#Joel Berry II
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🍒Favorite Fics🍒
MDNI, 18+
all of the following contain smut
Last Updated: 01/30/24
*none of these are my works, just wonderful amazing fics that ive found, all credit goes to the wonderful authors, also none of the gifs are mine💋*
ps: I will continually update when I find more gold 🫶
Joel Miller
ONESHOTS
Dangerous - enimies to lovers, post breakout, slight angst, smut
Starving - strangers to lovers, smut, slight angst, post-breakout
For Science - friends to lovers, period sex, comfort/fluff
Crave - strangers to lovers, smut, sex worker reader
stranger than a stranger - manipulation, very dark joel, NONCON, perv joel, smut
patrol - caught masturbation, patrol w/ joel, smut
lazaretto - sex pollen, feral joel, !!!!NONCON!!!!
hunger - sex pollen, dubcon, after starving you and joel eat mysterious berries, slight brat!reader, age gap
healed - injured!reader, freinds to lovers, almost noncon (but joel saves reader)
one bed - smut :), stubborn joel (as always), pining (kinda)
alone and forsaken - cockwarming, hurt/comfort, horny!reader, their desperate
buzz - dbf joel, innocent (ish) reader, alcohol, smoking weed, age gap (legal)
truth or dare - dubcon!!! (but reader initiated everything), reader had a sex dream about modurn!au joel and was dared to see how far he'd go, age gap, rough, actually disgusting :)
SERIES
his favorite girl, part i - absolutely amazing, slight smutish? guitar playing joel, no outbreak au, angst
sensational; part ii - find part one on the fic, innocent reader, friends to lovers, smut, angst
Aches - perv joel (🫶), friends to lovers, innocent reader, smut
thoughts - part 2 to aches, friends to lovers, smut
monsters - enemies to lovers-ish, joel and reader clash, reader used to be innocent but now both her and joel are kinda "monsters" as the title says, but they both have a soft spot for ellie
teeth - tension finally breaks, smut, joel makes it seem like a business transaction but they are literally in love with each other <3
one thing i'm missing - literally the sweetest, most amazing joel fic out there. soft!joel, and soft!reader, they're blind, pining, hurt/comfort, eventual smut
feelings on fire - reader is back home from college to her extremely religious parents, joel miller is the new neighbor, corruption, age gap, inexperienced/virgin reader, joel kinda scares me in this ngl
Din Djarin
ONESHOTS
First - (a03 link) virgin din, smut, fluff, hurt/comfort, angst
where to start - virgin din (virgin din owns my heart), slight dom reader, fluffish
virgin mando - virgin din, shy din, slight dom reader, fluff
holy terrain - friends to lovers, sex pollen, clueless readrr, reader gets sex pollen, smut
sex pollen - sex pollen trope, fluff, smut
in the darkness - slight noncon? but enjoys it? smut, jedi reader, entering mandos dreams
midnight excursions - late night surprises, friends to lovers, awkward reader, smut, slight dom mando
just like that - virgin reader, dom mando, one bed kinda, fluff, smut
body heat - filth, absolutely wonderful, dom mando, its cold, basically anything by @absurdthirst is actually amazing, please read their whole ass masterlist 🙏🙏
blue crush - sex pollen, dubcon, rough, it's your birthday
gut wrenching - sex pollen (theres gonna be a lot of these), dubcon, thigh riding, kinda mean mando
chemical feelings - sex pollen (again), mando affected, slight voyeurism
heat - broken air conditioning and forced proximity
to be taken care of - drunk!mando, soft din, drunk sex, feeeelinggss
just a little taste - inexperienced!din, brothel, sex work (but not reader)
focus - telepathic reader, established situationship, slight dom!din, fantasies
cherry waves - sex pollen, affected!reader, mando lends a helping hand
cutting it close - din and reader are bounty hunting in a busy club, they cant be seen, fake dating-ish?
somno - very!dark!din, NONCON, somnophilia, alcoholic reader
one stowaway, why not two - sex pollen, bounty!reader, service top din, helmet stays on, dubcon
take good care - sex pollen, dubcon, service top din, this is so good, please read
deep into the wilderness - sex pollen, dubcon, din gets bit by a snake, desert sex (tatooine)
Frankie Morales
SERIES
pt. 1 endorphins - addict!frankie, best friend reader, (sex instead of drugs), this fic is actually so amazing
pt. 2 addicted - shower sex, masturbation
Ezra (Prospect)
ONESHOTS
sex pollen - (what did we expect guys, im obsessed) dubcon
Bucky Barnes
ONESHOTS
dry humping - sub bucky, smut
win you over - bathroom sex, pining, distractions, fake dating
try to relax - forced proximity, enimies to lovers, locked in a room for hours, weed!use, slight? dubcon cause of said weed, pining
SERIES
kneel, pray and obey - father barnes, literally unholy, smut, innocent reader
unholy sacrifice - 3some, smut, unholy, smutttt, innocent reader
Natasha Romanoff
ONESHOTS
stimulation - sub nat, nipple play, smut, fluffish, established relationship
straight a student - dom nat, smut, teacher x student
Wanda Maximoff
SERIES
cute little family - dark, daddy nat, mommy wanda, wandanat, innocent reader, smut, part 1 is linked to fic
Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto
ONESHOTS
the panic of love - fluff, angst, smut, very fluffy smut, feeelinggss (ik, but its worth it). hes such a gentleman
Tate Langdon
ONESHOTS
ouija board - tate has been watching reader for awhile, she and her friends decide to use an ouija board, kinda? dubcon?, soft!tate, smut
eyeliner - pining, idiots in love, tate being a teenage boy!, he's honestly feral in this one
Jimmy Darling
ONESHOTS
i held my nose and took a drink - this fic is so good trust me, reader is hypnotist, love potion (sex pollen trope), drunk jimmy, its sex pollen so dubcon, they've always had a crush on each other
chantilly lace - virgin!reader, soft smut, the tupperware party, friends pressure reader into seeing jimmy, jimmy being so sweet so charming so amazing i love him so much. oh also prostitute!jimmy
Kyle Spencer
(these are probably all going to be franken!kyle cause he's so babygirl)
ONESHOTS
in the end of the night, i can feel your warmth - franken!kyle, primal?ish?, kyle does stuff off of instinct, praise, sweet kyle, sexual guidance/coaching
feed my frankenstein - primal!kyle, franken!kyle, stripper!reader, zoe and madison are irresponsible(in this), biting, rough smut, blood
unsupervised tablet time - kyle somehow comes across p0rn on his tablet, he comes to you for help, slight dubcon? at the start, so fluffy, the fluffiest
Kai Anderson
ONESHOTS
howlin' for you - dubcon, slight NONCON? reader is winters best friend, rough, enemies to lovers (but not really), halloween :) this one is honestly so hot
Peter Maximoff
ONESHOTS
Bitchin - smut without plot, slight public stuff, he's so babygirl
sunlight - smut, clairvoyant reader, porn with plot, virgin reader, its honestly so good, please read it
SERIES
pt 1 pt 2 honeysuckle - sex pollen (I'm so sorry its my favorite) smut, porn with plot, this is amazing, beautiful, so hot.
#joel miller fanfic#mandalorian fanfic#din djarin fanfic#ahs fanfic#american horror story#even peters#pedro pascal#bucky barnes#wandanat#carmen berzatto#kai anderson fanfic#jimmy darling fanfic#tate langdon fanfic#kyle spencer fanfic#frankie morales fanfic#ezra spector fanfic#ahs smut#tlou smut#pedro pascal smut#carmen berzatto smut#evan peters smut
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2024 in Films Part II
The second quarter of 2024 and the films I watched during that time
April
Chuck Berry - Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll (1987) - What I learned is that Chuck Berry was difficult to work with but probably fun to hang out with
Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust - The Bridge to Russia (2014) - Billy Joel ended the Cold War. Jokes aside a really good documentary about a historic tour and how music connects people across ideological and geographic borders. the song Leningrad hits very different now.
Next Goal Wins (2023) - the most underdog story to ever underdog story
Gran Turismo (2023) - What if gamers were oppressed???
Az Men Git Nemt Men (1982) - charmingly bad yiddish disco musical. As a living language, Yiddish has the right to have bad media produced in it. It doesn't just have to be serious, sad classics.
May
Batman Returns (1992) - Iconic
Batman Forever (1995) - Obsessed with the outfits
Batman & Robin (1997) - Obsessed with the outfits again
Chantal im Märchenland (2024) - Surprisingly fun
The Batman (2022) - Dark but like visually as well, couldn't see half the film. I rewatched The Lego Batman Movie immediately afterwards and it was such an experience. I also rewatched the Dark Knight trilogy the day before.
Sleepless in Seattle (1993) - Cute but I feel soo bad for Bill Pullman
July (I didn't log any films in June so I am including July in this quarter, sue me)
Psych: The Movie (2017) - I binge watched Psych in a worringly short time span and then binged the films in one evening. You know I am NOT normal about this because I screamed when Shawn had the glass fish in his office
Psych 2: Lassie Come Home (2020) - the totally legal website I watched this on kept recommending me Beethoven and Hachiko. Also seeing how they incorporated Timothy Omundson's stroke in universe and how he is recovering nearly made me cry. Also seeing the credits say James Roday Rodriguez for the first time also nearly made me cry
Psych 3: This is Gus (2021) - That ending is so chaotic and I hope they make a fourth film. "Previous Holiday" by Curt Smith is a banger
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THE BEST WRITTEN SONGS OF ALL-TIME
Because I have zero innate musical ability, the idea that someone can sit down with a musical instrument, and create an original song out of thin air is magic to me. Songwriting is a craft, but it’s inspiration that makes a good song into a great one. There are songwriters who seem able to turn out high quality songs in perpetuity. There are others who write maybe one or two great songs, and are never heard from again. So, I made a list of what I think are the 50 best written songs I’ve ever heard. These are in no particular order. I’ve listed the title followed by the songwriter or songwriters, and in parentheses is the performer I most enjoy hearing do the song – although most of these songs have been recorded countless times by a variety of artists. You can probably find all of these on YouTube or any of the streaming services. Most have lyrics, but some do not. But, it’s hard for me to imagine any of these songs being recorded by anyone with talent, and not retaining the brilliance with which the song was written.
Claire de Lune by Claude Debussy (Eugene Ormandy & The Philadelphia Orchestra)
Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin (Zubin Mehta & The New York Philharmonic, Gary Graffman, piano)
A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke (Sam Cooke)
Coal Miner’s Daughter by Loretta Lynn (Loretta Lynn)
Hello Walls by Willie Nelson (Faron Young)
I Left My Heart In San Francisco by George Cory and Douglass Cross (Tony Bennett)
God Bless The Child by Arthur Herzog, Jr. and Billie Holiday (Billie Holiday)
Eleanor Rigby by Paul McCartney and John Lennon (The Beatles)
Blind Willie McTell by Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan)
A Remark You Made by Wayne Shorter (Weather Report)
She’s Always a Woman by Billy Joel (Billy Joel)
Roll Me Away by Bob Seger (Bob Seger)
Margie’s At the Lincoln Park Inn by Tom T. Hall (Bobby Bare)
Angel From Montgomery by John Prine (Bonnie Raitt and John Prine)
Rainy Night in Georgia by Tony Joe White (Brook Benton)
You Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry (Chuck Berry)
Where or When by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (Dion and The Belmonts)
American Pie by Don McLean (Don McLean)
It Was a Very Good Year by Ervin Drake (Frank Sinatra)
Gentle On My Mind by John Hartford (Glen Campbell)
Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot (Gordon Lightfoot)
Book of Rules by Harry Johnson and Barry Llewellyn (The Heptones)
Highwayman by Jimmy Webb (The Highwaymen)
American Music by Ian Hunter (Ian Hunter & Mick Ronson)
That’s Entertainment by Paul Weller (The Jam)
Song of Bernadette by Leonard Cohen (Jennifer Warnes)
Jazzman by Carole King and David Palmer (Carole King)
Talking Back to The Night by Steve Winwood and Will Jennings (Steve Winwood)
My Favorite Things by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (John Coltrane)
Don’t It Make You Want to Go Home by Joe South (Joe South)
Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down by Kris Kristofferson (Kris Kristofferson)
Heart Like a Wheel by Anna McGarrigle (Linda Ronstadt)
I Am a Town by Mary-Chapin Carpenter (Mary-Chapin Carpenter)
Footprints by Wayne Shorter (Miles Davis Quintet)
Pleasant Valley Sunday by Gerry Goffin and Carole King (The Monkees)
This Old Town by Jon Vezner and Janis Ian (Nanci Griffith)
Brooklyn Roads by Neil Diamond (Neil Diamond)
Thrasher by Neil Young (Neil Young & Crazy Horse)
Box of Rain by Robert Hunter and Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead)
Is That All There Is? By Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (Peggy Lee)
Louisiana 1927 by Randy Newman (Randy Newman)
King of the Road by Roger Miller (Roger Miller)
America by Paul Simon (Simon & Garfunkel)
The Sound of Silence by Paul Simon (Simon & Garfunkel)
Children’s Crusade by Sting (Sting)
My Girl by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White (The Temptations)
Green, Green Grass of Home by Claude “Curly” Putnam, Jr. (Tom Jones)
Downtown Train by Tom Waits (Tom Waits)
The Whole of The Moon by Mike Scott (The Waterboys)
My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys by Sharon Vaughn (Willie Nelson)
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hi! i hope you dont mind the ask! im looking to set up a period fc and just looking to get some fc help! i want the group to be diverse as possible and was hoping you could help with some fc suggestions?
Kathy Bates (1948) - American Horror Story as Madame LaLaurie.
Richard Ridings (1958) - Dickinson.
Michelle Yeoh (1962) Chinese Malaysian - The School for Good and Evil.
Zahn McClarnon (1966) Hunkpapa Lakota, Sihasapa Lakota, White - History of the World, Part II.
Sophie Okonedo (1968) Nigerian / Ashkenazi Jewish - The Wheel of Time, The Hollow Crown.
Adrian Lester (1968) Afro Jamaican - Mary Queen of Scots.
Yuliya Aug (1970) - Ekaterina.
Warwick Davis (1970) - Willow - has spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita.
Danny Sapani (1970) Ghanaian - in Harlots.
Nick Frost (972) - The Nevers & Into the Badlands.
Matt Berry (1974) - Year of the Rabbit.
Caroline Chikezie (1974) Igbo Nigerian - The Shannara Chronicles.
Ashlie Atkinson (1977) - is queer - The Gilded Age.
Karthi (1977) Tamil Indian - Ponniyin Selvan.
Oscar Isaac (1979) Cuban-Guatemalan-Spanish - In Secret.
Nonso Anozie (1979) Igbo Nigerian - Cinderella.
Adeel Akhtar (1980) Pakistani / Indo Kenyan - Enola Holmes.
Chrissy Metz (1980) - American Horror Story as Ima ‘Barbara’ Wiggles.
Angel Coulby (1980) Afro Guyanese / White - Merlin.
Mahesh Jadu (1982) Indo Mauritian - The Witcher.
Ella Smith (1983) - The Nevers.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw (1983) Zulu South African / White - Belle.
Joel Fry (1984) Afro Jamaican and White - Drunk History UK.
Freida Pinto (1984) Konkani Indian - Mr. Malcolm's List.
Sterling Sulieman (1984) African-American - Still Star-Crossed.
Zawe Ashton (1984) Ugandan / White - Mr. Malcolm's List - has spoken up for Palestine!
Sonoya Mizuno (1986) Japanese / Spanish-Argentinian, White - House of The Dragon.
Jodie Turner-Smith (1986) Afro Jamaican - Anne Boleyn.
Deepika Padukone (1986) Indian - Bajirao Mastani.
Lashana Lynch (1987) Afro Jamaican - Still Star-Crossed.
Susan Wokoma (1987) Nigerian - Enola Holmes - has spoken up for Palestine!
Pippa Bennett-Warner (1988) Jamaican and Kittitian - Harlots.
Stefanie Reinsperger (1988) - Maria Theresa.
Aiysha Hart (1988) Saudi / White - Atlantis - has spoken up for Palestine!
Gratiela Brancusi (1989) Romani and White - 1883 - has spoken up for Palestine!
Dalmar Abuzeid (1990) Sudanese - Anne with An E.
Sophia Nomvete (1990) Iranian and Black - Rings of Power.
Himesh Patel (1990) Indian - The Aeronauts and The Luminaries.
Lolly Adefope (1990) Nigerian - in Ghosts - has spoken up for Palestine!
Paapa Essiedu (1990) Ghanaian - Anne Boleyn - has spoken up for Palestine!
Jacob Anderson (1990) Black Caribbean and White - Interview with the Vampire.
Ebonee Noel (1990) Afro Guyanese - Still Star-Crossed.
Dianne Doan (1990) Chinese - Warrior.
Katie Findlay (1990) Chinese, Portuguese-Macanese, White - Walker: Independence - is queer (they/them) I'm unsure if they're referring to gender and/or sexuality as queer but I'm under the assumption it's both! - has spoken up for Palestine!
Liu Yuning (1990) Chinese - A Journey to Love.
Dev Patel (1990) Gujarati Indian - The Personal History of David Copperfield.
Sope Dirisu (1991) Nigerian - Mr. Malcolm's List.
Medalion Rahimi (1991) Iranian, Mizrahi Jewish - Still Star-Crossed.
Ashley Park (1991) Korean - Mr. Malcolm's List.
Ronke Adekoluejo (1991) Nigerian - Chevalier.
Kiran Sonia Sawar (1991) Pakistani - The Nevers.
Denée Benton (1991) African-American - The Gilded Age - has spoken up for Palestine!
Emma D’Arcy Actor (1992) - is non-binary (they/them) - House of Dragons - has spoken up for Palestine!
Anna Shaffer (1992) Black and White / Jewish - The Witcher.
Devon Terrell (1992) African-American / Anglo-Indian - Cursed.
Crystal Clarke (1993/1994) Trinidadian and Guyanese - Sanditon.
Kelvin Harrison Jr. (1994) African-American - Chevalier.
David Licauco (1994) Filipino - Maria Clara at Ibarra.
Julie Anne San Jose (1994) Filipino - Maria Clara at Ibarra.
Kit Young (1994) Ugandan / White - Shadow and Bone.
Lola Petticrew (1995) - is non-binary (they/them) - Anne Boleyn.
Jack Wolfe (1995) - is queer - Shadow and Bone - has spoken up for Palestine!
Maddison Jaizani (1995) Iranian / White - Versailles.
Alisha Boe (1997) Somali / White - The Buccaneers - has spoken up for Palestine!
Madeleine Madden (1997) Eastern Arrernte, Arrernte, Kalkadoon, White / Gadigal and Bundjalung - The Wheel of Time.
Chen Muchi (1997) Chinese - The Starry Love.
Archie Renaux (1997) Indian and White - Shadow and Bone.
Sophie Wilde (1998) Ivorian / White - Tom Jones.
Josie Totah (2001) Palestinian / Lebanese and White - is a trans woman - is a trans woman - The Buccaneers.
Aaron Cobham (?) Black British - The Spanish Princess.
Stephanie Levi-John (?) Black - The Spanish Princess.
Akil Largie (?) Black - Sense and Sensibility.
Bayo Gbadamosi (?) Black British - The Great.
Thalissa Teixeira (?) Afro Brazilian - Anne Boleyn.
Matthew Broome (?) Black - The Buccaneers.
Colette Dalal Tchantcho (?) Cameroonian / Sunni Kuwaiti - Dangerous Liaisons.
Scott Turner Schofield (?) - is a trans man - The Conductor.
Gladly! I'd also suggest checking out @periodfcnetwork's amazing directory and page, maybe they can help find more disabled, fat and/or trans suggestions not listed because I sadly couldn't find many!
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Day 2: Sweet/Salty
Hi! This is mizumech back for treebarkweek 2024! I wasn’t really around for Day 1 because I didn’t like how it turned out but I’m somewhat happy with Day 2, even though it’s rather experimental for me.
Without further ado, this is “le festin” at 3565 words long! I reserve all rights to put this up on ao3 and editing. Enjoy! :)
—
i. sweetberry jam
A Black Isle specialty. Sweet and long-lasting, preparation is truly an exercise in warding off temptation.
On the day the sweet-berry brambles were due to become overipe, Martyn watched as Ren gathered them all with old falconry gloves and put them into a bucket.
As is his duty, Martyn goes over to help.
How can he not?
When Martyn goes over to ask, Ren looks almost like a vampire of old tales, with red berry juice running down his chin and a sharp smile.
Yet, he is not scared. He smiles too, as he goes down to the well to draw a bucket for later.
~
When Ren comes back to the kitchen, he washes the berries in the bucket before inviting Martyn to help him to mix the portioned-out sugar and fruit.
“Back in the Black Isles,” Ren tells Martyn as he puts the berries and a third of the sugar to a modified bowl, “We would normally use glowstone dust to thicken this and add glow berries for acidity, but we can make do.”
Ren then takes two wooden pestles and hands one to Martyn, enthusiastically starting to pound the berries into the sugar.
Martyn shouts as the juice gets onto his shirt, but joins in too, bringing his pestle down onto the yet-to be macerated berries.
~
The reddish pulp goes into a glass jar and the cap is screwed on, before they realise they forgot to add all the leftover sugar back in.
Ren sighs.
After that, both Ren and Martyn take turns to try and open the jar, using cloth, forks, axe heads and teeth.
They don’t succeed.
On Ren’s thirteenth try, Martyn secretly sweeps some of the sugar into the palm of his hand, the ideas of a prank starting to form in his mind.
As Ren wraps his whole arm around the jar cap, Martyn takes aim. The amount of sugar he has doesn’t have the same weight as a snowball or an enderpearl, but the sweat from his palm has created some sort of shell that helps with the feel.
The sugar ‘ball’ nails Ren in the shoulder and Ren, to Martyn’s delight, whirls around with a dramatic gasp.
“My Hand! Must you betray me with something so sweet? You’ve just ruined me flannel!”
Martyn can only laugh and duck as Ren gathers his own ammunition.
~
Eventually, the jar finally opens, and they start sweeping the sugar back into the jar.
It’s terribly domestic to Martyn, reminiscent of the times he used to spend sweeping snow off roofs and driveways with a daughter he’s very sure he once had but can’t quite recall the face of.
They’ve wasted about a cane-worth of sugar, but none of that really matters when they’re having so much fun, because they can always just devote a day to making more.
~
“What? All this work and I don’t even get a taste?”
“Guess you’ll just have to live long enough to taste it!”
“What if I want it now?”
“Patience, laddie. We’re going to put this underground and let the sugar draw out all the juices, and only I can uncap the jar to check on it, you got that? You can have the leftover berries if you want, though!”
Fine.
He pretends to pout as he takes a berry and rolls in sugar before popping it in his mouth. It’s not like he doesn’t also have secrets he keeps from Ren.
Some things are too important to be shared.
ii. horse curry
A Tumble Town specialty that hails from its Mezalean history. It embodies the bold, bright culture that used to flourish in the mesa before the cataclysm.
In a world so absent of meat and animals, Martyn’s gotten somewhat desperate, and has therefore bribed and blackmailed Joel into a cut of what is probably horse.
He hopes it's horse meat.
It better not be dog.
“Take it,” Joel says tersely, throwing the leg at him, as if daring him to try and challenge him “it’s not like I wanted it anyways.”
Martyn looks him in the eyes. He can see where the mesa ancestry also rests in Joel’s face. The same remnants of an accent, the same terracotta freckles, the way he wraps the horse meat with the oiled paper.
He remembers his time in Tumble Town, when the town was still developing; founded on a fateful Midweek and still roiling with multicoloured dyes and flowers.
He remembers horse curry, ladled out by old ladies with creaky, rusted joints and peeling painted makeup and served with flatbread and fortified with whatever vegetables were on hand.
Watchers above, he was hungry. Hungry for calmer times, hungry for peace, hungry for good, rich food.
Hungry. What a strange feeling, reminding him of love and care while making his mind feel jittery and restless. Martyn isn’t sure if he wants to be hungry or not.
~
In the kitchen, Martyn starts by dragging over a big pot, because he can’t have the curry overflow when he’s not looking.
Unwrapping the horse leg is less of a deal than Martyn thought his mind would make it out to be, and for one horrifyingly long second, Martyn feels afraid at what seems to be underwhelmingly nothing.
But that’s exactly it. How can it be that one of the most defining kitchen memories of Martyn’s datastream life makes him feel nothing?
How can revisiting memory of somewhere he almost considered home make him feel…nothing?
Is he forgetting Tumble Town already?
He carefully pulls at the red ribbon holding it together, the oil paper glossy and satisfying under his fingers.
Still nothing.
Martyn really can’t help but feel a little disappointed.
When people talked about homecoming, they often portrayed it as a grand thing, about realising a sense of belonging and all that.
Maybe that’s the side effects of wandering. In a headspace where anywhere could be your home, nowhere was really your home at all.
The rest of his preparations are almost robotic, just trying to get to the conclusion where he could eat.
Maybe he didn’t want to be hungry anymore.
~
Cold water.
Horse.
Splash
Small fire.
Skim off the foam and grease.
Resist the urge to drink raw horse water.
Skim off the foam and grease.
Resist the urge—
~
When the water finally boils, Martyn sprinkles in his salt.
What was the saying, salty like the ocean?
Allium root clove, fried onions, curry leaves and all the vegetables he thinks he would be able to stomach also go into the pot, all swallowed into the rapidly darkening mix.
There’s still…nothing.
He still remembers every step, even cooking this exact dish with the other universe’s Jimmy and teasing him and the fact that diced chorus fruit was once an ingredient in the stew, and there’s still nothing.
He remembers warmth, and happiness, and fun, and he’s pretty sure he could describe the tiled floor of the kitchen with no issue at all, but he can’t feel homesick in this…game like everyone else seems to do.
Does he even remember anything at all about his old life? Did it mean anything at all?
Well, at least the next step is just waiting.
He can do that. He can even top up the enchantment on his armour while he waits!
Even if he can’t remember, he can still appreciate the process for what it is, and if this stew isn’t for him anymore, it can at least be for Ren.
If he cannot be a citizen of Tumble Town any longer, he can at least be a good Hand of Dogwarts, and serve his king like he was always meant to do.
~
Recarve the grooves and enchantment runes.
Crush up lapis with mortar and pestle.
Cough violently.
Roll powder into a tube like a blunt.
Shake powdered lapis into the lines until it flushes with the armor plate.
Cough violently again.
Smooth over.
Run the blowtorch over it like curing redstone.
Tie on the armour pieces as if it will keep you together.
Vambraces.
Pauldrons—
~
The re-enchanting helps to calm Martyn’s mind, and by the time he’s ridiculously hot and suited up, the familiar yet unfamiliar smell of the stew tells Martyn that it’s ready. Now all he has to do is reheat some of the flatbread they have and he can serve it.
But for now, it’s just for him, and travelling has made him basically immune to not liking food and burning his tongue, and he can handle it.
Ladling out a spoon of the soup into his bowl; the one made by Ren with the green glaze, he uses his fork to scrape off a chunk of the steaming soft potato in his portion and raises what was once home food to his new home, at least until he should depart again.
iii. zombie-skeleton bone broth
A kind of stone-soup-esque concoction of a weary wanderer. It has traces of many different cultures depending on the chef, although it also tends to taste of no culture at all, due to the nature of its maker.
After the zombie apocalypse, the morning after finally comes, and the undead start to burn.
Not all parts burn in the perfectly habitable solar temperature, however, and Martyn’s travels tell him that such an event is basically a whalefall to the starving.
At first light, Martyn light-headedly drags Ren outside their bunker; blood suddenly rushing to his head from standing up.
“Come on,” he urges, already pulling crumbling redead into his arms, gesturing for the sake of both Ren and the rest of the Red Bannerknights who have followed him, “gather them. I’ll explain later. We just need to get them before they fully burn away.”
If Ren has any questions at all, about his sudden reverence for the (un)dead, he doesn’t show it.
He just…does as Martyn says.
If Martyn were a minstrel instead of a wanderer, he’d probably have something to say about a king tending to the dead on behalf of his Hand.
Something about a holy vulture, something about the essential role of carrion creatures in the ecosystem.
So the men of Dogwarts stand, in the overnight cemetery, on the altar and in the courtyards; harvesting zombies and skeletons.
~
Back in Dogwarts, Martyn leads them in picking and scraping the rotting flesh off bones, who have all enthusiastically agreed to help after hearing about Martyn’s plans to make broth out of the bones.
Skizz, Etho, and Bigb are somewhere in the back making a mirepoix to flavour to broth, last he heard.
He glances over at them three, with lacy aprons tied around their waists as they laugh and chop vegetables.
Bigb’s chopping allium bulbs that had finally come in useful from the spring, spinning together a story about a betrayal and a friend called Terry as he does.
Skizz laughs along and points things out brightly as easy as water over rocks as he chops his carrots from the farm and the zombies alike.
Etho, with his artificial redstone eye, has been playfully force-assigned to onion duty. He laughs too, with his eye-smile pushing minute tears out of his natural eye.
Martyn…he hallucinates pork.
Martyn imagines a timeline where pigs still existed as luxury enough to eat as he cuts another zombie open, following the path of bone, and cleaning off the putrid flesh before cracking a rib off and dropping it into a pot of seawater to draw out the metallic taste.
It takes more effort than it should for Martyn to stop himself from putting raw rotten flesh into his mouth because he craves meat, goddammit.
It’s the pull of fonder times; older, ‘wet nurse’ recipes for the sickening loved ones; mushy or crunchy vegetables for vitality and to push the sickness out, soft meat for strength to endure the symptoms and something sweeter like applesauce or berries to give hope to see themselves through to the end.
Maybe it means something other than animal shortage that Martyn craves meat. He also craves strength, in a way; strength to protect and the strength to betray what he holds dear equally.
He cracks out another rib as Ren sweeps by in his old summer rollerblades to sweep the vegetables into a pan with what looks suspiciously like zombie fat.
The rest of the ribs and bones, supplemented by skeleton bones disappear fast, and after a few minutes, they’re all in a cauldron over a campfire, something Martyn’s learnt how to make from Jimmy and Scott.
The bone broth will end up lasting till their final days, frozen in tiffins and heated over makeshift fires for the men to take heart in.
~
“I think I might be hungrier than when I started,” Ren quips to the raucous, slightly nauseous laughter of squires and knights as he sits back in his chair after his share of Etho’s frankly radioactive-looking experimental rotten flesh chasiu.
The chasiu is glazed with what could either be honey or just sheer rot, and marbled with greenish…mold, and jiggles under Martyn’s chopstick-grip more than it should.
When he brings it to his mouth, the texture is surprisingly good and the taste is actually pretty great too, going well with the richness of the broth, but it seems to burn itself a hole in his stomach to sink into.
Luckily, hunger of people unlike him is a type of sickness easily healed, and Martyn cannot help but to oblige and ladle more bone broth into the men’s bowls, if only to give them hope that these apocalyptic wars too, would pass.
iv. datastream ramen
Before Martyn had ever entered the datastream on that fateful day, Martyn often spent dinners cross legged in front of the telly with cup noodles on his knees.
Sometimes, on holidays when he was feeling like he had enough energy, he would make himself ramen.
Today is one of those days. A ramen day for him and Ren to enjoy after a week of enchanting and farmwork.
Well, not really ramen. A lack of animals and lack of need or want to brand more hunger into his stomach with zombie flesh certainly removes from what he would normally consider ramen.
But he has an egg, salt he skimmed from ocean water, kelp, bone broth, salmon, he has wheat flour and water, and he has alliums and a dream, and he’s going to make it work.
First is the tare. He doesn't have cooking wine, so stirring salt into wine will probably have to work.
Next is soup, and he’s too lazy to make more, so he’ll just take out another portion of zombie-bone broth.
For the noodles, he doesn’t have the right type of water, but he’ll just have to make do to the best of his abilities.
It’s a lot like making pasta, but with more water. He’s not sure what that changes about the composition at all.
Egg. Flour. Water.
Knead, knead, and knead, he does.
He puts his whole body into it, dusting flour on it every once in a while.
Knead, knead, knead.
Chop, chop, chop.
The sound of the dough hitting the countertop sounds like a head hitting an altar.
~
The aroma of the combined soup is also somewhat familiar yet unfamiliar to Martyn, in a way that signals to him yet again that he should be feeling homesick.
That’s nothing new, though.
~
Broth and tare flow into the bowl in a honey-coloured stream, salmon resting on a raft of noodles with the kelp and the fried onions.
~
When the ‘ramen’ is ready, Martyn sprinkles on some allium stems before taking the bowls to one of the watchtowers where he knows his king will be.
“Dinner’s ready, my liege,” Martyn says, purposely making his footsteps loud on the steps so as not to scare him while trying to balance the chopsticks on the bowl and preventing them from sliding off.
Ren’s rather solemn face turns to sunshine again at the mention of food, like it always does. That’s how it’s always been.
With a sigh, Martyn sets the steaming bowls down, careful not to spill a single drop.
“No meat again, my liege, I’m afraid,” Martyn jokes. It’s not really as much of a joke as it used to be, because being pseudo-vegetarian is basically a fact of life, but every ounce of humour counts, nowadays.
Ren obliges, letting slip a laugh.
Martyn also laughs in turn, as Ren fumbles with his chopsticks and tries to bring the noodles to his mouth in some sort of kingly way.
That’s what the fork in his back pocket is for, obviously.
~
“Back in…where I came from, it would have pork,” Martyn says hesitantly, mirroring Ren the first time they had made the jam, “but we can make do.”
Ren slowly turns to look at Martyn and the fork he’s offering; grip on it like a knife.
“…you’re not from Tumble Town?”
“…no. In this universe, I do come from Tumble Town. Sometimes.”
Ren doesn’t take the offered fork, instead turning his back to try to continue eating with his chopsticks.
Something lurches in the pit of Martyn’s stomach.
Maybe there really is nothing in this world for him.
Even as he eats out of the green, round bowl, the world feels like it has come back ironically round to walls, corners, and edges.
~
After the frankly torturous meal, Ren finally clears his throat.
“M—Martyn. Must you betray me with a lie?
Martyn cannot answer him. How could he as a wanderer possibly explain where he comes from?
v. golden carrot, potato and beetroot ratatouille
A Hermitcraft recipe, not often made but great for events and potlucks. It’s good with many things, like honey, broth, love, and magic etc.
On one of those awkward days where neither Martyn nor Ren have anything to do, Ren approaches Martyn with a proposition.
Over the days, both of them seem to have come to the consensus that where they come from is not nearly as important as where they will end up being, and Martyn can finally look his liege in the eyes again.
Therefore, he agrees.
When he reaches the kitchen, the somewhat silence is holy. The knife coming down on the vegetables sounds like heads coming down on the altar again, but in a different, more reverent way.
If anything, their time not talking to each other have made them more attuned to body language, so when Ren beckons Martyn closer with his hand and his gaze falls toward the bowl of beetroots, Martyn knows exactly what to do.
Chop, chop, chop.
The red juice from the beets starts to stain his hands as he hacks into them and slices them up, the severed parts falling under his left hand in a strangely satisfying way.
It’s so strange how domestic the scene feels yet again, even with two reds holding knives in a small area. Slightly warming sun streams in through the window and everything seems…right.
Ren puts his golden carrots into a small pot of bone broth, and Martyn does the same with his beetroot slices.
There’s only one bowl left, and it’s full of potatoes.
Martyn watches Ren look at the potatoes and then look at him. He looks at the potatoes and then he looks at Ren.
They both reach for the potatoes at the same time and then smile and then laugh together in sync.
Chop, chop, chop.
~
When the vegetables are all broiled, Ren oils a pan with some of the garlic-allium confit oil BigB made, before throwing all the vegetables in.
While the vegetables sizzle, Martyn thinks this.
He might actually be hungry.
~
“Cheers,” Ren says, holding out his fork with some vegetables on it for a toast.
Martyn can’t believe his ears. The word seems to hang in the air, like a question that he can’t quite dodge.
“Cheers,” he offers in turn. The vegetables are gorgeously rich and melty on his tongue.
“Where I…come from, I used to share this with people I loved.”
This is them, now.
+1. the night before the final fight
When Ren finally, finally brings out the jam, Martyn almost cries.
When they made it, Martyn thought nothing of the sugar use. Just some sweetness in their lives; hope to see the end.
That would be unimaginable now; with every bit of sugarcane being put towards TNT or enchanting books.
Maybe this is the beginning of said end.
What hope can there really be, when all of them might be dead and gone?
He’s survived long enough to taste the fabled jam, and now what?
What is left to do other than to accept fate, lay down, and die?
The jam goes into two bowls of boiling water and the sweet smell starts to waft, and Martyn thinks he might be salivating, actually.
It’s a different kind of hunger now. It’s a type of thirst.
He doesn’t long to be full, or with purpose anymore; only to experience something sweet in the tragedy, something to take his mind out of the war and the stupid puppeting games.
A thirst to hope.
In a world full of harsh corners, the fact that some things come all the way round to remind Martyn that there is still love and hope out there; whether it be in the desert or in the taiga, makes him almost emotional.
@treebarkweek
#treebarkweek#treebarkweek2024#trafficblr#please tell me if i’m not tagging right#martyn inthelittlewood#rendog#This doesn’t feel shippy to me but im not sure so i haven’t tagged renchanting or treebark
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A look behind the scenes at Bernie Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme, how it was perpetrated on the public and the trail of destruction it left in its wake, both for the victims and Madoff’s family. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Bernie Madoff: Robert De Niro Ruth Madoff: Michelle Pfeiffer Frank Dipascali: Hank Azaria Stephanie Madoff: Kristen Connolly Catherine Hooper: Lily Rabe Mark Madoff: Alessandro Nivola Eleanor Squillari: Kathrine Narducci Andrew Madoff: Nathan Darrow Martin London: Steve Coulter Dan Horwitz: Michael A. Goorjian Ostrow: Geoffrey Cantor Michael Schwartz: Jason Babinsky Waitress: Marta Milans Agent Ted Cacioppi: Kelly AuCoin SEC Investigator: Amanda Warren Peter Madoff: Michael Kostroff Reporter: Portland Helmich Upscale Gala Guest: Doris McCarthy David Sheehan: Hamilton Clancy News Reporter: Tommy Bayiokos Reed: Gary Wilmes Club Codette: Cece King Trader: Kelly Aaron Party Guest: Amelia Brain Pinks: Marion McCorry Nicole De Bello: Sophie von Haselberg Driver: Karen Goeller Emily Madoff: Sydney Gayle Photographer / Paparazzi: Vincent Chan Caterer: Adam Butterfield Mike: Razor Rizzotti FBI Agent Kane Partner: Derrick Simmons Visitor: James Brickhouse Kenneth Langone: Ray Iannicelli Florida Fisherman: Guy Sparks Carl Shapiro: Ben Hammer Pool Kid: Ethan Coskay Picard Reporter: Victor Joel Ortiz Federal Agent: Chris LaPanta Daughter: Nicole Scimeca Young Mom: Anthoula Katsimatides Irving Picard: David Little Pierre: Jean Brassard Robert Jaffe: Mark Axelowitz Audrey: Reagan Grella Girl in Pool: Giulia Cicciari Party Guest: Wayne J. Miller Tom FitzMaurice: Neil Brooks Cunningham Palm Beach Party Guest: Lori Burch Bartender: Christine J. Carlson Inmate Gonzales: Sammy Peralta 17th floor Office worker: Ralph Bracco Young Daniel: Eli Golden Ike Sorkin: Mark LaMura Pool Party Guest (uncredited): Robert Levey II BLM Employee: Geoffrey Dawe Film Crew: Producer: Joseph E. Iberti Screenplay: Sam Levinson Executive Producer: Barry Levinson Screenplay: Samuel Baum Screenplay: John Burnham Schwartz Book: Diana Henriques Co-Producer: Amy Herman Original Music Composer: Evgueni Galperine Casting: Ellen Chenoweth Director of Photography: Eigil Bryld Editor: Ron Patane Costume Design: Rita Ryack Art Direction: Ryan Palmer Executive Producer: Robert De Niro Executive Producer: Jane Rosenthal Set Decoration: Heather Loeffler Executive Producer: Berry Welsh Co-Executive Producer: Jason Sosnoff Original Music Composer: Sacha Galperine Production Design: Laurence Bennett Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Skip Lievsay Movie Reviews:
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oh boy if you don't know anything about blaseball this is gonna be a nightmare of an explanation because i do NOT have the space on this post to explain the plot of blaseball, however, i can grab a short powerpoint about the broad strokes if you're curious.
if you AREN'T familiar with blaseball the Absolute Basics you need to know to make this even a little bit legible are: blaseball (2020-2023) was a baseball simulator that was also a horror game about killing gods, dying in a fire, community, and the failures of capitalism. it was beautiful and i miss her everyday.
this au is less "making the story of empires into blaseball" and more "throwing the empires characters into blaseball", and thankfully for those of you who don't know anything about blaseball, most of the empires characters don't have a blaseball analogue. unfortunately that's not going to make anything i say about anyone, blaseball analogue or not, make any sense. sorry.
anyways let's get into it.
so, here's what position everyone is in and what team(s) they play for. i also wrote down any mods they have if i decided to give them mods.
False: False Symmetry II is a season 2 pitcher for the Yellowstone Magic, traded to the Core Mechanics after they show up, Mild
S1 Fwhip: Fwhip Rose is a batter for the Chicago Firefighters, Fireeater
S2 Fwhip: Fail Whip is a batter for the Core Mechanics
S1 Gem: Gem Rose is a batter for the Yellowstone Magic, Precognition
S2 Gem: Gemini Tay is a pitcher for the Hellmouth Sunbeams
S1 Joey: Joey [last name TBD] starts season 1 as a batter for the Mexico City Wild Wings, plays for the Shelled One’s Pods, and then falls back to the Wild Wings, Siphon
S2 Joey: Joey Azimuth is a batter for the Atlantis Georgias
S1 Katherine: Katherine Blossom is a “Wild Low” batter in general. Through feedback, blessings, etc., she swaps between the LA Unlimited Tacos, Boston Flowers, and Miami Dale a lot, but she started on the Flowers
S2 Katherine: Katherine Grove is a batter for the New York Millennials
S1 Lizzie: Lizzie Beans is a pitcher for the Canada Moist Talkers, she’s alternated in season 7 and becomes S2 Lizzie
S2 Lizzie: Lizzie “Shadow Lady” Beans is a batter for the Canada Moist Talkers. She picks up the “Shadow Lady” nickname after being alternated and she has the Beans last name by virtue of Blaseball Alt rules. I haven’t decided if that means she and S1 Joel stay married.
S1 Sausage: Mythical J Sausage starts season 1 as a batter for the Dallas Steaks, plays for the Shelled One’s Pods, and falls to the Boston Flowers (and also has a big wardrobe and personality change into season 2 Sausage’s whole thing)
Oli: Oli Orionsound is a pitcher for the Seattle Garages
S1 Pix: Pixl Riffs is a pitcher for the Kansas City Breath Mints, roaming, he walks out of hell Pudge Nakamoto style cause I think it’s funny
S2 Pix: Pixl Rifts is a batter for the Baltimore Crabs, and then after shenanigans, Yellowstone Magic
Pearl: Pearl Moon is a batter for the Boston Flowers, then after she dies, she plays for the Hall Stars and is released
S1 Shubble: Shrub Berry is a batter for the Hades Tigers
S2 Shubble: Shelby Moore is a batter for the Yellowstone Magic who dies in season 3 and is resurrected on a joke as a pitcher for the Houston Spies
S1 Scott: Scott Riven is a pitcher for the Seattle Garages, then Bullshit Happens, and sends him to the Shelled One’s Pods and the Hall Stars, where he is eventually released
S2 Scott: Scott Smajor is a batter for the Charleston Shoe Thieves, Flinch
S1 Joel: Joel Beans is a batter for the Hawai’i Fridays
S2 Joel: Joel [last name TBD] is a batter for the San Francisco Lovers, then gets ego and Vaulted, so he plays for the Vault Legends, has the Charm modifier
S1 Jimmy: Jimmy Solidarity is a batter for the Canada Moist Talkers, he is alternated in season 11, and becomes S2 Jimmy, and shortly feedbacked or otherwise traded
S2 Jimmy: Jimmy Solidarity is a batter for the Hellmouth Sunbeams
Xornoth: Xornoth Riven is a pitcher for the Yellowstone Magic, then Bullshit Happens that eventually results in him playing for the Hall Stars and being released
Hermes: Hermes Hermès (tentative name) is a batter for the Miami Dale
Eddie: Eddie Sausage is a batter for the Dallas SteaksMaria: Maria Sausage is a pitcher for the Tokyo Lift
now for the plot
Most of this AU is just “I have placed the Empires characters in the plot of Blaseball”, but some of it is making Empires characters into pre-existing Blaseball characters.
Those being: Sausage, False, Pearl, Xornoth, S2 Shubble, and S2 Pix.
Xornoth is this world’s Jaylen. He and Scott are sibling pitchers on different teams with a friendly rivalry- Scott is good, but not on the same level as Xornoth. Xornoth is killed with the opening of the Forbidden Book, and Scott receives the Max Out Pitcher blessing, and takes Xornoth’s place as the best pitcher in the league. The Garages manage to keep him because I don’t want to put him anywhere else, though.
When the Forbidden Book opens, we have a similar but slightly Off election shenanigan as the one that actually happened in season 1. Rather than the election running three times, the timeline splitting into thirds, and certain parts of the other timelines, like Derrick Kreuger being Jaylen’s replacement, making their way over here, three universes who opened the Forbidden Book at once smash into each other, and things get scrambled. The three universes contain the Hermits, the Life Series players, and the Empires players. When this smoosh happens, the player who was meant to replace Xornoth is thrown into Hermitcraft, and False is thrown into the Empires universe, coming out very scrambled. This is how she ends up with the Mild curse without having played the Pods. Side effect of universe hopping.
Xornoth is necromancied (yes, by the Magic. Don’t worry about it.) in season 6, and returns with Debt. He kills the same players Jaylen did, and also Pearl, who is our Sebastian Telephone stand-in.
Pearl played for the Boston Flowers until her death, and we’re ignoring that time Seb got alternated for this. Sausage is our Jessica Telephone, starting his career on the Dallas Steaks (alongside Eddie). He has his heel arc there, and he’s one of the first players to be Shelled. Scott and Joey are also Shelled at some point.
After Xornoth’s resurrection, his rivalry with Scott becomes a lot less friendly because Xornoth kills people now. At some point in season 9, Pixl Rifts, a batter for the Crabs, dies. This is a surprise tool that will help up later.
During season 9, Lizzie is alternated and turns into a cat girl. Sorry Joel, no matter how much you attempt to dodge the plot, it will hit you somehow. Your wife is a cat now.
Later is now! The Microphone- who is still Wyatt Mason, dw about it- pulls the repeat history thing, and swaps Xornoth into the Hall with Pix. Yup, he’s our Tillman for this AU. Don’t worry he doesn’t suck. I just thought this worked well and also would be really funny if Oli wrote shutout about him.
Xornoth and Pearl both play for the Hall Stars, alongside the rest of them, and Scott, Sausage, and Joey play for the Shelled One’s Pods, also alongside the others. Scott and Xornoth are the two pitchers swapping throughout the game, and Pearl dies again, and then god is dead yay! When it’s over, the Hall Stars are released, including Scott, Xornoth, and Pearl, because the Monitor lets everyone who played for the team go.
Sausage falls to the Boston Flowers while Joey falls back to the Wild Wings. Sausage then has a character arc that turns him design and personality wise into his season 2 counterpart.
The Expansion teams bring in a few of our s2 characters, but if a s2 character doesn’t play for an expansion team just assume they’ve been here the whole time. Blaseball has a ton of characters with the same name anyways.
During season 11, Jimmy is alternated as well and becomes his s2 counterpart. Sorry Joel, the plot has hit you again, your brother-in-law is a cop now. He then gets feedbacked or otherwise traded to the Hellmouth Sunbeams, where his aesthetic is more thematically appropriate.
The only important plot things for the Expansion Era are:
God Joel gets Ego and is taken into the Vault, because of course he does.
Shelby Moore, who died back during season 3, gets resurrected onto the Spies and gets to go through Chorby Soul chomp hell. However, her debt isn’t rerolled into unstable because I don’t want it to be, so she lives, and eventually stops having so much soul due to getting munched, and gets to be happy.
Joel Beans dies when the Fridays are incinerated in season 24. Don’t worry he gets better.
Pixl Rifts survives the Expansion Era unlike Tillman (and probably doesn't become Vaulted? Unsure) because I think it's more fun this way.
Pixl Riffs (s1 Pix) dies at some point but he has roaming, so it’s fine, he just says “If it sucks, hit da bricks” and walks out of the Hall, Pudge Nakamoto style.
False is traded to the Mechanics after gate crash because it’s just wildly more in line with her aesthetic than the Magic.
does anyone want to hear about my empires blaseball au. i have so many thoughts about this au.
#mcyt blaseball au#empires smp#i thought too hard about blaseball and the fact that i miss it today so we have this. whoopsies.
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*thug tears
thank you, joel.
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#Nate Britt#Joel Berry II#march madness#ncaa basketball#NCAA#College Basketball#Basketball#National Championship#unc tar heels#Tar Heels#university of north carolina#University of North Carolina Tarheels#north carolina#unc tarheels#tarheels
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It's a good day to be a Tar Heel!!
#Joel Berry II#UNC#tar heels#beatduke#TAR HEEL NATION#go heels#dook sucks#roy williams#michael jordan#dean dome
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Survivor Blues
Part One : Fight or Flight
A/N: I am equally excited and terrified to finally be sharing this story, but here goes nothing! This has been in the works for close to a whole ass year now, and it all started when @something-tofightfor sent me a link to the cutscenes of TLOU I & II, casually suggesting I “get to know Joel Miller”, which lead to me having the strongest reaction to a fictional character that I have had in AGES, having a little emotional breakdown about it, and then immediately diving into a google doc to do something with all of my emotions. This is the result. I want to warn you that it does stick to canon timelines as well as themes, so the same darkness and danger that was present throughout the games is still (mostly) in tact here. It’s not a straight up angst pile, but you’re certainly going to have to buckle up if you choose to get on this ride. You’ve been warned. (please enjoy!!)
Warnings: language, violence, death, apocalyptic themes, mother effing mushroom headed freaks, mentions of illnesses, brief mention of sexual assault - no description whatsoever (please feel free to ask me before reading if you are unsure)
Word Count : 5,145
Summary: Twenty-four years after the cordyceps outbreak ravaged the world, you find yourself wondering what could possibly be left for you that was worth fighting for. Lost, alone and having seen better days, you just want to find a place to rest. You end up finding more than you bargained for - or more accurately, more than you bargained for ends up finding you.
SPRING
April - 2037
You’d been making your way through the trees, boot soles landing one in front of the other over mostly melted snow and muddy terrain when you felt it - the eerie tingle that started near the base of your skull and traveled down your spine, telling you that something was wrong. The hair stood up on the back of your neck and you froze, eyes widening to try to locate what had triggered your innate sixth sense. Though sometimes the foreboding came well before the danger was visible leaving you to warily wonder what to be on the lookout for, this was not one of those times.
As you carefully scanned the landscape ahead of you, you saw them. Stalkers, judging by the way that they were moving and the low croaking sounds you could hear them making, two of them.
Crouching behind a boulder before they spotted you, you swore to yourself. It had been a long time since you’d dealt with any infected at this phase, most of the ones you’d dispatched in the past few years either well beyond this stage of the cordyceps infection or else still freshly turned. These still had their sight, could employ strategic attacks, and were physically strong, and you were not looking forward to a confrontation with them. But they were wandering through a clearing roughly fifty yards away and directly in your path, blocking you from where you hid and the abandoned house you were hoping to find supplies in, so you were faced with an ultimatum: turn away and hope that your retreat would go unnoticed - and that you would soon find another place to seek shelter and much needed supplies - or stand your ground and take them out.
Fight or flight.
Those were the choices that almost everything in the world came down to anymore. Every decision you made was weighed on that scale, calculated by measuring risks against benefits. You had taken both routes at different times, depending on what the situation called for - fight when you had to or when it was one you could win, flight when running was the safer option. There was no such thing as dignity or pride when it came to these matters, only survival and protection, and you had fully adapted to that system years ago.
But now? You were tired. Bone tired, mentally exhausted, and neither seemed like the better option. It had been days since you’d eaten anything more substantial than dried berries and half a strip of squirrel jerky, weeks since you’d slept somewhere with a wall at your back or a roof over your head. You were desperate for a break, absolutely starving for just a spec of relief, and the thought of either engaging rogue stalkers in hand to hand combat or else rolling the dice and running away - possibly directly into another threat - made you want to crumble to dust or dissolve into tears. Before you could stuff your sleep deprived emotional response and make an intelligent choice, you were in motion, right hand grabbing for the pistol tucked into your jeans and whipping it out as you charged from behind the rock and directly towards the two creatures you’d spotted.
Shit.
You ruined it, the deep silence of the slowly thawing wilderness you were traveling through. With two quick pulls of your pointer finger, you had shattered the stillness that twenty years of societal decay and natural reclamation had brought to the neighborhood-turned forest you’d stumbled upon. Two deafening cracks sent a spray of blackbirds into the air from the branches they’d just begun to nest in, and then a pair of solid thuds hit the ground immediately after. Holding your breath, you waited for the world to swallow up the echo and go back to the quiet you’d interrupted, hoping the sound hadn’t carried down into the valley that you’d been skirting, or to any other infected that might be in the area.
Gun still extended out in front of you, it shook in your hand. Why the fuck did I do that? You really shouldn’t have fired your gun. It wasn’t smart to make that much noise in unknown territory. Especially not when you were alone, and definitely not when you only had three bullets left. Why did I fucking do that? Adrenaline pulsed behind your eyeballs, your heart pounding in your chest as you failed to answer the question and strained to listen for the silence that would tell you that your mistake hadn’t been a costly one.
Above the whoosh of blood in your ears though, instead of the thick quiet you’d hoped for, you heard a string of clicks and groans coming from just beyond where the two stalkers had been. Gritting your teeth, you watched as the hunched form of a clicker, its face grotesquely split in two by the growth eating through its skull, stepped out from behind a rusted out and overgrown car, another line of patterned sounds leaving it’s mouth as it searched for you. You blinked and willed your breathing to slow or at least to fall back into an even rhythm while you reassessed the situation and how best to move forward. You knew that if you stayed stock still the thing wouldn’t be able to find you and you’d be able to buy a few more seconds of time to make a plan.
But it seemed that you were not done paying for lapse in good sense as yet another stalker ambled jerkily out from behind a dilapidated shed that you hadn’t seen at first. It's one bulging eye swiveled around and locked on to you almost instantly, and playing statue was suddenly no longer an option. Releasing a screech, the thing suddenly launched itself in your direction, leading its blind counterpart by sound.
Oh, fuck.
Gripping your gun with both hands to steady your aim, you waited until you had a clear shot on the faster of the two - the stalker - and took it as soon as it was clear. Just like the others, it went down hard and fast leaving only the clicker, but the echo of your weapon told the snarling thing exactly where you were. Having just fired your last bullet, you were down to the hunting knife tucked into your boot and any rocks or branches you could find to use in your defense. No matter what you’d have to get within reach of the creature to kill it, and that meant that it would be able to reach you, too. You knew that it was stronger than you were in that moment, that its crude drives could power its body far more forcibly and effectively than your depleted muscles could. Making a quick judgment call, you decided that you would have better luck trying to get past it unscathed.
Without pausing to stow your pistol, you ran, gun still in hand, sprinting towards the house and trying to give the clicker in your way as wide a berth as you could. You knew that it would be on your heels as soon as it could find you again - a snapping twig or sliding gravel underfoot would give your position away eventually - and after a few strides it did.
Damnit.
You could hear the thing gnashing its teeth behind you as you leaped over one of the dead stalkers, and you did your best to keep your pace even as your body begged for you to stop. Every desperate gasp tore at your throat, the cold air searing your lungs as the sound of your own frenzied breathing filled your ears. Keep… Eyes on the ground a few feet ahead of you, you extended one leg to jump over a fallen tree trunk. Ignoring the splinter of pain that shot through your ankle and shin as you landed, you ran through it, as hard as you could. Keep moving. You sucked in another sharp gulp of chilled air, panting as your aching chest emptied, puffs of vapor bursting from your lips. Thighs burning with the caustic buildup of lactic acid, you let out a grunt and forced them to turn over again and again, denying your body’s demands for you to stop, to rest.
I can’t. The thing behind you wasn’t stopping. The vacant shell of a person that was chasing you at breakneck speed wasn’t resting. Can’t stop. You knew what would happen if you did. If I stop I’ll die. Despite knowing that, you couldn’t keep the next question from cropping up.
Would that be so bad?
It was the worst possible time for you to have an existential crisis, but it happened nonetheless. Frost bitten leaves and blades of grass crunched under the treads of your boots as your oxygen deprived brain tried to offer you an out. You could stop. You could choose to let yourself get caught. Ducking under a low hanging branch without slowing down, you considered what it would mean to make that choice, to let twenty years of inevitably to finally catch up with you - to stop fighting and running altogether.
For a long time it hadn’t been an option, stopping. Not while you had Kyle and Laura and the others to look out for, or Gavin to get back to- not when you still had a family. But you were alone now, and you had been for months. Alone, with no one counting on you or waiting for you or hoping you were safe. No one who needed you, no one who wanted you or loved you, no one to wrap your arms around or to wrap theirs around you. You were alone, and you were so tired.
Would it be so bad? For it to be over?
You weren’t even sure what scared you anymore, what drove you. When you were younger you wanted to be fearless, like the characters in your favorite books and movies. They were unafraid of tackling any obstacle, ready to run headlong into the fray and fight for what they believed in, to protect who and what they cared about. As a kid you’d always equated fearlessness with bravery. But now you knew that they weren’t the same. Bravery required something to fear. Being fearless, you’d realized, just meant that you had nothing at all. Nothing to protect or hope for, nothing to lose or have taken from you.
Death had stopped scaring you years ago. Over the past two and a half decades you’d been forced into close quarters with it, becoming intimately acquainted with the inevitable. You’d fought with all you had to stay alive for the people you loved, but that became harder with each one that you lost. Your parents and your siblings, friends and coworkers and everyone you knew before the outbreak, then Ty, Ryan and Brayden, Gavin, Laura. By the time it was just you and Kyle, your only fear was turning. Not because you worried about what it was like to let the cordyceps infection take root in your brain. You’d seen it happen enough times to know that it was just like a switch being flipped - one minute the person was still in there, struggling against the takeover, and the next they were gone, all traces of who they were erased entirely. Compared to the years of degradation you’d watched your grandfather go through in his battle against Alzhiemer’s, it didn’t seem nearly as heartbreaking or traumatizing for the person being turned. The only reason you found that prospect terrifying was because you didn’t want anyone you cared about to be saddled with the moral burden of putting you down. But now you were free from that fear, too, because there was no one left that you cared about, and no one left who cared about you. No one left to suffer your loss.
Before you could convince yourself to surrender, the toe of your boot caught on a rock that was still snow covered and hidden, and you tumbled, rolling and skidding over the ground to land on your side. The thing chasing after you took advantage of your situation and closed in on you, and in those final seconds before its jaws snapped and caught your arm or shoulder or any other part of your body between them, your brain released one final reserve of energy and self-preservation. With a yell, you rolled to your back and reached for the handle of your blade, unsheathing it from your boot as you planted that same foot in the creature’s hip joint. Planting your other foot in the opposite hip, you used your legs as a frame to control the distance between you and your demise. When you were ready, you bent your knees to your chest, bringing the attacking clicker closer to you as you thrust your blade up under its chin, burying it to the hilt.
The second your knife pierced the decayed bone and cut through the main stem of fungal growth that had replaced the former occupant’s brain, it became a limp sack of dead weight hovering over you. With a grunt, you kicked your legs straight again and pulled back on the handle of your blade, the defeated clicker slumping off of you as you turned your face to avoid the ooze of dark blood that leaked from its fatal wound. Panting, your chest caving in and expanding so rapidly you felt yourself going dizzy, you wanted to just lay there in the muddy snow. Your fingers were still curled around the leather straps wound around the knife’s grip, throbbing with how tightly you held it, and your limbs vibrated with overuse.
But that last ditch effort of your survival instincts wasn’t done yet, that same thing that had taken over and handled the clicker screaming at you to get up, to get inside the house. It's right there, just a few more steps away. There might be something useful in there - food even, or fresh clothing. You haven’t seen anyone in weeks, that house might be untouched. It could be a gold mine. You could lay down in a bed. Just get up and get yourself inside.
It wasn’t until you’d dragged yourself up to the second floor, sobbing through your soreness and fatigue, that you realized it was Gavin’s voice in your head, bargaining with you to keep going when all you wanted to do was quit, not your own. Limping and shuffling through the first of three doors at the top of the stairs, you shouldered the door open as tears streamed from your eyes. Of course it was him that would remind you to fight. Of course it was him that would urge you to keep fighting, even the memory of him was so strong that he wouldn’t let you quit. You fell into a shaking, sniffling heap on the dust covered bed, uncaring of the filth that coated your skin and the blankets you laid on. Reaching under your shirt, the fingers that had been clutching your knife closed around the chain that hung around your neck, the blade tucked back into your boot. You squeezed until you felt two smooth, round metallic bands pressing into your palm, and then you let go - of the rings, of your tears, of your consciousness - and let sleep fall fast and heavy over you.
In your dreams, he came to you. Not just his voice, not just his insistence that you keep finding reasons to fight, things to live for, but him. Your Gavin. In your dreams, the world hadn’t ended twenty some odd years ago, and he wasn’t sick or weak. When you slept, you saw him, felt him the way you most loved to remember him - smiling and warm, grabbing your hand to twirl you through the kitchen before the restaurant opened or wrapping both arms around you to pull you down into the bed with him. In this particular visitation, he was sitting with his back to the trunk of the big maple tree that overlooked his grandfather’s farm, your spine pressed to his chest as the two of you watched the summer breeze sweep over the fields before it tickled your skin. You felt his lips at your ear as he whispered his love for you, felt the tips of his fingers flex against your body where he held you. “Don’t want to let you go,” he murmured, nuzzling into your hair. “Don’t want to say goodbye.”
You turned to tell him that he didn’t have to, but instead of his face all you saw was the tree bark. Swiveling back around, you saw him standing in front of you instead. Hmm? How did he-
Before you could piece together that this was a dream and that the laws of physics didn’t matter, Gavin knocked the toe of his sneaker against your foot, your heel rolling in the grass. “C’mon, time to get up.”
“Uh-uh, Gav,” you protested, reaching your hands out to try to grasp his and urge him back down to the soft grass with you. “I want to stay here with you.”
He gave you a sad smile and shook his head, toe knocking against your foot again. “You can’t, sugar. You can’t stay with me, you have to get up now.”
Another nudge to your foot jogged you from the dream and dropped you back into your body, eyes flying open to see the muzzle of a rifle as it poked at your boot. Oh, shit. Adrenaline spiking again, you sucked in a breath as your heart pounded against your ribs. Gun. That’s a gun. Drawing your knees to your chest you sat straight with your back against the headboard and held your hands up, empty palms facing away from yourself, a slight shake in your fingers. Shit, what do I- Wincing, you swallowed the panic that threatened to rise and forced reason into your thoughts, convincing yourself that since you hadn’t been shot on sight, maybe the situation was worth trying to talk your way out of.
Fight or flight… or surrender.
You exhaled slowly and lifted your gaze to take in the figure of a broad shouldered man in a canvas coat, the weapon gripped in his gloved hands trained loosely on you though his trigger finger was relaxed, resting on the guard. His face was partly obscured by his gun, but you took in a pair of dark umber eyes weighing you with each blink, the bags beneath them sagging into his cheeks which disappeared under a graying beard. From the looks of him, he’d only been out on the road a day or two, jeans worn but clean, a scarf bundled around his neck and a bag strapped to his back that seemed full, as though he had packed it recently. He didn’t look hungry or ragged like you knew you must appear to him, but you didn’t know if that had any significance or if he’d just been lucky and happened upon a cache of food in another nearby house. Maybe he’s like me…just passing through, just looking for-
“You’re gonna need to start talking.” His gruff voice broke the silence to make you realize that it wasn’t silent, a second pair of footsteps ascending the creaking staircase. Shit, there’s more of them.
Nodding, you decided that the best course of action was to earn his trust, show him that you weren’t looking for confrontation. “There’s a knife in my boot and a gun in my bag.” You swallowed, eyes darting down to the pack that was on the floor next to the cot you occupied. “There’s no ammo in it, you can check.”
“Which boot’s got the knife?” He asked, chin jutting out as the other pair of steps grew closer.
“Right,” you answered quickly, licking your dry lips and extending your right leg out so that he could disarm you without having to come any closer. Using one hand, he found the handle of your hunting blade and carefully drew it from the sheath you had tucked between your shoe and your sock, dropping it behind him to clatter noisily on the floor.
“You bit anywhere?” He stepped back, again putting space between him and you but blocking your path to the door. “Saw those infected out there. Any of ‘em get you?”
“No.” You crossed your arms over your chest. You knew he had to ask for his own safety. If you had been bitten, there might only be a few hours before you started devolving into a soulless vessel for the infection, before you turned and became a monster yourself.
“You lyin’?” He pushed, though not any more aggressively than you would have if the situation was reversed.
You swallowed, recalling a handful of times when you had come upon strangers that you weren’t expecting to find and how you’d actually been more aggressive than this man was when you’d questioned people. “No,” you answered again. Eyes moving to where he’d thrown your knife, you went on. “I would have taken care of things if I’d gotten bit.” A flash of understanding in his eyes told you that he got your meaning. You may have been out of ammunition for your gun, but if that clicker you’d dealt with had managed to sink its teeth into your flesh you would have followed the bite with your blade and ended things before the infection could take hold. “Look, I’m not… I just-”
You stopped speaking as you heard the second person, another man, speak from the hallway. “Joel? What’s goin’ on in there?” He hurried into the room then. “I heard-” The second man’s eyes landed directly on you, widening as he took in the sight of the first man stooping to pull a small revolver from your backpack. “Well, shit.” You watched him tighten his grip on his own weapon even though he kept it lowered. “Who do we got here?”
“I dunno Tommy,” the first man, Joel, answered as he stood, returning his eyes to yours and tilting his head to one side so that the longer strands of his salty grayish hair flopped over his forehead. “We didn’t get that far.”
“And we don’t have to go any farther.” You held your hands up in front of you again and proceeded carefully. “I was just… I needed to rest. I’m not looking for trouble or anything. I’m sorry if this is your place. I just… I’ll go. And you won’t see me again.”
The two men looked at one another, silently conversing with their eyes and facial expressions, and you realized that they looked alike. The younger of the two had longer hair that was slightly lighter in color and struck through with fewer grays than the older one, but their bone structure was similar and their eyes were the same shade of brown. Brothers, some part of your subconscious told you, or cousins. Definitely family. You weren’t sure how or if you could use that information to get them to let you go, but you filed it nonetheless. You focused on listening for any signs of others but heard none, though you did catch a sound that you thought might have been the whinny of a horse.
Before you could try to piece anything together, the younger man, Tommy, lowered his weapon to his side, Joel doing the same but kept his eyes trained on you. “You don’t have to high tail it now,” Tommy said, giving you a slight grin. “And forgive me for saying this ma’am but you look like fifty miles of bad road and if we let you go without offerin’ an alternative I’m fairly sure we’d be finding your corpse up here next time we come through, and that’s not what any of us want.”
You narrowed your eyes at him and weighed the man’s words. You knew you looked like shit, and you knew that the two strange men who had stumbled upon you could probably tell that you hadn’t had a decent meal or a full night’s rest in far too long just by looking at you, so you knew that you couldn’t bluff and say that you weren’t in need of whatever they might be offering. But you’d also heard first hand about groups of men who sought out women just to have their way with them - you’d met Ty after she had escaped from one of those settlements, the woman never fully recovering from her time spent there. If that was what they were offering you, you’d take your chances with the infected. “Why should I trust you? I don’t know you. I really just… I needed a place to crash and-”
“You need food.” Joel stated, head tilted to one side. “You’re a few days out from starving, I can see it on your face.” That shut you up, because you knew that he was right. “We have a place not far from here. It’s safe. There’s people, we have plenty of room.” He finally stowed his rifle back over his shoulder, completely disarming himself and locking eyes with you. “It's not just men, either. There’s women, kids.” He shook his head. “Long as you don’t try anything stupid, we’re not gonna hurt you.”
You thought again about what they were offering. If they had wanted anything from you they had already had plenty of time to take it. If they’d wanted you dead you would be. “I…” You licked at your chapped lips and tried to come up with a reason not to accept their offer. But after the brush with mortality you’d just suffered and the heaviness of being alone at the end of the world, you simply couldn’t. “Alright,” you nodded. “Just-”
“Alright then,” Tommy moved his head up and down one time and turned for the door as Joel stooped down to pick up the knife he’d taken from you along with your empty gun. He picked up your bag as well, putting both items inside and keeping a firm grip on it. You stood from the molded mattress and extended a hand out to take your things back from the man, but he clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“I’m gonna hold onto these ‘til we get where we’re goin’. You’ll get ‘em back once everything’s sorted, yeah?”
You didn’t see what choice you had so you sighed. “If you say so.” He gave you a look that said that he did in fact say so, and you nodded, realizing that he was waiting for you to follow the other man out of the room and down the stairs. “Alright.”
His hefty footfalls followed your lighter ones as you descended the rotting steps that you’d somehow made it up without injuring yourself on, and then you were back outside, the late afternoon light already starting to fade. “Is it far?” You asked, turning to the man behind you.
“Not too far,” he answered. “An hour maybe. We were out on a standard perimeter run when we heard gunshots up here and found you.”
You felt yourself deflate a little at the thought of walking for an hour, especially when you realized that what you thought was the sound of a horse had actually been two horses - one for each of the men. Tommy was already sitting in his saddle when the two of you stepped up to where the second horse, a chestnut colored one with a long black mane, stood. “What’s the plan, Joel?” He looked down at you and then up at the other man as he too stepped into his stirrup and climbed atop his horse.
“She can ride with me.” The man answered as he leaned forward, running his large palm over the horse’s shoulder before patting the animal twice. It wasn’t a suggestion so much as it was a decision, his tone firm and his eyes fixed securely on you as he sat back in his saddle. He wants me in front of him where he can see me. Smart. It was that more than anything that made you relax enough to start to trust him - he didn’t underestimate you, which meant that he wasn’t an idiot.
The other man nodded once, clicking his tongue in his cheek. “Alright then.” Gripping the reins in his hands he pulled them, his horse turning so that the animal was facing the direction of what must have been a road at one point, the asphalt reduced to gravel by the tree roots that had broken through to reclaim it. “I’ll take lead since you got,” he waited until you had climbed up and taken your place in front of Joel the man’s large gloved hand closing securely around yours to help hoist you up and, then raised one eyebrow so that it disappeared under the hair that hung over his forehead. “Extra cargo.”
You stiffened at that, narrowed eyes trained on the younger man as he turned. Cargo? I’m not… I’m a person. You remembered Ty telling you that the men who had kept her and the other women captive had often referred to them as cargo. People aren’t cargo. I -
“He doesn’t mean it like that.” Joel’s voice came from behind you as though he could sense your unease at Tommy’s words. “He just meant since there’s two of us he’ll take point so I can keep an eye on you.” He reached around you to grab the reins, his thick arms coming around your body. “We done a lot of bad shit to survive, Tommy’n me.” You didn’t turn around, but you felt the movement as the man shook his head. “But we would never do what you’re thinkin’. I promise.” You felt yourself release some of the tension in your muscles and then he was speaking again. “You don’t have to tell me your name if you don’t want to, but like I said. We’re not gonna hurt you. What we’ve got? The place we’re taking you? It’s safe, and all we’re tryin’ to do is help.”
You thought for a few seconds about giving him a fake name but decided that there was no point in that. Giving him your real one, you thanked him for everything that he had said and all that the two men were offering, and though Tommy had been quicker to fall into a smile in front of you, you heard the barest hint that there was one on Joel’s face as he let out a stunted laugh. “Thank me once we’re in Jackson and you’ve met Maria.”
With that he flicked the reins and the horse began to trot off in the direction Tommy had gone, leaving you to wonder exactly what was in store for you when you arrived.
.
.
.
Thank you for reading! If you would like to be added to or removed from the tags for this or any of my stories, please feel free to let me know! You can also fill out the form on my masterlist!
Tags: @something-tofightfor @littlemisspascal @mishasminion360 @nyctophiliiiiaaa @practicalghost @amb11 @mindidjarin @jk7789 @tentacruels
#joel miller x reader#joel miller x female reader#joel miller x you#Joel Miller#pedrostories#joel miller fic#the last of us fic#tommy miller#joel miller tlou#pedro pascal character#tw violence#tw death#survivor blues#survivor blues joel miller#fight or flight#i am terrified to release this into the wild but here we go
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Masterlist
👄 : mature theme (but nothing explicit)
🔥 : smut
🔪 : violence
Please review the detailed warnings at the beginning of each post
THE LAST OF US
Joel Miller/Reader
She’s back (angst, drabble)
The Escape 🔥🔪 (hurt/comfort, smut)
COD: MW2
RAIN UNIVERSE - Ghost/Reader & Reader/all
Series with an autistic!Reader
I - Rain or Shine 🔥(smut, hurt/comfort)
II - Hard Rain 🔥(pining, angst, light smut, w/ Soap)
III - What happens in Siberia 🔥🔪(pure smut, w/ Soap, Price, Gaz)
IV - Plaything 🔪(angst, capture/rescue)
V - After the rain 👄 (angst, hurt/comfort)
ONE-SHOTS with various CoD Men
Just Like Old Times Part 1 👄 (Price/Reader & poly141, Winter fluff, praise kink)
Just Like Old Times Part 2 🔥(Price/Reader & poly141, smut, fivesome)
Night Blue 🔪👄 (Price/Reader, rescue mission)
Three - drabble 🔥(Soap/Ghost/Reader, pure filth, threesome)
Medieval AU!Price 🔥(Price/Reader, drabble)
Vampire!Price 🔥(Price/Reader, period sex, drabble)
Taken 🔪(König/Reader, angst, extreme violence)
TOP GUN MAVERICK
Squadron/Reader
Imagine - Type of lovers 🔥
Imagine - Dirty talk 🔥
Phoenix x Reader 🔥🔥 (pure smut, dom/sub vibes)
Rooster x Reader 🔥 (smut, menstrual sex, hurt/comfort)
Squadron x Reader 🔥 (smut, group sex, angst)
Bob x Reader 🔥 (emotional hurt/comfort, friends-to-lovers, smut)
Imagine - Comfort 🔥 (hurt/comfort)
Hangman x Reader 🔥 (body insecurities & comfort)
Hangman x Reader 👄(how to cure a hangover)
Other pairings
Hangman x Rooster x Phoenix 🔥 (crack fic, threesome)
RINGS OF POWER
Arondir/Reader
A New Path 🔥 (soft smut, PWP, human!reader)
Headcanons 🔥
Wounded 🔥 (hurt/comfort, smut)
Small 🔥 (smut, size kink)
THE BOYS
Billy Butcher/Reader
Poison 🔥🔪(smut, angst)
Frenchie/Reader
Forget 🔥(smut, sub!Frenchie)
TRIPLE FRONTIER
The boys/Reader
Imagine - Going to Disneyland 👄 (fluff)
Tequila shots 👄 (drabble, poly vibes)
ATLAS 🔥 🔪 🔪 (poly vibes, angst, smut)
Breakfast - Atlas Universe 🔥🔪 (poly vibes, angst & fluff & smut)
Old Romance - Atlas Universe 🔥 (poly vibes, period sex, fluff & smut)
THE PUNISHER & DAREDEVIL (MARVEL)
Frank Castle/Reader
Training Day 👄 🔪 (knifeplay)
You again 👄 🔪 (extreme hurt/comfort)
SFW Alphabet 👄 🔪
NSFW alphabet 🔥 🔪 (smut, fluff)
Good Girl 🔥 (smut, brat taming)
After the Rain 🔥 (soft smut, hurt/comfort)
Daredevil/Reader
The Email (fluff, hurt/comfort)
NARCOS
Javier Peña/Reader
Imagine - White Knight 👄🔪 (hurt/comfort)
Imagine - White Knight Part 2 👄🔪 (hurt/comfort)
Horacio Carrillo/Reader
Imagine - Sick (hurt/comfort)
STAR WARS
Kino Loy/Reader (Andor)
Flesh and Dreams 🔥🔪(hurt/little comfort)
Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth/Reader
A Mandalorian, a Marshal, and some complicated feelings:
part 1 🔥🔪 (hurt/comfort)
part 2 🔪 (hurt/comfort)
part 3 🔪 (extreme angst + hurt/comfort)
Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Caring is hard 👄(angst)
Poe Dameron/Reader
Autistic!Reader blurb (fluff, hurt/comfort)
Anakin Skywalker/Reader
The Mechanic 🔥 (PWP)
Kylo Ren/Reader
La Petite Mort 🔥🔪 (Vampire AU)
ETERNALS (MARVEL)
Druig/Reader
In Your Mind 🔥 (sweet smut)
Druig/Makkari/Reader
Christmas Gift 👄(fluff)
FAST & FURIOUS
Deckard Shaw/Reader
Finance Management 🔥 (smut, sugar daddy vibes)
VARIOUS
Santa Claus/Reader (Violent Night)
Brandy & Gingerbread 🔥 (Christmas fluff and soft smut)
Alfred Pennyworth/Reader
Rain & Berries 🔪🔥 (hurt/comfort)
Pedro Boys/Reader
Imagine: recovering from painful sex 🔥 (comfort, fluff)
James Bond/Reader
When in Venice - James Bond AU 🔥 (w/ Oscar Isaac & Jon Bernthal)
Ransom Drysdale/Reader (Knives Out)
A Spirit of his own 👄🔪 (Halloween fic)
FIC RECS
Part 1
#masterlist#javier pena x reader#the punisher#din djarin x reader#frank castle x reader#cobb vanth x reader#narcos#star wars fanfiction#din djarin x cobb vanth x reader#deckard shaw x reader#hobbs and shaw fanfiction
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Watch highlights here of the UNC Tar Heels men's basketball 71-65 win vs Gonzaga Men's Basketball.
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Season 1 Gilmore Girls References (Breakdown)
Yay! All the season 1 references have been posted. Before I start posting season 2, I wanted to post this little breakdown for your enjoyment :) It starts with some statistics and then below the cut is a list of all the specific references.
Overall amount of references in season 1: 605
Top 10 Most Common References: NSYNC (5), Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (5), Taylor Hanson (6), Leo Tolstoy (7), Lucky Spencer (7), Marcel Proust (7), PJ Harvey (7), The Bangles (8), The Donna Reed Show (8), William Shakespeare (10)
Which episodes had the most references: #1 is That Damn Donna Reed with 55 references. #2 is Christopher Returns with 44 references
What characters made the most references (Only including characters/actors who were in the opening credits): Lorelai had the most with 237 references, Rory had second most with 118, and Lane had third most with 48.
First reference of the season: Jack Kerouac referenced by Lorelai
Final reference of the season: Adolf Eichmann referenced by Michel
Movies/TV Shows/Episodes/Characters, Commercials, Cartoons/Cartoon Characters, Plays, Documentaries:
9 1/2 Weeks, Alex Stone, Alfalfa, An Affair To Remember, A Streetcar Named Desire, Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman, Avon Commercials, Bambi, Beethoven, Boogie Nights, Cabaret, Casablanca, Charlie's Angels, Charlie Brown cartoons, Christine, Cinderella, Citizen Kane, Daisy Duke, Damien Thorn, Dawson Leery, Donna Stone, Double Indemnity, Double Mint Commercials, Ethel Mertz, Everest, Felix Unger, Fiddler On The Roof, Footloose, Freaky Friday, Fred Mertz, Gaslight, General Hospital, G.I. Jane, Gone With The Wind, Grease, Hamlet, Heathers, Hee Haw, House On Haunted Hill, Ice Castles, I Love Lucy, Iron Chef, Ishtar, Jeff Stone, Joanie Loves Chachi, John Shaft, Lady And The Tramp, Life With Judy Garland: Me And My Shadows, Love Story, Lucky Spencer, Lucy Raises Chickens, Lucy Ricardo, Lucy Van Pelt, Macbeth, Magnolia, Mary Stone, Mask, Midnight Express, Misery, Norman Bates, Officer Krupke, Oompa Loompas, Old Yeller, Oscar Madison, Out Of Africa, Patton, Pepe Le Pew, Peyton Place, Pink Ladies, Pinky Tuscadero, Ponyboy, Psycho, Queen Of Outer Space, Rapunzel, Richard III, Ricky Ricardo, Rocky Dennis, Romeo And Juliet, Rosemary's Baby, Sandy Olsson, Saved By The Bell, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Schroeder, Sesame Street, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Sex And The City, Sixteen Candles, Sleeping Beauty, Star Trek, Stanley Kowalski, Stella Kowalski, Stretch Cunningham, The Champ, The Comedy Of Errors, The Crucible, The Donna Reed Show, The Duke's Of Hazzard, The Fly, The Great Santini, The Little Match Girl, The Matrix, The Miracle Worker, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Outsiders, The Shining, The Sixth Sense, The View, The Waltons, The Way We Were, The Scarecrow, This Old House, V.I.P., Valley Of The Dolls, Vulcans, Wild Kingdom, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, Wheel Of Fortune, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Working Girl, Yogi Bear, You're A Good Man Charlie Brown
Bands, Songs, CDs:
98 Degrees, Air Supply, Apple Venus Volume 2, Backstreet Boys, Bee Gees, Black Sabbath, Blue Man Group, Blur, Bon Jovi, Boston, Bush, Duran Duran, Everlong, Foo Fighters, Fugazi, Grandaddy, Hanson, I'm Too Sexy, Joy Division, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Kraftwerk, Like A Virgin, Livin La Vida Loca, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Man I Feel Like A Woman, Metallica, Money Money, My Ding-A-Ling, NSYNC, On The Good Ship Lollipop, Pink Moon, Queen, Rancid, Sergeant Pepper, Shake Your Bon Bon, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Sister Sledge, Smoke On The Water, Steely Dan, Suppertime, Tambourine Man, The B-52s, The Bangles, The Beatles, The Best Of Blondie, The Cranberries, The Cure, The Offspring, The Sugarplastic, The Wallflowers, The Velvet Underground, Walk Like An Egyptian, XTC, Ya Got Trouble, Young Marble Giants
Books/Book Characters, Comic Books/Comic Book Characters, Comic Strips:
A Mencken Chrestomathy, A Tale Of Two Cities, Anna Karenina, Belle Watling, Boo Radley, Carrie, David Copperfield, Dick Tracy, Dopey (One of the seven dwarfs) Goofus And Gallant, Great Expectations, Grinch, Hannibal Lecter, Hansel And Gretel, Harry Potter (book as well as character referenced), Huckleberry Finn, Little Dorrit, Madame Bovary, Moby Dick, Mommie Dearest, Moose Mason, Nancy Drew, Out Of Africa, Pinocchio, Swann's Way, The Amityville Horror, The Art Of Fiction, The Bell Jar, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Lost Weekend, The Metamorphosis, The Portable Dorothy Parker, The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath, The Witch Tree Symbol, There's A Certain Slant Of Light, Tuesdays With Morrie, War And Peace, Wonder Woman
Public Figures:
Adolf Eichmann, Alfred Hitchcock, Angelina Jolie, Anna Nicole Smith, Annie Oakley, Antonio Banderas, Arthur Miller, Artie Shaw, Barbara Hutton, Barbara Stanwyck, Barbra Streisand, Beck, Ben Jonson, Benito Mussolini, Billy Bob Thornton, Billy Crudup, Bob Barker, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, Catherine The Great, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Charles I, Charles Dickens, Charles Manson, Charlie Parker, Charlotte Bronte, Charlton Heston, Charo, Cher, Cheryl Ladd, Chris Penn, Christiane Amanpour, Christopher Marlowe, Chuck Berry, Claudine Longet, Cleopatra, Cokie Roberts, Courtney Love, Dalai Lama, Damon Albarn, Dante Alighieri, David Mamet, Donna Reed, Edith Wharton, Edna O'Brien, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Webber, Elle Macpherson, Elsa Klensch, Elvis, Emeril Lagasse, Emily Dickinson, Emily Post, Eminem, Emma Goldman, Errol Flynn, Fabio, Farrah Fawcett, Fawn Hall, Flo Jo, Francis Bacon, Frank Sinatra, Franz Kafka, Fred MacMurray, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder, George Clooney, George Sand, George W. Bush, Harry Houdini, Harvey Fierstein, Henny Youngman, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Henry VIII, Herman Melville, Homer, Honore De Balzac, Howard Cosell, Hugh Grant, Hunter Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Jaclyn Smith, James Dean, Jane Austen, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Tandy, Jim Carey, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hoffa, Joan Of Arc, Joan Rivers, Jocelyn Wildenstein, Joel Grey, John Cage, John Gardner, John Muir, John Paul II, John Webster, Johnny Cash, Johnny Depp, Joseph Merrick AKA Elephant Man, Judy Blume, Judy Garland, Julian Lennon, Justin Timberlake, Karen Blixen AKA Isak Dinesen, Kate Jackson, Kathy Bates, Kevin Bacon, Kreskin, Lee Harvey Oswald, Leo Tolstoy, Leopold and Loeb, Lewis Carroll, Linda McCartney, Liz Phair, Liza Minnelli, Lou Reed, M Night Shyamalan, Macy Gray, Madonna, Marcel Marceau, Marcel Proust, Margot Kidder, Marie Antoinette, Marie Curie, Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain, Mark Wahlberg, Marlin Perkins, Martha Stewart, Martha Washington, Martin Luther, Mary Kay Letourneau, Maurice Chevalier, Melissa Rivers, Meryl Streep, Michael Crichton, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Miguel De Cervantes, Miss Manners, Mozart, Nancy Kerrigan, Nancy Walker, Nick Cave, Nick Drake, Nico, Oliver North, Oprah Winfrey, Oscar Levant, Pat Benatar, Paul McCartney, Peter III Of Russia, Peter Frampton, Philip Glass, PJ Harvey, Prince, Queen Elizabeth I, Regis, Richard Simmons, Rick James, Ricky Martin, Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Robert Smith, Robin Leach, Rosie O'Donnell, Ru Paul, Ruth Gordon, Samuel Barber, Sarah Duchess Of York, Sean Lennon, Sean Penn, Shania Twain, Shelley Hack, Sigmund Freud, Squeaky Fromme, Stephen King, Steven Tyler, Susan Faludi, Susanna Hoffs, Tanya Roberts, Taylor Hanson, Theodore Kaczynski AKA The Unabomber, The Kennedy Family, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Gummo Marx AKA The Marx Brothers, Venus and Serena Williams (The reference was "The Williams Sisters"),Thelonious Monk, Tiger Woods, Tito Puente, Tom Waits, Tony Randall, Tonya Harding, Vaclav Havel, Vanna White, Vivien Leigh, Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, William Shatner, Yoko Ono, Zsa Zsa Gabor
Misc:
Camelot, Chernobyl Disaster, Cone Of Silence, Hindenburg Disaster, Iran-Contra Affair, Paul Bunyan, The Menendez Murders, Tribbles, Vulcan Death Grip, Whoville, Winchester Mystery House
#gilmore girls#gilmore girls references#season 1 references#reference breakdown#nsync#willy wonka & the chocolate factory#taylor hanson#leo tolstoy#lucky spencer#marcel proust#pj harvey#the bangles#the donna reed show#william shakespeare#lorelai gilmore#rory gilmore#michel gerard#lane kim#lane kim van gerbig#jack kerouac#lauren graham#alexis bledel#keiko agena#yanic truesdale
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Bzhaun Rhoden, Malik Lindo, Renato Sanches
Ray J, Jeremias Amoore, Tyler Lepley
Bryson Tiller, Joel Berry II, Joshua Zirkzee
Roddy Ricch, Tylor Bradshaw, Vincent Forite
YK Osiris, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Lil Nas X
DaBaby, Tory Lanez, Brandon Williams
Junior Vasquez, Jacob Robinson, Christopher Marrs
Omari Dixon, Deonee Arnez, Iann Dior
Kairo Whitfield, Nick Young, Lil Mosey
Tahith Chong, Deivys Nicola, Mason Greenwood
*Please DO NOT reblog if you are willing to ignore whitewashing, racial slurs, BLACKFACE or post white people and celebrities who have done these things. No, I won’t care how long ago it happened. This post is for, by, and about black people! This post is not meant to be a token splash of color on pages filled with mostly white faces*
Just to be clear: If regularly including ALL KINDS of black people isn’t important to you, this post is not for you. If you can overlook racism towards black people, period, but especially by your nonblack celebrity faves then this post is not for you. If you only objectify (ignore the objectification of) black men then move the fuck on. If your default porn preference is fetishizing interracial race play, Mandingo, sex slave or some other dehumanizing fantasies MOVE THE FUCK ON.
FYI, if this caption bothers you then I’m DEFINITELY talking about you.
This post is about celebrating black men and connecting with others who respect black men and not those who fetishize us and our bodies.
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James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. A progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music and dance, he is often referred to as the "Godfather of Soul" and "Soul Brother No. 1". In a career that lasted over 50 years, he influenced the development of several music genres.
Brown began his career as a gospel singer in Toccoa, Georgia. He joined a rhythm and blues vocal group, the Gospel Starlighters (which later evolved into the Famous Flames) founded by Bobby Byrd, in which he was the lead singer. First coming to national public attention in the late 1950s as a member of the singing group The Famous Flames with the hit ballads "Please, Please, Please" and "Try Me", Brown built a reputation as a tireless live performer with the Famous Flames and his backing band, sometimes known as the James Brown Band or the James Brown Orchestra. His success peaked in the 1960s with the live album Live at the Apollo and hit singles such as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World".
During the late 1960s, Brown moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music-making that influenced the development of funk music. By the early 1970s, Brown had fully established the funk sound after the formation of the J.B.s with records such as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "The Payback". He also became noted for songs of social commentary, including the 1968 hit "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". Brown continued to perform and record until his death from pneumonia in 2006.
Brown recorded 17 singles that reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts. He also holds the record for the most singles listed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart which did not reach No. 1. Brown was inducted into 1st class of the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2013 as an artist and then in 2017 as a songwriter. He also received honors from many other institutions, including inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In Joel Whitburn's analysis of the Billboard R&B charts from 1942 to 2010, Brown is ranked No. 1 in The Top 500 Artists. He is ranked No. 7 on Rolling Stone's list of its 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Rolling Stone has also cited Brown as the most sampled artist of all time.
Early life
Brown was born on May 3, 1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina, to 16-year-old Susie (née Behling; 1917–2003), and 22-year-old Joseph Gardner Brown (1911–1993), in a small wooden shack. Brown's name was supposed to have been Joseph James Brown Jr., but his first and middle names were mistakenly reversed on his birth certificate. He later legally changed his name to remove "Jr." In his autobiography, Brown stated that he also had Chinese and Native American ancestry, and that his father was of mixed African-American and Native American descent, whilst his mother was of mixed African-American and Asian descent. The Brown family lived in extreme poverty in Elko, South Carolina, which was an impoverished town at the time. They later moved to Augusta, Georgia, when James was four or five. His family first settled at one of his aunts' brothels. They later moved into a house shared with another aunt. Brown's mother eventually left the family after a contentious and abusive marriage and moved to New York. Brown spent long stretches of time on his own, hanging out in the streets and hustling to get by. He managed to stay in school until the sixth grade.
He began singing in talent shows as a young child, first appearing at Augusta's Lenox Theater in 1944, winning the show after singing the ballad "So Long". While in Augusta, Brown performed buck dances for change to entertain troops from Camp Gordon at the start of World War II as their convoys traveled over a canal bridge near his aunt's home. He learned to play the piano, guitar, and harmonica during this period. He became inspired to become an entertainer after hearing "Caldonia" by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. In his teen years, Brown briefly had a career as a boxer. At the age of 16, he was convicted of robbery and sent to a juvenile detention center in Toccoa. There, he formed a gospel quartet with four fellow cellmates, including Johnny Terry. Brown met singer Bobby Byrd when the two played against each other in a baseball game outside the detention center. Byrd also discovered that Brown could sing, after hearing of "a guy called Music Box", which was Brown's musical nickname at the prison. Byrd has since claimed he and his family helped to secure an early release, which led to Brown promising the court he would "sing for the Lord". Brown was released on a work sponsorship with Toccoa business owner S.C. Lawson. Lawson was impressed with Brown's work ethic and secured his release with a promise to keep him employed for two years. Brown was paroled on June 14, 1952. He would go on to work with both of Lawson's sons, and would come back to visit the family from time to time throughout his career. Shortly after being paroled he joined the gospel group the Ever-Ready Gospel Singers, featuring Byrd's sister Sarah.
Music career
1953–1961: The Famous Flames
Brown eventually joined Byrd's group in 1954. The group had evolved from the Gospel Starlighters, an a cappella gospel group, to an R&B group with the name the Avons. He reputedly joined the band after one of its members, Troy Collins, died in a car crash. Along with Brown and Byrd, the group consisted of Sylvester Keels, Doyle Oglesby, Fred Pulliam, Nash Knox and Nafloyd Scott. Influenced by R&B groups such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, the Orioles and Billy Ward and His Dominoes, the group changed its name, first to the Toccoa Band and then to the Flames. Nafloyd's brother Baroy later joined the group on bass guitar, and Brown, Byrd and Keels switched lead positions and instruments, often playing drums and piano. Johnny Terry later joined, by which time Pulliam and Oglesby had long left.
Berry Trimier became the group's first manager, booking them at parties near college campuses in Georgia and South Carolina. The group had already gained a reputation as a good live act when they renamed themselves the Famous Flames. In 1955, the group had contacted Little Richard while performing in Macon. Richard convinced the group to get in contact with his manager at the time, Clint Brantley, at his nightclub. Brantley agreed to manage them after seeing the group audition. He then sent them to a local radio station to record a demo session, where they performed their own composition "Please, Please, Please", which was inspired when Little Richard wrote the words of the title on a napkin and Brown was determined to make a song out of it. The Famous Flames eventually signed with King Records' Federal subsidiary in Cincinnati, Ohio, and issued a re-recorded version of "Please, Please, Please" in March 1956. The song became the group's first R&B hit, selling over a million copies. None of their follow-ups gained similar success. By 1957, Brown had replaced Clint Brantley as manager and hired Ben Bart, chief of Universal Attractions Agency. That year the original Flames broke up, after Bart changed the name of the group to "James Brown and The Famous Flames".
In October 1958, Brown released the ballad "Try Me", which hit number one on the R&B chart in the beginning of 1959, becoming the first of seventeen chart-topping R&B hits. Shortly afterwards, he recruited his first band, led by J. C. Davis, and reunited with Bobby Byrd who joined a revived Famous Flames lineup that included Eugene "Baby" Lloyd Stallworth and Bobby Bennett, with Johnny Terry sometimes coming in as the "fifth Flame". Brown, the Flames, and his entire band debuted at the Apollo Theater on April 24, 1959, opening for Brown's idol, Little Willie John. Federal Records issued two albums credited to Brown and the Famous Flames (both contained previously released singles). By 1960, Brown began multi-tasking in the recording studio involving himself, his singing group, the Famous Flames, and his band, a separate entity from The Flames, sometimes named the James Brown Orchestra or the James Brown Band. That year the band released the top ten R&B hit "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" on Dade Records, owned by Henry Stone, billed under the pseudonym "Nat Kendrick & the Swans" due to label issues. As a result of its success, King president Syd Nathan shifted Brown's contract from Federal to the parent label, King, which according to Brown in his autobiography meant "you got more support from the company". While with King, Brown, under the Famous Flames lineup, released the hit-filled album Think! and the following year released two albums with the James Brown Band earning second billing. With the Famous Flames, Brown sang lead on several more hits, including "I'll Go Crazy" and "Think", songs that hinted at his emerging style.
1962–1966: Mr. Dynamite
In 1962, Brown and his band scored a hit with their cover of the instrumental "Night Train", becoming a top five R&B single. That same year, the ballads "Lost Someone" and "Baby You're Right", the latter a Joe Tex composition, added to his repertoire and increased his reputation with R&B audiences. On October 24, 1962, Brown financed a live recording of a performance at the Apollo and convinced Syd Nathan to release the album, despite Nathan's belief that no one would buy a live album due to the fact that Brown's singles had already been bought and that live albums were usually bad sellers.
Live at the Apollo was released the following June and became an immediate hit, eventually reaching number two on the Top LPs chart and selling over a million copies, staying on the charts for 14 months. In 1963, Brown scored his first top 20 pop hit with his rendition of the standard "Prisoner of Love". He also launched his first label, Try Me Records, which included recordings by the likes of Tammy Montgomery (later to be famous as Tammi Terrell), Johnny & Bill (Famous Flames associates Johnny Terry and Bill Hollings) and the Poets, which was another name used for Brown's backing band. During this time Brown began an ill-fated two-year relationship with 17-year-old Tammi Terrell when she sang in his revue. Terrell ended their personal and professional relationship because of his abusive behavior.
In 1964, seeking bigger commercial success, Brown and Bobby Byrd formed the production company, Fair Deal, linking the operation to the Mercury imprint, Smash Records. King Records, however, fought against this and was granted an injunction preventing Brown from releasing any recordings for the label. Prior to the injunction, Brown had released three vocal singles, including the blues-oriented hit "Out of Sight", which further indicated the direction his music was going to take. Touring throughout the year, Brown and the Famous Flames grabbed more national attention after giving an explosive show-stopping performance on the live concert film The T.A.M.I. Show. The Flames' dynamic gospel-tinged vocals, polished choreography and timing as well as Brown's energetic dance moves and high-octane singing upstaged the proposed closing act, the Rolling Stones. Having signed a new deal with King, Brown released his song "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", which became his first top ten pop hit and won him his first Grammy Award. Later in 1965, he issued "I Got You", which became his second single in a row to reach number-one on the R&B chart and top ten on the pop chart. Brown followed that up with the ballad "It's a Man's Man's Man's World", a third Top 10 Pop hit (#1 R&B) which confirmed his stance as a top-ranking performer, especially with R&B audiences from that point on.
1967–1970: Soul Brother No. 1
By 1967, Brown's emerging sound had begun to be defined as funk music. That year he released what some critics cited as the first true funk song, "Cold Sweat", which hit number-one on the R&B chart (Top 10 Pop) and became one of his first recordings to contain a drum break and also the first that featured a harmony that was reduced to a single chord. The instrumental arrangements on tracks such as "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose" and "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" (both recorded in 1968) and "Funky Drummer" (recorded in 1969) featured a more developed version of Brown's mid-1960s style, with the horn section, guitars, bass and drums meshed together in intricate rhythmic patterns based on multiple interlocking riffs.
Changes in Brown's style that started with "Cold Sweat" also established the musical foundation for Brown's later hits, such as "I Got the Feelin'" (1968) and "Mother Popcorn" (1969). By this time Brown's vocals frequently took the form of a kind of rhythmic declamation, not quite sung but not quite spoken, that only intermittently featured traces of pitch or melody. This would become a major influence on the techniques of rapping, which would come to maturity along with hip hop music in the coming decades. Brown's style of funk in the late 1960s was based on interlocking syncopated parts: strutting bass lines, syncopated drum patterns, and iconic percussive guitar riffs. The main guitar ostinatos for "Ain't It Funky" and "Give It Up or Turn It Loose" (both 1969), are examples of Brown's refinement of New Orleans funk; irresistibly danceable riffs, stripped down to their rhythmic essence. On both recordings the tonal structure is bare bones. The pattern of attack-points is the emphasis, not the pattern of pitches, as if the guitar were an African drum, or idiophone. Alexander Stewart states that this popular feel was passed along from "New Orleans—through James Brown's music, to the popular music of the 1970s". Those same tracks were later resurrected by countless hip-hop musicians from the 1970s onward. As a result, James Brown remains to this day the world's most sampled recording artist, but, two tracks that he wrote, are also synonymous with modern dance, especially with house music, jungle music, and drum and bass music, (which were sped up exponentially, in the latter two genres). These songs are, "Funky Drummer", and "Think (About It)", that he wrote for Lynn Collins, and, features his signature, "Whoo - Yeah", which were sampled, on a multitude of late 1980s - early 1990s house music tracks.
"Bring it Up" has an Afro-Cuban guajeo-like structure. All three of these guitar riffs are based on an onbeat/offbeat structure. Stewart says that it "is different from a time line (such as clave and tresillo) in that it is not an exact pattern, but more of a loose organizing principle."
It was around this time as the musician's popularity increased that he acquired the nickname "Soul Brother No. 1", after failing to win the title "King of Soul" from Solomon Burke during a Chicago gig two years prior. Brown's recordings during this period influenced musicians across the industry, most notably groups such as Sly and the Family Stone, Funkadelic, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Booker T. & the M.G.s as well as vocalists such as Edwin Starr, David Ruffin and Dennis Edwards from The Temptations, and Michael Jackson, who, throughout his career, cited Brown as his ultimate idol.
Brown's band during this period employed musicians and arrangers who had come up through the jazz tradition. He was noted for his ability as a bandleader and songwriter to blend the simplicity and drive of R&B with the rhythmic complexity and precision of jazz. Trumpeter Lewis Hamlin and saxophonist/keyboardist Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis (the successor to previous bandleader Nat Jones) led the band. Guitarist Jimmy Nolen provided percussive, deceptively simple riffs for each song, and Maceo Parker's prominent saxophone solos provided a focal point for many performances. Other members of Brown's band included stalwart Famous Flames singer and sideman Bobby Byrd, trombonist Fred Wesley, drummers John "Jabo" Starks, Clyde Stubblefield and Melvin Parker, saxophonist St. Clair Pinckney, guitarist Alphonso "Country" Kellum and bassist Bernard Odum.
In addition to a torrent of singles and studio albums, Brown's output during this period included two more successful live albums, Live at the Garden (1967) and Live at the Apollo, Volume II (1968), and a 1968 television special, James Brown: Man to Man. His music empire expanded along with his influence on the music scene. As Brown's music empire grew, his desire for financial and artistic independence grew as well. Brown bought radio stations during the late 1960s, including WRDW in his native Augusta, where he shined shoes as a boy. In November 1967, James Brown purchased radio station WGYW in Knoxville, Tennessee, for a reported $75,000, according to the January 20, 1968 Record World magazine. The call letters were changed to WJBE reflecting his initials. WJBE began on January 15, 1968, and broadcast a Rhythm & Blues format. The station slogan was "WJBE 1430 Raw Soul". Brown also bought WEBB in Baltimore in 1970.
Brown branched out to make several recordings with musicians outside his own band. In an attempt to appeal to the older, more affluent, and predominantly white adult contemporary audience, Brown recorded Gettin' Down To It (1969) and Soul on Top (1970)—two albums consisting mostly of romantic ballads, jazz standards, and homologous reinterpretations of his earlier hits—with the Dee Felice Trio and the Louie Bellson Orchestra. In 1968, he recorded a number of funk-oriented tracks with The Dapps, a white Cincinnati band, including the hit "I Can't Stand Myself". He also released three albums of Christmas music with his own band.
1970–1975: Godfather of Soul
In March 1970, most of Brown's mid-to-late 1960s road band walked out on him due to money disputes, a development augured by the prior disbandment of The Famous Flames singing group for the same reason in 1968. Brown and erstwhile Famous Flames singer Bobby Byrd (who chose to remain in the band during this tumultuous period) subsequently recruited several members of the Cincinnati-based The Pacemakers, which included Bootsy Collins and his brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins; augmented by the remaining members of the 1960s road band (including Fred Wesley, who rejoined Brown's outfit in December 1970) and other newer musicians, they would form the nucleus of The J.B.'s, Brown's new backing ensemble. Shortly following their first performance together, the band entered the studio to record the Brown-Byrd composition, "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine"; the song and other contemporaneous singles would further cement Brown's influence in the nascent genre of funk music. This iteration of the J.B.'s dissolved after a March 1971 European tour (documented on the 1991 archival release Love Power Peace) due to additional money disputes and Bootsy Collins' use of LSD; the Collins brothers would soon become integral members of Parliament-Funkadelic, while a new lineup of the J.B.'s coalesced around Wesley, St. Clair Pinckney and drummer John Starks.
In 1971, Brown began recording for Polydor Records which also took over distribution of Brown's King Records catalog. Many of his sidemen and supporting players, including Fred Wesley & the J.B.'s, Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson and former rival Hank Ballard, released records on the People label, an imprint founded by Brown that was purchased by Polydor as part of Brown's new contract. The recordings on the People label, almost all of which were produced by Brown himself, exemplified his "house style". Several tracks thought by critics to be excessively sexual, were released at this time. He would later soften his vocal approach. Songs such as "I Know You Got Soul" by Bobby Byrd, "Think" by Lyn Collins and "Doing It to Death" by Fred Wesley & the J.B.'s are considered as much a part of Brown's recorded legacy as the recordings released under his own name. That year, he also began touring African countries and was received well by audiences there. During the 1972 presidential election, James Brown openly proclaimed his support of Richard Nixon for reelection to the presidency over Democratic candidate George McGovern. The decision led to a boycott of his performances and, according to Brown, cost him a big portion of his black audience. As a result, Brown's record sales and concerts in the United States reached a lull in 1973 as he failed to land a number-one R&B single that year. Brown relied more on touring outside the United States where he continued to perform for sold-out crowds in cities such as London, Paris and Lausanne. That year he also faced problems with the IRS for failure to pay back taxes, charging he hadn't paid upwards of $4.5 million; five years earlier, the IRS had claimed he owed nearly $2 million.
In 1973, Brown provided the score for the blaxploitation film Black Caesar. He also recorded another soundtrack for the film, Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. Following the release of these soundtracks, Brown acquired a self-styled nickname, "The Godfather of Soul", which remains his most popular nickname. In 1974 he returned to the No. 1 spot on the R&B charts with "The Payback", with the parent album reaching the same spot on the album charts; he would reach No. 1 two more times in 1974, with "My Thang" and "Papa Don't Take No Mess". Later that year, he returned to Africa and performed in Kinshasa as part of the buildup to The Rumble in the Jungle fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Admirers of Brown's music, including Miles Davis and other jazz musicians, began to cite him as a major influence on their own styles. However, Brown, like others who were influenced by his music, also "borrowed" from other musicians. His 1976 single, "Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved)" (R&B #31), interpolated the main riff from "Fame" by David Bowie while omitting any attribution to the latter song's composers (including Bowie, John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar), not the other way around as was often believed. The riff was composed by Alomar, who had briefly been a member of Brown's band in the late 1960s.
"Papa Don't Take No Mess" would prove to be his final single to reach the No. 1 spot on the R&B charts and his final Top 40 pop single of the 1970s, though he continued to occasionally have Top 10 R&B recordings. Among his top ten R&B hits during this latter period included "Funky President" and "Get Up Offa That Thing", the latter song released in 1976 and aimed at musical rivals such as Barry White, The Ohio Players and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. Brown credited his then-wife and two of their children as writers of the song to avoid concurrent tax problems with the IRS. Starting in October 1975, Brown produced, directed, and hosted Future Shock, an Atlanta-based television variety show that ran for three years.
1975–1991: Decline and resurgence
Although his records were mainstays of the vanguard New York underground disco scene exemplified by DJs such as David Mancuso and Francis Grasso from 1969 onwards, Brown did not consciously yield to the trend until 1975's Sex Machine Today. By 1977, he was no longer a dominant force in R&B. After "Get Up Offa That Thing", thirteen of Brown's late 1970s recordings for Polydor failed to reach the Top 10 of the R&B chart, with only "Bodyheat" in 1976 and the disco-oriented "It's Too Funky in Here" in 1979 reaching the R&B Top 15 and the ballad "Kiss in '77" reaching the Top 20. After 1976's "Bodyheat", he also failed to appear on the Billboard Hot 100. As a result, Brown's concert attendance began dropping and his reported disputes with the IRS caused his business empire to collapse. In addition, Brown's former bandmates, including Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and the Collins brothers, had found bigger success as members of George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective. The emergence of disco also stopped Brown's success on the R&B charts because its slicker, more commercial style had superseded his more raw funk productions.
By the release of 1979's The Original Disco Man, Brown was not providing much production or writing, leaving most of it to producer Brad Shapiro, resulting in the song "It's Too Funky in Here" becoming Brown's most successful single in this period. After two more albums failed to chart, Brown left Polydor in 1981. It was around this time that Brown changed the name of his band from the J.B.'s to the Soul Generals (or Soul G's). The band retained that name until his death. Despite the decline in his record sales Brown enjoyed something of a resurgence in this period, starting with appearances in the feature films The Blues Brothers, Doctor Detroit and Rocky IV, as well as guest-starring in the Miami Vice episode "Missing Hours" (1987). In 1984, he teamed with rap musician Afrika Bambaattaa on the song "Unity". A year later he signed with Scotti Brothers Records and issued the moderately successful album Gravity in 1986. It included Brown's final Top 10 pop hit, "Living in America", marking his first Top 40 entry since 1974 and his first Top 10 pop entry since 1968. Produced and written by Dan Hartman, it was also featured prominently on the Rocky IV film and soundtrack. Brown performed the song in the film at Apollo Creed's final fight, shot in the Ziegfeld Room at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and was credited in the film as "The Godfather of Soul". 1986 also saw the publication of his autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, co-written with Bruce Tucker. In 1987, Brown won the Grammy for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for "Living in America".
In 1988, Brown worked with the production team Full Force on the new jack swing-influenced album I'm Real. It spawned his final two Top 10 R&B hits, "I'm Real" and "Static", which peaked at No. 2 and No. 5, respectively, on the R&B charts. Meanwhile, the drum break from the second version of the original 1969 hit "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose" (the recording included on the compilation album In the Jungle Groove) became so popular at hip hop dance parties (especially for breakdance) during the early 1980s that hip hop pioneer Kurtis Blow called the song "the national anthem of hip hop".
1991–2006: Final years
After his stint in prison during the late 1980s, Brown met Larry Fridie and Thomas Hart who produced the first James Brown biopic, entitled James Brown: The Man, the Message, the Music, released in 1992. He returned to music with the album Love Over-Due in 1991. It included the single "(So Tired of Standing Still We Got to) Move On", which peaked at No. 48 on the R&B chart. His former record label Polydor also released the four-CD box set Star Time, spanning Brown's career to date. Brown's release from prison also prompted his former record labels to reissue his albums on CD, featuring additional tracks and commentary by music critics and historians. That same year, Brown appeared on rapper MC Hammer's video for "Too Legit to Quit". Hammer had been noted, alongside Big Daddy Kane, for bringing Brown's unique stage shows and their own energetic dance moves to the hip-hop generation; both listed Brown as their idol. Both musicians also sampled his work, with Hammer having sampled the rhythms from "Super Bad" for his song "Here Comes the Hammer", from his best-selling album Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em. Big Daddy Kane sampled many times. Before the year was over, Brown–who had immediately returned to work with his band following his release–organized a pay-per-view concert following a show at Los Angeles' Wiltern Theatre, that was well received.
On June 10, 1991, James Brown and a star-filled line up performed before a crowd at the Wiltern Theatre for a live pay-per-view at-home audience. James Brown: Living in America – Live! was the brainchild of Indiana producer Danny Hubbard. It featuredM.C. Hammer as well as Bell Biv Devoe, Heavy D & the Boys, En Vogue, C+C Music Factory, Quincy Jones, Sherman Hemsley and Keenen Ivory Wayans. Ice-T, Tone Loc and Kool Moe Dee performed paying homage to Brown. This was Brown's first public performance since his parole from the South Carolina prison system in February. He had served two-and-a-half years of two concurrent six-year sentences for aggravated assault and other felonies.
Brown continued making recordings. In 1993 his album Universal James was released. It included his final Billboard charting single, "Can't Get Any Harder", which peaked at No. 76 on the US R&B chart and reached No. 59 on the UK chart. Its brief charting in the UK was probably due to the success of a remixed version of "I Feel Good" featuring Dakeyne. Brown also released the singles "How Long" and "Georgia-Lina", which failed to chart. In 1995, Brown returned to the Apollo and recorded Live at the Apollo 1995. It included a studio track titled "Respect Me", which was released as a single; again it failed to chart. Brown's final studio albums, I'm Back and The Next Step, were released in 1998 and 2002 respectively. I'm Back featured the song "Funk on Ah Roll", which peaked at No. 40 in the UK but did not chart in his native US. The Next Step included Brown's final single, "Killing Is Out, School Is In". Both albums were produced by Derrick Monk. Brown's concert success, however, remained unabated and he kept up with a grueling schedule throughout the remainder of his life, living up to his previous nickname, "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business", in spite of his advanced age. In 2003, Brown participated in the PBS American Masters television documentary James Brown: Soul Survivor, which was directed by Jeremy Marre.
Brown celebrated his status as an icon by appearing in a variety of entertainment and sports events, including an appearance on the WCW pay-per-view event, SuperBrawl X, where he danced alongside wrestler Ernest "The Cat" Miller, who based his character on Brown, during his in-ring skit with The Maestro. Brown then appeared in Tony Scott's short film Beat the Devil in 2001. He was featured alongside Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, Danny Trejo and Marilyn Manson. Brown also made a cameo appearance in the 2002 Jackie Chan film The Tuxedo, in which Chan was required to finish Brown's act after having accidentally knocked out the singer. In 2002, Brown appeared in Undercover Brother, playing himself.
In 2004, Brown performed in Hyde Park, London as a support act for Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts. The beginning of 2005 saw the publication of Brown's second book, I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul, written with Marc Eliot. In February and March, he participated in recording sessions for an intended studio album with Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, and other longtime collaborators. Though he lost interest in the album, which remains unreleased, a track from the sessions, "Gut Bucket", appeared on a compilation CD included with the August 2006 issue of MOJO. He appeared at Edinburgh 50,000 – The Final Push, the final Live 8 concert on July 6, 2005, where he performed a duet with British pop star Will Young on "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag". The previous week he had performed a duet with another British pop star, Joss Stone, on the United Kingdom chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. In 2006, Brown continued his "Seven Decades of Funk World Tour", his last concert tour where he performed all over the world. His final U.S. performances were in San Francisco on August 20, 2006, as headliner at the Festival of the Golden Gate (Foggfest) on the Great Meadow at Fort Mason. The following day, August 21, he performed at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA, at a small theatre (800 seats) on campus. His last shows were greeted with positive reviews, and one of his final concert appearances at the Irish Oxegen festival in Punchestown in 2006 was performed for a record crowd of 80,000 people. He played a full concert as part of the BBC's Electric Proms on October 27, 2006, at The Roundhouse, supported by The Zutons, with special appearances from Max Beasley and The Sugababes.
Brown's last televised appearance was at his induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame in November 2006, before his death the following month. Before his death, Brown had been scheduled to perform a duet with singer Annie Lennox on the song "Vengeance" for her new album Venus, which was released in 2007.
Later life and death
Illness
On December 23, 2006, Brown became very ill and arrived at his dentist's office in Atlanta, Georgia, several hours late. His appointment was for dental implant work. During that visit, Brown's dentist observed that he looked "very bad ... weak and dazed". Instead of performing the work, the dentist advised Brown to see a doctor right away about his medical condition.
Brown went to the Emory Crawford Long Memorial Hospital the next day for medical evaluation and was admitted for observation and treatment. According to Charles Bobbit, his longtime personal manager and friend, Brown had been struggling with a noisy cough since returning from a November trip to Europe. Yet, Bobbit said, the singer had a history of never complaining about being sick and often performed while ill. Although Brown had to cancel upcoming concerts in Waterbury, Connecticut, and Englewood, New Jersey, he was confident that the doctor would discharge him from the hospital in time for his scheduled New Year's Eve shows at the Count Basie Theatre in New Jersey and the B. B. King Blues Club in New York, in addition to performing a song live on CNN for the Anderson Cooper New Year's Eve special. Brown remained hospitalized, however, and his condition worsened throughout the day.
Death
On Christmas Day 2006, Brown died at approximately 1:45 a.m. EST (06:45 UTC), at age 73, from congestive heart failure, resulting from complications of pneumonia. Bobbit was at his bedside and later reported that Brown stuttered, "I'm going away tonight," then took three long, quiet breaths and fell asleep before dying.
In 2019, an investigation by CNN and other journalists led to suggestions that Brown had been murdered.
Memorial services
After Brown's death, his relatives, a host of celebrities, and thousands of fans gathered, on December 28, 2006, for a public memorial service at the Apollo Theater in New York City and, on December 30, 2006, at the James Brown Arena in Augusta, Georgia. A separate, private ceremony was held in North Augusta, South Carolina, on December 29, 2006, with Brown's family in attendance. Celebrities at these various memorial events included Michael Jackson, Jimmy Cliff, Joe Frazier, Buddy Guy, Ice Cube, Ludacris, Dr. Dre, Little Richard, Dick Gregory, MC Hammer, Prince, Jesse Jackson, Ice-T, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bootsy Collins, LL Cool J, Lil Wayne, Lenny Kravitz, 50 Cent, Stevie Wonder, and Don King. Rev. Al Sharpton officiated at all of Brown's public and private memorial services.
Brown's memorial ceremonies were all elaborate, complete with costume changes for the deceased and videos featuring him in concert. His body, placed in a Promethean casket—bronze polished to a golden shine—was driven through the streets of New York to the Apollo Theater in a white, glass-encased horse-drawn carriage. In Augusta, Georgia, his memorial procession stopped to pay respects at his statue, en route to the James Brown Arena. During the public memorial there, a video showed Brown's last performance in Augusta, Georgia, with the Ray Charles version of "Georgia on My Mind" playing soulfully in the background. His last backup band, The Soul Generals, also played some of his hits during that tribute at the arena. The group was joined by Bootsy Collins on bass, with MC Hammer performing a dance in James Brown style. Former Temptations lead singer Ali-Ollie Woodson performed "Walk Around Heaven All Day" at the memorial services.
Last will and testament
Brown signed his last will and testament on August 1, 2000, before J. Strom Thurmond Jr., an attorney for the estate. The irrevocable trust, separate and apart from Brown's will, was created on his behalf, that same year, by his attorney, Albert "Buddy" Dallas, one of three personal representatives of Brown's estate. His will covered the disposition of his personal assets, such as clothing, cars, and jewelry, while the irrevocable trust covered the disposition of the music rights, business assets of James Brown Enterprises, and his Beech Island estate in South Carolina.
During the reading of the will on January 11, 2007, Thurmond revealed that Brown's six adult living children (Terry Brown, Larry Brown, Daryl Brown, Yamma Brown Lumar, Deanna Brown Thomas and Venisha Brown) were named in the document, while Hynie and James II were not mentioned as heirs. Brown's will had been signed 10 months before James II was born and more than a year before Brown's marriage to Tomi Rae Hynie. Like Brown's will, his irrevocable trust omitted Hynie and James II as recipients of Brown's property. The irrevocable trust had also been established before, and not amended since, the birth of James II.
On January 24, 2007, Brown's children filed a lawsuit, petitioning the court to remove the personal representatives from the estate (including Brown's attorney, as well as trustee Albert "Buddy" Dallas) and appoint a special administrator because of perceived impropriety and alleged mismanagement of Brown's assets. On January 31, 2007, Hynie also filed a lawsuit against Brown's estate, challenging the validity of the will and the irrevocable trust. Hynie's suit asked the court both to recognize her as Brown's widow and to appoint a special administrator for the estate.
On January 27, 2015, Judge Doyet Early III ruled that Tommie Rae Hynie Brown was officially the widow of James Brown. The decision was based on the grounds that Hynie's previous marriage was invalid and that James Brown had abandoned his efforts to annul his own marriage to Hynie.
On February 19, 2015, the South Carolina Supreme Court intervened, halting all lower court actions in the estate and undertaking to review previous actions itself. The South Carolina Court of Appeals in July 2018 ruled that Tommie Rae was, in fact, Mr. Brown's wife.
Artistry and band
For many years, Brown's touring show was one of the most extravagant productions in American popular music. At the time of Brown's death, his band included three guitarists, two bass guitar players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist. The bands that he maintained during the late 1960s and 1970s were of comparable size, and the bands also included a three-piece amplified string section that played during the ballads. Brown employed between 40 and 50 people for the James Brown Revue, and members of the revue traveled with him in a bus to cities and towns all over the country, performing upwards of 330 shows a year with almost all of the shows as one-nighters.
Concert introduction
Before James Brown appeared on stage, his personal MC gave him an elaborate introduction accompanied by drumrolls, as the MC worked in Brown's various sobriquets along with the names of many of his hit songs. The introduction by Fats Gonder, captured on Brown's 1963 album Live at the Apollo is a representative example:
So now ladies and gentlemen it is "Star Time". Are you ready for "Star Time?" Thank you and thank you very kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you at this particular time, national and international[ly] known as "The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business", the man that sings "I'll Go Crazy"..."Try Me"..."You've Got the Power"..."Think"..."If You Want Me"..."I Don't Mind"..."Bewildered"... the million dollar seller, "Lost Someone"... the very latest release, "Night Train"... let's everybody "Shout and Shimmy"... "Mr. Dynamite", the amazing "Mr. Please Please" himself, the star of the show, James Brown and The Famous Flames!!
Concert repertoire and format
James Brown's performances were famous for their intensity and length. His own stated goal was to "give people more than what they came for — make them tired, 'cause that's what they came for.'" Brown's concert repertoire consisted mostly of his own hits and recent songs, with a few R&B covers mixed in. Brown danced vigorously as he sang, working popular dance steps such as the Mashed Potato into his routine along with dramatic leaps, splits and slides. In addition, his horn players and singing group (The Famous Flames) typically performed choreographed dance routines, and later incarnations of the Revue included backup dancers. Male performers in the Revue were required to wear tuxedoes and cummerbunds long after more casual concert wear became the norm among the younger musical acts. Brown's own extravagant outfits and his elaborate processed hairdo completed the visual impression. A James Brown concert typically included a performance by a featured vocalist, such as Vicki Anderson or Marva Whitney, and an instrumental feature for the band, which sometimes served as the opening act for the show.
Cape routine
A trademark feature of Brown's stage shows, usually during the song "Please, Please, Please", involved Brown dropping to his knees while clutching the microphone stand in his hands, prompting the show's longtime MC, Danny Ray, to come out, drape a cape over Brown's shoulders and escort him off the stage after he had worked himself to exhaustion during his performance. As Brown was escorted off the stage by the MC, Brown's vocal group, the Famous Flames, (Bobby Byrd, Lloyd Stallworth, and Bobby Bennett ), continued singing the background vocals "Please, please don't go-oh". Brown would then shake off the cape and stagger back to the microphone to perform an encore. Brown's routine was inspired by a similar one used by the professional wrestler Gorgeous George, as well as Little Richard.
Brown performs a version of the cape routine over the closing credits of the film Blues Brothers 2000 and in the film of the T.A.M.I. Show (1964) in which he and The Famous Flames upstaged the Rolling Stones. The Police refer to "James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show" in their 1980 song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around".
As band leader
Brown demanded extreme discipline, perfection and precision from his musicians and dancers – performers in his Revue showed up for rehearsals and members wore the right "uniform" or "costume" for concert performances. During an interview conducted by Terri Gross during the NPR segment "Fresh Air" with Maceo Parker, a former saxophonist in Brown's band for most of the 1960s and part of the 1970s and 1980s, Parker offered his experience with the discipline that Brown demanded of the band:
You gotta be on time. You gotta have your uniform. Your stuff's got to be intact. You gotta have the bow tie. You got to have it. You can't come up without the bow tie. You cannot come up without a cummerbund ... [The] patent leather shoes we were wearing at the time gotta be greased. You just gotta have this stuff. This is what [Brown expected] ... [Brown] bought the costumes. He bought the shoes. And if for some reason [the band member decided] to leave the group, [Brown told the person to] please leave my uniforms . ...
Brown also had a practice of directing, correcting and assessing fines on members of his band who broke his rules, such as wearing unshined shoes, dancing out of sync or showing up late on stage. During some of his concert performances, Brown danced in front of his band with his back to the audience as he slid across the floor, flashing hand signals and splaying his pulsating fingers to the beat of the music. Although audiences thought Brown's dance routine was part of his act, this practice was actually his way of pointing to the offending member of his troupe who played or sang the wrong note or committed some other infraction. Brown used his splayed fingers and hand signals to alert the offending person of the fine that person must pay to him for breaking his rules.
Brown's demands of his support acts were, meanwhile, quite the reverse. As Fred Wesley recalled of his time as musical director of the JBs, if Brown felt intimidated by a support act he would try to "undermine their performances by shortening their sets without notice, demanding that they not do certain showstopping songs, and even insisting on doing the unthinkable, playing drums on some of their songs. A sure set killer."
Social activism
Education advocacy and humanitarianism
Brown's main social activism was in preserving the need for education among youths, influenced by his own troubled childhood and his being forced to drop out of the seventh grade for wearing "insufficient clothes". Due to heavy dropout rates in the 1960s, Brown released the pro-education song, "Don't Be a Drop-Out". Royalties of the song were donated to dropout-prevention charity programs. The success of this led to Brown meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. Johnson cited Brown for being a positive role model to the youth. A lifelong Republican, Brown gained the confidence of President Richard Nixon, to whom he found he had to explain the plight of Black Americans.
Throughout the remainder of his life, Brown made public speeches in schools and continued to advocate the importance of education in school. Upon filing his will in 2002, Brown advised that most of the money in his estate go into creating the I Feel Good, Inc. Trust to benefit disadvantaged children and provide scholarships for his grandchildren. His final single, "Killing Is Out, School Is In", advocated against murders of young children in the streets. Brown often gave out money and other items to children while traveling to his childhood hometown of Augusta. A week before his death, while looking gravely ill, Brown gave out toys and turkeys to kids at an Atlanta orphanage, something he had done several times over the years.
Civil rights and self-reliance
Though Brown performed at benefit rallies for civil rights organizations in the mid-1960s, Brown often shied away from discussing civil rights in his songs in fear of alienating his crossover audience. In 1968, in response to a growing urge of anti-war advocacy during the Vietnam War, Brown recorded the song, "America Is My Home". In the song, Brown performed a rap, advocating patriotism and exhorting listeners to "stop pitying yoursel[ves] and get up and fight". At the time of the song's release, Brown had been participating in performing for troops stationed in Vietnam.
The Boston Garden concert
On April 5, 1968, a day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, Brown provided a free citywide televised concert at the Boston Garden to maintain public order and calm concerned Boston relatives (over the objections of the police chief, who wanted to call off the concert, which he thought would incite violence). The show was later released on DVD as Live at the Boston Garden: April 5, 1968. According to the documentary, The Night James Brown Saved Boston, then-mayor Kevin White had strongly restrained the Boston police from cracking down on minor violence and protests after the assassination, while religious and community leaders worked to keep tempers from flaring. White arranged to have Brown's performance broadcast multiple times on Boston's public television station, WGBH, thus keeping potential rioters off the streets, watching the concert for free. Angered by not being told of this, Brown demanded $60,000 for "gate" fees (money he thought would be lost from ticket sales on account of the concert being broadcast for free) and then threatened to go public about the secret arrangement when the city balked at paying up afterwards, news of which would have been a political death blow to White and spark riots of its own. White eventually lobbied the behind-the-scenes power-brokering group known as "The Vault" to come up with money for Brown's gate fee and other social programs, contributing $100,000. Brown received $15,000 from them via the city. White also persuaded management at the Garden to give up their share of receipts to make up the differences. Following this successful performance, Brown was cautioned by President Johnson to visit cities ravaged from riots following King's assassination to not resort to violence, telling them to "cool it, there's another way".
Responding to pressure from black activists, including H. Rap Brown, to take a bigger stance on their issues and from footage of black on black crime committed in inner cities, Brown wrote the lyrics to the song "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud", which his bandleader Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis accompanied with a musical composition. Released late that summer, the song's lyrics helped to make it an anthem for the civil rights movement. Brown only performed the song sporadically following its initial release and later stated he had regrets recording it, saying in 1984, "Now 'Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud' has done more for the black race than any other record, but if I had my choice, I wouldn't have done it, because I don't like defining anyone by race. To teach race is to teach separatism." In his autobiography he stated:
The song is obsolete now ... But it was necessary to teach pride then, and I think the song did a lot of good for a lot of people ... People called "Black and Proud" militant and angry – maybe because of the line about dying on your feet instead of living on your knees. But really, if you listen to it, it sounds like a children's song. That's why I had children in it, so children who heard it could grow up feeling pride ... The song cost me a lot of my crossover audience. The racial makeup at my concerts was mostly black after that. I don't regret it, though, even if it was misunderstood.
In 1969, Brown recorded two more songs of social commentary, "World" and "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing", the latter song pleading for equal opportunity and self-reliance rather than entitlement. In 1970, in response to some black leaders for not being outspoken enough, he recorded "Get Up, Get into It, Get Involved" and "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing". In 1971, he began touring Africa, including Zambia and Nigeria. He was made "freeman of the city" in Lagos, Nigeria, by Oba Adeyinka Oyekan, for his "influence on black people all over the world". With his company, James Brown Enterprises, Brown helped to provide jobs for blacks in business in the communities. As the 1970s continued, Brown continued to record songs of social commentary, most prominently 1972's "King Heroin" and the two-part ballad "Public Enemy", which dealt with drug addiction.
Political views
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Brown endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey and appeared with Humphrey at political rallies. Brown began supporting Republican president Richard Nixon after being invited to perform at Nixon's inaugural ball in January 1969. Brown's endorsement of Nixon during the 1972 presidential election negatively impacted his career during that period with several national Black organizations boycotting his records and protesting at his concert shows. Brown stated he was neither Democratic nor Republican despite his support of Republican presidents such as Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In 1999, when being interviewed by Rolling Stone, the magazine asked him to name a hero in the 20th century; Brown mentioned John F. Kennedy and then-96-year-old U.S. Senator, and former Dixiecrat, Strom Thurmond, stating "when the young whippersnappers get out of line, whether Democratic or Republican, an old man can walk up and say 'Wait a minute, son, it goes this way.' And that's great for our country. He's like a grandfather to me." In 2003, Brown was the featured attraction of a Washington D.C. fundraiser for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Following the deaths of Ronald Reagan and his friend Ray Charles, Brown said to CNN, "I'm kind of in an uproar. I love the country and I got – you know I've been around a long time, through many presidents and everything. So after losing Mr. Reagan, who I knew very well, then Mr. Ray Charles, who I worked with and lived with like, all our life, we had a show together in Oakland many, many years ago and it's like you found the placard."
Personal life
At the end of his life, James Brown lived in Beech Island, South Carolina, directly across the Savannah River from Augusta, Georgia. Brown had diabetes that went undiagnosed for years, according to his longtime manager Charles Bobbit. In 2004, Brown was successfully treated for prostate cancer. Regardless of his health, Brown maintained his reputation as the "hardest working man in show business" by keeping up with his grueling performance schedule.
In 1962, Tammi Terrell joined the James Brown Revue. Even though she was only 17, Brown became sexually involved with Terrell in a relationship that continued until she escaped his abuse. Bobby Bennett, former member of the Famous Flames told Rolling Stone about the abuse he witnessed, "He beat Tammi Terrell terrible," said Bennett. "She was bleeding, shedding blood." Terrell, who died in 1970, was Brown's girlfriend before she became famous as Marvin Gaye's singing partner in the mid-Sixties. "Tammi left him because she didn't want her butt whipped," said Bennett, who also claimed he saw Brown kick one pregnant girlfriend down a flight of stairs.
Marriages and children
Brown was married four times. His first marriage was to Velma Warren in 1953, and they had three sons together. Over a decade later, the couple had separated and the final divorce decree was issued 1969. They maintained a close friendship that lasted until Brown's death. Brown's second marriage was to Deidre "Deedee" Jenkins, on October 22, 1970. They had two daughters together. The couple were separated by 1979, after what his daughter describes as years of domestic abuse, and the final divorce decree was issued on January 10, 1981. His third marriage was to Adrienne Lois Rodriguez (March 9, 1950 – January 6, 1996), in 1984. It was a contentious marriage that made headlines due to domestic abuse complaints. Rodriguez filed for divorce in 1988, "citing years of cruelty treatment," but they reconciled. Less than a year after Rodriguez died in 1996, Brown hired Tomi Rae Hynie to be a background singer for his band and she later became his fourth wife.
On December 23, 2002, Brown and Hynie held a wedding ceremony that was officiated by the Rev. Larry Flyer. Following Brown's death, controversy surrounded the circumstances of the marriage, with Brown's attorney, Albert "Buddy" Dallas, reporting that the marriage was not valid; Hynie was still married to Javed Ahmed, a man from Bangladesh. Hynie claimed Ahmed married her to obtain residency through a Green Card and that the marriage was annulled but the annulment did not occur until April 2004. In an attempt to prove her marriage to Brown was valid, Hynie produced a 2001 marriage certificate as proof of her marriage to Brown, but she did not provide King with court records pointing to an annulment of her marriage to him or to Ahmed. According to Dallas, Brown was angry and hurt that Hynie had concealed her prior marriage from him and Brown moved to file for annulment from Hynie. Dallas added that though Hynie's marriage to Ahmed was annulled after she married Brown, the Brown–Hynie marriage was not valid under South Carolina law because Brown and Hynie did not remarry after the annulment. In August 2003, Brown took out a full-page public notice in Variety featuring Hynie, James II and himself on vacation at Disney World to announce that he and Hynie were going their separate ways. In 2015, a judge ruled Hynie as Brown's legal widow.
Brown had numerous children and acknowledged nine of them including five sons – Teddy (1954–1973), Terry, Larry, Daryl and James Joseph Brown Jr. and four daughters – Lisa, Dr. Yamma Noyola Brown Lumar, Deanna Brown Thomas and Venisha Brown (1964–2018). Brown also had eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Brown's eldest son, Teddy, died in a car crash on June 14, 1973. According to an August 22, 2007, article published in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, DNA tests indicate that Brown also fathered at least three extramarital children. The first one of them to be identified is LaRhonda Pettit (born 1962), a retired air stewardess and teacher who lives in Houston. During contesting of Brown's will, another of the Brown family attorneys, Debra Opri, revealed to Larry King that Brown wanted a DNA test performed after his death to confirm the paternity of James Brown Jr. (born 2001)—not for Brown's sake but for the sake of the other family members. In April 2007, Hynie selected a guardian ad litem whom she wants appointed by the court to represent her son, James Brown Jr., in the paternity proceedings. James Brown Jr. was confirmed to be his biological son.
Drug abuse
For most of his career, Brown had a strict drug- and alcohol-free policy for any member in his entourage, including band members, and would fire people who disobeyed orders, particularly those who used or abused drugs and alcohol. Some early members of Brown's vocal group the Famous Flames were fired due to alcohol use. Despite the policy, some of the original members of Brown's 1970s band, the J.B.'s, including Catfish and Bootsy Collins, intentionally took LSD during a concert gig in 1971, causing Brown to fire them after the show because he had suspected them of being on drugs all along.
However, by the mid-1980s it was alleged that Brown himself was using drugs. After he met and later married Adrienne Rodriguez in 1984, she and Brown began using PCP ("angel dust"). This drug usage resulted in violent outbursts from him and he was arrested several times for domestic violence against Rodriguez while high on the drug. By January 1988, Brown faced four criminal charges within a 12-month span relating to driving, PCP, and gun possession. After an April 1988 arrest for domestic abuse, Brown went on the CNN program Sonya Live in L.A. with host Sonya Friedman. The interview went viral due to Brown's irreverent demeanor with some asserting that Brown was high.
One of Brown's former mistresses recalled in a GQ magazine article on Brown some years after his death that Brown would smoke PCP "until that got hard to find", and cocaine, mixed with tobacco in Kool cigarettes. In January 1998, he spent a week in rehab to deal with an addiction to prescription drugs. A week after his release, he was arrested for an unlawful use of a handgun and possession of cannabis. Prior to his death in December 2006, when Brown entered Emory University Hospital, traces of cocaine were found in the singer's urine. His widow suggested Brown would "do crack" with a female acquaintance.
Theft and assault convictions
Brown's personal life was marred by several brushes with the law. At the age of 16, he was convicted of theft and served three years in juvenile prison. During a concert held at Club 15 in Macon, Georgia in 1963, while Otis Redding was performing alongside his former band Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, Brown reportedly tried to shoot his musical rival Joe Tex. The incident led to multiple people being shot and stabbed. Since Brown was still on parole at the time, he relied on his agent Clint Brantley "and a few thousand dollars to make the situation disappear". According to Jenkins, "seven people got shot", and after the shootout ended, a man appeared and gave "each one of the injured a hundred dollars apiece not to carry it no further and not to talk to the press". Brown was never charged for the incident.
On July 16, 1978, after performing at the Apollo, Brown was arrested for reportedly failing to turn in records from one of his radio stations after the station was forced to file for bankruptcy. Brown was arrested on April 3, 1988, for assault, and again in May 1988 on drug and weapons charges, and again on September 24, 1988, following a high-speed car chase on Interstate 20 near the Georgia–South Carolina state border. He was convicted of carrying an unlicensed pistol and assaulting a police officer, along with various drug-related and driving offenses. Although he was sentenced to six years in prison, he was eventually released on parole on February 27, 1991, after serving two years of his sentence. Brown's FBI file, released to The Washington Post in 2007 under the Freedom of Information Act, related Brown's claim that the high-speed chase did not occur as claimed by the police, and that local police shot at his car several times during an incident of police harassment and assaulted him after his arrest. Local authorities found no merit to Brown's accusations.
In 1998, a woman named Mary Simons accused Brown in a civil suit of holding her captive for three days, demanding oral sex and firing a gun in his office; Simons' charge was eventually dismissed. In another civil suit, filed by former background singer Lisa Rushton alleged that between 1994 and 1999, Brown allegedly demanded sexual favors and when refused, would cut off her pay and kept her offstage. She also claimed Brown would "place a hand on her buttocks and loudly told her in a crowded restaurant to not look or speak to any other man besides himself; Rushton eventually withdrew her lawsuit. In yet another civil suit, a woman named Lisa Agbalaya, who worked for Brown, said the singer would tell her he had "bull testicles", handed her a pair of zebra-print underwear, told her to wear them while he massaged her with oil, and fired her after she refused. A Los Angeles jury cleared the singer of sexual harassment but found him liable for wrongful termination.
The police were summoned to Brown's residence on July 3, 2000, after he was accused of charging at an electric company repairman with a steak knife when the repairman visited Brown's house to investigate a complaint about having no lights at the residence. In 2003, Brown was pardoned by the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services for past crimes that he was convicted of committing in South Carolina.
Domestic violence arrests
Brown was repeatedly arrested for domestic violence. Adrienne Rodriguez, his third wife, had him arrested four times between 1987 and 1995 on charges of assault. In one incident, Rodriguez reported to authorities that Brown beat her with an iron pipe and shot at her car. Rodriguez was hospitalized after the last assault in October 1995, but charges were dropped after she died in January 1996.
In January 2004, Brown was arrested in South Carolina on a domestic violence charge after Tomi Rae Hynie accused him of pushing her to the floor during an argument at their home, where she suffered scratches and bruises to her right arm and hip. Later that year in June 2004, Brown pleaded no contest to the domestic violence incident, but served no jail time. Instead, Brown was required to forfeit a US$1,087 bond as punishment.
Rape accusation
In January 2005, a woman named Jacque Hollander filed a lawsuit against James Brown, which stemmed from an alleged 1988 rape. When the case was initially heard before a judge in 2002, Hollander's claims against Brown were dismissed by the court as the limitations period for filing the suit had expired. Hollander claimed that stress from the alleged assault later caused her to contract Graves' disease, a thyroid condition. Hollander claimed that the incident took place in South Carolina while she was employed by Brown as a publicist. Hollander alleged that, during her ride in a van with Brown, Brown pulled over to the side of the road and sexually assaulted her while he threatened her with a shotgun. In her case against Brown, Hollander entered as evidence a DNA sample and a polygraph result, but the evidence was not considered due to the limitations defense. Hollander later attempted to bring her case before the Supreme Court, but nothing came of her complaint.
Legacy
Brown received awards and honors throughout his lifetime and after his death. In 1993 the City Council of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, conducted a poll of residents to choose a new name for the bridge that crossed the Yampa River on Shield Drive. The winning name, with 7,717 votes, was "James Brown Soul Center of the Universe Bridge". The bridge was officially dedicated in September 1993, and Brown appeared at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the event. A petition was started by local ranchers to return the name to "Stockbridge" for historical reasons, but they backed off after citizens defeated their efforts because of the popularity of Brown's name. Brown returned to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, on July 4, 2002, for an outdoor festival, performing with bands such as The String Cheese Incident.
During his long career, Brown received many prestigious music industry awards and honors. In 1983 he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Brown was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at its inaugural induction dinner in New York on January 23, 1986. At that time, the members of his original vocal group, The Famous Flames (Bobby Byrd, Johnny Terry, Bobby Bennett, and Lloyd Stallworth) were not inducted. However, on April 14, 2012, The Famous Flames were automatically and retroactively inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside Brown, without the need for nomination and voting, on the basis that they should have been inducted with him in 1986. On February 25, 1992, Brown was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 34th annual Grammy Awards. Exactly a year later, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 4th annual Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards. A ceremony was held for Brown on January 10, 1997, to honor him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
On June 15, 2000, Brown was honored as an inductee to the New York Songwriters Hall of Fame. On August 6, 2002, he was honored as the first BMI Urban Icon at the BMI Urban Awards. His BMI accolades include an impressive ten R&B Awards and six Pop Awards. On November 14, 2006, Brown was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, and he was one of several inductees to perform at the ceremony. In recognition of his accomplishments as an entertainer, Brown was a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors on December 7, 2003. In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked James Brown as No. 7 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In an article for Rolling Stone, critic Robert Christgau cited Brown as "the greatest musician of the rock era".
He appeared on the BET Awards June 24, 2003, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by Michael Jackson, and performed with him.
Brown was also honored in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia, for his philanthropy and civic activities. On November 20, 1993, Mayor Charles DeVaney of Augusta held a ceremony to dedicate a section of 9th Street between Broad and Twiggs Streets, renamed "James Brown Boulevard", in the entertainer's honor. On May 6, 2005, as a 72nd birthday present for Brown, the city of Augusta unveiled a life-sized bronze James Brown statue on Broad Street. The statue was to have been dedicated a year earlier, but the ceremony was put on hold because of a domestic abuse charge that Brown faced at the time. In 2005, Charles "Champ" Walker and the We Feel Good Committee went before the County commission and received approval to change Augusta's slogan to "We Feel Good". Afterward, officials renamed the city's civic center the James Brown Arena, and James Brown attended a ceremony for the unveiling of the namesake center on October 15, 2006.
On December 30, 2006, during the public memorial service at the James Brown Arena, Dr. Shirley A.R. Lewis, president of Paine College, a historically black college in Augusta, Georgia, bestowed posthumously upon Brown an honorary doctorate in recognition and honor of his many contributions to the school in its times of need. Brown had originally been scheduled to receive the honorary doctorate from Paine College during its May 2007 commencement.
During the 49th Annual Grammy Awards presentation on February 11, 2007, James Brown's famous cape was draped over a microphone by Danny Ray at the end of a montage in honor of notable people in the music industry who died during the previous year. Earlier that evening, Christina Aguilera delivered an impassioned performance of Brown's hit "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" followed by a standing ovation, while Chris Brown performed a dance routine in honor of James Brown.
On August 17, 2013, the official R&B Music Hall of Fame honored and inducted James Brown at a ceremony held at the Waetejen Auditorium at Cleveland State University.
ART THE BOX began in early 2015 as a collaboration between three organizations: the City of Augusta, the Downtown Development Authority and the Greater Augusta Arts Council. 19 local artists were selected by a committee to create art on 23 local traffic signal control cabinets (TSCCs). A competition was held to create the James Brown Tribute Box on the corner of James Brown Blvd. (9th Ave.) and Broad St. This box was designed and painted by local artist, Ms. Robbie Pitts Bellamy and has become a favorite photo opportunity to visitors and locals in Augusta, Georgia.
"I have a lot of musical heroes but I think James Brown is at the top of the list," remarked Public Enemy's Chuck D. "Absolutely the funkiest man on Earth ... In a black household, James Brown is part of the fabric – Motown, Stax, Atlantic and James Brown."
Tributes
As a tribute to James Brown, the Rolling Stones covered the song, "I'll Go Crazy" from Brown's Live at the Apollo album, during their 2007 European tour. Jimmy Page has remarked, "He [James Brown] was almost a musical genre in his own right and he changed and moved forward the whole time so people were able to learn from him."
On December 22, 2007, the first annual "Tribute Fit For the King of King Records" in honor of James Brown was held at the Madison Theater in Covington, Kentucky. The tribute, organized by Bootsy Collins, featured appearances by Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D of Public Enemy, The Soul Generals, Buckethead, Freekbass, Triage and many of Brown's surviving family members. Comedian Michael Coyer was the MC for the event. During the show, the mayor of Cincinnati proclaimed December 22 as James Brown Day.
As of 2019, a significant collection of James Brown clothing, memorabilia, and personal artifacts are on exhibit in downtown Augusta, Georgia at the Augusta History Museum.
Discography
Studio albums
Filmography
The T.A.M.I. Show (1964) (concert film)- with The Famous Flames
Ski Party (1965)- with The Famous Flames
James Brown: Man to Man (1968) (concert film)
The Phynx (1970)
Black Caesar (1973) (soundtrack only)
Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973) (soundtrack only)
Adiós Amigo (1976)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Doctor Detroit (1983)
Rocky IV (1985)
Miami Vice (1987)
James Brown: Live in East Berlin (1989)
The Simpsons (1993)
When We Were Kings (1996) (documentary)
Duckman (1997)
Soulmates (1997)
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
Holy Man (1998)
portrayed by Carlton Smith in Liberty Heights (1999)
Undercover Brother (2002)
The Tuxedo (2002)
The Hire: Beat The Devil (2002) (short film)
Paper Chasers (2003) (documentary)
Soul Survivor (2003) (documentary)
Sid Bernstein Presents ... (2005) (documentary)
Glastonbury (2006) (documentary)
Life on the Road with Mr. and Mrs. Brown (2007) (documentary; release pending)
Live at the Boston Garden: April 5, 1968 (2008) (concert film)
I Got The Feelin': James Brown in the '60s, three-DVD set featuring Live at the Boston Garden: April 5, 1968, Live at the Apollo '68, and the documentary The Night James Brown Saved Boston
Soul Power (2009) (documentary)
Get on Up (2014)
Biopics
James Brown: The Man, the Message, the Music (1992), the first biopic about James Brown
Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (2014), released in April 2014, written and directed by Alex Gibney, produced by Mick Jagger.
Get on Up (2014), released in theaters on August 1, 2014. Chadwick Boseman plays the role of James Brown in the film. Originally, Mick Jagger and Brian Grazer had begun producing a documentary film on Brown in 2013. A fiction film had been in the planning stages for many years and was revived when Jagger read the script by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth.
In other media
Games
In the video game World of Warcraft, the first boss character of the Forge of Souls dungeon is Bronjahm, "the Godfather of Souls". His quotes during the fight are musical references, and he has a chance of dropping an item called "Papa's Brand New Bag".
A different version of "I Got You", recorded in 1974, is playable in the rhythm video game Rock Band 3. In addition, "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine (Pt. 1)" is available for download across the series, while "Super Bad (Pts. 1 & 2)" was released later, only for the third game.
In the Worms Armaggedon and Worms World Party video games, many of James Brown's song titles are used in the "Soul Man" custom voice setting like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "Like a Sex Machine", clear references to James Brown.
Television
Appeared as Lou DeLong in the 1987 Miami Vice episode "Missing Hours".
As himself (voice) in the 1993 The Simpsons episode "Bart's Inner Child".
In 1991, James Brown did a Pay Per View Special with top celebrities such as Quincy Jones, Rick James, Dan Aykroyd, Gladys Knight, Denzel Washington, Mc Hammer and others attended or were opening acts. This was produced with boxing promoter Buddy Dallas. 15.5 million households tuned in at a cost $19.99.
Music
The songs "James Brown Is Dead" and "James Brown Is Still Alive" are all about reports on the iconic musician James Brown, and were released in 1991.
See also
Earl Tucker, a vaudeville performer whose dance moves appear on film
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