother died he didn’t know how to deal with it, and he basically said that you’re not running away from the fact that you’re not together anymore. You accept it for what it is and then the pain will slowly diminish, but it’ll never go away. That’s why i said (in the book), ‘When I see you again, I’m gonna kick yo’ ass…’”

[sunnyap]

Here's a character profile for Andrew, an SCP oc of mine I'm very biased towards. I created him in early 2020/late 2019, and he's my little baby boy (despite the information in this bio!)

-----

GEN.

Full Name: Andrew Jacquelin Griffin

Aliases: 1-1, And (he HATES this one)

Age/DOB: 36 (as of 2020), born on 30 December 1984 Place of Birth: Queensland, AU Spoken Languages: English, French (quite rarely, though)

Gender/Pronouns: Male, He/Him

Sexual/Romantic Orientation: Openly Bisexual

Affiliation: SCP Foundation

Occupation: MTF Nu-7 servicemember (Spec-Ops Combat Team, 1st Squadron, Platoon 2344, 3rd Company)

→ Rank: Task Force Lieutenant

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APPEARANCE.

BODY TYPE: Combination body type; Mesomorph and slight endomorph. Athletic, muscular, tall.

As a former Marine, Andrew has had his fair share of physical activity. He used to frequent the gym (and still goes when he's able to), and that, coupled with military training and other physical activity in his youth, has earned him a strong build.

He's quite tall as well, standing at 6'3", and nearly bordering 6'4". He can thank his father for his height. He also weighs in at around 230 lbs. Unit.

SCARRING: All over his body, pretty much.

Many of his scars are from injuries during his time spent working for the Foundation. However, there are some that are from before that, as he was deployed for combat twice. These include shrapnel wounds on his calves, and very few bullet wounds.

One notable scar is one he has on the left side of his neck; a bullet wound! While his skin wasn't fatally penetrated, a round grazed his flesh enough to result in bleeding and scarring. A scary moment for him!

His knuckles are pretty scuffed, due to some temperament issues resulting in occasional violent tendencies. The boy needs psychiatric help, I think.

NOTABLE PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES:

His hair is light brown and either very wavy, or slightly curly. In his earlier years, it was always cut short, but after being recruited by the foundation, he allowed it to grow out, and now maintains it at a length that falls just a few centimetres below his shoulders. When he's working his shift, he keeps it tied back neatly.

He has green eyes, and is the only member of his family with that eye colour (since it's a phenomenon that's the result of a genetic mutation). His expression is almost constantly either sleepy, or irritated!

He has many, many freckles, all over his body. This is due to spending quite a lot of time out in the sun, especially in his childhood. He grew up playing outdoor sports and engaging in a lot of outdoor activities in general.

VOICE:

The man's from Australia; born and raised in Queensland, specifically. Living in the state until about 14 has resulted in a permanent accent when he speaks English. The 'bogan' accent, too, as I've heard.

A slightly gravelly voice. He also often sounds like his throat is sore. He yelled a lot, and continues to do so.

It's very easy to tell how he's feeling through his voice, as there's a lot of emotional tone. He also speaks with the High Rising Terminal; the ends of his phrases and sentences have a higher intonation than the first. This is also due to the fact he's Australian. Uptalk is another word for it.

The volume of his voice entirely depends on the setting, his feelings, the situation, and who he's talking to. Exempli Gratia: If he's calm, and he's speaking to one person in a relatively quiet setting, he's very good at utilizing an inside voice.

FASHION:

He doesn't care much about his clothes. His closet is full of neutral tones. He's not the type of person to wear anything extravagant or stylish, or overly colourful.

Pertinent to the latter statement, his attire when out of uniform consists of sweatshirts, tshirts, or polos, as well as jeans, cargo pants, or sweats.

He's sensitive to cold temperature specifically, so he layers during winter, and is usually found wearing sweaters. Winter coats, too, obviously.

-----

PERSONALITY.

MYERS-BRIGGS: ENTJ-A

MORALITY ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good

POS. TRAITS:

Strong-Willed: Despite his issues, he's not the type of man to give up on the pursuit of a goal, or on a challenge, all too easily. In fact, I don't think there's anything he enjoys more than a challenge.

Efficient: Andrew views inefficiency as a problem, especially in his field of work. When he has a job to do, he doesn't often procrastinate, no matter the circumstances.

Observant: Due to being in the military, he's learned to always be wary of his surroundings. This trait's only been heightened since being recruited to work for the Foundation.

Protective: Ever since he was young, Andrew's been protective of those he loves and cares about, and has taken on the responsibility to take care of people around him. Though this has dwindled over the years, it still remains.

Serious: Not much needs to be said for this one, other than the fact that if he has a job to do, there's absolutely no goofing-off tolerated.

NEG. TRAITS:

Stubborn: If he's absolutely convinced of something, it's quite difficult to change his mind!

Lack of Restraint: Andrew has a poor handling of his emotions, sometimes allowing them to influence his rationality, and decisions and actions.

Self-Doubting: Despite his position as a leader, he occasionally second-guesses his own decisions and thoughts.

Recklessness: Andrew doesn't see much value in his own existence, resulting in him constantly coming vis-à-vis with danger, willingly.

Ill-Tempered: Andrew deals with much, mentally, and has adopted the habit of transforming all negativity he feels into irritation and anger. He's prone to getting heated, and is no stranger to confrontation, physical or verbal.

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EXTRA.

He's allergic to cats!

He can play the electric guitar, and is a big fan of Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, and many other rock artists.

Before being recruited to work for the Foundation, he held the rank of Staff Sergeant (E-6) in the USMC. He was also deployed for combat twice.

He dislikes hospitals and hospital settings; they make him uncomfortable and anxious.

He's also quite jumpy. He dislikes having his back exposed, and he dislikes not being able to find any exits in an environment. He also isn't fond of thunder.

This aspect of his character honestly started off as a joke, but he's got the most insane luck ever. Survived a bullet graze to the neck, among multiple other injuries that SHOULD'VE killed him. As he realizes this, he becomes increasingly erratic, believing there's something quite wrong with him and his place in reality.

Absolutely despises corn syrup.

Afflicted with MDD (Major Depressive Disorder), GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), among other things.

Oddly attached to his equipment...

Here are some doodles of him. Not my full inventory, but these are ones in my current art style, because my old one is stinky. I draw this man very often, though.

Will I ever share his backstory, or tales/events? Maybe, maybe...

[longformeditions]

LE092 Julia Reidy Gardening 8.12.2021

Julia Reidy makes music for processed and acoustic instruments (mostly guitars). Their recent recorded work – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – can be described as a series of non-traditional song forms which combine unstable harmonic territories, rhythmic elasticity and abstract narrative over stretched, episodic forms. They have performed at Tectonics Festival (SCT), Send/Receive Festival (CA), Mona Foma (AUS), Berlin Jazz Festival (DE), Angelica Festival (ITA) and Borderline Festival (GR).

Artist notes: This piece began as a study to explore a tuning in 13-limit just intonation. The harmonic material was an adventure in voicing chords outside of the range of the guitar. The 16 pitch sets were all devised more-or-less intuitively and plugged in (quite painstakingly) afterwards instead of playing them live.

The synth tones are all digital and digital-sounding – quite pure and cold – a sound I either like or have convinced myself I like out of not being able to afford or operate an actual synthesiser.

The environmental sounds are recordings of me tending to a garden plot that I shared with a person I love a lot, an activity which at certain points has felt like an important ritual in nurturing something we’d started together.

Gardening attempts to establish a kind of suspended harmonic space, with scenes from this particular environment shifting in and out of focus.

Mastered by Simon Scott at SPS Mastering.

[bllsbailey]

CNN's Top Legal Analyst Highlights the Lib Hypocrisy Over Wisconsin Judge Story

CNN’s Elie Honig

The Wisconsin judge story has become another rallying cry for the Left.  Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan tried to help an illegal alien escape federal authorities. You can’t do that, lady. CNN’s Elie Honig, a legal commentator and former assistant U.S. attorney, nailed the liberal hypocrisy over their meltdown of this arrest. He did say that when handling a situation like this, it should be assessed with more care, whatever that means, but the principle remains the same: no one is above the law, even for those entrusted with the gavel.

"These are the same folks who were gravely intoning when Donald Trump got arrested: 'No man is above the law.' Well, no judge is above the law either,” he said. 

Honig has been a more sensible voice on CNN regarding the legal issues surrounding Donald Trump. He’s not Scott Jennings, but he did heavily scrutinize the hush-money cases. He was appalled by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith’s October maneuver, which violated the cardinal rule of every federal prosecutor. Smith was handling the 2020 election interference and Mar-a-Lago classified documents cases.

Smith re-filed the charges for the former case in a brazen attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. 

In the end, it was all for nothing, as Trump won the 2024 election.

[velvialifestylesummit]

Definitely the Biden Administration will ensure the smooth transition of power following the presidential recalibration of Democrats being overwhelmingly thwarted by the retaliatory premeditation to ruin the fabricated campaigns for Kamala Harris. The massive failure of Kamala Harris can be attributed to the incandescent renegade of the Biden Presidency in addition to the presidential distortions of Kamala Harris including abortion freedom and the uncontrolled influx of migrants from central America. Undeniably the critical distortion of presidential election comes from the undemocratic result of the electoral college votes for the projected winner without the support of majority voters. The lack of electoral consensus of America to displace the undemocratic verdict of the electoral college votes tends to deny the authentic winner of the presidential election. The consequential impact of the revolting momentum associated with the incessant unwonted performance of Biden Presidency could trigger the next level of political implosion amid the looming massive deportation of foreign migrants from Trump Presidency. The engendered impacts on the projected woman presidency of Kamala Harris including the inimical malfeasance to resolve the unsustainable living conditions of the stormy states and the sudden change of political intonation of Biden to admit the return of Trump Presidency implicated the woman presidency of Kamala Harris was tarnished unwittingly amid the looming coup of America which could trigger the chaotic upheavals in certain states including the legalisation of undocumented migrants before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2025. This could enlarge the ongoing furious fire zone in California. Obviously the extreme hostile gesture of China to confront the return of Trump Presidency denoting someone dislikes the comeback of Donald Trump to raise the projected tariffs war of international trade despite the ostensible diplomatic statements from BRICS. The sarcastic invitation of Biden to welcome the return of Donald Trump seems to admit the clemency of the pendulous hurdle of interregnum triggered by Trump Presidency in 2020.