#Ragtag Theatre

[jehan-d-art]

I am very much not in denial, Aran and Tattoo are canon (to me) and even if they haven't gotten all that many scenes together in the last episode, I'll create more myself (aka I'll be writing about them some more) I'm working on two fics that are parts of fic fests (and they are due at the end of the year) so I don't know how fast I'll be in terms of turning all these ideas into actual ideas though I'll try to write at least a story or two (for now) ^^

planned fics (I'll keep adding to this if I get more ideas):

canonverse aka the promised 5+1 story

more canon compliant omegaverse (aka omega!Aran and alpha!Tattoo)

Hoy's attempt to get Aran and Tattoo together (while they are already dating and having the time of their lives watching Hoy trying again and again to play cupid)

whump aka Aran needing someone to sleep next to him or to be right by his side while he sleeps after the events of the last episode (more so than ever) and he tries to be sneaky about it but he ends up taking long naps at the hospital right by Tattoo's bedside because there, he feels as if his nightmares cannot get to him

Aran having a chat with everyone's local badass grandma (maybe omegaverse au as well, aka a chat between the leading omega of her very own ragtag pack and her newly adopted omega grandson, next to mostly alphas and a few betas)

teachers au: Aran is the art teacher while Tattoo is the science teacher at a high school (Toi Ting is obviously a student there while Jack and Joke are her dads). the entire school knows these two teachers cannot stand each other (and they really cannot stand each other, there is no secret relationship twist here) but they have to work together for a theatre project or something similar (because of Aran's keen eye for fashion and designs and because of Tattoo's craftsmanship) already posted fics (AUs are tagged as such)

Aran and Tattoo are living together, both of them have feelings about it (as well as feelings for each other) ; rating: M, words: 3k

Omegaverse: Tattoo walks in on Aran masturbating in the shower but that isn't the only surprise ; rating: E, words: 5,4k

[hotvintagepoll]

I am adoring all of these polls and gif sets and just being fed so many hot vintage people. As someone who really hasn’t watched very many classics, are there any movies you’d recommend for someone just starting to dip their toes in older media but unsure where to start?

Sure! I don't want to sway any voting, but I'll put an incomplete list of favorites that involve hot men not still in the bracket below the cut.

Something to note that applies to most of these old movies—older movies have different pacing than modern movies, so some of these might seem really slow or weird to start. There are also different ways of framing gender and agency, for better and for worse. I've italicized the ones that I think are the best for starting with, but go with whatever genre/aesthetic sounds best.

The Court Jester (Danny Kaye, Basil Rathbone)—a circus performer working for a quasi-Robin Hood infiltrates the royal court. Fun comedy that's incredibly accessible and still so light on its feet. Swordfighting, glamorous medieval costumes, court intrigues, and silly accents.

Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly)—fun polyamorous musical comedy. The dancing is incredible, but so is the sense of joy and camaraderie between Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. Genuinely captures the feeling of hanging out with your best friends. 1920s Hollywood, big movie studios, backstage drama, goofy hijinks.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone)—classic swashbuckler/romance. It could read a little slow to modern tastes but the action scenes are absolutely killer, as is the sentiment of seeing little guys pull down big capitalists evil monarchs. Swashbuckling, labor activists merry men hanging out in the woods, hot men in tights, social commentary swords, a Maid Marian who really holds her own and falls in love with the socialist

Charade (Cary Grant)—thriller/romantic comedy. Audrey Hepburn's husband dies and leaves her a hidden inheritance, and she's racing some skeevy characters to find it. A little bit scary but mostly charming and gorgeous, and you can find it high quality virtually anywhere because they fucked up the copyright trademark in the opening credits. Romance, murders, Paris, 1960s fashion, chases in the night.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Dick Van Dyke)—this movie is divisive for some reason—I personally like peace, love, and joy, so it makes the list. This is a James Bond movie if James Bond had two kids, lived in a windmill in the south of England, and was into cottagecore inventions more than martinis and racism. This is very much a kids' movie so go in with that expectation, but enjoy the gorgeous production design, the wonderfully silly performances, and Lionel Jeffries pulling out every stop as an insane old man. Dick Van Dyke has excellent DILF energy. Magical cars, big musical vibes, fun inventions, and romantic fantasy.

To Be Or Not To Be (Jack Benny)—comedy/drama. A ragtag Warsaw theatre troupe stands off against the Gestapo after the invasion of Poland. TW for Nazis, obviously, but overall this is a comedy with some heft, and kind of shocking to be this ballsy about fucking hating Hitler's guts in the 1940s. Hambone actors, Shakespeare, spies, 1930s gowns. It's been a minute since I watched it so I don't think there are any TWs here, but go forth with caution.

Witness for the Prosecution (Tyrone Power)—mystery/legal drama based off an Agatha Christie story. The performances are campy fun and the twist would be at home in something like Knives Out. Big dramatics, hambones, lots of talking, a bit of a mindbender.

The Lady Vanishes (Michael Redgrave)—mystery/suspense/romantic comedy. It's a little slow to start but roll with it—once the action moves to the train the pacing really picks up. This gets slotted as a thriller sometimes but it's much funnier and gentler than that. There's some period-typical snarkiness directed at anyone Foreign™ by some of the British characters; the British characters are also made fun of. Trains, British people, international shenanigans, mystery, and humor.

All About Eve (absolutely none of these hot men, lots of hot women though)—a legendary actress fights for her life against the rising star who supplants her. Big drama, big performances, lots of gasp! and dahling! and vicious little quips. New York, theatre pronounced theahhtah, drama queens and plotting.

The Philadelphia Story (James Stewart, Cary Grant)—talk-heavy comedy, lots of quick banter and period transatlantic accent fun. It's a bit shouty and conflict-heavy at times, but I don't think James or Cary have ever been hotter, and Katherine Hepburn is just wow. Very funny dialogue, relatable characters, incredibly hot across the board. There is one instance of a racial slur (not directed at anyone but still there) and one shove. Some people won't like the discussion of Hepburn's character's choices as a daughter and a wife. With all of these movies you'll see a a range of how female characters are presented and treated, and while some period movies fall hard for sexist tropes, I personally think the performances, direction, and subtext of many of these films actually prioritizes the experiences of the female characters and shows them as living, breathing people, even if they're not framed the way they would be today.

[devilsrecreation]

been thinking about the outlanders high school au again and how much i love the idiots' little friend group because they're such a ragtag bunch 😭 you've got a lunch table consisting of

beefy ny theatre kid

gamer nerd sweetheart

guy who's entire personality is how much he loves his girlfriend (she's welcome at the table anytime lol)

student therapist for the entire school (he just gives hugs to everyone)

silly guy (sorry i completely forgot what cheezi does- but i do wonder whether he'd be the type to make yt videos or something)

No bc you’re absolutely right. They’re the best

I think I’ve mentioned that Cheezi would also be a theatre kid cuz the thought of he and Tamka stealing the show is both wholesome and funny

Though I guess he’d also be kind of a wild card. Like he’s in a lot of different clubs: Theater, Art, Fashion (for some reason), Ceramics, even book club! Anything but clubs that require you to be smart like chess or science olympiad hfhfgf. He had a lot of free time lol

They’re also some of the nicest kids around who allow just about everyone to sit at their table. The person not in the group is always the smartest one there lmao

[tailschannel]

Here's a complete recap of everything featured in this year's Sonic Central presentation

New collaborations with LEGO, an upcoming Sonic Frontiers DLC update, and a first look at Part 2 of Sonic Prime were among the major highlights in this year's Sonic Central presentation.

Here's everything you need to know.

Sonic Frontiers

Details on the second major content update for Sonic Frontiers was revealed in the Sonic Central. Titled "Sonic's Birthday Bash", it's scheduled for a release on 23 June 2023.

Sonic's Birthday: Celebrate Sonic's birthday in Sonic Frontiers with a new birthday theme, including a festive HUD, environment objects, a new birthday skin, and more!

Open Zone Challenges: Explore the Open Zone with all new challanges scattered throughout.

Spindash: The iconic Sonic move makes a return in Sonic Frontiers!

New Kocos: Some Kocos seem to dawn new outfits and some do seem a bit bigger than usual.

New Game Plus.

Sonic Superstars

A new teaser was shown promoting the new Sonic Superstars and LEGO collaboration, featuring LEGO Eggman as a pre-order bonus.

Following the presentation, SEGA dropped new renders and descriptions for all the characters featured in the upcoming game.

Trip: Not much is known yet about Trip, the mysterious girl first encountered by Fang on the Northstar Islands. While a bit clumsy, Trip is heavily armored and has been enlisted by Fang and Dr. Eggman to protect and guide them around the wonders of this uncharted region.

Fang the Hunter (formerly Fang the Sniper): Fang is a springy jerboa that is light on his feet and is always looking for the next big score. A bounty hunter by trade, Fang the Hunter has been known by many different names over the years, likely due to his “WANTED” status with the authorities. Always trying to stay one step ahead, he’s constantly modifying and upgrading his primary mode of transportation, the Marvelous Queen.

You can check out the rest of the descriptions for Sonic, Amy, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman here.

The official Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube channel also uploaded a new 3-minute video featuring Superstars producer Naoto Ohshima and Sonic Studio creative officer Takashi Iizuka.

They "talk in-depth about Superstars, including inspirations, challenges, and what it's like to create a new character."

Sonic Symphony World Tour

Here are the official tour dates for the Sonic Symphony from 2023 to 2024:

Sept 16, 2023 - London, Barbican Hall

Sept 22, 2023 - Paris, Le Grand Rex

Sept 30, 2023 - Los Angeles, Dolby Theatre

Oct 14-15, 2023 - São Paulo, Brasil Game Show

Oct 21, 2023 - Boston, Emerson Colonial Theatre

Oct 28, 2023 - Chicago, Auditorium Theatre

Nov 17, 2023 - Düsseldorf, Mitsubishi Electric Halle

Dec 15, 2023 - San Antonio, Majestic Theatre

Dec 29, 2023 - Atlanta, Cobb Energy P.A.C.

Jan 05, 2024 - Seattle, Paramount Theatre

Jan 06, 2024 - San Francisco, Davies Symphony Hall

Jan 20, 2024 - Washington DC, Warner Theater

Jan 27, 2024 - Kansas City, Kansas City Music Hall

Feb 11, 2024 - Tokyo, LINE CUBE SHIBUYA

Feb 17, 2024 - Toronto, Meridian Hall

Mar 24, 2024 - Montreal, Wilfrid-Pelletier Theater

Mar 29, 2024 - Portland, Schnitzer Auditorium

For more information such as ticket pricing and availability, check out the above links.

Sonic Prime

A new extended clip of the upcoming second content drop of Sonic Prime was previewed. It's scheduled to make its debut on Netflix in 13 July.

With the help of his ragtag group of Shatterverse allies, Sonic battles the Chaos Council for control of the powerful Paradox Prism, one Shard at a time.

Sonic Dash and Speed Battle

A new Classic Super Sonic skin will be joining SEGA HARDlight's flagship titles Speed Battle and Dash soon.

Other things of note, as reported last week:

To coincide with the release of the 2nd season of Sonic Prime, characters from Prime will be playable in Dash, including Boscage Sonic, Rusty Rose, and Tails Nine.

Alongside the Prime characters, Super Silver and an all new Dragon Hunter Lancelot will make their debut in Dash and Speed Battle later this month.

San Diego Comic-Con 2023

With Comic-Con coming this summer, a new pop-up restaurant featuring the blue blur will open near the show floor.

More details will be announced in the weeks ahead.

Merchandise

New Death Egg Set from Jakks Pacific: Based on the Sonic 4 Episode 2 final boss, fight The Egg Heart in the new Death Egg set.

Streetwear brand Hypland announced their collaboration with Sonic the Hedgehog: The limited edition collection features an assortment of graphic tees and hoodies featuring Sonic and his friends meshed into contemporary streetwear designs.

S-Fire Sonic Statue: Pre-order the new Sonic & Shadow statue today with augmented reality compatibility.

Sonic has officially announced a collaboration with the popular shoe brand Crocs. As reported back in late May: it's available in adult and kids sizes, for $49.99 USD and $44.99 USD respectively. Besides the shoes themselves, Crocs will be offering Jibbitz charms. They will be coming in a pack of 5 with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Shadow, offered at $19.99 USD.

Other things of note: a Sonic-themed Playmate cooler from Igloo, a themed guitar from ESP Guitars, and Sonic and Shadow Cable Guy figures.

Sonic Origins Plus

With Origins Plus out, SEGA released a new launch trailer.

With more content than ever before, and a new premium physical version, Sonic Origins Plus is the definitive way to play 16 classic Sonic games in one timeless collection.

LEGO

SEGA officially previewed the Death Egg Robot set, now scheduled for a release in August.

As reported via a leak earlier this month, it contains a Sonic mini figure accompanied with his speed sphere mechanism and the launcher to it; and the Death Egg Robot piloted by Eggman, and Cubot.

Samba de Amigo: Party Central

As reported, the upcoming Samba De Amigo: Party Central will be featuring the world's famous hedgehog as a guest character.

The game will feature two iconic Sonic tunes, Escape From the City and Fist Bump, alongside the City Escape stage itself.

IDW Sonic the Hedgehog

Today's Central presentation made a brief mention of IDW Publishing's upcoming one-shot issue for the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series: Amy Rose's 30th Anniversary.

You can read more details in our report from earlier today.

Sonic Speed Simulator

Despite the developer's controversies, the officially-licenced Speed Simulator got a mention in the Central presentation.

Users can celebrate Sonic's birthday in style with the new Tuxedo Classic Sonic skin, out now.

Lastly...

TailsTube got a shoutout, and voice actor Mike Pollock dropped some fire bars in the LEGO collaboration video.

...and that's all! For news and updates anytime, be sure to follow @TailsChannel where you are on social media.

(Files contributed by the Tails' Channel Newsfeed.)

[annimator]

Visual representation of Team Chaosmos after Cameron brought them to a theatre to watch I Saw The TV Glow

(extra OC context under the cut because I always get carried away when talking about them)

• Team Chaosmos is 1 of the 3 OC groups that I created

• All 3 of my OC groups have one primary theme/motif, with Chaosmos being a ragtag gang of misfits, since everyone in the group comes from different ethnic & supernatural backgrounds

• Chaosmos has 12 members, & all of them are on the LGBTQ+ spectrum

• Cameron is trans & non-binary, watched ISTTVG prior to this, and after watching (and also getting completely astounded by) the movie, they decided, “yeah fuck it, imma show this to my besties & see how they react to all the queer metaphors”

• they did in fact have a reaction to all the queer metaphors. Oh my god this movie was so amazing, I can’t get its message out of my head

[vile-wizard]

Kay!!!! Dashes into here!!!! Does Kay have any original characters that he loves dearly I would LOVE to hear about them ✨💫💫 Or any current blorbos!! That would also be lovely hehe <33

This is a very difficult ask to answer because there's years of information to tell. I used to play a lot of TTRPGs and on top of making my player character I'd make their friends and enemies and parents and coworkers etc etc etc. I've got some old art of my old OCs floating around in my drawing posting tag. I've also mentioned Jethro here. I also have Tumblr blogs for a lot of them just sitting around gathering dust...

It's a little hard for me to think about Jethro now bc the campaign he was in fell apart but he's still my special little guy. Here are some drawings I did of him from HS, College and current (He's 27 but he acts like a grandpa. It doesn't help that he starts greying VERY early.) As you can see he liked horror films and theatre. Also he is Transgender. Just thought I should mention that.

His whole deal was that he's a Private Investigator looking for his Dad who went missing several years ago. His dad was a PI who did a bunch of dangerous magical cases (did I mention this is a magical world) and Jethro is trying desperately to follow in his footsteps. Jethro has questionable social skills but he watched a ton of movies growing up so he's molded himself after those old timey noire detectives.

At the start of the campaign Jethro is living in his dad's old office (don't worry there's a bathroom attachment). He's making some money taking financial and insurance fraud cases on a freelance basis and..... Well....here are my notes actually:

(His dad and mom were tragically separated before his birth and then his mom got sick but 12 year old Jethro used his burgeoning detective skills and the power of library internet access to find his dad and take a Greyhound bus him)

Anyway. In the campaign the town of Portage (and most of the world) is overrun by Magical Mutated Monsters called Slashers. No one knows how they form or what causes the mutations. There's a science research team looking into it but they keep going missing. Jethro's first task was to find out what happened to one of the missing researchers.

The game was kind of separated into arcs where Jethro and his ragtag team of misfit friends would fight a slasher all while trying to figure out the Truth behind what's going on. Jethro's character build (this game is Urban Shadows btw) is called The Sworn and it basically means he's a fighter for a kind of God. Because this is a horror game the God type thing that Jethro is affiliated with is called The Chorus the Angel of War, Justice, Revenge and Protection. It talks to him sparingly through other things. Fortunately I wrote a disco elysium style thing about Jethro's first interaction with it after his first fight with a Slasher:

Anyway, he starts hearing Voices and despite his Catholic upbringing he's still more than a little freaked by it especially since they're telling him to avenge the dead and stuff. There are more gods in the same and I made a Pinterest for them here. Jethro questions his sanity, humanity and has general existential dread about the whole thing. It's kinda an issue for him because he ALSO experiences hallucinations due to his poor life choices. He self medicates with a variety of sleeping pills throughout the game, something that his friends can't really do anything about because they've all got their own traumas (horror game).

Sorry there's a lot of stuff here and I'm getting ahead of myself. Uhhh personality wise Jethro is very altruistic and sometimes stupidly kind but he also has a deep rooted hero complex. He keeps things to himself and wants to handle matters on his own, which causes a lot of issues.

TLDR; I have so so so so many original characters and there's too much to say. I'm also running out of time to write this because I have a stupid timer on to limit my Tumblr usage lmao BUT YEAH. There's so much thanks for asking

[sweetdreamsjeff]

The Rebel: Patti Smith

--I bring Tim Buckley's unreleased demo of the old folk tune ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ for Patti, and she talks about how the singer/songwriter was a favourite of Robert Mapplethorpe’s back in the early Brooklyn days, and chuckles when she recalls how she and her first partner in artistic crime would neck like high school kids to the Goodbye And Hello album. She was delighted when Jeff Buckley stopped by the recording sessions and added a high, ghostly vocal part to ‘Beneath The Southern Cross’, and even more delighted when he raced home and returned to the studio with an essrage, an Egyptian instrument he used to texture the track ‘Fireflies’.--

---

Ben Edmonds, MOJO, August 1996

To R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, she is "one of the premier artists of my lifetime – I’ve blindly stolen from her for years." To Bob Dylan, she is "still the best, you know." She is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s true originals, and on her return to the fray after eight years of joy and tragedy lived out of the public eye, Patti Smith grants Ben Edmonds the most revealing interview of her career.

PATTI SMITH IS IN FULL SWAGGER, WORKING THE ROXY Theatre stage in LA with relaxed authority. She takes the stage alone, wearing a shapeless warm-up jacket with hood tightly framing her face, to deliver a fiery reading of ‘Piss Factory’. With each succeeding song she adds band members until her musical complement is complete. Left-hand man Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty are Patti Smith Group confederates, while bassist Tony Shanahan has played with Kaye and John Cale (and backed Patti on some solo dates last autumn). This core trio is augmented by Patti’s 23-year-old poetry protege Oliver Ray on rhythm guitar and — seated stage left behind impenetrable shades and cradling his guitar like some old CBGB's bluesman — Tom Verlaine.

Smith has a couple of wild cards up her sleeve as well. She introduces Bob Neuwirth as "the person who encouraged me to sing and gave me my first start," after the legendary personage – Bob Dylan road companion, Jim Morrison babysitter, painter, filmmaker, composer of ‘Mercedes Benz’ for Janis Joplin – has sung a typically wonderful song called ‘I Don't Think Of Her’. "Bobby has a new CD out [Look Up on Watermelon Records] on which I appear," Patti announces. "It's available almost nowhere."

Her son Jackson, 13, appears plugged in and joins the troupe for a romp through – are you ready? – ‘Smoke On The Water’. Jack and guitar stand nose to nose with the amp, noodling noisily as Lenny Kaye sings Deep Purple's stirring lament for the tragic death by fire of recording equipment. Mom makes the most of her vocal cameo, belting out "Fire in the sky-eee" in the most godawful screech you've ever heard. It's a small glimpse of what the future might have held had Patti chosen to become the singer of Blue Oyster Cult (for whom she wrote songs) instead of setting off on her crusade to save the soul of rock'n'roll with The Patti Smith Group.

The band has a homemade, slightly ragtag quality that reminds this audience member of nothing so much as the earliest Patti Smith Group when it consisted of Patti, Lenny and Richard Sohl. That trio "toured" California in 1974 to "promote" ‘Piss Factory’, and you felt like you were watching something invent itself right before your eves. This mini "tour" follows almost exactly the same path, and once again you feel like you're watching something in the exhilarating process of becoming.

They attack a fair number of familiar songs – ‘Ghost Dance’, ‘Rock'N'Roll Nigger’, ‘Dancing Barefoot’ (although, curiously, nothing from Dream Of Life) – with gusto. The 10 shows opening for Bob Dylan last winter seem to have jump-started this aggregation's chemistry, and they're now also capable of moments of transcendence that rival anything Patti's bands have attained in the past. ‘About A Boy’, her meditation on the loss of Kurt Cobain, has grown from humble acoustic beginnings into an oceanic noisefield than tonight is staggering. And their ‘Wicked Messenger’ ranks with the great rock rearrangements of Dylan songs. It's a treat that such a thing remains possible in 1996.

The small acoustic shows and guest spots she's done sporadically over the past year have been tentative in tone and occasionally awkward. She is not – nor does she have the slightest inclination to be – the punk tornado who ripped through this room 20 years ago, when the Roxy was LA's premier showcase club, hosting legendary engagements by Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Marley, and live recordings by Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, Warren Zevon and others. But she has certainly regained every bit of the belief that the space is hers to command.

The sold-out house is evenly divided between the older soldiers who served in the rock revolution Patti Smith heralded in the early '70s and those who wish they could have been there, having heard their own heroes like Michael Stipe say that were it not for Patti Smith he wouldn't exist. The R.E.M. singer has been all over MTV News this week, quoted as saying that Patti's show at the Wiltern Theatre a few days earlier had been not simply the greatest concert he'd ever seen, but one of the greatest emotional experiences of his life. *

THE PATTI SMITH RESUME: ARRIVED IN NEW YORK FROM New Jersey in 1967 and wrote herself a new identity in concert with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe; wrote plays like Cowboy Mouth with Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard one line at a time, pushing a battered typewriter back and forth across a Chelsea Hotel tabletop in a game of attitude chess; published small press volumes of hallucinogenic verse inhabited by James Joyce, Johnny Ace, Jesus Christ, Harry Houdini, Joan of Arc, James Brown, Georgia O'Keefe, the Paragons and the Jesters, Picasso and Rimbaud and Bob Dylan's dog; wrote poems, profiles and record review reveries for Creem and Rolling Stone; put her big ideas into embryonic practice at her Rock'N'Rimbaud readings accompanied by guitarist Lenny Kaye at St Mark's Church, New York's new poetry nirvana; released ‘Piss Factory’ b/w ‘Hey Joe’ in 1974 on their own Mer Records, now regarded as one of the first shots fired in the punk/indie revolt (though at the time it was a shot barely heard in the next block); released in 1975 a debut album Horses, a parable in spoken word and song for the declaration of self that adolescents itchy to slip their skins will probably respond to for generations to come; sounded a clarion call with her amped-to-the-teeth Patti Smith Group that has been answered only in part by punk rockers, alterna-nerds and riot grrrls; fell from a Tampa, Florida stage in 1977 to a concrete floor 14 feet below, breaking her neck; came out of traction and back into action with ‘Because The Night’, a hit single co-written with Bruce Springsteen, yet always gave equal time to noisy improvisational epics like ‘Radio Ethiopia’ that were unplayable on any radio format (and guaranteed to scare the living piss out of anyone attracted by her Brucie ballad); announced her retirement from public life in the shadow of her biggest-selling album (Wave); and immediately following her biggest concert ever (85,000 in an Italian football stadium on September 10, 1979) quietly married former MC5 guitarist Fred 'Sonic' Smith in 1980, and moved to an unassuming Detroit suburb to raise a family. In the next decade she raised her head above the parapet only once, with her 1988 album Dream Of Life.

Since 1990, Patti has suffered the loss of four of her closest comrades. Her best friend Robert Mapplethorpe was claimed by AIDS. Her piano player (and, after Lenny Kaye, longest-serving musical ally) Richard Sohl succumbed to heart failure. Then in late '94 her husband, soulmate, and hero of so many of her best songs (‘Because The Night’, ‘Frederick’, ‘Dream Of Life’), Fred 'Sonic' Smith, suddenly passed away, a shock compounded by the death of her brother and crew manager Todd Smith only a month later.

The release of a new album, Gone Again, and a limited return to live performance is part of a plan she and Fred had mapped out before his untimely passing. Yet there's no denying that these activities have now become, at least in part, a memorial to all her fallen comrades. This mission was launched in earnest last December when, at the personal invitation of Bob Dylan, she opened 10 of his shows on the East Coast, a pairing he dubbed The Paradise Lost Tour.

"A lot of girls have come along since Patti started," Dylan told a Boston audience the first of many times they duetted on his song ‘Dark Eyes’. "But Patti's still the best, you know." Then he kissed her. *

DRIVING TO PATTI'S HOUSE, I WAS THINKING ABOUT something she had told me recently. The subject was her desire to play only those places where she'd been treated well. I wondered, then, what places this might disqualify.

"Detroit," she said without hesitation. "They've never been that supportive of our work. I don't think Fred got the support from the music community that he was entitled to. The radio stations knew who he was and what he'd done, and they should've tipped their hat to him. I guess I feel somewhat bitter about that. Not for me. I don't care; but it hurt Fred deeply."

Patti will soon be moving back to New York. This move is not unexpected. Detroit was where she came to make her life with Fred. It was his town, his family, his roots, and there's probably no place she can turn here and not be confronted by a reminder of her late husband.

This has got to be especially true of their home, which they bought, furnished, and within which they created a family. Patti and Fred even saved it together, sandbagging the place when torrential rains and a rising lake very nearly flooded them out. Because the family was so reclusive, all sorts of rumours circulated about their domestic refuge. One had them living in a sumptuous lakefront estate, another pictured them in utter sub urban tract home anonymity. Neither turns out to be accurate.

They're not on the lake, though they could most certainly see it if there weren't so many other houses in the way. They live in a normal middle-class neighbourhood where many of the smallish homes sport obvious additions to accommodate expanding families, resulting in houses that are a little too big for their modest plots but never quite big enough to contain all the kids' stuff which litters the porches and short driveways. Yet there's no doubting which is the Smith residence. It's easy to spot, being the only castle on the block. A small castle, to be sure, really no bigger than most of the surrounding homes, but a towered and turreted castle all the same.

Seen from the insight, the tower contains the winding staircase that leads to the upper floor. The house is sparsely though comfortably furnished, in casual boho. The usual family stuff is posted on the fridge and scattered about; handmade birthday and Mother's Day cards, postcards, school meeting notices. If it weren't for the guitars and amplifiers in the living room, you'd never know this was the lair of musicians. Where you might expect to find a portrait of some revered family elder hangs a picture of honorary uncle Allen Ginsberg.

Once past the idea of amps in the living room, the closest we get to rock'n'roll excess is an extravagant selection of teas. Oliver Ray brews some camomile for Patti, whose stomach is acting up.

At 48, Patti Smith's hair is unashamedly lashed with gray and worn in simple braids. Her interview demeanour is pretty much as it's always been. She considers each query carefully and answers at length, not looking at her interviewer but staring at some private point beyond the opposite wall, a safe place she always returns to. Though Patti is never at a loss for a forcefully expressed thought or opinion, whenever the conversation touches on her late husband – which is frequently – her voice falters and she has to bear down hard on her words to get them out.

I bring Tim Buckley's unreleased demo of the old folk tune ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ for Patti, and she talks about how the singer/songwriter was a favourite of Robert Mapplethorpe’s back in the early Brooklyn days, and chuckles when she recalls how she and her first partner in artistic crime would neck like high school kids to the Goodbye And Hello album. She was delighted when Jeff Buckley stopped by the recording sessions and added a high, ghostly vocal part to ‘Beneath The Southern Cross’, and even more delighted when he raced home and returned to the studio with an essrage, an Egyptian instrument he used to texture the track ‘Fireflies’.

You find yourself wanting to somehow crack the fog and get her to smile. During the second of our two interviews, conducted at her Michigan home, it is her eight-year-old daughter who unintentionally provides the cue. Patti is expounding on the divine bliss of parenthood when Jesse, who's been yakking to a friend in the other room, suddenly calls out, "Mommy, can I have a cellular phone?"

"No," Patti immediately shoots back, rolling her eyes at the cosmic timing of this interruption, and then dissolving into the best laugh I'd heard from her in a very long time.

In the words of one of those Irish poets, "the healing has begun." *

This album is unique for you in that it has so many solo songwriting credits.

Fred was giving me guitar lessons. He had taught me some chords, basically so I could write songs. We studied song structure and things I didn't know a whole lot about. He taught me enough on the guitar that, after a lot of practice, I could write simple songs. When he passed away...I just…um… I used to spend a lot of time by myself at night with the acoustic guitar just making up little songs. A lot of the songs on the record – ‘Farewell Reel’, ‘About A Boy’, ‘Raven’, ‘Dead To The World’, ‘Wing’ – were written that way late at night. They're all in waltz-time, 3/4, which is the only time signature we worked on so it's the only one I know.

The version of ‘About A Boy’ you played at the Roxy is already far beyond the album version.

That song has really grown in performance. It's the closest thing to anarchy – controlled anarchy – that we have right now, because we let the song completely open up at the end. I always like having a piece where everyone goes out but then returns. That was the beauty of John Coltrane, and what separated him from the noisemakers and indulgent jerk-offs. He would go out there and stay out there as long as he could, but he always returned. That's what we strive for.

When Kurt Cobain took his life, Fred and I were extremely disturbed about that. Both of us liked his work. We thought it was good for young people. I was happy that there was a new band I could relate to, and looked forward to watching them grow. He had a future. As parents, we were deeply disturbed to see this young boy take his own life. The waste, and the emotional debris he left for others to clean up.

I was also concerned how it would affect young people who looked up to him, or looked to him for answers. I guess that's the danger of looking to anyone else for answers, but I perceived that he had a responsibility. To himself, to the origin of his gifts, to his family, to the younger generation.

So I wrote the song for two reasons. One was as a well wish, even after what he did, that his continuing journey be beautiful. But it was also written with a certain amount of bitterness. The chorus says "About a boy/beyond it all." One way of looking at it is that he's beyond this particular plane of existence. But it's also a wry statement, a frustrated refrain. It relates to my sorrow for the various boys we've lost. Whether it be Jim Morrison or Brian Jones; any of these young, gifted, driven people who do feel they're beyond it all, that they can completely ravage and ruin their bodies or have no sense of responsibility to their position and their gifts. We all were pioneering some kind of freedom, but I don't think what's been done with it is all that constructive.

When you were that age how did you deal with those feelings?

All young people feel sometimes that they can't take it, that they'd rather die than get up out of bed. But there was always something that reminded me, it could be anything. The handiwork of man. I could be feeling totally desolate and then look at a beautiful prayer rug or a Picasso, and that would be enough to make me want to live. That's what other people's work did for me. When I say that The Rolling Stones got me through this, or Bob Dylan got me through that, they did. That in itself is a motivation for working. The act of creation is a beautiful thing. That belongs to the artist; he's got that moment of illumination, when a kernel of an idea erupts and blooms. But after he creates it, it ceases to be his. It's really for other people.

What brought you back to New York to record?

I love Electric Lady, which is where we cut Horses; it's intimate but highly developed. It's right on 8th Street, so you can walk out at three in the morning and there are people on the streets. It's a good energy. I don't require privacy and silence when I'm recording. It's the first recording studio I was ever in. The first time I ever went there was also the first rock'n'roll party I'd ever been to. Jane Friedman invited me to this party for Jimi Hendrix because he'd just opened the studio up. I was so excited because I'd never been in a recording studio before. But when I got there I was too nervous to go in, so I sat on the steps. Then Jimi came up the stairs. He was incredibly beautiful; tall, very... he was Jimi Hendrix, y'know? A great-looking man. But really shy. He came up the stairs and I was sitting there so he sat down next to me and just talked. He asked me why I wasn't going down and I told him I was too nervous. He said, "Me too, I'm too nervous to stay." Then he told me some of the things about the studio, and how he wanted to work on a more global kind of music. He said that he was going to London, but that when he came back he was gonna go up to Woodstock with new musicians and then bring them into Electric Lady to record. But of course he never came back from London... That was a great moment for me. So when Robert Mapplethorpe gave us money to do ‘Piss Factory’, even though it was not much money I had to go to Electric Lady.

The equipment has been updated, but it's got a lot of the same things – the late '60s psychedelic paintings and bad murals of Jimi Hendrix playing right-handed. It didn't really occur to me how cyclic it was until I was in the middle of it. I was standing by myself in the hallway looking at those murals, when I remembered standing in that same spot in 1975 and Robert Mapplethorpe taking a picture of me and John Cale. Lenny came out and stood next to me and said, "Amazing, isn't it?" It was like he could feel what I was feeling. The first time we were back in the studio, just hearing those Lenny guitar tones and Jay on the drums, it was so... from the subconscious. It triggered so many memories.

How was this one as a recording experience?

This album was both joyous and heartbreaking to do. We were 80 per cent done with the record and I had to stop. I couldn't take it any more because... I just really missed Fred. It was so difficult, and I was so emotionally depleted. So we stopped for a while. When we did that little mini-tour with Bob Dylan I was supposed to be finishing the record, but I still couldn't face it. But I got a lot of energy and positive feelings from the Dylan experience, and then we went in and completed the album. Those dates gave me my confidence back.

Do you know what made Bob reach out to you?

What I gleaned from Bob is that he felt it would be good for me to come back out, that he thought people should see me. I wouldn't presume to speak for him, but he has been so highly influential that he knows probably what it tasted like to be influential and then get shuffled around somewhere. I guess he felt I could use some encouragement.

We weren't prepared, but I wanted to do it so badly that we prepared ourselves practically on stage. I think we had about five hours of rehearsal. But all of us had pretty much played together, and we all pooled the things we could do. The first night was pretty shaky, but after that I felt like I was back in familiar territory. My mission on that small tour was to crack all the energy, crack the atmosphere and set the stage for him, to get the night as magic as possible, so that when he hit the stage – 'cos he hits a lot of them – that maybe it would feel a little more special. I think we did a pretty good job and I know that he was happy.

Had you been in touch with him over the years?

No, not really. I met him back in the '70s, before we even had a record deal. It was at the Other End on Bleecker Street in the Village. I was told he was in the audience, so I made a few obscure references that I knew the crowd wouldn't get, but would let him know that I knew he was there. It was kinda presumptuous, but that's the way I was then. I was thrilled that he was there, but I wasn't gonna let him know it. When he came backstage I was kinda snotty. "Any poets around here?" he said, so I said I wasn't into poetry anymore – Poetry sucks. Can you believe I said that? But he was very gracious, and even put his arm around me to have our picture taken. The next week it was in the Soho Weekly News, right on the cover, and seeing that was definitely one of my best moments ever. But it also made me kinda sad, 'cos I knew I hadn't treated him well and I felt like I'd kinda blown it, y'know?

A little while later, I was on 4th Street and I saw him walking toward me. I tried to shrink but he saw me anyway. And he was really nice. He pulled out that picture and said, "Who are these two people? Do you know them?" And he gave me this beautiful smile, just to let me know it was all right. So he's been incredibly generous and understanding toward me from the very beginning.

I've admired Bob Dylan since I was 15 years old; he's been an important part of my life for two-thirds of it now. So to have someone like that give you encouragement is... beyond words. [On the tour] we sang ‘Dark Eyes’ almost every night, and singing with him was just like being in heaven. I was so happy. I kept thinking…sometimes it made me think of Fred, because Fred really liked and admired Bob too. He often said that there were only two people that would be able to pull him out of his self-imposed retirement, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. He'd say, "Now if Keith or Bob call and want me to play with 'em, I might have to come out." So how could I not answer the call? It was a great experience.

Do you still regard Bob with a fan's awe?

Meeting him again, I can't say I'm in awe of him. The way I relate to him at this point in my life is that he's a man that has a fine presence, a very noble presence. He's an extremely attractive man. When I talk to him I still feel sort of like a schoolgirl, but also like a friend and a colleague.

After Fred passed away, the record I most listened to for solace was Bob's album World Gone Wrong, which is all those great old blues and other songs from the trove of his knowledge. I listened to that almost continuously. Once again he helped me through a difficult time with his music. And then to have him reach out to me as a human being... I'll be forever grateful.

And this gave you the confidence to finish the record.

We'd pretty much recorded everything; most of the vocals on the record are the live vocals. It was just a question of pulling all the threads together and presenting the record. But I just... I just needed time to think about everything. We had pretty much everything cut except the title track ‘Gone Again’, which we did right before we came out here. That was Fred's last music and...um...I just wasn't able to...write the lyrics. And finally I…I marshalled my energies and did it. Lenny had a lot to do with making certain ‘Summer Cannibals’ and ‘Gone Again’ came to light. We had a lot of cassette tapes with Fred playing acoustic guitar or chanting or giving some direction...to me, 'cos he often made tapes like that so I could write lyrics. Lenny had to lovingly piece those songs together.

So many people haven't yet discovered Dream Of Life, which I think is your best album after Horses. People are going to be discovering that album for years.

I hope so, because it's the only real document we have of Fred's range, though it's still only a partial account. It's pretty much his album; I look at Dream Of Life as his gift to me. He wrote all the music, arranged everything, a lot of the song titles, the album title, the concept of the songs, especially ‘People Have The Power’, were all Fred's. I told him we should call it by both our names but he wouldn't. But he had promised me that on this album he would sing on it and we'd put both our names on it. So I was really looking forward... I thought this was going to be a great album because people would see his face, hear him sing, and he was getting interested in performing live again. But...ah...it didn't happen. Which has been the heartbreaking part of making this album for me.

There was one thing released under both your names: the atmospheric piece ‘It Takes Time’ that you did for the Wim Wenders film Until The End Of The World in 1990.

Thank you for remembering that one! I love to hear it, because Fred's reciting poetry. Again, that's almost entirely his piece. Not only did he write the music and some of the poetry, he actually dictated how he wanted me to read my parts. Oh yeah, we had some friction, some healthy friction, in the recording of that song. He was the suggester in the family. He was clearly the boss, although he liked to pretend that he wasn't...

How did you first meet him?

It was March 9, 1976, and we met in front of the radiator at that hot dog place, Lafayette Coney Island, in Detroit. The Sonic Rendezvous Band was opening for us, but I didn't know anything about him. Lenny introduced me to this guy. I heard that his name is Smith, and my name is Smith. We just looked at each other and I was completely taken by him. I had no idea who he was or anything about him until afterwards when Lenny told me. Lenny introduced me to him and said, "He's one of the great guitar players." I said, Perhaps you'll want to play with us tonight. And he said, "Maybe so." Then he left and I asked Lenny if he was really any good, and Lenny said, "The best". So I was playing with him that night, and I had a lot of bravado in those days. I didn't have respect for anybody. But I totally submitted to his reign. He came on the stage and started playing, and after a while I just set my guitar down and let it feed back. I just let him take over because I felt that I had met my match, that I had met the better man.

As I understand it, the original plan you'd developed with Fred called for you to begin re-emerging now anyway.

Yes. This would've happened. It was according to plan. A couple of years after Dream Of Life, Fred wanted us to go out with just a percussionist, Richard Sohl, him and I. It would have been more spoken art, more poetry with them doing interpretive things behind me. Fred really wanted to do that, but then Richard died suddenly. It really broke his heart, 'cos Fred was really close to Richard. So we withdrew from that idea.

Then, after a time he really felt it was time for me to walk back on stage. In his own way he had a somewhat competitive nature, and he was watching how the arena of female artists has really widened. The girls have done a great job. Now, I don't consider myself a female artist – I'm just an artist – but Fred had that bit of competitiveness. He wanted me to take a stand, I think. I actually was the one who was reticent. He felt it in me before I did.

We were gonna do pretty much what we're doing now: do a record, do dates in the summer, do things when we could. But he was... actually (her voice slows down)... looking forward to…that. So…

Are any of the songs from that period on this new album?

Two. I didn't do a lot of them, just because I couldn't. It was just too painful. Even doing those two... They're two rock songs. Fred really wanted me to do rock songs again. For all the knowledge and sophistication that Fred had acquired over the years as a musician, he always said there was always room for one more great rock song, and he never stopped trying to write it. It's just so happened to work out that the pivotal rock songs on the album are the two that Fred and I wrote together.

It's funny, but I really always wanted him to go back out. I would've been happy staying at home taking care of the kids. I really wanted the world to see him. I really loved his work, and I do regret that people didn't get to see his full range. But he was his own man, he did what he wanted. He wasn't a guy trapped in a family situation. He wanted a family deeply, and he committed himself to his family... to a fault, I think. He was a great father.

One of the main reasons that I'm able to feel no guilt, nothing but pride when I'm performing, is that I know he wanted me to do it. I never regretted my decision to stop performing. I spent the '80s studying and writing, and becoming a far more facile writer. I learned quite a bit about everything from sports to cooking, whatever I needed to learn at any given moment. And I really treasure those years. I didn't yearn for or regret the past. I didn't even think about it. I was too wrapped up in our present.

What I often did was to wake up early and write from five to seven or eight when the kids got up. I always allowed myself a time, and continued the work ethic that I had developed with Robert Mapplethorpe. No matter what was happening, even when we were sick, Robert and I always worked. Every day. It was sort of a pact we made, and I've kept to that.

I've learned that I don't need to smoke pot all night and then at three in the morning write my poem. I had to learn a whole different system of creation. If I have from five to seven to do my work, then that's when I'll do it. I've completely grasped the fact that it comes from within me, and I take it wherever I go. Whether I'm in a prison in French Guyana or in my laundry room. You don't have to be the victim of inspiration. I learned a lot of things from Fred...

The recent Mapplethorpe biography painted you as a prisoner of Fred's tyrannical whims.

Oh, please... I made a decision about the kind of life I wanted to live. I made it, and I have never even once – never! – regretted making it. I mean, I missed my friends, I missed the camaraderie of the band, I missed certain things. Even though sometimes it was difficult, to me it was a privilege to be with him. I only regret that he's gone. I don't regret nothing else.

It was a treat to see Bob Neuwirth at your Roxy show.

I met Bobby around 1969 at the Chelsea Hotel. I was still kinda hoping to be a painter at that time, but it was beginning to become clear to me that it wasn't my beat and so I was writing quite a bit. I was in the lobby of the Chelsea and I had a notebook. "Hey poet," I remember him saying. "Well, you look like a poet. Do you write like one?" Defiant, very challenging. I thought, Whoah, Bob Neuwirth! He was in Don't Look Back. That's his leg on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited! So I gave him my notebook, and he read it and actually thought about it. He took me under his wing. He was a bit older than me, and really like a brother. He was very kind to me, but tough too. He taught me a lot, and helped me start to develop some sense of myself as a writer. At the same time he introduced me to a world that I hadn't been privy to. He introduced me to all kinds of people – Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead – and introduced me in a way that they treated me respectfully.

After that I met Sam Shepard and he was the same way. He really felt that I was a good writer. He encouraged me to the point of conceit, nearly. He really made me feel good about myself, and made it seem important that I keep writing. He and Bobby did a lot to instill in me not only the desire to keep writing, but they made me feel that I was a writer. That's an important step. I had always felt different from other people, a misfit and an alien, but I never really gleaned myself as being special. Other people seemed to pull it out of me, whether it was Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard or Bobby Neuwirth. I've been very lucky in my life to have people perceive something in me that I didn't always perceive in myself.

When I called your hotel in San Francisco, you were out and they told me that Todd Rundgren had come by with his kids to pick up yours. That seemed like another nice full circle.

Yes. He was very important to me in those early New York days too. I think it was Bobby Neuwirth who introduced me to Todd. And Todd had been so good to Jackson. He let Jack play this beautiful Gibson of his on stage, and then let him take it on the rest of the tour. Todd's another person who really encouraged me. Todd actually thought I had a future as a comedian. I did too.

You mean we almost had Patti Lee Smith in stand-up comedy?

I had that daydream for years. I used to pretend that I went on the Johnny Carson show. He really liked me, and then he got sick and asked me to take over the show until he got better. And I did so well that when Johnny retired he gave me his show. It was one of my favourite daydreams. I still make use of my Johnny Carson studies, as you've probably realised. All the sparring I do, being able to take what hecklers dish out and one-up them, is from years of studying Johnny.

I wasn't really a '60s person. I had lived a fairly sheltered life in South Jersey. I came to New York in 1967, but I lived with Robert Mapplethorpe in Brooklyn. I spent that time working to be an artist or supporting Robert, and I really didn't go through all those '60s changes. I wasn't really involved in the political scene. I was frightened by the '60s, really. The masses of people and all the assassinations and the drug culture and the war in Vietnam...I found all of this overwhelming.

The one positive thing is that I did get a sense of the collective, that there was some sort of unspoken unity thing happening. Even though I was chronologically the same age, I felt younger because I was a bit behind. So I observed it from a slightly different perspective. What I like about it was how it produced its own networking tools, whether publications like Crawdaddy, Creem and Rolling Stone, or underground radio. Number one, of course, was the music itself, which was something new. Generations before us went wild over Benny Goodman or Frank Sinatra, but they didn't necessarily say anything. But our music was in concert with who we were.

So I did learn some good lessons from the '60s. I looked at the best of it, and what I thought would happen is that the '70s would come along and be even better. But then what I saw was the people losing interest, becoming more self-oriented, and I was very concerned. I was sort of disappointed with my own people. I didn't like what I saw, and that inspired me to do the kind of work that I did.

I understand it was Lenny and your brother Todd who helped you through the desolate time after Fred passed away.

Between Lenny and my brother, they wouldn't let me get too deep down. The minute Fred passed away, my brother got on a plane and came out. He devoted the rest of his life – which only turned out to be one month – to getting me back on my feet. Todd was one of those workaholic types who work around the clock and never take vacations, but he left work immediately and came and stayed with me.

Then at Thanksgiving we all went back to my parents', and I was having an extremely difficult time. We always went back to New Jersey for Thanksgiving, and this was the first time without Fred in 16 years. I could hardly even rise in the morning. So Toddie came in and said, "C'mon babe, get dressed," and he made me get in the car. He rolled down the windows – he actually had a car where you had to roll down the windows! –and put on a cassette of the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. Our song ‘Rock'n'Roll Nigger’ is on that, and he turned it up as loud as he could get it, and we drove around to all our old hangouts and the places we used to play when we were kids.

Todd really loved that song, and he played it over and over, singing at the top of his lungs. He was going, "You're gonna be all right. You're gonna get back to work. Fred wanted you to and you're gonna do it and I'm gonna help you do it. Even if I have to quit my job to go on the road with ya, we're gonna pull everything up." He was so full of energy and love and enthusiasm that he made it difficult to disbelieve him. I wasn't familiar with that soundtrack, and he said, "There's another little song on it you'll like." So we parked in front of Hoedown Hall and Thomas's Field where we used to play, and this song came on. It was Bob Dylan singing "See the pyramids along the Nile..." [‘You Belong To Me’]. Fred used to sing that song to me, and I sat there and cried listening to Bob sing it. We had been talking about Dylan and how great he was; again, Toddie would have loved being a part of that tour.

We talked and talked, and he stayed for another couple of days. He wouldn't let me not feel good; it was his mission. He said, "We're gonna spend Christmas together and we're gonna get back on our feet." Todd went back to Virginia, and right after that he suffered a stroke and passed away. Which isn't at all uncommon on my side of the family. It was really terrible, but after the shock of losing him I found that he had made me feel so good, and had brought up my spirits so much, that I made a decision. Since his last mission in life had been to get me feeling good, I wasn't going to have his mission be in vain. So even now when I feel... you know... I just think about that.

You have to let your loved ones go, even as you cherish their spirit as you move forward. Which is difficult, but very important. Then, because of the kind of person I am, I also feel it is my mission to do something in their honour. Like I keep working and collaborating with Robert. [The Coral Sea, her tribute to Mapplethorpe featuring many of his photographs, will soon be published by W.W. Norton.] I have many things to do for Fred, not only in terms of work but of course the lifelong mission of watching over our children. With my brother, my mission is to feel good, be happy and do my work. So in those ways…as deeply as I miss all of their earthly presences, they're still around. Very much around.

"Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" is a line that will forever be associated with you. How do you view it now?

I wrote that line when I was 20 years old. A lot of people misinterpreted it as the statement of an atheist, somebody who doesn't believe in anything. I happen to believe in Jesus. I never said he didn't exist. I only said that I didn't want him to take responsibility for my actions. Because I was young, I perceived myself as an artist, and the artist as a sort of cerebral criminal. I wanted the freedom to pursue all the things I imagined. Things within my art, not in life. In my art, I wanted the right to be misguided, misdirected, slightly criminal, utterly promiscuous, even a murderer. Within the realm of my work. I didn't want to be weighed down with such a conscience that I couldn't trample the earth, every junkyard and every cloud. I wanted to be free of conscience. I wanted free rein.

Over the years I got into studying Christ, reconsidering Him in Pasolini terms: Christ as revolutionary, a person who felt akin to our people. I found, as I got older and studied deeper, His roles, His ideals, His philosophies a lot more interesting. To the point that at our last show in Florence in '79, which was the last time I did that version of ‘Gloria’, I sang, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, why not mine?" I probably would not sing that original line now. Not because I think there's anything wrong with it, just because I don't identify with it now.

You always operated from the belief that rock'n'roll was a force for good. With all that's happened in the culture, do you still think that? Or has this belief in some way been perverted?

Well... I think everything gets perverted. But I'm not really concerned with how it gets perverted up in the mainstream, because that's business. I don't have the time or energy to pioneer against big business at this point in my life. Young people can do that.

I like the way young people are interacting globally. I like the alternative networking they're doing. I'd like to see them develop that, and start seeing what they can do collectively to better our situation on the planet. This planet is in deep trouble. What are we seeing? A resurgence of communicable diseases like tuberculosis, we have AIDS; the whole planet is becoming very viral. I'm not saying we can stop it, but only we can reduce all of these things.

Is music the same energy source for kids today that it was for us, or is it even possible that it can be?

I think there's so much stuff now. Look when we grew up. When I was a kid TV was black and white and there were three stations. They only had cartoons on Saturday morning. The records would come out, it's a big album, you have a big record player, you go home and put it on the record player, you sit and listen to it and really digest what the music’s saying. It was its own experience.

Music is still a powerful force – if you have a powerful individual – but I think it's a lot more convoluted now, if that's the right word.

You and Fred talked about not doing anything for personal gain, that it would have to benefit someone else. How do you reconcile that with everything that's happening now?

With this little tour we're not making any money; we're pretty much breaking even. We did a benefit for an AIDS hospice in San Francisco, and benefits will continue to be a big part of our agenda. I have to get back on my feet, truthfully. If it starts building and things go well, I look forward to a time where I never have to take a cent for hitting the stage. I'm watching people in rock'n'roll make millions and millions of dollars. I see a lot of my friends who've gotten extremely prosperous, and I think they should be doing a lot more. I don't mean giving an autographed guitar to charity. I mean, if you already have $20 million in the bank, take 10 million and find the people that are doing the strongest AIDS research and just give it to 'em. I would encourage performers to take the money they make on stage and give it to the people who need it.

When you first came around the mission was to keep alive and free a certain rock'n'roll spirit. Is the mission this time about this different, though related, spirit? The responsibility that comes with freedom?

I think so. A lot of the things we attempted to do in the '70s were accomplished. Like T.S. Eliot said, each generation translates for itself. I done what I was supposed to do when I done it. It's not my place to do it now. I wouldn't even know how to. All I know is that the planet is full of hands needing to be helped, and I'm trying to see what I can do to get things motivated in a new way. I still think it has to be revolutionary. We still need to redesign stuff.

People are making comeback tours and farewell tours, they're going on Unplugged and they're picking up their lifetime achievement awards. But what are they really doing? I think we've gotten way too cute with all these tons of awards we're giving to each other. Too much bullshit, too much cute stuff. The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. It's another money machine. I did appear at one of those to induct the Velvet Underground. I did that out of respect to the Velvets, and because that recognition meant something to them. But I feel about the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame pretty much the way Fred did: that we should be ashamed. The spirit should be the museum.

‘Piss Factory’ is still one of your more resonant works. But those women you described with such disdain – "these bitches are just too lame to understand/too God damn grateful to get this job to know they're getting screwed up the ass" –with all you've lived since, I'm wondering how you'd regard them now?

Oh, I'd be a lot more compassionate now. Not necessarily for their stupidity, because some of their rules and codes I would still rail against. But being hard-working women... maybe their husband's dead, or their husband took off and they've got six kids to look after. So yes, much more empathy, compassion. Much more respect.

When I was younger, I really felt completely there for the misfit, the person outside society. Artists, and people on the fringes, whether because of their philosophies or sexual persuasion or politics. And I still feel akin to those people, 'cos I'm still one of them. But I've been through so much... life – being a mother, being a widow, being a laundress, all the things I do – that I definitely feel more empathy, a more common bond with people. When I was younger I had so much intensity that it got to the point where I felt I was in a whole other realm. I don't feel that so much – I feel a lot more human these days.

© Ben Edmonds 1996

Michael Stipe on Patti

UNLIKE THE OTHER GUYS IN THE BAND, WHEN WE started I didn't have any particular understanding of the standard history of the pop format, so I pretty much learned as I went along. I had virtually no musical background. I pretty much ignored music until I was about 15 years old, and at the high school that I went to – which was in Illinois in the very heart of middle America – heavy metal ruled. My parents listened to Gershwin, Mancini, Wanda Jackson and the soundtrack to Dr Zhivago. That's all I heard.

I accidentally got a subscription to the Village Voice when I was 15. Right about that time – middle to late 1975 – they were talking about this thing that was going on in New York with Television and Patti Smith and the Ramones and CBGB's. I distinctly remember the November 1975 issue of Creem magazine. Someone had left a copy in study hall under a chair. It had a picture of Patti Smith, and she was terrifying looking. She looked like Morticia Addams. And I think it was Lester Bangs or Lisa Robinson writing about punk rock in New York and how all the other music was like watching colour movies, but this is like watching static-y black and white TV. And that made incredible sense to me. I read about those bands before I ever heard them, and it just sounded so amazing.

Horses, the first Patti Smith album, came out soon afterwards and it pretty much tore my limbs off and put them back on in a different way. I was 15 when I heard it, and that's pretty strong stuff for a 15-year-old American middle-class white boy, sitting in his parents' living room with the headphones on so they wouldn't hear it. It was like the first time you went into the ocean and got knocked down by a wave. It killed. It was so completely liberating. I had my parents' crappy headphones and I sat up all night with a huge bowl of cherries listening to Patti Smith, eating those cherries and going. Oh, my God!... Holy shit!... Fuck!... Then I was sick.

© Michael Stipe 1996

[dem0nguy]

RAMBLETIME 4 (I somehow have more)

We’re rambling about Brutux fellas!

This man needed so much goddamn explanation for his backstory that we just never got…

First off, he’s like, a fuckin gang leader. And that’s just completely glossed over.

HE RUNS A FUCKING GANG FOR BOOKS!!!

And he very clearly has a HUGE influence in the post-apocalyptic world. Like he created a whole monetary system based on credits and bartering. Where you can turn in treasures to him or others affiliated with the gang in turn for credits or goods.

Such as the bartender in the first episode. He mentions Sheriff not having enough credits to pay for food, so Sheriff gives him a rubber duck to pay for it. The bartender then tells him “But this doesn’t settle your debt with Brutux.” Then throws the duck into a vault.

When that vault is destroyed, and the bartender goes to Brutux to tell him that, Brutux sends him to the dungeons to be tortured. When Joe questions him about his decision he says, “I’m the biggest smuggler on this cheek. I can’t let anyone make a fool of me.”

So my guy is REALLY important in this world, and he knows it too. So why tf did he drop everything to join a ragtag team of people trying to make the impossible happen??

Honestly I headcannon that he’s actually still part of the gang, he’s still leading it while also being part of La Résistance.

It would be interesting to have seen a concept like this explored in the show, and to see Brutux reach out to his gang for help every now and then. Or for the others to question his true intentions, because everyone in this world likely knows of Brutux at the very least.

I also think he stuck around because of Dr. White. Cause that’s like his idol, and hanging out with him has probably been Brutux’s dream since he started reading.

When Brutux was a kid we know he was in a gang, I think his parents were also in a gang and that’s how he got affiliated with them in the first place. His parents probably died at some point and left him on his own, so he joined a ragtag kid gang. Then we know he created his own gang sometime after that when he fell in love with books. He kept growing that gang until the Big Fart, and then modified it to center more around finding artifacts than books. He gradually gained influence over the post-apocalyptic world, and that leaves us to the present day.

Now ima just move on to some basic headcannons that I don’t feel like writing paragraphs about:

- he tall fella (~6’2)

- has had several identity crises (both about his sexuality and his general existence)

- loves using big vocab words just bc he can

- taught himself French, Latin, Italian, and a little Greek

- has French heritage

- Has survived three assassination attempts, one of them left him without an eye.

- Always wanted to open a school, but the apocalypse crushed that dream

- writes in a diary (he starts every page with “dear diary”)

- is a homosexual

- he wears makeup, not a lot but enough

- loves listening to Dr. White talk about his hyperfixations

- might have a crush on Dr. White (he would never admit it)

Overall Brutux is a really interesting character. I just love the concept of him being a gang leader for the soul sake of getting books. I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere else, we usually get “tough guy but softie” or something like that. But Brutux isn’t a softie, he’s a tough guy, he just likes books.

He isn’t judged for it either, except by Sheriff, but I don’t think Sheriff can even read in the first place…

He’s also a theatre kid, and like, I love that. He’s a big guy who loves dancing around a stage essentially playing pretend and that just fits him so well. <3

Unrelated but in the episode “Grandma’s Cookbook” Brutux pretends to be a french girl while shirtless?? And like, Ms. Paper just goes with it?? I mean, ally Ig slay

Ok I think that’s all I got :D

( @spinningbagel I GOTCHU HOMIE TAKE SOME HEADCANNONS!!)

[themovieblogonline]

Borderlands: When Chaos Meets the Big Screen

The "Borderlands" movie is finally here, and it's bringing all the chaos, humor, and wild antics that fans of the video game series have been craving. Directed by Eli Roth and featuring an ensemble cast that reads like a Hollywood A-list party invitation, this film is set to redefine what it means to adapt a video game for the big screen. But with so much anticipation, does "Borderlands" live up to the hype, or is it just another flashy, explosive disappointment? A Star-Studded Cast Ready to Unleash Chaos Let's start with the cast because, let's be real, that's what most people are here for. Cate Blanchett as Lilith? Yes, please. Kevin Hart as Roland? You better believe it. Jack Black as Claptrap? Keep going. And with Jamie Lee Curtis, Edgar Ramírez, and the always-charismatic Gina Gershon joining the crew, "Borderlands" is stacked with talent. At a recent fan event in Los Angeles, the stars took to the red carpet at the TCL Chinese Theatre, and it was a spectacle. Between the cosplayers, the Hart House food truck, and Moxxi's Bar activation, it felt more like a "Borderlands" theme park than a movie premiere. And let's not forget the dunk tank crewed by masked bandits—because what’s a "Borderlands" event without a little bit of madness? Eli Roth’s Vision: More Than Just Explosions Eli Roth, known for his work in the horror genre, might seem like an odd choice to helm a movie based on a game that's as much about humor as it is about action. But Roth's knack for dark, twisted narratives is a perfect fit for the chaotic world of Pandora. The screenplay, co-written by Roth and Joe Crombie, strikes a balance between the absurdity of the game's universe and the character-driven storytelling needed for a film adaptation. The plot follows Lilith, an infamous bounty hunter, as she returns to her home planet of Pandora. Her mission? To find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful man, Atlas, played by Edgar Ramírez. Along the way, she teams up with a ragtag group of misfits, including Roland, Tiny Tina, Krieg, Tannis, and the wisecracking robot Claptrap. Together, they must battle bandits, alien species, and uncover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets. The Fan Experience: More Than Just a Movie What sets "Borderlands" apart from other video game adaptations is its fan-centric approach. The Los Angeles event was more than just a screening—it was an experience. Fans got to immerse themselves in the "Borderlands" universe, complete with cosplayers, interactive experiences, and, of course, a chance to meet the stars. This is exactly the kind of engagement that makes the "Borderlands" community so passionate and loyal. Will "Borderlands" Break the Video Game Movie Curse? Video game adaptations have a notorious track record in Hollywood. For every "Sonic the Hedgehog," or "Super Mario Bros.", there's a DOOM that makes you question why they even tried. So where does "Borderlands" fall on that spectrum? Based on early reactions, it seems like Roth and his team have managed to capture the essence of what makes the game series so beloved. The humor is sharp, the action is intense, and the characters are larger-than-life—just as they should be. But will it resonate with those who aren’t familiar with the games? That remains to be seen. What’s clear is that "Borderlands" isn’t trying to be just another video game movie; it’s aiming to be the video game movie. Final Thoughts: A Wild Ride Worth Taking In the end, "Borderlands" is shaping up to be a wild, action-packed ride that stays true to its source material while offering something fresh for newcomers. Whether you're a die-hard fan of the games or just someone looking for a fun, explosive time at the movies, this film promises to deliver. As we eagerly await the official release, one thing is certain: "Borderlands" is set to bring the chaos, the laughs, and the insanity that only a trip to Pandora can provide. So buckle up, grab your popcorn, and get ready to enter a world where the rules don’t apply, and the only thing you can expect is the unexpected. Read the full article

[unproduciblesmackdown]

from an interview with joe iconis about the christmas extravaganza 🎄🎄🎄

"…So for those of us who haven't seen it, or have only seen, like, the videos and clips and stuff, can you explain what exactly the Joe Iconis Christmas Extravaganza is?"

"I can, yeah. So, it is a, um—it is basically a full-blown Christmas musical that is pretending to be a Christmas concert. It is an extravaganza that is inspired by things like, uh, the Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas special, things like the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular, things like Charles Busch's Times Square Angel—y'know, I grew up really loving Christmas and I love the, um—I—I've always loved the—the conceit of the Christmas special. Y'know, this thing like, where, um, y'know, characters you perhaps know, characters you don't, get to mingle and, uh, exist in this kind of, like, capsule that's solely about the, uh, trappings of the holiday. And so, this is a show that is really irreverent, it's, yknow, very wild, uh, and it's, like, slightly profane, but: it has a real, uh, a real heart to it, y'know. It's made by people who have a love of, uh, not just the holidays, but of, y'know, theatre and family and, um, yeah. So it just kind of feels like a really, y'know, insane, uh, Christmas party, um, that's, uh, y'know, that's just filled with, uh, seventy of your—your closest friends and enemies." 🌰🌰🌰

"How do you do this, do you just do, like, an open invitation to everybody in your contacts, or is it, like, everybody in your close friend circle, do you just say, like, 'Come one, come all, we'll figure out something for you to do'?"

"There's, um, it is—it is the most specific casting experience there could ever possibly be. It's actually—the only way that this show works is if it is cast, uh, within an inch of its life. There's nothing left to chance, there's nothing casual about it. It, um, and the casting—the casting, uh, organization that we use for the Christmas Extravaganza is the, uh, the Joe Iconis Casting Services? Um, just me, uh, y'know, asking specific people, um, because everyone has a different part, the size of everyone's parts are really different, and so it's the kind of thing where I'm, like, 'Okay. I know that AJ can do the show this year, but he's not really available for our five rehearsals, and so I'm gonna write something for AJ that, if he can't make any rehearsal, he can just read it from a card. Like, that character will have to be some kind of announcer.' It's, like, that kind of thing, y'know, it's, like, 'Oh, um, y'know, this person has a ton of availability to rehearse this year, so they're gonna get a huge part,' uh, and everyone who's in the show is someone who is, like, they all have to be great actors, they all have to be, um, uh, good to great singers, they all have to be willing to dance, […] and then we need, like, four people who are really good at dancing, y'know, um, a few people who are willing to, like, wear something skimpy, y'know, a few people who are willing to wear, like, full-body costumes where you can't even see their face—it's a very strange, specific thing, um, but it's just what makes the show the show, and so our—we have a cast of fifty at each—at each performance. Uh, and it's not the same cast at each show: there are some people who do all six, some people do five, some people do one, y'know—and so it's this really mind-exploding, uh, carousel of actors—to rehearse it is a, uh, it is a feat which, uh, I've never—never experienced. And, y'know, I've worked at all, um, at all levels of the theatre, I'm really used to, like, makin', y'know, ragtag theatre in basements, and do-it-yourself stuff, and obviously I've done shows on Broadway and the West End and I've had shows in Tokyo, and, uh, there's just nothing that compares to the level of—of, uh, stress, uh, and, uh, and talent, and just, like, y'know, the diggin' in your—your heels kinda work, uh, that is required to make this Christmas Extravaganza as extravagant as it is." 🎭🎭🎭

"…Over the years, we've had a few—y'know, a few rowdy audience members. When we did it in 2019, there were these two guys, who—it was so weird, they, um, they were very—they were very conservative Republicans, uh, who came to the show, and, uh, they were really drunk, I don't know why they came." ["On accident? Did they—did they stumble in the—?"] "No! They—it was actu—I mean, the honest reason was that one of them really liked the song 'The Goodbye Song,' which is a song that I wrote, and so they came to the show, um, uh, because they liked this one song, which is performed in the show, and, uh, but they also—they were like, young, it was very strange, and they were, um, and they were—they were so drunk, and they were just the world's worst audience members, and, um, and I—I had them thrown out, right, and so I—which is really hard, 'cause I'm onstage the whole two hours, and I was like, 'These guys—they're outta here,' and so, y'know, I—I passed on a—a, y'know, a whis—it was like a whisper campaign through the theater, one of the—y'know, the people told the stage manager, and like, they had to get 54 and eject these guys. And so they went to throw 'em out, and one of them ran into the bathroom. To like, hide. And he was like, 'You're not gettin' me!' Like, all during the show, right, so that like—this like, young, drunk, conservative Republican runs into the bathroom to hide, like, barricades himself in there, and so then 54 Below is like, 'Um, I guess we have to like, call the cops or something? 'Cause this guy won't leave the bathroom.' And so eventually people went in and like dragged this guy outta the bathroom, and my favorite thing is that as he was—as he was being dragged out of 54 Below, and like, up the stairs? Um, the stairs, and, like, all the nooks and crannies of the space is where, like, everyone who is in the Christmas Extravaganza, um, y'know, waits. And so he had to go through, like, the sexy Virgin Mary! And literal Santa Claus. And, y'know, reindeers as he's being dragged out. And then all of them just, like, barricaded the door so he wouldn't come back in, and it's like, this is, like, this is what Christmas means to me. Y'know? Having—having some rowdy audience member get thrown out of a—of a nightclub on 54th Street by the—the icons of Christmas, y'know?" 🎅🎅🎅

"…Do you have a favorite Christmas special, or anything like that, whether it's something that influenced this or not, just something that you hold dear to yourself?"

"Well, I love, um, I—I already mentioned it, but I love the Pee-wee Playhouse Christmas special, I—I think it's really the top of the tops. Uh, I love Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, uh, which also really heavily influenced this, and as far as Christmas episodes of shows, I really think the '80s were the, um, that was kind of like the peak of the Christmas episode to me, and so, uh, the—for people who love—who love Christmas episodes, the ALF Christmas episode is a really, uh, famed one, um, because it is so unspeakably depressing? Um, so I—I like the—I like the tension of a—of a show that's basically for kids with a Christmas episode that's just about children dying. Uh, in a very horrible way. Um, so yeah, I love—those are all—those are all good one—y'know, just could keep going. But also Christmas movies, too! Y'know, I'm just such a sucker for a Christmas movie, I love the great ones, I love the bad ones, um, y'know, the Hallmark Christmas movies, they're fun, they're a little bit, like, samey for me? But like, I love a Christmas with the Kranks, I love The Family Stone, I love anything that's, like, taking groups of people and putting them in a house together, and—and, uh, y'know, adding like, fuel to the fire, and so there—there's elements of all of these things in the—in the Christmas Extravaganza." ❄️❄️❄️

[heta-micronomics]

I've bounced the idea around since like 2020 of the micronations putting all their talents/specialties together to make a ragtag theatre troupe. Specifically, I think they'd put on an amazing amateur Six.

Catharine of Aragon: Seborga

Seborga as Catherine just makes sense to me. Aside from the easy Catholic/Vatican motifs, it also works since he was the "first" micronation of the group. He's the oldest and arguably the most rational. They have similar vibes.

Anne Boleyn: Aerica

I headcanon that he's fluent in Quebecois French, so I think he'd like to have a role that nods to it. Plus, his over-the-top personality and eccentricity remind me of Anne. He's bold and fun and creative, yet like her, he's a nervous kid looking for the right thing to do.

Jane Seymour: Hutt River/Molossia/Sealand

I really want to say Hutt River because it would work SO well if he used this as a way to say a final goodbye. He's done his best and stayed with Australia, his boss, etc, but now he's dying. He's leaving Wy behind. It also fits his general vibe, and he'd love a huge, dramatic number.

It would be a really interesting take on Molossia's relationship with America. His official notes say he's independent "for now," and he's made it clear that he loves (it at least respects) America. He wouldn't leave him even if he could. But at the same time, that's basically signing his own death certificate.

Sealand. Dear God, this works so well. Aside from the literal "heart of stone" references to both the fort and his human name, Sealand is loyal and determines to a fault. He's stayed with his bosses and friends, and despite all he says, he canonically does care about England—or, at least he doesn't hate him as fanon can suggest. He just wants to be with people, but that's the very thing that killed Jane. Also, blue motifs lmao.

Anna of Clives: Kugelmugel

My main rationale is that he's German (well, Austrian). Though it also works on a meta level, too. Design-wise, he reminds me a lot of Prussia. Having Kugel sing about just loving himself feels so sweet, both for himself and for his... brother? Cousin? Uncle?

Katherine Howard: Hutt River/Sealand

I really want to say Sealand. The song intentionally uses more "kiddy" language, and having someone physically younger would highlight that in a terrible poetic way. Plus, Sealand's tried over and over to get someone to love and care (or literally buy) for him. It's like his whole thing. The irony of seeing him finally give up as Katherine has such literary potential.

Hutt River would also be great. His personality fits very well, and again, him "giving up" can work on the micronation level as well since he was dissolved.

Catherine Parr: Wy

I can't think of anyone better. It feel like the obvious choice.

[i-did-not-mean-to]

X - XOXO

Ah, it's the teacher AU.

@laurfilijames, @lordoftherazzles, @linasofia here is the monstrosity that has grown roots in my silly brain!

Words: 2 k (yes, I know, I am sorry)

Characters: Thorin, Fíli, Ori, Boromir, Legolas

Warnings: It's a Modern!AU, it has too many plot points, and it's entirely idiotic

“We have to do something,” Aude declared confidently, leaning over the rickety cafeteria table. “I can’t watch that poor man suffer like that.”

Boromir frowned; he was not the kind of young man who liked to meddle in other people’s love affairs, mainly because nothing could fool him into believing that he was managing his own very well so who was he to help someone else?

“I’m in,” Legolas hooted—he, on the other hand, was a kid who loved meddling and he was not above trying to give one of his favourite teachers a boost.

“Let’s say,” Aude interrupted his effervescent joy pragmatically, “we set the concert as a deadline. By the time we go on the excursion, I want melting gazes and seemingly accidental touches to be the standard. Are we agreed?”

Their little ragtag group of friends did not dare disagree with her when she got into one of her organisational moods and so, they simply nodded and started planning their devious machinations.

It had all started earlier that day.

While they had been a close-knit class for a few years, the teaching staff responsible for them had changed this semester—much to the chagrin of Boromir and Legolas.

Their new foreign languages teacher was a frightening lady, crackling with intensity, and her rather harsh methods had given them quite a jolt in the beginning.

Thus terrified by the educator who was unfortunately also responsible for the choir part of their annual concert, they had been considerably confused by the unusual reaction of their trusty, beloved English teacher when said Xanthippe had knocked on the door to inform them that choir practice would start a little late due to some unforeseen scheduling issues.

As the school was indeed much like a family and the teachers were known by their first names, the youngsters—first and foremost, eagle-eyed Aude—had had no qualms whatsoever to tease Mister Ori about his bashful blush at the sight of the newcomer.

After all, for the longest time, the rumoured dalliance between Mister Fíli—giving workshop classes—and their gym teacher Miss Rena had been the only source of gossip the voraciously inquisitive minds of the youngsters had fed on.

Consequently, it was totally unsurprising that they pounced on this new knot of tension like starved hyenas as soon as they got the first whiff of it.

“Boromir?” Aude leaned over while the flustered English teacher ran after the bits of chalk he had dropped in his nervous haste. “Your brother is in the theatre group, right? We need to have a meeting over lunch—I think Mister Ori has a crush on the dragon-lady.”

Grimacing as the extent of Aude’s plan dawned on him, Boromir thought that—by the time she and Legolas were done plotting—they’d have Miss Libby serenade their mousy, distracted, touchingly kind English teacher.

As he leaned back and gave Mister Ori a compassionate smile, he had to admit to himself that he couldn’t wait to witness the trainwreck those hellish women would bring upon as many poor, unsuspecting, soft-hearted men as they possibly could.

“They’re coming along nicely,” Rena sighed as she wiped the back of her neck with a soft towel. “I wonder if the new economics teacher will attend.”

“Hmmm?” Libby looked up from the piece of paper that had made its way mysteriously into the stack of lyrics she distributed and collected diligently at the beginning and end of every choir practice. “I think the headmaster has invited her personally, so yeah, it would be rather rude not to come and clap politely.”

“Politely?” her friend and colleague, who was responsible for the dance act, asked pointedly. “I am convinced of the talent and skill of my group. Do you have qualms about yours?”

“Not in the least,” Libby denied weakly. “Here, look at this, do you know what this is?” She held out the intruder amongst the bent and worn pages in her hand accusingly.

After taking a single look at it, Rena chuckled wryly. “Yes, I do, and so do you.”

Even though polite and supportive, Rena didn’t lose time pretending and dissimulating—especially not at this time of night, alone in the auditorium.

“It’s a page out of the play they’re putting on,” she muttered, inspecting the page more carefully now. “And there is a note in the margin saying ‘Meet me in the teacher’s lounge tomorrow at 15 o’clock. XOXO’. I wonder what that is about…”

“Well, it surely wasn’t meant for me,” Libby dismissed the whole thing frantically; already, she sorely regretted having shown this awful missive to her friend.

From day one, Rena had been a much-needed and trusted ally in Libby’s awkward navigation of a completely new school where everyone seemed to know one another from birth; thus, she merely ducked her head and didn’t contradict.

“Lib, it’s not from or for one of the students; they have no access to that room. Moreover, there is no other member of the teaching staff scheduled to be in the auditorium today. If it was meant for anyone, it was meant for you!”

Setting the piece of paper aside carefully, Rena stalked towards her friend on her long, nimble legs. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’ve interrupted class today.”

Scandalised, Libby denied having done anything even remotely disruptive.

“What grapevine? Did you hang out with Fí again? He’s one of the only teachers they had this afternoon.” Libby narrowed her eyes—at her previous post, nobody had ever taken such a vivid interest in the lives and proclivities of their peers, and she was not entirely sure that she liked being the subject of gossip.

“Oh no,” Rena grinned, “it’s much more interesting than that. So, the new economics teacher has complained to the headmaster—she is in that office all the time, I swear—that the class was being particularly unruly today. So, Thorin goes to check on the class while they’re walking over to Fíli’s and guess what he overheard?”

Libby waved her hand with as much nonchalant indulgence as she could feign.

“Apparently their English teacher has had a visit from—sorry for the wording—the Dragon-lady and the poor man—bless his soul—didn’t manage to get back his focus for the rest of the lesson. Isn’t that interesting?”

“I…” Libby started and then relapsed into petulant silence; those miscreants were lucky that she had not learned about this before choir practice.

“Do you deny it?” Rena was having entirely too much fun with this.

“No, I don’t. Now, dear, your petty narration does not explain how Fíli’s knowledge was imparted to you though, does it?”

“Ah,” the amazingly brazen Amazon purred, “we were having a little chat in the courtyard…about maybe joining the excursion. I surmise that you’ll be there to chaperone and hound the kids?”

Nodding tersely, Libby waited to see where her friend was going with this.

“Maybe, whoever wrote you this note also only wants to talk about the excursion?”

“As what you call ‘talk about the excursion’ seems to be code for another word containing the letters ‘e’ and ‘x’ in that order, I highly doubt that,” Libby hissed.

“I wish…” Rena grinned; she had much more knowledge than she led on, but—as a trained and experienced athlete—she knew that sometimes, one had to pace oneself if one wanted to make it across the finish line. “So, was it strictly necessary for you to go and startle poor Ori?”

Swallowing fitfully, Libby tried to mobilise the brusque façade behind which she habitually hid her own insecurities. “I had no way of knowing that he’d be that upset by a minor interruption; it’s not as if I knew him well—he seems to avoid me as much as possible.”

Hopping onto one of the props and crossing her legs slowly, Rena leaned towards her friend. “He’s a local boy, Ori, I mean. Fíli talks about him a lot.”

“Ah,” Libby interjected with a knowing smile. “Why are you telling me this? It’s highly unlikely that the one colleague who seems to profoundly and viscerally dislike me would invite me to a meeting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think he dislikes you,” Rena jeered, “but—in the name of friendship—I’ll investigate a little deeper. By the way, do you mind him terribly?”

“Rena,” Libby sighed, “I would not have chosen his class to burst into if I did not enjoy his blundering, stammering sweetness at least a tiny bit.”

Nodding her head sagaciously, Rena gave her a provocative smirk. “I’ll see what Fíli can tell me about it…”

“Hey Thorin,” Fíli grinned as he passed the new economics teacher, a truly handsome lady, on the threshold of their headmaster’s office.

“We’ve come to sign up for the excursion,” he announced with a flourish, dragging Ori in by the sleeve of his sempiternal woollen cardigan like a reticent child.

“You’re too old and I am quite pleased with the results Miss Libby is achieving,” Thorin replied sternly. “I’d rather not overtax the woman in her first year at our school with having to oversee that many hormone-fuelled savages.”

Fíli laughed. “Fair,” he admitted, “but I’ve come to offer my services as a chaperone, yes, that is quite right. Me. I’ve even convinced our resident homebody to pack his seven cardigans in various shades of beige and join us. Wouldn’t the presence of the best English teacher be a monumental advantage?”

Thorin paused and pondered that assertion for a long, silent moment before nodding slowly.

“It’s funny,” he then said in a low, languid voice, “you’re not the first to volunteer for the least sought-after extracurricular activity of this year. Though the other two were ladies of course. Seems like we’re well-matched then—the poor students won’t know what hit them.”

“How so?” Fíli asked immediately, his face gleaming with interest and curiosity.

“The new economics teacher and Miss Rena have volunteered as well.”

“The gym teacher?” Ori squeaked, visibly cowed by that idea.

“Well yes, Miss Libby was the first to sign up and Rena thought that she had to keep an eye on the new girl for fear that she’d get cannibalised by our students.”

With a throaty chuckle, he turned his attention back to the papers on his desk, signalling that this interview was at an end and that he had other matters to attend to.

“Aren’t you off now? Care to go over to the bakery and have a coffee?” Fíli asked his colleague who was dragging his feet as they made their way back down the administrative wing of the school building. “I would very much like to know why the mere mention of the Foreign Languages teacher makes you break out in nervous hives; I’ve known you all your life, my boy, and I know when something is up!”

“Erm…” Ori stammered. “I found a note among my papers of yesterday that told me to come to the teacher’s lounge at 3.” “A note? Do you know from whom?”

Ori shook his head miserably; there had been no person who could have slipped a note pertaining to that kind of meeting other than Miss Libby. She had been in his classroom the previous day—she had stood so close to the desk that he had been able to smell her dizzying perfume and unfortunately, he had truly not paid any attention to what she had been doing other than crowding him.

Secretly, he so desperately hoped that it was indeed her who wanted to see him—even if it was about the class, or toilet paper, or the weather—but he didn’t dare believe it, especially as the note was signed “XOXO” which didn’t seem to be her style at all.

“Well, how about you see what it’s all about and I’ll wait in the bakery?”

Ori looked past his friend through the high window front to see the gym teacher sprint across the street to said locale and he understood.

“Yeah sure,” he acquiesced kindly, “see you later.”

Muttering to himself to be brave and firm, Ori entered the teacher’s lounge…and promptly collided with his most dreaded colleague.

@fellowshipofthefics I am so sorry for this whopper.

Lots of love from me though

-> Masterlist

[an-aussie-button-masher]

Now Arriving, The Hype Train - Five of the Most Anticipated Games of 2024

   Happy new year, readers! You know what the best thing about a new year is? New games to look forward to! Well, for me, anyway. There've been some exciting announcements from last year, from big name new releases, like Nintendo and Star Wars games, to long-awaited sequels of beloved indie games. There’s something for everyone; Ubisoft’s marauding pirate game Skull & Bones, a supervillainous shooter in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and plenty of remakes and remasters, such as yet another Final Fantasy remake. On top of that, rumours abound about a potential successor to the Nintendo Switch being announced later this year - they’re only rumours, of course, but it’s certainly an exciting idea. Now, for something more substantial: I’ve gathered up a list of what might be among the most highly-anticipated game releases planned for 2024 - take a look for yourself!

Princess Peach: Showtime!    One of the most famous women's faces in gaming will finally be taking centre stage once again in 2024 - literally! Trapped in a stage play overtaken by the Wicked Grape and her sour minions, Princess Peach will be rescuing herself this time as she fights her way across theatre-themed stages with her new powerful sidekick Stella. Stella will allow Peach to transform into various different costumes, each granting her unique abilities like swashbuckling Swordfighter Peach and expert tracker Detective Peach. It’s been over 18 years since Peach headlined her own video game, but considering her growing protagonistic role in recent Super Mario games, leaving her damsel-in-distress role behind and joining Mario in the action, it’s about time she gets the leading role once more! Princess Peach: Showtime! will be coming to a Nintendo Switch near you on March 22nd.

Hades II    Hades, Supergiant Games’ mythical roguelike that has taken gaming by storm since 2018, is getting an almighty sequel this year with Hades II planned to enter early access in the first half of 2024. Once again, players will battle through the ever-changing Underworld of Greek mythology, encountering various gods - both new and familiar - that will help or hinder your grand odyssey. Play as Melinoë, sister to the first games’ protagonist Zagreus, daughter of Hades and the immortal Princess of the Underworld, as she faces off against the mighty Chronos. The Titan of Time takes the role of the main antagonist this time around, having kidnapped dear old dad Hades and plotting to wage war against all of Olympus. Will Melinoë survive the trials of the treacherous Underworld and save her father, or will her time run out?

Hyper Light Breaker    Better brush up on your swordplay skills and practise that aim, because it’s time to return to the world of Heart Machine’s Hyper Light Drifter in its upcoming successor, Hyper Light Breaker! Following Risk of Rain’s example, Breaker is taking the leap from Drifter’s pixel-art isometric style to a grand, 3-D open-world adventure with co-op multiplayer and roguelike elements. Players will control one of a ragtag group called the Breakers, navigating the dangerous Overgrowth with hoverboards and gliders at breakneck pace. Customise your Breaker’s loadout with whatever gear you find on your journey, mixing-and-matching melee and ranged attacks to fit your personal playstyle. Get ready to explore new corners of the world introduced in the award-winning Hyper Light Drifter from a new action-packed perspective as Hyper Light Breaker enters early access later this year!

Star Wars Outlaws    Rev up that hyperdrive, get a good blaster by your side, and return to the galaxy far, far away in a brand new, single-player open-world interstellar adventure: Star Wars Outlaws! While the Empire is busy battling the Rebellion and Han Solo is in the middle of a carbonite nap, a new scoundrel on the scene named Kay Vess aims to make a name for herself in the galaxy’s thriving criminal underworld. Pick sides or go it alone in a choices-matter storyline, combining sneaking around and straight fights across plenty of planets, both familiar and new. In the current age of live-service, microtransaction-laden online PvP games, it’s a welcome sight to see a big-name, purely single-player, narrative-driven release like this. Outlaws has no specific confirmed release date, but as Ubisoft tends to release games around October or November, we can expect Outlaws to release sometime in the latter half of 2024.

World of Goo 2    Feel that nostalgia? That’s right; World of Goo, one of the earliest and most definitive examples of a successful indie game from way back in 2008, is finally getting a sequel - fifteen years later! Announced completely out of the blue during the 2023 Game Awards, there hasn’t been much confirmed about the game quite yet besides an expected release in 2024. Even so, the announcement trailer brings back much of the familiar satirical humour and strangely-unsettling monochromatic artstyle that fans loved from the original. For those that didn’t grow up playing this classic, World of Goo is a physics-based puzzler all about building precarious bridges out of goo balls, crossing gaps and avoiding obstacles to get as many goo balls from point A to point B as possible, all under a narrative of corporate greed and consumption that rings truer than ever nowadays. The sequel will certainly have a lot to talk about, I’m sure.

   Of course, there are plenty more games set to release in 2024, many of which haven’t even been announced yet - who knows, we might even finally get Silksong this year! I can’t be wrong about that two years in a row, right…right?   Which of these games are you most looking forward to? Are there any other games not listed here that you’re hyped for? Let me know! Feedback, reblogs and likes are much appreciated!   Thanks for reading!

An Aussie Button-Masher

[mitoconniedria]

Just had a dream where the prof who's head of my musical theatre program turned out to apparently have secretly created this whole weird dramatic other life as a villain, and now he was single-ing out different people in my program on the down-low to like, test them essentially. And so he got to me and kidnapped my sister to lure me out to what one the outside looked like this old ragtag bar and was actually a front for his whole little evil test facility in the back, where he had me brought (and btw for some reason I had to wear a ball gown to try and blend in? Idk but apparently his bar wasn't that good of a front). And idk, I was supposed to be discussing the safe return of my sister with some of his cronies with the help of my parents (cause they realized that I was being sent random notes and clues essentially to find her and were both like "ain't no way we're letting you go after her on your own" which like, they're real for that) when suddenly everything broke out into a fight. Which was especially weird because at point I sort of had my suspicions that it was this guy who'd kidnapped my sister, and so when I'd fought off all his cronies in an oddly well-lit and costumed showdown, he finally emerged and was all like "bravo, you've finally completed your training." And was gonna offer me a job on Broadway if I just did some sort of "favor" because he apparently "knew people," at which point I kinda was like "nah bro, this is fucked," and left.

Like???? What??

I'm also 90% certain that at least part of that beginning context was foreshadowed in a DIFFERENT dream I had at some other point. I just-

This is why I can't have naptime, istg. I sleep too long and then this happens.

[dogwise]

the difference between the children of satan in TVA and TVL is honestly soooo funny. like they started as this super cult basically that was numerous, powerful and organized enough to take down a some thousand year old marius and his superpowered fledgling. and by tvl they’re a ragtag group of 20 (maybe?) camp-ass theatre freaks that armand up and offs half of in one night

[eristic-kaleidoscope]

Carry On My Wayward Son | Akito Epilogue

Just because the experiment is finally over doesn’t mean Akito Mikage’s work is done, or that it will be entirely finished in the months and years to come.

With promises to call and text his partners and the few friends he made every day, Akito departs for London with Kristina and Noelle in tow. Even if the three masterminds behind this Project were neutralised and in custody, there was always the danger of someone picking up the slack and coming after them, or more specifically Kristi. As she sleeps, exhausted from learning just how close her mind was to being overwritten, Akito and Noelle send another message ahead.

Vernal and Midsommar, no, Raymond and Dahlia are there to pick them up, along with a group of armed men that the former explains he has hired for his own protection. Since the experiment had been prematurely compromised, it wasn’t safe to be around his dearly beloathed father or the group of visiting “dignitaries” from the Erika Foundation, so they’d gone to ground and had waited until it was clear the extraction had succeeded to emerge from their safehouse.

It was a reunion with few dry eyes. Whatever the enmity between him and Akito had once been, Raymond whispered his thanks to the blonde, holding onto his girlfriend with tight arms for the rest of the ride back. Having already explained what was going on in the days before everyone flew out from the facility, they would have to brace themselves for the media fallout in the next couple of weeks, and prepare themselves to explain just how a ragtag group of five upheaved an entire shadow foundation with just the right set of skills.

“But first, I’m going to need a really good therapist.”

Akito gets his wish, and can tell his partners with confidence that yes, he is making himself go to therapy and talk about everything. Not just the experiment, not just his accident, but everything from the unreleased anguish of his childhood and the loneliness that’s finally started to ease up. Kristina joins him a few days, both traumatised from the kidnapping and the stress placed on their shoulders for leaving their families alone.

But it’s time they have to heal. And the rest of the world continued to move as they did.

It was Kristi’s idea to try and celebrate Christmas with those who had to stay behind in the VR. She’d only gotten to know several of them through the robot’s actions, and felt like in some way, she wanted to thank those who had kept her best friend alive. The few months had cooled off his enmity with some others (as onesided as it could go with Eureka, at least), and he tried his best to fulfil last requests and assisting compensations from those who had them, so why not visit and try to make their continued stay a little more pleasant?

At least the party didn’t double as an intelligence gathering mission this time. The outcome may hurt him more than he’s willing to admit, but he accepts it for what it is this time. He gets it.

The days passed into weeks into months, as several people came and went throughout his life. Assisting MI6 would end up occupying the time he spent not back on the stage, but the people of His Majesty’s Theatre were sympathetic to his situation. His relationship with his partners took a little break as they focused on their individual needs, and he did in fact return to Japan for a few months just to spend time with his mother.

And also prank Kenshin with Kori’s help, but don’t tell him that. He’s not sure Byrne will ever take anything he does, no matter how harmless, without a lingering sense of anger. Some things were best left laid to rest.

Eventually, Adrik moved to Miami and settled in with Erik A. When he was ready to make it work one more time, Akito made the trip over to their house with a luxury box of raspberry chocolates and fresh bouquets of pollen-free flowers, and even some small clothes for the orange hellspawn- er, Sunny, although he was certain the cat would just rip them up since they were from him. Boo. Whatever the case, their love rekindled and remained strong, and when his contract in London eventually runs out, he makes his way over to Broadway to revive the Phantom of the Opera production in the heart of the American theatrical industry. It’s a lot closer to them, and he’ll always have a place to stay in London with Kristi, Raymond and their kids if Uncle Akito visits. 

He makes new friends and associates, and watches Rose’s streams while trying to guess which one of the donations is his partner being cheeky. He finds out who his father is when the man comes to apologise to him for never knowing, and forgives him all the same while giving Pierre his mother’s number, asking him to talk to her about it instead. He grows past his past mistakes, little by little, and assists whichever group needs him to testify against and bury the rest of the Erika Foundation, his head held high even as their nightmare continues to hang over his head. 

He defends Satoru Nagase with everything he has to get the man off on a technicality and his good name cleared, and sends An and Calluna a cake and a sincere apology for what happened. He even gets in contact with Erisu to talk and reminisce, to introduce her to Kristi and help them make peace between each other. Things won’t ever be the same there, but at least he has one of his friends back, even if they’re probably never going to let Jaemin know the full extent of things. Their kids also have him thinking… but not right now. Not until-

And then the day comes when it’s done. It’s finally over.

Five years have passed. He’s in his thirties now and his first grey hairs have appeared, but for the first time in many moons, he can walk out of the courthouse with a tired grin. His work is done, the people behind the Erika Foundation brought to justice and his involvement with cleaning up the last few stragglers honestly unneeded. The weight that rests on his shoulders disappears, leaving only the lingering pain from the memories of five years past.

He still wishes Cosette was here, just a little. So instead, he resolves to clean the shrine he set up in their memory, sitting prettily in a corner of the house he lived in, until it’s extra-bright tonight.

Many things have changed by now, even his appearance. Though still as bright yet gaunt as ever, the mask is now clipped to a belt buckle by his waist, and he wears his scars in public with pride. They are a part of him that no longer gives him grief, a reminder of who he used to be before. There are some things that haven’t changed at all, though, and when he gets home, he feeds both his three angelfish and their young juveniles, a tall glass of iced chocolate milk in his other hand.

When his usual routine is finished, he walks downstairs into the basement, converted into his private soundproof study where all of his instruments are stored.

And then he screams. Long, loud, reverbating in the empty room where it all echoes back at him. He screams for what feels like minutes, getting all of the emotions welling inside him out, all the stresses and sacrifices and farewells he had to make for the people he had known and still knew, still remembered. His yelling only stops when he’s finally gotten his catharsis out, and it takes several minutes before he can shakily push himself back up to his feet.

Akito is willing to admit that the mask will never truly go away. You don’t change habits grown over twenty-five long years of hardship, hellish mentalites and humourless hamartia overnight. Even now, it just feels so surreal that he’s made it this far, this long, without eventually collapsing into himself and losing his mind to the madness. 

He should be dead, so many times over. He considered the idea of fading away into the night when no one was looking, letting them find their happiness away from him.

But invisible hands and invisible voices pull him up from the abyss. A diver with a single hope of floating back up finds proof that he is still alive, and aiming for the bottom of the sea, finds the happiness to never drown again. This life isn’t easy, but it was something he put everything on the line to live for, and he won’t do those who want him here the disservice of leaving when he should be living. 

It’s his life, too. As he leaves the room, he pulls out his phone to make a long-overdue call.

Just because the nightmare is finally over doesn’t mean Akito Mikage isn’t scared of the future. But it’s not like he’ll be facing that alone, either. And for the two who meant so much to him…

“Hello, Greyson Jewellers…? Yes, order 5549. I would like to come pick up my engagement rings.”

The best will come, soon enough.