#also i think i made sans too slinky

[venelona]

Happy Birthday to youuuu

Happy Birtdhay to youuuuuu

Happy Biiiirthdaaaay @ikustioa, 

Happy Biiiirthday tooooo yoooouuuuuuuuu!~

Have this scene from chapter 12 of ‘Songfell’ by the birthday giiirl ( @songfell-ut ), which is inspired by @lostmypotatoes ✨ Hope ya like it! Thanks for making me addicted to yer writing gyefihjkacfgrnl

have sans talkin in an old lady voice

[thecomposerofstories]

Information on Amy.

(Be warned it's a ~little bit~ long, any other pieces of information you want to know I'll gladly answer if you ask.)

~General Information~

Fandom: Toy Story.

Name: Amy the Ragdoll.

Nickname, if any: Amy, Ames, and Doll-Face(usually by more villainous characters or used in a joking manner).

Gender: Female.

Sexuality: ??? (I mean I know the gender of who she has a crush on, but I'm unsure on what her actual sexuality should be tbh)

Age: Mentally, mid-twenties in the first story second movie, thirties to forties in the third and fourth. Physically, she doesn’t have an age, but in regards to when she was made (the 1950’s) makes her fifty to sixty.

City they currently live in: San Francisco, apparently that’s where Toy Story takes place.

Any pets: Would Rex count? He just follows her around like a nervous puppy.

Current occupation: I mean she’s practically a therapist, but she’s a toy and she only treats Rex so it probably doesn’t count lol

~Physical Appearance~

Height: 10 inches.

Body type: Stocky, but a bit gangly too, similar to Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Eye colour: Black.

Skin tone: Light.

Clothing style: Pale green/turquoise shirt with short puffed sleeves, with a denim dungaree dress with a daisy print in the centre over it. She wears yellow rain boots.

Hairstyle: No style, it’s just there. It’s messy and gets in her face easily and is made out of dark brown thin string.

~Speech/Language/Communication~

Amy speaks quietly and politely, rambles a bit if left without a reply or under pressure, very nervous in front of intimidating characters.

First language: English.

Learned languages: A bit of Spanish (Ya’ll remember Toy Story 3!)

Accent: American.

Pitch of voice: High, but soft, not quite annoying, unless she’s stressed, then it gets very pitchy and shrill.

~Behaviour/Habits~

Amy tends to just stand there when she can’t find anything to do, and will immediately try to find Rex, Hamm, Buzz or Jessie if surrounded by strangers (Though she’s not sure if it’s for their comfort or her own) Amy is very polite.

Spending habits: She doesn’t like to be made a fuss of at all, the very fact of someone giving something to her is unnerving (even if the thing never costed anything at all) and she feels compelled to give the giver something in return.

Morning routine: She gets up same time as the others, but wishes she could stay in bed a bit longer though. Before she came to Andy’s room, her sleep pattern was all over the place.

Bedtime routine: Similar to above, now she goes to bed the same time as the others, but before she just slept and got up willy-nilly.

Nervous habits: Amy will try to find Rex if she’s nervous, and she’ll pretend it’s because she’s worried for him, which is quite true, but she also just feels most safe with him. Speaking of, Amy will let Rex hold her hand and squish it whenever he or Amy is nervous, it’s calming to the both of them.

Bad habits: Not a very good exerciser, but then again, she’s spend basically half her life in a small attic, so I’ll give her a break.

Skills/talents: She’ very logical, mind-over-matter, (mostly, very good at calming others down and/or convincing them. She’s very good at spelling and knows quite a lot of words, some of which others haven’t even heard of.

Hobbies: Reading, talking (especially with Rex, Jessie or Hamm), and generally just lazing about or walking around somewhere, on her own or with a friend.

~The Past~

Amy’s first owner was a little girl called Alice. Alice loved nothing more than to read Amy stories (Mostly fairy tales), but of course, Alice grew up like all kids do, and she left Amy in the attic for someone else to have her.

Amy waited for many years, and all that time she’d never given up that someone would find her.

She thought she’s hit the jackpot when Andy and his family move into Alice’s old house, but they don’t go up into the attic to collect her. Some weeks later, though, Andy’s mother brings a set of boxes filled with junk into the attic and leaves. Woody, Buzz, Slinky, and Rex were trapped in one of the boxes (Call me a cheater but this part was actually inspired by a Toy Story comic, where those four toys get stuck in the attic that way and have to escape. It struck me odd that they never met at least one new friend there, so I made one. It was also my first story, I needed some inspiration!)

Amy, in a fit of panic, goes and hides.

But then she’s found by Rex as he and the others try to find a way out.

They then decide to let the strange, dust-covered ragdoll come back to Andy’s rom with them. (well, Rex did, anyway.)

Home town: Would Alice’s old room count? But it’s now Andy’s Room, so it won’t count will it?

Happy or sad childhood: Pretty normal to be honest, as normal a life as a toy could have anyway. And as for sadness, having spent all that time on her own for all those years, having missed out on so much, is a little sad. But Amy made sure she never became bitter over it or used it as an excuse for anything.

Earliest memory: Waking up in her toy store, with a friend of hers for company (a ragdoll Prospector, a much as she remembers) and as she gets bought by Alice’s Auntie, she says she hopes he gets picked up by a kid. (Unbeknownst to her, she would meet him again in a while to find out he never got to experience it)

Saddest memory: One, being left by Alice, yet being so happy for her and how much she’s grown up, if she could cry tears of joy for her owner, she would. Two, some (or most) of the days she spent waiting for a new owner to arrive. And three, watching Rex have a mental breakdown of anxiety.

Happiest memory: One, the time she and Alice went to the park, (Amy absolutely adores nature) Two after sliding down a drainpipe to get to Andy’s room, and three, having known she’d helped her friend out.

Significant events: Being bought, being left in an attic, being rescued from the attic, while gaining some new friends.

~Family~

The entirety of Andy’s room, whether they like it or not, they’re all in this together and are some kind of mish-mash, found family in a sense.

Siblings: I’ve been thinking of giving Amy a brother (since I based her on Raggedy Ann, a matching bootleg Raggedy Andy seems reasonable) bur I’m unsure about it, since I’ve already mapped out Amy’s entire series of stories (Around six or seven all together, so far I’m currently writing only the third) and I can only fit him in the fifth or sixth if I can.

~Relationships~

Romantically? I’d like to say she has a crush on Rex, I don’t know why I thought of it, I was contemplating it one day as I sketched a rough (and terrible) sketch of her, and I drew Rex too because he’s just so fun to draw and I wanted to make a scale for Amy’s size, and one of my friends (who had been watching me) immediately said “I ship it!” and well, the rest is history, I made the decision to ship it too.

Friends: Jessie, Hamm, Buzz, and Rex are her closet friends, but she’d like to say that all the Gang are her friends. Later on she becomes good friends with Mr. Prickle Pants, Buttercup, Trixie and Totoro, and she absolutely loves the peas and Forky.

Best friend(s): Hamm, Mr. Prickle Pants, Jessie, and Rex.

What do people like about them? Amy’s pretty easy to talk to, she’s polite and attentive and will sit in companionable silence with someone if they need it. But she won’t hesitate to give hard truths and advice if it’s needed.

What do people dislike about them? Amy is quite a doormat, if someone is rude to her or breaches anything she just lets it happen, and sometimes she’s too indecisive about her own stuff, unsure whether she’s going to offend others or not over the smallest things, which annoys others quite a bit.

~Mentality/Personal Beliefs~

Amy is a toy of logic, and though she believes others can do it if they set their minds to it, she doesn’t quite believe in herself. She believes she must follow the rules of being a toy at all times, no matter what.

Phobias: Dust. She hates it. It took a good five weeks to brush all the dust out her hair and clothes, and even so there’s still some in her pockets and places she can’t reach. And being alone, too. Now she can’t be alone for more than an hour before she starts to get antsy and nervous. And for a short time books gave her a strange tiredness, after reading them for so long and for so many years she couldn’t even stand the sight of them.

But of course, not for long, since Amy found out Andy had a copy of Red’s Dream by a Mr. William Reeves.

Optimist or pessimist: Depends on the situation really, if her mind can’t come up with a solution, then there’s no point in trying anymore. Unless someone else can think of something, that is.

Personal philosophies: “You are here to make good things happen. No person here is made for one reason only, or even only one. There’s no point in pretending to be someone you’re not just for the attention of others, no matter how cool they are. We should find are own meaning, as we’re the only ones who have control of it.

It’ll take a while, but I swear, it’ll be worth it.”

Biggest dream/wish: Amy wants nothing more than to find meaning for herself, but finds it rather hard to do so. Of course, that doesn’t mean she’ll settle for someone else’s meaning. As cheesy as it sounds, she just wants an adventure. She doesn’t necessarily want to be the hero, though, she’s just happy to go along with the ride so long as it gets her out the house for a few hours. She also, above all else, wants Rex to find meaning too, even if she never does, it would be nice to know that he had.

Greatest strength(s): Persuasion, story-telling, logic, and good grammar.

Biggest flaw: Despite being a ragdoll, Amy can’t sew because of her fingerless hands, which are just soft mittens in shape. Amy is also quite a doormat, as I said before, so if her calm persuasion and reasoning doesn’t work, she’s left to be walked all over.

Regrets: Staying in that dratted attic too long, the window was open, she could’ve just climbed out, but no, she had to stay there for some mind-rotting decades. But if she had just escaped, she would never have met her new friends. Amy just wishes she had met them a lot sooner.

Achievements: Escaped the attic, slid down a drainpipe, leapt onto the windowsill (though nearly knocking Woody and Buzz over in the process) stopped her friend from having a panic attack, and managed to remember the entire Dictionary and is able to recite it down from A to Z, and even Z to A.

Secrets: Not much, just strange feelings for one of her friends, but it’s not much of a secret, Bo knows, and Mr. Potato Head and Hamm could see it from a mile away, and the others have their suspicions.

Goals: Read the entirety of Andy’s (and later Bonnie’s) bookshelves, become more confident in herself, have her own book-worthy adventure, and figure out what those strange feelings for her friend is.

~Likes/Favourites~

Favourite colour: Even before meeting Rex, Amy’s favourite colour was always green. Every time Alice had taken her to the park, Amy adored watching the sunlight pour through the leaves with a golden-green glow.

Favourite book(s): Because it’s sentimental to her, being her owner’s favourites, she loves Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz. They all hold similar plots (a little girl in a blue dress goes to a fantasy land, has a few adventures, and then leaves said fantasy land to go home to her family and responsibilities) but it reminds Amy of her old owner Alice (who was actually named after Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) and their playtimes together.

Favourite Book Quotation(s):

“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.”

“There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is facing danger when you are afraid.”

Favourite movie: Amy does much prefer books, since they allow her to imagine the setting and characters in her own way, but doesn’t mind movies, and isn’t picky on what they watch, though she does quite like horror films.

Favourite song: Amy likes any kind of music, new or old.

Favourite game: Amy never really cared for games, the competitiveness always bothered her and stressed her out. But she’s more than happy to watch Rex play his video games and cheer him on.

~Relationships with other characters~

~Rex~

- Hit it off pretty quickly.

- Amy helps him with his anxiety, and helps him find confidence in himself, she acts as a certain therapist to him.

- Both become very stressed without the other around.

- Rex will hold and knead at Amy’s hands sometimes; it calms him down.

- Rex will let Amy ride on his back if she’s tired or needs to see something (Because she’s so short).

- One of them can basically be talking about the most boring-est things ever, yet still the other will hang on to their every word.

~Jessie~

- Became friends pretty quickly.

- Will drag Amy along anywhere.

- Get along fairly well.

- Jessie does the talking and Amy does the planning.

- Jessie always pranks the other toys and makes Amy tag along (along with Hamm).

- Introvert/Extrovert dynamic for sure.

- Both were left in alone for years so like to find solace in each other.

~Hamm~

- Hamm begrudgingly warmed up to the timorous ragdoll.

- Surprisingly good pals.

- Have full conversations without saying anything.

- Like to sit and look out of the window together.

- Hamm makes Amy laugh when she really shouldn’t (mainly when he makes fun of the other toys, mainly Woody).

- Hamm makes fun of Amy having a crush on Rex every once in a while, though he doesn’t mean any harm.

~The Potato Heads~

- Mr. doesn’t really interact with Amy much, but finds her surprisingly tolerable, if a bit high-strung and annoying.

- Like Hamm, Mr. makes Amy laugh at the most wrong moments.

- She and Mrs. Are quite good friends, and she sometimes lets Amy take care of the aliens if she and her husband are busy.

~Woody~

- Are aquianteces.

- Don’t exactly interact much, even though the whole room practically revolves around him, in Amy’s opinion, though she would never say it to his face.

~Buzz~

- Amy thinks he’s super cool (then again, he is Buzz Lightyear, he practically invented coolness)

- Both are just as clueless as one another when it comes to social cues and interactions.

- Amy helps him with vocabulary and spelling every once in a while.

~Mr. Prickle Pants~

- Are absolute BFF’s.

- Go back and forth with book quotes to the point of driving the other toys insane.

~Bo Peep~

- Amy's not exactly sure if Bo has befriended her or not.

- (She has)

- They later become good friends.

- Amy misses their talks, Bo was one of the only toys she could talk to that could keep a secret.

[kamari333]

AO3 Tags and the Undertale Community

I went through my fics to re-tag my stuff after I saw the post by Galli talking about how fanon tags were supposed to go in as Additional Tags on AO3. I also re-read the Tag Wrangling support page on AO3, compared preexisting filterable tags, and reached a number of conclusions which I want to open up a discussion about.

I want this community to pull together and unify in its use of tags, and tagging patterns, so we can all identify the content we love accurately and safely. The more people who use the same tags, the more likely those tags will be made searchable by staff, and the easier it will be to find the content we want! But I don't think the volunteers are necessarily as savvy in the nuances of the fandom, so lets help them out by giving them the right info!

If I misunderstand any of these nuances in the guidelines, I want those who know better to help me get it right.

Long Post Incoming.

Firstly: Character Tags

Apparently the standard of Character tags is the format "<AU> <canon mirror> (Undertale)" example: "Underfell Sans (Undertale)". This is all well and good. Simple, no? Simply tag "Underlust Sans (Undertale)" and we all know Lust is in there.

So let me talk about the anomalies, the exceptions to this rule.

* Keep in mind I am only speaking in terms of the Undertale fandom, and any characters who have evolved beyond that to become originals in their own right are only being considered in the confines of their existence in terms of the Undertale fandom.

Who better to start with than Error when it comes to Anomalies? Error does not have an AU. He is only, and explicitly, known as Error. AO3 at this time has an "Alternate Universe - Errortale" tag, and is using "Errortale Sans (Undertale)" as a filterable tag, but these tags are inaccurate to who Error, as he was originally made by CQ, fundamentally is.

To combat this, and keeping in line with the rules of tag wrangling, I have started using the "Error | Not Sans Anymore (Undertale)" tag. This separates him from any alternate universe but still recognizes that he has his origins in Sans, and also separates him from his evolution outside the undertale fandom. I had considered and ultimately discarded "Error | Aftertale Sans (Undertale)" as an alternative, but I can certainly understand the argument given he is a logical progression of Geno, who by all rights should be tagged as "Geno | Aftertale Sans (Undertale)", separate from just regular "Aftertale Sans (Undertale)".

The next one I want to talk about is Ink. In accordance with, again, my understanding of AO3 tagging guidelines, Ink is known most commonly as Ink, despite explicitely being a derivative of Sans. We also know from his reference sheet that Ink is originally from an AU known only as "_____tale" (i counted 5 underscores, but if anyone else knows the more accurate number I would love to hear it). So, I have started tagging ink as "Ink | _____tale Sans (Undertale)" because he IS explicitly a Sans with his own, albiet unfinished, AU. Right now, AO3 has Inktale Sans and Inktale AU tags, but neither of those identify the homeless worldhopper originally conceived by his creator, so would be inaccurate tags in many cases.

Another anomaly is Fresh. For a number of reasons. Firstly, he isn't a detivative of any undertale character, instead contributing to the mythos indirectly by using sans as a host. Fresh is a parasite, so he should be tagged, and i have taken to tagging him as, "Fresh | Parasite (Undertale)".

Next I wanna talk about Killer. Killer is from a comic series which, from my understanding, is collectively known as "Something New". So, thats the AU Killer is from. By that logic, his proper tag should be "Killer | Something New Sans (Undertale)" to identify him as a Sans from his AU. Right? Unless his creator gave his AU a different name...

Next on my list is Cross. Cross also clearly has an AU, which conveniently also has a clear, distinct name (Xtale). But Cross isn't talked about as Xtale Sans (even though thats what he IS), he's just called Cross, even in his canon. So he would be tagged as "Cross | Xtale Sans (Undertale)"

Then we come to Dreamtale. Now... Dreamtale is its own, very, very far removed, AU -- the "Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale)" tag is accurate. I am conflicted since, on the one hand, both Dream and Nightmare are Sans, but on the other hand, they are not sans. So, is it more correct to say "Dream | Dreamtale Sans (Undertale)" or "Dreamtale Dream (Undertale)" ? Or are they synonymous?

For the record, I separately tag my AU by tagging as "Alternate Universe - Dr33mtal3 (Undertale)" and "Dream | Dr33mtal3 Sans (Undertale)" and "Nightmare | Dr33mtal3 Sans (Undertale)"

These tadding distinctions are incredibly important to understand and solidify NOW, because the minor details change how everything is alphabetized in Ship Tags.

I looked at the AO3 tag wrangling guide as best I could and compared existing tag patterns to figure this much out...

Canon Characters First

better known name

Surname (or in this case AU)

Forename (or in this case canon equivalent)

So lets look at some examples:

I have already gone and tagged all my Rust fics as "Underfell Sans/Underlust Sans (Undertale)".

I also tagged my Burlesque fics as "Dancetale Sans/Underfell Sans/Underlust Sans (Undertale)".

SpicyHoney is "Underfell Papyrus/Underswap Papyrus (Undertale)"

Kustard is "Sans/Underfell Sans (Undertale)"

SpicyKustard is "Sans/Underfell Papyrus/Underfell Sans (Undertale)"

...but add Slinky in and its "Sans/Lamiatale Sans/Underfell Papyrus/Underfell Sans (Undertale)"

If I tag Suave/Razz its "Dancetale Papyrus/Swapfell Sans (Undertale)"

but if for some reason I decide Dance and Slim have to kiss I would tag "Dancetale Sans/Swapfell Papyrus (Undertale)"

I struggled, however, tagging my HoneyCider crackship. I ultimately went with "Nightmare | Dr33mtal3 Sans/Underswap Papyrus (Undertale)"

But take KillerCreamMare. Here is where I have trouble...

Logic says that, assuming its classic dreamtale, its written as either:

Dreamtale Dream/Dreamtale Nightmare/Cross | Xtale Sans/Killer | Something New Sans (Undertale)

Dream | Dreamtale Sans/Cross | Xtale Sans/Killer | Something New Sans/Nightmare | Dreamtale Sans (Undertale)

Cross/Dream/Killer/Nightmare (Undertale)

Of course, these all present their own problems... The last of them doesn't distinguish Dream or Nightmare from each possible AU or combination of AUs, for starters. The others are quite the mouthfuls.

The first two could be synonymous but the third is ambiguous...

Edit: I also think we should normalize Platonic Relationship tags too! Like, I tagged "Underlust Papyrus & Underlust Sans (Undertale)" because that brotherly relationship in particular was a major focal point! And tags like that would make finding those friendship and family feelings easier!

TL;DR: This is all very very interesting... What do you think?

[kiwilana]

TouyaMight

sdkfjhsdkf listen don’t judge mE

this is a thread ive been writing on twitter since november,,,,, 

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

     Pissing off his father always gave Touya the greatest thrill. To know he was the one to put the angry scowl on his face and the furrow between his brows, well, it brought him a sense of sadistic joy.

What? He deserved to give his old man shit considering all the fucked up shit he had to go through

So whenever an opportunity came up to fuck with the number 2, Touya took it. 

Painting over the billboards that had his dad’s face? Kids play. 

Ruining his costumes with bleach in very strategic areas? Amateur hour. 

Bulk ordering All Might Merch to his agency? Done and done.

So when Touya joined his father and siblings at the most recent Hero’s Gala and saw the number 1 hero was also in attendance well…. He couldn’t just /miss/ a perfect opportunity like this! It would practically be a crime!

Fuyumi of course knew him all too well, he could see her bee lining to him, and he just /smiled/ and gave her a jaunty little wave, ignoring her calling his name as he sidled up to where the number 1 hero was conversing with others.

Touya could practically feel the heat of his father’s stare as slides in close to the blonde, one scarred hand delicately placed on a deliciously muscular arm. 

“Hey, I don’t think we’ve met before this, the name’s Touya Todoroki, it’s a pleasure to meet you All Might.” Touya flashes him his best smile, a soft curl of his lips and a fluttering of his eyelashes. 

He knows he’s a sight, white hair styled back, slinky black dress with high slits, heels, and of course the multitude of burn scars covering a majority of his body. 

Endeavor had nearly blown a gasket when he showed up like this, it was only the fact they were in public that kept him from scolding Touya. 

“Young Todoroki! It is a pleasure to meet you! It’s certainly unfortunate we haven’t been able to meet before now, I do not often attend these sorts of functions!” All Might’s smile was wide and bright and Touya kinda wished he had a pair of sunglasses damn those pearly whites were shining in his eyes. 

“It /is/ a shame huh? We could always meet up afterwards, I know a few restaurants.” The temperature in the room rose by several degrees and Touya could hear his sisters groan and Natuo’s muffled snort. 

The conversations around them had fallen into startled silence at the fact the son of Endeavor, All Might’s biggest rival, had just asked the number 1 hero out. 

All Might could only stare at Touya in shock, the offer of a date was unexpected and the hero couldn’t fight the flush that burned the tips of his ears, “I appreciate the offer young Todoroki but unfortunately I will have to decline.”

Before the white haired man could reply Endeavor is there, large hand wrapped around the slim arm and pulling him away, face positively thunderous. 

“Maybe next time All Might!” 

Touya laughed even as Endeavor dragged him out of the event.

Mission accomplished.

--------

The argument Touya and Enji got into once they reached home almost made the spectacle not worth it. Especially when the argument got heated enough and accusations thrown around that Touya’s tenuous control on his quirk slipped. 

The dark burn across his arms didn’t even hurt, not really, and that was the bad part. It meant that he’d burned straight past a 2nd degree burn to 3rd and he was going to be stuck in the hospital /again/. 

He hated being stuck in the hospital, he practically lived at the goddamn place. The whole staff knew him since he'd been coming there since he was young, how fucked up is that. 

 The pitying looks as they gave while they looked over his burns and decided whether or not he’d need another skin graft were so fucking annoying. 

He hated all of it. 

If he snarked more at the staff then necessary it wasn’t his fault really. The place was boring and stressful and he hated being stuck here. 

There were never that many other patients for him to talk to, the hospital was a private one for top heroes and their families, so Touya rarely saw other people. Most of his day was spent chatting with doctors and nurses and bitching about the extra meal replacement drinks he had to take. 

So when he noticed the frail looking blond man, he couldn’t help but be interested. The man was sitting outside in a hospital gown, and Touya took a seat next to him. 

“Damn, what’d happened to you?”

At least the guy didn’t look offended, a win in Touya’s books honestly. 

No, the guy snorted a laugh and gave Touya a surprisingly soft smile that made the gauntness of his face soften and Touya couldn’t help the thought that he wasn’t bad looking when he smiled. 

“A fight with a villain unfortunately. He got a lucky shot in and damaged me pretty bad.”

“Damn that’s gotta fucking suck. Especially since you’re stuck in this boring as hell place now.”

That earned him another smile. 

“Oh I don’t think it’ll be that bad, after all you’re here no? The man who asked out All Might is quite interesting I think.”

“Damn, so you saw me get rejected! Well, then you already know me, what’s your name? Since it seems like we both might be stuck here a while.” “I am Yagi Toshinori, it’s a pleasure to meet you properly Touya.”

-----

The next time Touya meets Yagi several days have passed by. He finds the older man slumped over in one of the comfier chairs, IV line in his arms and he looks absolutely /miserable/. 

Touya can’t help but feel bad for the poor guy, he looks worse than usual, his tanned skin unhealthily pale and breathing laboured. 

So he settles in next to Yagi, arms and legs thrown over the arm rests of his chair. 

“Damn, you’re lookin’ worse today Yagi-san, what happened?”

The tall man blinks at his new companion, a small smile stretching across his face. 

“Ah, we’re trying a new treatment today and well… it’s a bit taxing. I’m afraid I won’t be very good company today Todoroki-san.”

“Ah man, don’t call me that, makes me feel like my brothers or dad. Call me Touya.”

“Touya-san then.”

Touya fixes his eyes on bright blue ones and grins, he thought it would’ve been more of a struggle to get the blond to call him by name. 

“Well, since you’re feeling bad, how about a story? Natsu and the nurses used to read me some when I was stuck in bed.”

He doesn’t even really wait for a response before starting.

“So you like, remember how I told you I asked out all might yah? Lemme tell you about it. So like, there’s this party, and dad wants us all to go because the public has been asking about his family and all that. And so I came to the party, dressed amazingly right. Like I got this bOMB ass dress. Dad nearly blew a gasket when I came in it."

Touya wiggles his fingers and arms, making motions as he tells his version of the events. The growing smile on Yagi’s face just made him be more dramatic with his storytelling and movements. 

-----

"And there he is. There's All Might. The big kahuna himself. And my little brain gerbils start moving. And I get the idea. ‘How else should i make dad mad today?’ And that’s when it comes to me. ASK OUT ALL MIGHT."

“Wait was this before or after you kicked the guy who whistled at you?”

“After- so anyWAYS-”

-----

"And then the car explodes."

"What????!"

"Okay not really. Figuratively. Dad burned the roof again."

"Okay so maybe a little literally? I dunno english is hard."

"Touya were speaking japanese"

"Fuck"

-----

By the end of the story they’re both laughing and Touya feels light and happy as Yagi chortles at the selfie he managed to take while being dragged out of the party.

It was nice to see Yagi smiling again instead of hunched in on himself in pain and discomfort. 

“Thank you Touya-san, your story really did help. You’re quite the story teller. I’d love to hear more of them from you.”

“Sure! I always love having a captive audience, it’s the drama queen in me. “

-----

Yagi is the one to find Touya next time. 

He finds the younger man pressed in a dark corner under a staircase of all places. 

He wouldn’t have even noticed him if he hadn’t heard the soft sound of sniffling, and his heroic heart couldn’t just leave someone that’s so obviously in distress alone. 

It's a bit uncomfortable to climb under the staircase to settle next to Touya, listening quietly to his sniffles. It makes his heart squeeze a little and Yagi has to fight the urge to give the younger man a hug. 

Touya eventually notices him, big turquoise eyes meeting his own blue ones, there's tears clinging to the corners of his eyes. 

“Do you want me to call your nurse Touya-san?”

Touya shakes his head, lips pursing together before he drops his head down onto his arms.

“No. ‘S okay. ‘S nothing they can do. ‘M not allowed any more pain meds until tomorrow.”

The confusion on Yagi’s face has the unscarred parts of Touya’s cheeks flushing. 

“I.. had some issues with getting a/ddicted a few years ago. They’ve kept a tighter control on my medications since then. ‘S kay tho. The pain’s not too bad.. I’ll get over it soon.”

“Then.. how about I tell you a story? Let’s see… there was this time when I was in America…”

By the time Yagi reaches the end of his crazy tale Touya’s smiling and laughing, pain forgotten for the moment. 

“Honestly Yagi-san! How do you accidentally steal a penguin!”

“Ah well! That’s a mystery not even I know! And I was there!”

The tears on Touya’s cheeks were from laughter this time, and Yagi smiled so softly, a big hand reaching up to gently brush them away from Touya’s cheek.

And Touya /leans/ into his hand, eyes fluttering shut as he pressed into the warm and calloused palm. 

Yagi can feel his heart race faster and his ears burn red at the serene face. 

“Thank you Yagi-san… will you tell me another one…? It’s.. it’s a good distraction from the pain.”

“Of course Touya-san.”

The two of them spend hours like that, sitting under the dark staircase, Touya eventually leaning against Yagi’s bony shoulder, eyes shut as he listens to the deep voice rumble out tales of his times in America. 

It’s how their nurses find them.

They’re practically frantic with worry considering the two have been missing for hours. 

They get scolded thoroughly and before they separate Touya wraps one hand around one of Yagi’s own and gives him another one of those smiles that makes the blond’s heart race. 

“Let’s have lunch tomorrow Yagi-san.”

“I would love that Touya.”

-----

It becomes a new part of their routine, meeting up together to have lunch. 

The both of them were on pretty similar dietary plans, both meals were full of high calorie foods. Yagi explained it was to keep his weight up as he adjusted to the loss of his stomach. While Touya told the blond that his quirk burned through his calories so fast that if he didn’t constantly eat he’d easily end up malnourished. 

They end up closer as the days turn into weeks. It wasn’t uncommon to find them together, sitting and chatting, even occasionally finding them leaning against each other, the fatigue taking hold as they napped against each other. 

You could say the nurses had a field day with that one and took quite a few pictures. And if Touya and Yagi might’ve asked for their own copies well.. That was their business. 

If Yagi had a picture of them tucked into his wallet no one needed to know. 

And if Touya had his tucked into his desk drawer, that was for him to know. 

Occasionally visitors would come for Yagi, a small old man, a rather plain looking man and occasionally a man he recognized as All Might’s sidekick, Sir Nighteye. Those days he wouldn’t see much of Yagi, his lunches were spent alone in his room craving the presence of the other man. 

Yagi asked him about it, the day after he received Sir Nighteye as a guest again, and asked him why his family never seemed to visit him. 

Explaining to Yagi that his father didn’t let his siblings come visit was… awkward. The frown that crossed the normally jovial blond’s face at his explanation made Touya feel…. Ashamed? Awkward? 

He wasn’t quite sure honestly, but his cheeks burned and he rubbed at the back of his neck, unable to look into those piercing eyes. 

So he didn’t notice when Yagi moved closer to him. 

Not until those bony arms were wrapping around him, pulling him into a gentle hug, his bony chin resting atop the fluffy white mess that was Touya’s hair. 

And Touya just /melted/. He slumped into those arms, cheek rubbing against Yagi’s shirt as he clung to the older man. He could feel the pressure building up in the back of his throat and had to blink back tears. 

How long has it been since someone’s held him? 

“It’s alright Touya. I’m here.”

The soft voice and warm hands resting on his back, it was enough, and Touya shook in those deceptively strong arms, soft sobs leaving him as his tears soaked into Yagi’s shirt. 

They spent hours like that, Touya curled in Yagi’s arms, the blond never letting him go, even when his tears ran dry. 

It was so warm.

Touya never wanted to leave his arms. 

-----

Then the day came for Touya to be discharged. 

He’d stayed in the hospital for over a month now. The skin grafts on his arms had attached properly and had healed enough that he could go home. Fuyumi told Touya that she’d be the one coming to pick him up, Dad was going to be at work and unavailable. 

She told him she’d be there after school let out. 

Touya felt something sink in his chest as the nurses removed his bandages for the last time. His arms were… hard to look at and he avoided it as he slipped on the loose long sleeved shirt. Touya packed away the few clothes he had, fingers pausing over the picture of him and Yagi sleeping against each other. 

His chest squeezed tight at the thought of leaving. He didn’t want to leave the blond man. Ever since that breakdown in his arms Yagi had been so kind, the blond man was always touching him, lingering touches on his hands and shoulders, bringing him into hugs more often. 

Touya didn’t want to lose that. 

He… didn’t want to lose what connection he had with Yagi.

He didn’t want the blond to forget him.

He….

He liked him. 

Touya had to find Yagi before he left. 

-----

It wasn’t hard to find him. 

When Yagi wasn’t in his room or with his nurses and doctors, it's a safe bet to say he’d be outside relaxing, and he was. Seeing him sitting there made Touya’s stomach flutter and fuck he felt /nervous/.

The smile Yagi gave him when Touya stepped towards him made his heart beat faster, he could feel his palms getting clammy with sweat. Fuck.Touya had never felt like this before. It was.. Overwhelming. 

“Touya! It’s good to see you!”

How could one man be so adorable?

“Yagi… you’re.. You’re looking good today.”

Touya could feel the nerves twisting up at his insides as he took the offered seat next to the blond, the hot cup of tea Yagi gently pressed into his hands helped ground him a little. He could do this. He didn’t know if there’d be another chance. 

“I’m being discharged today.”

Yagi’s smile shrunk and he sighed deeply, “So soon..? I’m going to miss seeing you. I’ve greatly enjoyed your company here Touya. It’s made my stay much more bearable.”

“Yagi. I…” 

Touya trailed off as those bright blue eyes stared into his own, and he couldn’t help himself. 

His scarred hands gently cupped sunken in cheeks and Touya leaned up, pressing his lips softly against the older man’s, just a soft press of their lips that made Touya’s stomach flip flop in joy and dread. 

“Yagi, I really like you.”

Yagi’s stunned silence filled the small courtyard, beautiful blue eyes wide with surprise as a bright flush grew across the tops of his cheeks. 

Touya thought he looked gorgeous. 

“I. Well, I ah, I’m flattered Touya but.. I am many years older than you. I’m older than your father.”

/That wasn’t a no./

“So what? I don’t care about that Yagi. You /know/ that. I like you. I really really like you. I want to spend more time with you Yagi. I want, I want to hold your hand, I want to kiss you again, I want to eventually take you out on dates. I. If you really don’t, feel like that. It’s /okay/. I just. Fuck-”

He was rambling, his eyes squeezed shut and hands gripping his pants. Touya couldn’t put into words all the things he wanted. He just.. Wanted Yagi.

Larger hands gently wrapped around his own and Touya blinked watery eyes up, and Yagi was much closer now, mouth quirked in a small smile that made the white haired man’s stomach flip pleasantly. 

“Touya. Is this.. Do you really want this?”

“/Yes/.”

And those lips were pressing to his again and the dread in his stomach disappeared as those big hands held him so gently, like he was something fragile and /precious/, and Touya clung to the taller man, pressing kiss after kiss to his mouth. 

By the time they stopped they were both flushed and panting, lips swollen and wide smiles on their faces. 

“Well then, I suppose you should call me Toshinori now.”

Touya laughed and kissed the man again. 

“Whatever you say Toshi.”

[dreamofcentipedes]

The Wedding of Haruhi Suzumiya

Summary: Suzumiya Haruhi is getting married. Time has gone by so quickly, and yet, all of a sudden, it appears to stop. It seems Kyon can't get a day off, even on his wedding day!

Fandom: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Ship: Kyon/Haruhi

Characters: Kyon, Haruhi, Nagato, Mikuru, Koizumi, Taniguchi, Kunikida, Tsuruya, Kyon’s Little Sister.

Rating: Teen Words: 10,578 Link to AO3

A/N: This is a present for my wonderful friend @harleyquilt’s birthday! I'm glad I introduced you to the series so I could have an excuse to write this fic hahaha. It's written in the style of the novels, so from Kyon's first person POV. 

To anyone who's not Leila, this fic is based on anime-only canon; so that's why characters like Kimidori aren't here since she's not very relevant in the show. Enjoy!

Something was wrong. I felt it in my gut.

Ah, allow me to clarify. It was not the kind of odd feeling one might feel when forced to repeat summer over fifteen thousand times because of the oddly conscientious whims of a typically self-centred high school girl. I won’t force you all through that again – so long as Haruhi doesn’t force me to. Hey, if I suffer, you suffer! That’s the compensation I’ve earned from you, universe, for all my sterling efforts to save you. I may have admitted I enjoy a good deal of what Haruhi forces me into, but stuff like an endless summer is just too much. Today, at least, should be free of the kind of chaotic events that follow Haruhi around like the Duke of Buckingham to King James I of England (and VI of Scotland).

Or so Koizumi says. Which brings me back to the problem at hand. Or that is, the problem of the minute hand. On the clock that stared down at me from the wall like a Great Old One about to nonchalantly crush swarms of insignificant humans underfoot, I saw that there was only half an hour remaining until the ceremony.

“The Agency extends their full gratitude to you for what you’re doing today. If it all goes well, we won’t have to worry about Closed Space appearing for a few months at the very least.” Koizumi brushed some non-existent lint off his light grey suit and patted down his yellow silk tie. Smart and snazzy as always. He better not outshine me at my own wedding.

“I think you have an overly optimistic view on marriage. And on Haruhi, for that matter. Her temper will blow at my first sign of disobedience.”

“You think so? I hoped you’d know your fiancé better than that. To Suzumiya-san, you are an exceptionally important person. It will be hard to dent her good mood after all these years of holding back.”

I didn’t say anything back, but as I adjusted my red tie over my blue suit in an outfit reminiscent of my old High School uniform, I thought about what he said. I hoped he was right, and not for the sake of the world or reality or whatever other annoying stuff he cares about. Haruhi’s smiling face was just a pleasant sight for me to see, that’s all. It’s not like I was marrying her because the Agency wanted me to. I barely even know those guys.

“I’m sure Nagato-san and Asahina-san will also extend you their appreciation at the reception. On behalf of their organisations, that is.”

I had some idea of what he was talking about with that clarification. I did worry about those two, but I had made my decision and didn’t have any regrets. At least where that matter is concerned. Otherwise, there was still that ball of anxiety in my chest wrapped up like a mangled slinky.

Ah, we really did get sidetracked, didn’t we? Yes, this is the odd feeling that was haunting me. Wedding jitters, cold feet, spineless hesitation from the latest generation of worthless men – call it what you like, I could barely keep my hands still as I fussed endlessly over the tightness of my tie. That’s what I hoped it was, anyway, but I had the sinking feeling it was something more than that, and worse, that I knew what it was. I desperately needed someone to talk me, but Haruhi had somehow managed to hijack my own Best Man, so Koizumi served as my substitute. Creepy as he was, he was at least a calm presence. Taniguchi would send me insane.

Of course, I couldn’t tell him I was nervous. It would be a cold day in hell before I admitted weakness in front of him. He was an annoyingly observant guy, though.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

His voice slipped into a more serious tone. I left the mirror alone at that and turned to face him. Watchful brown eyes peeked out from his usual squint.

“Of course I am.” I grumbled.

Koizumi gave a smile that seemed a little sad, then clapped a hand on my shoulder.

“Then see it through.”

With that, he gestured to the door.

“Well, being the joyous occasion that it is for Suzumiya-san, I doubt any strange phenomena will occur. But the job of an esper is never over. I will be patrolling the grounds for anything that seems out of place. I hope you’ll survive without me until then.”

As he was turning the handle, I felt a strange mix of frustration and sadness rise up in me. To any shrinks in the area, I’d like to get this checked out, please. But whatever it was, it made me call out to him: “You’ll be at the ceremony, won’t you?”

His hand let go of the doorknob and he looked at me, surprised.

“You’re a member of the SOS Brigade, after all.” I continued. “If you’re not there, Haruhi would be devastated. Then the world would really be in danger.”

He lowered his eyes and that sad smile crept up again. I decided, compared with this, I’d prefer that sickeningly sweet smile he usually plasters on his face. But before long he turned his eyes back to me with a slightly more jovial expression.

“You may be right. I’ll do my best if you do yours.”

He opened the door and left the room, leaving me alone with my unsatisfactory tie. What’s more, that clock was staring at me again, with only half an hour to go. Hey, cut it out. You’re not my Best Man, are you? Actually, where was my Best Man?

Well, since the wedding was Western-style it was a bit less of a pain to prepare for than Japanese-style weddings, but I still found myself combing my hair in five different directions. Eventually I got tired of it and set off to find my AWOL assistant. As I traversed the corridors, I noticed the legs and torso of someone in a black suit and tie making his way down the stairs. It was silly of me to hope for the best, but instead it was Taniguchi.

“Kyon my man! I’ve been looking for you all over!”

“Well, I was looking for Kunikida. Seen him anywhere?”

“Nope, not even once! What an unreliable guy! It’s not too late to change Best Men, you know.” He gave a grin that made me want to punch him on the nose.

“Really? I’ll let Koizumi know, then.”

Taniguchi looked aghast. “Koizumi? That creepazoid? You’d pick him over me, your constant buddy over three years of high school and four years of university?”

Like radioactive waste, I couldn’t ethically get rid of him. Well, maybe I did have some fun times with him around. It was much more enjoyable to not let him know that, though. When I didn’t respond, he acted hurt.

“Hmph! Well, I can’t see why you’d resign yourself to a lifetime chained to a girl like that anyway!” He raised his hands and shook his head with an insufferably smug expression. “Aah, she has you well and truly whipped, doesn’t she? Forcing you to flush your youth away down the toilet of the marriage bed.”

Ignoring that his metaphor was painfully inconsistent, I just asked him whether he’d gotten a girlfriend yet. He quickly shut up with an expression like Aeschylus must have had when he was mortally wounded by an airborne tortoise.

“Speaking of, Kyon,” he asked me when he had recovered, sidling up to me like a drug dealer in a black-and-white film noir and whispering to me, “You two have…done it, right?”

I pushed his face away from my ear. There was a 20% chance I was blushing. No, 10%. 5% tops! But if any such out-of-character situation was occurring, I didn’t want Taniguchi to see it. He probably did anyway.

“You have!” He laughed. “You totally have! Oh man, oh man, oh man, OH MAN!”

Haruhi and I had been dating since our last year of high school, so I don’t know why he was so surprised. What, did he seriously think the woman who had sexually assaulted Asahina-san on a daily basis was the type to save herself for marriage? This guy was purer than I thought. I placed a hand on his shoulder in sympathy.

“Uh, what’s this about?” Taniguchi brushed it off sheepishly. “So? She’s into some weird stuff, right? Does she make you do dress-up?”

Everything about his tone and expression was cringe-inducing.  Just when I was resigning myself to indulge this overgrown 14 year old with the rudimentals of my sex life as the only alternative to my anxiety, I was saved by a benevolent god called Kunikida.

“Ah, Kyon, I’m so sorry!” He was red-faced and out of breath, rushing down the stairs as fast as he could while carrying about five bags with him. He came to a halt in front of me and dropped them to the ground, panting heavily. It’s a good thing he was wearing black, because otherwise the growing pools of sweat under his armpits might be much more obvious.

“Hmm, look who finally decided to show up!” Taniguchi remarked jealously.

“Taniguchi, zip it. It’s fine, Kunikida. What does she want this time?”

Kunikida returned to a stable condition and raised his head. “She wants to know which ribbon you’d like best.”

I shook my head with the fond exasperation that girl always exerts in me. Yare yare. Isn’t the bride’s appearance supposed to be a surprise for the groom? Nagato might be useless in the fashion department, but couldn’t she rely on Asahina-san and Tsuruya-san’s advice a bit more? Even my sister, another of my comrades she’d hijacked, had started to become fashion conscious. But Haruhi’s never coped with uncertainty too well. I decided I might as well have a look, lest her stress blow a hole in the fabric of the cosmos.

There was a red one, a blue one with black stripes, a purple one, orange with polka dots…I didn’t know why they each needed their own separate bags. But the choice was a pretty easy one for me. It was just too nostalgic.

“Let’s go with yellow.” I told Kunikida.

He nodded with approval. “I thought you’d pick that one. It’s just like the one she wore back at North High. I told her that, but she made me check with you anyway.” He pouted. “Well, I’ll report back then.”

“Oi, Kunikida.”

“Hm?”

“Any more tyrannical demands Haruhi makes of you, refuse them.” Kunikida paled. “Just tell her it’s a direct order from the groom. I’ll take the heat. For now, I need you to help get me ready.”

Kunikida nodded, told me he wouldn’t be long, and disappeared up the stairs. I imagined the chaos that must be happening up there, the hell Haruhi must be putting all her poor bridesmaids and even my Best Man through. I imagined Haruhi in her bridal dress, with that yellow ribbon in her hair…and my stomach knotted again as other thoughts rushed through my head in concert. I felt so dizzy I thought I might fall over. Steadying myself with a strong exhale, I grabbed Taniguchi’s sleeve.

“Move it, Taniguchi. I need a substitute until Kunikida gets back.”

I needed some company, any company, even if just to make sure I didn’t fall over and ruin my meticulously pressed suit. Taniguchi seemed pretty ecstatic about it, though, so I didn’t tell him that last part. We moved into my dressing room.

I was reaching for the comb on the side of my desk when I noticed that accursed clock again. ‘Accursed’. Only then did I begin to realise just how accurate that description truly was.

Because only half an hour remained until the ceremony.

“Hm?”

I stared at the clock, wondering if I misread it. But no, the hands didn’t lie. It wasn’t broken, either: the second hand was happily ticking away, and the minute hand slowly moving with it.

“Hey Kyon, earth to Kyon. You still with us man?”

I turned to the bemused Taniguchi, then looked back at the clock. When I did, I saw something that made that ‘wrong’ feeling that had been ruthlessly assaulting my small intestine level up at least twice, with major boosts to its ATK, DEF, and SPD. Because although the second hand was now ticking down from the top of the clock, the minute hand had returned to exactly half past 2.

Despite all the conversations and activities I had gotten up to since the clock had struck that time, despite all the time that had seemingly passed – somehow, it was still exactly half an hour until I married Haruhi.

I prayed for the sake of my already trembling heart that it was just a broken clock. But when I snatched my phone off the counter, I saw the exact same time glaring at me: 14:30.

I crammed my phone back into my pocket with frustration. Koizumi! No strange phenomena, he said, as though I could trust him. One day that guy’s going to get a career peddling snake oil. Dammit! This was the last thing I needed today! I slammed my hands against the counter and stared at the clock.

“Hey, Kyon, aren’t you gonna – ”

“Shut it, Taniguchi.”

Thankfully, he did. I looked at the clock, allowed a few seconds to pass, looked away, then immediately looked back. The seconds had reset.

I rubbed my sweating temples with my equally clammy hands.

“Taniguchi, I need you to do me a favour.”

“Huh? Sure! You can always count on – ”

“Hold my eyes open for me.”

“Wha?” He was clearly taken aback. “Uh, Kyon, you feeling okay?”

“Groom’s orders.”

He sighed, muttering something about me being as crazy as Haruhi, before I experienced the highly unpleasant sensation of Taniguchi lifting my eyelids up. I stared intently at the clock.

My stinging eyes, desperate to blink, beheld a full minute passing before I told Taniguchi it was enough and rushed to sink my eyes back into peaceful oblivion, like a salaryman collapsing in his bed after a particularly nasty overtime shift. When I opened them again, 2:31 was no more, and 2:30 was back with an insufferable grin on its clock face. Stop looking at me like that, arsehole. I’ll break your hands.

I exhaled. I guess it couldn’t be helped. I knew what I was getting myself into when I proposed to Haruhi, and honestly, at any other time I might look forward to this kind of sci-fi event. But Haruhi, could you really not hold off on the day of our wedding, at the very least?!

No, maybe that’s too hasty. I’ve always been too quick to point the finger at my fiancé in the past, but in my defence, if you’re in a room with a known thief and something goes missing, who else are you going to accuse? But I should stick with what I know: that the moment I take my eyes off the time, it resets to 2:30, with all the events that have happened since then left unchanged.

“Taniguchi, notice anything?”

“Huh? Notice what?” He looked so confused I almost felt sorry for him. “What are you going on about, Kyon?”

So Taniguchi hadn’t realised anything was wrong. He wasn’t looking for anything suspicious, so it makes sense. That, and he’s an idiot. In any case, it saved me a headache-inducing explanation about a problem I hardly understood myself.

Right, there was nothing left for it then.

“Oh, dang! Taniguchi, I forgot my cufflinks!”

“Eh? But you’re wearing them right now…”

“No no no, these are just my temporary cufflinks. Koizumi should be bringing me my real cufflinks – could you ask around if anyone’s seen him?”

“Haah? Temporary cufflinks? Why are you wearing temporary cufflinks?”

“No time to explain, I need them right now. There’s only half an hour to go you know! Think you could be my Best Man for a while?”

Taniguchi perked up at that. “Ah…well…”

“I’m counting on you!” I gave him a thumbs up and sprinted out of the room, leaving a baffled Taniguchi looking this way and that. He’ll play along in the end, he always does. Let it not be said that I haven’t learnt anything during my time in the SOS Brigade. Seven years’ experience of lying through your teeth counts as a transferrable skill, right? I doubt I’ll get to put it on my CV, anyhow.

My mood darkened as the thought crossed through my mind. What, we’re making jokes about this, now? I furrowed my brow as I ran up the stairs. Really, just how irresponsible could I be…

With my eyes fixed on the ground, I didn’t notice the sudden appearance of a wild Kunikida at the top of the stairs. His sudden “Hey, Kyon!” wasn’t enough to stop me from slamming into him. He managed to keep his balance, but my knees hit  landing. First of all, ouch; but much more importantly I hoped my suit wasn’t crumpled.

“Kyon, are you okay? What’s the hurry?”

“Ah…my bad, Kunikida. I just needed to see Nagato and Asahina-san.” I told him, standing up and zealously cleaning my suit legs like a medieval Catholic priest with a supposed segment of the Holy Cross. If Taniguchi could summon Koizumi, and I could get to Nagato and Asahina-san, at least one of them should be able to help me skip to the end of this poorly-timed adventure.

“Eh? But they’re with Suzumiya-san, you know?” He was shaking like a leaf. I was really starting to wonder what kind of torture Haruhi was putting him through.

“That’s fine. Like I said, I can take the heat.”

“Eh? That’s not the problem!” Kunikida objected. “The groom can’t see the bride before the ceremony, it’s bad luck!”

Could I really be having worse luck than I was having now? Actually, wait, this is Haruhi we’re talking about. If she thinks I’ll get bad luck, I probably will. I sighed.

“Could you get them for me, then? It really is urgent.”

Kunikida looked at me with the confused expression I had become so used to as a member of the SOS Brigade.

“Okay, if you say so…”

“Sorry to make you keep walking up and down these stairs.”

Kunikida proceeded at an annoyingly leisurely pace. I wanted to yell at him to get a move on, but when I thought about it, there really wasn’t any need to hurry at all. Time wasn’t moving. Or, it was, but in a way that it wasn’t. Well, I didn’t need an explanation, just a resolution, but I still felt kind of stupid for running all that way and messing up my clothes.

After what felt like a few minutes but what was, in actuality, no time at all, Kunikida reappeared with Nagato in tow. She had on a sleeveless light purple dress with an interesting shading pattern. It suited her pretty well, so I’m sure she had nothing to do with its selection.

“Ah, thanks Kunikida, Nagato.” But something was missing from this picture. “Where’s Asahina-san?”

Kunikida opened his mouth, but Nagato pointed wordlessly up the stairs.

“She’s still upstairs? Why?”

“Leaving Suzumiya Haruhi alone with the girl Tsuruya and your sibling…” Nagato stared at the ground, probably recalibrating. “…Dangerous.”

Couldn’t argue with that. Actually, yes I could. All due respect to our valued members of staff who might fall victim to that tyrannical trio, but I’m first in line for compensation! Move along! Just then, as if as a counter-argument, I heard a high-pitched wail echo from the upper floor followed by a string of indecipherable yelling.

Well, now I knew I was right – far more dangerous than leaving them alone was leaving Asahina-san alone with them! I held back my oncoming migraine and begged Kunikida to go and save her.

“B-but…they’re…I’ll…”

“Groom’s orders!”

I’m pretty sure it’s not a rule that the word of the groom is absolute during his wedding. But for some reason, whenever I said it, it worked, so I wasn’t going to quit now. Kunikida meekly jogged up the stairs, surely getting a pretty good workout by this point.

Well, besides rescuing Asahina-san it also got Kunikida out of the way for me to ask Nagato what exactly was going on.

She stared at me for a few seconds. “It is your wedding.”

Uh, no Nagato – I mean yes, but that’s beside the point. I showed her the time on my phone and gave her a brief rundown of the situation as I understood it.

She stared at me for another few seconds. “You are referring to the chrono-shift?”

I wasn’t exactly thrilled she knew about this already.

“Hey, Nagato, I know you were only sent here to observe, but you have a lot more freedom now, you know? If you notice some strange event going on, could you tell me next time?” It felt weird having to talk to a hyper-intelligent being as though she were a five year old who didn’t understand what was wrong with hoarding crayons from the other kids, but social courtesies weren’t Nagato’s forte.

“I was providing assistance to Suzumiya Haruhi. It was also highly probable you would notice the occurrence of the chrono-shift and seek consultation with me yourself; so it was not considered urgent. Time was not...of the essence.” From the long look she gave from those golden-brown eyes speckled with melancholy, I had the feeling she wasn’t telling the whole truth. But I certainly couldn’t lecture her on that front, so I decided not to drag it out of her. Let’s start with the basics.

“What is a chrono-shift?”

“Chrono-shift. A space-time event wherein a selection of space is held in abstraction from the flow of time. Its marginal presence allows time to pass as normal only while an observer is conscious of its transition, however, as soon as observation ceases, the abstracted time will correct itself. With the exception of these moments of observation, the time within the abstracted space will move differently than the time outside the target area.”

After all these years, I still couldn’t begin to decipher Nagato-ese. Where was Koizumi when you needed him? Even Asahina-san would do. She was the time traveller, after all.

“Do you know how to stop it?” I asked her the far more useful question.

“To reverse the eruption of a chrono-shift, access to technology enabling time travel is required.”

I scratched my head at the thought of more time travel escapades. I really didn’t want to run the risk of getting stabbed on my wedding day like I had on my most memorable trip through time, but whatever we had to do, we needed Asahina-san. I lent my ear to the sounds of muffled calamity still occurring above us.  It appeared Kunikida had gone MIA, so contacting Asahina-san became not just a practical but an ethical obligation.

I told Nagato to follow me as I stomped up the stairs. Haruhi had been behaving herself on this front a lot more since our first year of High School, but I guessed Bridesmaid-Mikuru was just too much for her. Well, it’s not like I wasn’t interested to see it myself…Oi universe, what’s with that judgemental look? I may be a soon-to-be-married man, but if my bride isn’t going to leave her lust at the door then I retain the right to wandering eyes!

However, this internal act of defiance felt somewhat pointless, as it was not the thought of Asahina-san that had set my heart thundering in my chest. Thinking of Haruhi in a bridal gown again made me feel completely dizzy, a warm feeling suffusing all throughout my body like a bacterial infection. Was this really real? Wasn’t this some kind of alternate reality, where the consequences of my actions wouldn’t have the slightest effect on the real world? Ever since our first kiss in Closed Space, I had always felt like Haruhi and I would always remain in more or less the same state, me as reluctant servant and her as diabolical overlord. Well, I supposed our marriage wasn’t going to be too different from that, but even when we started dating four years ago it felt like I had somehow achieved something I had never expected to, even knowing how she felt, even knowing how I felt. Like an alternate reality, I guess. But it was here, in this one.

At least, it was for me. Given what I knew and what she didn’t, it was like we were living in two completely different worlds.

The thick, glutinous knot that had been squeezing my chest came back with a vengeance. I’m sorry, Haruhi. I can’t do right by you. I can’t even wait for the ceremony before seeing you. I want your forgiveness, but I can’t even tell you what I’ve done wrong. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Kunikida knocked me out of depressive spiral again, this time with a door to my face.

“Eh – Kyon?! You can’t come in here!” Kunikida objected to my crumpled corpse. For some reason, his black tie was wrapped in a bandanna around his head. Is this really the time to kickstart your delinquent lifestyle, Kunikida?!

“Ehhhhhhhhhhhh? Kyon-kun is - !!!” Came Asahina-san’s soft, panicked voice.

“Ohohoh, couldn’t wait for the ceremony, could he? Hey Suzumiya-san, your hubby-to-be’s more of a man than I thought!” That carefree and boisterous tone could only belong to Tsuruya-san.

“KYON-KUN!” And that was…

My sister barrelled out of the room in a pink dress with her finger taking aim at my chest.

“You can’t see the bride before the wedding you know! It’s forbidden! For-bid-den!”

She was driving me back like a bulldozer driven by some Hollywood action hero, giving my chest an extra prod with each syllable.

“It’s important, I have to talk to Asahi- ”

“NO IFS!” She paused for effect. “NO BUTS!”

I hadn’t said either if nor but, but I was sure telling her that would only earn me another piledriver. What happened to the cute sister I had known all those years ago? She’s been spending way too much time with Haruhi. It was a sister-in-law tag team I had come to dread.

“Eh? Kyon-kun wants to see me…um…this isn’t the best the time…” Asahina-san’s dulcet tones rang out from behind the door.

“Asahina-san!” I slipped out from behind my sister’s human wall. “I have something I need to talk to you about! With Nagato.”

“N-Nagato-san is…?” She seemed to have got the hint about what kind of conversation this would be. “U-um…what should I do…?”

“Well, well, what’s this, Kyon-kun?”  The mischievous face of Tsuruya-san in a dark blue, Chinese-style dress emerged from behind the door, intercepting my path. “You want to see Mikuru? Not your lovely bride? Aw man, it’s the day of the wedding and we already have a scandal on our hands! I’d expect nothing less from you, Kyon-kun!”

What exactly was that supposed to mean?! I gave her my best attempt at a stare like the kind a cowboy might have while saying this town wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

“Tsuruya-san, whatever you and Haruhi have been doing to Asahina-san, cut it out now! This is important!”

I started marching towards the door. At that time, I was reminded of the Charge of the Light Brigade and the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae, but I didn’t let such depressing and realistic examples deter me from my righteous crusade.

“KYON-KUN, YOU CAN’T – Ah!”

Ever the reliable ally, Nagato easily fended off my sister’s hug-attacks with timely swishes of her arm. I charged on past the useless defence of Kunikida towards Tsuruya-san. Her eyes widened in surprise.

“Woah woah woah woah woah woah woah, wait a minute!”

Even Tsuruya-san’s spirited defence was insufficient against my determination. I ducked under her arms and passed right on through towards the growing sounds of quite a few panicked noises from Asahina-san. It’s okay, Asahina-san – I’ll do my best not to look!

The open door was in front of me. Asahina-san, to my relief and confusion, was fully dressed in an angelic white gown. But Haruhi…Haruhi was…

“G-G-G-G-GEEEEEEEEET OOOOUUUUUUUUT!”

Her flushing face slammed the door into mine, literally. I dropped to the floor, more from astonishment than the force of the blow. My nose was bleeding for a different reason, too, but don’t tell anyone. What was that?

Hey now, me. Is it really so shocking to see Haruhi half-dressed? You’ve seen her butt naked more than a few times – in fact, you’ve gotten to know that Haruhi very well indeed (oi, wipe that smirk off your face). I hadn’t been expecting it, so there was that, but I think what really did it for me was what she still had on. Just like in my imagination, there was something about seeing her half in her bridal dress that turned me on to a ridiculous degree. I felt the need to stand up and clamp my legs together.

Not long after, following much berating from Tsuruya-san and my sister and muffled shouts from behind the door, Asahina-san eventually eked open the door and crept through, leaving no room for even the slightest peek.

“Um…sorry about that, Kyon-kun…”

“I-it’s fine. Uh, can I ask what you were doing…?”

“Preparing your bride for her wedding night, of course! Wahahaha!” Tsuruya-san tormented me, and I felt like throttling her, just a little bit.

“N-no! It wasn’t like that! Kyon-kun, it really wasn’t like that!” Poor Asahina-san seemed like she was about to cry. It wasn’t even you I saw! I calmed down and gave a reassuring nod to show her I believed her. She exhaled with relief.

“Suzumiya-san couldn’t decide on what dress she wanted to wear…or how she wanted to wear it…so she asked us to help her decide…um…”

“And well, we thought we should have some fun with it! Get revenge for Mikuru’s suffering all those years ago, wahaha!”

“I-it was you who thought that, Tsuruya-san!” Asahina-san desperately objected. As if I could believe Saint Asahina could want revenge for anything. The girl turns her other cheek before someone even slaps her.

Wait, hold on – does this mean my Best Man has seen my bride naked?! I redirected my death-glare from Tsuruya-san to Kunikida. He started waving his hands in front of him as if he was trying to deflect my laser vision.

“I-I didn’t see anything! I tried to stop them, like you said, but Tsuruya-san grabbed me and wrapped my tie around my eyes!” He tugged on the tie now wrapped around his forehead. “They made me help out, but I was totally blind!”

I folded my arms and turned towards Tsuruya-san, who was nodding in confirmation, looking like she was having way too much fun. Satisfied, I gave Kunikida a solemn nod. It made no sense to try to get someone you just blinded to help you, but that kind of thing was just like Tsuruya-san. Then I realised something.

“Wait, it’s thirty minutes before the wedding, and she still hasn’t decided on her dress yet?” I groaned. “Well, it is like her to skim over important stuff like this…”

“Kyon-kun!” My sister scolded me. What now?! “That’s not how it was at all! Haruhi-nee thought really hard about it, but couldn’t decide, so she bought three just in case! She’s thinking about it even now just to make sure she looks as good as possible for your wedding!”

A-aah. That’s really quite sweet, actually.  But Haruhi, please dial down your spending habits after we get married. And come to think of it, why does my sister use sibling honorifics for you when she doesn’t for her biological brother?!

“Suzumiya-san was totally psyched out when you turned up, Kyon-kun.” Tsuruya-san was squashing her cheeks between her hands and swivelling back and forth in adoration. “She was so nervous she couldn’t get out a word! Ah, young love…”

To my knowledge Tsuruya-san was the same age as the rest of us, but in Haruhi’s universe, I knew better than to make hasty assumptions. She could still be a slider/ghost/Mobile Suit Gundam yet. But what she said was kind of interesting. If Haruhi was feeling as anxious as me, maybe this was just a normal feeling after all…

“Well, we better get back to work. Please bring Mikuru back when you’re done with her, Kyon-kun. Only half an hour left to go~!” Tsuruya-san intoned, pulling Kunikida’s tie over his eyes and pushing him through the door, followed by my sister. “Suzumiya-saaaan, we’re coming in!”

Left outside with Asahina-san and Nagato, I prayed for my bride’s wellbeing. Intervention from me was clearly the opposite of what she wanted right now. For someone so bold, she really was easily embarrassed.  

Anyway, we had even bigger fish to fry on a day that was beginning to qualify as a community barbecue for the fishmongers of the world. Leading my co-conspirators away from the door into an empty room, I gave Asahina-san a rundown of the situation.

“I think it’s called a chrono-shift. Nagato told me her understanding of it, but I’d appreciate it if I could hear yours as well.” What do you think? Cooler than admitting I had no idea what she was talking about, right?

“A – a chrono-shift…” Asahina-san performed the same clock-based experiment I had a little while earlier, minus a slave to hold her eyes open. “Oh no…what are we…what are we going to do?!” Her big amber eyes began shaking like a farm animal that had wandered too close to the electric fence. This didn’t look good. On my wedding, of all days - !

“Asahina-san, is it really that big of a problem? Can’t we fix it?”

Asahina-san shook her head. “A chrono-shift is…the time that we’re in is running differently from the time in the rest of the world. It will only run the same when we’re observing the time, on a clock or a phone or a…classified information…” She looked around nervously, only just remembering to censor herself in her panic. “But it will reset as soon as we look away!”

I scratched my head and thought it over. “Then to escape the chrono-shift, can’t we just go to an area where time is moving normally?”

“If it doesn’t cover the entire building then it should be fine…the wedding could still happen that way…but there’s no telling how large the chrono-shift is; sometimes it can cover districts, cities, countries, planets…”

My hand clapped against my forehead in despair. Planets?! You’re kidding. It was tough enough to get this venue, I’m not about to navigate the Martian marriage services!

“Asahina-san, isn’t there something we can do? Nagato said we might be able to, uh, ‘reverse the eruption’ with time travel technology.”

“Yes, but something of that scale…we’d need the classified information of the classified information, right in the heart of the classified information!” Asahina-san’s terrified babble was barely making sense anymore. “My TPDD just isn’t enough…I’m sorry, Kyon-kun…on your wedding day…”

“It’s okay, Asahina-san.” I reassured her. “We don’t know how large the chrono-shift is, do we? There’s still a chance we can get out of it and time can move normally again.” I turned to the silent alien next to me. “Nagato, I’m sorry for always relying on you like this, but do you think you could find Koizumi while Asahina-san and I check the grounds? He might be in my dressing room, if you know where that is.”

I had already sent Taniguchi on Search & Recon, but now I had Nagato at hand, I wasn’t going to rely on a half-trained mutt over a SR-71 reconnaissance jet.

She nodded. “Where should I bring them?”

“Oh, uh, the dressing room is fine.”

She gave another nod, announced she was leaving (a cute courtesy she never used to do), and softly stepped out of the room. Now it was just me and Asahina-san. I fully intended to check the grounds with her, but there was something else I wanted to check with her first.

“It’s okay, Asahina-san. You can stop acting now.”

The trembling Asahina-san froze. “Wha-what?”

I rubbed my hand against the back of my head. “I’ve never told you this, but I’ve met the future you more than a few times. You came back in time again to help me out. You can’t be too far from her in age now, and you look a lot like her…so I figure you must behave a lot like her too, when you’re in private.”

Asahina-san looked at me, agog, like a prey animal sizing up a new invader into its territory, discerning whether it’s a threat. I looked back at her with the gentlest expression I could manage; my usual slumped shoulders and casual demeanour hopefully communicated my very real ease with the whole situation.

Asahina-san brushed her hair a little from her forehead. “I really am nervous, though.” She told me in a mature and familiar voice. When she lifted her face, it was as though the future Asahina-san was standing in her place. “I’m sorry, Kyon-kun. For everything…”

I gave a small smile. I knew I was right. Koizumi suggested something like this to me ages ago, but I never bought the convoluted conspiracy theory that went along with it. It was just a hunch, really. How does the saying go? ‘Takes one to know one’.

“It’s fine, Asahina-san. They were your orders, right? We’ve all been keeping secrets.”

Tears, real tears were brimming at the corners of her eyes. She lifted her finger and brushed them aside.

“Kyon-kun…only you would understand…only you…” Though much more controlled than the ‘younger’ Asahina-san, her voice was still shaky. “I wish…” But whatever it is she was going to say, I never found out. Her sentence trailed off into the past forever. After a tremulous breath, she asked:

“Do you want to know why?”

I shook my head.

“That’s not really important to me. Even if you weren’t being honest with me, everything’s turned out pretty much exactly how I would have wanted it. I can’t blame you for that, Asahina-san. But can I just ask you one thing?”

She breathed in, bringing her emotions under control. “Yes?”

“Were you always the way you are now?”

She offered me a sad smile. “I was never quite the way I presented myself to you. But I was a lot closer to that person I was pretending to be than I am now. I really was young, scared, inexperienced…I just knew what I was doing a little more than I let on.”

I nodded, satisfied.  I was relieved, to tell the truth. I was glad the Asahina-san I knew wasn’t a total fabrication.

“Then, were you really taking your revenge on Haruhi just now?” I asked with a turn of my lip.

“I-I wasn’t!” She pouted, before allowing a smirk and a giggle. “Well…maybe a little. But those are all fond, fond memories to me now.”

Her words reminded me of something. “Oh, Asahina-san, is it alright if I ask you one more thing?”

She looked up at me expectantly.

“What’s your real age?”

She smiled and cutesily brought a finger to her lip.

“Classified information!”

We laughed at the nostalgic scene. I was struck by just how well our friendship had survived this, and above all else, how relieved Asahina-san looked. I wondered whether it would be the same with Haruhi…whether the knot in my chest would unravel if I only found the courage to tell her.

Remembering we had a major problem at hand, the two of us set out on our clock-hunt. As soon as we left the room, Asahina-san morphed back into the shy girl we all knew so well. She may have been discovered by me, but she needed to keep up appearances for the world at large. It was bizarre and a little funny to watch, but at the same time, I was feeling the burden of yet another secret.

We searched a good half of the premises, and everywhere we went, the clocks were the same. The president of North High’s computer society, who Haruhi had somehow blackmailed into coming, eventually allowed us to look at his swanky atomic watch. Unfortunately, even that was subject to the chrono-shift. Let this be a lesson to all you youngsters out there – there are two things money can’t buy you: happiness, and freedom from the relentless flux of space-time.

When we had exhausted the upstairs rooms and were heading back down to the ground floor, I was ambushed outside my dressing room by a wild Taniguchi.

“KYON! Finally! You’re a hard man to find! Come on, I got him, I got him!”

Taniguchi was dragging me into my room by my tie, a privilege I typically reserve for Haruhi, but I forgave him when I saw he was as good as his word. Sitting across from me on a stool and a chair were Nagato and Koizumi.

“Welcome back. I have your ‘real’ cufflinks.” Koizumi sneaked out sardonically from behind his obsequious smile.

“Man, all that fuss for a pair of cufflinks!” Taniguchi was going off. “You know, I thought he was a member of staff! Who goes around cleaning clocks when there’s a wedding on? There’s no way you can make this guy your Best Man, Kyon – ”

“Good work, Taniguchi.” I slapped his back amicably. “Now I need you to find my real tie.”

“EUCH?!” Taniguchi was so shocked he evidently slipped into the memories of his past life as a Munich cobbler. “Why would you need a temporary tie?!”

“Because certain people think it’s okay to tug on the groom’s tie half an hour before his wedding.” I glowered at him.

Taniguchi was downcast in sour defeat, before suddenly, his ears pricked up.

“Eh? Half an hour?”

He looked at the clock. Dammit. A thousand plagues upon my loose tongue. The eyes of all the room were on him, and I wondered how many excuses were being collectively thought up over the duration of those agonising seconds. At least enough to power a small Honda Civic.

“Hmm. Guess I was quicker than I thought!” Taniguchi grinned. “Alright, I’ll find your stupid tie in no time!” He marched off, without me telling him where to find it. I was smart to make friends with such an idiot.

The tension in the room diffused as the time traveller and I stood facing our resident alien and esper.

“Well,” Koizumi motioned to the clock. “It seems we have plenty of time to explain.”

And explain we did. Koizumi had noticed our temporal jam a while ago and had been testing all the clocks Asahina-san and I hadn’t reached. It was then Taniguchi grabbed hold of him and led him in several different wrong directions until Nagato rescued them. From Koizumi’s findings, it seemed the entire venue was caught up in this chrono-shift.

“So what, are we going to have to cancel the wedding?” I moaned. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I certainly felt something. Something like disappointment meets relief meets confusion meets me throwing my entire emotional computer out the window, I don’t know.

“We needn’t go to such lengths.” Koizumi smiled. “Although it would be easier if that were the case. However, I am not so sure this is a spacial issue at all.”

“Eh?” Asahina-san reacted. “But, Koizumi-kun…a chrono-shift is a space-time phenomenon…”

“Indeed. Perhaps I should clarify. It is a spacial issue, but perhaps not in the way we typically think of space. Rather than a segment of land being affected by this shift, it is my belief that it is merely the space between our skulls.”

An eerie silence permeated the room.

“And those of all the other guests.” Koizumi finished, with serious eyes undermining his easy smile.

“S-so…” Asahina-san began, “Koizumi-kun is saying…the guests are caught up in the chrono-shift, not the venue?”

“Hold on,” I interrupted. “If that’s true, Koizumi, we can never escape the shift. If it’s occurring inside ourselves, we’ll be stuck here forever!”

“So it would seem.” Koizumi bowed his head as he stared at his wringed hands. “Time has frozen within us…rather poetic, don’t you think? But perhaps now is not the time to be waxing lyrical.”

“This theory.” Nagato gave him a blank stare. “Where did you get it from?”

She had been doing this for years now, but it still warmed my heart to see Nagato actually interacting us like a regular person. At least, it typically would if my head wasn’t thumping like Goliath playing the bongos. Time frozen forever? What would that even look like? Would I ever see the night sky again, or catch a train again, or talk to anyone who wasn’t a wedding guest?

Would I ever marry Haruhi?

“It is simply my analysis of Suzumiya-san’s mental state.” Koizumi shrugged. “Working on the assumption that she created this chrono-shift, what purpose do you think it serves?”

I wracked my brains for an answer. Why would Haruhi want to freeze time? On today of all days? The day Koizumi said would make Haruhi so happy the Agency wouldn’t have to worry about any extraordinary phenomena occurring for at least a few months?

“It couldn’t be…”

“Oh? It looks like you’re catching on.”

“You’re telling me that Haruhi…has displaced us in time…”

“Yes…”

“…because she has cold feet?!”

Asahina-san looked at Nagato. Nagato looked at me. I looked at Koizumi.

Koizumi smiled.

“Can’t you relate?”

Well, yes, I could, but…

…

For crying out loud, Haruhi!

Koizumi and Asahina-san were debating whether that necessarily meant the chrono-shift was targeting us individually or whether she just placed it on the venue, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of that nonsense. I was just too mad.

“Oh? Where are you going?” Koizumi asked me as my hand reached for the doorknob.

“To see Haruhi.”

“Oh my. Isn’t it bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding?”

“You’re telling me at this rate, there won’t be a wedding. The entire life I’ve planned with Haruhi will never happen!” Unconsciously, I had raised my voice. Glancing behind my shoulder, I could see the others staring at me in surprise. That didn’t stop me, though.

“I let Haruhi get away with a whole lot…but cancelling our wedding? Fat chance!”

With that, I barged through the door and slammed it behind me. Just you wait, Haruhi. I’m going to give you a real talking-to. I don’t care if I get bad luck. I’d break a thousand mirrors if it meant getting out of this chrono-bullshit. I’m going to marry you in half an hour. I swear it.

Besides, I’d already seen the bride in quite a bit of detail today.

When I reached Haruhi’s floor, I was panting for air. I had ran again, unnecessarily, but I wasn’t going to postpone this any longer. I strode towards the door and fought off the waves of dizziness, the black knot tightening itself inside my chest. Yanking forth my courage, I knocked thrice.

“Ehhh? Who is it?” I heard my sister’s voice ask.

“It’s me. I’m coming in.”

Mass panic shook the other side of the room, and I opened the door as slowly yet confidently as possible. By the time I opened my eyes, Haruhi was facing the curtained window, hastily pulling the zip up on her bodice.

There was a long brunette ponytail before me, held fast by yellow ribbon and streaming over an almost naked back. Beneath that, a shapely white dress exploded into a fluff of silky flares. When she turned towards me, her dress flew like a swan mid-flight. It was – in a word – divine.

It was only the familiar irritation in those caramel brown eyes that reminded me, with comfort, that this really was Haruhi.

Supposedly, this woman was meant to be some kind of deity, and sometimes I really could believe it. It scared the crap out of me just then, just like it had when I woke up this morning in a cold sweat and a sinking feeling warring against a rapidly beating heart. I had felt as though, this was too much for me, or more accurately, like I couldn’t possibly deserve this.

But seeing her cute glare made me remember that this wasn’t a god I was looking at. How could it be? Theorise all you want, Koizumi, but as far as I was concerned, Haruhi was just Haruhi. That was the woman I was marrying, not God, not the potential for auto-evolution or a time-warp or whatever else you want to call her – all that’s unverifiable anyway. As usual, I was the only one in this damn brigade with my head on straight. I believe the evidence before my eyes, and the only thing I knew for sure was that this bold, forceful, chaotic girl was Suzumiya Haruhi, and that when she was with me I felt a certain something fill up my soul. What that something is, I’ll leave to you guys. I’ve got a pretty good idea, though.

While these thoughts were going through my head, absolutely nothing was escaping my mouth. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, but Haruhi obviously found our staring contest kind of awkward.

“W-well?!” Her furiously blushing face asked. “What is it?!”

Now I was blushing. I did my best to recover my cool and issued a command to all Haruhi’s hanger-ons.

“Everyone out!”

Kunikida gladly took the opportunity and bumped straight into me, before remembering to pull his tie off his eyes and running for freedom. The others were less enthusiastic.

“Haaah? Dumb Kyon, who do you think you are to order me about in my own dressing room? I’m Brigade Leader, you know!” Haruhi objected, snorting like a bull.

“Not you, Haruhi. You stay here.” I turned to Tsuruya-san and my sister. “You two, get out.”

“Hmm?” Tsuruya-san was undeterred, her wicked smile welcoming the challenge. “Can’t you wait until the wedding, Kyon-kun? Or do you want a last piece of young love before the marriage bed sucks it all away?”

“KYON-KUN!” Began my sister, again. “I’M HARUHI-NEE’S BRIDESMAID, AND – ”

“If you don’t get out I’ll tell Mum and Dad who broke the TV!” I threatened her.

My sister deflated like Aeolus’ bag of winds.

“Y-you wouldn’t…ohhh…” Compliantly and resentfully, she traipsed out.  Now only my greatest foe remained. Fortunately, I had a plan.

“Tsuruya-san, please leave. It’s just as you said: I’m going to make love to Haruhi.”

A high-pitched squeal escaped from Haruhi. “Wh-wh-wh-wh-what?! Kyon! What are you saying?!”

“Eh?” Tsuruya-san looked at me as if she didn’t quite understand. “Eh? Eh eh? That was a joke…you’re joking, right? Right?”

I stared her down like I was the protagonist in the sequel to that cowboy movie I mentioned at our last showdown.

“Eh? Eh? Eh eh eh?” Tsuruya-san was colouring red. “Eh? Ah…eh?”

She turned around and walked from the room in a total daze. When I saw the chance, I slammed the door behind her. Tsuruya-san, your bark is so much worse than your bite. I pray for your swift recovery.

Haruhi backed up against the window with her fists out in front of her in what looked like an entirely new martial art.

“B-back off Kyon! We’re going to get married, you know?! There’s no time for that kind of thing…” Her flushed cheeks made her pout extra cute. “Geez, you’re always so needy…”

“That’s you, isn’t it?” I sighed with some affection. Really. Her face had sucked all my righteous anger out of me. Guess I should prepare for my life as a doormat husband. “Relax, Haruhi. That’s not why I’m here.”

I walked up to her and plonked my hands on her shoulders. She squeaked and her big eyes stared up at me with apprehension.

“Haruhi…how are you feeling?”

Her cheeks puffed out as she geared up to vehemently reject the supposition that anything was wrong with her. But just as soon, they deflated, and her face fell with her silence. We’d been in a relationship too long for any of the emotional drama of our teenage years, so we’d been approaching something like honesty. One big hurdle still remained for me, though.

All of a sudden, Haruhi barrelled into my chest and a disorienting warmth rammed through me like a bolt from a ballista. She was clenching my lapels, holding them with all her strength, rubbing her head against my chest, taking in my scent. Shaking.

“Even though I’ve wanted this for so long…”

I pressed my arm against her back and pulled her closer. Oh, Haruhi.

“Even though I’ve wanted this for so long,” her muffled voice repeated. “I’m still scared…”

It’s normal, you know, Haruhi? Cold feet. That’s what I wanted to say.

But then she said something else.

“…Of what you might say…”

My eyes widened. So this wasn’t just cold feet. There was something more to this, something I was completely unaware of: something I hadn’t noticed because I was too busy worrying about my own secrets.

“Haruhi…”

I really was a hopeless man. Very well then, Haruhi, I’ll take responsibility. I’ll tell you what I know you need to hear. It shouldn’t be too hard: it’s the truth, after all.

“No matter what you tell me…no matter what you haven’t told me…there’s no way I could leave you, you know?” I drew us apart just enough so I could look into her puffy red eyes. “First of all, you’ve thoroughly domesticated me. If I went back out there into the big wide world without you, I’d be eaten up in a heartbeat.” She couldn’t help but smile at that, which made me smile too. “And secondly…I’ve seen the world without you in it. I don’t want to go back there.”

I didn’t expect her to understand what I was talking about, since the events of that Christmas had been forgotten by everyone but Nagato and me. Still, it seemed to reassure her. After a little while, she drew in a breath, tried to say something, failed, and, in classic Haruhi style, tried a second time but louder.

“S-so, you don’t blame me?!”

“Huh?” I was completely taken aback.

“You don’t blame me?!” Her expression was intensely earnest, like a dam had exploded within her and she was awash with the power and relief of the flow.

“Why…why would I blame you?” I lifted my hands up in genuine confusion at the bouncing fireball beneath me.

“I mean!” Haruhi turned away from me now and paced back and forth, looking at everything else in the room. “I made you do all these crazy things you didn’t want to, just because you started talking to me…you just wanted a normal high school life, but because I was bored, I dragged you into all of it and…now you’re marrying me, but do you really want that, Kyon? Do you really…” She bit her lip and cautiously, fearfully, dared to look up at me. “…want me?”

I blinked at her, and stayed quiet for longer than was good for her peace of mind. It wasn’t that I had to think about the answer; I was just so shocked. This had been your reason for worrying all this time? This was your reason for stopping time? It was never about her at all. It was just about me…

“Wh-why are you laughing?!” Haruhi’s trembling, embarrassed face was doing its best to be menacing, but nothing would work. I just couldn’t stop laughing. It was so stupid.

“Haruhi,” I made out when I recovered myself, “I do have free will, you know? I’m not just a puppet dancing on your strings.”

“O-of course I know that!” Now she was indignant. “That’s why I was asking – ”

“Haruhi, if I really felt that way, why would I have proposed? Or heck, before that, why would I have even asked you out? Or in the very beginning, why do you think I went to the SOS Brigade after school every day? I could have ditched you anytime I wanted.” A smile crept up my face unwares. I felt truly, truly happy. “But I wouldn’t change anything in these last seven years. Not a bit of it.”

Really, Haruhi, I had realised all this in the first year I met you. For a multi-talent super-genius, you really are dense. Our eyes looked into each other’s for a good minute, and inside her gaze I saw a churning sea of raw feeling, shifting, changing, like a subatomic particle. It was seriously enchanting to look at, and I could have stayed there for the rest of our endless time, but a bear hug from Haruhi knocked me back to the outside world.

“Stupid Kyon…” She muttered. She sounded happy herself – so happy I could hardly picture the gloomy girl who sat in front of me on the first day of High School. Really, how far we’d come.

Or, no, not quite yet.

“…Say it…”

“Hm?”

“Say you’ll marry me!”

“I just said I wouldn’t leave you, didn’t I? And in the first place, isn’t that what the vows are for!?”

“Just say it, Kyon! Do what I tell you to already…”

I chewed on my thoughts. Haruhi had borne herself to me, her whole self, secrets, regrets and all. It was time for me to step up too. Hopefully she would just laugh it off like I had, but whatever might happen, it needed to be said. If I turned back without saying it, I knew I couldn’t forgive myself.

“No.”

“N-no?” Haruhi’s frail voice repeated.

“No. Not yet. First…”

I pulled us apart more urgently this time, and now it was my turn to cling onto her for security as my hands gently squeezed her shoulders. Damn the consequences. This wasn’t anything new. I had the balls to do it before, so I might as well do it now, and if the universe explodes, well, the universe explodes. The universe should get a hobby instead of interfering with my relationship with Haruhi all the time. It’s been third wheeling through our whole relationship, you know? It’s super awkward, and I’m fed up with it.

I said a silent apology to the others, but what happened now was just between me and Haruhi, and no-one else.

“Haruhi, there’s something I need to tell you.”

--

“It would seem the time has come at last.” Koizumi jested, invading my personal space enough for Taniguchi and Kunikida not to hear. “Whatever you did back there, it seems to have worked. Nagato-san hasn’t detected any fluctuations since you reported back to us.”

“Well, don’t jinx it. I’ve been waiting for this long enough.”

In the last twenty minutes, with the help of my male companions including a returning baffled Taniguchi, I had patted down my suit, mastered my hair, and fixed my tie so perfectly that no further fiddling was necessary. As I stood in front of the door to the main hall, waiting for the ceremony preparations to begin, I found my nervousness had disappeared. I was confident – even excited. Koizumi, sly as he was, evidently caught on to this.

“Would I be right in saying the chrono-shift wasn’t the only thing you fixed?”

I couldn’t help but let loose a smile.

“Something like that.”

“Well, I wish you two the utmost happiness.” Koizumi’s face was painted with his usual cheery smile, but I felt a cold stab like the kind a resurrected blue-haired AI might give. I hadn’t forgotten what the other Koizumi had told me in that transformed world.

“Koizumi.” I turned to face him. “I’m glad you’re here.”

The fake smile paused, before settling into a much more genuine one.

“And I am genuinely happy for the two of you. You must believe me when I say that. And not just for the Agency’s sake.” He brought a finger thoughtfully to his chin. “Although, if you’re so glad I’m here, you could have at least made me your Best Man.”

Yare yare. Him too? I gave a good-natured sigh and an exaggerated shrug. “Sorry, I’ve just known Kunikida longer than anyone else. Besides, if you gave a speech you would just start talking about the Anthropic Principle or Schrodinger’s Cat or some other stuff that would send our audience to sleep.”

Koizumi chuckled. “Fair enough. Your wedding, at least, deserves to be a day off from the problems facing the make-up of reality. It really is unfortunate the chrono-shift occurred when it did.”

“No,” I shook my head. “I think it occurred at just the right time.”

“Oh?” Koizumi looked interested, but didn’t follow up.

A brief period of silence ensued as I contemplated the doors. What would happen from here? I would stand at the end of the end of the hall with Kunikida, and wait for Haruhi to emerge from the other side of the room arm-in-arm with her old man and her chaotic quartet of bridesmaids in hot pursuit. Then we would hold each other’s hands before the officiant, say our vows…you know, if the officiant calls me Kyon, I think I’m going to cry.

“Kyon.” Kunikida tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s time.”

I placed my hand on the doorknob with gravitas. Before I was ready to open it, a meaningless thought occurred to me.

“Ah…I hope Haruhi’s washed her face since then. It’d be bad if people thought she’d been crying on her wedding day for the wrong reasons.”

“I’m sure she’s already beaming from ear to ear.” Koizumi assured me. “And I don’t think Suzumiya-san will care much for what her poor guests might think. You might as well be the whole universe to her today; the rest of us will just be specks in the corner of her eye.”

I smirked as I turned the handle.

“Are you kidding me? This is Haruhi we’re talking about, remember? She might love me, but she also loves aliens, time travellers and espers.”

As I stepped through the door, I turned my head back to Koizumi.

“After the ceremony, good luck prising her away from you guys. You’ll have a lot of catching up to do.”

As mine and Kunikida’s footsteps echoed against the polished wooden floor, I heard Koizumi, after a spell of stunned silence, begin to ever-so-weakly tell me to wait. But in the end, it just devolved into a tremendous chuckling. I smiled and fixed my eyes ahead of me.

Haruhi had known me long enough now to tell when I’m being serious. What had worried me was how she would feel about us hiding it from her all these years, but it turned out I was being just as stupid as she was.

Like Haruhi would ever turn up the opportunity to play with aliens, time travellers and espers.

[shirtlesssammy]

7x14: Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie

Then:

Send in the clowns (much to San’s utter horror)

Now:

Our intrepid hero, Sam Winchester runs down a dark alley away from CLOWNS. And honestly, I can’t blame him. They are scary! A couple corner him in an abandoned warehouse while he mutters, "If it bleeds, you can kill it."

60:00:00 Earlier

Dean battles the germs of a phone booth to talk with Frank. He’s got, as Sam puts it, “dick on Dick”. Sam has a potential new case though, and since Dean’s just coming off of his Amazon baby mama drama, he swears this time there will be “No bars. No booze – no hot chicks of any kind.”

Wichita, Kansas

At the morgue they’re presented with a corpse covered in red boils. Apparently a Giant Pacific octopus did this to the man, in Kansas. The coroner surmises that someone staged the hickies and then bled the victim dry. “So what are we looking for? An octovamp? A vamptopus?” Dean wonders to Sam later.

They head to talk with the victim’s widow.

They ask her all the routine questions and she tells them they should talk to Stacy, the nanny. She was with him the night he died. The boys discuss why the wife would summon such an excessive monster while they leave the house. Dean heads to interview the “naughty nanny” while Sam stays to check out the wife’s house after she's gone.

At Stacy’s, Dean learns pretty quickly that the nanny mainly dealt with Deborah and that Stacy was working late because Brian was working late. It was their daughter Kelly’s birthday and the party was at Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie and Brian showed up for 5 minutes while Deborah didn’t show up at all. Another kid told Kelly that her parents didn’t love her. Dean asks the usual questions and Stacy admits that Kelly’s afraid there’s a monster in her closet.

Dean later calls Sam to see if he can interview the daughter. Sam gets in a brief conversation with Kelly where she tells him that she tried to warn her dad that the monster would get him before her mom calls her back inside.

At night, a man in a bathrobe runs for his life away from a galloping horse. He jumps a fence and rests a beat against the fence only to have a golden spire pierce his chest. He falls over dead while the camera pans over the fence to reveal a majestic unicorn. It’s horn is glistening blood and as it turns and speeds away, rainbows shoot out of its butt. (This REALLY has is it all.)

Now

Sam’s battling the clowns. He tries shooting one of the clowns but his gun only shoots glitter.

The clowns continue to laugh and mock him, and then start laying punches.

36:36:08 Earlier

Dean inspects the unicorn murder. After asking the victim’s wife some questions about their son, he learns that the father and son were at a friend’s birthday party. Dean calls Sam and asks if he remembers Plucky Pennywhistle’s. Sam’s face goes blank and he say, “No.” He quickly counters that when he admits that he hated them as a kid. Dean would dump him to go “trolling for chicks.” Dean made a connection to the place and the murders though and suggests Sam check out the local Plucky’s while he talks to the latest vic’s son. Sam hastily suggests he interview the kid. Dean laughs and wonders if this is about Sam’s “clown thing.” Sam weakly denies this, but Dean sees right through him and advises him, “If it bleeds, you can kill it” before hanging up.

Sam heads inside to face his nightmare.

(I’m sorry, but what’s with the skeletor clown in the front? How much fun did Jerry Wanek and Co. have this week?) He sees a frazzled mom working while trying to convince her son to just “stay sane for three more hours.” He sees a wall of “Draw your worst fear... Plucky will make your fear disappear” drawings. The manager, Jean, finds Sam. He asks about the drawings and she gives him the explanation that it’s supposed to help kids cope with their fears, otherwise they can affect kids well into their adulthood (*cough* SAMMY *cough*). Sam asks about the latest kid’s story and the manager tells him that the dad threw a fit about leaving early.

Sam is then approached by a skittish maintenance worker who tells him to come back after closing.

At the motel, Sam fills Dean in on the mean parent trend and the worst fear drawings.

Dean has some war flashbacks to fighting leprechauns. Dean then shows Sam what the boy drew --a unicorn impaling his father.

At Plucky’s, just as Saul, the maintenance man, is leaving for the day, Jean tells him that a kid puked in the ball pit. It’s gonna need a complete sanitization. And I’m sorry, but why are you waiting to tell him at the end of the day?! I’m side eyeing you HARD, Jean.

Saul is next in the ball pit, sucking the balls up one at a time (seems a tad inefficient, but then I have no clue how those places are cleaned. Probably aren’t --so, gross.) The camera pans behind him, Jaws-esque music starts, Saul cries out and reaches for his leg. His hand comes away bloody.

He’s then sucked under the balls. Welp.

Sam and Dean arrive to find the cops taking away the body.

*Classic Dialog Alert*

DEAN: Cops have a theory?

SAM: Yeah, they think the ball washer did it.

DEAN: The what?

SAM: The... ball washer.

DEAN: The what?

SAM: The ball –

Dean shows Sam the victim and they both agree that it was a shark bite. Dean knows a bit more due to his excessive Shark Week research. They head inside the darkened Plucky’s.

Inside, they stop by the wall of worst fear drawings. Sam notices that the shark drawing is missing this time. “Dractopus. Seabiscuit the impaler. Land shark – what's next?” Dean asks. (Seabiscuit the Impaler is my wrestling name.)

The next morning the waitress, Libby, pulls up to Plucky’s with her son Tyler. They’re both tense - the mom is late for work and the kid’s irritated and on his own to catch the bus. As they part grouchily, the camera zooms in on his drawing: a giant killer robot shooting laser eyes. Um. HERE FOR THIS.

Back in the present, Sam continues to get the glitter kicked out of him by the two killer clowns. (I find them far more annoying than frightening.) The only thing more aggravating than a villain with a smug grin is one with a grating chuckle.

Back in the past, Sam and Dean toss out theories. It’s time to put the hammer down on the investigation. Dean is SUPER excited to be given the job of the creepy loner dude hanging out at Plucky’s while Sam plays Fed. (But also, he really is?)

At Plucky’s, chaos reigns. It’s full of kids and the bloody murder ball pit is “roped off” for the day. Yikes. Dean spots a kid walk by playing with a giant slinky and suddenly all thoughts of the investigation leave him.

And immediately Dean WANTSES THE SLINKY. (Please imagine that I’ve just written eight tons of meta about Dean’s missed childhood wrought by his father and later, by himself.)

He asks to buy one at the prize counter, but the chirpy clerk tells him that he has to earn it - he can’t just buy one of the prizes. Dean heads off to ski-ball his way to giant slinky glory.

Meanwhile, Sam interrogates Jean about the guy’s death, spooking her and sending her running from Plucky’s. Dean demonstrates his adult priorities, ditching ski-ball to stalk his quarry. He discovers Jean’s terrible secret. She’s unwinding with a quick joint behind the building. So… not really a criminal magical mastermind.

Sam moves on to the cheerful clerk. “Special agent? Wow!” he says excitedly, while reading Sam’s business card. Sam scowls at Mister Sunshine-and-Light and amps up his bad-cop routine.

While Sam snarls at suspects, Dean teams up with Tyler to properly police the correct game-play of ski-ball. They bond over it and the kid’s mom arrives with a plate of greasy pizza for his dinner. Dean tells the frustrated kid to cut his mom some slack. His dad “hauled him places” too. (I mean, crime scenes, crappy motels, and monster dens, but sure.)

Dean notices Tyler’s killer robot drawing but before he has a chance to comment on it, the lion-costumed guy Sam was interrogating splits. After a harrowing chase set to 70’s style cop-show-music Dean pins him down. The guy sort of confesses to manufacturing meth in the past, but is also PRETTY SURE he hasn’t been using kids’ nightmares to kill people. (He sounds a little uncertain on that last point.) He mentions a sub-basement of the building with creepy sounds coming up from the boiler room near the vents. Well, we know that only good things happen in boiler rooms.

They head back to Plucky’s. Inside, Libby loses her cool. It’s time to leave but her son resists - someone stole his killer robot drawing. Dean immediately hones in on that. Awww yeah KILLER ROBOT TIME. (In a subplot, Dean communicates nonverbally with Tyler, encouraging him to communicate better with his mom, who in turn communicates better with her son. I’m glad we were all here to share this after school special.)

The sub-basement is eight levels of creepy, stacked with crap and featuring an open pit of flame. “Well, that’s perfectly normal,” Dean comments. And...yeah. The boiler room does appear to be problematic. Posted up on the wall are kid drawings and on tables, occult books. Dean examines a book and finds the missing robot drawing. He turns to find the chirpy clerk, Howard, training a gun on him. He orders Dean to drop his gun.

Dean compliments him on his magical prowess. It’s gotta take some serious mojo to make a unicorn. “There's power in fear,” Howard tells him. “And when a child draws what he's afraid of, a little of that mojo ends up on the page.” All of his victims deserved what they got, Howard maintains. He’s targeting Libby for sure, but tonight’s not the night for killer robots. Instead, his current target is Sam-the-Fed.

Cue the clowns!

Now that our timeline has nearly caught up, Sam stalks Libby and Tyler back to their house, only to be confronted by a creepy clown. Nooooooo!

While Sam gets beaten by evil clowns, Dean discovers that Howard is angry that he lost the management job to Jean. He’s deranged, and thinks all the kids are better off without various parents in their lives. Oh, and he’s got some fun buried trauma of his own. His brother drowned while his parents ignored (or didn’t take seriously) his cries for them to help.

Dean chucks Howard’s old drawing of the drowning into the magical fire, plus a clown statuette, and suddenly a drowned child appears, looking vengeful. Howard whimpers pleas for mercy to no avail. Before Dean’s astonished eyes, the clerk drowns in front of the phantom of his dead brother. Y I K E S. Destroyed by his own fear, anger, and guilt. (Looks directly into the camera.)

Elsewhere, Sam’s about to get clown sandwiched when they explode into harmless glitter bombs.

Welp.

Later, Sam pulls up to meet Dean. When he gets out, we see that he’s absolutely covered in glitter (and, apparently, seltzer from the clowns’ flowers).

Dean just about dies laughing at the sight. He then apologizes for “psychologically scarring” Sam, and ditching him when they were kids. Hey, all’s forgiven. Sam pulls out a present for Dean - a giant slinky!!!!

Dean is overjoyed. He gets out a gift for Sam as well - a clown doll.

Er. Thanks, Dean. Sam treats it with the appropriate reverence and gratitude.

_____________________________________________________

Everybody Loves a Quote:

So we got dick on dick?

You spawn a monster baby, see how quick you want to dive back in the pool.

If it bleeds, you can kill it.

So now unicorns are evil?

A whole week of sharks.

Watch out for evil lunch ladies.

_____________________________________________________

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive! 

[popatochisssp]

Snips & Snails 6/7

Series: Undertale, Horrortale Relationship(s): HT!Sans/Reader, HT!Sans & HT!Papyrus Chapter Warnings: none

It's been a rough road. It hasn't been easy to make it this far. ...But he did it. 

AO3 Link

PERSEVERANCE

Sans mulls it over for a long, long……long time.

It’s not the kind of thing you rush into, lots of factors to be considered, and honestly, he’s…a little nervous about what you’ll say.

But eventually, he builds up the courage to ask.

One night while you’re cuddled up beside him in bed, he gently nudges you and just blurts it out.

“i want a cat.”

Sans isn’t quite sure what he expects you to say, but you manage to surprise him anyway.

“Yeah? Okay, a cat sounds nice.”

“……really?”

It feels like it shouldn’t be so easy.

He feels like you should be…rolling your eyes at him, pointing out that you already have a pet, he doesn’t need another one.

(Sans never thinks that he had a bad dad, but it’s moments like these, when he’s surprised to be so quickly, unquestioningly supported that he realizes he probably didn’t… have a very good one, either.)

You make half a shrugging gesture and wriggle a little closer beneath his arm.

“Sure,” you say. “I mean, we probably want to be careful about personality, don’t want Buddy getting bullied too bad, but… yeah, we should be able to handle a cat.”

“……”

Sans elects not to answer with words. He figures his silent gratitude is understood in the way you snicker at his affectionate nuzzling.

“Got your eye on anybody in particular, or…?”

At that, it’s Sans’ turn to shrug.

“i’ll let ya’ know,” he says, and that’s the end of that discussion.

Sans is excited already.

-

You actually have no part in picking out the cat.

You’re out walking a new dog and Sans is in the cat room, cleaning out litterboxes and it just sort of happens.

Just like in the movies, practically in slow motion, he looks up and meets eyes with…her.

‘She’s a fine specimen of feline’…is something that would probably not be said about her very often.

She’s a little weird-looking, with a thin, sparse coat instead of a fluffy one and gigantic ears that don’t really fit her head and when she sees Sans looking at her, she screams at the top of her lungs—which is pretty damn loud, because those big bat-ears of hers don’t work and she has no concept of volume control.

Her loudness is actually what got her the affectionate name of…

………

Well, Sans can’t remember it now, but he thinks it was probably appropriate, whatever it was.

He also thinks that this cat has been here a pretty long time already, with no one willing to give her a chance.

And he knows instantly that she’s The One.

He feels it urgently enough that he finishes his task and then goes straight to her, scooping her up and carrying her into the lobby.

She sniffs and tries to bite the pen he uses to hastily scrawl his name on the adoption form, but then is perfectly mild-mannered as he pays the fee and probably spooks the receptionist by shortcutting home with his new cat.

Sans sets her down in the middle of the living room. Even knowing she can’t hear it, he still says, “go on, check out your new digs,” and slowly, cautiously, she does.

She looks around, taking a sniff of the carpet, the coffee table, the leg of the couch, and it seems to pass muster.

The real challenge is when Buddy’s head pokes out of the kitchen door, investigating the noise of somebody home so early in the day.

Sans watches them carefully as the two catch sight of each other for the first time.

He surprises himself with how much animal body language he’s picked up over the years and how well he understands what’s happening now.

Buddy’s ears are back, but his tail is slowly wagging as he comes on in—a little wary, but mostly curious.

The cat’s tail is straight out behind her, a little low, but not fluffed—not quite sure of what’s happening, but not scared, either.

Buddy approaches and when he’s finally close enough, he…sniffs her.

She sniffs him back and summarily decides he is a boring dog, like all the other ones she’s seen at the shelter, and ambles away to explore much more interesting things.

She’s not followed because Buddy goes straight to Sans instead, snuffling at his slippers in greeting of his skeleton-dad.

Sans grins so wide it makes his skull ache.

“good boy, buddy,” he assures him, giving him a real good scritch behind the ear.

No instantly flying fur and claws was a fantastic sign and he makes sure to give his little pal a cookie for being cool before tracking down his littler pal on her tour around her new home-to-be.

-

Sans can’t quite say it’s all smooth sailing.

Actually, aside from the meeting with Buddy, there’s not much smooth about her introduction into the house at all.

She knocks over three cereal boxes and a half-empty bag of coffee trying to jump on top of the fridge. She finds the laundry room and spends a good few minutes yelling at the washer and looking between it and Sans as if expecting him to explain himself for it. He picks her up and shows her the upstairs instead and she gets so excited about the new territory that she starts to rocket back and forth with the kind of Unique Cat Energy that usually only comes out at three in the morning, and…

Well, by the end of that, at least Sans has a pretty good name for her.

He asks if she likes it, but she just hops up onto his lap and starts kneading little cat-claw-sized holes in his already hole-ridden hoodie.

“you’re such a weird goof,” he mutters down at her. “you’re gonna do great here.”

She keeps on kneading and squints at him, the way you always say he does when he’s happy.

Sans doesn’t think he’s capable of making a face as cute as hers, but he guesses love can make even the ugliest of monsters seem cute.

And speaking of love, you’re walking in through the front door, smiling brightly at the sight that greets your eyes.

“Here you are,” you say, with a cute little smirk, and…

Oh.

Did Sans text you he was leaving, or did he just sorta…ditch you?

“……sorry,” he says sheepishly, attempting to cover his bases, but you shake your head.

“Don’t worry about it,” you say. “I figured something pretty important must’ve been up and it wasn’t too hard to figure out what when my husband and our resident noisemaker both disappeared at the same time.”

You come right up to Sans and the cat, unable to stop your grin as she cranes her head directly backwards to look at you.

She seems happy to see you and the feeling is mutual. You gently harass her, flicking her ears and letting her chew your finger a bit.

“How’s Banshee like the place, anyway?” you wonder.

Banshee, that was it!

But Sans doesn’t have to worry about forgetting that again.

“slinky likes it just fine,” he assures you. “already buddied up with buddy, even.”

You smile, but also… you know him entirely too well.

“She got that name for a reason, didn’t she?”

Sans shrugs, but he’s already grinning, anticipating your question.

You sigh. “Alright, alright, let’s hear it—why ‘Slinky’?”

“wasn’t lookin’ where she was goin’ an’ cartwheeled down the stairs.”

“Pfft! Hahahahaha, Sans…!” You scoops Slinky up and hold her to your chest, as if protecting her from him. “That’s so mean!”

“heheheheh, you’re laughin’,” he gleefully points out. “‘sides, it ain’t like she’s gonna come when we call. could name her ‘fartface’ if we wanted to.”

“Let’s…stick with ‘Slinky’ for now.”

“yeah, you’re right. ‘fartface’ is more of a middle name.”

Sans knows the punch-line hit you unexpectedly when you snort trying to hold back a wheeze and his soul feels fit to burst with pride.

You may not be the biggest audience he’s ever performed for, but you’re definitely one of the best.

And you’re hands down his absolute favorite.

-

Sans doesn’t miss his guess about Slinky: she’s a great fit for your home.

She…causes some collateral damage around the house from time to time—which Papyrus doesn’t particularly love—but she more than makes up for it by being the sweetest cat you could ever imagine.

One of her favorite things to do is just sit on top of people and purr. She does it to everyone in the house at some point or another, but she seeks out Sans’ lap the most and it’s…nice.

It’s especially nice for those times when you and Pap are at work and Sans is home, dissociating so hard that not even Buddy’s head resting on his feet is enough to bring him back around.

Lately, Sans has been coming back to himself with a dog at his feet and a vibrating cat-loaf in his lap, or just a little more rarely, some loud, insistent screaming and gentle paws bapping at his skull because it’s lunch-time and Queen Slinky has not been fed yet, the horror!

You make for a much kinder nursemaid than the cat, but… Sans thinks Slinky does a pretty good job, too.

At least good enough to earn her an extra treat or two on top of her meals, just because.

Slinky loops around your feet and yells excitedly when you get home, barely bullies Buddy, and as much as Papyrus gives her the side-eye-socket and refers to her exclusively as, “The Menace,” he always seeks her out and plops her onto his lap while he’s watching those soap operas he loves so much, and that’s more telling than anything else.

Sans is really glad he brought her home.

He feels like he made a good decision.

It’s a rare feeling, for him. It’s often felt like most of his decisions…weren’t entirely his own. Or weren’t decisions at all, just things he had to do.

But he didn’t have to get this cat: nobody told him to do it, nobody needed him to do it, nothing bad would have happened if he hadn’t done it.

…But life feels just a little bit nicer because he did and that’s…good.

Really good.

-

Slinky’s most hated enemy in the entire world is definitely the washing machine.

Something about the look or smell of it had already put it afoul of her, but then she had discovered something far more sinister about it.

Sometimes…one of you turned it on.

She certainly couldn’t hear it but she must’ve been able to feel its vibrations or something because her indignant, offended yelling could not be stopped on Laundry Day, The Most Awful of All Days.

Sans is recording this one.

“…aaan’ we’re live at the scene of the most clawful travesty catkind has ever seen—the washing machine is running. we go to our correspondent, slinky, for more. slinky?”

Slinky looks right at the camera of Sans’ phone. “MYAAAAAAAAAH!”

“harrowing. now, do ya’ think there is even the slightest pawssibility that you’re blowing this out of proportion?”

“MRRRRRAAAAAA!”

“i see. and ya’ can’t think of any way to put a better spin on this?”

“MRRRRRRRR.”

“well, far be it from me to tell ya’ what you should be feline in the midst of this catastrophe.”

Sans angles his phone towards the washing machine and the clothes and soap swirling around inside.

“yeeeep, me an’ slink are havin’ loads of fun here. might have to spring for another cycle just to keep it goin’.”

As if Slinky could understand him—or even hear him—she yells again and it almost sounds like the word ‘no.’

He loves this freakin’ cat.

“heheheh, c’mon, slink, get a sense of humor, m’only kitten.”

Slinky bats at the glass door of the washing machine, utterly humorless and very loud (as usual).

Sans sighs.

“guess not everybody appreciates the clean humor. maybe i gotta start workin’ blue?”

He stops the recording before he can laugh too hard at his own joke and texts the video straight to you.

He doesn’t expect a quick response, and he doesn’t get one.

You’re out—not at work, but at some sorta training class with Buddy. Sans thinks it’s to do with service dog stuff, something about ‘he’s gonna earn that damn vest’, and while Buddy’s certainly smart enough for it, he doesn’t totally see the point in it himself.

It’s important to you and your Justice soul, though, and that’s all that really matters to Sans, in the end, so whatever classes you want to take with your son is fine by him.

The (horrible, evil, no good) laundry is finished by the time Sans gets an answer.

You: LOL, baby, you gotta post that one!

………post it?

PUNbelievable: what, like…online?

You: Yeah, it’s really funny!

Sans is…honestly a little thrown by the suggestion.

He never thought of doing that before.

He wonders…if you’re just saying something nice, or if you really think he should do it.

And even if you do…you’re probably the most biased person he could ask.

You love him, of course you think his goofy cat puns and laundry jokes are funny.

He spares a glance at Slinky, already happily loafed and furring up the clean, folded sweatpants at the top of the laundry pile.

She’s the real star of that video, isn’t she?

Eventually, he settles on a response to you.

PUNbelievable: i’ll take another one next laundry day with just slink in it, give the people what they really want.

A weird, screaming cat seemed more like something people on the internet would actually wanna see, without his half-baked puns ruininginterrupting it.

But you insist.

You: No, it’s perfect, funnybones, just post it!!!

Three exclamation points—you really must mean it.

Sans still hesitates.

He spends a couple days mulling it over, resisting the urge to just ‘accidentally’ delete the video from his phone so he’d have an excuse not to do anything with it, but in the end…

In the end, Sans thinks that as biased as you are, he probably trusts your opinion more than his own when it comes to…himself.

And if you think it’s funny, then somebody else out there probably will, too. Even just one more smile out there in the world is something Sans has trouble saying ‘no’ to.

He posts the video.

And the comments flood in.

Most of them are exactly what Sans expected:

Not to be dramatic, but I would die for this loud goblin

 lol what’s with the ears? Is she gonna grow into that?

 why she screm at own laundry

But there’s also…

There’s a lot more comments than he’d thought that are…

That are…

 You’re pretty funny, dude, cute cat!

 The commentary really makes the video, I love this guy already

 hOW MANY PUNS DO YOU HAVE?! WHEN WILL GOD SILENCE YOUR SINFUL TONGUE

 ……Sans actually screenshots that last one, just to save.

But he finds himself coming back to the post every couple of hours, reading new comments and old ones, trying (and mostly failing) to remember if the number of likes had gone up since the last time he looked.

It makes him feel… a very familiar feeling.

It’s just a flash, but it feels the same as when he used to be able to do standup; when his skull was whole and he could retain a whole set, beat for beat, without getting mixed up somewhere or forgetting an hour in if he already did that joke or not.

All he did was post a little video, but looking at all these likes and comments makes him realize what’s actually happening here: that there’s real, actual people out there, hundreds of them, and they’re all looking at this clip with his weird cat and his silly puns and they’re smiling. They’re laughing, they’re having a good time and it’s…

It’s because of Sans.

He did that.

A thought slowly creeps its way into his skull.

That video wasn’t even five minutes long.

Sans’ short-term memory sucks, but even he can keep himself on track for five minutes.

It’s been a long time since Sans has felt this openly, unrestrainedly hopeful. The last thing that made him feel like this was…is you, the love of his life, and getting to feel so passionate about something again—after so long without it—is exciting beyond the telling of it.

The next time he’s home alone with Slinky, he pokes her belly, waking her up from a nap.

She yells at him, but he pays it no mind.

“hey, slink. ya’ ready to take the stage again?”

Because Sans thinks…that he is.

-

The next video he takes is of Slinky on her back and trying to rabbit-kick a cat-toy that she’s way too long for.

His punning game is cranked up to eleven and without anyone’s encouragement necessary, he goes right ahead and posts it.

The likes and comments come in a flood and most of them are still about the cat, but Sans doesn’t think he minds playing second fiddle to a feline with as much star-power as Slinky’s got.

He spends a long time reading over the stuff people have to say about him and his cat and almost every single one gives him that same amazing thrill of validation.

But his favorite is still the one you left on it.

LOL, what a goober. Like father like daughter! ;3

Sans looks at those words and the cute little emoticon and all he can think about is how amazing it is that he has all this; that he’s still around to have all this.

He’s alive and thriving, with a nice house and plenty of food in it for him, his brother, his human, and two pets. He has a family that loves him, he’s (more or less) stable, and now, he has a brand new hobby that’s giving him feelings he thought he’d never get to experience again.

Things are good. He’s okay, and more than that, he’s…

Keys jingle from behind the front door and Sans knows that it’s you.

The second you’re through the door, he’s on you—sweeping you up into his arms and nuzzling the living daylights out of you.

You laugh, one of Sans’ favorite sounds in the world.

“Sans, what the hell,” you giggle in between smooching him back, but Sans just shakes his head.

“no reason,” is what he says, because there really isn’t one.

He’s just happy.

Maybe that’s reason enough.

Postscript to Fur a Good Time, Call…  

A/N: Sans, allowed to do things for himself? Getting to have things he enjoys, after years of getting pushed into stuff and barred from his own happiness?It's more likely than you think. ;3

Prev Chapter | Next Chapter

[evilwriter37]

Weird Things My Friends Have Said in College

“I hear that flinging your mail into the ether is usually a far more efficient means of delivery than the postage system.”

“I have more chins than friends.”

“Internal bleeding: that’s the best kind!”

“Somebody frisbee toss me into the sun.”

“How you doin’, floor monster?”

“I was trying to be a spider monkey, but then I got weird and scared.” *proceeds to hop*

“I’m not going to yell. I’m going to dad.”

“I just got dismissed by Ferris Bueller and I’m about to have a fit.”

“Somebody give me a cheat sheet for Catholicism.”

“50% cannibalism is still cannibalism.”

“I love you, slinky cat.”

“Easy for you to say, penguin boy!”

“I got two reasons not to go there again: ferrets and cops.”

“I love screaming into the piano.”

“I’m drowning my problems with gummy bears.”

“Don’t take the plants! This is plagiarism!”

“I wasn’t twerking. It was just a general waving of the behind.”

“I wish I had the body of a dorito.”

“If I look at it hard enough, maybe I’ll break out into hives.”

“It’s kind of like getting gangbanged by rain.”

“Conclusion: the sky is a blueberry.”

“My one true religion is memes.”

“I wanna have mushrooms grow out of me. What a great way to go.”

“Who needs YOLO? I have sandwiches.”

“There clearly is an alpha in the pack of feral children.”

“He dead, fam. You killed him. He has no nipples.”

“That probably has a higher chance of being published than Satan’s cock.”

“My island is being fat.”

“I need to run laps around the solar system.”

“I may be drunk, but I’m still right about yams.”

“They thirst for Canadian blood.”

“I’m waiting for Caleb to come out as a fictional character.”

“My phone just died. Either that, or my dumplings are vibrating.”

“Blue eyes are a disease. Somebody strip away my rights.”

“How can bacteria not get killed by an antibiotic?” “They form their own militia?”

“My love for you is like a hydrogen bond. It doesn’t actually exist.”

“Is that a hickey?” “No. Someone tried to kill me.”

“I don’t like saying the word ‘panini’ out loud. It sounds like a dirty word.”

“I need an orifice to scream into.”

“Sorry. My internal monologue is also an external monologue.”

“I made a Spongebob reference. Can I join the cool kids club now?”

“This is not how you birth a baby. Do not bring chainsaws into the delivery room, please.”

“Get in the fucking cup! You’re a fish! I’m a human! I know what’s best for you!”

“I’m gonna go into the men’s room and fight him!”

“On my suicide note I’m gonna write: ‘This is for cheese’, and let them wonder!”

“Get under the bed where you belong, heathen!”

“Okay, guys, what Hogwarts House is mayonnaise?”

“Unbind me so I can get my grubby little hands on all those fucking books.”

“We don’t measure ice cream in pints. We measure it in panic attacks!”

“I never smelled a crying person!”

“Dead people don’t want tea.”

“How do you cite memes in MLA format?”

“You know it’s gonna be a bad day when I’m getting teary over the retirement of a Crayola crayon.”

“Shannon is just a formality. Daddy is my real name.”

“I think your biggest character flaw is your love of tarantulas.”

“If I ever fucking met Plato, I’d kick his legs in.”

“I don’t care what you say, Martin. God is not a food-processor.”

“Hey, I lost my letter opener, so when we get back to my room, drop your pants.”

“You supply the memes. I’ll supply the condoms.”

“You know this probably isn’t a smart idea ‘cause I’m lactose intolerant, but like... milk proteins.”

“Every kiss begins with K, but so does kinky.”

“If you think about it, God is the ultimate daddy.” “Why? Because he keeps fucking me over?”

“That’s why I drink tea, so I don’t turn into a goat.”

“The ancient Greeks were real fuckboys, but you know who’s the biggest fuckboy? Zeus.”

“I don’t care. I’ll duct tape Lindsay to my door too.”

“I know for a fact that no one burned down an entire city over a boner.”

“There are two benefits to submitting a paper in comic sans. One: you get to meme. Two: your classmates will beat you to death so you don’t have to suffer anymore. You get to die for the memes! What a great way to go.”

“English isn’t my first language. Dabbing is.” *epic dab*

“Why does this place smell like depression?” “He does realize this is a college campus, right?”

“You are the walking embodiment of ‘yikes.’”

“Your dingle dangle is not a frisbee.”

“Now I’ve got to kink shame humanity.”

“I’m more afraid of lemons than I am of the dark.”

“I’m feeling Hamlet-y. Wake up in the morning feeling... Like killing myself and/or my uncle who’s also my dad.”

“I want your genome.”

“I prefer you with clothes on. In fact, extra layers, because I have a fetish for onions.”

“I don’t believe in glasses. I’m waiting till marriage.”

[deanssexplorations]

New York (Married) Couple

About two years ago I had a trip to New York in which I would have a free evening, but nothing to fill it with. After a little online searching I met Debbie and Greg, an attractive, professional, married couple living in Manhattan with their two pre-teen children. Interestingly I met them on AdultFriendFinder as opposed to my usual OK Cupid, so I knew they were serious.

As it turns out I was also their first face-to-face meeting via AFF, and even moreso, while they were in an open marriage and were actively exploring play opportunities, I was also their first complete stranger - i.e. I was the first person who was not already a friend of one or the other who they were planning to meet, and, assuming everyone agreed, go off and fuck. In fact, this was a sufficiently large step for them that we did a Facetime meeting before even getting in person together in New York. I think that was the only time I've done that prior to a face to face (and I seriously doubt they do that anymore either). They were both articulate, intelligent, and attractive. I was psyched.

The morning of my trip I made my way to San Francisco airport, only to find that my flight had been cancelled due to a huge storm in New York. Unfortunately, that was the night we were to meet, and I had arranged an early morning departure to allow the time. It was actually a bit of a nightmare because everyone else was trying to book seats on one of the few remaining flights that day. My travel agent tried to get me on a redeye, or barring that a flight arriving at 11:30 p.m. in New York (instead of my original 5:00 arrival time) and as much as I wanted to explain that I really needed to be there because I had an important sex date I needed to keep, I managed to find other ways to convey my urgency to my travel agent.

In the end I got a business class seat on another airline (good thing my client was paying for it!) and ended up having a perfectly enjoyable flight. I did arrive a little after my original schedule, but Debbie and Greg were running a little late anyway, so it didn't end up making a difference in the end.

Whew.

We had agreed to meet at my hotel bar for a drink and to assess the chemistry. I had finished my grooming and prep schedule early (I do like to be manscaped when I meet new people) so headed down to wait. I found a table with a view of the entry way, ordered a drink, and waited for my nerves to settle a bit.

For yes, I had a good amount of nervous energy going on. While I had done threesomes before, this would be my first married couple. And heck, I was about to (possibly) have sex with them!  I was certainly excited and ready to go.

After a while I saw them enter the bar. Debbie was wearing a sexy, slinky black dress. She was extremely attractive with short, blonde hair and a winning smile. Greg was the consummate gentleman, and was looking very dapper in a black suit and sport coat with a purple shirt and no tie. We introduced ourselves and ordered a drink, and fell into easy conversation - although all parties admitted right then and there that we were all experiencing some nerves. That alone was a great icebreaker!

After we finished our drinks, I proposed we get a second drink, but take it up to my room. They readily agreed. Once in my room, we did the "awkward standing around shuffle" that I've come to associate with threesomes or moresomes in hotel rooms with too few places to sit (other than the bed). And this being a small Manhattan hotel room, elbow room was at an even greater premium. So to break the ice (and receiving Greg's encouragement), I leaned in and gave Debbie a kiss.

She was incredibly sexy, and was a fantastic kisser. Our lips meshed as her body melted up against mine. I wrapped my arms around her slender waist and traced the curve of her amazing ass. I don't think I mentioned it, but she was an executive at a New York health club, and she had the tight body to show for it.

Lucky me.

We had established when enjoying our drinks that Greg didn't mind watching, was happy for Debbie to enjoy herself with other men. But I also established that I am very inclusive and didn't intend for any one of us - Greg especially - to be left out of the mix. So as much as I was enjoying her company, I made a point to make eye contact and check in with him. At this point he was preparing the room, pulling out his cock ring, and making sure the bed was prepped. I beckoned him over to give his wife a kiss, and while the two of them were thus engaged I entertained myself by peeling Debbie's dress off - which turned out to be a black skirt and a black top - so even more to peel off!

Things went from there. Debbie was naked pretty quickly, and Greg and I got there as well albeit a bit more slowly. Part of my pre-encounter prep consisted of donning my own cock ring, and as soon as she took my boxers off, Debbie exclaimed, "look, Greg, Dean's wearing a cock ring!"  This because Greg was in the process of putting his on as well. Great minds think alike.

As it turns out, the similarity didn't end there. Once the two guys' cocks were out, we all three were amazed at how similar they were. Our cocks were almost exactly the same size and shape, with the same hood and the same balls. If the two were in a lineup, I'm not sure I'd be able to tell for sure which was mine.

Which was probably a tad freaky but I'm sure pretty fun for Debbie. Sort of like getting fucked by her husband's cock. And by her husband's other cock. She sucked my cock while Greg fucked her, and I fucked her while she sucked his cock. At which point I asked if they had done DP, and Debbie excitedly ventured that no, they hadn't done it, at least not successfully - yet. She asked if I had done it (I told her I had) and we agreed to give it a try.

I was the man on the bottom, with Debbie sitting on the edge of the bed straddling my cock, and Greg standing behind her ready to do ass duty. Unfortunately there were too many legs vying for the same space so we never actually made it work. We also tried DV while we were all in the right position, and I think there was a fraction of a second during which the tip of Jeff's cock joined mine in Debbie's pussy, but for the most part the DP/DV adventure went unfulfilled.

But not to worry. Debbie got her wish a few months later with another gentleman they met in New York. I know because I have photographic evidence.

So instead we went back to sucking and fucking. I spent some lovely time with her fantastic pussy. It was small and tight and beautifully proportioned. And I fucked it quite a bit. But I think the iconic image from that evening, in my mind at least, was Debbie on her knees while Greg and I stood in front her, both fully erect, both sporting our cock rings, while she enjoyed the two nearly identical cocks. She had one in each hand, then took one in her mouth, then the other. She went back and forth like this for a while as Greg and I enjoyed the view.

Finally I came in her pussy, while Greg came on her chest, and after cuddling for a bit, we decided to go for dinner. They took me to a nice Italian place nearby while the three of us compared notes on former lovers and friends with benefits (and talked about work and family of course). Interestingly to me, they hadn't really connected with the swinger's/sex club crowd in New York yet, and they were fascinated to hear about my experiences with that scene in San Francisco. I told them they should come out at some point and that we could double date at my favorite sex club. Pulling out my phone, I even showed them some of my FWBs and took requests.

I guess I was sufficiently persuasive, because we kept in touch when I returned to the Bay Area, and I convinced them to schedule a weekend in San Francisco at the end of the summer. They did make it out, I found a date (actually, two), and the five of us ended up having a mind-blowing evening at my favorite sex club in San Francisco.

But that's another story, one which you'll just have to wait to read...

;-)

[allisonswrittenwords]

Who doesn’t love a cute Christmas outfit?

From the time I was a toddler (I was fourteen months old on my second Christmas, which was also memorable for me taking my first unassisted steps on Christmas Eve) until I was five years old (so, 1983 until 1987), I always wore cute jumper dresses – not all of them were Christmas-esque, but they really seemed to be a popular style of toddler/little girl dress.  For four years of my life, they were the standard to dressing me for Christmas. Be they corduroy or velour, they were the outfit of choice.

Until I was twelve years old, my clothes came from Kids R Us, which closed in the early 2000s (I believe 2003).  Think Toys R Us…but not fun unless you like clothes.  I’d also like to think that having several different outfits in several different designs each year (while maintaining the very basic design concept) and colors set me up for my burning need to buy the same shirt in several colors.

Variety is only the spice of life as long as it comes in at least five colors, friends.

I was going through pictures in October (while finding the picture of my first Halloween costume), and I made sure to take some pictures of my Christmas dress photos.  I knew they would come in handy for blogging material.

Since much of this month’s emphasis is on personal nostalgia and personal stories, these dresses fit right in!

1985

I didn’t scan my photos from 1983 or 1984, so let’s start with 1985.  This was actually my professional photo from that year, taken in all its 1980s portrait studio glory.

This photo was part of a photo gallery my mom created in the upstairs hallway of my childhood home.  It was the ultimate display of cute and posed portrait studio photos, taken between the ages of 18 months and 9 1/2 years old.  The display was legendary, if for only one reason…I was fourteen when she put the photos up.  That’s right, my parents repainted the upstairs hallway, and it was time to put up the gallery of “look how cute you were when you were little!”

Our friends used to laugh at the photos – not because they were awkward or terrible (they weren’t, my mom’s “perfect babies” did not take bad photos!), but all the standard 1980s photo techniques were on display – floating heads, black backgrounds, the fall scene, the fireplace, props, my brother at 18 months shrugging his shoulders and doing the “what?” gesture in his first professional photo.

Come to think of it, that’s the one our friends laughed at!  Not my adorable display of cuteness in this red dress.  No way!

Man, that went off the track fast!

Meanwhile, staying in 1985, this was the Obligatory Christmas Eve Photo from that same year, complete with a different dress!

Skinny legs = baggy tights.  My mom has told me that getting tights to fit on me was difficult.  You’d never know that these days, with my giant calves (all muscle!), but until I was thirteen, I had some toothpick legs!

Moving ahead a year, and two different dresses!

1986

It’s Christmas Eve with these four-year-olds, all ready to go to Grandma and Pop Pop Venezio’s house for dinner and visiting with cousins!  My memories are really scattered with this Christmas, but man did we look cute!

We’re fraternal twins, and have never really looked alike, but those smiles are pretty similar!

This was also the first Christmas that I wore knee-high socks, something I would wear for Christmas for years, on account of the skinny legs!

(I also hated tights!)

Christmas Eve was all about that cute red dress, but Christmas Day meant a different – and green – dress!

That is a kid who is clearly excited about Christmas (held at our home – a yearly tradition when we lived in this house!).  That Pound Puppy dog house and “Hungry Hungry Hippos” were great presents, which definitely sums up that smile!

And for the final jumper dress, we move forward to…

1987

This is the first Christmas I remember more than just a few memories.  It was the last one in this house (we moved in the summer of 1988 to the house I would live in for 18 years, until I was almost 24 years old), and the last one where my mom’s extended family came for Christmas. At that point, Christmas Day meant spending it with my two cousins, Erin and Craig (who are playing the game with me), my Aunt and Uncle, and my maternal grandparents.  The other two people in the picture are my cousin Sandy (holding the “Monster Mash”  Monster Maker Machine) and Sue, my cousin Kenny’s wife (holding the instructions).  I’m sure my brother was playing too, but he’s not in the photo.

As for that dress, I remember it had a dog printed on it.  Also of note is the doll sitting on the couch – this was the Christmas I received one of my favorite Christmas gifts of all time.

This was also the Christmas I received a Cabbage Patch Kids pillow that my cousin Erin made for me – I still have that pillow so many years later, even though it isn’t as comfy as it was when I was a little kid (it’s every bit as comfy as a 32-year-old pillow is expected to be).  I treasure that pillow – I’ve got to get it from my closet at my parent’s house and send her a picture of it.

Christmases Future…

Christmases after that were always as memorable and lovely as the ones in these pictures.  We moved to my childhood home (as I always refer to it) in 1988, right after I turned six years old.  We had our first Christmas in that house that year (almost two months after we moved in), but it was the last one there until I was in high school.  Christmas Day was spent at Grandma and Grandpa Nesgood’s house (maternal grandparents), with our cousins and and aunt and uncle.  I’ve got pictures somewhere of those Christmas Days and all their associated outfits/dresses (sans jumpers).

1988 – New House and jumperless (traded for a “bib” dress, apparently) Christmas dress. Oh, and a Slinky!

As I said in my Christmas Vacation memory, I really miss those days.  The dresses were great, but they were only a small part of what made Christmas so special.  Be it the family togetherness, gifts, dinner, or just the fact that it was spent with my grandparents (who’ve all passed away), those Christmases were special.

I really miss it all, including the cute dresses.

Oh, and those twins in the adorable photos…

He’s still way taller.

    #Christmas Memories: Christmas Dresses - A bit of personal nostalgia - several years worth of very similar Christmas dresses! Who doesn't love a cute Christmas outfit?

[itsworn]

1968: A Year of Political and Societal Unrest Hand-in-Hand with the Decade’s Best Muscle Cars

Yesterday I received the magazine/program that Bob Ashton produces for the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, which takes place about three weeks after I’m writing this. In it he wrote an interesting story about 1968, “the year that rocked the world,” to put in historical context the show’s Class of 1968 50th Anniversary Invitational display.

Automotively speaking, 1968 was monumental. In a lot of ways it was General Motors’ year. The revamp of the midsize A-Body models sewed seeds of muscle car greatness for Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick for years to come. If you were a sports-car lover, the 1968 Corvette seemed to jump years into the future with its slinky new shark-inspired body.

Chrysler also thoroughly revised its midsize B-Body models, and in a way one-upped its GM rivals with the introduction of a low-cost, low-content, youth-oriented car named after a cartoon bird. It may have seemed silly at first, but the success of the Road Runner got everyone’s attention in Detroit.

Ford was still basking in the glow of the Mustang, but external forces had the biggest impact on the original Ponycar that year. One came from our own publishing company (or where we all began, anyway), when a story by Hot Rod magazine’s Eric Dahlquist about Bob Tasca’s KR-8 super Mustang inspired (or should we say “pushed”?) FoMoCo to building the 428 Cobra Jet.

The other major influence also came out of California. It would be hard to calculate the promotional value of a certain Highland Green Mustang that chased a certain black Charger around the streets of San Francisco in a movie we are still talking about, and is still selling cars for Ford, 50 years later.

Even financially struggling American Motors came to the party. AMC finally introduced its unique-looking entry into the ponycar market, the Javelin, and followed it up with the even more radical AMX.

It’s fascinating to me that all this automotive exuberance came in a year that was arguably the most tumultuous in a decade of huge social and political change and upheaval. Most are familiar with the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in April and Robert Kennedy in June. But those events are just part of a frenzied year.

Photo: Eric Dahlquist, Petersen Publishing Co. Archive My pick for the most significant new car of 1968? The Road Runner. Big fun in a stripped-down, affordable package, aimed squarely at the youth market—even those too young to drive, judging by these kids’ faces.

Our involvement in Vietnam was polarizing the country, and 1968 was a rollercoaster that started with the Tet Offensive in January but saw President Lyndon Johnson call an end to bombing North Vietnam in October because of progress made at the Paris Peace Talks.

Johnson announced he would not seek reelection in 1968, believing he could not run the troubled country and campaign for president at the same time. That opened the door to other Democratic contenders, including the ill-fated Kennedy and, ultimately, Hubert Humphrey, whose candidacy was announced at a (literally) riotous Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Humphrey was beat that November by Richard Nixon, who went on to have some pretty tough times of his own.

Riots and protests weren’t limited to the Chicago convention. They broke out in the wake of MLK’s killing and at college campuses across the country, with civil rights and Vietnam their flashpoints. Two of the year’s most memorable news photos reflected the times: Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize–winning photo of a South Vietnamese police chief executing a bound Viet Cong officer with his revolver; and the images of sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in a Black Power salute while on the podium at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Not all of 1968 was grim. This same year gave us Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and 60 Minutes. The Beatles’ The Beatles album (aka the White Album) was released, and Led Zeppelin formed. Science fiction movies ran the gamut from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Planet of the Apes. Mattel introduced the first Hot Wheels cars. And in a preview of what would be the biggest story of 1969, Apollo astronauts circled the Moon for the first time, in preparation for our eventual landing six months later.

How does one square the technological and cultural accomplishments that took place during a year that tore at the very fabric of our society? How can something as silly and fun as the Road Runner (car or cartoon) exist alongside assassinations and violent protests? I’m no philosopher, just a car magazine hack. But I think you can look at 1968, and maybe the entire decade, as a crucible. Not a physical one, a metaphoric one: “A situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new,” as my online dictionary described it. You could see these works of art, mechanical and cultural, as inspired by—or as a reaction to—the pressures of our severe societal unrest.

That’s my take, anyway. If you’ve thought about this too, let me know.

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[tgaoe]

Andy’s 2017 Music Report

Favorite Albums, Favorite Songs, and other assorted temporally-specific ramblings.

Preamble

I. Dearth I listened to less music this year than I did last year, partly due to the immense amount of time required to finish my Master’s Degree, and also because I slept better. You may recall from last year’s treatise that I experienced something of a listening renaissance late in the year, turning to music during nights spent sleepless for work-related anxiety. 2017 marked my fourth year in my current job, and the first during which I began to feel confident in my own professional competence. Hence, less anxiety, fewer sleepless nights, less music. So it goes.

II. Duplicity, Disaffection Another reason. Prior to November 21st, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to a single band, the band that made my #1 record from 2016. They were also my most-listened to band of 2017. I went deep into their back catalogue, full immersion, and I found such joy and pleasure in doing so. The band helped me through a fraught, life-altering personal ordeal. I traveled to see them play and it was cathartic. However, on 11/21 it was revealed that the leader of that band may have betrayed much of what he/they claimed to have stood for as steadfast advocates for kindness, equity, and empathy. The woman or women he hurt are the primary victims, but secondarily his hypocrisy destroyed a community of people who connected strongly with his music. I believe in rehabilitation. But I also doubt I’ll ever be able to listen to this band the same way again, if at all. I share this troubling information because it undoubtedly colors this list. For weeks after the revelation I only listened to songs sung by women, maybe to offset the damage somehow, maybe to avoid connecting with another secretly awful man.

III. Disappointment Last year I wrote extensively about how the absence of releases from legacy acts resulted in my exposure to an unusually large number of new/emerging artists. That trend of exposure continued this year, for unfortunate reasons. Most new releases by old favorites proved little more than pleasant. Though something like 20 albums from 2017 fall into that category, only five or six made my list of favorites, and even some of those did so despite caveats. I suspect this may have to do with the current circumstances of my life more than with the music itself, at least in some cases. For instance, Sleep Well Beast will not appear below, but I am the only National devotee I know who doesn’t love it as much as their previous records. Time will tell, I suppose.

IV. Derelict I devoted significantly less time to this project this year than I did to its previous iterations, probably 20 hours vs. the usual 40-60. I usually track favorites all year and begin writing in October. This year I was much less diligent, not commencing writing until mid-December. It shows, I’m afraid. I did not keep an actual Favorite Songs list, nor did I keep a running record of micro-moments.

Blame the Master’s. Over five months of work my research project ballooned to 18,415 words spanning 118 pages—characteristically about twice as long as it needed to be. It’s a mystery how I mustered the energy to eke out another 6000 words for this thing after all that.

V. Dingus As always, forgive my assumption that readers of this monstrosity possess a certain level of familiarity with prevailing music culture. The writing reads better that way. Also as always, please forgive the preposterous pretense that anyone would want to read this, the bloviations of yet another obsessive 30-something white man desperate for your attention.

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2017

19 favorites because 19 was how many favorites I had.

19 The World’s Best American Band White Reaper Big, stupid, shameless riff rock; a record as fun as its title is ridiculous. The band almost has the chops to live up to it too, blazing through ten hook-dense, hedonistic rockers with fatalistic abandon. No introspection here, folks. The only lesson White Reaper has to impart is, “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.” Noted, dudes.

18 Cigarettes After Sex Cigarettes After Sex How to Make the Sexiest Music Ever, Apparently

1) Start with early Interpol. 2) Slow it down. 3) Tighten it up. 4) Strip away the fuzz. 5) Replace Paul Banks with Greg Gonzalez, a man whose smoky, sultry voice I mistook for a woman's until just now. 6) Drop the nonsense lyrics in favor of straightforward stories, proclamations, and invitations, all specific and intimate like the first xx record.

The result: a collection of variations on "Fade Into You" sans twang. Almost unfathomably sexy. The sexiest.

17 The Nashville Sound Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit I don’t love this album, but I do love all its songs. The Nashville Sound should have been a solo record with an accompanying full-band live release a few months later. The 400 Unit is so talented, so utterly professional that they can’t help but sound canned, over-produced, in a modern studio. Any old band off the street can be made to sound that way. What makes the Unit special is that this is how they sound live. They sound perfect. Perfection on record isn’t much fun.

Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of his generation. Case in point: Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” his best song and a contender for best song by anyone, famously concludes with the couplet, 

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

Isbell manages to casually convey the same sentiment through implication on Sound’s “Molotov”: 

Another life but I still remember A county fair in steamy September In the Year of the Tiger, nineteen-something

He remembers, but not that well, not the year. He doesn’t think of her that often.

16 Need Your Love Sheer Mag The opening salvo of “Meet Me in the Street” and the sort-of title track tells you everything you need to know about Need Your Love, the surprising segue of anthemic nails-hard rebel rock into heartfelt, slinky soul-funk. Sheer Mag is everything 70s rock, all facets, plain and simple, in timbre, tone, and demeanor, fitted to modern pop structure and sensibility. Massive riffs, throaty hollers, cavernous sonics, never not danceable. The last 40 years never happened.

15 Something to Tell You Haim Four years ago I passionately engaged in a pointless internet debate on the false premise of the superiority of Haim vs. Lorde. Of course this was less about the actual artists than it was the debaters’ desperation for validation of our own tastes and preferences at the expense of others’, which is a stupid thing insecure young white men do for some reason. However, looking back now and comparing the two entities’ work and public personas does reveal fascinating differences in their approaches and cultural placements, especially considering the rollouts and receptions of both artists’ follow-up records. I’ll write more about Lorde later (spoiler), but she crafts songs that achieve timelessness and universality seemingly unintentionally, through trope subversion and highly specific and personal writing. Haim achieves the same through something like the opposite approach.

Every Haim song feels like a glossy new product behind a high-end shop window, displayed uniformly, calculated and designed for maximum value and mass appeal. I’ve said this before, but Haim recordings sound like money, sound expensive. Because they are. Haim recordings are light, airy, sleek, tight, and huge. The lyrics strive for universality by exploring standard romantic emotional states in the most vague, impersonal, situationally unspecific possible manner. We do not know the identity of the “you” in these songs. Hell, we don’t really who the “I” is. We can project whoever we want. These songs are perfect manufactured products. That may read as negative criticism, but it is not. The total orderliness of Haim songs forces order on anarchy. Haim songs make the world simple, make it make sense. Every question has an answer, every problem a solution.

There is an exception that proves the rule here, a more experimental Haim song that towers above the others by subverting those established expectations of order, transcends them to depict in actuality the true messiness of love. That song is “Right Now,” and it is a monster jam, likely the best song Haim has ever written. The structure is confounding, the melodies don’t time out naturally, nothing musically makes sense, is rational, in the same way feelings don’t and aren’t. There is a call-and-response with which it is almost impossible to sing along because the response comes in like half a beat later than every other pop song has trained us to expect. Feedback blares, clicks click, hums hum. “Right Now” is imperfect, and in that it is the most perfect Haim song. It came not from an assembly line, it came from a soul. Or souls. “Right Now” even allows a single reference to an actual specific event, a quiet conversation overheard through a window, which, even though still somewhat vague, gives the song a level of personal meaning to the narrator missing from, you know, every other Haim song. More like this please.

By the way, this short PTA-directed performance film is incredible, and suggests that everything I wrote in that second paragraph may be negated when the band plays live.

14 Graveyard of Good Times Brandon Can’t Dance Brandon Ayers's collection of mom's basement DIY songs plays as much like a friend's great mix cd as it does a solo artist's album, intuitively-sequenced and formally experimental in the sense that the dude seemingly tries any musical idea that occurs to him, and there are so many here: stoned weirdo neo disco, 80s soft rock, wall-of-sound shoegaze, earnest folk, synthy dance rock, 90s industrial and more, all effortless, catchy and united aesthetically by competent use of limited production resources. Ayers's lyrics are always either smart or hilariously, knowingly dumb as he explores a kind of mundanity inherent to a life of low-budget hedonism, as well as how much he loves his dogs, mom, sister, and grandma. Can't go wrong with that.

13 Villains Queens of the Stone Age Josh Homme and Britt Daniel have much in common culturally, both mid-40s men who have spent nearly two decades each as highly unlikely sex symbols, sustaining multi-decade rock careers, stalking stages with maniacal, borderline-predatory confidence. But musically they’ve shared few qualities until now. Villians has airless, precise grooves similar to some Spoon records, but, you know, with that Queens menace and evil. The QoTSA has always been a band about perfect playing, but this time Homme brought in preeminent funk racketeer Mark Ronson to help shape Villains. The result is the shortest, most accessible record the band has ever made. Actually, it is not the shortest—it just feels that way. Villians cooks, showcasing the same old Queens, aggressively showy and prone to extended digressions, but with arrangements more focused, lightweight, and compressed than ever before.

Make sure you stick around for the entire song. Trust me.

12 I Love You Like a Brother Alex Lahey What is happening in Australian that the country keeps producing these witty, confident female punk singer/songwriters? Alex Lahey’s style certainly mines a similar humorous vain to Courtney Barnett, but her approach is more energetic and less erudite. I always feel held at a distance by Barnett’s music; listening to it is almost a purely intellectual exercise. Lahey’s, however, has a casual immediacy that makes me want to smile and laugh and dance.

The title track is both punk as hell and sticky-sweet, a genuine love song from a sister to a brother, insanely catchy and refreshingly sincere. I am no one’s sister, and my brother and I, though we love each other, have never had a connection quite like the one Lahey documents here. Still, I so feel this jam. It follows the album’s opener, “Every Day’s the Weekend,” an actual love song, albeit one about having fallen for a broke, emotionally elusive charmer. “Fuck work, you’re here, every day’s the weekend,” is lyric of such powerful brevity, so effectively conveying the feeling during those times when someone exciting has unexpectedly exploded into your life. The hilarious “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” another gatestormer, follows, and then the album starts to mutate into something more complex and interesting.

I Love You Like a Brother begins as an aggressive punk record, but slowly warps into atmospheric, radio-ready stadium rock. On a couple occasions this may be to its detriment, but as a whole the album serves as a solid testament to Lahey’s versatility as a writer. The lyrics of “Awkward Exchange” are comparatively anonymous to the earlier tracks, but the open sound, dynamic structure, and wordless chants beg for massive festival singalongs. It might happen. It should happen. The two approaches combine on “Lotto in Reverse,” perhaps Lahey’s greatest triumph here, an inward-focused dirge grafted onto a massive, hooky rock song that more than earns its prominent placement on Spotify’s Badass Women playlist.

11 Go Farther in Lightness Gang of Youths Christian music is terrible, almost all of it. Not just because it all still sounds like U2, but because none of it deigns to explore actual life as a flawed human who happens to be Christian. This is so intentionally. The Christian music industry is insidiously Randian; cynical and deplorable. Gang of Youths is fighting back, hard.

Singer/songwriter David Le'aupepe is a vulgar spiritualist, kind of a like an Australian David Bazan or Sufjan Stevens in the way he publicly struggles to reconcile his faith with his human proclivities. His studious lyrics often recall very early Bruce Springsteen, with their expansive vocabulary and wide-ranging cultural literacy. The band met in church (like U2!), yet the man swears with relish and documents his perceived failings as well as his issues with the spirtual institution to which he belongs. Get a load of this, from “Perservere,” which is actually my least favorite song on the album:

But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job What words to hear, and I’m a mess by now 'Cause nothing tuned me in to my failure as fast As grieving for a friend with more belief than I possessed

Imagine that at Sunday service! If all Christian music was this nuanced and genuinely introspective then, well, Christian music wouldn’t be a ghetto. It would just be more music.

This album is long, almost feature-length, most of its 16 songs stretching beyond five minutes. Fortunately, the wealth of ideas and arrangements sustain the length, if only just barely. Gang of Youths are adventurously egalitarian in their consummate unoriginality, adamantly subscribing to the notion of Ecclesiastes 1:9, content to let Le’aupepe’s compelling narratives give the band identity as their arrangements freely pillage ideas from the most successful indie rock bands of the last decade, mostly those who can now fill arenas; the Killers, the National, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, LCD Soundsystemm Bloc Party. My favorite songs here pound forward relentlessly like Titus Andronicus. On some songs Le’aupepe’s words tumble out uncontrollably like Gareth Campesinos, on others his voice could be mistaken for Matt Berninger’s low growl.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention how appealing I find it that there are no white people in this band. It’s rare and refreshing to hear this kind of massive music from a cultural perspective so different then my own.

10 Hot Thoughts Spoon Spoon is a band of consummate constants and variables. The band knows exactly what defines it, what listeners like, and they always deliver while also changing just enough to surprise. Every record, every song, reliably has three particular elements: an airtight hard rhythm groove, simple, catchy, repetitive; a masterful command of pop structure; and Britt Daniel’s enigmatic brand of ultracool, vaguely sexual vocal swagger. The other sounds around those elements, the atmospheres and tones, change with each record. Hot Thoughts delves deeper into the psychedelic G-funk timbres the band played with some on They Want My Soul, as Daniel continues to explore nonthreatening, acceptable ways to express desire. In short, it’s another Spoon record, and it rules.

9 Strangers in the Alps Phoebe Bridgers I keep coming back to lyrics. Lyrics draw me in like nothing else, the more smart, personal, and specific the better. Lyrics don’t come more specific and personal and smart than Phoebe Bridgers’s. She tells vivd stories, recounts memories of events and emotions by conjuring indelible, detailed settings and images with devastating depths of feeling, mostly over quiet, close-miced acoustic guitars underlaid with noninvasive strings and other atmospherics. Prepare to be haunted.

Though she sometimes doesn’t bother and the songs don’t suffer for it, as on the incredible “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers can also write the hell out of a chorus. Try not to get “Motion Sickness” stuck in your mind.

Strangers in the Alps does take a production risk I would understand some finding off-putting. Sometimes sound effects supplement and/or match lyrical events; a plane flying overhead, a boot crunching leaves, the kind of thing. It’s strange at first, but ultimately sets the album apart from others by similarly earnest stool-seated strummers.

8 Near to the Wild Heart of Life - year’s best title Japandroids I’ve seen this band play three times. The third was this year. Those previous had been with friends, and before the shows we drank and goofed around, celebrating our affection for each other and getting just the right level of lit up. This year I took a vacation day from my professional job, drove to St. Louis alone, and waited in line alone while reading a screenplay by one of the guys I used to go to shows with, eventually watching the show alone while nursing a single beer. It wasn’t the same. But it was still good.

Japandroids write what they know. Seven years ago what they knew resulted in a masterpiece, an album more relatable to me at the time than any other. Indeed, Celebration Rock remains my all-time favorite record, its ragged, propulsive riffage and emotional narratives of kinetic nights with close friends still have the power to take me back to that time, when I had more energy and a will to wildness. However, over the long interim between albums, the Japandroids’ lives and mine ceased to resemble each other. My closest friends moved. I have bills and a career and a generally pleasant, stable life—one distinctly not wild. Meanwhile, those dudes are evidently still globetrotting, every night out there swilling top-shelf tequila to nurse the heartache of intercontinental romance, living hard and loving harder. I no longer relate. As a listener I’m an observer now when I was once a participant. However, while I don’t connect with latter day Japandroids experientially, in a way the fact that Wild Heart still plays great for me despite that suggests that Japandroids is a legitimately great band on a musical level, rather than one just great for its ability to bash out messy, meaningful feelings..

These dudes are not shy about their laziness as songwriters, at least in terms of prolificacy. They release music as soon as they’ve reached the requisite minimum quantity of great songs, and it takes them forever to do so. Like the two previous Japandroids records, Wild Heart has only eight tracks, and they cheat even to amass that many. While Celebration Rock included a (totally awesome, raucous, thematically-appropriate) cover song, this time one Wild Heart track is an interlude, barely a song (“I’m Sorry [for Not Finding You Sooner]”), and another is just bad, sounding like a high school garage band trying hard to write a Japandroids song (“Midnight to Morning”). They really shouldn’t have let that one through. But man, the other six songs still kill with the same ferocity as before, some with an increased sense of melody and hook, and they all sound great live and feel great to shout along with, which, let’s be honest, is mainly what this band is for, and has always been for. The shouting just means a little less to me now.

7 Don’t Be a Stranger Nervous Dater Rachel Lightner has the gift, my favorite gift. She expels what she considers her worst qualities, and she does it through great songs; extremely catchy, smart, driving, dynamic punk songs. She does it publicly, with casual confidence. She makes it look easy and, most importantly, normal. Feeling how she feels is not unique. Sharing those feelings legitimizes them, creates a community around them. I mean, look at these lines:

Cause when things get quiet I feel uneasy I need my friends or at least just the sound of the TV To keep these things in my head from screaming “You’re inadequate! You’re a piece of shit! You could run forever but you’d never get away with it! And if people really knew who you were, They’d probably cover up the ground that you walk on with spit!”

If you can’t relate, then I envy you. If you can, and if you like punk, you need this band.

The players behind Lightner are also great, building arrangements that match incidental turns in the lyrics. The lines above are from the title track. Listen for how the song bends and nearly breaks as the narrative does the same, then recovers before almost breaking again. The band follows a formula, each instrument doing a specific job. Drums, bass, and one guitar lock into rhythm, while a lead guitar incessantly plays highly-involved tasto solo hooks. The band rarely veers from its set aesthetic, and when it does, it does so with purpose.

Occasionally a male member of the band will cameo, supplementing Lightner’s self-excoriations with early-2000s emo-screaming in the background. It’s a signifier that, intentionally or not, effectively ties Lightner’s music back to that era, an era that very intentionally excluded and delegitimized women’s voices. As has been proven time and time again in recent years, that was stupid. Women do it better. The contemporary women making emotional, personal punk music are doing it so well that nobody’s come up with a term like “emo” to dismiss it. I love being alive right now.

6 Big Fish Theory Vince Staples For when people ask what kind of music I like, that impossible question almost only asked by those who do not share the obsession, I have developed a stock answer of surprising accuracy. The smartest versions of punk, rap, and country. Country is a fudge, designed to open up a conversation about what “smart” country is. Dorks call it “alt-country.” Anyway. That’s a separate essay. You may have noticed that Big Fish Theory is the first rap record on this list. I am not tapped in to most contemporary rap. The slow, repetitive codeine scene doesn’t do it for me, and rap is more about single songs and premium playlist placement than it is about albums now. The album-focused rappers are dinosaurs. Four fossil-rap acts made solid records this year, and three made my list. Ranking them was difficult, and I am not at all confident in my final assessments. Vince Staples could have ranked highest another day.

Some days I like Big Fish Theory more than DAMN. Vince Staples’ world is less complicated, more concentrated and angry. Some days unnuanced anger is what I want. For fuel. Case in point, compare the two’s thoughts on the President and the country. First, Kendrick, hinting and contemplative:

Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

And Vince:

Tell the President to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the one percent to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the government to suck a dick, because we on now

And, of course, both men appear on “Yeah Right,” every bit as glorious a linguistic whirlwind as could be expected.

Also, I don’t know another rapper more musically experimental, forward-thinking, and adventurous than Vince Staples, including Kendrick. Vince is admirably without ego here (humble!); often letting the music overtake his voice, having faith in listeners to look up his words if they so desire. Much of Big Fish Theory is essentially modernized Chicago house with rapping, while also proudly West Coast. And it bangs, hard.

5 Melodrama Lorde This one took time. It took reading younger people’s perspectives to appreciate, grow to love. The first listen felt cold, staid. Pure Herione had been an instant rush, a loud announcement of a new, exciting pop personality, fully steeped in enthusiastically appropriated pop tropes of the time and letting Ella Yelich-O'Connor’s novel personality shine atop it all. Melodrama is different. She doesn’t shine, she seethes and writhes. She’s growing up in front of us, with surprising, precocious wisdom and emotional maturity.

There is nothing particularly contemporary about the sound of Melodrama. It’s less jokey, more earnest than Pure Heroine. And ultimately, despite that it does not provide the same sugary pleasure rush of its predecessor, Melodrama is far superior. It doesn’t sound like a time period, it sounds like first love and first heartbreak, because it is the manifestation of those. It sounds timeless, orchestral without an orchestra, because it is those things.

One track is a notable exception to the timelessness, and that makes it almost impossibly special. I will elucidate later in the Favorite Songs section.

4 DAMN. Kendrick Lamar Has there ever been an artist so deft at balancing/blending pure creative expression with commercialism? Until DAMN., Kendrick had achieved that balance through compartmentalization, by creating knotty, esoteric records, masterpieces, while also featuring on the most crass chart-bait singles imaginable. Another case in point: Kendrick made “For Free?” and appeared on the “Shake it Off” remix the same year. DAMN. inextricably fuses the two compartments without compromise. Almost every second of the album is both at once. Every song has earworm hooks and brain-breaking lyrical density. The record is jammed with potential singles, yet still works as a whole… even when listening to the tracks in reverse order. All hail. DAMN. is unquestionably the best album of the year, but even so, and even though I flew 1500 miles to see him play it live his hometown… it is not my favorite this year. DAMN. somehow isn’t even my favorite rap record, a late-breaking change-of-heart that took me by surprise.

3 RTJ3 Run the Jewels It’s too long. Let’s get that out of the way. But it’s all essential. For months I said that cutting “Hey Kids” and “Thieves!” would have made a better record. I was wrong. “Hey Kids” is the weakest track, for sure, but Killer Mike’s verse is straight up canonical, despite the relative frivolity of El-P’s bars and the idiocy of Danny Brown’s feature. “Thieves!,” on the other hand, after some close-listening and Genius deep-diving, is one of RTJ3’s best tracks, a massively ambitious dystopian sci-fi narrative that subtly riffs on Hamlet. Part of that ambition is manifested in a structure quite different from the straightforward presentations we’re used to from these guys; listening without the proper context doesn’t provide the furious pleasure typically associated with Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike & El-P were in an unenviable position prior to releasing this album. RTJ1 surprised everyone, even its makers; a no-stakes lark that happened to be much better and more special than that due simply to the sheer volume of talent involved. Expectations for RTJ2 had been high as a result, and they were exceeded as the band chose to treat the project with seriousness and gravity, leveraging their newfound fame and cultural relevance/reverence for conscientious advocacy. The result, RTJ2, is an unimpeachable classic, one I will listen to for the rest of my life. How could they top it, or even match it, without repeating themselves? By ratcheting up the ambition even further, and with it the risk.

Run the Jewels had been many things on their first two records; angry, funny, aggressive, stoned. Introspective was rarely one of those things. On RTJ3, the duo turn their focus inward, exploring feelings, emotions, and motivations as they apply to the external world in a manner they had never done previously. They also continue to make hilarious dick jokes.

The first and last four tracks are the best work they’ve ever done, the bookends especially. I didn’t appreciate just how great “Down” is until seeing the group close a couple live sets with it. The friends with whom I saw those shows and I were confused by that choice, but it caused us, or me at least, to listen to the song differently, to consider it as the type of song to close a set. Turns out, the choice was a great one. This band has become a band about hope manifested as anger and action, and no track conveys that notion better than “Down,” no RTJ album does it better than their third.

2 Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker Julien Baker creates stadium soundscapes using only a clean electric guitar and/or piano filtered through looping pedals. Many artists try this and fail. Especially in a live setting, it’s a cynical trick often deployed to impress perceived plebes, as I’ve seen Ed Sheerhan and, sadly, Elvis Costello, do in person. But for Julien Baker it is not a trick. It is seamless, unnoticeable; technical mastery not for its own sake, for impressing an audience, but for empowering expressions of deep feeling.

Turn Out the Lights is so much more than its production and arrangements, however. Baker is one of the most talented living writers, singers, and performers. Her percussion-less, entirely solo arrangements exist only to serve the themes of her songs. She’s one woman, onstage or on record, alone with the power of a full orchestra as she looses her interior on the world, her battles with addiction and depression, her fight to square an existence as a Christian and queer person, and her longing search for love and meaning through it all, the constant quest to hurt less.

1 After the Party The Menzingers If this were a list of “best” rather than “favorite” albums of the year, After the Party would be much lower, possibly not even included. There’s nothing innovative or original happening here, nothing generation-defining, no new ideas or calls to revolution. But there is an endless well of energy, feeling, and hyper-competent rock musicianship. The Menzingers have one of the most able rhythm sections working, serving the songs of two extraordinary writers, who seem incapable of picking up guitars without creating stadium punk hooks as indelibly catchy as they are heavy. This is smart, pure, meat-and-potatoes rock music, the meatiest and starchiest.

Beyond the wholly satisfying drive and force of the band on a primal musical level, these dudes have a real working-class, post-religious Midwestern mentality, despite hailing a little too far east to fully qualify. Many of these songs deal with how to gracefully age and settle while maintaining an uncommon resistance to traditional values. It should come as no surprise how strongly I relate. Earlier I mentioned Japandroids, how their initial records depicted the romance of early-20s debauchery and intense friendship. The true triumph of After the Party is how the The Menzingers manage to write about moving forward, building lives with partners, embracing careers and domesticity while also looking back fondly at bygone wild days without romanticizing them, fully owning that a calmer life is a better one, but allowing that the past was pretty damn fun.

After the Party may not become a timeless classic like other records on this list might, but this year it was the album to which I connected most. It was, and is, mine.

A Few of My Favorite Songs of 2017

8/7 “Truth Hurts”/“Water Me” Lizzo Lizzo should be a huge star. She’s like André 3000 good. She’s my Beyoncé.

Including these songs here is like an honorary Favorite Album spot. I listened to the two singles back-to-back more times than I did most albums this year. Lizzo has talent in excess of her excess of confidence and swagger.

Music journalists could not shut up about the two times Rihanna rapped on record this year, a little on the Kendrick album and on the only good 45 seconds of the N.E.R.D. album. Both instances earned effusive and universal praise. It bothers me that Lizzo doesn’t get that type of attention. She raps, sings, and writes far better than Rihanna, better than most pop stars working, really, and she often does it all in the same song, the same line.

“Truth Hurts” is a total kiss-off rap banger, insidiously catchy as it deconstructs and rebuilds the chorus of “Black Beatles” into something much better and exponentially more driving than its lugubrious origin. “Water Me” is an aggressive funk jam that Lizzo goes nuts over, showing off the full range of her voice, trying about a hundred different modulations and weird ideas. They all work, and together form some truly transcendent pop.

Check out her older stuff too, including a couple unlikely collaborations with Sadie Dupois from Speedy Ortiz (!) for my punk friends.

7 “What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” Gang of Youths This isn’t another “Younger Us,” a song that so fully represents a period of my life that the opening chords still sometimes have the power to make me tear up. But it does take me be back to another time, and moves me in a similar way to the Japandroids classic. I haven’t told many people about this, but though I didn’t openly quit the church until a few months after graduating high school, I had struggled to maintain faith for a few years, even while playing in a devoutly evangelical Christian rock band.

“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” takes me back to a specific morning, a bone-cold, see-your-breath morning, driving to school my sophomore or junior year, listening to the first song from the second Spoken album and weeping at the lyrics’ longing prayer for help and guidance. In hindsight, Spoken made objectively bad music; comically derivative and poorly-structured. Throughout the Gang of Youths album, and especially on “Fire,” similar sentiments are explored and depicted more articulately, with far superior musical acumen. I’ll never believe again, but it’s nice to be made to have those feelings again, to experience unforced sympathy for another’s spiritual struggle.

6 “Right Now” Haim See the last paragraph of the Haim album entry above.

5 “Even” Julien Baker Julien at her most simple, most distilled, uncharacteristically just 4/4 quarter-note strumming an acoustic guitar, showing us that her layered productions would be nothing without the powerful songs beneath them. And what a song, karmic allusions and memories of conflicts.

It's not that I think I'm good I know that I'm evil I guess I was trying to even it out

Yeesh.

4 “Supercut” Lorde That word, and its power. Until recently no expression or single word existed to describe that wistful wash of isolated, curated romantic memories, warm-tinted flashes of the loveliest tiny moments of a lost relationship, ignoring fights and infidelities, only seeing sunshine. The good parts. And knowing its nature, indulging it with caution, recalling fondly and reliving without desire to return or recreate. “Supercut” could not have existed at any other time, on any other album, by any other artist. Lorde took the most modern of language and forged a work of art of crushing emotional truth; timeless, indelible, perfect.

3 “HUMBLE.” Kendrick Lamar I saw Kendrick play his first ever solo headlining arena show in his hometown. When it came time for “HUMBLE.”, the music dropped out after the initial “Hyeuh, hyeuh!,” and Kendrick let the crowd rap the entire song acapella while he just gazed around, observing in awe. The moment was magic.

2 “If We Were Vampires” Jason Isbell I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to write about this one without getting inappropriately personal. It’s been a hard year for me in certain relevant ways, and this incredible song has not helped matters.

1 “God in Chicago” Craig Finn The adjective “cinematic” doesn’t do justice to “God in Chicago,” which, despite lasting a mere four minutes and forty-five seconds, and not being cinema, is one of the best films of the year, a devastating, seedy road trip romance with a tight plot, loveable flawed characters, and an ambiguous ending. Craig Finn fronts my favorite band of over a decade, and yet this is the best thing he’s ever done. Every detail matters, every word and phrase considered and intentional. It’s Craig’s “Chelsea Hotel No 2,” a quiet meditation towering over an oeuvre of louder, more sensational and populist work. I love this man.

Appendices

I. Albums I enjoyed and/or listened to often but did not become favorites for whatever reasons Allison Crutchfield, Tourist in this Town Arcade Fire, Everything Now Big Thief, Capacity Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder Bully, Losing Charly Bliss, Guppy Cloud Nothings, Life Without Sound The Dirty Nil, Minimum R&B Drake, More Life Fat Joe/Remy Ma, Plata O Plomo Father John Misty, Pure Comedy Feist, Pleasure Craig Finn, We All Want the Same Things Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet Jay-Z, 4:44 Jens Lenkman, Life Will See You Now LCD Soundsystem, American Dream Migos, Culture The National, Sleep Well Beast Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The French Press Ryan Adams, Prisoner Sampha, Process Sylvan Esso, What Now Tigers Jaw, spin The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding Waxahatchee, Out of the Storm Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry Worriers, Survival Pop Yaeji, EP2 Yr Poetry, One Night Alive

II. Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time So many. Basically any album on any list covered on this site—the ultimate resource for end-of-year music dorkery--that I didn’t mention in my document I would have at least given a cursory try. That’s my normal process. There just wasn’t time.

III. A vain attempt to string together some final thoughts I’m exhausted, too exhausted to force a cute unified narrative onto my experiences with music this year beyond what I already have. As for the future… I’m excited, in a different way than normal. I don’t know what’s coming out next year. I haven’t done the requisite research. I’m into the idea of just letting it happen, letting New Music Fridays reveal themselves week-to-week.

Haha, just kidding. As soon as I post this I’m jumping in headfirst, making a 2018 Most Anticipated List. Sayonara suckers.

[freedinsidelove1]

MY NAME IS ANNIE SPRINKLE AND I AM A SYBARITIC COUGAR WITH ECOSEXUAL TENDENCIES. I am new bride, recently married to the Earth, the Sky and the Sea, and engaged to marry the Moon. Never had I imagined that I’d be so lucky in love, or become so consumed with seemingly crazy, taboo, sexual desires. Nothing prepared me for this kind of relationship, and for this strange, new sexual identity. There is so much to learn that I feel like a total eco-virgin, sun kissed for the very first time. Last night I arrived here in Akumal, Mexico by plane, from my home base in San Francisco, California. It is the perfect setting for a honeymoon adventure; a comfy condo apartment with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, which open right onto a white sand beach, a baby blue sky and a florescent turquoise-green Sea. Tropical birds sing me joyous songs as my Sky lover blows ocean-scented breaths all over my face, arms, and under my soft, slinky, leopard-print floor length nighty, which I bought special to wear on this honeymoon. It drapes nicely over my curves, and frames my abundant cleavage to perfection. You’d never know I got it at Target, unless you had one just like it. My gut is filled with anticipation, as though I’m about to eat the ripe, juicy apple from the Garden of Eden’s tree of knowledge. I wonder will the apple send me into rapture, or be poisoned? Or both at the same time? I can almost taste it, because in truth I’m no eco-virgin at all. I’ve been ‘round the planet more than once, and its no secret that I’ve had far more ecosexual experience than most other gals my age. It wasn’t just the great ecosex that brought me to this pregnant honeymoon moment. For years, the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon and I were, you could say, just friends. We liked each other a lot, and had what I’d describe as an ‘erotic platonic’ relationship. We didn’t see much of each other, as I was a city girl; born in Philadelphia, raised in L.A., and spent most of my adult life Manhattan. There weren’t a whole lot of opportunities in my life for meaningful connections with the Earth, Sky, and Sea, with the exception of four wonder-years I spent in Central America, in Panama, from the age of thirteen to seventeen when Dad worked for the US Agency for International Development. Panama was a lush, jungle paradise filled with ecosensual delights. My teenage experiments with psychedelics on “Tits Beach” made for some transcendental connections with nature and its elements. It’s possible that’s where my relationship with the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon really took hold. Or perhaps this relationship actually goes back to the womb, or further. Since I took my wedding vows, ‘to love, honor and cherish the Earth, Sky and Sea until death brings us closer together forever,’ my love grows bigger, deeper and more Universal every day, and penetrates every aspect of my life. I’m quite certain that we will be together for the rest of my life. I would be nothing without them. On this honeymoon I expect to get to know more about my lovers and what makes them happy and satisfied. But all is not sunshine and daffodils. Last night when I first arrived here at the condo with my luggage in tow, what was the first thing I saw in front of me? Nothing less than a huge, dreaded, killer Palmetto bug—aka the water bug—that indestructible, dinosaur cockroach. Was this a warning sign from the Universe that danger lies ahead? I’m scared. Will my new relationships work? Will I be worthy? There are issues; my fears of intimacy, old coping mechanisms, negative thought patterns, baggage from past relationships, societal taboos, not to mention the earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. There were also things that happened in my childhood. Between the ages of about seven and ten my younger sister chased me with giant water bugs whenever she found them. I’d run screaming into the safety of the bathroom and slam the door. She would then put them under the door and they would crawl towards me while she laughed, taunted and terrorized me. This created some deep wounds--for which she has since sincerely apologized. A shaman-therapist suggested that in a past life I had lived in the jungle, been tortured, and when left to die my body became covered with crawling water bugs. There were maggots involved too. Will I ever be able to overcome my childhood (and past life) nature abuse? In any case, I can no longer deny my romantic, and erotic, attraction to nature. Society does not support this kind of relationship. Look at the eco-sex negative names like “tree hugger,” “hedonist,” “beach bum.” “Pagan,” “dirty girl,” “tom boy,” “flower child”… The list goes on. We must reclaim these! Say it loud, say it proud, “I am a nature lover!” Those of us that can, must come out of the closet. Perhaps when people get to know us and realize we are part of their communities and in their families things will get better. Of course lots and lots of people don’t even realize they are ecosexual. They need to be educated. We need an Ecosex Community Center, an Ecosex Film Festival, a march on Washington to demand more environmental protections. Oh dear, here I am, working again--and on my honeymoon. OK, so I realize that I am anthropomorphizing the Earth, Sky, Sea, and Moon—attributing them human-like qualities, the way people anthropomorphize “God.” The Earth, Sky and Sea are not human beings, and human beings are not the Earth, Sky and Sea. --Or are we? This experience is so new that anthropomorphizing is the only way I can manage to even begin to explain it. Hopefully I will find better ways to speak of these things in the future. Here in Akumal, I’m grateful that I can share this honeymoon with my beloved, human life-partner, Elizabeth Stephens, aka Beth. She and I are walking hand-in-hand on this amazing bio-sexual adventure. We came to these life-changing self-discoveries at the same time. We fell madly in love nine years ago. For the first couple years of our relationship we desired to be totally monogamous. A couple years later we decided to practice what we call “adventurous monogamy.” We’d have erotic adventures together; like going to a neo-burlesque show and getting a lap dance, or doing a sensual massage evening with our sacred intimate, Joseph Kramer, or we’d find ourselves being voyeurs at a friend’s sex party. Things really changed five years into the relationship when we bought a little cabin in the woods of Boulder Creek, California. It was there that we found ourselves turning green-- what with all the talk of solar power, global warming, recycling, … green was in the zeitgeist. We discussed it and decided to open up our relationship to become what we call ‘pollen-amorous.’-- to take the Earth as our lover. Looking back, Beth and I can see how the experiences in our lives shaped us and brought us to this--our destiny. Perhaps she and I were drawn to each other by greendar, sensing each other’s latent ecosexuality. In any case, we are glad we found each other. There aren’t too many other partners that would let their wives marry, and make love with, the Earth, Sky, Sea and Moon. Now Beth and I want to share our enthusiasm for this kind of love, and the things we’ve learned and are thinking. We hope our story will help and inspire others like us, or help others who aren’t like us understand us, and ultimately we hope to help to protect our beloveds the Earth Sky, Sea and Moon. WHEN I KNEW -- CHILDHOOD When I first knew that I was an ecosexual I was five. My family moved from to sunny California from dark Pennsylvania. My parents bought us a house with a sparkling blue swimming pool. I remember, the first time I jumped into our. The rush of the cold water; my heart pumping, lips tingling, toes curling, the pure body pleasure. I floated, buoyant, the light twinkling on the top of the water like fairy glitter. The sound of the splasssshhhh, then the silence of the deep end. I became one with the water. I was a water ballerina, beautiful, graceful, at peace. I loved the taste and scent of the chlorinated water. I became renewed, refreshed. Even though I knew it was naughty, I peed in the pool. They don’t call me Sprinkle for nothing. When I knew that I was an ecosexual I was nine. My dad discovered Yosemite and he fell in love. In retrospect, my dad must have been an ecosexual too. Our family visited Yosemite several times a year. That’s when it started, between me, and the redwood trees. I liked them BIG. And they were HUGE! Big, round, hard, but soft, redwood trees. Gentle giants. I loved the scent of the trunk, like vanilla mixed with soil. I have a strong memory of coming across a redwood that had fallen over from a storm. I walked around and peeked at its freshly exposed roots. So soft, so sensuous, so sexy! I had to touch them. When I knew that I was an ecosexual I was ten. It was at night, when we were camping. My family would gather wood and make a fire. I was a Camp Fire Girl! We crumpled newspaper, topped it with kindling and lit it with a match. When the flames got going we added logs. It would start slowly, then build. Eventually the fire became raging, hot, I could feel the heat on my skin. I loved the smell of the burning wood and smoke. I could stare into the dancing flames for hours, and find so many colors; reds, oranges, yellows, even blues, greens and purples. Flames licking wood with intensity. The logs florescent with burning embers, like a painting on black velvet. I would watch until the fire went completely out. That’s when I knew. MY GREEN TEEN YEARS My first oral sex experience was in communion with nature, on a secluded beach two hours north of Panama City. Mathew Van Guilder Howell was a sweet older man at twenty-four years old. He owned The Golden Frog, a hippie coffee shop. I was a shy, sweet sixteen, high school student and budding hippie. We did what young people did in 1969 on their first date; a hit of mescaline. That night there was but a sliver of a moon, and the stars were only how stars can be on a jungle beach on the equator—more bright and abundant than anywhere else on the planet. There were so many shooting stars it was like a fireworks display, but way, way better. The gentle, rhythmic waves massaging the sand were filled with plankton, which made them glow in the dark with magical phosphorescent sparkle. Nature was at her most glamorous and seductive, dripping in diamonds. Van and I got naked. My heart was open and pumping, my senses aroused, and I was in love for the first time. I laid on my back, dug my feet into the sand, and let my knees open like butterfly wings to welcome the Universe in between my thighs. The splash of a wave spit on my belly and vulva. For a few timeless moments the Universe and I made an exquisite, erotic, cosmic connection. Then Van kissed his way down my body and gave me, what we called at the time, “head.” To this day Van and I remain friends, but it is the Earth, Sky, and Sea that I ultimately married. As I think about it, my most memorable teen ecosex experiences were when I was in an entheogen induced altered state. Like when I took a hit of orange sunshine (LSD) and sat by the stove and watched, transfixed, the miracle that is water boiling in a metal pot for a long, long, long time. The sounds the bubbles made against the steel pot were hypnotic and beautiful. Like when I ate psilocybin mushrooms, buried myself up to my neck in cool sand and lay cuddling with the Earth for an eternity. Like the time I smoked opium and watched a giant sea turtle lay her eggs on the beach. Like when I ate some peyote buttons in the Arizona desert and made love with a big, erect, suaro cactus. There was no touching of the cactus for obvious reasons, but I swear, that cactus and I exchanged our sexual energies. These experiences, and a few others like them, I treasure highly and wouldn’t have missed them for the world. MY ECOSLUTTY NEW YORK CITY YEARS At eighteen I moved to Manhattan. Like leaving a high school sweetheart behind when one goes away to college, I just didn’t have much use for nature anymore and was just fine without it. For years and years the city satisfied all my needs. I had an exciting and happy life in the sex industry, working in massage parlors, making porn movies, doing burlesque, and posing for sex magazines. Eventually I successfully transitioned into the art world, touring internationally with my one-woman performance-art-theater shows about my life. I also became a sex educator, and the first porn star to get a Ph.D.. On the rare occasions when I did venture out of the city into the country, it was mostly to the Wise Woman Center near Woodstock. In summers women would gather there to learn “wise woman traditions” at the famous, eccentric herbalist, Susun Weed’s rustic old house and barn-like studio located in an old, abandoned rock quarry. The WWC was surrounded by numerous acres of woods, rivers, and waterfalls. There was a lake, which had a thick blanket of green algae across the top but you could still swim in it, sky clad. Gardens, goats, geese, pet spiders, insects and fairies were all part of the curriculum. It was at the WWC that for the first time I heard someone mention, in passing, the concept of the “Earth as a lover” as an alternative to “Earth as a Mother.” This grabbed my attention! My motto had always been “eroticize everything.” Sex was my thing, my path, my language. Maybe I, a big city slut, could reconnect with nature by thinking of the Earth as my lover. The first time I went to the WWC was for Blood of the Ancients, a week-long gathering with rituals and workshops honoring menstruation. My curiosity about what such a gathering would entail led me to sign up. Women spun stories of walking into the woods, sitting on moist moss and letting their menstrual blood drip down on it as a way to nourish and connect with the Earth. Women spoke of bleeding into cotton cloth pads, then soaking the pads in water and using the bloody water to nourish their plants, and to feel earthy. While I definitely thought these practices were pretty out there, I also liked the idea of these intimate, symbolic gestures and later tried the bloody-rag-water idea out for myself for a few months on my two motley houseplants. The women all sang songs together about blood and the Earth around the campfire and in sweat lodge ceremonies. “Blood of the Ancients, flows through my veins. Forms die, but the river of life remains.” “The Earth is our Mother. We will take care of her. Hey yunga, ho yunga hey yung yung.” “Earth my body, water my blood, air my food and fire my spirit!” “The river is flowing, flowing and flowing. The river is flowing, back to the Sea. Mother carry me, a child I will always be. Mother carry me, back to the sea.” Even though it felt a bit silly, it was nice to sing about, and to, the Earth. In any case, there was no denying that shit grew like crazy all around the place. The next summer I returned to the Wise Woman Center for Green Witch Week. Just after my green witch initiation, Susun Weed invited me to teach there. So for ten years, every summer I went and taught a four-day Sacred Sex workshop with my friends Jwala, Barbara Carrellas, and Linda Montano. I had come to fancy myself a red witch and a sacred prostitute. We taught the usual stuff about g-spots, erotic massage, sex magic, tantra, and had Sluts and Goddesses dress up and performance nights. But on the fourth afternoon of our workshop, when the workshopees were ripe and ready, I’d give them a most unusual assignment; “go out into the woods alone and have sex with something in nature, like a tree, a rock, a cloud, or a waterfall.” I’d coach them. “Use all of your senses, smell, touch, taste, lick, kiss, rub, hump…” Sometimes I would do a little demo—like I’d lay across a hot granite boulder, kiss it, lick and taste it, sniff it, hug it, hump it, breathe it in... We’d all have a good laugh then off to the woods they’d go. Two hours later, we’d gather again in a circle for kiss and tell. “I made love with a waterfall, and it was the best sex I ever had.” “It was amazing. I got totally into this lavender bush.” “I never thought of doing this before but I had a great experience with some lichen and can’t wait do it again.” “I fell asleep by the river and when I woke up there were butterflies all over my body. It was so beautiful.” The women were overwhelmingly excited, amazed and satisfied. Of course there were always the Goddesses of Distention who held back. They just couldn’t, and wouldn’t go there. “Way too kinky.” But those that gave themselves over to the assignment agreed; nature was one hell of a hot lover. We teach what we want to learn. In the late 80’s and early 90’s I wrote a series articles for Penthouse magazine. One was about a Native American shaman, sex magician and teacher named Harley Swiftdeer and his five-day Quodoshka workshop. He was the real deal. Harley taught me the best sex technique in the world--the Fire Breath orgasm-- also known as the FBO. It’s a circular breathing technique to breathe ecstasy energy into and up one’s body and then out into an electric energy orgasm release. With the FBO one can learn to harness, build, and move sexual energy, which can then be utilized for all kinds of things; hotter partner sex, physical healing, emotional cleansing, spiritual nourishment, shamanic journeying, and more. When I saw his more advanced students all demonstrate it, I knew I just had to learn it. It took me a couple years of practicing to get the total hang of the FBO. I’d practice it at home alone or with other people who knew how to do it. But it was the day that I practiced the FBO in Central Park by the lake near the Alice in Wonderland statue, that I really GOT it and had my first big, electric, full body, blissful energy orgasm. The technique can be done with clothes on, standing or laying, and could be interpreted as someone doing yogic breathing or some sort of tai chi moves, so I don’t think anyone in the park knew what I was up to. Watching the light dancing on the water, breathing in the scent of the dirt, and the sounds of the pigeons around me were just the inspiration I needed to get me over the energy orgasm hump. Learning the FBO was pivotal for me in my ecosexual evolution. Through my breath, some kegals, undulation, and intention, I could make love with the Earth, Sky and Sea energetically. Over the years that followed I taught hundreds of others; men, women and trans people, to do it too in workshops I called “Ecstasy Breathing” or “Fun With Breath and Energy Orgasm,” and often gave the technique a bit of an ecosexual twist. Certainly a person does not have to be outside of a city to have good ecosex. For example, there was the time I was laying on my living room couch masturbating with my Hitachi magic wand when I looked out my eleventh story window, over the skyscrapers and into the sky when a big, white puffy cloud cruised me. Earlier I’d been reading the book Sexual Secrets and there was a quote I resonated with. “I am the sun, the moon and all the stars. There is no temple as sacred, no temple as blissful, as my own body.” I medibated on that thought and found myself fantasizing that the cloud was watching me, coming closer to me, then enveloping me in its pillowy puffs. This was very pleasurable, and triggered a series of deep clitoral orgasms, accompanied by a burst of emotion, which I call a crygasm. My favorites. As I came out of a divine afterglow, a wave of shame washed over me. Was I some sort of cloud pervert? Was there a difference between what Shere Hite told me was a totally normal recurring rape fantasy doing a live sex show with a horse, vs. a fantasy of making love with a cloud? I decided to ask the cloud, is this for real? Is this consensual? Am I totally nuts? In that moment a red helium balloon floated up into the sky and pierced the cloud, like with Cupid’s arrow. I took this to be a sign that indeed our love was real. Then before my eyes the sky darkened and it started to sprinkle. A cloud ejaculation! That was one of the best sexual experiences I had ever had, and I’d had many. For a long time I never spoke to anyone about this experience. It was a love that dared not speak its name. Occasionally I would find people with whom I could talk about ecosex. My friend Michael L. confided that once when he was camping he had an affair with a bright yellow flower that grew outside his tent. He masturbated with, and ejaculated on the flower a couple times. When it the flower started to die from old age, it made him so sad that he ate the flower and they became forever one. My friend Andrew R. shared with me about his tree in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which had a big hole in its trunk. He would sneak inside that tree, masturbate, and come inside the tree. He developed a very strong bond with the tree, a deep love. Jasmine D. a yoga teacher friend, told me about the day her boyfriend broke up with her. She was crying face down on the grass. Suddenly she felt the life force of the Earth shoot into her, which triggered a full body Kundalini orgasm, the biggest she had ever had, which was for her a profound, beautiful and healing experience. She never cried over that boyfriend again. Although I didn’t have a name for them yet, my ecosexual proclivities continued. Vegetables were a favorite dildo; namely the classic cucumber and the occasional carrot—I admit this was before we knew about washing off the pesticides. Water has always my favorite of the elements. On some special horny occasions, I’d lay on my back in the bathtub, straddle the faucet, turn on the water, and have beautiful watergasms. Or straddle a hot tub jet when I could find one. I loved doing clay masks, and to exfoliate in the shower with scrubs made of oatmeal, honey, lavender and rose. Steam baths, spa treatments with natural products, and aromatherapy scents made life extra pleasurable. As a sex worker I relished the occasional mud-wrestling photo shoot, the outdoor sex scenes, and the nice John with the yacht in the 79th street boat basin. In my personal life, having sex in the great outdoors was always a very special, all too rare, treat. Such was ecosex in the city. MY MERMAID YEARS Around my fortieth birthday the Sea began to beckon. “Come to me. You can’t resist me. Come to me. I want you.” Like the time I was in Scotland with my lover Mary. We were standing at the edge of Loch Ness looking for the monster when I heard, “Come to me, come to me…” My tears could not be withheld and Mary hugged me tight. “I feel so disconnected from nature,” I cried. “No wonder,” she said, “it’s the middle of winter for Christ’s sake.” But I knew it was more than that-- I was out of touch, and I knew in my heart that I had to get back to the Garden. So I inched myself away from Manhattan to live by the Sea. First I moved to East Hampton for a year. Then made my way to live in Provincetown where I fell in love with the humpback whales. After a couple years I was called to the Pacific Ocean, got a houseboat in Sausalito and lived right on top of the water, happily in rhythm with the tides. When my houseboat burnt down while I was out of town I learned about the power of fire. Free of material belongings, I took off with a male-to-female transsexual, named Captain Barb. We floated north on her fifty-five foot boat three years in a marina on Orcas in the San Juan Islands. I recreated myself as a mermaid. A WORK IN PROGRESS TO BE CONTINUED.