#and a lot of it just happens to be bloody

[menlove]

"Life After the Bastards: 30 Years On, Macca Tells All"

"Blamed for the break-up for the biggest band in history, Paul McCartney downsized rapidly to cultivate a successful pop smallholding. Yet a bountiful solo career was always dominated by two famous partners, he tells Paul Du Noyer."

i said i'd do this ages ago and then the horrors happened, but this is a written up version of an interview by paul du noyer with paul mccartney from mojo's july 2001 issue.

sidenote: this seems to be the source for the claim that john thought "dear boy" was about him, which is why i bought the magazine because i haven't been able to find a digitized version of the interview and wanted to get the context. but it's a very fascinating interview just in general so it's definitely worth a read!

Wings were a band who seldom felt the feathery end of the critic's quill, but this year we're seeing Paul McCartney's biggest effort so far to rehabilitate the second most popular group he ever belonged to. He's released a double-CD and a documentary, both called Wingspan, that tell the story as he would like it told. And you soon realise that there's more than a muso's pride at stake in this project. "The great thing is," he says, "it vindicates Linda. I know she wanted to do the Wingspan thing. She knew if it was laid out correctly, people would get the idea. With all the slagging off she got, like the famous tape at Knebworth..." (This illicit cassette, from the mixing desk of a live show at the outdoor venue, was for years a dependable source of satirical mirth in music business circles; Linda McCartney's off-key vocals circumnavigate the chorus notes of Hey Jude, while anonymous engineers hoot cruelly.)

"The truth was," her loyal widower continues, "she was doing this (he stands, raises his hands to clap above his head). She was being the big cheerleader: 'Hey Jude, naah-naah-na.' But you don't see the visual, you just here this out-of-tune voice, and I know she always wanted the record put straight. And this does. You see her playing. You hear her singing beautifully. And you see what she was to the group. You see why she had to be in the group. She becomes the ballsiest member of it..."

He settles back on the sofa, here in the Soho office of his MPL company. Around his neck is a slim pink tie of the kind that Elvis used to wear. On his feet are trainers that look less like a gesture to trendiness than a concession to comfort. Just behind him is the Art Deco statuette that appears on a couple of Wings LP sleeves. The other great thing about the Wingspan film, he says,was being interviewed by his daughter Mary. (That's her face you can see, peeping out from Dad's jacket on the cover of the first solo LP, 31 years ago.) "I'd never had such a long natter with her, as doing this. And I used to say to my kids, You're the only ones who never ask me about The Beatles. Their friends would come round and say, 'What was it like being in The Beatles?' I'd go (adopts pompous old git voice), Well, let me tell you... And my kids would all go out the room: 'Oh bloody hell, he's off...' That's how kids are, they don't want to hear about that shit. But their friends would, so I'd chunder on..."

In fact he chunders on about The Beatles a lot more than you might expect. Or about one Beatle in particular, at least. The World's Most Famous Living Liverpudlian is anything but reticent when it comes to the World's Most Famous Dead Liverpudlian. It's quite contrary of him, because for the first 20 years after the group split up, he showed a stubborn reluctance to discuss the subject with his interviewers. They wanted to ask about John Lennon; he wanted to discuss Back To The Egg... Then came a reconciliation with his past that culminated in the Anthology exercise, when the moratorium on Beatle-talk was entirely lifted. And now, in 2001, when the promotional agenda has switched back to Wings, you almost have to coax him off the subject of John Lennon. Is it just force of habit, or maybe the need to exorcise some kind of long-nosed, bespectacled, sharp-tongued ghost inside his head?

Taste restrains Paul from claiming any posthumous victories over John, though it's no secret that he still has some differences with Yoko that are as wide as the Atlantic that normally separates them. But he can't resist smiling at the irony of Lennon spending his last few years championing the sort of domestic cosiness that was once a derided part of the McCartney stereotype.

"Yeah, it's lovely. But you're right to say they were stereotypes. Everyone thought John was the hard, working class hero. As you know, if you look at his house, he was actually the middle class one, from Woolton. We were the scruffs. He had the full Works Of Winston Churchill: nobody any of us knew had that. A set of encyclopedias was the most that anyone in our class had. But he had The Works Of Winston Churchill, and he'd read 'em, I think.

"There were so many stereotypes of John. And I love the fact that in the end- it's one of the great blessings of my life, seeing as he got shot- that during the last year, we made it up. Thank God for that. I would be just so fucked up now, if I'd still been arguing with him and that had happened. I was thinking about it just the other day. It was cool that I'd started ringing him. We'd had a bread strike over here and I rang him and I was saying, What are you doing? He says, 'I'm breaking some bread.' Oh! Me too! Imagine, with the stereotypes, John and Paul talking about baking bread. He'd just had Sean, and he was talking about just padding round the apartment in his dressing gown, putting the cat out and changing the baby.

"And I'd been doing all of that, and as you say, I'd been stereotyped for it. It was really warm to be able to talk to him that ordinarily, finally. It was like we'd got back to where we'd been when we were kids. It was like we could actually talk about stuff that didn't matter, but somehow it did matter..."

Back in 1970 neither John nor Paul, nor George or Ringo, would find The Beatles an easy beast to walk away from. Paul and Ringo seem to be at peace with it now; John would probably have become so; George never has. Besides the legal wranglings and the personal rancour that persisted between them for a while, there was the unique problem of getting used to living in a world that you no longer ruled.

Pop in the 1960s was like a pyramid. At the top obviously, were The Beatles. Around them and just below, were Dylan, the Stones, the deposed King Elvis, and so on down to the broad base of innumerable also-rans. But pop in the 1970s was more like range of mountain peaks, topped by anyone from Elton John to the Sex Pistols. There was also no unified hierarchy any more, and there hasn't been one since. McCartney can't have found the new world order an easy proposition. But he overcame his doubts the same way that he overcame his blacker periods in The Beatles. In other words, he worked.

It's one of those first post-mop top albums that we discuss in detail today. McCartney (1970) and Ram (1971) were curiously anti-climatic in their day. The first was home-grown, small-scale, contentedly modest, like a record made for his private diversion. The second was sprawling and eccentric, full of unfinished tunes and nonsense rhymes. This was an era when former Beatles were still expected to return from the mountain bearing tables of stone (which Lennon and Harrison certainly attempted to do), not these gaudy, giggling indulgences. Three decades later, McCartney and Ram have endured far better than anyone expected.

It's typical of McCartney, though, that he's still insecure about their worth. He has a peculiar, wrong-end-of-the-telescope way of assessing his talent. He tries to talk up McCartney by telling you that "Dave Stewart really likes it", or boasts that a hippy van driver once yelled across the LA traffic, "Ram! Great album dude!" Recently his girlfriend Heather Mills put it this way: "He is a genius but doesn't realise it, which is delightful."

Towards the end of The Beatles you were dying to get back to playing live in a band, weren't you? But your first move is to go the opposite way and do a totally solo album.

Yeah. I couldn't have another band because I wasn't sure The Beatles had actually broken up. It was on the cusp: we hadn't broken up when I started it, so it was just me doing some solo stuff. And then we had broken up, but things hung on. It basically started from John's decision to leave the band, which came when I said I think we should get back together and do some little gigs. And he said, "Well I think you're daft and I wasn't going to tell you until after we signed the Capitol deal but I'm leaving the band." (Mimes an axe falling) That was, like, The Moment The Beatles Broke Up. But it wasn't in the open until a few months later, when I issued the McCartney album and did this press release with it, which virtually had the announcement. I finally blew the whistle on it. And John was annoyed, even though he hadn't said anything. It turns out, he told me later, that he wanted to be the one who announced it. He was jealous that I beat him to it. But I felt that three or four months was enough to wait around. Either we were just going to fuck about for another year, or we had to actually say to people, "You know what? About three or four months ago we actually broke up." So that was how that happened.

So in your head, The Beatles were still together when you were making McCartney. Whereas the outside world heard it as "What Paul did after leaving The Beatles." I think it seemed a strangely low-key record, as a result.

No. It was on the cusp. There were a lot of funny things around at the time. Allen Klein: he was the one I wanted to sue to get out of it all. But everyone said, "He's not party to any of the agreements, he's just an outside guy. So you'll have to sue The Beatles." So I got into this terrifying thing of having to sue them, scared more than anything of the fact that, as you say, people would just see this album come out, hear my announcement and then hear I was suing The Beatles, without knowing any of the context. So I knew I was in for problems. And I tired my best in the press to say, "Oh, blah blah blah, it was Allen Klein, blah blah." So it was a shitty time for me. The only option was to either let him take it all, and the guys just swim along with him, or fight it. He said I was fine, "Don't worry, McCartney loves me" and all of this. And I knew I was hating the bastard. But to get out of him I had to sue the guys. And, as you know, Liverpool, the mates, no matter how much we were arguing, it's one thing you don't ever want to have to do. So I knew the perception of me would, like, be deadened from there on in. And I suppose in many ways I've been fighting that for 20 years. But it was a clear choice: do that and possibly save it all- or even lose it and pay the lawyers' bills, which was not a terrific option- or just let Klein take it all. 'Cos the others were just with him, gung ho. So I took the option of suing him and had to live with that perception, including: "This is what Paul's done as his first move after leaving The Beatles." Which was actually the nicest bit of the perception: I did an album after The Beatles, so what? The worst thing for me was, I sued my best mates. But the thing is, looking back on it, they now say "Thank you, you got us out of it, we wouldn't have Apple, there'd be no Anthology, no I record, it'd all be in someone else's pocket now." It was the right thing to do, but I knew I was walking into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Very scary, but it was one of those moments in your life when you have to do it.

And, of course, we were hearing McCartney just after Abbey Road, which was at the opposite extreme.

Very produced, yeah.

Despite the problems going on around it, McCartney sounds a pretty cheerful affair.

Yeah, it was, because of Linda. I was just starting with Linda and in my mind the album was my escape from it all. I'd get home, new baby, that joy... any readers who've got a new baby, it transforms your life. I hadn't had a baby before, though we had Heather from Linda's first marriage. Home was a great solace for me, and making this record was "Yeah, this is what I love to do." The rest, outside, was shit, but coming inside it was like a little cocoon. So I either made the album all at home or went down to a little studio in Willesden. Lin and the baby in the control room. Young married life is a very special time. And I always liked doing things on my own. I was the kid in Liverpool who sort of went on a bus to the next stop, to Penny Lane, and got off and just looked around: "Who lives there?" I still like that, it's in my personality to just go somewhere and watch people. Last night I took the Tube home. We went to the theatre, couldn't get a taxi anywhere in the West End. I really get a charge off that. George never used to. His dad was a bus driver. I'd say to him, even when we were famous, I love getting on a bus. He'd say (astonished), "The bus? Why? You've got a car!" But you're just looking at people. And now of course, with fame, they're looking at me a bit.

There's one or two on the Tube last night, cracking up laughing. Guy in a baseball cap, decides he's got to cool himself out, pull it together, gets off at the same stop: "All right mate? Good luck!" So that's where the record got its happiness. And when the time came to release it, I finally had to deal with Mammon, which was Apple. Ring them up and say, "Er, can I have a release date?" Neil [Aspinall] gave me a date. I was kind of boycotting Apple, and Suddenly Mammon decided to change my release date for (adopts sarcastic tone) the massive Let It Be album. And I'm, "You fucking bastards! I've got a release date worked out! How can you do this?" I can't remember what happened, but I certainly shouted loud enough. So it was Rage Against The Machine, me against them. That's why it was a good album for me, and it's pretty funky, some of the little pieces like Momma Miss America have a great sound on them. I was like a professor in his laboratory. Very simple, as basic as you can get, a joy to make. (Scans the tracklist) Teddy Boy was good, I'd tried to make that with The Beatles but no one was having much patience with me. Maybe I'm Amazed was about the biggest song on it. And Kreen-Akrore was about an Amazon tribe I'd seen, who were fighting for survival, I went into the studio and recorded the sound of a bow and arrow going past the mike. Even now that album has an interesting sound. Very analogue, very direct.

The next album, Ram, is famous for its supposed attacks on John and Yoko, isn't it?

Well, Too Many People was a bit of a dig at John, because he was digging at me. We were digging at each other in the press. Not harsh, but pissed off with each other, basically.

Have I misheard, or does it really start with the words "Piss off"?

Yeah. Piss off, cake. Like, a piece of cake becomes a piss off cake. And it's nothing, it's so harmless really, just little digs. But the first line is about "too many people preaching practices". I felt John and Yoko were telling everyone what to do. And I felt we didn't need to be told what to do. The whole tenor of the Beatles thing had been, like, each to his own. Freedom. Suddenly it was, "You should do this." It was just a bit the wagging finger, and I was pissed off with it. So that one got to be athing about them. Once you start, the ball starts rolling. There was a picture that we had for Hallowe'en of the two of us in silly masks that we picked up at a kids' shop in New York. I'm Wimpey out of Popeye, and Linda was another character which looked a bit Oriental. We heard later that they thought that was a dig at them, but it actually wasn't. So when John did a piss-take [in a postcard given away with his Imagine LP], he held a pig instead of the ram. This wasn't posed. Me and Linda decided to catalogue all our sheep, so there's a photograph of me holding every bloody sheep in the flock. Over 100 of them. I was supposed to be cropped out.

Is that where the title came from?

I remember driving up to Liverpool at some point and deciding that Ram would be a good title for an album, then the picture came, and you can "ram" a door down, and a "ram" is a male, like a stag. It just seemed like a good word. Monkberry Moon Delight I liked, so much so that it's in my poetry book. "My long-haired lady." Very '70s. Ram On is a cute little thing on a ukelele, 'cos I used to carry one around with me in the back of New York taxis just to always have music with me. They thought I was a freak, those taxi-drivers. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey was an epic thing, a Number 1 in America, surprisingly enough. I like the bit that breaks in: "Admiral Halsey notified me, da-da-da, had a cup of tea and a butter pie." It's a bit surreal, but I was in a very free mood. I like all of that. It must have freaked a few people, 'cos it was quite daft. Back Seat Of My Car is very romantic: "We can make it to Mexico City." That's a really teenage song, with the stereotypical parent who doesn't agree, and the two lovers are going to take on the world: "We believe that we can't be wrong." I always like the underdog.

I think John might have taken Dear Boy as an attack on him.

Dear Boy wasn't getting at John. Dear Boy was actually a song to Linda's ex-husband. "I guess you never knew what you had missed." I never told him that, which was lucky, because he's since committed suicide. And it was a comment about him, 'cos I did think, "Gosh, you know, she's so amazing, I suppose you didn't get it.

The LP sounds like you had more tunes lying around than songs to use them in. A lot of the tracks are like medleys of different ideas.

Yeah, Long Haired Lady goes off a bit, Back Seat Of My Car goes off a bit, Big Barn Bed comes off Ram On, that's right.

No writer's block at that point, then?

No, I've been very lucky about writer's block, touch wood. It occurred to me the other day that me and John never sat down on, what was it, 295 songs me and John wrote? And on those 295 occasions, we never came away without a song, which is fucking phenomenal. The only time we nearly did, was Golden Rings, which became Drive My Car. It was "duh-duh duh-duh golden rings..." Um, this is not gonna compute. Finally, we had a ciggie and a cup of tea and our humour came back and Drive My Car came out of that. Some people analyse songwriting. I've never known about it. It's fingers crossed, every time I sit down to do it. I just dive right in and hope for the best, and it seems to work.

Were you feeling in competition with the other ex-Beatles, now?

Yeah, we were all in competition. Which was a weird thing, trying to avoid each other's release dates, like we'd avoided the Stones' release dates in The Beatles. When John or George released an album, I'd check it out, to see where he was up to. I think the truth, as a lot of people have said, is that we were missing each other. We missed the collaborative thing, of John saying, "Don't do that" or "Do that". Sparking each other off. For a while I was certainly very conscious of it. The only good thing was that I had been writing without John for a while, towards the end of The Beatles, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was still a pretty big shock just not to be hanging out with these guys. 'Cos I'd hung out with them since I was 17.

Even when you were not writing together, on later Beatles records, there must have been a stage in the process where the others listened to your songs, and vetoed them or otherwise.

Exactly. John brought me Glass Onion. I remember him out in the garden in St John's wood saying, "What do you think of this?" We would just run it past each other, like you would run it past a mate or a producer. And he actually asked me, "D'you think I should put in this line about the Walrus was Paul?" I said, Oh yeah! It's brilliant. I just generally tended to agree with his stuff, and he tended to agree with mine- like in Hey Jude, i was going to knock out that line about "The movement you need is on your shoulder." He said, "You're not, that's the best line in it." So, often it wasn't negative but bolstering each other up. I might go through the whole studio experience thinking, This line's not right. But the minute he'd signed off on it, I thought, This line is ace! Similarly with him and Glass Onion. It was the strength of unity.

It's always striking that, of the four solo Beatles, George and Ringo got off to the strongest starts.

Yeah, George's All Things Must Pass. As he said, it was just like a diarrhea, he must have held it in for so long. And he had Phil [Spector] and a lot of really good people. And George was just so pissed off with us. I mean, all that anger just came out. Which is a good thing for an album, the "I'll show you" factor, which I had later in Band On The Run, when two of the members left the night before. So George and Ringo did get off to very good starts. John and I took it a bit hard, but all in all throughout the years we all did pretty well as single acts.

You formed a band for Ram, but it's not yet Wings.

Not yet, no. Denny Seiwell turns out to be in the band. Hugh McCracken who plays on a lot of it, who was nearly in the band. He came to Scotland to rehearse, but he was such a New York guy that he didn't really like to be away from America, and I can see that. New York is such a satisfying town, you can walk one block and get anything, whereas you can't do that in the Mull of Kintyre...

The first official line-up of Wings, which makes Wild Life, includes Denny Laine.

Denny came from The Moody Blues. I'd seen him when were out on tour with The Beatles and we'd played with them. My enduring memory is of one night up in somewhere like Edinburgh on tour, we'd had a few drinks and we decided that The Moody Blues would play The Beatles at snooker on this very beautiful, full-sized snooker table. Instead of being sensible and playing one at a time against each other, in a kind of league, they all got on one end of the table and we all got on the other, and I'm afraid the table got trashed. Oh shit. So I knew Denny, I knew we could get on personally and I liked his voice, particularly from Go Now, which I championed. I remember taking that around the BBC in its early days and saying, "Have you heard Go Now by The Moody Blues? It's my favourite record of the moment." And those producers would take notice of us. I was also used to having another lead voice in the group with me, so Denny became that.

And this time there's a friendlier song for John.

Dear Friend was to do with John, a bit of longing about John. Let's have a glass of wine and forget about it. A making up song.

Finally you do what The Beatles wouldn't agree to do, and get back on the road.

It seemed to me that for a band it's essential. We'd given it up in '67 with Sgt. Pepper when our new decree was, "The record will go on tour and we won't. We'll make a great record and send that out instead." But what happened after that was, we made some good records, but missed the stimulus of going out on tour. We missed seeing the whites of their eyes and getting a reality check: "They liked that one, they didn't like that one." And we hadn't done it for so long that my choice was, Either give up music, or continue to make it. I wanted The Beatles to go out as a live band, therefore I ought to go out as a live band. So we got a band and hatched the plan of going out on the university tour. Didn't want a big supergroup, a Blind Faith-style thing. I wanted to try and learn the whole thing again, hopefully learn some new things, rather than just repeat The Beatles things, which had all been done, and been about as successful as anyone in the world was ever gonna be.

But you took the informality to extremes, not even booking hotels.

No gigs or hotels or anything. Looking back, I can't believe we did that. We had the van, the dogs, the kids, and it was just madness. It was like I'd never been in The Beatles, I couldn't rely on any of that fame as a crutch. We went up to these universities, and fate had it that a lot of them were having exams. We didn't ring them up and ask if they'd be ready for us. And the other thing was we walked into power cuts: it was the time of the Great British Three Day Week. My image now is of trying to find our way around the dark North with a torch. Is anyone in? Like trying to find a gig in a mine. But we found a couple. Nottingham was one. Lancaster we played. Newcastle City Hall. Durham. When we did find places it was really cool. The students had a good time.

And you had the unfamiliar experience of handling money again.

Yeah, it had all been cheques and accounts and stuff, bank statements. And suddenly it was 50p on the door. So we came away with these bags of coins, which reminded me of Peter Sellers in Tom Thumb: One for you, two for me... We just counted them out in the van afterwards. Good experience, going through all those hardships, and it got us together as a band.

But that line-up wasn't to last, and nor did any Wings line-up. Why?

I've never actually thought about it. I know it happened but I've always blanked it. Probably, in my mind, a band is a democratic unit. Everyone has an equal vote, and in The Beatles for 10 years that had been the case. So if Ringo didn't like one of our songs, which wasn't often, Ringo could veto a Lennon & McCartney song. That meant everyone felt good about themselves. But in Wings that wasn't the case. I was the ex-Beatle. So I saw myself as the leader of the group, which I'd never been in The Beatles. There wasn't a leader in The Beatles. People had said that John was, and later people had said that I was, but neither of us ever acknowledged it. It wasn't the deal. People would ask, "Who's the leader of the group?" We'd say there wasn't one. I think once or twice in Hamburg, in the early days, John said, "I am." But we got pissed off, so it became a democracy. But Wings wasn't. It wasn't a dictatorship, but we weren't all equal.

By the '70s there was suddenly lots of other big acts: Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, Bowie, Pink Floyd, even The Osmonds in their way, or Abba. Was it difficult, as a Beatle, to adjust to the new landscape?

I knew it was going to be difficult. There was this thing of Follow The Beatles. You found yourself just one of the acts in the Hit Parade, rather than the undisputed leaders. But I knew by starting the group from scratch that we had to work our way up So anyone like Zeppelin or Bowie who'd been building during the '60s and had now arrived, naturally took precedence. You just had to understand that there are people bigger than you. And it gave us a benchmark. We thought, "We'll be as big as you one day." It was very weird for me, starting all over again. But it wasn't the world's worst thing. It was quite sobering, really. It's good to be knocked off your perch. There was a lot of that with Wings. Not only was I doing things for myself with the band, I was personally doing things for myself, living up in Scotland, mowing the field with my tractor. In The Beatles, the office used to buy your Christmas tree for you. Now I was buying my own Christmas tree. I enjoyed that . It's unhealthy to think you're the big cheese all the time. Within The Beatles, we each reminded each other that we weren't. But I think there is a big risk with stardom. I'd ring up a restaurant and say, Have you got a table? "Sorry sir, we're full booked." It's Paul McCartney here. "Oh! Certainly, Mr McCartney!" I've never been comfortable with it.

It seemed like you were uncomfortable with The Beatles' legacy for most of your time with Wings.

The thing about Wings was we bought into the myth that it could never be as good as The Beatles. I knew it was the world's most difficult thing to bite off. Everything we did was in the shadow of The Beatles, which had recently been this phenomenal band. So we did everything with quite a lot of paranoia. And it's only on looking back, that I think we did a lot of great work. You look at '76, we have this big, big tour, and at first everyone wants to know, "Is this gonna be a Beatles reunion? It's rumored that McCartney blah-blah-blah, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are going to join him on-stage, and John Lennon blah-blah-blah." So it was rumoured The Beatles were going to re-form. Even in our most successful year they were taking our success off us. It was, "Well maybe The Beatles will re-form, that would be good." But the great thing was that three weeks into the tour it was suddenly, "Who cares?" It doesn't matter. This is a great band. And at the end of it we go and set some big world record. So that's good to see. We did this thing that we set out to do. And we needn't have worried.

[hjellacott]

I am always a Jewish supporter, and I acknowledge the deeply ingrained Jewish roots of my own genealogic tree, culture and country, but bloody hell, OP, I couldn't have written worse or more untrue things if I'd tried.

Yes, the Holocaust was a horrible thing, unarguably one of the very worst atrocities of humanity, but for God's sakes, how dare you talk as if you are the only ones who can hold onto anger for generations? The Holocaust only happened in the 20th century. Up until then it's 20 centuries of horrible wars, war crimes, atrocities after atrocities, and even afterwards, have you heard, for example, of Hiroshima? Or have you heard about the horrors of the Eastern European wars? My god quit the victim playing, yes you suffered horrible things, but you're not alone even in the slightest, and you don't get to have the full right to holding onto anger and playing victim forever.

To be entirely honest, I think no one has that right. Syria has been at war for decades, Yemen, numerous countries in Africa (where pirates prevail) and Asia, Eastern Europe (with Kosovo not that long ago, now Ukraine), and so on. And nobody is playing victim and going like "nobody gets it like we do!" And no one should be living in a permanent state of victimisation and acting like only they have the right of anything, like nobody's suffered like them, like nobody's had more injustice than them. Because whatever injustice and suffering you think you or your people have gone through, chances are someone else had had a million times more. And it's not a fucking competition.

Also, what's this bloody bullshit of "we rebuild, we don't need anybody's help, we don't ask anyone to help us, we do not hate"? Decent Jews are like that, but newsflash, the world has shown us that's not the majority of Jews, starting by this post in facebook, that is all about victimising and playing pity only to then pretend to be better than anyone. Israel, and Jews, the vast majority, are FULL of hatred, resentment, pity games and victimisation. Full of it. And those people love to cry like oooh nobody ever helps us we're so alone we're forced to fight alone... and it's not fucking true. Israel has had so much international support and help over the years, a lot of it out of guilt for the Holocaust, and Israel has used it to do absolutely horrific things to Palestine that are as bad as if not worse than the holocaust, and span many years more than World War II. Full of hatred, resentment, and remarkable violence, a lot of it against children and civilian, and for the only reason that they're not Jews, and the excuse that some of them are terrorists. Like the Israeli government isn't terrorist.

Keep in mind that I am separating the religion from the country, religion from politicians, and bad people from good people. I don't believe a single religion is evil, but I know evil people use religion as an instrument of evil, just like good people use it as an instrument of good. I don't believe someone's a jerk just for being a Jew, just like they aren't for being a Christian, or a Muslim, or anything else. But I do believe you've got to be such a tosser to write a post such as the one above from FB, and to support the horrors Israel is committing, always under the excuse of the Holocaust and Hamas.

I have sat in museums, crying as I stared at the belongings left by the Jews that were massacred during World War II, and I am sure each and every one of those poor innocent souls would be absolutely disgusted and horrified to see what has become of Israel and many of its people, and they would ask you how the fuck dare you to repeat such war crimes and horrors and to do so in their name?

[taamlok]

here's a collection of all the shadow figures i could find, under the cut for length and spoilers

i have posted about this previously, but there are 2 shadow figures that frequently show up in the game: one of them is kat and the other is corey. kat's shadow is doing her idle pose, and you can clearly see the strands of hair by her ears, her rolled up sweater sleeves, and the indents of her overall straps. corey's shadow sports his distinctive haircut, the silhouette of the outfit he's wearing the night of the concert, and also is standing in corey's idle pose with his arm crossed (he's even slightly rolling one ankle).

shadow!kat

ther first shadow!kat sighting takes place in 2022, where she can be seen on the righthand side of the bar when swann gets out of her car during the opening scene. (thank you @knifenick for telling me about this one!)

shadow!kat can also be seen standing in the corner of the cabin when swann breaks in for the first time. i think it's fair to say that she is the one who caused the "woosh" noise and posted the note with instructions of how to get in, especially since her knife is used to pin it to the post.

if you go up into the loft while cleaning out the cabin and approach the corn husk doll, shadow!kat blinks in and out of view

shadow!kat flickers behind swann right before the power goes out during their video viewing party

if you don't chicken out of bloody mary, shadow!kat appears behind swann in the mirror. you can even see the tie on top of her headband. interestingly, it was kat who made the dare and egged swann on to keep going

here she is again in the hunting blind, watching swann follow the moths to the abyss. weirdly, this version of her has no clothes or hair AND has distinguishable facial features, which is how i was able to ID her as kat. i don't think this was intentional and is probably just a bug with the shadow model.

shadow!corey

the first time you can see shadow!corey is when he knocks over the clown standee at the park. between this and shadow!kat hanging the note in the cabin, this is proof that both shadow!kat and shadow!corey can physically interact with their environment to some extent.

there are 5 shadow!coreys located in the forest on the night that the girls find the cabin. i was actually able to get 2 in one shot by using the freecam mode, however they are positioned in a way that stops you from being able to see more than one at a time in regular gameplay. it seems we're supposed to feel like the shadow is popping in and out of different locations around the forest. i also think it's worth noting that in both this scene and the scene with the clown standee remarks are made about there being a serial killer (swann optional dialogue and kat saying there's a masked serial killer in the woods, respectively). there's also the brief clip at the start of the game that shows someone wearing a wolf mask, which i think is corey (i brightened it in photoshop and could see his eye colour). not really relevant here, just food for thought.

here's shadow!corey watching the girls make their blood pact.

when we return to 2022 from the memory of finding the abyss, you can look out the window to find shadow!corey once again. nora and autumn are talking about him during this scene, saying that he was blamed for something that happened at the ranch.

if i missed any please let me know and i'll add them! also feel free to share this elsewhere, all i ask is that you please link back to this post because this took a lot of time and effort!

[franabz]

Fran Fran Fran!!

Idk when you’ll do asks or at least this ask but…

I need to see ghost x singleparent! Reader.

Lots of love

Sammy (reena)

★ Little things

You and Simon have been best friends since high school, and you both seemed to naturally gravitate towards one another. You both weren't exactly the most talkative pair which worked out in both of your favors quite nicely since there didn't need to be a strong conversation (if even at all) for the two of you to be content with one another. It was refreshing.

One thing led to another and suddenly you were carrying another man's baby fresh out of high school; a man you thought loved and cared about you all to turn his back the second he got that pregnancy test back positive. Simon always knew the man was trouble from the start, but you never should have had to find it out for yourself in these circumstances. He was always right there, even while on deployment to god knows where, listening to your broken sobs and blubbering stutters over the phone about how hard it was to juggle raising a daughter while having been fresh out of high school and barely running on multiple jobs with the pay that was practically a joke to you.

Starting off was difficult yes, but you never not once regretted what happened. You love your daughter Sydney with all of your heart and always did everything in your power to give her the best life possible, even if money was tight and she couldn't always get the candy in the grocery store checkout isles that sat oh so temptingly for her chubby little hands to get ahold of. In spite of Simon being gone and having joined the military, he always did his best to help you and give you the life he knew you deserved. You both deserved.

One day in particular it was raining exceptionally hard and Simon was fresh off deployment and needed a place to stay the night to clear his head and snap him back to reality after a jarring mission he never bothered to talk about. You knew better than to push. You were setting Sydney into her highchair, clipping the tray back onto the chair and stepping into the kitchen to scoop some food out of a pot for the toddler as she babbled incoherent nonsense followed by some random phrases like "Hungry" and "Bottle." Simon had just stepped out of the bathroom after a much needed shower wearing a black 141 branded t-shirt and a pair of joggers he luckily packed during his deployment.

You looked up from the plate of food you made for Sydney and gave him a small fond grin. He returned the grin and walked into the kitchen alongside you, leaning back against the cool marble countertops and watching you do you (something he could never get tired of)

"Hard at work I see." He muttered with a playful huff, taking a slight step forward while looking over your shoulder. "When am I not?" You snorted in suit "Taking care of this little gremlin is a full time job."

"Not like you have to remind me, birdie." He playfully waved his hand in a dismissive manner, setting his skull-printed balaclava onto the counter beside him. He never liked wearing it as a civvie. Especially not in front of you or Sydney. Simon much preferred to keep his work far away from the peacefulness of being around you and the baby bear, finding it his own little slice of home in the midst of the hell he goes through behind closed doors. Sydney squealed a little "Si-Si!" as soon as Simon came into her peripheral view, outstretching her small chubby hands and bouncing around in her seat like a loose spring in a couch. "Yeah, yeah... Si-Si's out. Don't go jumping 'round like a bloody bunny, missy." Simon's mouth cracked a sliver of a smile as he kneeled over, ruffling Sydney's hair fondly and earning a giggle out of the little girl.

You had been watching the whole exchange from the side, placing Sydney's food onto the tray of her high chair and fighting back a goofy smile "I'm starting to think she like you more than me." You joked, tilting Sydney's chin up a bit to tie a bib around her neck. "Don't be mad i'm cooler." Simon huffed, glaring at you without any heat. All you did was roll your eyes and pick up another plate, handing the hefty meal to Simon with a smile. He looked down at the plate of food forced into his hands and choked out a small scoff "You know I told you... You don't 'ave to feed me, birdie..."

You simply shrugged and pushed the plate of food further against his chest, the smile never leaving your lips. "And do I ever listen?" You retorted.

"No." He muttered, his voice getting smaller as he could finally feel himself crumbling under the delectable scents of cooked chicken that was unlike anything he'd ever eaten in an MRE. Obviously.

"Exactly." You hummed, smile growing in victory that he didn't put up a fight for once and actually accepted the food you gave him. "So eat up, yeah? I need you staying in good shape for when you're back out on deployment." You added, plucking a bit of extra chicken off the bone in the tray it was cooked in and popping it in your mouth, eye contact never breaking. Simon just sighed and set his plate onto the counter, eating slowly and savoring every bite as if it was his last time enjoying a home cooked meal.

It was the little things that mattered.

[weisshapt]

𝖆 𝖓 𝖘 𝖔 𝖓

when you close your eyes, what do you see? do you hold the light or is darkness underneath? in your hands, there's a touch that can heal but in those same hands is the power to kill are you a man or a monster?

for one of my favorites from one of my favorites @alistairs

[finnprof]

je m'excuse.................

[teaisfandoming]

I will forever love the conversation between Eddie and the priest because what Eddie truly needs is to forgive himself and to have someone give him permission to do just that.

[shad0wchateau]

uhhh fixation got so bad i made an au do we like weird yuri…

single imgs under the cut

[zlobonessa]

one aspect that always fascinates me about the witch cult is how much they are used-to-be humans-but-now-not-really-are. they were just people who sometimes were good in the way people are and sometimes were bad in the way people are. and then their lifes had been altered by powers so fundamentally that they just. lost touch with any humanity that they had. how do you comprehend being a hundreds years old? how do you comprehend being able to kill a human as simply as a mosquito? how do you comprehend being beyond time, beyond aging, beyond life and death, beyond your own body, beyond your own memories? it's a horror scenario accepted willingly, horror where instead of running from monster you shake its hand and convince yourself that that's all you ever wanted, because the alternative? the alternative is the existence so miserable you'd rather die than go back. the existence that may ask you to take responsibility for your actions, navigate your own life, change who you are as a person.

they cannot do that. they never could do that. they live for years and years, having powers to do literally anything and yet led by instructions in the book, further and further conservating in the state they were from a start, the moment they took a deal.

doomed from the beginning. never having a chance to escape. never wanting to escape, instead allowing your humanity to slowly seep away as a price for not bearing the weight of that it means to be human. damn.

[eyestrain-addict]

I feel like I should say I don't believe lestats version of events is entirely accurate because we're given multiple times where he just straight up lies (in the faux trial he omits that antionette was his mistress before they got claudia, during claudia, and after claudia left, trying to imply he only went to antionette when Louis wasn't sleeping with him (which wouldn't be a defense anyway but I'm just bringing up what he says)) so I think it's fair to say he wasn't being completely truthful but I also don't believe he was completely lying either because it doesn't seem like anything is truly different, it's just it seems the threads of Louis' mind were fraying way before they attempted to kill Lestat. Like we already knew Louis begged Lestat for Claudia. We already knew they fought.

However one glaring detail I noticed immediately and thought "he's lying" was during their fight, Lestat has a lot of blood on his face. As opposed to Claudia's account where he was completely unharmed. Given what we know about Lestat and Louis' strength, I don't think Louis would have been able to do that much damage to him even if he was trying his hardest and Lestat wasn't stopping him. I do however believe Louis laughed, because we already know Louis has a maniacal laugh, he does it in Dubai.

[scary-grace]

then I got worried that people were getting tired of seeing me post stuff.

CHEWS BITES. I AM NEVER TIRED OF SEEING YOU POST STUFF. I check this blog like its the vote tracking site election day

This is really kind of you to say, but I also have so many fics cued up/in progress that you might actually regret it at some point.

[the-narwhals-awaken]

Bloody Hearts Bingo Day 17

Prompt: See Ya, Whump | No matter what you say, or what you do, I'ma hunt you down 'til I find you

Rukia was well used to fury. Most didn't think it of her- tiny, good at seeming sweet for a few moments at least, brash and bold by nature but through a combination of the Kuchiki tutors and Sode no Shirayuki's demands and influence impeccably graceful and capable of being demure, with an ice-natured zanpakutou.

What most people forgot was that Sode no Shirayuki wasn't ice, exactly. Ice in and of itself didn't exactly forbid fury- ice was sharp and very easy to dispose of, so most ice-wielders with a temper didn't get caught easily- but it didn't seem furious the way fire or even lightning did. Sode no Shirayuki wasn't ice, though. Rukia wasn't quite sure what it was- snow wasn't it, but there were a concerning number of ice-and-snow-related subtypes and she only had so much time that she could spend digging through archaic texts and attempting to get answers out of her spirit before she had to go stab something or cool off somewhere else.

Rukia had held fury before. At the world, to keep her alive; at whoever had gotten in her way, out in the Rukon; at the world and a few particular Kuchiki elders, when she'd been adopted; all of that paled in comparison to what she felt towards Aizen. He'd ended up worse than scum just for what he'd planned- huge amounts of slaughter, destruction of the only forms of protection left for the spiritually powerful in exchange for even more chaos and destruction and a faint promise of 'things being better'. If he'd done anything at all to progress his goal in his time as a Captain, Rukia might have had a smidgen of mercy for him- not much, but a little- but he'd perpetuated the system he complained about and seemed unaware of the hypocrisy.

Hearing that he'd nearly kidnapped Inoue had been the last straw. For all his fuss about- well, everything, really- he certainly had no qualms about dragging the living into his fight. For that, and for all else that he'd done- hurting Momo, betraying every oath he'd ever taken like they meant nothing to him, all the people she cared about who could no longer trust their senses- she would make him pay.

Unfortunately, Aizen came with an army of the most fucked-up Hollows she'd ever seen or heard of, and they needed manpower. Rukia had gotten the mission- as an official Lieutenant, she was allowed to run off on her own to do things, and as the one with the most experience with those involved, she'd gotten first dibs.

If her timing wasn't being monitored- mostly because the Kido Corps was working on something weird with the cross-dimensional timing and she was being used as a test case- she would have ran off to spend some time with Ichigo and his friends- help out with Hollow patrol and relax from the war preparations. Even home wasn't safe- the elders were torn between retired Shinigami who understood but were grouchy about things and those who had never served, who did not understand and were being ever-more-strict about protocol in an attempt to compensate.

Instead, she knocked at the side door of the Shouten- the one she'd been instructed to use whenever on Gotei buisness.

Rukia was fairly certain that whatever C46 had intended with the draft document- now that she'd read it herself- was not going to work, if only because Urahara had made it clear he could get what he wanted without having to deal with jurisdiction issues.

It hardly mattered, though- she had another letter for Ichigo and his friends, and they'd accept- they had no reason not to, and Ichigo had already been willing to help. Formalizing it would only help them- they'd get pay, and supplies, and the same legal protections every Gotei member got. More importantly, it would ensure that should things get bad enough to get to Karakura, they wouldn't have just the Thirteenth to keep things properly wrangled.

This letter, fortunately, was accepted much better- and even better for the timing, all of them happened to be working through something in one of the side rooms of the Shouten. It looked to be homework, which Rukia politely ignored- it was good practice for the confidentiality training she was going through, at least. It had to be exam season, or nearing it- they looked haggard, and part of Rukia felt bad for the combat that they'd no doubt be going through.

The rest of her was delighted to be fighting alongside friends. Renji had made friends with most of the other lieutenants their age, but she was still working out how she fit with most of them and Momo was still not quite up to fighting shape.

All in all, Rukia thought things were going well. The rage in her heart could handle being put off for a bit, and though she was a bit wary of Urahara- the look in his eye reminded her of the guy who'd ended up having a massive pit full of child's corpses in his garden- he did good work. Aizen would fall and the rest would matter later.

[magnoliamyrrh]

did a tarot reading for the election for the shits and giggles of it bc i didn't do one before and what i got was basically a bunch of manipulation cunning deciet unfulfilled potential and a bunch of rancid vibes + judgement. didn't ask what was gonna happen i asked what is happening and boy that sure is the case

[newvegascowboy]

Playing the dnd version of Red is actually interesting to me because the context of their memory loss (or... lack of context i guess) really informs how they view romance and relationships and how they choose to live their life once they do regain their memories, and ir facilitates a lot of character growth.

Red in the game never goes through an amnesiac period, so they've just got to content with the immense weight of all their desires suddenly being freed and fed by the party, vs their entire life of Torment And Bad Decision Making.

Basically what im trying to say is this bitch needs to get hit on the head.

[caterpillarinacave]

Do you have thoughts about Baby Henry and his Great Aunt Matilda?

Oh BOY do I.

I could literally go on and on forever but I should redirect you to this entire fic which is basically a coherent, carefully constructed, novel of those thoughts:

(Those with an astute eye will notice that I call Matilda Henry’s aunt, as in his fathers sister, as opposed to his great aunt. Maybe this is due to the copious amounts of inheritance fuckery brought up in the first chapter. Maybe I forgot because rereading nothing but shadows makes me sad. Maybe I can make it work and I’m going with it.) 

[darkkitty1208]

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