#STAND BY ME WILL NEVER BE 1999 NIGHT BEFORE A WEDDING THAT IS THE PERFECT VERSION OF THE STORY

[filmfactors]

I watched Stand by Me 2 and was pleasantly surprised by how not god awful it was, it was only okay though- it improved on what made the first so bad but it still remained to have terrible things. Couldn’t stand Doraemon and especially not adult Nobita, the ending was also so unnecessary and ruined the nice things of the film.

Suneo and Gian were the highlight of this one for real this time, they made me smile. So was the grandma stuff! However, this is once again the case of other Doraemon movies/specials having the same things but done better than this one.

[brvdges]

Like A River Flows - Stark!Reader x Peter Parker

Title: like a river flows

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: Y/N hopes to meet her soulmate on her eighteenth birthday. Soulmate No Blip AU

Warnings: none

A/N: I've been gone so long but here's a new imagine! I got a new laptop! So hopefully there will be tons more of these. I listened to "Can't Help Falling In Love" by Kina Grannis if you wanna get the full experience.

Word Count: 1824

___

You could hear the sound of glasses clinking and laughter echoing up from the main room as you tugged at your dress at the top of the stairs. You turned around and looked in the ornate mirror behind you. 

Everything about you was perfectly polished and plucked; your lace was perfectly laid with every hair beautifully framing your face. Your ears were adorned with simple gold diamond studs and a matching name necklace sat daintily on your collarbone.

Your makeup was done to perfection with your brown eyes sparkling from behind layers of shadow, liner, mascara, and false lashes. For the first time in your life, you had gotten your makeup done professionally. Your father had paid for it of course -- it was at his insistence that you had gotten it done.

In fact, the entire party was at his insistence and he had taken it upon himself to have every detail perfect. You didn’t really want a big elaborate birthday party, but today was the big day. 

Everyone had a special day when you’d finally know the person you’re meant to be with. At a young age, you’d come to the conclusion somehow your meeting would be on your eighteenth birthday. When your father was enlightened with this fact, he had taken it upon himself to make everything perfect -- including you. Thanks to him, you looked undeniably stunning.  It was the most beautiful you had seen yourself in a long while. Ever since your mom had passed, you hadn't felt the need to dress up anymore -- so it no longer felt like you.

“You look absolutely radiant, Y/N.” Pepper assured you as she joined you in looking in the mirror. “Your father outdid himself. Just wait until he sees you.” You understood immediately what she meant, you were almost a spitting image of your mother. Your mahogany skin and high cheekbones were hers, as was your smile and arched eyebrows. The only evidence of your father was the occasional facial expression. “You ready?” she asked turning you back towards the steps. 

You nodded and smiled cautiously, “You’re gonna be okay. There’s so many people down there and they’re all excited to see you.” The two of you peered over the banister down all the sea of people below. Your father had indeed gone for a more sophisticated approach, but as with all Stark parties it was pretty much promised to liven up as the night went on. 

“All right! Chin up!” You did as you were told and began your way down the grand staircase. As you made your descent, you saw the attention shift to you as everyone took you in for the first time that night. “The birthday girl is here!” Natasha raised a glass to you. You smiled to her as you were welcomed with a myriad of birthday wishes.

As the party continued on, you felt almost like a princess. So many promising people had come up and introduced themselves to you; however nothing had clicked yet. You were starting to wonder if all the theatrics had been for nothing when your dad found you. You were standing against the wall watching your friends have a ball of a time dancing to the DJ that had recently taken place of the string quartet. 

“Y/N, shouldn’t you be dancing?” he asked, his dark brows furrowing in confusion. You sighed disappointedly, “Yeah, I guess.” You picked at a string on your dress, “I thought I’d meet them today.” Your dad nodded glancing over at Pepper. She was talking excitedly to Natasha -- likely about wedding plans. The way he looked at her was so beautiful. The way you could tell everything he felt for her from just a look was absolutely amazing. That was it -- that what you wanted. 

“Well, Y/N, you never know there’s still a few hours left to your birthday.” you frowned a bit, “I’ve talked to every person here that I’ve never met. I’m pretty sure it’s not happening today.” your dad chuckled, “You know Y/N, I know I’ve told you the story of how I met your mom.”

“Italy, 1999.” you mumbled looking up at your father. He nodded, “We met and it felt right. I’m not one to be very emotional, but I knew I wanted to keep her around. There was just something about her.” you tilted your head, “She wasn’t your soulmate though. Pepper is.” He sighed, “She was the one for me -- well until she passed, of course. By that time, I had known Pepper for years and I didn’t see her in that way until one day, I just did.” He looked over at her again, her and Natasha had been joined by Maria.

“I don’t know if you're understanding what I’m getting at. I don’t know if I’m explaining it clearly. What I’m saying is -- it could be someone you’ve already met and maybe you just haven’t realized it yet. No one ever said it had to be someone new -- just that there was a day that you would know.” He gave you a small smile, “You should enjoy your night because either way, you look amazing, kiddo. Happy birthday.” he playfully hit you on the shoulder before walking away.

Taking your dad’s words to heart, you decided to let it go for the night and just have fun. You made your way out onto the dancefloor, your friends cheering at your arrival.

...

It was finally the end of the night, cake had been eaten and presents had been surveyed as there were too many to open. Most of the guests were beginning to go home but some still lingered out on the cul-de-sac. You stood on the front porch, your heels in your right hand as you waved people goodbye with your left.

“I seemed to have missed most of the festivities.” A familiar voice made you turn around to see your father’s prodigy, Peter Parker, standing behind you. You were pretty good friends with Peter as he had been working with your father for little over three years now. Even still, he seemed to have his moments where he seemed to shut himself off from you and get quiet. He seemed to have his moments and his secrets and so you didn’t really hang out much outside him visiting the tower.

He also wasn’t a social butterfly so even though you had invited him to your party, you didn’t actually expect him to show. Even though it was the end of the night, your spirits still rose seeing him here. “Yeah, you did. My dad got so drunk he serenaded Pepper on the bar.” the two of you laughed. 

You looked out over the seemingly never-ending property, your father had held your party at the summer home. It aided in you feeling like a princess, there was a garden maze on the south side of the home and a long driveway lit by lanterns. You glanced over at Peter and stepped off of the porch, “Would you like to join me on a walk?” He smiled and followed. 

The two of you slowly made your way towards the garden maze on the other side of the property. “You look...” he trailed off while admiring you. You could feel the heat rise to your cheeks and were glad he couldn’t actually see it, “Thank you.” The two of you turned into the garden maze as lightning bugs flew overhead and a cool breeze filled the air. As you walked, you tried to catch and release a few lightning bugs.

The sounds of late summer night hummed in the background as you spotted the small black rectangular box in his hand, “What’s that?” you asked. He looked down at it sheepishly, “It’s just something I got you. I don’t know if you’ll actually like it.” He had thought to buy you something? That was unexpected, but very welcomed. 

Without you saying anything, he slowly opened the small box to reveal another gold necklace. “It’s not 100 percent pure gold like the ones your dad gets you,” it was absolutely gorgeous. It was a small heart pendant attached to a gold chain. “It’s stupid really-” he scratched the back of his neck, looking down at it. “It’s beautiful, Peter.” You whispered in awe. 

“Would you mind? You can take the other one off.” You said turning around. He carefully removed it from the box. He put it over your head and placed the pendant on your collarbone before securing it in the back and you felt a warm sensation in your heart. Suddenly, everything changed. 

It was like your senses had sharpened. You could hear the distant conversation at the front of the property and the chirping of the crickets. You could feel the soft summer breeze across your body and Peter’s soft breath on the back of your neck where goosebumps had started to form. Every time his skin accidentally brushed yours, it felt delicate yet intense all at once. The world seemed to slow as he pulled your hair over the chain after removing the other necklace and turned you to face him. 

You studied his face and your eyes fell upon his brown ones. His hand found yours sending shivers through your body. You lightly squeezed his hand before pulling him closer feeling your knees start to get weak.

Resting your hand on the side of his face, you slowly guided him to the ground. You were close enough to lightly feel the air escaping his nose. He looked down at your lips and was about to lean in when- “Y/N! Come say goodbye to your grandmother!” your father called off from the distance somewhere. 

The two of you fell apart still sitting on the ground the closest you had ever been. You frowned slightly looking away, “I should say goodbye to my nonna. I usually give her a kiss and a hug goodbye.” You licked your lips looking down to avoid eye contact. “She flew in from Italy -- my mom’s side of the family. I don’t get to see her like that.” 

“No, no. I understand.” he mumbled as you both quickly stood. You began dusting off your dress as he helped. You looked up at him again quickly before looking back down again, “Thanks again. It’s beautiful.” You couldn’t bring yourself to look him in the eyes again because his gaze suddenly felt so intense, it felt like you’d melt. “You’re welcome.”

“Y/N!” your dad yelled off in the distance again. You gestured towards the balcony of the house where your dad was likely yelling from, “I have to go.” Peter nodded quickly, “I understand.” You admired him and watched as his eyes softly gazed over your features one last time. “Good night, Peter.” you waved quickly, “Good night, Y/N.” You gathered your dress and hurried off towards where your dad and nonna waited for you on the balcony.

That was it.

[sisterspooky1013]

Only One Choice, Part 2, Chapter 24

Read it here on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic

June 1999

The air smells wet and woody, birdsongs trilling in the early morning sun that trickles through a sky light. She stretches, then disentangles her legs from the sheets and stands, walking to the window.

There is a giant soaking tub in the corner of the room, flanked by two windowed walls that afford a sweeping view of the Cascade mountains, green carpeted hillsides meeting with a baby-blue sky.

She can still recall her mother’s face when they told her the wedding would be in Washington State. “But...we don’t even know anyone in Washington, Dana,” she’d said with a bemused expression, lamenting the length of their flights with a nine-month-old in tow.

Her mother’s reaction paled in comparison to Mulder’s excitement when she’d suggested the idea; she would spend their honeymoon relaxing with a book in the tub, and he could spend it traipsing through the woods looking for Sasquatch, or ‘squatchin’ as he called it. They would reunite in the afternoon, hiking, making love, catching up on all the conversations they’d missed while in the trenches of parenting a new baby. Mom would stay at the same resort with Molly so they could see her every day, while having precious nights to themselves; something they haven’t done since she was born.

She turns the tap on the bath, a blast of water thundering into the empty basin. When it’s full nearly to the brim, she disrobes and eases in, breathing deeply to inhale the juniper-scented steam, courtesy of the resort-provided bath salts. Closing her eyes, she thinks back over it all; their chance meeting, how she was drawn to him by a force that seemed to be bigger than them both, the anguish of wanting him but feeling like she owed it to Ethan to stay together. Her eyes snap open, a memory long-buried in the recesses of her mind springing forth like a trebuchet.

The day she met Mulder, she’d been planning to take the day off to go to a book signing for an author she admires. The signing was cancelled due to a scheduling conflict and she almost took the day off anyway, but had a last minute pang of guilt knowing that the workload that week was already heavy and Trudy would struggle to manage it all on her own. So she’d gone in, she’d performed that autopsy that should have been on Trudy’s docket, and she’d filled out the paperwork, and she’d met Mulder. How delicate the balance of the universe that such an insignificant choice completely changed the course of her life.

She suddenly misses him acutely, and a bundle of nerves and excitement flutters in her belly thinking about when she’ll see him next. She’d scoffed at the idea of them spending last night apart; they live together and have a child so the performative chastity seemed to be a bit much. He said it was like a fast, that a little time apart would make it even more special when they saw each other at the ceremony, and she ultimately acquiesced.

“Meet me on a mountain top at 4 o’clock tomorrow?” he’d asked as he backed out of her room, pulling away from the desperate kisses she was planting all over his face.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she replied with a smile, and they said goodnight.

She smiles again, sinking down until the water slips into her ears. She can’t wait to marry him.

———

He sits up and arches his back, his spine protesting the cramped accommodations. Looking over at Byers and Missy curled up in the king size bed, he regrets his decision to crash on the couch here instead of staying with Scully in their room. Not only because he slept like shit with his legs hanging over the end, but also because work takes him away from his girls so often, he’s an idiot to add another day to it if he doesn’t have to.

He stands, hands on his hips as he twists to stretch his angry muscles, and walks to the window, taking in the dense green hills and valleys that surround them. He smiles, because she could have asked to go to Mexico, or France, or anywhere on the entire Earth and he would have given her what she wanted, but she chose the place she knew he wanted to go. Selfless and giving to a fault, his Scully. Soon to be his wife.

He quietly slips on his running shoes and sneaks out of the room, hitting the hard-packed dirt trail the concierge had told him about. The quiet forest is the perfect place to be alone with his thoughts, nothing but the thud of his feet striking the ground and the twitter of waking birds to distract him. He thinks about his life, about being a child who was lonely and alone, with parents who provided food and shelter but not much more. He thinks about Molly, and how she will never know that kind of pain, that there will never be a day of her life that she is not told how much she is loved. He wonders if his dad ever felt about his mom the way he feels about Scully, and he knows it’s not possible that he did, because if so they would still be together.

He comes to a break in the trees and pauses, breath heaving and lungs burning as he watches a hawk gliding through the valley below, hunting for breakfast. How easily he could have missed this moment, he thinks. Even one small change to the trajectory of his life, and he never would have walked into the autopsy bay that day. If the courier hadn’t been sick, if he hadn’t stopped by Kirkbride’s office when he did. Even further back, if he hadn’t stayed with the bureau with the X files were closed, if Valerie hadn’t been there to encourage him, or if he hadn’t met Valerie one random Tuesday at a record store. The path was long and winding, and it led to her. It led to him on this mountaintop in a sweat-soaked T-shirt, smiling at the thought of his baby daughter, his almost-wife.

He picks up running again, the smile staying on his lips. He’s always felt like he was running away; from his painful past, his regrets, his bad decisions. Now he realizes he’s running towards; his future, a thousand opportunities yet unseen, a kind of happiness he never thought he’d know. He can’t wait for the rest of his life to start.

———

He stands in a clearing near the edge of a cliff, the lush green landscape toeing up against the horizon looking like crooked teeth. Frohike stands beside him in khaki pants and a white linen shirt, a leather folio clasped in his hands. Mulder is also dressed fairly casually, in slacks and a blue Oxford shirt, the sleeves cuffed and the top button undone.

Scully wanted this to be as non-traditional as possible, to make it their own. There is no wedding party, no tuxedo, no flower girl or garter toss. No one will walk her down the aisle, as no one but herself has the ownership to give her away. The guests are small in number; immediate family only, plus the gunmen. Monica and Dahlia are house-sitting back in DC, minding Priscilla as well as the dog, King, that joined the family after the purchase of their house in March. Bucking the idea of arranging guests by whose “side” they are on, they all sit in a small cluster, and Scully will enter from the side.

He looks out and waves at Molly, who is standing on Missy’s lap, holding her hands and bouncing up and down forcefully. She squeals and shouts “dah, dah, dah!” which he chooses to interpret as “Daddy” even though Scully told him it’s just a nonsense syllable and doesn’t mean anything.

Langly gets the signal from Frohike and hits play on a small boom box, piping an instrumental version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” up into the branches of the towering evergreen trees. He expected to feel nervous at this moment, but all he feels is excitement as Maggie scurries out from behind a line of trees and takes her place beside Bill, giving him a smile and a wink.

Scully appears from around the same group of trees and he grins broadly. He’s seen the dress, they picked it out together, but the full effect is stunning. Her hair, now grown well past her shoulder blades, is curled softly and pinned half up, brilliant red tendrils shimmering in the midday sun against her porcelain shoulders. Her dress is full length pearl satin, a slim sheath cut with off the shoulder straps. She is holding a small bouquet of pink peonies in her hands, and holding his eye with a playful smirk.

She arrives beside him and before the music stops, before Frohike has a chance to begin, he steps forward and takes her by the waist, kissing her fully. The guests laugh and he pulls away to see a confused smile on her face.

“I couldn’t wait,” he says simply.

They move through the ceremony, exchanging rings and vowing to love each other forever; promises they’ve already made to each other a hundred times. As they near the part that Scully understands to be the end, Frohike goes off script.

“Mulder has prepared some words of his own, he’ll read them now,” he says, nodding toward his friend.

Scully’s eyebrows lift in a surprised and confused expression.

“Mulder, we didn’t talk about writing our own vows,” she whispers, afraid she’s failed to complete the assignment.

“It’s okay, these are for both of us,” he whispers, and then, taking her hands in his, he reads a passage from her favorite book from memory.

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love; I have found you. You are my sympathy, my better self, my good angel; I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely. A fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

The tear that slips down her cheek is borne only of happiness. She looks into his green eyes and sees contentment and love, and desire. It’s not a spark, what they have, nor an ember. It’s a wildfire, a white-hot torch, an eternal flame that binds them together inseparably. They were forged in fire the moment he laid eyes on her in that autopsy bay, maybe even before.

Frohike concludes, “by the power invested in me by the State of Washington, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride…again.”

He wraps his arms around her waist, lifting her up as he kisses her deeply, a gust of warm summer wind picking up pine needles and tossing them in a mini-tornado that surrounds them both. Molly squeals “dah dah dah!” and claps for her parents.

———

She stands at the mirror, brushing her teeth. Her hair is combed out, her makeup removed, the white dress hanging in the corner of the room with the hem now tinged brown from the dirt that served as their dance floor.

Mulder appears behind her, an arm snaking around the waist of her satin nightgown. She smiles at the sight of his newly ring-adorned hand pressed flat against her belly, then leans forward to rinse.

“Ready for bed?” he asks softly, and she nods.

They slip beneath the cool sheets, curling around one another face-to-face; her leg threaded between his, his arms around her back, foreheads touching. She draws in a big breath and lets it out slowly, contentment settling deep in her bones.

“Do you ever think about all the things that had to happen in exactly the way they did to lead us here?” he asks, and she pulls back a little to look at his face.

“Yes, I was actually just thinking about that earlier,” she says with a curious lilt.

“Makes you wonder, huh, what lives we’d be leading if even just one detail were changed,” he says, tracing his finger along her shoulder blade.

“I don’t think it would have mattered, actually,” she says, and he gives her a quizzical look, silently asking her to elaborate. “I know this will sound a little far-fetched coming from me,” she begins with a self-conscious smile, “but I think it was always going to end up this way. Even if we hadn’t met when we did, we would have crossed paths some other way. Looking back over everything, it just seems like this was meant to be the outcome, even if the path to get here could have gone in a lot of different directions.”

He ponders this, remembering a conversation they had over coffee when, against all odds, she reappeared in his life.

“Like there was only one choice, and signs along the way to pay attention to,” he says contemplatively, lifting his hand to brush a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Exactly,” she replies, pressing her lips to his briefly, “it was always going to be you.”

END

[buckstaposition]

Don’t wanna miss a thing

Birthday song challenge for @din-damn-djarin (prompt 37)

Marcus Moreno x widowed f!reader, Missy Moreno & reader 

1999 words

summary & warnings: Just days before your wedding to Marcus, your emotions are going a bit haywire. Starts angsty but turns fluffy I promise! Themes of loss and grief, loss of a spouse/family member

Sobbing in the bathtub a couple of days before your wedding was not where you thought this evening was going, but here you were. Bawling your eyes out. You had just meant to take a quick shower to freshen up before bed, as your day had been mostly filled with last minute preparations and you were sweaty from hauling around decorations. Maybe not hiring a wedding planner had been a mistake, in more ways than one.

“Honey? You in there?” Marcus’ voice sounded after a hesitant knock on the bathroom door. You knew you should answer him, but you just didn’t have the strength to at this moment.

“Sweetheart?” He tried again, and you could hear the worry in his tone and it only made you feel worse.

“I’m coming in.” Marcus warned after another two minutes or so. It was endearing how considerate he was of your privacy even though you’d told him it was okay to come into the bathroom with you on numerous occasions. If you really didn’t want anyone to come in you’d lock the door and he was the man you were going to marry in less than 48 hours.

The door creaked open and Marcus padded across the bathmat, slowly pulling aside the shower curtain.

“Darling?” Hesitantly, he reached out his hand to you, gently nudging your shoulder. Still sobbing, you gripped it and held it to your face, kissing his palm between tears and hoping he’d understand. Even if you didn’t.

“Is this about Sean?” He asked softly, thumb caressing your cheekbone. You nodded. Marcus sighed; he hated seeing you upset. Just like Sean had. Marcus nudged your chin up and pressed a kiss to your forehead, not caring that the water got on his glasses.

“If you want to be alone for a bit longer that’s alright, but please let me get you out of the shower? You’re shivering.”

It was true enough. The water had gone cold a while ago and now, taking stock of your body you realized you were freezing. You nodded and let Marcus help you up and wrap you in the big fluffy towels he’d bought the two of you as a house-warming gift when you’d moved in together. You leaned on him as he dried you off, suddenly exhausted from your outburst of emotion. You let him help you dress yourself in your fluffiest pyjamas, the shivers slowly subsiding when he pulled your extra fluffy socks onto your feet.

“Okay?” He asked, kneeling on the ground between your feet while you were sitting on your shared bed. You nodded absently, catching his hand and bringing it up to your face. The tears had stopped but the deep sadness lingered.

“Please stay?” You whispered. He kissed your knee, then your free hand.

“I’ll just tell Missy good night, okay?”

A noise from the hallway drew your attention. Missy stood in the doorframe like summoned, and your heart broke at her anxious expression.

“Hey bunny.” You tried to smile, but it didn’t quiet reach your eyes. Missy looked between you and Marcus in concern, her lip starting to quiver.

“Bunny, what is it?” You patted the space next to you, inviting her to sit. After a look at her father, she rushed over, instantly wrapping her arms around you. You exchanged a worried glance with Marcus, and he rose to sit down at his daughter’s other side.

“What’s wrong, bunny? You know you can tell me.” You coaxed again, your own undefined sorrows forgotten in face of her obvious anguish.

“Diyouchangeyourmindaboutthewedding?” It rushed out of her in one breath and she clung to you harder. You hugged her back, squeezing her smaller frame tightly and caressing her hair.

“Oh sweetie, no! Why would you think that?”

“Cuz I heard you crying and-“ she hiccupped a sob into your shoulder, her voice small when she continued. “Please don’t leave us!”

“Oh bunny!” Your own eyes were starting to water again. “I won’t! I won’t ever leave you! You two are my whole world!”

You squeeze her tightly to you, feel Marcus’ arms enveloping you both and look up briefly to see how he’s doing with all this. The look on his face is heart-breaking, and you lean over quickly to press a reassuring kiss to his lips.

“Then why are you so upset?” Missy sniffled. You sighed and ordered your thoughts, mad at yourself for causing anguish to this girl you’ve grown to love so much.

“It’s sort of a silly thing really.” You began. “You know how I was married before?”

“Yeah.” You’d taken her to see his grave once, just like Marcus and Missy had taken you to meet the previous Mrs Moreno. It felt only right. “You still miss him?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. I always will, but that’s not what made me cry. It was… I feel guilty for being so happy, with you two. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah…no… I don’t know.” Missy scrunched up her nose in thought. She was a smart girl, very mature for her age, but in the end she was still only a twelve-year-old girl.

“You see, when you lose someone you love very much, that grief never really goes away. Like you still miss your mom, right?”

“Every day.” She sniffled a bit less now, and looked up at her father, who nodded silently. “But I’d miss you, too!”

“I know, bunny.” You kissed her forehead, wanting to soothe her. “You won’t ever have to choose between us. Your mom is your mom and that will never change.”

“I don’t want to have to choose.” Missy whispered, wiping her tears away. “But I still want her back.”

“I know, bunny, I know. I want my husband back all the time, too.” You exchanged another glance with Marcus, glad to see that he understood and let you take the lead in this discussion. It warmed your heart to know how unconditionally he trusted you with his daughter. “It’s so unfair, isn’t it? It makes me so angry sometimes that it happened to me.”

“It does?” Missy’s eyes went wide. She turned to her father to confirm and he nodded, mouthing a soft ‘yeah, me too’ to her.

“The point is, it’s okay to feel all these conflicting things. And sometimes they might overwhelm you, like they did me today, and that’s okay too because I have people who are there for me when that happens.”

“You know you can always talk to me, us, about anything. Or grandma. Or your friends.” Marcus hugged her close and wiped away her tears, like he had yours earlier. “And if that’s not enough we will do anything to help you, okay?”

“Okay.” Missy smiled a watery smile, snuggling into her dad while holding your hand close. The three of you huddled together for a few minutes, giving everyone the chance to settle. Missy, being a kid, bounced back fastest.

“Can we have a movie night?” She looked at you both with the big puppy eyes she had inherited from her father and perfected over the course of her young life. You didn’t even need to look at Marcus to know the answer.

“And what movie were you thinking?”

“Mulan!”

“Okay, you prep the TV, I’ll get on the popcorn.” Marcus prompted, motioning for her to go ahead downstairs. She was out of the room with the speed of lightning.

“You sure that kid doesn’t have any powers? Super speed maybe?”

“Positive. You okay, honey?” He cupped your cheek and looked deep into your eyes, gaze searching.

“Positive. This actually really helped.” You smiled and leaned in for a small kiss. “So, I think we’re not too bad at this parenting thing, huh?”

“Are you kidding? You’re amazing at it!” Marcus hugged you close, kissing your forehead and then your cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

---

The reception was in full swing and everyone was enjoying themselves. There had been no mishaps save for the kind that would make for funny stories later and the cake was almost gone. Almost being the operative word. You were in your seat, relieved to be sitting down for a while and re-braiding Missy’s hair where the decorative ribbons and flowers had come loose during the day. Marcus was weaving his way through the guests back to your table, grinning triumphantly.

“Swiped the last slice of cake while Colin wasn’t looking.” You looked behind him to see Miracle Guy frowning at the now empty cake stand.

“Oh darling, you shouldn’t have!” You protested insincerely. It was your wedding after all. You felt you were entitled to some cake.

“He’s already had two!” Marcus put the plate down in front of you and produced some clean cutlery from his pocket. “Besides, anything for my girls.”

“Awww, you’re the best husband and dad!” You pulled him in by his bowtie to press a kiss to his lips.

“Gross.” Missy commented, snatching up one of the small fancy forks and starting to dig in. The two of you paid her no mind, too engrossed in your new marital bliss. You took turns feeding each other cake in between kisses and whispering sweet things, but really Missy got most of it. You didn’t even notice the band switching to a new song. Or the announcement they had made just before that, apparently. At least not until Anita planted herself right in front of your table and brought her cane down hard on the ground.

“You two! Stop canoodling! It’s time for your dance!”

“Mom!” Marcus whined, mostly for show as he was already pulling his tux jacket back on in the same motion, then holding his hand out to you. “May I have this dance, Mrs Moreno?”

“Gladly, Mr Moreno.” You smiled and rose, letting him lead you to the middle of the dancefloor. The band had been stuck playing an intro to your chosen song for several long moments now and launched into it one last time as you took your positions. Aerosmith – I don’t wanna miss a thing. Your song. Marcus took your hand, smiling softly, and when the vocalists started so did you, twirling around the dancefloor. You felt like you were floating, a moment of near perfect happiness.

“I love you so much.” You mouthed to Marcus as he led you across the dancefloor, his hand warm at your waist. He smiled, spun you out and then reeled you back in, closer this time to press a kiss to your temple.

“I love you.” The song ended and you paused for a moment to receive the applause from your guests. The band faded into another song and people started filling the floor around you while you swayed in place for a moment.

“You know, there’s only one thing missing.”

Marcus’s brow furrowed. “What’s that?”

You nodded towards the table where Missy was still sitting, chin in her hands and looking out towards the dancefloor, a picture both wistful and yet a little forlorn. You waved to get her attention, then motioned for her to join you two once that was accomplished. She started, her brow furrowing in the exact same adorable way as her father, then stood hesitantly.

“Come on, bunny!” You called, letting go of Marcus just enough to make space for her. Her whole face lit up and she came running over, long hair swooshing after her. She all but crashed into the two of you, throwing one arm around your waist and the other around Marcus.

“Wanna dance?” You smiled at her, drawing her as close as the volume of your skirt allowed for a little side hug.

“Yes!” She exclaimed, already starting to sway to the music. Marcus surreptitiously wiped at his eyes before hugging the both of you close. It took you all a moment to adjust your footing, but you managed it soon enough. This was truly, absolutely perfect. You could stay lost in this moment forever.

- - - 

author’s note: I started this whole thing over like five times, with different concepts and characters, and somehow landed on this. It turned more into bonding with Missy than the pairing, but hey. Hope you’ll still enjoy it. 

and yes, I named Miracle Guy Colin. He just looks like a Colin to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[official-weasley]

The Irreplaceable Charlie Weasley: Alternative Ending

Warnings: Absolutely nothing except Charlie being one happy bean ❤️

Charlie

The spells making sounds around me finally snapped me back to reality. My back was aching but I knew I have to get up and fight. I won't give up that easily! Before I could think twice about it, I was already duelling another Death Eater. It felt good immobilizing him and the adrenaline of fighting slowly came back to me when I heard a voice calling me.

“Charlie.”

I turned around but nobody was there. I shook my head. Perhaps I was still a bit shaken from talking to Nova wherever we were together just moments ago.

“Charlie.”

There it was again. I pressed myself against a nearby wall, trying to empty my head. Was I hearing voices now?

“Charlie.”

The voice was getting louder and it seemed it was coming from inside my head.

“Charlie.”

I opened my eyes and sat up so abruptly that everything went dark for a moment. What is going on? I slowly scanned the room I was in.

I wasn't at Hogwarts, I was in a bed. My bed. I rubbed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. This is my bedroom.

I heard someone walking up the stairs. I looked down at my body. I was shirtless and my back wasn't aching. Was I dreaming? I couldn't be. It felt so real.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” I turned my head to the door and saw Nova leaning against the doorway. I was in awe at how beautiful she was. She was wearing a burgundy jumper with a golden letter on it. It was my jump... Wait a minute. It didn't have a golden C on it. It had a golden N on it.

I pressed my fingers against my eyes. I have never been more confused. I looked in her direction again. She was still there. Along with her jumper, her favorite khaki-colored jeans, and barefoot.

“I was about to send our little army to wake you.” She giggled. “Did you just wake up?”

“Yeah.” I said with a rusty voice. I was still a bit disoriented and apparently, it showed on my face because Nova's pretty smile turned into a worried expression.

She slowly made her way across the bedroom and sat down on my side of the bed.

“Is this real?” I asked.

“It happened again.” She whispered as if she was reading my mind.

It was strange. I knew exactly what she was referring to, but I couldn't shake the dream away.

“Yes.” I nodded. “But it...it was different this time, Nova.” I shook my head trying to get the images out of my mind.

“How so?” She asked gently, placing her hand on mine, sending shivers down my spine.

“It wasn't Fred or Tonks. It was...you.” I looked into her beautiful blue eyes and I have never wanted to kiss her more, so I did.

She let out a sound of surprise before kissing me back, placing her arms around my neck.

It was all coming back to me now. I had frequent nightmares about the battle that took place at Hogwarts. I kept seeing Fred and Tonks die. It has been happening for years, but I didn't have a vivid dream like this in a very long time.

“What was the dream about this time?” Nova pulled away and cupped my face, locking her eyes on mine.

“I dreamt about that night in the Sanctuary, when we were attacked. But it was different. You only cast the Protection spell on me and not both of us.” I shook my head, my mind creating images of her getting burnt again.

“Then I lived my entire life without you up until the battle. We had a funeral for you and I was alone at Bill's wedding. You weren't Fleur's bridesmaid and I told my mum I was going to spend the rest of my life alone.”

She climbed into my arms, pulling me into a hug. I buried my fingers into her hair and breathed into her shoulder. She smelled like pancakes.

“And then I was fighting at Hogwarts and you were never there to save me from that blast in the back and I fell unconscious and everything turned white and you were there. We were by the Lake and we both cried missing each other and when I got back I was ready to fight again but I kept hearing a voice calling my name and then...I woke up.” I gently pushed her away. I needed to see her eyes again, they always calmed me down.

“You have to see that doctor George was going to.” The concern in her voice matched the one on her face.

“I'm fine.” I said unconvincingly. After so many years of being together, I still didn't learn that she can see straight through my lies.

“Don't give me that, Charles. There is nothing wrong with needing help. We're all messed up about everything that went down that year.” She frowned.

“Okay, I'll write to George tomorrow. I promise.” I bestowed her with a weak smile and kissed her again.

“I'll ask you just in case.” She crossed her legs on the bed in front of me.

“No need to do that, love.” I playfully rolled my eyes.

“Yes, I do, Char. You looked at me, me standing in the doorway, as if I was a ghost. This dream obviously messed with your perception of reality so we are doing this, whether you like it or not.”

She tapped her finger on my nose, making me grin. She asked me a series of questions to make me remember things and make me forget about my nightmares every time I woke up disoriented.

“Okay, I'm ready.” I cleared my throat.

“What year is it?” She started.

“2007.” I replied after thinking about it for a second.

“Where do we live?”

“In Romania. Two kilometers away from the Sanctuary in a small wizarding village. We deemed it perfect for raising our children and it's great because it's close enough that we can both walk to work since neither of us is fond of apparition.”

“Describe our wedding and when and where did we get married?” Nova asked her next question.

“We got married on 7th August 1995 at the Sanctuary. It was a small ceremony as we wanted. Our friends from the Sanctuary, my family, your mum and aunt, your dad's closest friends from Egypt, our friends from school. You couldn't decide which of the girls is going to be your maid of honor so they all were. Ginny was our flower girl and Bill was my best man and he gave you away. We both cried exchanging our vows, so did our mums and Bill shed a tear even though he will never admit it.” Nova laughed. “We ended up having a party in our house and it all ended with Fred and George's beautiful fireworks.”

It was the most beautiful day of my life. We loved how everything turned out. It was small and everybody had so much fun and Bill and my dad got drunk and we laughed at them singing songs. We couldn't have planned it better.

“Full names of our children and when they were born.” She said with a smile on her face. This was her favorite question. “Aoede Io. She was born on 2nd February 1996. My mum freaked out when she found out you got pregnant before we got married.” I giggled.

“That one time we didn't use the Protection spell.” She joined me.

“I'm happy we forgot.” I pressed my forehead to hers and she couldn't stop a smile spreading across her face at my words.

“Then we had Luna Dora and she was born on 1st October 1999 and our beautiful boy Roger William was born on 30th July 2003. We were all hoping he would share his birthday with Harry but he came a day earlier.” We both chuckled.

“What day is it?” Nova's last question interrupted my reminiscing.

“It's 1st September.” I said proudly, feeling like myself again.

“Do you still think this isn't real?” Nova asked softly.

“It is but I am living my dream.” I kissed her again. I can't believe I have everything I ever wanted.

“As you should. You deserve it.” She kissed me so hard that I got dizzy for a second.

“Wait, 1st September, we're supposed to take Aoede...”

“I know. That's why I came to wake you.” Nova giggled. “You get dressed and then come down for breakfast.”

She leaned to kiss my forehead but a sound of glass breaking made us both look towards the door.

“Bloody hell.” I heard Luna say.

“Luna, mum's going to kill you!” Aoede sighed.

“For cussing or for breaking the glass?” Luna sounded worried.

“Both!”

“Dora needs to stop hanging out with uncle Ron so much.” Nova playfully shook her head. Our Luna loved Ron the most and she loved to copy everything he said, including his cursing words.

“I better go down before someone gets hurt.” She stood up and walked to the door. “You going to be okay?”

“I will. I promise.” I smiled reassuringly. I felt better talking to her and answering her questions. I always did.

“Oh, and I almost forgot. Bill dropped by earlier, leaving Victoire here. Luna made an entire plan inviting her for ice cream when we drop Aoede at King's Cross and then she's sleeping over. She sent her a letter with Aoede's new owl and everything.” Nova laughed and went downstairs.

I got up, the biggest smile on my face. This really was real. I have to write to George. I have to get rid of these nightmares. My life was so great, I can't have these dark thoughts about losing Nova anymore. It was enough that I lost my brother, Tonks, and Remus.

I got dressed and slowly made my way downstairs. I loved our little house. We were looking for something similar to our cottage at the Sanctuary and were so happy when we found a perfect little house on the outskirts of a village near the Sanctuary. We fell in love with it immediately. We both saw us raising our children here and it's so cozy and homey and we couldn't have asked for more.

What I loved, even more, was the scene in front of me when I got to the lower floor. A ladle was pouring a pancake into the pan. Nova was leaning on the counter giving Aoede advice on the drawing she was making. I still can't believe how similar they are. Not only did Aoede get Nova's talent for drawing but she looked like her as well. She had long, wavy, dark red hair and Nova's blue eyes.

“Good morning, dad.” Aoede mumbled and Luna followed her lead.

Nova looked up and winked at me, before picking up a pencil and making a correction to Aoede's drawing.

I looked to the sofa where Dora was sitting with Victoire, braiding her hair and them both giggling as usual. Luna Dora was a perfect mixture of us both. She had blue hair and my eyes. Her nose was sprinkled with my freckles and she got the mischief gene from the twins.

I was standing still, watching the two best friends giggle. Dora adored her uncles Bill and George the most. Sometimes she is more at Bill and Fleur's than she is at home because she and Victoire are inseparable.

“Good morning, uncle Charlie.” Victoire turned her head to me and waved.

“Morning, Vicky.” I smiled.

Before I could say another word my four-year-old son ran into my arms. I picked him up and lifted him high into the air.

“I missed you, daddy. You were asleep for so long.” He sighed and I couldn't help but giggle. He was adorable and he was mine. A spitting image of me. A face full of freckles, curly purple hair and...

“Make me fly like a Dragon, daddy.” And he loved Dragons as much as I did.

“Dee-Dee, can you set the table?” Nova asked our eldest as she waved her wand for the ladle to stop and I was twirling our youngest in the air, making roaring noises while doing so.

“I can't.” Aoede replied, frowning as she focused even more on her drawing. “I want to finish this before I leave for Hogwarts today, mum.”

“Alright.” Nova sighed, knowing full well she was the same when she was her age so she couldn't really complain.

We all sat down for breakfast and it was the most beautiful sight. Aoede was trying to find her mouth to feed herself and draw at the same time. Roggie was playing with his Dragon plushie more than eating, so Nova helped him because we both knew what a tantrum he would throw if anyone even tried taking his plushie away. Victoire was eating her pancakes with one hand leaning on the kitchen table as Luna started to describe her plan for today to us.

“And then when we are done with ice cream we are going to go see uncle Harry and aunt Ginny.” Luna finished, her mouth full of pancakes.

“Is Teddy going to be there?” Victoire's eyes shone and I exchanged a look with Nova, who had the biggest smirk painting her face.

She already predicted that Victoire and Teddy are going to end up together and I couldn't argue with her as Dora, Vicky and Teddy were best friends. And so far she has been right about everyone. She was right that Bill will find someone special. She was right about Hermione and Ron and about Ginny and Harry.

“Bill would kill you if he saw your smug expression right now.” I leaned towards Nova and whispered to her.

“Oh, c'mon. They are adorable.” Nova defended herself. “Bill is just an overly protective father.” She giggled.

“Yeah, even more than I am.” I laughed.

“Oh, you'll see when Aoede tells you about her first crush. I will bet my wand right now that you will be the same as Bill.” She bit her lip, trying not to giggle.

“Yeah, yeah.” I playfully rolled my eyes, knowing she was probably right.

“And someone has to make Teddy an official Weasley. Tonks would be proud.” She gave out a gentle smile.

“Tell that to Bill.” I winked at her and made her chuckle.

—

After a lot of effort and bickering and making sure Aoede has everything and we didn't forget anything, we finally arrived at King's Cross. I took Aoede's trunk to the luggage compartment, while Nova was making sure Di-Di had all her art pencils.

“Are you crying, Charles?” Nova nudged me with her elbow as we watched our eldest get on the train, waving at us.

“Says the woman with the handkerchief pressed against her cheek.” I teased her, wiping away a tear. I can't believe how good we have it. After everything we've been through, after losing my brother and some of our friends, after having 3 kids, we were still perfect.

We kept waving at Aoede, Roggie now in my arms as he stated that his legs were hurting, waving his plushie around at his big sister, until the train disappeared around the corner.

The second it did, Luna grabbed Victoire's hand and they started running towards the pillar that will take us back to Diagon Alley, both shouting 'ice cream ice cream'.

“You want to make a bet in which House Aoede will be sorted in?” I chuckled at Nova's question.

“We already went through this, love.” I smirked. “Di-Di will be a Ravenclaw, Dora a Hufflepuff and Roggie...” I turned my head to our son, booping his nose, making him giggle. “...Roggie will be a Gryffindor.”

“I am willing to bet 10 Galleons that Aoede will end up in Gryffindor.” Nova said mockingly. I knew she didn't really believe it. Aoede was a miniature Nova, despite her red hair, and she knew that there is no way she will be sorted in any other House than Ravenclaw but she was having too much fun playing with me like this.

“It's on, Mrs. Weasley.” I smiled and kissed my wife. As long as we were a happy little family, our children healthy, knowing they are safe and Nova looking at me the way she was now, letting me know she is just as in love with me as she was all those years ago when we were at school, I didn't care in which House our children get sorted as I knew we would love them all the same.

A/N: Okay, this really is it now! I can leave this story with a lighter heart and no more shedding tears!

Now I need some time to move on from this story and then I am ready to write more happy endings for our Dragon boy ❤️

Thank you again for reading and being so nice on this site ❤️

[lamptracker]

FIC: Win/Win (Part 8/?)

Yeah, I’m sorry this is about 97 weeks late. And that it’s tiny. But I’m *just* getting back to where I can write actual fics again, so. I don’t know what to tell you.

Anyway

Series Masterlist

Overall Summary: Temporarily homeless, the reader needs a place to stay. Her friend Tom, who has a reputation for being a womanizer, has an extra room… and an idea.

Very loosely based on the How I Met Your Mother episode “World’s Greatest Couple,” where Lily posed as Barney’s wife to help him get rid of his one-night stands.

Part summary: After Jacob and Zendaya take the next step in their relationship, Tom and the reader ponder doing the same. 

Warnings: it’s so fluffy I want to DIE

Tags: @sspider-parker @dipshithipster @stephie-senpai @lemirabitur   @gravity-jade21   @ocaptainmycaptainrogers   @hollandfieldblurbs   @unicorn-princess-1999   @grace-wheeze @writings-and-stuff @almostrosadiazz @vendylewin @doctor-ninja @let-me-luve-you

Tom slowly sipped his beer while he waited for everyone else to show up to the bar after work. (y/n) normally got there first, but she had an after-school staff meeting. She came in about ten minutes after he did, a slightly sheepish smile on her face.

“Hello, love.” Tom took her hand as she slid into the booth, kissing her softly once she’d settled in. “How was your day?”

“Pretty good. Staff meeting was boring as hell and could have very easily been an e-mail.” She chuckled quietly to herself. “I, uh… I did something.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “You did something?”

“I did something. I don’t know if it was good. I think it might have been a little bad. For the sake of argument, I’m going to call it… morally ambiguous.”

“What did you do?” Tom asked, in that tone of voice one uses when a toddler does something naughty.

“I saw Tony in the parking lot.”

Tom scoffed. “Wow, he really likes to talk to you a lot for someone who was told to never talk to you again.”

(y/n) shook her head. “Yeah. He’s, just, an awful listener. It was a big issue when we were dating. Anyway, he wanted to talk to me because he wanted to formally announce that he is done pursuing me.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“What, did he give you a Certificate of Completion or something?”

(Y/n) snorted.  “So anyway, I ask him why, and he says he and Morgan are getting back together because… get this… she’s pregnant.”

Tom’s jaw went slack, his mouth forming an “o” shape. “Get out. Then what?”

(y/n) cleared her throat. “This is where it gets, ah, morally ambiguous. I put my hand on his shoulder, I looked him square in the eye, and I said: ‘Oh, Tony. Are you sure it’s yours?’ And then I just… started walking away.”

Tom instantly regretted choosing that moment to take a swig of his beer, because it very nearly shot out of his nose. “Oh, my God, that’s fucking awesome, babe.”

(y/n) laughed. “I heard him get his phone out and say, ‘Are you home? No, don’t go anywhere, we need to talk.’ I should feel worse about that than I do, shouldn’t I?”

Tom started laughing, more loudly this time. “No, no, I think that after everything he did to you, that was absolutely called for.”

“Oh, good.”

Just then, Harrison walked in and sat across from them.

“So guess what,” he said, plucking a spicy pretzel from the bowl on the table. “I, uh… I have a date.”

(y/n) smiled widely. “Really! Tell us all about them.”

“Well, her name is Amelia. She works at the bank down the street from my office. We met in line at one of the food carts outside, the tamale one?”

“Love tamales,” (y/n) said; Tom just nodded.

“Anyway, we’re going to dinner tomorrow night. I can’t wait, she’s so awesome.”

“You taking her out for tamales?” (y/n) asked; Tom and Harrison stared at her. “What? I thought it’d be a cute callback to how they met, I - oh, Jacob and Z are here.”

Jacob and Zendaya walked in, stopping at the edge of the table.

“We, um, we have an announcement,” Jacob said.

“You’ve decided you’re officially done pursuing me?” (y/n) asked; Jacob laughed.

“No, but I did see Tony in the parking lot… what did you say to him?”

“Nothing,” (y/n) replied casually, “so what’s this announcement?”

“We’re getting married!” Zendaya held out her left hand; a silver ring with a single round diamond encircled her ring finger.

Harrison, Tom, and (y/n) collectively gasped as she brandished the ring. Finally, all three of them started excitedly yammering at once:

“Oh, my God. Congratulations, you two!”

“Zendaya, that ring is gorgeous!”

“About time you locked that down, Jacob, congratulations!”

“I’m ordering a round of champagne for the table,” Tom said, getting up to go to the bar.

“(y/n), I want you to be my maid of honor,” Zendaya said.

“Oh, I’d love to!” (y/n) exclaimed.

“And I can’t decide who I want to be my best man, so I want Harrison and Tom to be co-best men,” Jacob said.

“I’m in,” Harrison said.

“Me too,” Tom added, carrying a tray with a bottle of champagne and five glasses to the table. He carefully distributed the champagne amongst the five glasses, then everyone took one. “I’d like to propose a toast. To Jacob and Zendaya!”

“To Jacob and Zendaya!” Everyone clinked their glasses together and drank.

**

“I am so happy for them,” (y/n) said, hanging her jacket on a hook just inside the apartment door.

“Me too.” Tom settled down onto the couch, patting the cushion next to him. “Let me ask you something, Tom.” (y/n) sat down next to Tom, head resting on his shoulder; his arm wrapped around her, pulling her close. “Do you want to get married someday?”

Tom chuckled softly, his thumb rubbing slow circles on her shoulder. “If you had asked me that a year ago, I’d have a dramatically different answer.” He looked down at her, smiling. “But, thanks to you… yeah. Someday, I do. And I want it to be you, you’re the one that taught me it was okay to love again. You’re the one that said it was okay to give my heart to someone again. I’ve given it to you, and I want you to have it forever.” He kissed her forehead; her eyelids fluttered closed and she sighed happily. “What about you?”

“Oh, absolutely. When I was with Tony, the thought of marriage never crossed my mind. I cared about him, you know? But I’m not sure if I ever truly loved him, not like I love you. You kept trying to tell me you were a bad boyfriend, but you’ve been perfect. You’re sweet, you’re funny, you care about me and you want to listen to my problems without trying to solve them for me. I thought I was in love before, but now… now I know I am. And when I picture my wedding day, I picture you at the other end of the aisle.”

“Am I wearing a tux?”

“Well, it’s a drunken Vegas shotgun wedding, right? So you’re probably in a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops.”

Tom laughed. “Horrifying.”

“You should see the Elvis impersonator, I never said which one of us was going to be drunk.” (Y/n) nudged him with her shoulder, giggling. “I love you so much, Tom.”

“I love you too, (y/n).”

“I’m not ready to get married yet, though, not for a while.”

“Me either. But I promise you this, I’m going to marry you someday.”

(y/n) smiled softly at him. “I can’t wait. Well, I mean, I can, that was the whole point of this, I mean…”

“Darling? I love you, but… you’re rambling.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you should shut me up then.”

Tom stood suddenly, scooping her into his arms. “Challenge accepted,” he said, winking, as he carried the now-giggling (y/n) into the bedroom.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Nansook Hong’s video gets over one million views

LINK to Nansook Hong video  17 minutes

Her book is called: “In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family.” Little, Brown & Co.  Boston, New York, Toronto & London, 1998  

▲ The marriage of Hyo Jin Moon and the fifteen-year-old Nansook Hong, officiated by Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han on January 7, 1982.

Nansook was married at 15, pregnant at 16, and a mother at 17.

Messiah Sun Myung Moon was guilty of breaking US law on 2 counts: false visa for Nansook to enter the US and enabling underage sex. (The age of consent was 17 in New York state in 1982, and is the same now.)

Nansook Hong fled from her volatile and abusive husband and the Moon ‘East Garden’ compound in August 1995.

Divorce papers were filed in December 1996.

In December 1997, Nansook Hong was granted a divorce from Hyo-jin Moon, and was given custody of their five children. Hyo-jin was granted visiting rights on condition he passed drug tests. He failed the tests.

On September 13, 1998, in a segment on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” Mike Wallace spoke to Nansook Hong about her 14-year marriage to Hyo-jin Moon, the eldest son of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. One of Moon’s estranged daughters, Un-jin Moon, broke her long public silence about the dysfunctional “True Family.” Un-jin backed up Nansook Hong’s account and called her “very honest.” Donna Orme Collins also contributed.

On September 21, 1998 Sun Myung Moon spoke at East Garden, but many members felt he failed to address their concerns from “60 Minutes.” The issue of another illegitimate son, Sam Park born in 1966, was a major one. Many members left.

In October 1998 Nansook’s book, In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family, was published in the U.S. It was also published in French (1998), Japanese (1998) and German (2000 and 2002). Sections of her book have also been published in a 1999 Korean book by Lee Dae-bok, 이대복 (a former member).

Mike Wallace spoke to Nansook Hong on the American CBS ‘60 Minutes’ TV program about her 14 year marriage to Hyo-jin Moon, the eldest son of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. His daughter, Un-jin Moon, and Donna Collins also contributed.

TRANSCRIPT:

Mike Wallace: If you’re a 15 year-old Korean girl and your spiritual leader, your messiah, selects you to marry his son, that is about as close as you can get to heaven on earth. But sadly Nansook Hong’s marriage into the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s family turned out to be more like hell on earth. As you will hear from her, and from one of Sun Myung Moon’s daughters, Moon himself and some of his children had not always practiced what Moon preaches. His Unification Church stresses no sex outside marriage, no alcohol, no illegal drugs. But Nansook says that is not what she saw after she married the Reverend’s eldest son, Hyo-jin Moon, the young man they call the prince.

Nansook Hong: He was the prince, the prince. He was very abusive, both physically and emotionally. He is alcoholic. He is addicted to drugs.

[video of Hyo-jin Moon giving a sermon to church members.]

▲ Hyo Jin cursing the church members at Belvedere

Hyo-jin Moon: After all, isn’t it give and take.

Mike Wallace: And, she told us, he was high on cocaine or some other drug when he made this rambling, angry, off-color speech to a church group.

Hyo-jin Moon: I am standing here being judged by you motherf*****s. What the f**k do you judge me by? Huhh.

Mike Wallace: Nansook didn’t even know Hyo-Jin when she was chosen to marry him, and she certainly didn’t expect a drug addict. She had been brought up believing that the Rev Moon’s family was without sin.

Nansook Hong: They had a lot of Moon and his family pictures that as a child, as a teenager, we adored, we admired. We looked at those nice smiles and the happy family and we thought that was ideal family.

MW: The Reverend Moon calls his family, the True Family, the perfect family.

NSH: Moon is a perfect human being, he is the only perfect human being on the earth, and he can choose his wife, and his wife then becomes perfect as well, and so his children become perfect because they are from this perfect man and perfect woman.

▲ Mike Wallace

MW: And so when Moon marries more than a thousand couples at once, as he did in New York last June, he exhorts them to live the high moral life that he, supposedly, exemplifies. The church told us that Moon himself had matched each couple by studying their pictures and brief biographies. And the newly-weds say they want their families to be just as virtuous as his.

Groom: He sets an example as to how to be true parents. The world is in dire need of strong family values. He not only preaches that, but he lives it as well.

Bride: True family, and they bring up children of goodness.

MW: And without sin…

Bride: No sin at all, no sin

MW: Drugs?

Bride: No drugs

MW: Alcohol?

Bride: No alcohol

NSH: Moon’s theology is that he is perfect man who can create perfect family, I think it kind of falls apart if I look at his children.

MW: The Moons gave birth to thirteen children, and various individuals who have been close to them told us, that, in violation of church rules, they have seen some of Moon’s children drink alcohol, smoke, and use illegal drugs. And Nansook soon learned that her husband is the worst of them. She lived with him here at the Moon’s opulent estate north of New York City.

▲ East Garden, Sunnyside Lane, Irvington (18 acres) was bought in 1973 for $566,150

▲ This Conference Center, in the grounds of East Garden, was built by Moon at a cost of $24million.

___________________________________

MW: Nansook says the Moons knew all about her husband’s drug problem but still they spoiled him; kept showering him with cash.

NSH: When he needed cash he went to his mum and his mum would give him from $1,000 up to $50,000 and some more.

MW: From a $1,000 to $50,000?

NSH: Yes, depends. Depends what he asked and what kind of mood the parents are in.

MW: Where did all this cash come from?

NSH: I believe it is mainly coming from Japan. When Japanese leaders come in, they bring cash in, and basically they give to Reverend and Mrs Moon.

MW: And how would his son use those church donations?

NSH: He basically used for his cocaine, his parties, his hostess, bar hopping, all the fun things that a person can do.

MW: Those fun things apparently included mistresses. Hyo-jin told her he was entitled to have affairs because his father had had them. And she says that Reverend Moon himself confirmed, to her, that he had had affairs and the Reverend told her that God wanted him to.

NSH: He told me, in person, that he… he called it providential affairs.

MW: Providential affairs?

NSH: Providential affairs

MW: What does that…?

NSH: It’s providential means that it is God’s mission. So he had to have these affairs, extra-marital affairs, because it was providential, it was God’s mission that he had to fulfill.

MW: Of course Reverend Moon does not tell his followers about that part of God’s mission. Instead he preaches that adultery is a major sin.

NSH: That is the worst sin that Unification Church members could commit, to commit adultery, then you will basically burn in hell forever. That is the one single most worse thing that you can do. But Hyo-jin did it many times and his parents know. But there is nothing they do.

▲ Hyo-jin Moon with two guns and a knife. His father is also holding one of the guns. Nansook said that Hyo-jin had a collection of about 60 guns, some of which he kept in their bedroom. She was fearful of them. Hyo-jin used money that Mrs Moon had given him, “earmarked for our children’s future, to buy a thirty-thousand-dollar gold-plated gun for his father and motorcycles for himself and his brothers.” … “He would open the gun case he kept in our bedroom and stroke one of his high-powered rifles. ‘Do you know what I could do to you with this?’ he would ask. He kept a machine gun, a gift from True Parents, under our bed.” ( ‘In the Shadow of the Moons’ pages 166 and 182)

___________________________________

MW: But worse than the affairs, she says, the Reverend’s eldest son would beat her. One awful night, she told us, he pummeled her while she was pregnant with her fifth child.

NSH: He was doing his cocaine ritual, and against my better judgement, I went and said I will have to talk to you. I said, I just cannot live like this. And I took his cocaine, and I tried to flush it down the toilet and that is when he started to punch me and I did get black eyes and I got bloody nose. And umm, he… But the big fear was that he was gonna kill the baby I was…

MW: You were carrying…

NSH: I was seven months pregnant and I was pretty big. And he kept saying, “I am gonna kill the baby, I’m gonna kill the baby.” That was the worst fear that I had, that he might punch and then something would happen.

MW: Whenever she told Reverend and Mrs Moon about the beatings, Nansook says, they blamed her.

NSH: I was not ideal wife for Hyo-jin that is why he would behave in a certain way towards me, and I was not a good member of their family – so also it was my fate…

MW: Who told you that? Mrs Moon or …

NSH: Both, both of them, yes. And it was my fate that I have to endure these things.

20:50

Un-jin Moon: Sounds familiar

MW: Nansook is getting support from a surprising source, one of Reverend Moon’s daughters, Un-jin Moon. She told us her parents blamed her too, when she was abused by her husband. Did he beat you?

▲ Un-jin Moon

UJM: Yes

MW: And you would tell your folks

UJM: Yes

MW: And they would say…

UJM: I deserved it.

MW: Un-jin Moon is estranged from her parents, but she has never criticized them in public before. She and a close friend, Jeannie Honnerd (spelling?), said that by coming forward they hoped to dissuade people from joining cults. Off camera Un-jin told us that she does not believe that her father is the messiah. On camera she put it this way:

UJM: He is just my father. I think that in itself should say a whole lot.

MW: Un-jin is a Moon, but not a Moonie, not a believer in her father’s church.

UJM: I believe in a God, but I don’t think that I want to belong to one particular denomination now.

MW: What do you think of Nansook? Honest?

UJM: I think she is very honest.

MW: Do you admire her, do you respect her, do you believe her?

UJM: Yes I do. I respect and admire her very much.

MW: Nansook got a degree in art history from Barnard College. Though she realized the perfect family was far from perfect, she tried to be philosophical about it. So what you are saying is that they are like…

NSH: … everybody else, like all of us who are dysfunctional. Every family has problems, so they are like everybody else. But I think a little more dysfunctional than an ordinary middle class family.

MW: Well they have more money to help them to be dysfunctional.

NSH: Yes

MW: The church won’t say how much money Moon has, or how many businesses he owns, but over the years he is reported to have amassed hundreds of million of dollars. Former Moon insider Donna Orme Collins was the first western child in Moon’s church. She was born into it because her parents set up the church in England.

▲ Donna Orme Collins

Donna Orme Collins: I grew up believing he was the messiah, but I can’t imagine it now.

MW: Moon took a personal interest in Donna, and as a favorite child from the West, she saw a lot of Moon’s family.

DC: I had more contact with his family that the average member which is probably what led me to leave because I saw a lot of the discrepancies between the teachings and his behavior in his family life.

MW: The final straw came for Donna and her family, she says, when they discovered another Moon family secret, that the Reverend has at least one illegitimate son. Moon’s daughter confirmed that:

Un-jin Moon: That I know, yes.

MW: You know the child?

UJM: Yes, his name is Sammy.

▲ Sammy Park with his mother, Soon-wha Choi, known as ‘Annie Choi’ in the US. There is a photograph of Sammy’s father on the wall behind them. It was at around this age that Sammy discovered the friendly auntie who came to visit was actually his mother.

___________________________________

MW: And Un-jin told us that the warm family pictures in the church magazine give a false impression; that the truth is that Moon spends very little time with his children; and that he and his children had never been close. Nansook says that there is even a language barrier between Moon and his five youngest children. Don’t his young children speak Korean?

NSH: Not really

MW: And the father does not speak much English.

NSH: The father doesn’t, no.

MW: So what you are saying is that the younger ones can’t talk to their dad.

NSH: They can’t really communicate.

Donna Collins: Actually that is what his daughter told me as well. But then I would say the communication he had, even with his older children, was not particularly intimate.

Do you worry at all that there might be some kind of revenge exacted upon you for your speaking out?

DC: Yes I was extremely frightened for a long time. I couldn’t speak out. But I think there is some safety in going public, and I certainly wanted to support Nansook, because I think it is wonderful that the truth comes out about him and his family.

MW: Over the years Nansook says that her husband became increasingly violent and she feared that he might hurt the children. So one night, three years ago, while, she says, her husband was locked in their bedroom after hours of cocaine, she hustled her five children into a minivan, hid them under blankets, and drove them out of the Moon’s luxurious estate, never to return.

▲ The entrance to the East Garden Estate showing the guardhouse.

MW: Now you live in a modest house in Lexington, Massachusetts, no swimming pools, no bowling alleys, no…

NSH: … no baby-sitters, no drivers, no cook.

MW: no cook

NSH: I am the cook. I had to learn.

MW: How have the children adjusted to this new lifestyle?

NSH: Oh, wonderfully. I am proud of them. We all had to learn a new way of life.

MW: A life that also contains fear of retaliation from the Moons.

NSH: They are not going to control my life. I basically have to live with the fear that I have that somebody might do something to me, but that is life.

▲ In the divorce court, Hyo-jin Moon looks at Nansook Hong.

___________________________________

MW: After telling the divorce court what she has told us about her husband, Nansook got her divorce plus $600,000 in cash and $9,000 a month for child support. Now 32 years old she works at a center helping battered women. And she has just completed a book called “In the Shadow of the Moons.” Why are you telling this story?

NSH: Because I feel that I was duped.

MW: Duped?

NSH: Duped. I feel I was conned. I had a certain naive idealism that I wanted to work for God. I do think a lot of people have that. And a lot of organizations like Moon do take full advantage of those people, and I was one of them.

MW: Nansook still believes in God, but she has a new way of looking at Reverend Moon.

NSH: I did come to the conclusion that Reverend Moon just cannot be the messiah.

MW: What you are saying is that he is a phony.

NSH: A con man.

MW: The Reverend Sun Myung Moon is a con man.

NSH: That is the conclusion I came with, [after] living with the family for 15 years.

MW: The Reverend and Mrs Moon declined to talk to us, but they did send us a brief statement. They wrote, in part, “We commiserate with Nansook over the suffering arising from the tragic personal problems our son has faced. We as parents feel a deep sense of responsibility.”

END

___________________________________

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han refused to help Hyo Jin pay court ordered money to Nansook and their grandchildren. Hyo Jin was jailed.

The Moon family tactic was to grind Nansook down financially so she would be forced return to her husband who had threatened to kill her. The “True Parents” failed because the judge understood their game. The “True Parents” had also failed to raise or guide their son to treat others with decency. The “True Parents” consistently blamed Nansook, whom they had married to Hyo Jin at age fifteen, for their own son’s failures and criminality.

Judge Edward Ginsberg didn’t buy Hyo Jin’s claim of poverty. He said he believes the Moon family is trying to squeeze Nansook Moon and her five young children. Judge Ginsberg agreed she must have money to pay her legal defense, and ordered Hyo Jin back to jail for another sixty days.

Nansook’s attorney, Weld Henshaw: “The church is, and the [Moon] family is going to devote all their energies, not to try to resolve the situation but to winning and grinding [Nansook and] their own grandchildren down. It is a pathetic, terrible situation.”

Suzanne Bates for WBZ News 4 in Boston: “Whether or not Hyo Jin can afford to pay, it is certain the Moon family could. Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who claims to be the messiah and the champion of family values, has millions of dollars in Trust Funds which have always supported his family, but he is not writing any checks to get his first son [Hyo Jin] out of jail.”

Full transcript of the WBZ-TV News reports

___________________________________

Japanese language 洪蘭淑 video transcript

Korean language 홍난숙 video transcript

Spanish – Nansook Hong entrevistada

Polish – Wideo: Nansook Hong w rozmowie z Mike'em Wallace'em.

____________________________________

A review of Nansook Hong’s revealing book

Nansook Hong interviewed by Rachael Kohn

Nansook Hong – [C-Span] Book Discussion – ‘In The Shadow of the Moons’ with FULL TRANSCRIPT

___________________________________

Book in English:

Nansook Hong – In The Shadow Of The Moons

___________________________________

Book in French:

« L’ombre de Moon » par Nansook Hong

J’ai arraché mes enfants à Moon – Nansook Hong

___________________________________

Book in Spanish:

‘A la Sombra de los Moon’ por Nansook Hong

Nansook Hong entrevistada

___________________________________

Nansook Hong book in German:

Nansook Hong – Ich schaue nicht zurück

___________________________________

Nansook Hong book in Japanese:

わが父文鮮明の正体 – 洪蘭淑

文鮮明「聖家族」の仮面を剥ぐ – 洪蘭淑

___________________________________

Polish:

Nansook Hong book Prologue

___________________________________

Three other significant videos about Sun Myung Moon’s activities:

VIDEO: The authors of The Tragedy of the Six Marys interviewed

English: Tragedy of the Six Marys video transcript with additional photos

Demands on the Japanese members of Mr. Moon’s church

Sam Park ‘Hidden History’ VIDEO – recorded at ICSA in 2014

Sam Park ‘Moon’s hidden history’ 2014 Video TRANSCRIPT

[melissadaisy27-blog]

This story is myown spin on when John and marlena get married in 1999.

stefano have a few plans in store for both of them

john and marlena, they don't what's comeing to them.

Chapter one.

the wedding day July 6, 1999.

John is at the penthouse Grill to make sure that everything is perfect and checking on security to make sure everything is quiet and secure.

Abe goes up to john and says,hey buddy, just relax, anything is going be perfect.

John looks at his best friend and says, abe,

I have to make sure everything is perfect, because I want this to be a day that Marlena will never forget.

Abe sighs and says, john, marlena never going to forget this day because she’s marrying you.

abe grabs John’s arm and forces him over to a couple of chairs off to the side.

Come on, sit down and try to relax for a few minutes, abe said to his friend.

John sinks into a chair next to Abe, but he looks anything but relaxed.

abe, do you realize that Doc and I will be getting married in less than two hours?.

john said as Abe smiles and replies ,do you?, because you’ve been so busy worrying about how everything looks and double and triple checking security, you haven’t even started getting yourself ready.

I told you, Abe, I want everything to be perfect and I also want to make sure nothing goes wrong and that includes taking measures to insure we don’t have anyone unwanted guests show up at the wedding.

john, Stefano isn’t going to get past my men, So why don’t you leave that part of it up to me?.

and as for the rest of it, you’ve hired a competent staff to do that, so how about you start concentrating on your part?.

abe asked as John smiles, at his friend and says.

Yea, I guess you’re right and thanks again, partner.

Abe grins and says, your welcome ,buddy and that's what a best friend is for, if it isn’t to try to calm those pre-wedding jitters?.

Abe and John are instantly on their feet as

Eric walks over to John and says, hi.

john, i love what you did with the Penthouse Grill, mom going to love it.

oh, hi, Eric, John say as he does and hugs him.

Abe looks at his watch, then at John and says, john, I’ll give you,fifteen minutes alone and then I expect you upstairs to get ready.

As Abe walks away, Eric asks, John.

So, john, why all the security?,is it because you afraid mom will try to get away before the priest can pronounce you, man and wife?.

john looks at Eric and replies back, No,

that not the reason, it's because I'm worried about that stefano that he might stop this wedding from happening.

like last time when he and kristen both stopped the last one?, Eric asked.

john nods and says, Eric, you do know that I love your mother very much and I would do anything for her?.

Eric nods and replies, john, you’ve already proven that and if I haven’t thanked you before for saving my mother life and her soul, then let me thank you now.

If it hadn’t been for you and your love for her, mom wouldn’t be here and I’ll always be grateful to you for that.

John smiles at Eric and asks him, does that mean that you will be my best man?.

Eric smile and replies of course i will be your best man and john, don’t you think we should go upstairs and get ready before Abe comes looking for you again?

Good idea, John say as he and Eric walks to the elevator and go upstairs to get ready.

John is now in his black tux and gets the final stamp of approval from Abe and Eric and he slips away unable to resist make a final inspection for down stair.

He arrives there before any of the guests begin assembling.

john goes out side to the balcony of the Penthouse Grill.

he looks up in the sky and says ,God, they say time heals all wounds and for Marlena and I, that is especially true.

Time and love have healed the wounds,

we have given to each other and to those we love.

Through each moment of trial and separation, our love has been as constant as the sun rising each morning and setting each night.

Despite that, I didn’t think this day would ever come, when the two of us would have a second chance to stand before you, our family and our friends to celebrate and seal our love.

But it has, and it is the happiest day of my life because from this day forward, I will live my life with my best friend, my soul mate and my love.

marlena has always been the one person who has given me complete faith and trust and for that, I get down on my knees every day and thank you, God and I thank you too, for the loving and wonderous gift, you have given me.

that gift is Marlena, I will love her, cherish her and protect her each and every day for all the days of our lives.”

John is startled when a hand falls on his shoulder as he quickly brushes his tears away and rises and turns to find Sami standing there.

sami's cheeks are wet with tears and John opens his arms to her and sami steps into them.

i’m so sorry, John, for everything that I did to you in the past and now i realized just how much you loved my Mom and how much she loved you.

Sami told john as he takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes sami's tears away and says, sami, you don’t have to apologize and we’ve all made mistakes.

john, i know but its hurt me more than you will ever know that I caused you and mom so much pain.

Sami told john as she looks up at him as tears are falling down her cheek.

Sami it means a lot to me that you’re here and the wedding wouldn’t have been the same without you.

john told sami as she gives him a smile and kisses his cheek.

I do love you, John and I wouldn’t have missed the wedding for anything in the world.

Sami replies back as john gently pushes a stray strand of hair back that had fallen across Sami’s cheek.

and I love you too, Sami, I always have, john told her as she gives him a final hug.

I’d better get back to Mom and there is something I need to tell her too, sami told john.

okay, sami can you tell your mother, that i love her and i will see her soon?,

john asked.

sami smiles at john and says back, of course i will tell her that for you.

thanks you, john said to Sami as she leave the balcony.

In Marlena's dressing room, marlena is getting ready and that when Sami walks in the room and says mom.

hi, honey, marlena said to her daughter and goes and hugs her.

Mom, there is something that I wanted to tell you and I wasn’t sure how until a few moments ago when I saw john on the balcony.

and I’m glad you’re marrying him, because I’ve finally realized how much you love each other and I love you both and I never meant to hurt either of you.

mom, I want to see you happy more than anything in the world and I know, now, that John makes you happy.

sami told her mother as tears gather in Marlena’s eyes as she cradles Sami’s face in her hands and says.

Oh, Sami, I love you so much and I never wanted to hurt you either and you’re a part of me and the one thing I have always wanted for you too, is your happiness.

Sami, i know someday you will find it and Having you here makes my marriage to John complete.

The tears slip down Sami’s cheeks as mother and daughter hug each other.

marlena saw letter from John as she is hugging sami.

she pulled out from the hug and goes to the table and opens it.

marlena started to read it and there was tears in her eyes.

mom, what to it says?, sami asked her mother.

marlena looked at her daughter and says, its read, to Marlena, the light of my life and I love you with every beat of my heart and bit of my soul, I will be yours forever, John.

PS, everything is ready for the wedding,

all you have to do is get dressed, and open your gift, i will give you a little hint it's with

your favorite flowers .

well, i saw the Lavender, sami said as marlena walks over to the flowers and then she lead over the lavender that when saw a black velvet box and then she grabs it.

oh, Sami, these boxes always make my heart stop, marlena said as she stares at the box.

well, are you going to open it?, Sami asked her mother.

yes, i will open it, i just don't what to rush it, marlena told her daughter as she slowly opens the black velvet box and inside were the most elegant bracelet, that she had ever seen and she gasped.

oh, mom its so beautiful, sami said as marlena looks at the diamond bracelet.

marlena just smiles at the beautiful diamond bracelet as tears are in her eyes and then says to sami.

oh, sami, can you help me put it on?, marlena asked her daughter.

of course i will, Sami said says to her mother as she puts the new bracelet on marlena's arm.

marlena has something new and she has her something old, her charm bracelet,

that john give to her for a Christmas present years ago.

and Her dress is blue, and Sami gives her a medal of the holy family, which she got from Caroline, it can be her something borrowed.

oh, mom before i forget, john what me to let you know that, he love you and he will, see you soon, sami told her mother

Marlena smiles and thanks her daughter and Sami tells her mom that she and John deserve such a wonderful life together.

family and friends are already arriving at the Penthouse Grill.

bo, hope, Caroline, Shawn, Austin, carrie, lexie, celeste, Laura, Maggie, Mickey, Kate, victor, Alice, roman, Lucas, will, jack, Jennifer, kayla, steve, Mike, Billie, Craig, Nancy, julie, victor, vivian and Doug and more people

meanwhile back in marlena's dressing room

before she walks down the aisle.

Roman tells Marlena that she is a beautiful bride, and that he knows she will be very happy with john.

Marlena hugs Roman and thanks him for their wonderful children, and that he'll always hold a special place in her heart.

Eric is next and he gave his mother best wishes and he so happy for her and john.

marlena hugs and thinks her son.

then its was carrie turn, marlena, I'm so happy that your and john are finally getting married and i love you both so much.

oh, carrie, thanks you and we love you too, marlena said back to carrie as she hugs her.

Sami asks her mom if she is ready to get married?

marlena smiled at her daughter and said yes, I'm ready to getting married to my love of my life.

John and Marlena's wedding is taking place. Alice asks God to bless ,John and Marlena today.

to grant them the wedding they've always dreamed of, and the long and happy marriage they deserve.

John waits at the altar as the procession starts and eric takes his place by John's side.

Belle and Brady walk down the isle and Sami follows them, and finally Marlena walks down the aisle .

The sight of her literally took John’s breath away, their gazes met and held and the special smile that she had always reserved just for him lit her face.

John felt truly blessed and his eyes welled with tears as he returned her smile.

As marlena walked down the aisle, she could feel John’s love wrap itself around her.

marlena was deeply touched when she saw his tears.

She was not doing a very good job of fighting her own tears.

They had waited for this moment for so long and now it was here.

John steps in front of the aisle and holds out his hand and Marlena slides her hand into his and then john turns it over and lifts it to his lips, placing a kiss and his heart in her palm.

In unison and they turn to face father Christopher.

the priest clears his throat and then begins, We are gathered here today to celebrate the love shared by, John Black and Marlena Evans.

to receive God’s blessing and to unite them in Holy Matrimony and I’d like to begin with a prayer.”

The assembled guests rise and bow their heads and Christopher continues.

Dear Lord, John and Marlena stand before you today to commit themselves to you, to each other and to their family and friends.

They have endured many trials and separations yet their love has endured and strengthened to bring them to this moment where they stand before you to tie that bond forever as they exchange their vows.

I would ask that you protect and keep them and their loved ones in your care for all the days of their lives and In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!.

The priest continues to speak, and says that when we think of a marriage in Salem we must think of the marriage of Tom and Alice Horton.

John and Marlena both would like to thank Alice and the late Tom Horton for providing them with guidance and inspiration.

The priest asks John if he takes Marlena to be his wife and John says I do.

and then the priest asks Marlena if she takes John to be her husband, and she says I do.

[itslovewithyouthings]

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But even though my pulse spiked and my nether regions clenched just at the mention of his name turning into a Disney caricature whistling happy tunes about catching the early worm or some shit wasnt happening. There was only so much joy I was capable of before ten a.m. and I was currently maxed out. The minute Id arrived I immediately regretted my outfit choice. The leather jacket knee-high boots and dress Id worn when Id left my apartment had been perfect for a fall New York morning. But in California I was roasting alive as I wrestled my way through the airport to the meeting point. Hey princess. Ryan slipped his shades down the bridge of his nose peeking over the lenses as the rumble made its way up his throat. I heard youre looking for a ride. Oh. Help. Me. Jesus. Every single muscle in my body seized at the sound of his voice my legs freezing in place as my eyes ran up and down the length of his body. He was gorgeous smoldering in a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt that hugged every curve of his abs like my tongue was aching to do. His eyes were on me doing a survey of their own as a sexy smirk played on his lips. And while my brain knew flirting was his baseline my hormones ignored that detail my girlie bits salivating more than one of Pavlovs dogs. Grab #1 Crush Today! PURCHASE TODAY Amazon US- amzn.to/2jEu8i9 Amazon Uk- amzn.to/2krx4mF Amazon Canada- amzn.to/2jZh7Di Amazon Aust- amzn.to/2krOfof iBooks- apple.co/1tvo2pk B&N- bit.ly/2kDhqEx Kobo- bit.ly/2kX7whV About T. Gephart T Gephart is an indie author from Melbourne Australia. Ts approach to life has been somewhat unconventional. Rather than going to University she jumped on a plane to Los Angeles USA in search of adventure. While this first trip left her somewhat underwhelmed and largely depleted of funds it fueled her appetite for travel and life experience. With a rather eclectic resume which reads more like the fiction she writes than an actual employment history T struggled to find her niche in the world. While on a subsequent trip the United States in 1999 T met and married her husband. Their whirlwind courtship and interesting impromptu convenience store wedding set the tone for their life together which is anything but ordinary. They have lived in Louisiana Guam and Australia and have travelled extensively throughout the US. T has two beautiful young children and one four legged child Woodley the wonder dog. An avid reader T became increasingly frustrated by the lack of strong female characters in the books she was reading. She wanted to read about a woman she could identify with someone strong independent and confident who didnt lack femininity. Out of this need she decided to pen her first book A Twist of Fate. She enjoyed the process so much that when it was over she couldnt let it go. T loves to travel laugh and surround herself with colourful characters. This inevitably spills into her writing and makes for an interesting journey she is well and truly enjoying the ride! Based on her life experiences T has plenty of material for her books and has a wealth of ideas to keep you all enthralled. Follow T. Gephart Facebook – ift.tt/2tjbWDm Website – tgephart.com/ Goodreads – ift.tt/1qlsXQF Twitter – twitter.com/… Instagram – ift.tt/2tjFQYr Subscribe to T. Gephart’s Newsletter – bit.ly/2th4pVM 2017 Release Australian Author Book Excerpts Contemporary Romance Games Other Books Players Social Butterfly Tours T.Gephart Teasers

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[vesselblock65-blog]

M.I.A.’s first show and the birth of the mash-up: Remembering Hollertronix, where mixtapes and mosh pits ruled

A show at North Philly’s Warehouse on Watts this weekend turns the clock back to the early 2000s in homage to one of the most legendary parties in Philadelphia history.

“Red Bull Presents: Hollerboard Redux” is a celebratory throwback to Hollertronix, the wild, sweaty, sonically innovative recurring party started in 2002 by DJ Lowbudget (aka Michael McGuire) and Diplo (Wesley Pentz). Friday night’s show features appearances by some of the key players in the scene — including Lowbudget, Cosmo Baker, Nick Catchdubs, Dirty South Joe, and Spank Rock (in his final performance under that stage name).

What’s to commemorate? After starting out as a strictly local affair, Hollertronix became a hot topic on the infamous online “Hollerboard” message boards and gained a cult following. It hosted one of M.I.A’s first shows. In 2003, the New York Times named the Hollertronix mixtape Never Scared one of the best albums of the year, calling it “a near-perfect party mix.”

Hollertronix was a laboratory that allowed Wes and Mike to popularize lesser-known musical genres (think Baltimore club) and experiment with mashing up musical styles in a way that’s now commonplace, but was then pioneering. It was a way to channel crate-digger geekiness and creativity with pure, technically-brilliant party rock. It was shaped by Philadelphia’s rich pre-Serato DJing history and an influx of New York folks fleeing Giuliani-era enforcement of cabaret laws. The dance floor featured a mélange of kids, black and white, gay and straight, hailing everywhere from Baltimore to Connecticut.

The result was something the Philly nightlife scene had never seen before — and has really never seen since.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Michael McGuire aka DJ Lowbudget (DJ and musician): Me and Wes kept bumping into each other, and eventually we decided to do a party at this place called the Ukrainian Club, the Ukie. We wanted to play down south music, ‘80s stuff, and electro. The first Hollertronix party was actually my birthday.

Wesley Pentz aka. Diplo (DJ and producer): I wanted to throw a party where I could play all kinds of hip-hop. The first Hollertronix, the “Get Crunk Now” party, was a lot of 80s stuff. Now, if you heard about this…you’d just be like, who gives a fuck, that’s so redundant. But back then those scenes were so different.

McGuire: The first party was September 2002. We really didn’t do much promotion at all. It was mostly word of mouth. We had about a 150 people come, but it was good, and the word of mouth afterward was even better.

Pentz: In Philly, social clubs had a special license to stay open an extra hour. The Ukrainian Club was dingy and old, but it was right by my house. Also, the parties we were doing were kind of illegal, but we were so far up the northside of Philadelphia that the police weren’t bothering us. I became good friends with the owners. They thought I was actually Ukrainian. I’d go to their meetings sometimes.

Rose Luardo (performance artist, comedian, musician): It looked like an old man’s basement: cheap, yellow, wood paneling, long cafeteria tables. It looked like there was a big Polish wedding the day before and the day after.

Nick Barat aka Nick Catchdubs (Fool’s Gold Records co-founder and DJ): It was all musty and dank. There was a tiny bar in the back, like in a cafeteria, where the lunch lady stands and takes your money. But instead, it was a weird Ukrainian lady who would take your money and then give you a giant bottle of Obolon beer.

Jayson Musson (artist): All the artwork on the walls was Ukrainian history, or Ukrainian people or Ukrainian national messages. By default, everyone was an outsider. It’s not your space, no matter who you are. So that put everyone on a level ground.

McGuire: Part of what gave us confidence was the alcohol was cheap and it stayed open later than 2 a.m. If you started playing something people didn’t like, they weren’t going to leave and go to the next bar, because it was in this weird location. So there was more freedom to be creative. I consider the actual setting of the party just as much a part of the success as our own creative input.

Luardo: People would say, “I went to a really great dance party and had the most incredible time.” And it grew and grew. You just knew you were going to have a balls-to-the-wall time.

McGuire: Social networking was blowing up at the same time. Friendster was just developing. There were these weird local Philly message boards. Everyone would get on there and it was all this Philly drama. People would have all-out beefs. It was a great promotional device. I remember [The Philadelphia] City Paper emailing me, saying, hey, we heard you’re doing this party, we want to list it. I never returned their call. If you had to read City Paper to find out about it, we didn’t want you there.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Cosmo Baker (DJ and producer): Philadelphia was really the home of the DJ. Cash Money and Jazzy Jeff were two DJs who, in the ‘80s, were the pinnacle of what it meant to be a DJ. We’ve always been a working class city. It’s a very tough city. Nobody can tell us what to do. Everyone’s growing up in a city that’s not really giving you that much. So when it comes time to blow off some steam, they really know how to do it, how to let loose.

Barat: The party could only have existed in Philadelphia. It couldn’t have existed in New York. New York was shitty because of Giuliani, and more importantly, 9/11 had happened and everybody was moving out. It was just sort of dead. You had really expensive rap-video-style, bottle-service club parties, and then you had beard-stroking, my-record’s-more-obscure disco parties that weren’t really for dancing. There were two total extremes.

Joey Massarueh aka Dirty South Joe (DJ and producer): In the summer of 1999, the cabaret laws were put into effect. It was a systematic thing: one by one, at all your favorite little [Lower East Side] spots that held 150 people, there were tables on the dance floor. Giuliani had this major push to clean the streets. New York really felt like a police state. Cops on every corner and halfway down each block. It was like, ok, here we are this vast metropolis, the greatest city on Earth, and you can’t fucking dance.

Baker: I decided, alright, I’m going to move back to Philadelphia. I’m not saying that Giuliani is responsible for the success of Wes and Mike, but a butterfly flaps its wings, and a wave crashes on the other side of the world, right?

Massarueh: There was definitely something special happening in Philly. I remember it being so much more “no bullshit” than any other place I’d ever been. There’s no hustle you’re going to get over here. There’s just too many ways that people are going to shoot it down or see through it. It’s a tough place to learn how to DJ, but you go to other places and you realize you’ve been trained. There’s generation after generation of families that are DJs in Philly. Kids whose dads taught it to them. It’s serious. It has a very blue collar basis here, and part of that is a foundation in classic party-rocking.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

McGuire: At Hollertronix, people would start coming in early and head immediately for the dance floor. No “Let me get a drink first, let me wait till they start playing music I like.” Just right to the dance floor. As a DJ, this is great, I can play whatever I want. They’re not being picky, they’re ready to party.

Naeem Juwan aka Spank Rock (rapper): I would be traditionally the first person on the dance floor. Me and my friends would walk in and start dancing. We’d be like the first five people on the floor — dancing relentlessly, all night. I loved dancing with people that didn’t know how to dance well.

Luardo: The combination of Wes and Mike was phenomenal. They had such different sensibilities. You want to talk about a mash-up—two guys with different music tastes, bringing music and people together.

McGuire: Wes was more out there, really wanting to push the envelope. I was more geared towards rocking the crowd. If it was just me, the party might not have been interesting enough. If it was just him, it might have been too weird, might have alienated people. Together, it was a great balance.

Barat: It’s easier for Wes to be the weirdo and Mike to be the voice of rap reason, but the reality of it was, they both had really extensive taste and both had as much vested interest in pop records and other stuff. Mike definitely brought a little more of the working DJ sense, because he had a lot more experience with it. And he scratched better.

Massarueh: The one thing Mike and Wes would both tell you is, there was a very direct relation going on between the record store Armand’s and the music that was played at Hollertronix.

Baker: Armand’s was the definitive record store in Philadelphia for years. It had everything. It became a ritual — you’d go down to Armand’s once or twice a week. It kind of gave DJs a sense of community — it’s how I met Dirty South Joe. You’d spend hours on end there, listening to records, digesting records, being around other DJs and seeing how they reacted to records. But there was also a sense of competition. You’d make sure that you got there at the right time, so that if there’s only three copies of a hot new record, you were going to be one of the three guys that got it.

Barat: This was DJing before Serato came out — Serato is a software that basically lets you DJ off your laptop. Which, for a working DJ, is a godsend, because you don’t have to lug records everywhere. But it did change the craft and approach. Anybody who can download music and copy it to their hard drive can just get out there and start doing it. But when Hollertronix stuff was going on, if Wes and Mike wanted to play a weird record, they’d really have to seek it out.

McGuire: This was not only before Serato, but also laptops and even CDs. Just two turntables, man. We were doing this with just turntables and a mixer and we had a little sampler for sound effects. People can’t believe we did that with just two turntables.

Massarueh: DJing pre-Serato didn’t just require a lot more skill, it required a lot more dedication from every aspect of your life. There were certain days you had to set aside each week to go get new weapons. You had to go clean and load your gun with new shit. If the labels were too slow, you’d get the kill cuts and bootlegs. You’d take a cab or drive anywhere from four to eight crates to a gig and pack them up at the end of the night. Everywhere you went, you kept them behind you in the booth. You were only as good as the records you had.

Barat: Wes and Mike would take these dollar-bin records from Armand’s and sort of build a context around them. They would play a Trick Daddy record and realize it’s the same tempo as this new Metro Area disco song.

Pentz: Lowbudget was the first to actually go down to Baltimore to pick up the records. We’d buy mixtapes — they worked so well for us.

Baker: It goes back to the vision they had, of throwing all these things together and creating a perfect blend. They weren’t the first guys to mix things half-time and they weren’t the first guys to play Baltimore club or Southern rap or Joy Division records, but they were playing all of them together. On paper, it didn’t make sense. But within the confines of the party, it made perfect sense.

Musson: Baltimore is played around the world because of Hollertronix. It’s in the music of Nick and Naeem, and more DJs in general drop Baltimore shit now. And that’s because of Hollertronix. They didn’t make the wheel, but they were definitely like, yo, there’s this wheel over here.

Juwan: Before, you had these very specific music scenes that had all these fucking rules. Rock sounded like rock, punk sounded like punk, and hip-hop sounded like hip-hop. But when you had everyone mixing together, all these different people with different musical backgrounds together and dancing at that party, it inspired everybody.

Roxy Summers aka Roxy Cottontail (party promoter and DJ): Fixed-gear guys next to tall-T guys next to regular South Philly dudes.

Musson: You’d have your indie kids. It was this kind of post-electro period. Racially, I guess it was really solidly diverse. You had white people, black people — it was just “the kids.”

Luardo: I really felt like, it doesn’t matter who you are in this city: if you are straight edge, if you are punk rock from punk rock, if you are a 90-year-old hippie, if you’re a high-school kid — if you show up to this party, you are down for whatever.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Massarueh: By the end of the night, that’s when it would get really crunk — head busting, people jumping off the stage. Me and Jayson and Mike had an unofficial group called the Philadelphia Crunk Lords. Everybody knew there was eventually going to be a mosh pit and we were all going to playfully beat each others’ asses and try not to slip on all the beer on the floor.

Musson: They’d play shit to incite mosh pit. The mosh pit was like a boardroom meeting of faces. It was a duty. I felt like if I wasn’t there, I was letting someone down.

Luardo: It was a lot of Sodom and Gomorrah. Crazy shit happened all the time.

McGuire: You’re not going to leave this party looking good. You can get as dolled up as you want, but when you leave you’re going to be nasty and you’re not going to be dolled up anymore. You’re going to break a sweat here.

Luardo: I know that I would crowd surf, I know that I would jump on top of people, I did things like that and everybody else did too. It was that kind of abandon.

McGuire: Our Halloween parties kind of became a thing. I remember the first one, just seeing so many crazy costumes. Jesus and Bin Laden dancing together. Dudes dancing in their underwear. Just people acting nuts.

Barat: M.I.A.’s “Galang” had come out on this little record company called Showbiz in the UK. Wes had found that 12-inch, sought her out, and they started working on stuff together. She signed, got her record deal, came to Philly, and made a mixtape. One of her earliest performances was at Hollertronix on Halloween.

Pentz: That was the first time M.I.A. had ever done a show. She’d done like a little Fader show in a parking lot but this was the first show after that. She was super nervous.

Juwan: By the time that big Halloween party happened, Hollertronix had really made a name for itself. It was big enough that they could get Bun B to come out. I was going on for Plastic Little, so I was fucking stoked.

Massarueh: Halloween was Naeem’s debut and M.I.A.’s debut. She was just getting her whole performing thing together. And friggin Bunn B was there.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Barat: They started getting all this attention when The New York Times said that the mix CD was one of the best records of the year — not just [best] mixtapes, but actual records. It became this phenomenon, and got really, really big, up to the point that it wasn’t sustainable anymore.

Summers: I remember Never Scared was in The New York Times as one of the best albums. It wasn’t even an album. I was like, huh? How could a mixtape get best album? But that just goes to show the power of the music they were playing.

Massarueh: They really changed idea of touring DJs. At the time, you had three or four dudes in the world that DJed rap on tour — Jazzy Jeff, Stretch Armstrong, Cash Money, early 2000s guys like that. Wes and Mike opened it up to more of a get-in-a-van, punk rock kind of thing. They took that party to different cities, starting with New York.

Barat: They wanted to do bigger things, move on to bigger challenges. M.I.A. happened, Wes’s thing as a DJ and producer happened. You couldn’t go back again.

Summers: Those times will never be replicated. And you know, when you’re in them, you don’t realize that. You just think they’re going to go on forever.

Barat: When the party stopped, it was almost like you didn’t realize it. It wasn’t like they played a last show and were like, alright guys, it’s done. They just didn’t do another one. I liked that it was left open-ended like that.

Luardo: Whenever I have a really fun time, I’m like, it feels like Hollertronix. It created a standard. The people I met there, we’re not really finding any more places that are what that party was. I don’t think there should be and I don’t think there can be. And I don’t think Wes and Mike knew it was going to be that amazing. When we look at all the lines, and trace it all back, it’s almost coincidental, random. Like when someone knocked a little bit of salt into the chocolate chip cookies and were like, oh my god, they’re so good. I’m nostalgic just talking about it. It was so good!

Source: https://billypenn.com/2018/09/28/m-i-a-s-first-show-and-the-birth-of-the-mash-up-remembering-hollertronix-where-mixtapes-and-mosh-pits-ruled/

[sarahsays]

t i m e l i n e

1. CONGRATULATIONS, IT’S A GIRL

19-year-old Alexandra Muñoz hadn’t grown up with much, but maybe things would be different for her newborn child. Her traditional parents had turned their backs on her after the news of the pregnancy, but she would get through it. She had someone new to concentrate on now: 

Sarah Leah Matthews was born on November 23rd, 1999, at 5 lbs 2 oz. She was two weeks early, which later would ring quite true to her personality: when she wanted something to happen, she wanted it done right then.

Although Alexandra she hadn’t wanted a child at first, she knew immediately that she wouldn’t change a thing about Sarah. When she looked at her newborn daughter, only one word came to mind: Perfect.

When her boyfriend at the time, Christopher Matthews, glanced over at Sarah, he said, “Oh. She’s  … pretty.”

2. BANG! BANG! IT’S A SHOTGUN WEDDING 

Alexandra Muñoz entered the new millennium as Alexandra Matthews. Christopher’s upstanding parents had pushed for marriage–it was the right thing to do–and even though Christopher seemed lukewarm about the idea, he conceded.

They were a nuclear family: a mom, a dad, and a daughter. All they needed was the white picket fence and the dog, and maybe everything would be okay. Maybe, at least on the outside, it would look like everything was okay.

Everything was not okay.

3. TABLE FOR FOUR ON A FRIDAY NIGHT

Their union was rocky on its good days and scathing at its worst. The two young parents had grown to resent each other in ways they could have never imagined. Still, they brought their son Caleb into the world under their facade. Maybe everything could be okay if they just tried harder.

Sometimes, they could play the part. When the kids were around, they tried their best to hide it. But Christopher had so much potential, so much of his youth left to live, and hated that he was wasting it playing house. He was supposed to go to college, see the world, date other women before deciding on the right one. He wanted that choice back. 

4. DRIVE AWAY AND TAKE YOUR LOVE WITH YOU

About a week after her seventh birthday, Sarah caught her father packing a suitcase. I’m going to stay at my mother’s for a little while, he said. He kissed her on the forehead, packed up his car, and left. 

That was the last of their nuclear family. 

It went on to prove to Sarah that love is worthless, and nothing is a guarantee. Don’t settle your roots in people; anyone can leave you at any time–and it can ruin your life in the process.

But sometimes, she wonders what would have happened if she had protested. What if he had stayed?

5. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE POOR

After the divorce, with only a high school diploma and no one to turn to, Alexandra struggled financially to keep her family afloat. They moved into a smaller house. She sold any fine jewelry she owned. And as a quick, temporary solution while she looked for work, she applied for welfare and public assistance. 

This would be the start of a vicious cycle: once you entered The System, you never left. 

For Sarah, this meant being treated like a second-class citizen. It meant being forced to live in a dangerous neighborhood because no upstanding neighborhood wanted to drag its reputation down with welfare recipients. It meant not being picky about food, and her family barely earning enough money to survive. 

It meant never having her mother at school functions, and as she grew older, sometimes going almost twenty-four hours without seeing her if their schedules conflicted enough. And even if she understood the situation the best she could, Sarah would grow to resent her mother for not being around. 

6. GIRL MEETS GRAFFITI

She had always been an artist, but at fifteen, Sarah discovered her affinity for spray paint.

She met a girl in her neighborhood who made the city her canvas. The girl was an orphan, a foster care kid, who had to get out of the house and entertain herself the best she could. She went by the name ILUSHUN–at least, that’s what her tag said. Sarah was enchanted, by the way the girl in the baggy, gray hoodie could flick her wrist and turn a crumbling brick wall into a work of art.

Sarah lingered around her for months, talking to her, learning her techniques. One day, ILUSHUN suddenly stopped showing up, and although Sarah figured she’d just moved away, she always wondered what had happened to her.

7. BUSTED! 

For over the course of a year, Sarah decorated the slums with her graffiti art. She lived for the adrenaline rush of picking the best spot, writing the perfect message, just making those close-calls of getting caught. It became an outlet for all of her rage, for the neglect she felt, the anger that always threatened to escape her lips. She spilled her emotions out onto the buildings under a new name: RAJA.

RAJA made the city her own, but it wasn’t hers for long.

One night, she got a little too cocky and a little too angry, and picked the perfect wall: the one behind the social services building that plagued her family. In big, black letters she wrote: DON’T BE A SLAVE TO THE SYSTEM.

She was caught teal-handed by the police, and she was sorry.

8. WELCOME TO PLATH ACADEMY

As it was her first offense, she was sentenced to either the juvenile detention center or this newly-reopened, ritzy-looking boarding school. Sarah and her mother chose the latter. She’d gotten a full scholarship due to her social standing, and it seemed like a win-win for everyone. One less mouth to feed, one less person to use hot water and electricity. And Sarah could talk to a therapist about all of the pent-up resentment she felt, and learn in a safe environment.

“A safe environment,” they had said.

9. T͉̳H͇̳E̪͎̭ ̙̺D͙A̜R̝̩̺͓ͅK͉͚̦͔͇͎ ̯̦R̹̖͎̞O͔͓͉̠̲͈̙O̯̪̩̩M̼̳̥̫̠͎

Things were fine, for a little while. Sarah naively started to settle down at Plath, despite her better judgment. Even if she knew she would be forced to leave one day, she couldn’t help growing attached to some of the people here. There were other kids like her; the staff understood her. It was nice. 

Until the maze. 

There was no passage of time in The Dark Room: the abandoned warehouse-turned-booby-trap with no lights. They had only been trapped down there for three days, but it could have easily been three weeks, three months. 

Three days of navigating traps, three days of blood, three days of abandonment. 

Somehow, she made it out alive, and with only a few scars to bear. But now she was afraid. 

Still, RAJA couldn’t be beaten that easily. 

10. CALL ME KING

She was starting to recover, just beginning to return to her old self again. The red irritation of her face had dissipated and she almost felt like herself again. Less like a victim.

And then the masquerade happened.

Someone with a death wish had nominated her for King, and then the rest of the school had followed. It had all been fun and games and first, until the announcement.

She still remembers the blood that sprayed her face, the peacock feather sticking out of Philip’s head like a trademark. Perhaps she had been part of the problem: perhaps she had been the partial cause. Classic Sarah Matthews, unable to keep her big mouth shut, like always.

But it’s been two months since then. Maybe the hell is finally over. Maybe she can finally do what she came here for and heal.

She can only hope.

[tastegoal5-blog]

M.I.A.’s first show and the birth of the mash-up: Remembering Hollertronix, where mixtapes and mosh pits ruled

A show at North Philly’s Warehouse on Watts this weekend turns the clock back to the early 2000s in homage to one of the most legendary parties in Philadelphia history.

“Red Bull Presents: Hollerboard Redux” is a celebratory throwback to Hollertronix, the wild, sweaty, sonically innovative recurring party started in 2002 by DJ Lowbudget (aka Michael McGuire) and Diplo (Wesley Pentz). Friday night’s show features appearances by some of the key players in the scene — including Lowbudget, Cosmo Baker, Nick Catchdubs, Dirty South Joe, and Spank Rock (in his final performance under that stage name).

What’s to commemorate? After starting out as a strictly local affair, Hollertronix became a hot topic on the infamous online “Hollerboard” message boards and gained a cult following. It hosted one of M.I.A’s first shows. In 2003, the New York Times named the Hollertronix mixtape Never Scared one of the best albums of the year, calling it “a near-perfect party mix.”

Hollertronix was a laboratory that allowed Wes and Mike to popularize lesser-known musical genres (think Baltimore club) and experiment with mashing up musical styles in a way that’s now commonplace, but was then pioneering. It was a way to channel crate-digger geekiness and creativity with pure, technically-brilliant party rock. It was shaped by Philadelphia’s rich pre-Serato DJing history and an influx of New York folks fleeing Giuliani-era enforcement of cabaret laws. The dance floor featured a mélange of kids, black and white, gay and straight, hailing everywhere from Baltimore to Connecticut.

The result was something the Philly nightlife scene had never seen before — and has really never seen since.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Michael McGuire aka DJ Lowbudget (DJ and musician): Me and Wes kept bumping into each other, and eventually we decided to do a party at this place called the Ukrainian Club, the Ukie. We wanted to play down south music, ‘80s stuff, and electro. The first Hollertronix party was actually my birthday.

Wesley Pentz aka. Diplo (DJ and producer): I wanted to throw a party where I could play all kinds of hip-hop. The first Hollertronix, the “Get Crunk Now” party, was a lot of 80s stuff. Now, if you heard about this…you’d just be like, who gives a fuck, that’s so redundant. But back then those scenes were so different.

McGuire: The first party was September 2002. We really didn’t do much promotion at all. It was mostly word of mouth. We had about a 150 people come, but it was good, and the word of mouth afterward was even better.

Pentz: In Philly, social clubs had a special license to stay open an extra hour. The Ukrainian Club was dingy and old, but it was right by my house. Also, the parties we were doing were kind of illegal, but we were so far up the northside of Philadelphia that the police weren’t bothering us. I became good friends with the owners. They thought I was actually Ukrainian. I’d go to their meetings sometimes.

Rose Luardo (performance artist, comedian, musician): It looked like an old man’s basement: cheap, yellow, wood paneling, long cafeteria tables. It looked like there was a big Polish wedding the day before and the day after.

Nick Barat aka Nick Catchdubs (Fool’s Gold Records co-founder and DJ): It was all musty and dank. There was a tiny bar in the back, like in a cafeteria, where the lunch lady stands and takes your money. But instead, it was a weird Ukrainian lady who would take your money and then give you a giant bottle of Obolon beer.

Jayson Musson (artist): All the artwork on the walls was Ukrainian history, or Ukrainian people or Ukrainian national messages. By default, everyone was an outsider. It’s not your space, no matter who you are. So that put everyone on a level ground.

McGuire: Part of what gave us confidence was the alcohol was cheap and it stayed open later than 2 a.m. If you started playing something people didn’t like, they weren’t going to leave and go to the next bar, because it was in this weird location. So there was more freedom to be creative. I consider the actual setting of the party just as much a part of the success as our own creative input.

Luardo: People would say, “I went to a really great dance party and had the most incredible time.” And it grew and grew. You just knew you were going to have a balls-to-the-wall time.

McGuire: Social networking was blowing up at the same time. Friendster was just developing. There were these weird local Philly message boards. Everyone would get on there and it was all this Philly drama. People would have all-out beefs. It was a great promotional device. I remember [The Philadelphia] City Paper emailing me, saying, hey, we heard you’re doing this party, we want to list it. I never returned their call. If you had to read City Paper to find out about it, we didn’t want you there.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Cosmo Baker (DJ and producer): Philadelphia was really the home of the DJ. Cash Money and Jazzy Jeff were two DJs who, in the ‘80s, were the pinnacle of what it meant to be a DJ. We’ve always been a working class city. It’s a very tough city. Nobody can tell us what to do. Everyone’s growing up in a city that’s not really giving you that much. So when it comes time to blow off some steam, they really know how to do it, how to let loose.

Barat: The party could only have existed in Philadelphia. It couldn’t have existed in New York. New York was shitty because of Giuliani, and more importantly, 9/11 had happened and everybody was moving out. It was just sort of dead. You had really expensive rap-video-style, bottle-service club parties, and then you had beard-stroking, my-record’s-more-obscure disco parties that weren’t really for dancing. There were two total extremes.

Joey Massarueh aka Dirty South Joe (DJ and producer): In the summer of 1999, the cabaret laws were put into effect. It was a systematic thing: one by one, at all your favorite little [Lower East Side] spots that held 150 people, there were tables on the dance floor. Giuliani had this major push to clean the streets. New York really felt like a police state. Cops on every corner and halfway down each block. It was like, ok, here we are this vast metropolis, the greatest city on Earth, and you can’t fucking dance.

Baker: I decided, alright, I’m going to move back to Philadelphia. I’m not saying that Giuliani is responsible for the success of Wes and Mike, but a butterfly flaps its wings, and a wave crashes on the other side of the world, right?

Massarueh: There was definitely something special happening in Philly. I remember it being so much more “no bullshit” than any other place I’d ever been. There’s no hustle you’re going to get over here. There’s just too many ways that people are going to shoot it down or see through it. It’s a tough place to learn how to DJ, but you go to other places and you realize you’ve been trained. There’s generation after generation of families that are DJs in Philly. Kids whose dads taught it to them. It’s serious. It has a very blue collar basis here, and part of that is a foundation in classic party-rocking.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

McGuire: At Hollertronix, people would start coming in early and head immediately for the dance floor. No “Let me get a drink first, let me wait till they start playing music I like.” Just right to the dance floor. As a DJ, this is great, I can play whatever I want. They’re not being picky, they’re ready to party.

Naeem Juwan aka Spank Rock (rapper): I would be traditionally the first person on the dance floor. Me and my friends would walk in and start dancing. We’d be like the first five people on the floor — dancing relentlessly, all night. I loved dancing with people that didn’t know how to dance well.

Luardo: The combination of Wes and Mike was phenomenal. They had such different sensibilities. You want to talk about a mash-up—two guys with different music tastes, bringing music and people together.

McGuire: Wes was more out there, really wanting to push the envelope. I was more geared towards rocking the crowd. If it was just me, the party might not have been interesting enough. If it was just him, it might have been too weird, might have alienated people. Together, it was a great balance.

Barat: It’s easier for Wes to be the weirdo and Mike to be the voice of rap reason, but the reality of it was, they both had really extensive taste and both had as much vested interest in pop records and other stuff. Mike definitely brought a little more of the working DJ sense, because he had a lot more experience with it. And he scratched better.

Massarueh: The one thing Mike and Wes would both tell you is, there was a very direct relation going on between the record store Armand’s and the music that was played at Hollertronix.

Baker: Armand’s was the definitive record store in Philadelphia for years. It had everything. It became a ritual — you’d go down to Armand’s once or twice a week. It kind of gave DJs a sense of community — it’s how I met Dirty South Joe. You’d spend hours on end there, listening to records, digesting records, being around other DJs and seeing how they reacted to records. But there was also a sense of competition. You’d make sure that you got there at the right time, so that if there’s only three copies of a hot new record, you were going to be one of the three guys that got it.

Barat: This was DJing before Serato came out — Serato is a software that basically lets you DJ off your laptop. Which, for a working DJ, is a godsend, because you don’t have to lug records everywhere. But it did change the craft and approach. Anybody who can download music and copy it to their hard drive can just get out there and start doing it. But when Hollertronix stuff was going on, if Wes and Mike wanted to play a weird record, they’d really have to seek it out.

McGuire: This was not only before Serato, but also laptops and even CDs. Just two turntables, man. We were doing this with just turntables and a mixer and we had a little sampler for sound effects. People can’t believe we did that with just two turntables.

Massarueh: DJing pre-Serato didn’t just require a lot more skill, it required a lot more dedication from every aspect of your life. There were certain days you had to set aside each week to go get new weapons. You had to go clean and load your gun with new shit. If the labels were too slow, you’d get the kill cuts and bootlegs. You’d take a cab or drive anywhere from four to eight crates to a gig and pack them up at the end of the night. Everywhere you went, you kept them behind you in the booth. You were only as good as the records you had.

Barat: Wes and Mike would take these dollar-bin records from Armand’s and sort of build a context around them. They would play a Trick Daddy record and realize it’s the same tempo as this new Metro Area disco song.

Pentz: Lowbudget was the first to actually go down to Baltimore to pick up the records. We’d buy mixtapes — they worked so well for us.

Baker: It goes back to the vision they had, of throwing all these things together and creating a perfect blend. They weren’t the first guys to mix things half-time and they weren’t the first guys to play Baltimore club or Southern rap or Joy Division records, but they were playing all of them together. On paper, it didn’t make sense. But within the confines of the party, it made perfect sense.

Musson: Baltimore is played around the world because of Hollertronix. It’s in the music of Nick and Naeem, and more DJs in general drop Baltimore shit now. And that’s because of Hollertronix. They didn’t make the wheel, but they were definitely like, yo, there’s this wheel over here.

Juwan: Before, you had these very specific music scenes that had all these fucking rules. Rock sounded like rock, punk sounded like punk, and hip-hop sounded like hip-hop. But when you had everyone mixing together, all these different people with different musical backgrounds together and dancing at that party, it inspired everybody.

Roxy Summers aka Roxy Cottontail (party promoter and DJ): Fixed-gear guys next to tall-T guys next to regular South Philly dudes.

Musson: You’d have your indie kids. It was this kind of post-electro period. Racially, I guess it was really solidly diverse. You had white people, black people — it was just “the kids.”

Luardo: I really felt like, it doesn’t matter who you are in this city: if you are straight edge, if you are punk rock from punk rock, if you are a 90-year-old hippie, if you’re a high-school kid — if you show up to this party, you are down for whatever.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Massarueh: By the end of the night, that’s when it would get really crunk — head busting, people jumping off the stage. Me and Jayson and Mike had an unofficial group called the Philadelphia Crunk Lords. Everybody knew there was eventually going to be a mosh pit and we were all going to playfully beat each others’ asses and try not to slip on all the beer on the floor.

Musson: They’d play shit to incite mosh pit. The mosh pit was like a boardroom meeting of faces. It was a duty. I felt like if I wasn’t there, I was letting someone down.

Luardo: It was a lot of Sodom and Gomorrah. Crazy shit happened all the time.

McGuire: You’re not going to leave this party looking good. You can get as dolled up as you want, but when you leave you’re going to be nasty and you’re not going to be dolled up anymore. You’re going to break a sweat here.

Luardo: I know that I would crowd surf, I know that I would jump on top of people, I did things like that and everybody else did too. It was that kind of abandon.

McGuire: Our Halloween parties kind of became a thing. I remember the first one, just seeing so many crazy costumes. Jesus and Bin Laden dancing together. Dudes dancing in their underwear. Just people acting nuts.

Barat: M.I.A.’s “Galang” had come out on this little record company called Showbiz in the UK. Wes had found that 12-inch, sought her out, and they started working on stuff together. She signed, got her record deal, came to Philly, and made a mixtape. One of her earliest performances was at Hollertronix on Halloween.

Pentz: That was the first time M.I.A. had ever done a show. She’d done like a little Fader show in a parking lot but this was the first show after that. She was super nervous.

Juwan: By the time that big Halloween party happened, Hollertronix had really made a name for itself. It was big enough that they could get Bun B to come out. I was going on for Plastic Little, so I was fucking stoked.

Massarueh: Halloween was Naeem’s debut and M.I.A.’s debut. She was just getting her whole performing thing together. And friggin Bunn B was there.

Courtesy Christopher Ross

Barat: They started getting all this attention when The New York Times said that the mix CD was one of the best records of the year — not just [best] mixtapes, but actual records. It became this phenomenon, and got really, really big, up to the point that it wasn’t sustainable anymore.

Summers: I remember Never Scared was in The New York Times as one of the best albums. It wasn’t even an album. I was like, huh? How could a mixtape get best album? But that just goes to show the power of the music they were playing.

Massarueh: They really changed idea of touring DJs. At the time, you had three or four dudes in the world that DJed rap on tour — Jazzy Jeff, Stretch Armstrong, Cash Money, early 2000s guys like that. Wes and Mike opened it up to more of a get-in-a-van, punk rock kind of thing. They took that party to different cities, starting with New York.

Barat: They wanted to do bigger things, move on to bigger challenges. M.I.A. happened, Wes’s thing as a DJ and producer happened. You couldn’t go back again.

Summers: Those times will never be replicated. And you know, when you’re in them, you don’t realize that. You just think they’re going to go on forever.

Barat: When the party stopped, it was almost like you didn’t realize it. It wasn’t like they played a last show and were like, alright guys, it’s done. They just didn’t do another one. I liked that it was left open-ended like that.

Luardo: Whenever I have a really fun time, I’m like, it feels like Hollertronix. It created a standard. The people I met there, we’re not really finding any more places that are what that party was. I don’t think there should be and I don’t think there can be. And I don’t think Wes and Mike knew it was going to be that amazing. When we look at all the lines, and trace it all back, it’s almost coincidental, random. Like when someone knocked a little bit of salt into the chocolate chip cookies and were like, oh my god, they’re so good. I’m nostalgic just talking about it. It was so good!

Source: https://billypenn.com/2018/09/28/m-i-a-s-first-show-and-the-birth-of-the-mash-up-remembering-hollertronix-where-mixtapes-and-mosh-pits-ruled/

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YEAR IN MUSIC 2017 12/26/2017

The 20 Best R&B Songs of 2017: Critics’ Picks

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From left: SZA, Frank Ocean & Childish Gambino

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While hip-hop and dance stayed at pop music’s center in 2017, R&B managed seep its way into the mainstream, in ways both satisfying and unpredictable.

Thanks to a couple too-good-to-ignore crossover hits, and a quasi-reinvention from one of pop’s biggest stars, R&B was an increasingly regular presence on top 40 radio throughout the year. And with several of the genre’s most promising talents percolating just below the surface, the genre’s slow trickle into the 2017 mainstream could lead to a full-on tidal wave in the years to come.  

Here are Billboard’s 20 favorite R&B songs of 2017.

20. PARTYNEXTDOOR, “Peace Of Mind”

OVO Sound’s resident sad-boy R&B songsmith stayed busy in 2017, releasing two EPs of material. “Peace of Mind,” from COLOURS 2, had the most staying power, standing out from the pack for its frank songwriting and straight-to-the-point hook. “I did crazy things and she still waited on me” is the sort of lyric you recognize in your chest. — ROSS SCARANO

19. Jazmine Sullivan & Bryson Tiller, “Insecure”

Featured on the season two soundtrack of the popular HBO series of the same name, this mid-tempo track showcases two of contemporary R&B’s game-changing players. Sullivan’s soaring-voiced dismay at her significant other’s insecurities provides the perfect counterpoint to Tiller’s crooning tenor. — GAIL MITCHELL

18. Toni Braxton, “Deadwood”

The voluptuous-voiced singer prefaces her upcoming eighth studio album with this left-of-center, guitar-driven track about a complicated romance. The feel of the melodic cut and its piercing lyrics portend what’s in store on Toni’s forthcoming Sex & Cigarettes LP. As the R&B legend told The Insider in September, “I wanna say what I feel. I don’t wanna be censored.” — G.M.

17. August Alsina, “Don’t Matter”

Not everything is alt-R&B. Nola’s August Alsina released this perfectly The-Dream-indebted single in June and real ones haven’t let it leave the rotation since. With a chorus anchored by those familiar cries of “Ay!” “Don’t Matter” is like home cooking. You’ve been here before and it’s nice to be back. — R.S.

16. Ty Dolla $ign feat. Damien Marley & Skrillex, “So Am I”

One of the few Ty Dolla-graced singles this year not to hedge its bets with some sort of ’90s hit interpolation, “So Am I” probably could’ve worked in some Inner Circle or something if the singer-producer was really determined to maintain brand consistency. But it doesn’t need it: The song’s hypnotic beachside bounce (assisted by Skrillex, apparently on permanent dubstep vacation) is warmly evocative of the dancehall crossovers of 20 years ago on its own, while its squawking pseudo-drop keeps it rooted in 2017 without sounding so trendy to risk Airport Reggae drubbing. — ANDREW UNTERBERGER

15. Sevyn Streeter, “Before I Do”

Is a potential lover for real or not? That’s the question Sevyn Streeter asks on this standout track from her Girl Disrupted debut album. The singer’s sultry vocals glide over a mellow groove that effortlessly recalls Aaliyah’s cover of the Isley Brothers’ classic “At Your Best (You Are Love)” — never a bad thing. — G.M.

14. H.E.R., “Free”

Long after the last note has sounded on this aching ballad, H.E.R.’s haunting vocals on the confessional chorus still linger: “You don’t ever say forever / Layin’ next to me / But nights like this I wish I never / Said that I was free.” — G.M.

13. Kelela, “Frontline”

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With “Frontline,” Kelela recorded the special opening track that’s so good, so purposeful, it could’ve been the album’s closer too. The song has so many parts, so many musical ideas, it feels like a movie — you’ve gone on a journey by the time it finishes. And yet it never feels overstuffed or scatterbrained; this is a breakup song that leaves you feeling refreshed, like you can do anything. “Why are you testing me?” she asks rhetorically. She’s got the answer spring-loaded: “I’m not the one.” — R.S.

12. Syd, “Got Her Own” 

On this understated highlight from her Fin album, Syd soulfully extols admiration — and longing — for a female peer who’s crushing it in terms of financial independence. “Heard she drive a Beemer and she got it on her own,” Syd sings on the yearning chorus. “Heard she was a dreamer but she sleeping all alone / I just wanna meet her ’cause I just wanna know.” — G.M.

11. Jeremih feat. Chris Brown & Big Sean, “I Think of You”

With “This Is How We Do It” being played out at seemingly every karaoke night and ’90s-themed party of the 21st century, a shift in retro-attention to Montell Jordan’s second-best hit, “Get It On Tonite,” has been long overdue. Luckily, Jeremih remembers: His “I Think of You” is as close a tribute to the 1999 hit’s slinking groove and frisky energy as you can get without risking lawsuit. It’s so much fun that Big Sean can’t help but sneak in a guest verse at the last second. — A.U.

10. Jacquees, “B.E.D.”

Cash Money jumped into the R&B bigtime in 2017 with this explicit anthem from Jacquees, using Avant’s 2003 R&B/pop hit “Read My Mind” as the song’s springboard. The young crooner told Billboard of the lift, “I started singing [the Avant hook] over the beat. We knew it was going to be a hit the moment we heard it.” — G.M.

9. Jessica Ware, “Midnight”

Nothing could’ve quite prepared Jessie Ware fans for the towering power balladry of “Midnight,” the lead track on third album Glasshouse, which essentially throws the curtains open on her earlier sensual slow jams to bathe them in jarringly bright moonlight. Over an insistent Prince-via-“Bennie and the Jets” stomp, the British singer-songwriter wails with increasing urgency, “This moment is made for you and I to go higher – higher – HIGHER – HIGHER!,” before pulling back to calmly plead “…can you meet me in the midnight?” Lord help you if the answer’s no. — A.U.

8. Frank Ocean, “Chanel”

“My guy pretty like a girl/ And he got fight stories to tell” might be the best opening couplet of the year. That it signaled Frank Ocean’s renewed commitment to releasing music made it all the sweeter. Frank didn’t ghost on us in 2017 and of the loosies he released, “Chanel” felt the most essential to his evolving story. It laid out the themes he’d explore in the year’s subsequent releases and featured some of his most evocative writing to date. “I know you need to try for my belt,” he sings in a tone that lets you know the competition is zilch. Seeing both sides is good and all but there’s no point in arguing about Frank’s place at the top of the game. — R.S.

7. Miguel, “Told You So”

The second single from Miguel’s War & Leisure harkens back to the singer/songwriter’s ‘80s-inspired EP series Art Dealer Chic. On this funky turn, Miguel dishes out multiple intentions: Is he talking to a lover or jabbing a finger at the country’s present and past social unrest? Both situations are depicted in the song’s video. Either way, the song ultimately reveals Miguel’s adeptness at delivering sly-yet-resonant messages. — G.M.

6. Daniel Caesar feat. Kali Uchis “Get You”

Perhaps more than any other genre, R&B produces songs that feel instantly timeless, like you’ll be hearing them at weddings for generations to come as love springs eternal. “Get You,” Daniel Caesar’s collab with Kali Uchis is a gentle ode to romantic luck. “Who would’ve thought I’d get you?” Caesar sings on the hook, expressing neatly that dumbstruck feeling we all hope lasts forever. — G.M.

5. SZA, “The Weekend”

You know you’ve got something when a Grammy winner does an impromptu cover of your song. But even before Miguel’s riveting version (and its top 15 status on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs tally), “The Weekend” was among the stellar tracks singled out by critics when SZA released debut album Ctrl. The track samples “Set the Mood (Prelude)” from Justin Timberlake’s 2006 album FutureSex/LoveSounds, but it’s all about SZA here, as her soft, emotive voice searingly conveys the conundrum of sharing a boyfriend with other females: “My man is my man is your man, heard it’s her man, too.” – G.M.

4. Childish Gambino, “Redbone”

“Redbone” achieved its No. 12 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 over half a year after its debut, and unlike some stupefying chart slow-burns, this one actually made sense: The narcotic creep of Childish Gambino’s first true crossover hit initially lands as “above-average P-Funk tribute,” proving itself something timely and unique only many listens later. Luckily, pop culture gave us the opportunity for the necessary exposure, as the song was ultimately revealed to be equally fit for a Twitter makeout meme as a foreshadowing musical cue in a horror comedy, simultaneously seductive and foreboding and just infectious. Without “Redbone,” Glover is still likely known in the U.S. as an actor with a musical side career, with the undeniable soul smash, he’s one of the most-nominated artists at this year’s Grammys. — A.U.

3. Khalid, “Location”

The takeover began here. Pop upstart Khalid’s debut single “Location” makes magic from a contemporary dating request. The Kylie Jenner cosign surely helped but the song’s appeal is broad, even if the lyrics get specific to this phone-dependent generation. — R.S.

2. DJ Khaled feat. Rihanna & Bryson Tiller “Wild Thoughts”

Here’s another perfect example of updating a classic vibe. Carlos Santana’s 1999 No. 1 pop and R&B hit “Maria Maria,” featuring The Product G&B, provides the foundation for DJ Khaled’s blast-from-the-past refresher course. Santana’s scorching guitar riffs fittingly underscore the sexual heat and wild thoughts radiating from Rihanna and Bryson Tiller’s ingenious pairing. — G.M.

1. Bruno Mars, “That’s What I Like”

As with his guest appearance on Mark Ronson’s Grammy-winning “Uptown Funk,” the similarly Hot 100-besting “That’s What I Like” added another mega-hit to Bruno Mars’ repertoire. A deft balancing act between retro and contemporary R&B with an earworm hook, “That’s What I Like” rightly became one of the most ubiquitous songs of 2017. The midtempo groove (co-written by Mars along with Christopher Brody Brown, James Fauntleroy and Philip Lawrence, plus production/songwriting team the Stereotypes), is also a multiple Grammy contender: up for song of the year, best R&B song and best R&B performance. — G.M.

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Ceremony:  Sts. Peter and Paul Church, Beaver, PA

Reception: Doubletree Moon Twp., PA    

Make Up:  European Flair

Hair:  European Flair

Florist:  Parkway Florist, Greentree, PA

Baker: Cakes by Tammy

Entertainment: The band Walk of Love lead singer Sean Kememer

Colors: Steel blue

Honeymoon: Mazatlan, Cancun, Mexico

I graduated from Freedom Area High School, class of 1999…at Freedom (when I went there) it was K-4 in two separate elementary schools, 5-8 in the middle school and 9-12 in the high school. I was terribly anxious going into 9th grade, the nervousness of a freshman that I would like to think most feel. I walked into my first period class and was met with a man named Mr. Byrnes, freshman English, as I thought, oh I got this, I enjoy English and I am decent enough on the subject so I didn’t feel the need to fret. Mr. Byrnes was a small man but he commanded the room as no other teacher I had ever encounter, he was strict, he was tough, he didn’t put up with crap(to put it as best as I can), he was also one of the best English teachers I ever had. I learned so much that year and fell in love with writing.

So when I had a consultation with Mr. Martin Byrnes and Miss Meagan Susa it hadn’t even occurred to me that it could be the son of MY Mr. Byrnes.  I may sound like a nosy photographer, but it is simply my way of getting to know my client when I ask how you met, what do you do for a living, etc. Martin informed me that he was a high school English teacher, I immediately thought, “wait a minute, is your father Mr. Byrnes? “. The answer would obviously be yes, whether it was MY Mr. Byrnes or not, but within minutes, here I was meeting the son of MY Mr. Byrnes. (Fun Fact: Both my parents as well as my brother are graduates of Freedom as well, both my parents had Mr. Byrnes for freshman English as well)

Now as I write this blog post, I hope that Martin will not be correcting my grammar and spelling. HAHA

Blog posts are informal, right?

I was thrilled when Martin and Meagan entrusted me with the privilege of photographing their wedding day. Meagan and Martin are not only incredible people, but I was very much looking forward to seeing MY Mr. Byrnes again after all these years.

I drove to the home that Meagan and Martin share for the pre-ceremony coverage, we captured Meagan, her mom and her bridesmaids getting ready. They have a gorgeous view and large picture window that is a photographer’s dream, natural light flooding the room, we finished the portraits of Meagan and headed to the church to do the pre-ceremony coverage of the groom.

Arriving at Saints Peter and Paul church in Beaver is like heading home, I have a lot of weddings here and Father Bob is just the sweetest person you will ever meet. We photographed the groom and his family as well as the groomsmen. It was great to finally see Mr. Byrnes, whom might I add, has not changed one bit and this man has not aged at all.

I knew from our initial meeting that this wedding was going to be different, wonderful and full of uniqueness. Martin’s uncle is a priest, they have a good friend who is a priest as well as this being their home parish, Father Bob would be there as well. The three men together would conduct a beautiful ceremony full of love, laughter and happily ever after(insert cheesy line here, haha).

Following a lovely mass, we headed to the alternate location, this couple decided upon Robin Hill Park. This is such a gorgeous location no matter the time of year. I have photographed many couples, family and children at this location; it offers a beautiful “mansion” turned events center, gazebo, walking trails, fire pit, pergola, stone wall, vintage and modern details and a quaint cabin all on the premises.  

It was now time to get these newlyweds to the reception at the Doubletree in Moon Twp., PA. Upon entering the reception, Meagan and Martin, shared their first dance to the DJ provided music immediately followed by the cutting of their cake and speeches. I love to see couples take liberties with their details, next to the cake we noticed a “vintage” photograph of a bride and groom kissing next to their cake and this was a photograph of Meagan’s grandparents on their wedding day standing next to a cake that looked as though appeared their cake could have been modeled after.

After dinner is the perfect time to take those few family, friend’s photos that may have been restricted due to the timeframe allotted at the church. This newlywed’s day was no exception, following dinner we snagged a few more photographs with family and friends and began the dancing portion of the evening.  Martin danced with his mom and Meagan with her brother, you know it’s funny prior to 2014 I would find myself getting emotional at the father-daughter dances during weddings and I still do but there is nothing quite like watching a man dance with his mother. I think the birth of my son changed that for me. I now imagine myself one day dancing with my son at his wedding to a girl I will no doubt love and approve of every sense of the word. My children are my world and as Addison and Gabriel get older(I’m not of course, so I don’t exactly know how it is happening), I realize just how precious these moments are. On my wedding day, dancing with my father is one of my happiest memories, after suffering from a major heart attack (they call it the widow maker) just one year prior, I know exactly how precious that moment was, but the longer my amazing career spans the more I realize how precious the moment must have been for my parents. You raise these tiny humans all this time, you hope for their future, their education, their choices in friends and spouses and their happiness  and all you want ultimately is for them to grow up to be happy and healthy. The joy that my children bring me is unparalleled, they are the light in my darkest of days, the hope for the future, the chaos in the quietest of moments and this time in my life may be the calm before the storm but all I know is that I want my children to be happy, a happiness that fills them to the brink of spilling over, just like Meagan and Martin.

Now it’s time to get this party started! Meagan and Martin chose to have a band at their reception. It never ceases to amazing me how totally different the vibe is at a band versus DJ experience, now to each their own but concert going is truly one of my favorite pastimes, particularly in my teens and 20s, these days I don’t get to head to as many concerts as I would like but never the less that spirit is within me. I love the inhibition that happens to the wedding guests when a live band hits the stage. Many times at a DJ wedding reception you will have waves of dancers and by that I mean, if the DJ is playing Marvin Gaye or Sam Cooke, you’re not going to find too many 20 something’s on the dance floor as in the same scenario when that DJ plays the remix to Imagine Dragons Thunder. (Fun fact: I had ONE of my first old lady moments not too long ago, when hearing this song on the radio, I thought they were saying Fun Dip, my daughter still makes fun of me by singing “Fun Dip! Eat the Fun Dip. Fun Dip! Eat the Fun Dip. Lightening and the Fun Dip!) At a wedding reception where you have a band performing I have seen many 90 year old couples out there dancing the night away to Black Eyed Peas, Let’s get it started and many teens and kids sweeping the dance floor to AC/DC you shook me all night long!

It is just not all that often that growing up you get an inside look into the home and family life of your school teachers, you see them as an authority and those things are kept private. (Except when your best friend is the daughter of one of your middle school teachers, shout out to Beth Foster and Patty Donaldson LOL ) But to get a small glimpse into the life and love of one of my teachers has been both a blessing and an honor. To Meagan and Martin, may all your days be filled with sunshine and happiness, may you always hold one another in times of pain and sorrow, and may you be surrounded by love always and in all ways.

PS. Martin and Mr. Byrnes, please go easy on me. LOL

Not talkin' 'bout a year No not three or four I don't want that kind of forever In my life anymore Forever always seems to be around when it begins but forever never seems to be around when it ends So give me your forever Please your forever Not a day less will do From you People spend so much time Every single day Runnin' 'round all over town Givin' their forever away But no not me I won't let my forever roam and now I hope I can find my forever a home So give me your forever Please your forever Not a day less will do From you Like a handless clock with numbers An infinite of time No not the forever found Only in the mind Forever always seems to be around when things begin but forever never seems to be around when things end So give me your forever Please your forever Not a day less will do From you

[lamptracker]

FIC: Win-Win (part 2/?)

Wrote this as I’m slowly getting caught up on blurbs. I am going to attempt to update this on Mondays. We’ll see how well that works out hahaha

Anyway

Part 1

FIC: Win-Win (Part 2/?)

Overall Summary: Temporarily homeless, the reader needs a place to stay. Her friend Tom, who has a reputation for being a womanizer, has an extra room… and an idea.

Very loosely based on the How I Met Your Mother episode “World’s Greatest Couple,” where Lily posed as Barney’s wife to help him get rid of his one-night stands.

Part summary: The reader’s friends find out about her agreement with Tom. Her ex, Tony Revolori, has some doubts. 

This is mostly filler to introduce everyone else, but it’s still important to the story!

Also, Jacob and Zendaya are dating. No idea why, I just like ‘em together.

Tagged: @sspider-parker   @dipshithipster   @stephie-senpai   @lemirabitur   @gravity-jade21   @ocaptainmycaptainrogers   @hollandfieldblurbs   @unicorn-princess-1999   @peter-holland-parker1996

“Okay, hold it.”

Jacob Batalon sat across the table from (y/n) at their usual booth in their usual pub. He’d ordered a round of beers for the group - her, himself, Zendaya Coleman, Harrison Osterfield, and Tom. He handed (y/n) her beer and grabbed one for himself.

“Yeah?”

“You and Tom - who almost never hang out outside of this place - are living together?!”

“Just temporarily.” She snagged a spicy pretzel from the bowl in the center of the table, popping it into her mouth. “He’s letting me stay with him until my landlord’s done with all the pest control. Big rat problem or something.”

“Well… I get why you couldn’t live with me. But why not Z? Or Haz?”

“Harrison only has one bedroom, and I’m allergic to Z’s cats.” She grabbed another pretzel; Jacob widened his jaw expectantly. (y/n) tossed the pretzel directly into Jacob’s open mouth. “Does Tony know?”

Jacob scoffed as he chewed. “How does he know something that I only found about three minutes ago?” He grabbed a pretzel out of the bowl.

(Y/n) shrugged. “Good point.” She opened her mouth; Jacob tossed a pretzel into her waiting mouth. “Oh, and I occasionally have to pretend to be his wife.”

Jacob, who’d opened his mouth to catch another pretzel, quickly closed it. “You what?”

“It’s to scare off his one-night stands. You know how he has trouble getting them to leave sometimes? That’s where I come in. He gives me the signal - like, this morning it was ‘Would you like any cream or sugar?’ And then I walk in, she accuses me of being his wife, we don’t deny it, she leaves. I’ve been there three days, I’ve done it twice, it’s perfect.”

“It’s evil.”

“So what? Beats being homeless.”

“What beats being homeless?” Zendaya asked; she and Harrison had just arrived. Harrison slid into the booth next to (y/n); Zendaya sat next to Jacob, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek.

“Oh, (y/n) is living with Tom now.”

“Only temporarily!” (y/n) exclaimed as she tossed another pretzel at an unsuspecting Jacob; he quickly opened his mouth and deftly caught it.

Zendaya shook her head. “You two weirdos and your pretzel thing. And you know I have an extra bedroom, right?”

“You also have Rosie.”

“Oh, yeah.” Zendaya sighed as Jacob wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Missed you today, babe. How was work?”

“You know, another exciting day in the world of accounting.” Jacob pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “Heard your show this morning. Awesome as usual.”

“Thanks,” she replied, smiling. Zendaya was the co-host of a local radio station morning show.

“Nobody has asked me how I’m doing,” Harrison interjected, almost indignantly.

“Nobody cares,” Zendaya retorted. “We’re much more interested about (y/n) and Tom living together.”

“Only temporarily!” (y/n) exclaimed yet again.

Jacob laughed. “Oh, I left out the best part. She has to pretend to be his wife!”

“His what?” Zendaya nearly shrieked.

“Oh, to scare the chicks away,” Harrison said as he grabbed his beer. “Seriously, is anyone going to ask-”

“That’s pretty much it,” Tom said as he joined them. “Hello, Mrs. Holland.”

“Evenin’, Mr. Holland.”

Zendaya just shook her head.

“Well, you guys do what you have to, I guess.” Jacob picked up a pretzel, pretending to toss it at (y/n); he popped it into his own mouth instead.

“Jerk,” (y/n) sneered as she took another drink of her beer. Noticing Harrison pouting next to her, she laughed. “How was your day, Harrison?”

“Fucking finally!” Harrison sighed. “I got promoted! You’re looking at Wilson Technologies’ latest Project Lead.”

Everyone at the table cheered and offered their congratulations.

“We’re all growing up!” Jacob exclaimed, wiping away a fake tear. “Harrison’s getting promoted, Z’s radio show is the number one show in town, (Y/n) and Tom are married-”

“They are?”

Everyone looked up. There, standing at the end of their table, was Tony Revolori.

Also known as? Jacob Batalon’s roommate.

Oh yeah, and (y/n)’s ex-boyfriend.

(y/n) laughed. “Not for real. Just fake-married. To scare the chicks away.”

“They do live together, though,” Jacob said.

“Only temporarily!” Tom and (y/n) yelped simultaneously.

“It’s just until they’ve got the pest control problem in my building taken care of,” (y/n) added.

Tony nodded. “I see. Um, (y/n), can I talk to you over here for a minute?” He jerked his head to a spot not far from the bar, but just out of earshot of the group.

“Uh… okay.”

Tom and Harrison let her up as she met Tony at the designated spot.

“I don’t like this,” Tony said.

(y/n) scoffed. “Well, I didn’t like when you cheated on me after two years together, and then started dating the girl you cheated on me with two days after we broke up. But okay.”

Tony sighed. “This isn’t about that.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“I don’t like you living with Tom.”

“I don’t recall asking for your permission.”

“Dammit, (Y/N), would you just- I mean, uh… you know how he spends his free time.”

“Yes.”

“And you know he might… try that with you, right?”

(y/n) gave him the oddest look she could possibly muster.

“Are you serious right now? Like, are you seriously serious? Look, Tom may sleep around but he has a code, okay? Nobody in his friend group. That means I’m off-limits. Just ask him.” (y/n) scoffed again. “Not that I would ever anyway, I mean… he’s good-looking and all but I have standards.”

Tony nodded solemnly. “Well, okay. Just… just be careful, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Should’ve thought about that before, you know, you hurt me. See you later, Tony. Tell Morgan I said hi.”

“Um, Morgan-”

“Hates me. Feels threatened by me, like I’ll steal you back from her or something.” (y/n) snorted. “Like that would ever happen. Anyways, this was a good talk, Anthony, I’ll see ya later.” She patted his arm before rejoining the rest of the group at the table.

“What was that about?” Tom asked

“Just typical ex-boyfriend crap. Now, let’s have a little fun, guys. How do you think the wedding went? You know, if there’d been one?”

“Oh, this was not pre-planned, you just know it,” Zendaya said. “I’m thinking drunken Vegas decision.”

“And they were definitely married by an Elvis impersonator,” Jacob chimed in.

“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” Harrison asked. “Because that’s the only way I see Tom ever getting married.”

“You’re a true friend, Harrison.” Tom nudged Harrison’s arm with his elbow.

“Drunken Vegas Elvis shotgun wedding?” (y/n) sighed. “Oh, Tommy, you make me feel like the luckiest girl alive.”

Tom sipped his beer. “Anything for the love of my life.”

“Would you like any cream or sugar?” Tom asked loudly from the kitchen the next morning.

“Oh, no thank you,” a girl’s voice replied.

Tom looked expectantly at the hallway. “I said, would you like any cream or sugar?”

“And I said, no thank you.”

“Oh, shit, that’s me,” (y/n) muttered, tossing the stack of quizzes she was grading to the side and rushing into the hall. “Good morning, baby, how- Tom? Who is this?”

“Darling, let me explain, I-”

“Oh, my God!” The girl shrieked. “Is this your wife?!”

“Of course I’m his wife!” (y/n) shouted, stomping over to where Tom and the girl were sitting. “How could you do this to me, Tom? When I’m carrying your child, nonetheless!” Without warning, she brought her hand across Tom’s cheek; the slapping noise echoed through the kitchen.

“Oh, no. I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t… I’ll just be going.” With that, the girl quickly gathered her things and ran out the door. Tom rubbed his sore cheek as he smiled.

“Well done!” he said. “Pregnant, huh? That’s good.”

(Y/n) shrugged. “Well, I had to live up to part of the Vegas Elvis Shotgun Wedding, didn’t I?”

Tom laughed as he drank his coffee. “And that slap? Genius! You did not hold back.”

“Eh. Always wondered what it’d be like to slap someone.” (Y/n) poured herself a cup of coffee. “Oh, I was thinking. We want to sell the ruse that we’re married, right? We should do a little redecorating, then. Nothing huge, just maybe some pillows for the couch. Little area rug. Stuff like that.”

Tom stroked his chin as he thought about it. “Not a bad idea. We can go this weekend?”

“Sure. Right now I need to finish grading this stack of quizzes I told my fourth-period kids I’d have graded three days ago. I always pull out the old ‘you know how English teachers are’ excuse. They’re high school kids, they seem to buy it.”

“Right.” Tom sat down at the table again. “Hey, what were you and Tony talking about yesterday?”

“He doesn’t like our arrangement. Thinks you’re gonna try and sleep with me or something.” (y/n) grabbed a grape from Tom’s date’s abandoned fruit salad and popped it into her mouth.

“I would never. You’re my friend and now, my wife. You’re off-limits.”

“See! I told him that. But he thinks I’m easily swayed by your charms or something. I mean, the idea of us? How ridiculous is that?” Tom burst into laughter. “Utterly ridiculous!”

But you know what they say about famous last words...